2008-06-04: Big Trouble In Little Chinatown

Starring:

Jack_icon.gif

Guest Starring: Bebe

Summary: Trouble? Jack? Please.

Date It Happened: June 04, 2008

Big Trouble In Little Chinatown


Loft Housing - Chinatown

Burdened with the almost impossible task of maneuvering a motorcycle while simultaneously trying to ensure that the unconscious six and a half foot man precariously propped up and strapped to her back like a stillborn Siamese twin is both still breathing and securely in place, traversing the twelve or so miles between Brighton Beach and lower Manhattan manages to take the longest twenty-two minutes of Barbara Deacon's life.

All the same, by the time she manages to make it back to base — an almost empty warehouse she'd borrowed recently from a trio of Tong members who just so happened to check in for a series of extended stays at Gouverveur all on the same day — Jack, while still unconscious, is no more worse for wear.

She hauls him into the old freight elevator and ascends to the loft, where she lays him out on someone else's bed before discarding her leather jacket and beginning the search for scissors or a knife or something sharp that might make for a suitable tool in removing the Irishman's shirt — so that she might tend to his injuries, of course. Over the next hour or so, Bebe washes wounds and even inserts expert stitches into the particularly brutal gash Jack's sporting over the eye with the patch. He earned that one from her not-so-sweet salutation.

The feeling of fleet fingers on bare flesh might tickle if it weren't for the fact that almost all of Jack's exposed skin is decorated in either scars or ink. Still, there is some sensation to be had that might lead to lucidity…

There are far worse ways in the world to wake up.

Father, it hurts…

I know it does. That's why we're here. To see how much you can take.

But Father, I'm bleeding.

Stop crying. You can take this. You were bred for it. Built for it. Do NOT fail me.

Jack gasps for air as he regains consciousness and tears himself free from the… the dream?

He hurts, but it could be worse. An instant of self-assessment assures him that none of his bones are broken. Cuts and bruises are the worst of his injuries, save for the enormous knot on his skull where he was clouted by… What was he clouted by again?

By a motorcycle helmet.

"Bebe," he growls, instantly alert. Her touch on his body is familiar. Even the way she tends his wounds brings back memories. He bolts upright into a sitting position and snatches her hand. His good grey eye fixes on her mercilessly. "Where am I? And where's Ghost?"

While the expression on her face make seem to suggest surprise, in actuality, Bebe had been expecting this moment to manifest for almost half an hour now. "You're safe," she says. "For now." Ain't that the truth.

How long until Daddy Deacon discovers his darling daughter's whereabouts this time around? Surely, he hasn't a clue about the company she's keeping. Half naked men certainly aren't anywhere to be found on the approved list of acceptable associates — especially not someone who's already violated the one and only strike rule. Maybe now might be a good time to keep your hands to yourself, eh, Jackie Boy?

Bebe barely twitches a muscle while her wrist is still at risk of being twisted until the tendons reluctantly let go of the bones. "Don't worry. He's still right where you left him." Not that that's any sort of consolation whatsoever.

Jack is Not Pleased. He releases Bebe and rolls to his feet with a twist of flexible-if-sore muscles, glowering even more thoroughly at his one-time lover. "You," he says, his voice rough and angry. "Even if you were a man, you'd never be half the man that he was. He deserves better than to lie in an abandoned building."

For a moment it seems like he's ready to take off. Shirtless, bruised, and bloody, his first coherent thought is properly respecting his dead friend. The friend he killed. The second friend to die because of him in the last day and a half. Then he glances back over at Bebe and narrows his eye.

After all, Ghost is already dead. Just like she said, he's not really going anywhere.

"How dare you?" he accuses, advancing on her one dangerous step at a time.

For the most part, Bebe doesn't have a whole hell of a lot to say in regards to Ghost; she'd never met the man - at least, not as far as she could tell from the brief glimpse she caught of his corpse at the laundromat - and given the choice between bodies to bring home, she went with the one she knew she could revive. Apparently, she chose wrong. No partial credit given for the obvious answer.

"How dare I what…? Save your life?" By hitting him in the face with a motorcycle helmet, apparently. Some of life's lessons hurt more than others. Of course, by that measuring stick, Jack's probably owed at least a week of constant crotch-kicking until he's on par with the brand of agony he'd inflicted upon poor, precious Bebe with his oh-so-abrupt departure all those years ago. If only she knew about that whole stabbing story. Maybe later. Right now she's rolling into something full-on indignant and she's always so sexy when there's just a hint of malice on the tip of her tongue.

"'Cause that's what I did back there. It was your ass or his and my bike's not exactly a four-seater. We had three minute at the most to haul ass outta there before the rest of the gang showed up." Which probably means they found a fair bit of the shit he stashed and left behind. Maybe a little less than half, though, if he's lucky.

