Gavin watched warily as Michael dug through the box that had been left at their doorstep, addressed to the boy himself.
It wasn’t the first time this had happened; in fact, Michael had received four packages in as many weeks, all with luxurious gifts inside and a small note from some anonymous douchebag.
For the first few packages, the rest of the crew (including Michael) were absolutely positive there was some tracking device or explosive or anthrax or something in the gifts, and so they’d sent them off to Lawrence from their sister gang to check them out.
He’d sent them back, slightly befuddled, with a shrug. “They’re completely clean. Nothing out of the ordinary. Also, sorry for devaluing some of your really nice, new things.”
Yes. Nice, new things. That were being sent from some random, to Michael, who was more than capable of buying things for himself, in fact, he loved it. Yet here he was, seemingly tickled pink because someone else was doing it for him.
“Oh, fuck yes!” Michael cried, pulling a CD sleeve out of the box with one hand and the familiar card stock with the other. “Overwatch! This is supposed to be in beta for a few more months!”
“Michael, you can’t put that into any of our systems,” Gavin squeaked, completely serious, heart clenching at the idea of what an outside disk could potentially do to all of his systems, but also playing it up a little. “We don’t know what’s on it.”
“No fuckin’ shit, dumbass,” Michael said, though he wasn’t totally able to hide the obvious disappointment off of his face. “But at least, I have it. I have it before any of you plebs do.”
“Aren’t you, like, at all concerned about the random stuff you keep getting?” Gavin asked, not particularly enthused with the way Michael scoffed at him.
“I’m concerned with how I’m gonna go deaf if you keep talkin’ my ear off,” Michael snorted, though his mocking tone was lightened by the way he threw an arm around Gavin’s shoulders and gave him a squeeze. “Not to worry, boi, you have a few months to prepare for the unyielding ass whoopin’ I’m gonna unleash upon you when the game’s really out.”
Gavin knew that there wasn’t much point in arguing, even though he really, really wanted to. Well, maybe he could convince Michael to send it back, and then the random admirer or whatever would get the message and leave them alone.
~ ~ ~
“Nice watch, sugar baby,” Meg asked, eyebrow cocked as she leaned on the doorframe to the garage, where Michael was busy doing something complicated and most likely unnecessary to his car.
Michael rolled himself out from underneath the car and god dammit, he was all greasy and his hair was all over the place and his arms were flexing against the sleeves of his white t-shirt, but she had to be strong. He wasn’t wearing his glasses (Gavin liked to surprise him while he was under his car, and one too many broken frames have taught him better) and he raised an eyebrow right back at her.
Her eyes moved, and he followed her gaze, to the toolbox a few feet away, where the gaudy, silver watch was resting in a careful loop on the lid.
“Oh, that,” he shrugged, as if a smug smirk wasn’t already crawling onto his face. “Just another trinket.”
“That’s funny,” Meg said, stepping into the garage (expertly avoiding the puddles of oil in her Louboutin shoes.) “You never go jewelry shopping without me.” She took careful, methodical steps, so even though Michael had retreated back under the car on his little roller whatever, he could still hear her judging him. “We even got ourselves pierced together.”
Michael rolled back out, nose twitching as if at the very mention of his septum piercing. “Yeah, but no one knows you got pierced,” he said, his attempt at an annoyed tone rendered useless by the way his eyes darkened, gaze traveling down her body to where he knew the piercing was. “They all just think you went to hold my hand while I put another hole in my body.”
Meg smiled with glossed lips, folding her arms over her chest as if to block his view. “You can never have too many.”
“Any particular reason you’re down here, Trouble?” Michael quipped, rolling himself across the floor to where his laptop was sitting open next to the toolbox. Unless Meg was mistaken, he was reading an honest-to-God online tutorial for whatever he was doing to his car. “Because if you’re down here just to distract me with your tits, this is a bit of a time-sensitive project.”
“Are you ignition bombing your own car?” she asked, slightly alarmed, the timing to her strut thrown off.
“No, stupid,” he said, laughing. “I’ve just cut the… thing or whatever and I know if I wait too long, I’m going to forget where I left off.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m here because I know you didn’t go jewelry shopping without me because you wouldn’t dare.”
“I have a boyfriend and a girlfriend besides you,” Michael pointed out. “I could’ve gone with them.”
