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nico-di-genova · 9 months

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Paperwork and Chinese Food

Summary: It was just supposed to be a normal date. Jaime wasn't meant to get so overwhelmed that he launches himself from Jenny's balcony in a desperate search for the air that has left his lungs.

Inspired by a prompt from @averagemartian: too much information. TW: panic attacks

It starts with Jenny. Or really, that’s not fair, because in honesty she’s just the catalyst. What really starts it is the itch at Jaime’s back, where Khaji Da is embedded into his skin, their six little legs like needle points in his spine. It’s the sort of itch that doesn’t go away, a constant low-level annoyance that is now just part of his life. He wants to scratch at it so bad, gouge at the enflamed skin around where Khaji had formed their new home, until he can bury his fingers inside himself and get to the source. He’s taken to picking at his back subconsciously, when he’s sitting down and watching a movie, in the kitchen of their rental listening to Milagro explain to their mother why she’s covered in paint, laying in his bed late at night when he can’t sleep because his brain refuses to conform to anything regarding a normal sleep cycle. He will dig his fingernails into the skin at the notch of his spine, until he’s just there – can feel the promise of reaching that damned itch.

He’s picking at it now even as he’s sat in Jenny’s house – or apartment really, a luxury unit on the top floor where she has a wraparound balcony and a view of most of Palmera. It’s the sort of place Jaime had always thought he would end up, before he realized all of his problems wouldn’t be solved with a piece of paper that cost him six figures of debt. They’ve set up at Jenny’s dining room table. It’s elegant, modern, and made from reclaimed wood that’s been stained and sanded down until it looks less like the notched and un-level version that’s in Jaime’s house – used to be. Used to be in his house, before it went up in flames with the rest of what he had always regarded as home.

Before him is spread a mountain of paperwork. Lease agreements, legal documents, financial statements, all of it scattered across the surface of the table in a chaotic mess that sets Jaime, who is already tense, on edge. Jaime’s name is stamped in clean script across most of the paperwork, because he has been noted as the beneficiary of Kord Industries’ gracious “rebuild the Edge Keys that were stolen from the people who were there first” grant. Jaime went to law school, or at least pre-law, he knows how the corporate paper trail works. If Kord is going to shell out millions of dollars in reparative funds to the family whose home they had first been planning to steal, and then ultimately destroyed, they want his signature as collateral. They’ll take these documents, file them away neatly in a folder stamped ‘Reyes Incident – 2023’, and hand it all over to their legal department who will keep it carefully stashed away from now until the event that took his father from him fades into irrelevancy.

Elbows on the table, arms pressed against his neck so he can feel the reassuring pressure, his fingernails dig further against the notch of his spine, until he can feel one of Khaji’s pincers shift. The bug themself chirps, alarmed, in his head.

“Are you alright, Jaime?”

“What is all this?” Jaime directs his question at Jenny, ignoring Khaji. Even though he already knows what the mound of papers are, he’s still trying to grasp that this is why Jenny invited him over. The dinner she’d ordered in for them is already going cold on the plates she’d placed everything on – an effort to feign a home cooked meal. He doesn’t want to eat orange chicken and fried rice, even if his stomach feels cavernously empty, he knows it would taste like guilt on his tongue and stick heavy in his throat.

“It’s just Kord stuff, it’s not a big deal, just some stuff they need you to sign before they release the money.”

Not a big deal.

Jaime tries to draw in a breath, already feeling the beginnings of anxiety threading its way through his veins. It’s a cold feeling, like ice water is trickling slowly through him and pooling in his gut. He thinks of Milagro’s tear streaked face, the way she had screamed his name, like they were kids, and he was the big brother who was going to bandage her skinned knee and convince her to get back on her bike. Like he was going to fix it all. His hands shake, his breathing stutters.

“I went over everything myself. It’s just the standard stuff, just a formality really. We’re still going to give you the money Jaime, I promise.”

“Oh, that’s nice of you,” Jaime manages, and it comes out venomous. There’s a buzzing building at the base of his skull, a staticky sound. Jaime wonders if it’s maybe Khaji, if they’ve somehow found a way to manifest as more than just a voice and are now buzzing around inside his head like a trapped fly.

Jenny reaches across the table until she’s close enough to brush her hand gently along his bicep. The soothing gesture burns and he flinches away from her.

“Jaime…”

The buzzing grows louder. Jaime looks at the paperwork and it seems to grow in size, it spills off the table, across the tiled floor, fills up the space of the room until Jaime is choking on his own name written in ink. He cannot breathe.

“Hey, hey, what’s going on?” Jenny tries again, still trying to reach for him, to touch him, to keep him tethered here. Jaime thinks of a metal collar heavy around his neck, and then he’s stumbling out of the chair so fast that it clatters to the ground behind him. He trips over his own feet as he blindly stumbles for an escape.

