He grabbed the flashlight and, still barely catching breaths, illuminated every corner of the room.
Nothing.
Chapter 1 - Jake
Jake couldn’t believe the hangarounds were already gone. The MC’s most important business partner, Mr. Magpie, was to stay at the clubhouse for the first time ever. Every surface needed to shine. Every single item needed to be cleaned and polished, yet nobody but Jake seemed to care. Even though Beast had generously offered money to people willing to help out with preparations, even though being a hangaround should mean not only booze and orgies but also dedication, being part of an extended family, everyone was gone the moment the clock struck ten on the morning of Magpie’s arrival. Back to their daily lives, as if helping out at the clubhouse were a factory job they did to pay the bills, not a way to support the community formed around the Kings.
Once again he was faced with the fact that most hangarounds didn’t care about the club after all. They were only there for the fun and thrill of it, but real work required far more dedication. No wonder the Kings hadn’t found anyone they considered prospect material in a while.
So there he was in the bathrooms closest to the concert hall where the club held all their big events, on his knees with bleach in one hand and a brush in the other, correcting some slacker’s job. Jake had found spots right in the middle of the floor, as if it hadn’t been washed in the first place. Un-fucking-believable.
Jake sighed and glared at the bottle in his hand. It read that inhaling the fumes might be toxic, so maybe the hallucinations he’d experienced a few days back, when he entered the cellar looking for Elliot, had been caused by some weird mold or chemicals? Maybe he’d contracted some kind of long-forgotten flu from the air down in the cellar, like those people who’d died after opening Tutankhamun's coffin? That would have been just his luck. He’d die a prospect, without having ever earned a patch of his own. And if contact with Egyptian mummies could kill people, then who could vouch for the safety of two-hundred-year-old skeletons in New England?
A slight fever had been plaguing Jake since the descent into the cellar but he’d kept it to himself, unwilling to bother anyone about it. The nausea and constant heartburn were much harder to ignore, so he was planning to ask Rev about that since he was the oldest member, and older people usually knew more about medical shit. But Jake would only do that after Mr. Magpie was gone. The last thing he wanted was to be a distraction at such an important time.
Still, as scorching heat traveled up his gullet and bit the back of his throat yet again, he popped another antacid. The pills didn’t help much, but there wasn’t anything else he could think of in terms of fighting the weird symptoms, and the minty aftertaste was at least soothing.
He shuddered and sprayed more bleach on the toilet seat before scrubbing it energetically. Mr. Magpie himself might not use any of the facilities here, but someone from his entourage might, and Jake would have hated it if that somehow reflected badly on them. One can always judge a host by the state of their restrooms, was what Jake’s mother always said. Well, at least she used to when he was still welcome back home.
Bile rose in Jake’s throat, hot as if he’d had wasabi for breakfast, and his eyes watered. He dropped the sponge, bending in half from the pain in his throat.
Why him? Why today?
His head bobbed as he slid to the floor, and he consoled himself that at least the tiles were clean for once, so he didn’t risk kneeling in someone’s piss.
The bitter heat kept shoving against his gag reflex, and it was the most bizarre of feelings when the pressure—physical and solid like a chunk of flesh— invaded his throat from the inside. Jake shut his eyes, resigned to his fate, and pushed on his stomach to make himself vomit and be done with it. Relief trickled down his body along with cold sweat when he spasmed over the toilet, but when he expected bitter liquid, it was scorching hot air that came out of him. Light flashed so brightly he could see it even with his eyelids shut. Within split seconds, he opened his eyes to stare at melting plastic licked by blazing fire.
Shocked and frightened by the explosion, he fell back on his ass, staring at the toilet lid dripping down porcelain as if it were a surrealist painting come to life. With sweat running down his back, Jake attempted to convince himself that Joker must have spiked his food with some magic mushrooms. But then his throat, sore from... whatever that was, contracted with a violent cough. Jake was stunned to see tiny balls of fire erupt from his mouth each time, and he frantically shifted around in the stall so that they hit the wall rather than wood or plastic.