“But you didn’t,” she said, victory already on her tongue.
“So?”
“So, you’re a sugar baby,” Meg said accusingly.
“You spent two months undercover as some rich old dude’s sugar baby,” Michael shot back, though his voice didn’t seem very ashamed, like she expected.
“Yeah, and I was undercover. I got to kill him afterwards!” she said, indignantly. That had been one of her all-time favorite hits and now he was using it against her?
“I know you still have all the lingerie he bought you,” he said.
Predictably, Meg pouted. “It was Bordelle and Carine Gilson!”
“I don’t know what that means,” Michael said. That did nothing to dissuade her sad puppy dog eyes and he sighed. “Look, I’m not complaining that you kept it, obviously. I’m just saying it’s the same thing.”
“But you’re not going to kill this person afterwards!” she huffed.
“I might,” Michael said, shrugging again. “I kill a lot of people, Turney.”
“I’m just saying, you’re kinda being a tease.”
“I-“ he rolled himself back out from under the car, eyes dancing with mirth and fuck, she’d never hear the end of this. “Did you come down here to slut-shame me?”
“This guy is gonna expect favors-“
“Sexual favors? Is that your concern?”
“Favors,” she said through gritted teeth. “And you’ll owe him or whatever and then you’ll get into trouble.”
“Oh, you’re so jealous,” Michael said gleefully and Meg felt herself flushing, feeling caught.
(A feeling she wasn’t very well-acquainted with.)
“I am not!” she squawked. “I could buy you anything. I just don’t think you deserve it.”
Michael grinned in that way she wished she hated, rolling over to her feet.
“You’re so fucking jealous,” he said, taking her hands in his disgusting, greasy gloves, and pulling her down for a kiss. “Don’t worry, Turney, it’s cute.”
“You’re a hoe,” she said against his lips, causing him to laugh against her cheek. “And I am so much prettier than you, I deserve the nice things.”
Michael was still chuckling as she let herself out of the garage, slightly greasier for her troubles and still with a hoe boyfriend.
~ ~ ~
“And you’re, like, not at all concerned that these guys have our address?” Ray asked, absently cleaning his rifle while Michael pulled three new Elite Xbox controllers out of a box, then moved on to the next one.
“Nope,” Michael replied, popping the ‘p’ at the end of the word with a grin.
When Ray didn’t speak again, he looked over to where he was sitting, glancing at him blankly.
“I would be,” Michael continued, because Ray’s judge-y face was evil. “If we didn’t have this place locked up tighter than Fort Knox, weren’t putting all these gifts through vigorous surveillance before using, and if every person who lived at this address wasn’t wanted for at least three counts of murder. Also, we’re all immortal, so.”
Ray had done enough reckless things with his immortality to know that he didn’t have much place to argue that just because they would respawn doesn’t mean they should do it on purpose.
“Geoff would still be pissed if there was an ambush,” Ray sing-songed.
“There isn’t gonna be one,” Michael sang back. “They already have our address, if they were gonna ambush us, they would’ve already.”
Ray was about to retort when he was cut off by a high peal of Michael’s laughter.
“And besides,” he continued, grinning like a maniac. “If they were interested in ambushing us, I doubt they would’ve given us this.” He looked happier than a kid in a candy store as he pulled a solid gold mini-gun out of the box.
~ ~ ~
Since weapons had become center stage in Michael’s gifts (he had received three tungsten blades and a perfect replica of the Master Sword from The Legend of Zelda, with a real blade, since the mini-gun had been sent,) the crew had pretty much lost the argument that whoever was sending him these gifts meant them harm.
(They could still argue that, but if it was the reason, they’d made it significantly harder for themselves, since Michael had been dreaming of decapitating someone with a Master Sword since he was eight.)
So, they were forced to come to a single, horrifying conclusion.
Someone had a crush on Michael.
~ ~ ~
“I can’t believe I didn’t think to get him a Master Sword,” Gavin griped, arms crossed and pouting as he sat on their bed.
“Oh, come on, he loved the flamethrower you got him,” Lindsay said, though she didn’t look much less pissed.
“But he has a Zelda tattoo!” Gavin cried. “It was right in front of me.”
“Okay, so I realize you’re butt-hurt that some rando knows Michael better than you do,” Meg snarked, speaking for the first time since she’d started pacing. “But this is bigger than that.”
