Jed Bailey (jokerandthief) wrote in the_colony, @ 2011-03-26 22:02:00 |
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Entry tags: | ^ week 35, alice munroe, jed bailey, | alice and jed, ~ series: traders |
Week 35: Tuesday
Characters: Jed Bailey, Evie, Noah, Rizzo, and Alice Munroe
Location: Evie’s trailer
Summary: Jed confronts Evie about who might be the father of her child. It doesn’t go well.
Rating: PG-13 for language and violence
Sweat was prickling up all over Jed’s body, from his upper lip to the small of his back. Which was ridiculous; things had warmed up, but it was still pretty damn cold, and it wasn’t like he was running to the traders’ campsite. More like trudging. He’d avoided the place since his fight with Alice. Having her jump to the same conclusions he had made it feel all the more possible, and that scared the hell out of him. He didn’t want to be some baby’s father, he wasn’t right for it.
But Evie hadn’t been asking him to be. Hell, if he was the father, she was pretty calm about the whole thing. Maybe he had it all wrong. He shouldn’t even ask her, really, if she wasn’t going to bring it up. That’s what he’d been telling himself the past few days. It hadn’t worked. He had to know. Then, when he heard her say, “No, the baby’s not yours,” he could go back to breathing normal again.
Nodding in greeting to a few of the traders, Jed came up to Evie’s RV and knocked.
It took a moment before the door opened. Evie’s hair was a little bed rumpled, and her eyes blinked blearily before she fixed him with a fuzzy smile. “Oh hey there, handsome stranger.”
Jed’s stomach squirmed. God, he had to get this out of his head so he could at least enjoy her flirting. “Hey,” he said with a weak smile. “Sorry, figured you of all folks would be up an’ goin’ in the mornin’.”
“Had some trouble staying asleep all night last night,” she answered, bringing her hands up over her head and stretching. There was an audible pop as her vertebrae shifted. “Mm. Didja need something?”
He watched her, not wholly without interest but his mind definitely elsewhere. “I was wantin’ to talk,” he said, having second thoughts even as he said it. “Can I come in? Or if you’d rather later, it ain’t im-- It can wait.”
“Sure, c’min,” Evie replied, pulling back and into the campervan. The space smelled faintly of something herbal and sweet, and a sprawling interpretive mural of the celestial bodies crept up from either side all the way up to the ceiling. Evie followed the middle path all the way to the back, where one giant bed and a bunk above it were situated. She settled down easily on the end of it, gesturing to the nearby bucket seat by the drop-down table that acted as their dining surface.
“What’s on your mind?”
Jed sat gingerly on the edge of the seat, as if he might need to bolt any minute. He licked his dry lips, trying to come up with the words. He’d thought about it so much lately, he had no idea what to say. “Do you... There somethin’ you wanna tell me?”
Evie looked properly confused by the abstract question, frowning slightly. “I’m not really good at guessing games, sweetheart,” she said, bemused. His body language was enough to put her on edge. “How about you give me a hint first?”
It was just a question, just a quick little question. Taking a breath, he let it out with the words. “That baby mine?”
Evie’s whole presence shifted with the question. Her arms shifted around her midsection, the gesture purely protective. Her eyes narrowed for a moment at him before she gave him a wane smile and a small shrug.
“I don’t know.”
Not the answer he expected. “What d’you mean you don’t know? It was six months ago, right?”
“You’re not the only person who shared my bed, Jed Bailey,” she said smoothly, maintaining eye contact. “It’s not like I can arrange a paternity test.”
Jed felt light-headed. This wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He was supposed to ask and then he’d know. It was supposed to feel better. “Well why not?” he said, a desperate whine to his voice. “We got a doctor.”
It was clear from the look on her face that it took a certain amount of control not to look annoyed by his response. “An ER doctor isn’t going to know how to run a paternity test with full accuracy,” she said, her voice taking on an authoritative tone. It was her business voice. “The most she might be able to do is a blood test, and that’s pretty useless.”
His hands leaning heavy on his knees, he stared at the floor in thought before looking at her again. “What’re you gonna do?”
Her eyebrows rose. “About what?”
“About figurin’ out the father,” he said, his tone turning testy.
“I won’t,” she said plainly. “My tribe will help me raise my child. Whoever the father is, is unimportant.”
Jed scowled. “What if it’s me?”
She looked at him thoughtfully with her brows slightly arched before speaking. “Are you going somewhere with that question, or am I not being clear enough for you?”
“If it’s mine then I got a right to it.” The words were out of his mouth without thinking, but even on second thought, he knew they were true. He didn’t want a kid, sure, but if he had one, then dammit, it was his. “When’s your ‘tribe’ plannin’ on goin’?”
