"You're still here?"
With a shift, a scuffle and the achey unwinding of his back as his chair rolls out from under the table, Jahseh uprights himself where he sits and zeroes onto his brother, who posts himself against the doorway to his office like the courtesy of knocking is by some means beneath him. Sullivan, toting a shaggy cloth littered with grease and its sorts, wipes his hands somewhat clean, sluggish to make his point much to Jahseh's dismay.
"You need something?"
"No."
"So fuck off," Jahseh mumbles, and then disappears back beneath his desk. He continues to fiddle with the laces of his steel toe boots, as he had been for the past five or so minutes, because their mismatched lengths had grown to bother him that much.
"Make me come in there and do you something," Sullivan scoffs. He strolls deeper into the room anyway, a blind ear turned to Jahseh's lowly chuckles. He wavers between a seat at the desk and the boucle curved sofa against the wall, before he opts for the latter. "You said you'd be out by 2."
"And so what if I ain't?"
Again, Jahseh rears himself upwards, so he can take Sullivan in, alongside all his stony misgivings. The two sit all through their glares, one altogether a spitting image of the other, before Sullivan begrudgingly caves.
"Santana's coming by in a few."
Jahseh blinks, "For what?"
"Oil change."
"I'm not here. Shut the door when you're leaving." And then he dives back towards his laces. Now, Sullivan has and most likely will remain to silently stomach his opinions on his brother's impermeable bubble, the miles worth of distance he's over the last year or so dug between himself and everyone he once considered a friend, yet somewhere in the midst of Jahseh's self-destruction and debris, Sullivan has come to find himself forced to draw a line, an indomitable one at that. Sometimes he by-stands, sometimesâlike todayâhe does not.
"Are you hard of hearing?" Sullivan says, and by the scorching dip in his tone alone, Jahseh knows there is truly no avoiding the wrath his brother is gearing himself up to descend upon him. Sullivan is met by the whites of Jahseh's eyes as he rolls them, with all but discretion. "Don't piss me off, Jah."
"Ah, don't start."
"Don't make me start, then." Jahseh's deadened stare seems to peeve Sullivan all the worse, noted by the hereunder slump in his posture as he takes his elbows to his knees and one clenched fist to his palm. "I ain't said not one word about the way you're moving with your boys, your boys, but hear this, thoughâthat shit don't run with family."
"Heâ"
"He's family."
You could take to the tension in that room with a butcher's knife, and even then you'd barely make a dent in it. A dead man could sense the woeful shift between the brothers in that moment, one at their wit's end and the other far beyond it. Jahseh can very nearly feel the pattern of his heartbeats deaden at the mention of family, the little he has to claim as such. Or rather, at the mention of Santana, the closest thing he's ever gotten to a little brother. Suddenly, he's sure there's a gaping hole where his stomach's supposed to be, siphoning all the gall he knows it'll take to have this conversation with Sullivan. He doesn't want to talkânot about his friends, not about his family, and not about Santana.
"He gets it."
"He's a kid, he don't get nothing," Sullivan thunders, and despite the bridled volume of his voice, his fiery sincerity rings as loud in Jahseh's ears as ever. "You said fuck the world and I let you, 'cause watch, you're gonna regret that all on your own. You ain't gonna say fuck Santana, though. You ain't turning your back on no family of ours, I can promise you that much. You ain't spoken to him in how long now? Sinceâ"
And that's about as far as he gets, because a few feet before Sullivan's drawn line sits Jahseh's, and he devotedly abides by it. Sometimes Sullivan by-stands, sometimes he doesn't. Sometimes Jahseh lets him, sometimesâlike todayâhe doesn't. There are things, many as such but only one to be taken as staunchly serious as this, that the brothers had vowed never to speak on. Chapters of their history Jahseh still foolishly tries to convince himself are his mind's own works of fiction, memories that taunt him every time he questions the worth of a life lived alone, his life lived alone. There are some things that the brothers, as close as they are, never speak upon.
If Jahseh were to make sure of anything, it would always be of that.
"Oi!" Jahseh snaps. He's on his feet before he realises he's on his feet, backed as far away from his brother as space allows. The same brother who sits a room away from him, stoic and yet beneath that startled as Jahseh all but bursts before him. "The fuck are you doing? I ain't talking 'bout all that with you, so fuck off!"
"Jaâ"
"Nah, fuck off!"
