Bump and Run

Now, he hadn’t exactly been a saintly little kid – what only child on a military base filled with all the sorts of things you were warned not to touch would be – but he’d never stolen anything. Ahem. Not that way anyway. If you counted some shitty Yugo in Kosovo, maybe he had, it’d been a go or possibly end up in some shitty gulag hoping the old man could get him out before they worked him to death situation though. In some circles he’d been in, that was considered lucky. He’d seen the things some kids had to do to survive in the shittiest parts of the world. He’d not begrudged losing the fifty dollars in the back pocket of his trousers to some scruffy little thing in a crowd in Grozny – even if that had been all the bargaining money he’d had left. He did bloody begrudge it in the middle of Mystic Falls though.

Like his luck wasn’t shitty enough as it was. JJ almost stopped to bash his brains out against the shelf in front of him – and the boxes of Wheaties that would undoubtedly end up as soft as his sodding brains the minute he poured milk on them. There was no need for any of that here. If anything Mystic Falls was dripping in money, it was what attracted opportunistic leaches like Grey Maddox there in the first place. There was no desperate need for a loaf of bread to stop them starving – something he would’ve bought them if they’d been willing or able to open their mouths. There was just the occasional bad apple (alright, alright, it took one to know one) the store hadn’t gotten around to throwing out yet.

Would the Sheriff give a pickpocket that tiny a slap on the wrist or was Forbes secretly the sort who’d teach them a lesson with a few hours in the cells. It hadn’t worked for him, but hey who knew. Stuff it, with Christmas coming he might even be a little altruistic himself and let the brat go if she handed it back.

JJ took after her, skidding down and around the aisles on her tail, until she got all the way back to mummy. He snorted as the woman turned towards him. Those rotten apples certainly didn’t fall far from the tree, although she’d been a bit more like one of those sharp-sweet apples they had here. The sort that puckered your mouth up, but then had you going back for another bite, lingering sticky on your lips. He might’ve thought the kid had just picked any woman as a cover, but she’d been talking to the girl as he approached and not in that ‘what the bloody hell do you think you’re doing way’.

Sandy brows rose, amusement pulling at his lips for just a second as his hand fell away from his mouth, his order to the kid to hand his wallet back blatantly ignored. He dipped his head a bit, his nose twitching as he wrinkled it with his grin. ”Well,” he drawled. ”She is trouble, so I guess that’d fit. That’s not the way you ask for the child maintenance darlin’.” Not that the kid probably had a clue what that was, she had her pay day, so who cared.

She slipped out from behind her mum though, her voice soft, those brown eyes going all big and shiny like she expected him to be the sort to melt over it. JJ looked at her for a moment, his brows remaining high before he cackled. His grin was broad now. He beckoned her closer with both hands, bending slightly so he was more on her level. ”Well, if you ask your mum real nice I might be,” he offered. ”As long as I get my wallet back. Some of us are old enough that we’ve gotta pay for our own …” Pausing, he looked beyond the girl towards the cart where the kid’s coat – oh, she was a quick change artist too, this wasn’t her first bump and grab – lay over everything else. ”Mac and cheese? Well, you’re eating better than I am. If I offer up a reward for someone helpfully finding my wallet for me am I gonna get an invite to dinner?” He looked up hopefully, his arms still spread like the kid wasn’t canny enough to avoid him. The wallet might’ve been in the cart, but he was willing to bet she’d put it somewhere far safer.

Tagged: LUCKY CHRISTMAS * Word Count: 753

It was what? JJ stared at her for a moment, his nose wrinkling. Support, of course they wouldn’t use the same word – and he wasn’t gonna admit that support made a whole lot more sense than maintenance – as though you were paying to keep the kid convinced that the status quo was still there. Had the old man even bothered doing that for his first born or had he just washed his hands of the entire thing? Well, when it did inevitably happen, he wasn’t gonna be the apple only falling a couple of inches from the tree. Mistakes learned from and all that.

JJ pooched out his lips, tipping his head back and forth before he shot a grin at the kid. She hadn’t asked for money at all and that had been the problem, hadn’t it? ”Same difference,” he muttered. Neither of them were gonna be paid since short stuff here wasn’t his. This town wasn’t that freaky.

Crouched down, studying her as she made her way towards him, JJ could see that there probably wouldn’t have been much of him in her if he had ended up an unintentional dad, contributing to the great gene pool. Looks wise her mum was there, personality-wise, maybe … He wouldn’t have denied being light fingered a time or two, had certainly never met a line he hadn’t skipped across as a kid. And her gob, Jesus ….