Evie’s lips thinned. Her displeasure at his tone was clear on her face. “We’re leaving in a month. We have previous engagements up north, but we plan to come back through for our share of the crops once season has come to peak.”
“Yer travelin’ north? You shittin’ me? It’s dangerous up north,” he snapped. “There’s a whole bundle of fuckheads up there who’d love to get their hands on a pregnant woman.”
“Good to know you’re so concerned about my welfare,” she said with a humoring smile. “But we can take care of ourselves, thank you. We have guns and know enough routes to avoid being followed.”
Jed ran his hands into his hair, staring at his knees. She was going to go off and take his-- what might be his child all over the damn country. Hell, they’d been in Mexico, where the whole swine flu thing started in the first place. Surely she wasn’t dumb enough to want that. “Look,” he said, meeting her eyes again. “You can stay here. Yer folks can go up, meet whoever, and you can juss stay here. We got a doctor, so’s you wouldn’t need to worry about nothin’ goin’ wrong.”
A dark cloud descended over Evie’s face as she blinked at him incredulously. “I’m not leaving my tribe,” she said in a rough voice. With minimal effort she stood from where she sat, moving over to one of the drawers and opening it.
“I think you should leave.”
Jesus, she was being pissy. Jed got to his feet, trying to keep his face from scowling. “Look, juss stay until the baby’s born. I gotta know. If I got a kid, he ain’t growin’ up without a father.”
“You’re never gonna know, aren’t you listening?” she snapped, turning on him with fire in her eyes. “You’ll never know for sure. There is no way to know. And even if my baby came out blond-haired, blue-eyed, and wearing a stetson, it still wouldn’t be yours. This is my baby, and my baby will have plenty of men to look up to that will help me and who respect me.” Her hands balled into fists at her sides. “I don’t even know you, or anyone here in this place. I am here on business; why the hell would I leave people I know and trust to stay here for your peace of mind?”
“We weren’t business!” Jed snarled, his hands fisting as well. This was crazy. If the kid was his, the kid was his, and no one was taking it from him. “You got no right, pushin’ me out! It ain’t like you made that baby all by your lonesome!”
“I’ve got every right! There’s no question that it’s my baby!”
“So, so, what, just ‘cause you got a vagina, means you got all the say? Men got no right to their babies no more?”
Her face flushed with fury. “Get the fuck out of my van,” she said, her voice deadly quiet.
Jed pressed his mouth tight. “No!” he said, pointing sharply at her. “I’m sicka bein’ pushed around and told what’s what and havin’ no right to say a fuckin’ word! I got a right to see that kid and know if it’s mine! Don’t change juss ‘cause yer a slut and don’t know whose it is!”
The side door suddenly opened at the back of the van, two bodies crowding into the space. Jed knew Noah instantly, but the other man he’d only seen in passing around the camp since they’d arrived on the property. Both men’s expressions were hard, but the other man had a different sort of rage written all over his face.
“What’s goin’ on in here?” he asked in a sharp voice, his accent making the vowels wide and long.
“Nothing,” Evie answered, looking past Jed to her brother and fellow trader. “Jed was just leaving.”
Jed crossed his arms, his jaw clenching. If she thought it was that easy... “I don’t aim to leave ‘til we’re done talkin’,” he said evenly. Being outnumbered did set his nerves on edge, but it wasn’t like they could do anything. At least without big consequences.
“Ev?” Noah said, his tone concerned. Evie responded rapidly from across the space in a language Jed didn’t understand, her face contorting animatedly as she gestured between herself and Jed. Noah’s face darkened considerably and he asked a question in kind while the other man glowered at Jed.
Noah made a gesture behind him with his arm, which Evie answered with a short nod and a shorter reply, then Noah turned his eyes to Jed again.
“My sister asked you to leave,” he said with authority. “I suggest you do so.”
Without breaking Noah’s gaze, Jed took a deliberate step back and sat firmly on the bucket seat.
The other man stepped further into the camper van immediately, his whole body tense. Evie inhaled in alarm.
“Ricky, don’t--”
“This is our space, and when you’re told to leave it, y’better do as your damn told, pal,” he said angrily.
“Rizzo,” Noah said pointedly, but the man -- Ricky or Rizzo, whatever his name was -- ignored him.
“This is you’re only warning.”
“Yeah, whatever, city boy,” Jed said with a smirk. “Go ahead and try.”
Rizzo pulled back his arm sharply, but Noah was behind him before he finished the movement, grabbing his forearm. There was a clear struggle on his face for a moment as he worked to restrain the other man, and once again Evie spoke up in what could only have been her native language. Noah replied in kind, and with some effort the pregnant woman slid out from behind them, escaping through the still-open door.
