Jessica Jones (thehword) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2019-08-15 18:29:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, jessica jones, yondu udonta |
Who: Jessica Jones and Yondu Udonta
What: Yondu joins Jess on a stake out
Where: A cramped fire escape outside someone's apartment
When: After this, mid-July
Ratings/Warnings: Mostly low
Status: Complete
Jessica wasn’t used to working with other people. Sure, she and Veronica had once worked a case sort of together, but that was because they’d both been hired by different spouses, only to discover that their targets were cheating with one another. It wasn’t like she’d started her stake out with Veronica at her side, they’d just realized it was more convenient if they shared Veronica’s car for the night.
This was different. Yondu had volunteered to come with Jessica, which she couldn’t exactly wrap her mind around, and she, for some reason, had agreed, which was even more baffling.
And so here they were, both sitting on opposite sides of the same, cramped fire escape, Jessica’s legs pressed up against Yondu’s, while Jessica looked through the viewfinder on her camera into the window across the street, trying not to think about how distracting it was having Yondu there. There still wasn’t any movement there, so she took a gulp from her whiskey-filled thermos, and passed it over to Yondu. “You bored yet?” she asked.
Yondu received the thermos with a smirk and took a swig. "Chica, you're talkin' to a man who does this every week. This is like one of my slow days." The fast days usually required his Yaka arrow because he was getting too old to run after his bounties anymore. "'Cept I don't have company like this." He winked, throwing her a charming grin. He'd had nothing going on this week and he had grown restless. Yondu wasn't the sort to sit around watching movies all day and all of his spacecraft from the dreams were still in really good shape requiring no maintenance; even if they had he knew Peter would have jumped in to do it anyway. So he'd more or less invited himself to Jessica's stakeout. Besides, he'd missed her while she'd been off in England.
"So what's the deal with this guy?" He leaned back against the fire escape, not minding the constant contact between them. Yondu had his human hologram going so it was nice teeth, human skin and curly hair today.
“I assume there’s usually a chase at the end of your day,” Jessica said. No chases here. It wasn’t like she ever had to bring any of her marks in to the police at the end of the day. Most of the time, at least. She let the police handle the criminal cases, and only took on the ones that they wouldn’t look at for whatever reason.
“Oh, the usual,” Jessica said. “Coming home late, being evasive with his reasons, not interested in sleeping with his wife anymore. They’re usually pretty good signs of a man cheating,” she said, and paused. “Sometimes they’re actually working late, but probably not this time. What’s it like on your jobs?”
"Yeah, usually. Or I'm gettin' shot at. That's always fun."
"Hm." Yondu commented, glancing at the apartment across the street. Without the benefit of binoculars or looking through Jessica's camera it was just a brick building in the street lamp-lit dark of evening. "Mine? Usually assholes skippin' bail hearin's, not checkin' in with parole officers, stuff like that. Days are much like this, only once the bounty gets out in the open there's usually runnin', shoutin' and cussin'." He sniffed. "Did a job like this one, waitin' for him to finish banging his girl 'fore he stepped outside. Sonuva bitch took forever. Homeless dude I paid to use his bench thought I was some perv like 'im till he saw me chase after th'guy an' draw my weapon."
Jessica snorted. “There really is no way to spy on being having sex without looking like a pervert,” Jessica said, and then held up her camera. “Especially when you’ve got one of these with you.” Which was one of the reasons why Jessica tended to do her work on old fire escapes or in trees instead of on public benches.
“Maybe one of these days I should come keep you company on one of your jobs,” she added, bumping his knee with hers. There was some movement by the window now, and Jessica raised her camera, snapping a few shots of the silhouettes in the window.
“Ain’t that the truth.” Yondu chuckled. He grinned when she nudged him. “Sure! Company would sure be nice. Can get lonely some days.” His lips twisted into a smirk. “Lucky for you I’m usually in my car, so there’s AC at least.” He turned and looked when Jessica raised the camera to her eye, and he squinted, trying to see. A hint of movement in the window. “Whatcha got?” He said after a moment of silence and nothing but the camera clicking away.
“AC is nice,” Jessica admitted, especially since she rarely left home without the black leather jacket she’d gotten from her dreams. The weather here was a lot hotter than it was in New York, where she still lived in her dreams, but her jacket had become like armour to her. Leaving her home without it made her feel naked and vulnerable.
“Just a bunch of shadows,” Jessica said, frowning at the display on her camera. “Nothing conclusive that’ll get me paid.” It was annoying, but that was the way it went a lot of the time. “We might have to wait until they leave together in the morning.”
“The morning?!” Yondu blurted, shocked. “Hot damn, you better be gettin’ paid top dollar for this shit.” He looked around and realized that there really wasn’t room to move much. His knees were gonna lock up if he had to stay like this for hours on end. He shifted, then stood up, looking at a small empty spot next to Jessica. “Hold up, lemme try somethin’.” He sat back down and slowly extended his legs to sit on the metal grating next to her, his feet just sticking out over the edge. “Yeah, that’s better.” He sighed, glad he was able to stretch a little bit.
Jessica tried to hide the bit of a smile on her face when Yondu, and while she didn’t necessarily lean into him, she didn’t pull away from having him pressed against her like that. “You know, you don’t have to stay all night,” she said. “I can handle this on my own.” The company was nice, and she didn’t necessarily want Yondu to leave, but it wasn’t like she needed him there with her.
"Didn't say you couldn't." Yondu patted the grilled steel next to him. "C'mon, darlin', kick those legs up. Relax. I ain't goin' nowhere." Besides there was something he had to get off his chest and Jessica was the closest person he figured he could trust with it.