Right now he's not.

"What you really don't want to do right now is get me angry, okay, Jackie?" Because, what? She's the Hulk now or something? Bebe's never really been capable of throwing fear into a man effectively without her father's shadow looming over her shoulder.

"You know what? Blow me. I'm outta here." With that, Jack turns his bare, whip-scarred back on Bebe and makes his way toward the elevator. He didn't ask for any of this. Being chased. Being attacked. Having his loved ones threatened and targeted.

Is it so wrong for Pinocchio to want to be a real boy?

"I have a friend to bury. If you want to stop me, try your luck. I dare you. If not, you can reach me at this number sometime later. Sometime much, way later."

Despite his complete lack of shirt or jacket, Jack pops his wrist and produces a business card. It's simple. Direct. Just like the Man Himself. It reads 'JACK' on one side and has a cellular phone number on the other.

Disdainfully, he doesn't even turn to face her. He just drops the card on the floor and thumbs the button on the freight lift.

"Jack…" Those approaching steps just over his shoulder make it clear that she's crossing the floor using wider strides than what might be considered typical for her gait but she isn't running. "You can't go back there. They'll kill you," she says with a genuine shade of concern coloring her voice. Not that she doesn't consider Jack to be capable of extraordinary levels of asskickery — she simply isn't entertaining any illusions as to his current physical condition. He really isn't in any shape to take on half a dozen men.

As if to punctuate her point, Bebe's hand reaches over to pull down the metal gate that keeps the elevator shaft closed when the lift isn't in use; she's trying to hinder if not outright prevent Jack's escape. Some might call that kidnapping. Criminal confinement. "…and I'll be damned if I'm going to let you walk out on me again."

Wise advice. No doubt about it. The question is wether or not Jack is going to listen. He wraps a hand around the gate's bars and squeezes them hard enough that the metal creaks ominously.

"I go where I wanna go," he answers after a ponderously long moment. "And just because I've been inside you, that doesn't give you the right to drag me off on that little rice burner of yours."

His infamous temper is growing closer and closer to the boiling point. Right now, it's only a matter of time. He shoots a harsh glare in his former lover's direction.

"You can go to Hell!" So much for sentiment. If Jack's in an awful hurry to kill himself by someone else's hand then Bebe seems to be willing enough to oblige; after all, she's owed. She exacts small change by suddenly curling her fingers into a fist and delivering a quick blow to the man's left kidney. The strike isn't of sufficient force to send him to the floor but he very well may have just bought himself another bruise.

It hurts. It really does. Not only is Bebe skilled, she has the tiny, sharp knuckles of a dainty-handed woman.

Moving with the impact, Jack bounces his belly off the cage and leans backward with every muscle loosened. When his back is parallel with the floor and his weight supported on one leg, the other foot swings out against the gate to maintain his balance. With his body held in the shape of a 'T', he launches a punch at Bebe's abdomen.

The greatest benefit of his inverted kung-fu stance is that he can see the look in Bebe's eyes.

Surprised? No. Not really. Angry? Perhaps. Determined? Yes. For now, however, Bebe is doing a whole lot of looking at the floor, as the fist sent to her stomach has doubled her temporarily. It did not, however, knocked her off her feet… which is unfortunate for Jack, because it means that she's still got every opportunity to drop and elbow down onto his chest from above. Or try. Either way, her body weight is apt to send them both down to the ground to wrestle it out.

And they do come crashing down, Bebe landing heavily on Jack. Luckily, she's small and slim where he's bulky, so the impact isn't near as crushing as it would've been if their positions were reversed. Still, Jack lets out a WHOOSH of air as the breath is driven from his lungs.

"You always did like to be on top," he gasps raggedly. As he taunts, he grabs the back of his opponent's shirt by the hem and pulls it up and over her head. Not all the way off, but enough to blind her and pin her arms against her ears. Then he rolls and twists nimbly out from under her, rubbing at the sore spot on his chest as he does. That shot hurt even more than the first one did.

The irritated noise that Bebe emits from behind the impromptu veil of cotton sounds more like a groan than a growl as she hastily hurries to yank her shirt back down to it's proper place and recover from the floor. It's a classic martial arts move; a Bruce Lee-like maneuver that sends her back arching as her legs pump forward and the bottoms of her feet find the ground again, returning her body once again to an upright position.

Her recovery brings with it only one hand curled into a fist and at the ready while the other remains palm out and flat. It looks like she's decided to kick Jack's ass with a little bit of preprogrammed Wu Shu. "Well, that was the only way it was going to last longer than five minutes," she says with a little sneer.