That got Jed to his feet, though he didn’t make a move to follow. He’d just have to be here when she got back. “Where’s she goin’?”
“Somewhere you aren’t followin’,” came Noah’s reply. Both men appeared to be furious, but only Noah spoke. “And you’re lucky I don’t fuckin’ kill you for talkin’ to my sister like that, motherfucker.”
Noah’s words seemed to stoke the fire in Rizzo’s veins. He obviously didn’t know the language both siblings spoke fluently, but appeared to be jumping to his own conclusions as to what had happened.
Jed scowled but didn’t look overly concerned. “Yeah, well if you’da shot me, my “tribe”,” he said, waving air quotes, “woulda returned the favor. Yer sister ain’t that dumb, juss dumb enough to think she can boss me around.”
Rizzo lurched forward a second time, and once again Noah restrained him, though he looked like he would have liked just as much to respond physically to what Jed said. The two men went silent, crowding Jed where he stood.
Jed smirked before he glanced at the door, then back at them. “So what, now you keepin’ me trapped here?”
The only response was silence. A very tense silence, but apparently they were playing the silent-bodyguard game now. Jed could handle that. He took a step forward, in easy swinging distance now, and his eyes settled on Noah.
“Yer awful protective of your sister,” he said languidly. “That why she ain’t claimin’ a father? The baby’s yours?”
Noah blinked at him, his face flinching in disgust before it smoothed out again. Rizzo seemed a little more tense at the other man’s reaction, his eyes passing between the two of them, but he was more intent on glaring Jed down. A little disappointed, Jed rolled his eyes.
“Alright, fun’s over. Outta the way.”
Neither men moved an inch, though both tensed considerably at the order as though ready to use force if necessary. Jed didn’t expect anything different, but at least now he could say he warned them. Shoulder first, he shoved his way between them. That sent both men moving at once; they moved with a strange synchronicity, grabbing at either of his arms hard and bodily pushing him backward into the bucket seat again.
Jed strained against them, his hips bucking to try to stand. “Get off! Y’can’t keep me here!”
“Oh now he wants to go,” Rizzo said with a sneer. Noah’s expression twitched, either with effort to hold Jed down or with amusement, there was no way to be sure.
Gritting his teeth, Jed kicked back hard at Rizzo’s knees for that. Rizzo stumbled slightly, grunting with pain, and as a result roughly slammed his head into Jed’s with considerable force, making the blond man see stars.
“You sonofabitch, I’ll fuckin’ kill you!”
“Rizzo--!”
“I’ll KILL you!”
“Let him go!”
The sudden female voice made both men flinch back instantly and turn their heads in the direction of the door of the campervan. Alice stood in the small archway, her expression fierce and angry.
“The hell--” Rizzo started, but Alice pulled her gun.
“You let him go, right now, or so help me God I’ll fuckin’ end you both right now.”
His left eye watering from Rizzo’s head, Jed looked at Alice with nothing short of shock. First of all, she was here. Second of all, she was threatening them with a gun. This could go wrong real quick.
“Alice, don’t, it’s fine,” he said, holding up his hands. His arms were still held by Noah and Rizzo. “Weren’t nothin’ but a love tap. You don’t need t’start blazin’ yer guns.”
Alice blinked at him, some of the tension in her arms relaxing, though she didn’t lower her gun altogether. Noah’s pressure on his arm released anyway, and it took him grabbing Rizzo at the shoulder for the other man to finally let up.
“Did your leader tell you to come collect your grunt?” Rizzo asked, the words biting. Alice’s expression hardened.
“Nobody told me nothin’; I heard you from the damn yard,” Alice snapped back. She moved her eyes past him to where Jed still sat. “C’mon, let’s go.”
Jed stood, though his eyes stayed on Rizzo. “You wanna start somethin’ for real, shorty, you know where to find me,” he said before turning around and following Alice out.
Alice returned her gun to her side holster the moment the door was shut, then grabbed Jed’s arm firmly, her nails pressing sharply into it. “What the fuck are you doing?” she asked, the words dripping with accusation.
Jed wanted to pull away from her grip but knew he’d probably lose skin in the attempt. There was just no good way to answer that, not after how upset Alice had gotten before about Evie. He shrugged. “They wouldn’t let me leave,” he said, glancing towards three figures that were coming from the house. While he still had the chance, he looked at Alice and said, “Thanks fer comin’ in after me.”
Alice blinked again, her hand dropping and her expression confused. “What?”
Continued...