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chapter nine: mama's (gwen's) boy
a/n:
jake banks pov? jake banks pov. someone play mama's boy by dominic fike.
tw(s) — past violence, closeted gay boys doing closeted gay boy things, teenage boys (written by a girl who kind of hates real teenage boys), rick is still a bully, teen angst (like so much teen angst)
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When Jake was a freshman at Eden Hall, he got asked to homecoming by Emily Anderson, the prettiest junior in the school.
He was so excited at the time—— as a scrawny fourteen-year-old who had braces and an older sister who did his laundry for him, he'd never been on a date, let alone with a girl like that. Jake'd spent the days leading up to it anxiously waiting for it, buying clothes with Scott and Rick in some boutique out in Osseo and learning how to tie a tie with Gwen. He'd been so anxious, so excited, so naive, that he failed to see the honeytrap laid before him until Emily walked him up to the older boys on the lacrosse team instead of inside to the dance. They laughed in his face. She laughed in his face. And then he, alongside every other freshman who was trying to join the team, got piled into a van, and taken out for the night from hell.
Gwen was waiting up for him when he got home, still all dressed up. He hadn't uttered a word to her about what happened but she knew. She saw his disheveled clothes and the tear tracks on his face and she knew.
That following Monday, Gwen made him tell her which one Emily was. They found her out on the quad after school. She was standing with friends and, at the sight of the two siblings, they started to giggle as if they were in on some joke that no one else was. Jake thought that they might have gone on to do that, laugh at him and any other person who was beneath them until they were red in the face, for the rest of their lives if Gwen hadn't silenced them when she launched herself across the green and punched Emily in the face.
Emily's head snapped back and her nose gushed blood, but that didn't stop Gwen from wrestling her to the ground. They rolled in the grass for a while, throwing punches and pulling hair as the crowd grew around them, but it ended with Gwen on top.
"You think you can screw with my brother like that? You think you can just hand him over to them and get away with it?" Gwen grunted. Her nails dug crescents into the skin of pretty Emily's pretty face as the brunette pawed at her. "Eat dirt you pig! Eat it!"
Jake remembers thinking it wasn't only about what happened to him. It couldn't have been.
Not after Gwen stayed there, pressing Emily's head into the dirt, until Cole lifted her, backward, over his shoulder and walked her a few paces away as she kicked at the air.
There were talks of Gwen getting expelled, but their dad's a lawyer and Rick's dad has made a puppet out of their principal, so all she got was detention and a warning to never do that again. Thoroughly humiliated, Emily left the school a few weeks later, and Rick, because he'll do just about anything that Scott or Gwen tells him to, saw to it that the captain of the varsity lacrosse team never knew a moment of peace until his graduation.
That night, though, when he asked her why she did it and risked everything for him, Gwen held his face with the very hands that committed violence on his behalf and smiled wide.
"You're my brother." She said and shrugged her shoulders. "That's just what I'm supposed to do."
(And, fuck, how could he ever forget that?)
So, when Gwen wakes him for school the Monday morning following the first varsity game and tells him (casually over the table at breakfast) that he's not allowed to talk to Charlie Conway or any of those kids ever again, he knows better than anyone that something bad is going to happen.
He expresses this worry to James as they walk into the school.
"Dude, I think Gwen's going to go postal on Charlie Conway."
James just cocks a brow (not because he doesn't think Gwen would, because he knows she would, but because he can't fathom why.)
"She didn't tell me why." Jake says with a shrug. "She just said that I wasn't allowed to talk to him ever again, and in Gwen's language that means that he's dead."
"Maybe it's a good thing——"
"You remember freshman year, right?"
"How could I forget?" James asks, mirth thickening the quality of his voice as they stop by Jake's locker. "Watching your sister, like, rip that girl's face off might've been my sexual awakening."
Jake makes a face and unlocks his locker with a pull on the lock that's harder than he intended. He really, really hates it when guys talk about his sister like that in front of him, but it's almost worse when it's coming from James of all people.
"Oh, come on. Stop looking at me like that. Your sister's hot. You can deal."
"Oh, I can deal, huh?"
"Yeah." James grins lazily as he leans against the lockers. "I've dealt with a lifetime of girls fawning over Rick , you know."
"Yeah, maybe, but I'm not gay, so I can't return the favor."
"What? Don't feel like embracing your masculinity and admitting that you'd bang my brother if you were a chick."
To that, Jake rolls his eyes. He's not entirely sure why the conversation has taken such a twisted path, nor why James is so insistent that he admit that Rick is hot, but he's glad that things aren't about Gwen anymore. Otherwise, he'd have to punch James, or something.
It'd be hypocritical to let everything James says about Gwen slide.
He doesn't want anyone to think he's picking favorites, or anything.
"Anyway, who are you taking to homecoming?" Giving him whiplash, Jake surmises, must be one of James' only talents. He isn't particularly great at hockey or lacrosse, and he doesn't know when (or how) to shut up, but he's perfected the art of catching Jake off guard just well enough to sometimes leave the blond spinning. "I was thinking of asking that one girl—— the pretty blonde that plays tennis?"
