A/N: Update: Modified 3/12/08 from the original version. Enjoy this one, I think it's better.
Disclaimer: Nope, I still don't own Four Brothers. That would be sweet though.
Can't Turn Back Time
The Problem with Love
Jack was sitting on his bed, legs spread apart, the grin on his lips spelling trouble. Elisa moved onto the mattress, sliding in between his thighs. He came forward to meet her and they bumped noses, which caused her to laugh. They breathed softly on each other's faces, teasing each other for awhile. Finally, they switched from face-to-face to mouth-to-mouth. At this for an entire minute, Jack started to glide his hands along her stomach and under her t-shirt. Just as he was about to lift up—
"Damn it, Jack!" They looked up to see Bobby in the doorway, gazing down at the spectacle they'd made. Elisa slid out of reach, Jack's eyebrows coming together in annoyance as his hands slid off her skin in turn. "You two've been all over each other. You ever gonna call it quits?"
"I'm good with this, actually," said Jack, glaring at Bobby.
"Mom only went out to get groceries. She'll be back in five minutes," he said, nodding towards the window. "'Course you won't need that long, will you, Jackie?"
"Fuck you, Bobby."
"You're confusing us," he said, pointing to Elisa. "El is your girlfriend."
She rolled over Jack's leg and onto the bed beside him, sighing from the aggravation of being interrupted. She stared at the ceiling and waited for the two brothers to duke it out. It wasn't the twenty-fourth time she'd been stuck in the middle of a Mercer Boy quarrel. In fact, it was fast becoming habit. She didn't know if she could last a day without a good dose of their bickering. Once, she had had to endure an entire five minutes of yelling over what television show to put on. The mere memory of it made her roll her eyes.
When Bobby finally submitted and left the room with the jacket he had originally come for, they were back in position. Elisa pulled Jack's shirt over his head and threw it on the ground, allowing him to perform the same action on her. She wrapped her arms around his chest and lifted herself up to place her mouth at an equal height to his.
"Hey, look at that!" Bobby shouted from the stairs. "Mom's home!"
"You've gotta be shitting me!" he said in a muffled voice as Elisa pulled away, unknowingly bringing his lower lip with her.
They both jumped off the bed to collect the clothes they had already shed and Elisa made her way quickly out of Jack's room.
- - -
He sniffed the air as a gust of wind hit his face with the force of icicles. He could smell the burning rubber of the tires on the car that had just sped down the street. Early December was just beginning the winter season, but having lived in this kind of weather his whole life—for all he knew—Jack was almost immune to the cold. He wore jeans, ripped at the knees, a long-sleeved shirt and a black zip-up sweatshirt. And he wasn't even shivering.
The youngest Mercer had been looking for something special to give to his girlfriend, for lack of a better term, for a couple weeks. After school, he walked down to the corner shops where they sold antique jewelry cheap. But Jack didn't plan on getting Elisa anything cheap. She deserved more than gaudy hoop earrings or something a grandmother could wear and actually think made her look nice. Jack was eyeing the gold bracelet in the glass case of Noah Cadence's shop.
It was perfect for her. Being in a glass case, inside a box and wrapped up wouldn't make it an easy steal, but the thought of Elisa's eyes lighting up when she saw it made him forget about the trouble he'd have to go through to get it.
"Hey, Noah," said Jack as he stepped through the door. Cadence picked up his head and nodded lazily at his customer. He was a listless old man, ready to drop dead at any moment. And he probably would, too, once he realized what was going on.
Jack didn't go straight for the bracelet. Despite what his brothers said, he had learned a thing or two about finesse from them. He was just lucky he'd ignored Bobby's lessons or he'd have ended up aiming a pistol at Cadence's kneecaps or some shit. He moseyed around for awhile, fingering some cheaper necklaces to make a point of not knowing exactly what he wanted, or if he wanted anything at all. When he reached the glass, Cadense's head perked up suspiciously.
