Anthony Tinoco 

The pain tore through Tino like a blade dragged slow beneath his ribs, yanking him out of the dark with a guttural noise ripped straight from his throat. The cushions were too soft, the heat clinging to his skin like damp fabric, and his spine ached from being curled too long. When he finally blinked the world into focus, he knew immediately where he was. Jamie’s apartment. It smelled sour and metallic, enough to turn his stomach inside out. 

His shirt was gone. Bandages were wrapped tight around his ribs. It was dark at the center, deep brown-red where the stitches sealed the bullet’s path. It wasn’t leaking, but near the edges faint stains had started to bloom, fresh enough to suggest he’d been moving more than he should. The fabric clung unevenly to his side, caught in places where the skin looked swollen and irritated. 

He winced, swore under his breath, and let his head fall back against the pillow, dizzy with the effort. When he lifted his hands into view, he saw they were wrapped in gauze too. His fingertips were stiff. Dried blood clung to the creases. He swallowed back the wave in his throat and blinked toward the table. A plastic bottle of water sat beside an empty ashtray. He reached for it, every joint screaming. The bottle slipped once before he got a grip. The first sip burned going down, but he drank anyway.

Finally, he forced himself upright. The couch groaned beneath him as he moved. Each step pulled at the wound. Reaching the bathroom, he gripped the sink and stayed like that for a moment, willing the room to stop swaying. He reached for the hand towel hanging by the mirror, running the water. He kept his hands lifted awkwardly out of the stream while he soaked the towel. It wasn’t easy, his fingers didn’t want to cooperate. The towel came out uneven, too wet in places, barely damp in others, but it would have to do. He couldn’t shower, not like this. This was the closest he was gonna get. He dragged the towel across his chest first, wiping away the cold sweat on his skin. Down his neck, over his stomach, across the patchwork of bruises painting his side. He was halfway through wiping down his back when he heard the soft creak of the bathroom door behind him.

“What are you doing?”

Tino didn’t turn around. He couldn’t, twisting even a little sent fire straight through his ribs. “The blood, man. It’s all I can smell. Making me wanna puke.”

Jamie stepped inside and sat down on the closed toilet lid, elbows resting on his knees. “It's the bandage. Smells like that when the blood dries.”

Tino ignored him. He knew it probably wasn’t doing much, he could still feel the grime clinging to his skin, but the motion gave him something to focus on. 

“You need help?”

He scoffed. “I ain’t retarded.”

“I didn't ask if you’re retarded. I asked if you need help.”

He looked into the mirror, looking past his own reflection and found Jamie. Jamie’s hands were the first thing he noticed, scratched up, knuckles and fingers lined with fresh cuts. One was holding a gun, the other was wrapped in gauze, but not soaked. Nothing leaking through. His face was marked too, a few thin scrapes along his jaw and cheekbone, already starting to scab over. Ugly, but superficial. He had no bruising on the ribs. No limp. No red blooming under his shirt. He looked intact. Tired, maybe, but fine. 

“You get hit?” he asked, even though Jamie’s body had already answered. 

“No.” Jamie looked at his own hand. “Just cuts.” 

Tino’s shoulders eased the tiniest bit. 

“I think it was Southbound,” Jamie said. “That last batch? They didn’t think we’d notice anything was off. Thought we’d move it without asking questions. When we didn’t, they got spooked. Because if Freddy or Armando find out they’re handing out stepped-on product with their name on it, they’re done. So they hit us first. Tried to shut it down before it got to them.”

Tino thought about Lars. About his smug face, and how he regretted not shooting him when he’d had the chance. “You tell Vic?” 

“He didn’t bite. Thinks I’m reading too much into it.” 

“Figures.” Tino tossed the towel aside, not caring to look where it landed. “Vic’s an idiot. You always been smarter.” 

He watched Jamie get up from the toilet seat and set the gun down beside the sink with a soft clunk. “Freddy called a sit-down. Two days from now. We both need to be there.” Jamie reached up and opened the cabinet behind the mirror. A roll of fresh gauze sat on the middle shelf. He grabbed it and peeled away the loose end. 

“You fucking with me now?” 

Jamie shook his head. 

“The fuck am I supposed to do there?” 