There was no reason at all why that should make Jessica so happy; what she had with Yondu wasn’t anything based on something like feelings. He was good looking, and good in bed, and she enjoyed his company for the most part, but she definitely didn’t have feelings for him, so there was no reason for the butterflies in her stomach. She took a gulp from her thermos.
“Then get ready for a long, long night,” she said, managing a good amount of indifference in her voice.
“Well, if I can tolerate some of the bullshit I have to put up with that thirty somethin’ that acts like a teenager that’s livin’ in my house, then this is gonna be a cakewalk.” Yondu chuckled. “Honestly - worst idea I ever had lettin’ him hook up that Nintendo Switch thingie to the living room TV.” He fell silent then, staring out into the darkness a moment before speaking again. “Speakin’ of Peter…” he sniffed and leaned back a little, looking over at Jessica. “He and I kinda had a...moment. The other day.”
“You should have brought it along,” Jessica said, with a bit of a smirk. “Would have given us something to do.” She frowned a little though as Yondu stiffened next to her, and she glanced at him sidelong. “Yeah?” she asked.
He saw the look on her face and realized he was probably giving off the wrong impression. "Ain't nothin' bad." He tapped his fingers in a non rhythmic pattern along the warm steel of the fire escape as he leaned back fully against the metal support. "Not exactly. Actually went pretty damn well, considerin'." He paused. " 'Member last year 'round November or so I dreamed 'bout dyin'? Well Peter had the same dream the other day." He looked away a moment, uncomfortable suddenly telling this to someone else. "That person I died in front of? It was him."
Jessica chewed on her bottom lip, glancing at Yondu as he looked away. She never had been good at this whole comforting thing; she tended to solve most of her problems with alcohol. It sounded like this could have gone worse, of course, but still, it couldn’t have been easy dreaming of your death and then dreaming again of someone else watching you die.
She put her hand on Yondu’s knee and gave what she hoped was a gentle squeeze instead of a bone crushing one, and then wordlessly offered him the thermos of whiskey.
He looked at Jessica and smiled, gratefully taking the thermos. He took a swig. The hand on the knee felt good; he knew Jessica had the ability to snap him like a twig, but their time together had given her a chance to figure out what could hurt him and what couldn't. Being turned into a tough old alien helped - he could take more than he would of if he were still human.
"He woke me up in th'middle of the night, tears an' all. Went on about what he dreamt and how he was an ungrateful ass." And he'd said Yondu was more of a father to him in both the dreams and here. Yet he couldn't get himself to tell Jess that and for the life of him he couldn't figure out why. Yondu chose to down another mouthful of burning whisky instead of dwelling on it, ignoring the vague burn of the beginning of tears in his eyes.
“Must be unnerving to see Peter cry,” she said. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever seen Peter without a smile on his face. “How are you holding up with all of it?”
“It was...a surprise, for sure.” Whenever he thought about it the whole thing still felt a bit surreal.
He shifted a little, uncomfortable suddenly with being asked about his emotions and starting to second guess if this had been a good idea to talk about. “Ah…” he rubbed the back of his neck with a hand, “well...it was pretty...intense for both of us. With me dyin’ an’ all that.” The last part he chewed on the words to them nearly being unintelligible. “An’ him callin’ me Dad.” Well look at that, he could get it out after all. Another shot of whiskey before handing it back to Jessica.
Jessica’s eyebrows furrowed together as she tried to make out exactly what Yondu had just said. She was pretty sure that she had heard the word ‘dad,’ and after running the sentence through in her head a couple of times she thought that she had it more or less figured out, but that only lead to more confusion. “You’re not actually his dad, are you?” Jessica asked. Their relationship did seem very grumpy father obnoxious son, but she’d never actually considered the fact that could actually be what it was. Something like that would have come up before now, right?
Yondu laughed. "No! No he ain't mine. Though some days it honest to God feels like it. That boy tries my last nerve often enough. Pretty sure he does it for shits and giggles." His mouth curled up in a wry smile. "But yeah. Dreams had him realizin' I was the closest thing to a dad he had. Here an' in the dreams."
That was a relief. She knew that Yondu was older than she was, but there was something about the idea of him being the actual father to a man around her own age that somehow quantified that in a way that just knowing wouldn’t have.
“Pretty sure half of what Peter lives for is getting a rise out of you,” she snorted. “You guys fit well together.” Maybe they weren’t family by blood, but the seemed close enough as far as Jessica was concerned.
Yondu chuckled. "Sounds about right. You should see the shit he pulls in the dreams." He rolled his eyes. "Miracle that boy wasn't killed or castrated by the time he hit twenty five." He shook his head as a few memories flickered by in his mind.
“I don’t want to see the shit he pulls in the dreams,” Jessica said. “I’ve seen enough in this life to not want to add space travel whatever else into it.” She had to agree with Yondu. Given how often she’d wanted to kill him already, it really was miraculous that no one else had taken that particular task upon them.
"Aw c'mon, you don't want to hear about the time an A'askavarii female nearly choked him to death when she found out Peter was screwing her rival?" Yondu teased, laughing. He remembered he and the crew roaring with laughter when Peter came back with tentacle marks around his neck and arms. Yondu had had to save him that time. Nine times out of ten though he let Peter learn his lesson.
Jessica had no idea what an A’askavarii was, but that didn’t stop her from snorting at the mental image of someone choking Peter for, presumably, being an idiot. “Well, when you put it that way…” she said. “Maybe some stories from your Dreams would help pass the time.”
Yondu grinned and gestured for the flask. "Oh I got plenty to last us, don't you worry about that."