"What're you looking over here for?" he spat from behind the counter, giving Jack a don't-push-it-boy glare. "You know you don't got the money for any of that."
"Settle down, Noah," Jack said easily, moving his fingers slowly across the glass. "Hey, that's a nice one."
"Fourteen karats," was Cadense's only warning.
"I'm saving up," he said reassuringly, a half-smirk on his face. "How much are you selling it for?"
"Don't tease yourself, kid."
"Let me see it," he persisted, straight-faced.
"You can see it just fine from there. That's why I got these clear cases."
Jack started to see that it would take a little more than just pushiness to get the bracelet out of the box, so he thought to himself for a minute. He smirked inwardly at the genius of it when he said, "Bet it's not even real gold."
Struck a nerve. The one thing Cadense got more upset about than people stealing from him was when someone called him a liar. That just made it too easy to piss him off. Jackie wasn't stupid, he just needed to hook the fish and he couldn't do that without some bait.
Noah stood up in a haughty way, walked towards the case and bent down. Setting the bracelet on the counter in front of Jack, he watched his customer carefully, not allowing his eyes to wander anywhere out of sight of the gold. Jack, picked it up and placed it in the center of his palm. He moved his hand up and down as if weighing it, allowing his mouth to ease into a slight frown.
Noah smiled and stared him straight in the eye. "Well?" he asked, expectantly.
Jack set the bracelet down on the counter and admitted, "Yeah, alright. It's not a piece of shit." Pointing to the opposite wall as he walked to the door, he said, "I'll probably be back for the locket."
The bell rang on the door as Jack stepped across the threshold. He grinned when he reached the curb. Putting both hands in his pockets, his fingers curled around the cold, circular form of the bracelet.
- - -
"You didn't!" Elisa screamed happily. "Where did you get this from? It's gorgeous!"
Jack's smile could have stretched a mile wide as she hugged him tightly. But as the strength of the hug lessened, the width of the smile decreased.
"Wait a sec," Elisa said, pulling away from him with concern etching her face. "Jackie, where did you get this?"
"Band had a gig last Friday," he explained, somewhat lamely. He could have told her anything, and there were some very convincing arguments available to him that she would have bought. He must not have thought it through all the way, or else that non-existent gig he was talking about would have been a little more believable.
"That's bullshit," she replied frankly, not in the mood to uncover anything by way of cryptic messages or sideways stares. "You would have asked me to come."
"You hate our music. Why the hell would I ask you to come?"
So she didn't enjoy 'rocking out' to the tunes he jammed to. Elisa was a little hurt by the blunt insult that he thought support wasn't a good enough reason for her to see him play. She drew in a small breath between her teeth and said, "Don't lie to me. Where did you get this?"
Looping a finger through a strand of her fallen hair, he tried to look innocent, but she pushed his hand away.
"Did you steal it, Jack?"
His stare was piercingly gentle, something he never was with her—so tender it hurt just to look at him. She felt like an asshole digging up a coffin just to pocket a dead man's spare change. No matter how much it pained her to look at him, she gazed defiantly back into his eyes.
With an amount of vulnerability she had never witnessed from him before, he said, "Can't you just…put it on?"
"Jack," she sighed despairingly. "You have to take it back. What if you get caught? They have cameras and God knows what else in those shops, especially the ones that sell this kind of fancy shit. When they find out it's gone, you're a dead man! Did you even think—"
"I did it for you, El," Jack said quietly, looking her straight in the eye. "I wasn't thinking. I can never think when I'm around you. I'm going on impulse. It's like nothing I've ever felt before. I think—I mean, I'm pretty sure—I'm in love with you."
After a few silent minutes passed, she looked down at the bracelet clenched in her fist and then back up at her him. Jack watched as she slipped it onto her wrist and laid her hand on his waist. She stood on her toes to kiss his cheek and went wordlessly out of the Mercer house, a heated battle of right versus wrong still going on in her head.