“They’re making a point.” 

Tino could barely stay upright for five minutes without his knees shaking. The last thing he wanted was to be dragged into a place full of people who would notice. Still, Tino knew this wasn’t about what he wanted. Freddy and Vic probably hadn’t said it out loud, but Tino could feel the intention over it. They were being put on display, propped up like a pair of intact statues after a fire. It wasn’t just a meeting, it was theater. A power move. Proof that if Southbound had come for them like Jamie suspected, they hadn’t landed the blow. That Cortez boys didn’t flinch, didn’t bleed, didn’t crawl away in the dark.

Only, Tino did actually bleed. He was still bleeding, for all he knew.  

Jamie started picking at the tape along Tino’s side. The bandage clung stubbornly, and every movement made Tino’s shoulders flinch. The fabric lifted skin as it came loose. The wound was clean, but it looked horrible. A straight line of thick, black sutures cut across Tino’s side, just beneath the ribs. The thread pulled the skin together in harsh tugs, pinched and swollen at each entry point. The area around it was a deep, mottled mix of purples and sickly yellows, the bruising from both the bullet’s impact and the rushed fieldwork. Antiseptic stains bloomed faintly around the site. 

“So what now?” 

Jamie reached for a clean towel, and ran it under the tap. Then, without asking, he stepped behind Tino and pressed it gently to the back of his neck. Tino didn’t argue, but just let his head drop forward, damp curls falling around his face, breath catching faintly in his throat with each exhale. 

“I need Freddy to believe me.” 

“And if he don’t?”

“Then we have a problem. They’re gonna come for us again.”

Tino scoffed under his breath. “Cool.”

Jamie wiped down his back with slow motions, careful not to touch the rawer parts of the wound. Once it was as clean as he could manage, Jamie picked up the two towels, the one he just used and the one Tino tossed aside earlier, and hung them both neatly over the shower rack. He took the fresh gauze and began wrapping it around Tino’s torso, working with quiet focus. “I’m serious.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Tino’s fingers twitched against the edge of the sink. His vision dipped for a second before leveling out. “They shot at us. We should hit ‘em back. Same way they hit us.”

“We don’t move without Freddy.”

“Fuck Freddy.”

Jamie pulled the bandage tighter than necessary. Tino hissed through his teeth. 

“You wanna go rogue? End up in a ditch? We go at them without proof, we look like we’re covering our own fuckups. And if we go without Freddy’s permission? You know how that ends.”

“You don’t wanna?” 

Jamie looked confused. “What?” 

“Go rogue. Now you suddenly don’t wanna?” 

“What are you talking about?” 

“You. Few months ago. You said there’s gotta be something ‘better’. Sounded like you wanted out.” 

Jamie let out a dry sound, somewhere in the shape of a laugh. “Does that sound so crazy to you? You’re shot. You got a bullet pulled out of you on a goddamn kitchen table.” 

“So you want out?” 

Jamie met Tino’s eyes in the mirror. He reached for one of Tino’s hands still clenched around the sink and started peeling back the dirty bandages. “Would you come?” 

“Would I what?” 

“If I walked away from all this. Would you come with me?”

Tino stared at him like he’d just spoken a foreign language. 

So he had meant it, that time they’d sat above the city eating tacos. It was fucking delusional. Jamie was the smartest person Tino knew, the one who always had the plan, the backup plan, the exit route even when there wasn’t supposed to be one. He didn’t say shit he didn’t mean, and he never said anything without thinking it through first, twice over. So how the hell could he be the one talking like this? 

He felt heat rise in his chest, because if Jamie believed this, if he really believed they could just step out, then maybe everything Tino thought was solid wasn’t. “You got a death wish, Jamie? You think we get to just walk out? They’d have us dead in a week.”

“I’d make a plan.” 

“Oh a plan. Well, fuck me, guess we’re saved.” 

Jamie didn’t look up from Tino’s hands. Once the last strip was off, he reached for the fresh roll and began winding clean white around Tino’s palms, one loop at a time.

“Can’t wait to hear it. We moving to the fucking moon? That your plan?” The sarcasm came out thinner than he meant it to. “‘Cause unless you got a rocket stashed under your bed, I can already tell you, it ain’t gonna work.” 