Blue eyes narrowed down like hers, his forearms planted on his knees until she took a swipe at him – like mother like daughter indeed. JJ barked out a laugh, blinking at her. ”Well there was plenty for mac and cheese and the nice bottle of something I was planning on having with dinner until someone dipped their hands in my pocket.” There was that glimmer of hope in his eyes as he looked up at mom. It wasn’t the first time he’d ever mooched dinner on the power of his charm alone, or anything else. A smile and that guileless boyish look could get you everywhere. He bet the kid knew how to play on her own version of it too. ”How about twenty dollars?” he offered. Undoubtedly that was gonna be pushed, the bargain never struck that easily.

Maybe he’d believed it had been in that museum bathroom in a breathless rush at the end. A satisfied married couple smoothing down clothes as they’d left it. The frown lines started to cut deep again. JJ straightened up, one finger held out in that age old signal to wait. ”Woah, woah. I always keep my word. What do you think I didn’t come through on?” He’d taken a swing at Maddox hadn’t he? It wasn’t his fault that the one woman invested in keeping his reputation clean was the one paying his wages, holding his strings. The article had ended up out there and anybody with half a brain would’ve caught the whiff of bullshit about the retraction he’d been forced to write.

Grumbling under his breath, he dragged a hand over his stubbled jaw and looked down at the kid. Now she had his wallet and the means to put the boot in herself, like his ego wasn’t bruised enough without little feet stomping all over it. ”I dunno, but I don’t think she’s happy with me,” he stage whispered back. He wasn’t about to tell her how the bargain had been struck, little ears and all of that.

”Bullshit,” JJ announced as he straightened up. He clapped his hands over the kid’s ears, glaring at her mum over the top of her head. He’d done his part both times around, even if she wasn’t gonna give him credit for doing his husbandly duty the first time around. ”I published the article, I wasn’t betting on his girlfriend, y’know, my boss, being back before it got any real traction. I had no choice. It was publish a retraction and a sodding apology or my career’s tanked. I dunno about you, but a pay packet’s just a little necessary if I wanna keep eating mac and cheese. You want me to go for his jugular again?” By the time point his teeth were gonna be blunt, the pitbull like lock he’d tried to get on Maddox loose enough that he was practically gumming at him instead. Cursing under his breath he peeled his hands off of Lucy’s ears and held one out like she was about to deposit his wallet back in it.

Tagged: LUCKY CHRISTMAS * Word Count: 750

JJ kept his eyes on the kid, his grin frozen in place as the sass came rolling back from her. Jesus, was this what it had been like for his own parents? Never a word that rolled out of his gob that wasn’t smart in that smug bratty way. Truths lobbed like stones from the catapult of that mouth, stinging as they landed without any real intentional aim – least he thought there wasn’t much of that. He hadn’t been that bad. ”We’ll call that a life lesson,” he said sweetly.

Only. The bark of laughter rolled out again. Alright, his wife definitely had it worse than his mother ever had. ”You know an awful lot about what’s in there and what it takes to replace for someone who’s never seen it.” Staring down at her, JJ let his lips curl out of the purse they’d shrunk into, back into a smile. ”Is that what it’s gonna take? A passport with old Lizzie’s face on it and twenty bucks?” Two could play at the bargain game, although adding another twenty to it would be a hundred sodding times easier than trying to convince the embassy that he’d somehow slipped over here without anyone know nine – or ten? – years ago to knock some woman up and disappear again without realising that they’d created this little miracle of life.

That turn of phrase should’ve stung like an ulcer – it’d felt like one was swallowing him up as he’d seen the opposite of one when Destiny had walked back into the rubble he’d turned her relationship into on the front page of her own newspaper. There’d been nothing miraculous about that baby being lost. No sodding miracle for him in a Pulitzer winning story of a serial killer operating on both sides of the Atlantic either. Just that … ugh.

JJ wanted to peel a hand off of the kid’s ear to dig fingers into his gut like he could pull out the bit of him where regret had burned. It should’ve been sat there as a lump under his skin, his conscience growing like a tumour since he’d fetched up here. What he needed was someone to cut it out, it’d be less painful for him, even if it wasn’t for everybody else. He glanced down at the kid, frowned as she hissed and tried to shrug him off. ”It’s difficult finding someone to print your accusations when you get yourself fired for it. That whole ‘go independent, make yourself a blog thing to put the truth out there’s a crock of shit.” Not the journalist he made himself out to be. Another pang right there. ”After she got back from losing one,” JJ grunted quietly. Alright. Forget his gut aching, now it was his balls as she took a swipe at them too. ”If she had been there it wouldn’t have gotten printed at all. That was me picking out my fight.” And it’d been a piss poor one.

