Shot by Cupid

Gunshots echo around Jessy, bullets whizzing past his ears every second. He curses under his breath as he ducks under a piece of rubble. His breath comes out heavy and his hands shake as he tries at just avoiding the fray. This isn’t his fight. He isn’t part of a gang. He had just been trying to walk home, for crying out loud.

There’s yelling now, and the young man gets a feeling that all this is just about to get worse. His eyes scan the area for some way out of this. He just needs to get to the end of the block, then he’ll be in the clear. He inhales sharply, noting how the gunfire has died down ever so slightly.

They’ve gotta be all reloading now, or something, he thinks. Realizing this is his best chance, Jessy then sprints out from his hiding place.

Next thing he knows, he’s on the ground bleeding. He can’t process what’s happened in the past few seconds. A searing pain is flaring from his shoulder, and he’s about to check to see just what’s happened… though he has a feeling it’s a gun shot.

But, just as he goes to turn his head, a hand clamps around his nose and mouth. His eyes go wide as a man seeming to be about his age with raggedy black hair appears above him.

“Stay still, civilian,” he mutters. “Stay down.” Jessy’s mind goes haywire. He squirms this way and that. Panic soaks through the pain, and soon he’s fighting to just get up again. He’s just been shot. He needs to go to the hospital. He… He needs to breathe. Oh God, he needs to breathe. His vision is going dark. He… He’s got… to…

Jessy awakens with a start. He looks around wildly, his panic from before still in his head. Where is he? What happened? He looks over to his own shoulder, his eyes blazing open at the bandage wrapped around it. A small speck of blood is all that remains visible of his wound.

“Bout time you woke up.”

The young man glances up, pressing his lips together at seeing the noirette from before. The man pops a gum bubble, the faded pink creating an interesting contrast between his pale skin and black hair. Jessy pulls his own legs closer to himself, filled with a sudden urge to put as much distance between himself and the male as possible. The stranger quirks up an eyebrow, reaching up to rub at the back of his neck. The motion reveals a filigree heart tattooed on the inside of his wrist with an arrow piercing it.

The label of the gang in charge of this town: The Cupids.

The gang member chuckles under his breath as Jessy’s eyes widen with recognition. He then stands from the bed, walking towards a chair with a slight lilt.

“I’m Eros, by the way,” the man tell shim over his shoulder. He grabs a jacket hanging on the chair and tosses it over, then continues on his way to the nearby counter. Jessy numbly takes the coat, noticing dazedly that it’s his own, as he watches him move. His mouth goes dry as he remembers all the things he’d heard about the leader of The Cupids, how brutal he was to anyone who even dared cross his path. All these things he’d heard about the man he’s now in the same room with.

“Sorry you got roughed up earlier,” Eros tells him. He peers into a pot steaming on the hotplate, pouting thoughtfully before leaning away to grab a paper bowl. “I fixed up your wound so you won’t have to pay any hospital bills, and I mended your jacket. There’s no bullet holes anymore.” Jessy glances down at the jacket in his hands in surprise. Eros returns with the paper bowl in his hands, some delicious-smelling soup steaming away within. “You need to eat,” he says simply.

“You sew and cook?” Jessy asks, willfully ignoring the fact this is the first thing he’s said to the man this entire time. Not ‘thank you’, not ‘I owe you one’, but something that sounds oddly like a criticism. Eros yelps out a laugh, rolling his eyes.

“Why does everyone act so surprised when they find out I can sew and cook?” he murmurs, sounding like it’s more to himself than to Jessy. Though, that doesn’t keep the man from answering.

“Sorry. It’s just not what one expects of a member of one of the baddest gangs in the city, ya know…” Eros hums, nodding in understanding. He pops his gum again and he sighs, gesturing towards the bowl.

“Eat,” he repeats. “Once you’re done, I’ll make sure my boys get you home safe.” Jessy nods, but merely stares down at the bowl for a moment. He isn’t too sure if he should actually eat this… It could be poisoned, for all he knows. Of course, if Eros had wanted him dead, he’d have left him out on the street to bleed.

As he wavers between eating and not eating, Jessy’s stomach growls loudly, and that’s it. He slurps down the food in under a minute, ignoring the scorch in his throat and mouth at the hot liquid and just happy to have something on his stomach. Eros stares amusedly at him, his eyes twinkling with an unreadable light.