"I think her name is Tyler."
"Ah! Yeah, Tyler. Now answer the question."
"I don't know. I haven't thought about it."
Truth be told, Jake doesn't want anything to do with homecoming. Call it being bitter or call it being traumatized, he doesn't care. He's not willing to let his sister dress him like a doll just to listen to a constant chorus of God, don't you remember when Tommy Flannagan made us drink pond water so we could join the team and be the only guy who doesn't take a girl home at the end of the night.
(He also really doesn't feel like watching his sister, James' brother, and their best friend make googly eyes at each other longer than he has to.)
"Don't tell me you're thinking of sitting it out this year."
Jake silently shuts his locker. That's enough of an answer for James.
"Oh, dude, you can't just leave me alone——"
"You won't be alone." Jake shrugs. "You'll be with Tyler."
He makes his voice higher—— girlier—— when he says her name and bats his eyelashes for effect. James narrows his eyes.
"I'm not going to sit around and twiddle my thumbs while you make out with a girl."
James' locker is only a few lockers down from Jake's. The blond hides a grimace as his best friend opens it, revealing the amalgamation of garbage, books, and loose papers that fill the space. Last year, it took them an entire trash bag to clean it out before the semester ended.
(He shudders to think about what James' gym locker looks like.)
"You don't have to sit around and twiddle your thumbs." James argues weakly, nauseatingly shoving aside an old food wrapper to grab a notebook that looks worse for wear. Jake's fingers twitch with the urge to just grab it and throw it away. "You could take Tyler's sister."
"You mean the one that doesn't talk?"
"No. The other one—— yes, that one."
"Mhm. I'm sure that she'd love to go to a dance with me. I'm sure that's on her list of things she dreams about at night."
James' expression borders on exasperated. "Then don't take her. Take another girl. Take any girl. Just don't sit at home all night, man."
"I don't understand why we can't just go stag like we did last year."
"Because we're juniors now, Jake. We need to establish ourselves as serious dudes who get the girl before we're seniors."
Jake's eyebrows pinch together in the center of his forehead.
Before he can ask James to elaborate on that, though, their attention is stolen by something else.
At the same time, almost as if James' hair stood on end in the very same way that Jake's did, the both of them turned to face their captain, Ryan Brown, as he approached his locker at the end of the hall. Ryan's current girlfriend(?), Melinda Sinclair, was lingering by it. Almost immediately, they were engulfed in a hushed conversation, and Ryan was looming over Mindy in a way that made Jake's stomach hurt.
"What's up with them, d'you think?"
"I don't know." Jake answers truthfully. "I don't like it, though."
Jake doesn't like Ryan very much, either. He is, to put it mildly, a total fucking dick, and Jake has been anxiously awaiting the day he graduates, even if that means that Gwen leaves, too, and he gets left with all the responsibility that their dad stuck her with after their mom died.
"Me neither."
James looks over at Jake again.
"I think she's only with him because she thinks that Rick and Gwen are hooking up." He says. "Do you think they are?"
"Nah. I don't think Gwen sleeps with guys she actually likes."
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By lunch, James has it in his head that he's got it bad for Tyler, who may or may not have told him to get bent when he got the courage to ask her out.
Jake sits across the table from him and listens, absolutely perplexed, as the brunet waxes on poetically (or, at least, as poetically as he's capable of) about strong arms and hair the color of gold. He just doesn't get it—— can't wrap his mind around the idea of humiliating himself like this.
The girl said no, he wants to say just as much as he wants to shake James like a ragdoll, there is no secret meaning behind no, you idiot.
But he doesn't say it, and he doesn't reach over to smack some sense into him.
He just continues to stare at James like James has three heads and tries to make things make sense.
"God, you should've seen her——"
"She thinks you're an idiot." Jake's voice finally finds him, and he sounds like he might just agree with Tyler on that front. "She told you that she'd never go with you, not even in your wildest dreams."
But that doesn't faze James, who sighs dreamily in a way that makes ire prickle beneath Jake's skin.
"James, I swear to God."
"You don't believe in God."
Jake pauses to sigh through his nose, nostrils flared, and then sucks his teeth because James does have him there.
"Well, I do believe that I can't listen to this any longer."
"What's got your panties in a twist, man?"
"What's got my—— You didn't even know this girl's full name two hours ago." (For the record, Jake doesn't know why he's so mad, either. He just knows that he is, and he's sick and tired of this.) "You're not in love with her. You can't be in love with a girl you've just met."
Then it's James' turn to stare at him like he's crazy.
And, frankly, Jake doesn't really blame him for that.
He goes to apologize, mouth open and everything, but he can't find the words. It doesn't matter anyway, though, because something loud happens across the cafeteria before he can figure out where to start.