Jenny is still calling for him. He knows none of this is her fault, distantly, he knows that. She is just trying to fix what her aunt broke, and Jaime wants to let her. He wants her to wave some magic wand that he’s always assumed wealth would grant, and for everything to be fixed. He’d have his home back, the photos on the wall, the blankets on the couch, the quiet whir of nana’s sewing machine and the tv playing reruns of his favorite cartoons. He’d have his dad sitting beside him on the couch, and Jaime could curl up against him the way he used to when he was little. He tries to stay in the comfort of that lost place, but the fire finds its way in. There’s a blazing inferno hot against his face, and the paralyzing pain of an electric current keeping him frozen to the spot – forcing him to watch again and again as everything he has ever loved crumbles into nothing.

Jenny manages to grab at him and get ahold of his wrist. He can feel his heartbeat thundering against where the pads of her fingers rest just over his pulse point, can hear the rush of blood in his ears. Benefits of having an other-worldly bug buried in his spine and heightening his senses, or a side effect of his worsening panic, Jaime isn’t sure which.

"Hey. Jaime, look at me,” Jenny pleads.

He tries. He really does, but he gets as far as the worried furrow of her brow before he knows he can’t be here and yanks away with a force that must be Khaji’s doing. He doesn’t ask them to get him out, but Khaji is in his brain now, so they must sense the silent scream building within him. He’s encased in the protective layer of his suit and out on Jenny’s balcony before he can really process any of it.

When Jenny screams his name, scared and confused and mixing with the screams of his little sister that he cannot block out, Jaime is already being launched into the sky.

“You need to breathe, Jaime,” Khaji warns.

Jaime tries, but the air sticks in his chest like a brick. He chokes on a sob and claws at the front of his suit with blind alarm. With the helmet tight around his head and his own half breaths loud in his ears, Jaime cannot think past the base instinct of needing to escape. It is all too much, everything. The itch at his back, the papers on the table, the suit tight on his skin, the quiet sobs he hears coming from his mother’s room every night, it’s drowning him. It’s killing him.

“You are not dying,” Khaji says, factual, “you are experiencing a heightened state of emotional distress. I cannot regulate your nervous system if you will not listen to me, Jaime.”

“I’m trying.”

“You are scared. I understand. But we are safe now.”

Jaime feels tears prick at the corners of his vision, feels saliva pooling in his mouth, feels like he might vomit.

“I can’t breathe,” he cries out to Khaji, hoping they will understand.

When the helmet falls away from him, Jaime sobs in relief. The cool wind rushing against his face chills the heat that has been steadily crawling up his neck and collecting on his cheeks. It dries the tears tacky against his skin. He has always sought out height when feeling overwhelmed. Once, it had been the roof of his house, where he could stand and see the skyline of Palmera in the distance. In college he’d frequented the Wayne building, which housed the school of engineering and also doubled as the tallest building on campus. The door to the roof was usually unlocked, and if not, Jaime would just find the nearest window and open it so he could sit with his legs hanging out over the sill. The height, it soothed something inside him; if he could get high enough he could look down and see the bigger picture of it all. He could feel less live everything was crashing down on him.

Khaji has learned this, in the way that they have learned everything else about him.

“This is the highest you can go without the helmet,” the scarab intones, and then stalls the boosters of the suit so that they hover above the city which has grown small beneath him.

“Are you now able to breathe?”

Jaime tries, finds the air fills his lungs just a little bit easier, and nods, “Y-yeah. Thanks, Khaj.”

"Of course, Jaime.”

They stay there until Jaime comes back to himself, until the fire in his mind is dulled to a simmer, and Jaime can pack everything away neatly. He will sort through it all later, preferably when he’s with his mom and they can lean on each other for support. He will let her hold him as they both cry and he will ask for the horchata she was fond of making him in high school – when homework would weigh him down and he’d emerge from his room past midnight with a headache and an empty stomach. It wouldn’t fix everything, Jaime knows that, but he thinks it could help soothe it all over.

He closes his eyes, breathes deep. It’s quiet here, high above the earth, where not even the distant sound of traffic or music or any indication of life can find him. Jaime floats in a sea of stars, the whisps of clouds, and he feels finally at peace. When he looks back at Palmera’s blinking cluster of lights beneath him, he feels maybe like things will one day be okay.

Khaji returns him to Jenny’s reluctantly, and only at his request. They’re unsure about taking him back to the place that had triggered his panic attack in the first place, but Jaime knows that’s only because it goes against their directive of protecting him. They keep the suit on him, mainly because his clothes have burned away, but also as a layer of defense.

When he lands on Jenny’s balcony, stumbling only slightly because flight is still a foreign concept to him, she is there waiting for him. He can tell from the way she’s curled up on the patio furniture, hair pulled into a messy bun and biting nervously at her thumb, that she hasn’t been back inside since he took off. She’s been waiting for him. When she spots him, she’s on her feet and in his arms in the span it takes for him to blink twice.

