Chapter Text
Jake shook his head, wincing at the way Frank pulled the bow close to his own face as he tried to aim at the target on the tree. He was definitely going to get hit in the face by the rebound, but he also wouldn’t listen to Jake if he tried to explain that to him so he just let it happen.
Ignoring Frank's yelp he watched as Joey and Julie stepped up to try and hit the target next while they themselves snicker at Frank’s mistake. They both leaned back, spine straight and shot the arrow with good precision. Joey hit the blue around the red dot in the middle while Julie’s hit the tree behind it. They did pretty well, although Julie keeps letting go too early.
They’ve all improved significantly since the first time Jake let them practise with his own bow, but Susie was the best at it. She’s been getting bulls-eye after bulls-eye. She’s even better than Jake himself, which doesn’t say much because Jake’s pretty bad at it himself.
It was fun trying to teach them to shoot arrows, although Tapp thinks it’s definitely a bad idea, but… eh. If they try to shoot someone then it’s not his fault, and the victim would probably deserve it. He’s teaching them good skills, ones that will help them once they get kicked out of their homes when they turn 18. Jake’s just hoping they don’t try to practise on each other, that would be hard to explain to their parents.
He glanced off to the side, the sun had already slipped below the horizon, leaving a dark glow across the ground. Jake thought it was pretty, even if he’d have to stop their practise before it gets too dark and they accidentally shoot each other... or themselves. The trees were back lit with hard lines of orange and gold, making them stand out against the dark sky. The stars would be coming out pretty soon.
Jake startled when he heard his phone ringing. Even the others glanced at him with concern. His phone never rings, yeah his mom calls once a week, but that was usually on sunday around 12 in the morning. It’s only wednesday and he should definitely not be getting a call this late in the afternoon.
He guessed it could have been someone from the town, but he hasn’t given anyone his phone number. Not even Claudette and Kate. They never asked so he didn’t even think about it. Jake thinks it’s because they don’t think he even has a phone.
Either way Jake leaped up, stretching quickly before dashing inside to pick up his landline. It was next to his fridge, right above his overfilled trash can. It was old and worn, but it definitely worked for him. He never really plans on getting a new aged phone, even if everyone keeps expecting him too. This one worked just fine.
He picked up the phone, holding it to his ear as he answered with a, “Hello, this is the residence of the parks, your speaking to Jake Park.” It had been trained into him by his father and older brother, it was apparently a good skill to have for future businesses, even for a two year old.
It was silent for a second until he heard a very familiar and tired voice over the line, one that made a very clear and hard ball roll around his chest, like marbles being skidded on a dirty sidewalk. “H-Hey baby bro…”
Jake didn’t know why but he just freezes, hands clenching around the phone and into his jacket. The voice over the end of the line turns his bones to stone, locking them in place while Jake desperately listens to that quiet voice on the other end of the line, one that he hasn’t heard in over five years. Not even being able to answer back when it stops.
“Hello?” Jake’s older brother swallows, voice quiet and full of tiredness. Like he had been up for the past few days doing something hard and strenuous. “Jake, are you there?”
Jake swallowed the spiky lump in his throat, blinking away his sudden tears he answered back with a soft, “Uh- Y-Yeah, I’m here.”
He hears another voice in the background, high pitched and squeaky, too quiet to understand what they're saying, but he’s pretty sure it’s one of his niecies. His brother answers their question before responding back to him, “Cool.” There was an awkward silence before he added on a tired, “sorry for calling so late...”
Is he okay, he sounds really tired. Jake bites his lip, hoping that his brother wasn’t in any trouble. Maybe he should ask? But what if that makes him stop coming to him for help, does his brother want help?
“Jason…” Jake paused, not really knowing how to go forward with this, “Jason, is everything okay?” he couldn’t help but let at least a little bit of his worry settle into his question, making it wobble and shake with effort.
“Yes!” Jason exclaims, quickly followed up with a quieter, “Ye-Yeah, why would you say that?”
Jake could hear another squeak in the background, followed by a tiny crash and some scraping sounds. His brother cursed and then came back to him, waiting for an answer.
“I-I don’t know, you just never really call me unless it’s important.”
It was true, he stopped calling when he moved away. Not even on his birthday or during christmas, and Jake didn’t even have his number to call instead. Not that his father would have let him, mind you, but it still would have made Jake feel better knowing that he could contact him if he wanted too.
“Well…” Jason paused, contemplating his next words carefully, “I never said it wasn’t.”
Jake stood there waiting for a second, waiting for Jason to continue on with his problem, not realizing that his older brother was doing the same thing. Jake listened in to his own background, making sure the others weren’t trying to listen in. He tuned back in when he heard the quiet thuds of the arrows hitting their marks outside.