New dad. Would Maddox have been called that if Destiny had … nope, he wasn’t gonna go tumbling down that path, ‘specially not with his wallet gone and no way to pay for the six pack and the litre of Kentucky’s cheapest that thought was gonna require. The lines had carved their way deeper between his brows for it. ”Not from your mum there ain’t. From little ears though … there’s gonna be some. It sucks, but that’s another life lesson for ya.” And there was one for him. Sighing, JJ dragged his palm out from under the kid’s, grabbing one of her fingers to yank it. ”Well since you’ve got such a hard … you’re so keen to do it, you can gimme a hand with dragging him down.” It was gonna take more than his big shiny brass pair and his wife definitely had them.

Straightening up, JJ looked down at the kid like she’d sprouted a second head as she took his hand and dragged him towards the exit. Apparently the wallet was gonna be his after dinner treat. ”Alright, let’s go.” Looking like a little family trailing through the shop, although he kept himself at a long enough distance that Lucy couldn’t reach across with her hand other to dip anything else out of his pockets. He wouldn’t put it past her to dip his keys. He’d get the super to let himself into his apartment later and find the place entirely cleaned out.

Of course, that meant it didn’t occur to him that Light Fingered Lucille – honestly, had he just learned his daughter’s name before his wife’s? – was leading them straight out the door without chucking the groceries down the conveyor belt. Innocence shone in his eyes as he hitched his brows at wifey. ”I guess it’s good thing that one of us has still got our hands on our money, eh? No cash and I’ve still gotta work for me dinner? That don’t seem like much of a deal to me,” he mock grumbled to the kid. He started loading up the belt anyway, carefully putting the heavy things up front – he wasn’t that much of an idiot at least. You stuck bottles on top of your bread and what you had was a gross mushy sandwich.

It woulda been his card paying for the groceries – he was on the line for child whatever they were calling it after all – but in lieu of being able to do that, JJ took the bags and lead the way out to the street, where he’d parked his car up outside the coffee bean. He dumped his bag in the boot – the back seat was dangerous with the kid back there. It wasn’t like the town was big enough to need a map, but he still followed the directions back to the apartment building that coulda been a clone of his own, even if they were streets away.

The bags were his to carry again, up in the elevator to an apartment he was glancing around the minute the door opened. His parents had always been given the cushy spots wherever they were stationed. Houses instead of the shitty apartments, yards for him to run around in, staff occasionally. This wasn’t that, but it wasn’t a tip either. He guess Lucille was still old to be making that sort of mess. ”You wanna tell me where to put this away? Kiddo here can help, since I’m guessing that’s usually her job anyway.” And he’d definitely lumped himself in with her in the earning mac and cheese for dinner stakes.

Tagged: LUCKY CHRISTMAS * Word Count: 1099

Now she got why he hadn’t tried to eviscerate Maddox through his bird. The slashes he had taken at Destiny by association had cut deep enough that he’d been able to see each wound in those big blue eyes that’d shimmered like lakes at him while he’d sat there for his arse kicking. Guilt had carved itself deep into him then, taking its sodding time to heal too – especially with her hand selected monkey on his back, now he’d passed it along. She’d proved a distraction, just the same way Lucy was now.

JJ continued to stare down at her, only managing to snort when she started picking his parenting skills apart. His lips pursed for a second before he nodded. ”And that’s another for ya – all life lessons are dumb, but you learn ‘em all the same. It’s a parent’s prerogative to toss them out at their kids when they don’t know how else to tell you not to do stuff.” Like listening in. If there was anything you didn’t want a kid to pick up they’d hear it clear as anything. His mum had always sworn that it was a selective deafness, especially on his part. Maybe she hadn’t been wrong.

The wince was faint, the kid’s nosiness something he was glad enough to pass off to his wife. JJ bobbed his head like he was agreeing with whatever nonsense bullshit Lucky was pushing on her daughter. He watched the kid quietly from the corner of his eye until she started to sputter something about alligator’s. Had he honestly been just like that? Probably. Being on the other side of it was painful, the distraction of checking out a blessing when it finally came. He’d chalk all of this up on his long, long list of why he wasn’t about to reproduce any time soon.