Sullivan too rises, approaching his brother with all his scolding's objectives adjourned. He rounds that desk till the two are face to face, the silence between them pierced by Jahseh's heaving breaths, the stillness disturbed by the tempered rising and falling of Jahseh's chest. Sullivan takes a a hand to his brother's shoulder, "Relax."
"I am relaxed. I'm calm," Jahseh lies with ease, dredging all the solace he can from his brother's attempts at comfort. And like every other time, it works. No one could ever explain the connection the two shared nor could they make sense of how effortlessly they leaned on one another. It was solely for them to understand.
With a sigh weighted apparently by the world itself, Sullivan heaves out, "Just go home, man."
"Baaaabe!"
At the sound of Morgan and her fast approaching footsteps, the pair straighten themselves up, their united efforts to dissipate the tautness in the room before she picks up on it is a lesson learned from a tale as old as timeâMorgan would have them sitting knee to knee for hours on end with poured hearts and tears unshed before she ever let either go to bed unhappy with the other.
"We're in here!" Sullivan retreats back towards the couch, Jahseh busies himself with his own dismissal. He's still rustling about in search of his keys when Morgan waltzes through the open the door. She grumbles out something along the lines of a greeting, before she untangles herself into her boyfriend's awaiting embrace. Sullivan smiles, glancing towards Jahseh once more before he asks, "Where you coming from?"
"Eve's. Babe, you're not even gonna believe what's happened. I'm fuming," Morgan huffs. She sits up, pulling her bag from her shoulder to prop it beside her. Jahseh can't fight the perk of his ears, although he attempts to play it off as he swipes his keys from their hiding place.
"Oh, what's she saying? What's going on?"
"I haven't seen her in a few days, I was getting worried," Morgan begins, but her vagueness is quick to bore Jahseh, from his seat outside of their conversation.
"Is she sick or what?" He probes. Sullivan casts him a curious stare, unsure whether he's mistaken to observe some semblance of concern in his brother's prying, and then his head swings back to Morgan at her words to follow.
"She got robbed when she was leaving work a few days ago."
"Huh?" The brothers blurt in concert, as equal in their bewilderment as Morgan had been a mere hour ago when she'd first been enlightened. Jahseh's mood, already at its sourest, teeters on the brink of something rather unfamiliar, he lets his face twist in whatever expression it is that his heart desires, far past feigned indifference at this point. That girl ain't got no luck in life, he thinks to himself.
"I know! And she never said anything," Morgan tuts, with a dispirited shake of her head. "She doesn't wanna file a police report either, she said the guy seemed really young."
Sullivan scoffs, "Who cares? Bring your phone, let me chat to her."
"Babe, she's not in the mood. Trust me. I feel so bad, she just moved here and already she's going through it. After everything she's already been through," Morgan mumbles. Jahseh hasn't a clue what she means by this, and he finds himself thankful for that fact. He has enough about her on his mind as is, more than he'd as a man like to admit.
"Stop frowning," Sullivan says, he seatbelts his arm across Morgan's torso and pulls her snug into himself. Then, he veers his attention towards Jahseh. Sullivan raises his brows, Jahseh responds with a shrug. A bigly laced shrug. "Look, let us sâ"
"Don't even think about it. I just came to drop you guys off some food, it's in your fridge. I'm going back to her's now. I'll see yous later," Morgan is quick to snuff the thought before it can ignite and blow to insurmountable proportions. She snatches her bag off the seat, gives her boyfriend a series of pecks in farewell, and then turns to Jahseh, who tucks himself into the corner of the room as he stuffs his arms into his jacket. "Oh, Jahseh. Do you have Eve's number?"
He frowns, "No."
"If I send it to you, will you give her a shout? I want her to know she has us, if anything. Just check on her or something."
The couple await his response, Jahseh fusses with the collar of his coat in avoidance. How he'd gone from begging his brother to keep Eve at a distance to building her furniture and running wellness checks in her favour, he couldn't tell you if he tried. He's sure he fixes his words to politely decline, but insteadâ
"Yeah, send it."
Good morning! Wrote this last night, fell asleep before I could publish it. I'm unstoppable (until it's writer's block). Tryna write as much as I can before it creeps up on me again.
Now, are things starting to click? Probably not lmao.
Thoughts and feels on Sul and Jahseh's tiff. What on earth is this big bad thing that Jahseh refuses to speak on?
Morgan tells of Eve's situation. Is someone gonna tell the police? Will Sullivan and Jahseh involve themselves? Or will everyone listen to Eve and leave it be? Idk.
Well I know, but you know what I mean.
Bye for now.