Realizing that his brother wasn’t going to give back a response Jason continued on with a quiet response, “Jake, uh, I just had another baby. A boy this time.” He could hear the smile in his voice, happy and content. If not just a little bit of tiredness mixed in. “Isn’t it wonderful.”
Jake felt a spike of something hit his chest. Taking his breath and causing him not to respond. A baby, well another baby, one that his brother didn’t even come to tell him about. Yeah, maybe actually coming down to see him would have been hard, with his girls and all, but he could have at least called. His brother should have at least told him he was getting a new nephew.
“Jake?” Jason’s worried voice came in over the line, anxious and panicked.
Jake swallowed before responding, “A baby?”
Maybe he heard wrong? It was an old line after all and the actual words coming out of the phone were staticy and slightly disjointed, It could have been a mistake on his part. It could have been something about the army or brandy or something else that’s similar to a baby. Jake shouldn’t assume it was automatically a baby.
“Y- Yes.”
“Oh,” Jake shuffled his feet against his floor, damn, “When did that happen?”
“Just about three months ago.” Jason sounded even more tired, his voice strained and choppy, “I’ve been meaning to call but with everything going on, but it’s been pretty hectic.”
He bets, a new baby is a handful. He’s never really handled one but he can imagine with having to get up and take care of it every night. Jake definitely wouldn’t be able to handle that, and that’s why he’s never going to become a parent. He’d probably drop kick the thing if he did.
“Oh.” Jake could feel a kind of pull in his chest, something old and broken, something that never quite healed all that long ago.
“Anyways, I wanted to invite you to a ‘party’ at my house.” Jake could hear the quotation marks in his brother's words, “Everyone’s coming, and since you're my only baby brother I wanted to invite you.”
Jake took in a deep breath, closing his eyes against the sudden sting in his eyes. Desperately trying to keep the squeaking out of his voice as he responded, he wasn’t a damn teenager anymore, “Okay.”
“Yeah, all my friends are going to be there, so if you want to bring a few of your own then you can too. I don’t know if you’d want to hang out with mine, some of them are like twice your age…”
There was another crack in the background and a sudden giggle. He could hear Jason sigh deeply, before yelling something that Jake couldn’t quite make out. Probably telling off his niece or something.
“Y-Yeah, sure.” Jake didn’t really know why he agreed, he just did. Maybe it’s because he wanted to see his new nephew, or maybe his older brother. Either way he was definitely going to feel misplaced when he gets there,
“Okay…” Jason sounded strained, still distracted by what’s going down in the background. “Mhhm.”
He pressed himself against the wall, listening to his brother ramble on about something before clueing in on the actual import stuff, “I’ll see you next weekend at like 3, okay?”
“Yeah. yeah, I’ll see you then.” How the hell was Jake even going to get there!?
“Cool…”
There was another sudden and loud silence over the phone. Each brother waiting for the other to add something, not wanting to interrupt in case they do.
Jason was the one to break it, voice rushed as he quickly did something in the background. Jake could hear the rustling sounds and clanking. “Listen, I’ll talk to you then, alright?” Jake blinked, that’s one way to end the conversation. “I got to go check up on the kids now, so I’ll see you in a bit.”
He hangs up without giving Jake the time to answer. Instead Jake just pulled it off his ear to look at it disgruntledly before shoving it back onto the receiver and marching out to his door. He took a deep breath before opening it.
“Oh,” Jake sighed out. They were all gone. The legion had left all their bows and arrows behind, scattered about haphazardly, probably to go bother some store owners or something. Well that makes things easy. At Least he doesn’t have to fake his mood at that very moment.
Jake wakes up in a bad mood, not… not grumpy or annoyed, but just there. It’s hard to describe, like he was just existing. Not really angry or happy, neither sad nor curious. Just there.
He stayed in bed until midday, not very motivated to move. His curtains were drawn keeping the blinding light out which meant the only thing telling him it was actually day was the sound of the birds outside. They were pretty. Their calls and songs drew him out of his mind and made everything okay.
Jake only rolled out of bed because he realized that he should probably catch something to eat. Not that he was very hungry, there was a growing knot in his chest, gnawing and old, but because the Legion or Feng would probably drop by later for food. He couldn’t just accidentally starve his new, adopted, siblings.
The legion drops by practically every night after learning that he’ll start feeding them if they come by. He’s kind of glad that they did, there starting to fill out more. He didn’t even realize how skinny they all were when he first met them. He’s learned, from over listening, that their parents don’t really care too much about them. It explains why Jake only ever really sees them in those hoodies. Or why Jake has to deal with Tapp coming by yelling about how they’ve vandalised another store.
Why he comes to Jake instead of his parents is something he’ll probably never know about. It’s probably because if they go to their parents then they will be in trouble. Not the kind of trouble Jake or Tapp wants anyways. Either way Jake has somehow become the main person to go to if they get in trouble, and it’s somehow become his responsibility to punish them too.