It didn’t feel like he’d moved all that far out of his own childhood. You could’ve been to a dozen different warzones, spent bowel liquifying hours with the muzzle of a weapon inches from his head, but the minute a mother told you to jump, you didn’t even ask how high, you just started hopping. He wasn’t the only one who knew it either. He would’ve winked conspiratorially at the kid as he finished griping, but Lucy was already getting a jab in that had him pouting. ”Not your fault, eh?” JJ hummed, shaking his head as he started straightening the cans up, knowing he was gonna be the one putting them in bags on the other side. ”I hope you remember that sharin’ thing when it comes to the washing up.” He didn’t imagine that would hinge on how much he crabbed, like Lucy was suggesting. That was just gonna come with someone else making him dinner – he wasn’t a total bloody heathen after all. He’d been raised with manners, and some had stuck after he’d slithered out from under the old man’s thumb and expectations.

Just as he’d expected the bagging was their job too, with orders from the boss that he resisted meeting with a salute. He hefted the bags into the car, only winced once as he glanced in the rear view and spotted the kid rifling through the back of the car like she was gonna turn up anything more than receipts or chocolate wrappers back there. ”She’s gonna have me cleaned out by the end of dinner,” he puffed. And he’d get his wallet back soon enough after him, even if it was by dangling her upside down by her ankles at the end of it and shaking til it dropped out of wherever the hell she’d put it.

The kid took some bags on the way in at least, keeping a hold on them until they piled out of the elevator and into the apartment. ”I guess that’s far enough,” JJ grumbled, although he carried his into the kitchen, seeming to guilt Lucy into doing the same, by not following her grumbling example. She stowed them up on the counter before she tried to retreat. Nu uh, if he was gonna get called on his complaining then turn about would be fair play. JJ winked at Lucky as she raised her brows at his suggestion. ”Oi,” he grumbled. ”You really want me poking through every cupboard in here? I could you know…” Building up more of a picture of Lucky than he’d gotten so far – a journalist’s prerogative that he’d indulged in more than once.

He still did it, flipping jars and bottles around as he put the groceries Lucy unbagged where she ordered him to – oh, there was definitely more of her mum than just her looks in the girl. ”Yes boss,” JJ muttered quietly every time he stowed something. By the time he was done and Lucy was trailing out – supposedly to do homework, although if she was anything like him it’d be five minutes of that and half an hour of staring at the telly with the sound down low enough that it couldn’t be heard. ”I thought she was the only one giving orders.” He didn’t bitch as he did as Lucky asked though, just fetched the butter and milk without complaint.

It didn’t take Lucky two minutes to bring up their former conversation again. JJ’s gaze stayed on the kid as Lucky murmured to him. ”When little ears aren’t listening, you mean?” he asked lightly. There weren’t much of a question there at all – you didn’t talk about bringing a man to his knees for being a cunt while there were impressionable minds right there. JJ grunted lightly, crossing his arms over his chest. He settled back against the edge of the counter, dragging his eyes away from Lucy finally. ”Yeah, I’m still going after him. I’m not letting that sort of scumbag continue to fuck up lives here, especially not when my sister-in-law’s right in that lion’s den.” Pulling himself back up, he lifted his chin towards the table. ”You got anything else you need my help with?” It was only polite after all.

Sitting around the table for a proper family meal felt a little weird at first – they certainly hadn’t been like that when he was a kid – but the stilted feeling rapidly melted away. This was one for the plus column of having kids, short as it was. He told some of the less gruesome stories of his time on the road – like the time he’d taught a couple of kids not much older than Lucille how to play cricket in Rwanda, and how one of them had smacked the ball he’d lobbed for him right back in his face. The black eye had faded before the sting in his ego had. By the time he’d polished off his bowl the last thing he wanted to do was wash up, but he was up and picking up the dishes anyway. ”I should make you help with this,” he told Lucille, ”I’m gonna take one for the team though. You owe me … and that’s on top of the wallet.” He backed out of the room with his eyes narrowed at her. It hadn’t just been a ploy to get that private conversation either.

The dishes went in the sink, the soap squeezed in with a heavy hand. He went to work on them, bubbles squeezing up between his knuckles. JJ frowned his way through it, rinsing carefully before he set them aside to dry. More than half had been done before he heard footsteps heading back. ”Is it time for the big talk then?” he asked, winging his brows. There wasn’t much of a joke to it, not when they were about to plan Grey Maddox’s downfall, and more than likely, his being canned right on the heels of it.

Tagged: LUCKY CHRISTMAS * Word Count: 1303