Jamie silently moved over to the next hand. 

“You wanna start over somewhere? Open a diner? Grow tomatoes? Fake our deaths and move to the suburbs? They’ll still find us. They’ll always find us. If you that set on dying, we might as well skip the drama and shoot ourselves in the head. Save everyone the trouble.” 

When Jamie was done he grabbed his gun off the sink and took a step back. “Go rest.” 

Tino reached out, fingers splayed against the wall to keep himself upright as he followed Jamie out of the bathroom. When he finally reached the couch, he lowered himself down with care, one hand gripping the armrest, as he sank into the cushions. From where he sat, he could see Jamie moving around the kitchen. He was rinsing something in the sink, back turned, sleeves shoved up to his elbows.

“You wouldn’t really, would you?” Tino asked. 

The water kept running. Jamie turned it off and set whatever he was holding down in the sink. “I don’t know. Some days, yeah. I think about it.” 

“One bad week and you ready to ghost us all?” 

“I wouldn’t ghost you, Anthony.” 

Tino didn’t answer. He just stared at Jamie’s back, the echo of his own name hanging in the air. 

I wouldn’t ghost you, Anthony.

Maybe Jamie believed that. Maybe he meant it. But Tino knew what leaving looked like. He had seen it too many times to trust a promise half-mumbled over a sink. People didn’t even leave, not really. They disappeared. They got found in alleys, in riverbeds, with their mouths still open like they’d been trying to explain themselves. Leaving wasn’t a clean break, it was a sentence. A slow, quiet one that started the moment you said the wrong thing to the wrong person.

Jamie had always been there. Not in a warm or comforting way, not with words or any kind of softness. Just there. Reliable in the way gravity was, something you stopped noticing until it wasn’t under you anymore. Even when they weren’t speaking. Even when they hated each other a little. Even when Tino was fucking up so badly he couldn’t stand the sight of himself, Jamie stayed. Said nothing, but stayed.

Tino didn’t know what life looked like without that. Not just the presence but the knowing. The way Jamie always seemed to understand when Tino was about to snap, or shut down, or disappear into himself. He didn’t make it better, he just made it bearable.

The idea of that being gone felt like trying to breathe with a collapsed lung. If Jamie left, Tino wouldn’t stop him. Wouldn’t beg or follow. He’d just keep going. That’s what people like them did. But he wouldn’t know how. Everything would still be there, the crew, the work, everything they’d done, but it wouldn’t mean anything anymore. 

“You can’t leave me alone in this shit, Jamie.” 

The words left before Tino could think twice. 

Jamie turned to look at him. “I won’t.” 

There was nothing to say after that. Tino had to take Jamie’s word for it. He leaned back against the couch, trying as hard as he could to settle despite the pain.

Jamie talked like there was still a version of them that hadn’t already been decided. As if they could wake up one day and just stop being what they were. But Tino couldn’t even imagine that. Not only because of the risk, but because it was in their blood now. It was how they moved, how they breathed. Even if no one came after them, what the hell were they supposed to do instead? Who would he be if he wasn’t this? It was like wanting to un-break a bone. Some damage doesn’t reverse. Some choices stick. And Tino had never seen a life outside the gang that didn’t look like just another kind of prison.

“Vic’s gonna eat shit when you’re right.” It came out like an afterthought, but it wasn’t. It was the only thing Tino could say without cracking something open. Because believing Jamie was easy, he always had. When it felt like the world was spinning wrong, Jamie was the one thing he didn’t question. Saying it out loud was more than just taking his side against Vic. It was a way of planting something down. A marker. I believe you. I’m on your side. Even if he couldn’t follow Jamie into the dream he was chasing. Deep down, it was Tino’s way of saying, don’t forget where you belong. Remember who stood with you, when you start thinking about walking away. 

Author's Note:

Thank you so much for reading! If you’ve made it this far, I’d love to hear what you think. Your feedback means a lot to me, so don’t hesitate to share your thoughts. 🖤

I aim to post a new chapter every weekend, but sometimes life gets hectic, so I might skip a week here and there. Just know I’m still working on this, I’m not going anywhere! 

Thanks again for being here with Jamie and Tino. Their story’s only getting deeper from here.