He mostly just threatens to burn down their hideout or set a bunch of traps around the tree house. They didn’t listen at first, but now they do . He still chuckles at the memory of their startled screams.
Feng started to show up a few weeks ago, deciding that a new playlist on her channel was going to be ‘hanging out with the old man in the woods,’ where she learns how to hunt or fish. Apparently all her viewers like him and were interested in what he was doing. Even if that was just him and Feng sitting on his porch feeding the crows around his house.
He’s decided that he’ll fish today. Not only was it low maintenance, but he could also do something else while waiting for the fishes to bite. Like draw or write in his journal, or something. Either way it’ll be nice to just relax or chill out for awhile. He’s been pretty busy with all his new friends and acquaintances dropping by.
He just wanted to relax and enjoy the sun for awhile.
Everything seemed so serene, like the world around him was frozen in time and moving very slowly. The light danced off the ripples in the water into the darks of his eyes, lighting up the dust and fluff in the wind. He glanced back down at his book leaning up against a tree a few feet away from the edge of the lake.
He loved the sound of the water lapping against the side of the bank, sloshing and rippling smoothly. It reminds him of the beaches his brother used to take him to when he was younger. How the waves would wash in, bringing all kinds of cool little things. Like shells and sea glass, or those tiny crabs that him and his brother used to catch and play.
Jake couldn’t help the small smile that quirked onto his lips. He remembered how his brother would always try to pick them up with his hands, how he would yelp and whine when they would snach up onto his hands and pinch his feet. It was so funny hearing him scream and run about trying to get it off.
Jake’s smile fell off, eyes darkening.
Letting out a sigh he noticed the fishing pole shake and spin, signaling that he’d just caught a fish. He set his book to the side, making sure to mark his place, and set off to real in the fish. It bucked against the line, pulling hard and fast, but Jake got it eventually. Making sure to toss it in a bucket so that he could safely bait and set his pole out again. He’d already caught a few others so it wouldn’t be too bad if he left after the next one. It’s not like Jake, himself, was going to eat too night. He knew it wasn’t very healthy, but he just didn’t feel up to it at the moment.
Settling back against the tree Jake thought back to the phone call the previous night. How the hell did his brother already have 3 kids. How did he not know that his wife had gotten pregnant again, and why was he learning this right now. His brother had told him every other time.
Jake’s eyes drifted to the dirt around him, eyes scanning the grass patches, watching bugs and ants drifting about. So tiny and unworryingly. Jake kind of wished he was a bug right now, drifting aimlessly in the wind, only worried about what he was going to for his next meal. He didn’t want to deal with his family.
Should he even go next weekend, would his brother even care? He hasn’t seen him since he turned 16. His brother had just up and left to start his new job. He knew he had had a few kids when he started his 3rd year in highschool, but three, three kids. The oldest hat to be at least 6 by now. His brother had two girls and a boy. Jake has two nieces and a nephew.
It was hard to imagine. Jake still felt so young himself. How the hell did he already have nieces and nephews. He knew his brother was 12 years older than him, so maybe that’s why. It has been since, his brother was 34, and he already had a wife by the time he was 26. Jake had met her when he turned 11, on his birthday, her name was Angelina, but every one called her Angie.
She had black hair and soft brown eyes, and she was always wearing a golden cross necklace over her flowing shirts and jeans. It had been her grandmothers, something that was passed on from generation to generation. Jake thought she was pretty and nice, smart too. She helped him with his homework when she came over for dates.
Their mom had approved, saying that she reminded her of their grandmother when she was younger, but their dad... their dad didn’t feel the same way. He thought that they should marry for power. That he should go out and date one of the rival business women or something to get power over them.
It’s what drove the final nail in the coffin for his brother. He left when Jake turned 13, taking off to start his own business, to start his new life without his old family. Without Jake. it made everything worse, made the punishment worse. His brother had left and had barely showed up to anything that dealt with him.
His brother didn’t want anything to do with him anymore...
Jake let out a sigh, eyes shutting against the setting sun. God, how would he even get there. It was a 6 hour drive away from his new house. A lot better than the drive to his parents, which was around 13 hours away, but still bad. He’d have to pay the taxi so much. Maybe Claudette or Dwight would let him borrow his car or something...
Jake jumped hearing a giant crash. He turned to see the fishing pole being pulled into the water. He rushed up, barely even noticing how the water splashed up his thighs and onto his shirt while he tried to grab the pole out of the water. When he finally got it he pulled, tugging hard while he stepped back. Holy hell this fish was fast.
Jake grunted when he finally pulled up the bass. It was huge, maybe a foot and a half long, and it had probably weighed 16 pounds. He dropped it into the bucket after struggling to get it off the hook. Holy hell, him and the others were definitely eating good tonight.