"Right," Jack replies scornfully. "You snuck out to see me every night because I was soooooo bad in bed. Speaking of which, nice tits. Are you sure you wouldn't rather just shake them for me than take an ass whippin'?"

He's still taunting and teasing and chuckling at the sight of Bebe with her shirt pulled up as he feigns a cross-legged stumble that closes the distance between he and his angry ex. With his lips only a hair's-breadth from hers, he winks roguishly and he throws all of his weight into a hefty, football-like shoulder tackle.

Size matters, sugar.

It certainly does. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. In that split-second between winking and winking, Bebe sidesteps Jack's charge just in time while miraculously managing to hitch a few fingers into the back of his trousers and help him along — it's one of those moves you might see in an old Western movie — which subsequently sends him careening into the coffee table not more than a few feet behind her with a crash.

The feng shui of this place is about to get all sorts of fucked up. Bebe rounds on the man sprawled out amongst the broken debris and wastes little time in trying to deny him the opportunity to get to his feet. She's straddling his hips again and bringing back a fist in order to deliver another knockout to her ex-boyfriend's not-so-pretty face.

Jack wards off the blow by raising both forearms to cover his head. He's laughing, though. Laughing. "You like to stay awfully close for somebody who claims to be pissed at me," he crows.

Part of the laughter is completely genuine. Part of it is to cover how much it hurts to crash through a coffee table. It's humiliating, too, getting tossed around by someone half your size. To repay Bebe in kind, Jack draws one hand up and delivers a crashing, back-handed slap to the side of her face.

It's precisely the sort of strike that results in a cinematic snap of Bebe's head to one side, hair flying out over her shoulders, blood brought to the corner of her mouth in a single rivulet. To an outside observer, the fight might look comical — especially with Jack laughing — as the two combatants grapple with each other in an attempt to gain the literal upper hand. Bebe's at a disadvantage when the situation calls for feats of strength over skill and, frankly, Jack's hands are much bigger than hers and harder to keep control over when the idea actually isn't to snap his fingers like dry twigs. Instead, Bebe digs her knees in, squeezing her denim-clad thighs against the already tender flesh of his exposed upper body in an attempt to possibly make him pass out from the pain.

Normally, Jack would be thrilled at the prospect of being ridden like a mechanical bull. Considering the rider, who wouldn't?

Unfortunately, he's covered with bruises, cuts, and scrapes, all of which hurt like hell as Bebe takes him for a ride. Can't breathe. Can't move. Can't…

"NO!" he roars. With both palms, he strikes his opponent in the chest and shoves her off of him. Putting every ounce of his remaining strength into the blow, he sends her flying across the room as he rolls to his feet.

For those few short seconds in which she's airborne, Bebe's all long and lanky limbs until she crash-lands onto the hardwood floor and slides right into one of the concrete columns situated throughout the converted loft for structural support. Ow. That hurt. Her recovery isn't so quick this time; not everything happens the way you see it on TV.

She slowly climbs onto her knees and then pushes back up to her feet, arching her back in agony that she keeps contained behind her teeth. Still, she's coming back for more…

Jack hurts. Every single part of him hurts. He keeps one hand pressed against his side as he crosses the room. What starts as a slow lope picks up to a short, high-speed sprint. This is the last card he has to play.

He tackles her, wrapping both arms around her slim body and taking her to the floor. This time he's on top. Nose to nose with her, his good eye roams over her face. Drinking her in. Studying every contour. "You've been practicing," he says gruffly. Approvingly.

Then he grabs her by the hair, pulls her in, and gives her a deep, lingering kiss.

Of course. It was so simple. While Bebe had initiated the fight in order to stop Jack from promptly running right back down to Little Odessa and killing himself in the name of the noble dead, her petty anger at the past had prevented her from recognizing the more easy and obvious method for keeping a man distracted for extended periods of time. Caught up in the kiss, she silently wished that she'd thought of seduction before ending up with what she's pretty sure is a cracked rib. Just thinking about it makes her wince, gasp, and pull away. However, she disguises the pain as piqued desire and eyes Jack with a hard stare before shoving him back in the direction of someone else's borrowed bed.

"Jackie Boy, you have no idea…"

"Neither do you, lover. Now I hate to smooch and run, but I've got places to be and people to kill."

Using the bed as a springboard, Jack covers his face with his arms and leaps through a dusty window. A narrow ledge and a drain pipe serve as his personal elevator as he half-falls and half-slides the two stories down to the street amidst a shower of broken glass.

That's gonna hurt in the morning.

He pauses just long enough to blow a kiss up at the busted-out window and then he disappears into the hectic, overcrowded environment of Chinatown.

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