“Oh thank god,” she cries, one hand cupping the back of his neck and the other burying itself in the tangled strands of his hair. The pure relief in her voice is enough to make Jaime melt against her.

“I’m okay,” he promises, hugging her back. He hooks his chin over her shoulder, kisses her neck, and holds her like an apology. She’s not good with abrupt departures.

“I’m so sorry,” she sobs against him, “I wasn’t thinking.”

Jaime pulls away enough to look her in the eye, cups her face in his hands and wipes away the tears with a blue gloved thumb, “Hey. Hey. It’s okay, I’m okay. I just…I just needed some fresh air.”

Jenny nods, sniffles, “Yeah, I know. Your sister told me.”

At the confusion that filters across his face, she holds up her phone in answer.

"I called her. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Jaime opens his mouth to say something but instead it’s a half laugh that escapes him. The sound surprises him a little because it feels out of place. But something about his girlfriend frantically calling his baby sister to explain that he’s just blasted off into the atmosphere because of paperwork and Chinese food is funnier than it should be. Jenny smiles before she’s laughing too, and then they’re just two teary eyed idiots giggling on her balcony. Jenny still in her slacks and suit jacket from work and Jaime in his superhero suit.

Eventually Jaime will explain that Kord’s money feels dirty to him, tainted in his father’s blood and dropped at his feet. It’s more than simply signing his name, it feels like giving away a piece of himself, and Jenny will look horrified as he says it. She forgets sometimes, how her wealth has shaped her worldview, and it’s Jaime who puts that in a startling perspective. He’s thankful for her help, but he won’t give any more of himself to Kord.

“My money then,” Jenny will say, “you can take mine. I’ll move some stuff around, I’ll get you what you need. Just enough to rebuild your house. No paperwork, no strings.”

“Jenny-”

“You need your home back, Jaime. You and your family. This is how I can help, please let me do this.”

The paperwork that had loomed before Jaime earlier still sits like a threat at the dining room table, so they sit cross-legged across from each other on the balcony, close enough that Jaime can pick at the fabric of her leggings covered knee. Jaime’s changed into a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie that he’s started to keep in her room, Jenny’s wearing one of his Nightwing shirts he left during his last visit. They’re sharing a bowl of reheated Kung Pao chicken because Jaime’s hunger had finally set in somewhere between him landing back on the ground and the length of time it took him to figure out how to get Khaji to pack the suit away.

Jaime picks at the rice in the bowl with a chopstick and thinks. The money will still technically be Kord’s, given that Jenny is their CEO now. Which is also another thing that seems insane to think about. He is dating the leader of one of the world’s top tech companies, he’s been in tabloid photos as “Jennifer Kord’s unnamed beau.” It borders on overwhelming, so he quickly pushes that to the back of his mind and eats another bite of chicken.

“You do realize this isn’t going to help the Maria accusations,” Jaime says around a mouthful of food, already picturing how his family is going to break out in that damn theme song when they hear.

Jenny smiles, there’s a hint of relief in her eyes, “Yes. But it won’t be like that. It will be just enough to get you guys back to where you were, and then the rest will be all you.”

Jaime knows it’s what needs to be done. He knows his family is sick of sleeping in beds that aren’t theirs, in a temporary rental that reeks of cigarette smoke. They need their own space back, and this is realistically the only way they’re going to get it – since clearly Jaime’s four-year degree is shaping up to be worth absolutely nothing. And he knows Jenny, knows that she’s one of the most honest people he’s ever met. He trusts her, and it’s only because he does that he accepts the offer.

“Okay. Yeah.”

"Yeah?”

“Yes, but only enough to rebuild the house. Nothing fancy. Just…just the same house, okay?” And he knows it won’t be the same, not in the way he means in, but Jenny understands that too and he thinks that’s maybe why they work.

“The same house, I swear,” she says before leaning forward to kiss his cheek, leaving sticky traces of kung pao chicken behind.

She’s the first to head inside. Jaime stays out for a minute to take in a few lungful’s of fresh air, his nerves are still frayed and will be until he finally crashes into exhaustion later tonight. He leans on the railing of the balcony and listens to the sirens, horns, the drone of an airplane overhead. Khaji unfurls from where they’d been resting inside him, and he can feel them taking in the city the same way he is.

“You are still operating at a high stress level,” Khaji says, and it almost sounds like a question, or at least as close to a question as her robotic voice can get.

“Always, Khaj. I’ll be okay, though.”

When Jaime does finally go inside, the papers have been cleared from the table. He doesn’t see them again.

#blue beetle #jaime reyes #jenny kord #jaime reyes x jenny kord #my fic #blue beetle fic #i just really love Jaime and think he deserves nice things #but also he is my milk soaked webkins cat that i like to slam into the wall #i'm also on a mission to make him a nightwing stan

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