What greets him when he turns around is something he can only describe as a bullying scene from some cheesy eighties movie that his sister might watch but never admit to it.
Rick's taken one of the JV kids' bookbags and is holding it over the empty trashcan. He's got this grin on his face—— half smile, half sneer, but wholly evil in its own right—— and, while he can't hear what he's saying, Jake knows that he's taunting the runt. Cole is body-blocking the kid so he can't get his stuff back.
Adam is, and Jake is not shocked by this, hiding at the cheerleader's table.
(Jake isn't sure what he hates more: that Gwen coddles Adam so much, or that Adam lets her do it. Sometimes, it really feels like they've got their own thing going on, some sort of reshaped family bond that has nothing to do with him.)
"You need to find out what that kid did." James says, all digressions forgotten, and leans forward in his chair.
Jake nods. Wordlessly, he slips from his chair and crosses the room to his sister. Her friends give him various greetings and she pauses in the middle of a bite of food as he leans down to get eye level with her.
"What the hell did Conway do?"
Gwen glanced at Adam and Adam looked down at his lap, and, before Jake could get ticked off about their super-secret sibling alliance, she turns to face him again with a look that very clearly states that they'll talk about it later.
In the meantime, though, she hums and says, just as succinctly as she'd delivered an order to him that morning, "He made Adam cry."
And, yeah, to Jake that's a good enough reason for a metaphorical no-contact agreement and for some redheaded twerp to get his books covered in half-eaten food.
(It's better than Gwen ripping faces off in front of the entire student body, anyhow.)
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Jake did actually go and track down Tyler's sister. After James left him to go to his Spanish class (which, incidentally, was another thing that James wasn't terribly good at—— more often than not, Jake does his homework for him) and the bell rang, signifying the start of what was his only free period of the day, Jake, instead of hunkering down in the library and starting his homework like he should have, found himself wandering over to the art classrooms and standing on the threshold of the one for a solid minute.
She was in there—— this quiet blonde that always existed in the periphery who, absorbed in the quiet peace of the art she was making, was finally in her element—— but he never said anything.
He just stood quietly in that doorway and stared at her like some kind of creep, and then walked away.
Jake figured that she might've liked it better on the sidelines. Otherwise, she might've used her sister's popularity for something, like douchebags like him and James have done.
Besides, he reflected, he wasn't Tommy Ross. He wasn't going to drag some poor girl whose name he didn't know out of her comfort zone, into the spotlight, and embarrass her to make himself feel better about not having a date.
No.
If James didn't want to go stag with him, then Jake just wouldn't go to the dance.
And that thought carried him all the way back to the library.
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The rotten cherry on top of a particularly awful day came in the form of Charlie Conway.
He doesn't know a whole lot about the boy who's spent the better part of four years chasing after his little brother, staring moonily at the side of his head like Adam's face holds all of the answers to the universe, but he does know that he's stubborn. (In another life, Charlie and Rick could've been very good friends. At the very least, Jake reflects, they could've compared notes on how to be utterly dorky about their preferred Banks sibling.)
So, he's only half surprised, more peeved than anything, when the freshman comes barreling down the hall in his direction after the last bell.
"What the hell is going on, man?"
"I don't know." Jake sniffs and shrugs his shoulders. "Depends on what you're talking about."
"You know what I'm talking about."
"I'm not sure I do."
"Why's your sister being a total bitch all of the sudden?"
His hands clench into fists at his sides. "That's between you and Gwen, dude. I'd reconsider your recent behavior before doing that, though. She's not as forgiving as Adam tends to be."
The two of them stand there for a moment, looking one another in the eye, before Charlie leaves in a huff.
"Hey, Charlie, wait——"
Charlie, only a few feet away, now, turns around to face him again. He lifts a brow expectantly.
"Look, man, I've been having a really shitty day, so I'm just going to put this plainly. Whatever you did to Adam has put you on Gwen's permanent shit list, and, honestly, I don't blame her for that."
Though he isn't quite naive enough to believe it, Jake thinks a look of regret might cross his face.
"And, just for the record," He leans in a little closer, making his voice as low and as threatening as he can, "if you call my sister a bitch again, I'm going to kick your ass every day until I graduate."
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a/n:
kicking myself in the (nonexistent) nuggets for naming them jake and james. like where did I get that fucking idea?
james riley is so boyfailure omfg. he is a loser and a pig, but he's jake's loser and pig. dumb and dumber over here.
putting easter eggs of riles' fics into mine is my favorite thing to do <3
I keep hitting this wall where some of you guys will straight up just not read/not comment on a chapter because it centers around the oc, but idc. if you only want to read this fic to read about the canon characters/events, then don't read it lmao. go to ao3 and read fics there, or find a canon-only fic somewhere on this hell site. and if you are only reading this for the eventual smut, then literally put some ice on it, jfc. there's porn w/o plot elsewhere.
comments and votes are super appreciated! they let me know that you guys like my writing and I cannot stress how much they motivate me to continue! thank you