“Also, Michael has a Charizard tattoo, so you weren’t too far off,” Lindsay said, patting Gavin’s arm and earning an appreciative smile from him.
“Is it bigger than that?” Gavin asked. “This guy obviously isn’t interested in attacking us. Is there any harm in just sending him gifts?”
“Um, yes?” Meg snapped. “A) This will get out, because everything does, and when it does, it’ll look like Michael is aligning with another crew. Not only does that make it look like one of the most destructive people in Los Santos-“ (even through her anger, she said this with an obvious air of pride in her voice) “is teaming up with some random schmuck, but it also makes us look like jackasses.”
Meg, though known for her flair for the dramatic, had a point.
“Okay, but Michael won’t actually leave,” Gavin said.
“Of course he won’t!” Meg said, and it was true. Despite Michael’s abundant love for things, he had a fierce and unfaltering loyalty to the crew, and especially, to Geoff.
Geoff had, quite literally but also figuratively, helped Michael become the man that he was today. He’d given him a place to live, he’d given him work, and protection, and even though Michael had repaid that debt tenfold, he’d probably hold onto that loyalty forever.
“But we don’t want people to think we’ve lost our fire guy, they’ll think we’re weak!” Meg continued, eyes nearly wild with her words.
“Okay, but. Won’t we have the upper hand then?” Lindsay asked. “Because, like, he still is on our side, so-“
Meg crossed the room in two strides, grabbing Lindsay’s cheeks in her hands so they squished up against her nose.
“Lindsay, we are losing our boy!”
“I really don’t think-“
“Lindsay!” Meg let her go, standing up to her full height with a solemn look on her face. “I didn’t want to have to do this.” She stomps across the room and begins digging around in Michael’s drawer, all but throwing his boxers across the room in the process.
“Meg, please,” Gavin seemed to plead with her. “Don’t do this, it’s unnecessary.”
“She’s seconds away from defecting, Gav,” Meg said, coming back to the bed with a few pieces of card stock in her hands. “It has to be done.” And with that, she handed the cards to Lindsay, who took them.
“A small trinket, because I’m thinking of you,” said the first, with a small XOXO followed by a heart sketched at the bottom.
“I can’t help but be blinded by your burning light and beauty.”
“Not a day goes by that you don’t cross my mind. I yearn to meet with you.”
They were endlessly cheesy, unoriginal and most likely from the inside of a Hallmark card, yet Lindsay found herself steaming more and more as she read each one.
Michael was, for all his big talk and machismo, was stupidly in love with the three of them. Like goofy, schmoopy, pathetic, puppy dog love. He was bad. If some of the people they fought saw the way he acted around his girlfriends and boyfriend, they’d laugh themselves straight into a bullet between the eyes. Michael was pretty much stuck with them for life, because Lindsay, Meg, and Gavin were perfect for him and he knew it.
That being said, that didn’t mean other people were allowed to try.
“All right, fine,” Lindsay said, ripping the cards to pieces without even looking down. “Let’s go with your convoluted plan.”
“Guys, he’s gonna know we were snooping!” Gavin hissed, but he went unheard.
“I know you’d see it my way, gorgeous,” Meg cheered and Lindsay grinned.
They weren’t even five minutes into their planning when Geoff came barreling into their room, looking just minutes short of an anger-induced heart attack.
“Oh, good,” he grumbled, voice cracking. “You’re all gathered in the idiot conference room.”
“Can we help you?” Lindsay asked, because Geoff hardly ever ran to do anything, let alone come into their room and insult them (though for things like that, he tended to walk a little faster.)
“Yeah, I need you to go collect your idiot boyfriend,” Geoff spat, jamming his thumb over his shoulder. “He went to go see whoever’s been sending him gifts or whatever. Something about getting himself a new car.”
Meg felt her heart clench tight in her chest and looking to Lindsay and Gavin showed her they were feeling much the same way.
“He what?”
~ ~ ~
“I just wanna say for the record that I know Michael’s not cheating on us,” Gavin yelled, squawking as Lindsay ran her third red light. “We’re just checking up on him.”
“Shut up, Gavin,” they replied in unison.
~ ~ ~
“Michael Vincent Jones, you better have your pants on or so help me God-“ Meg was hollering as she tromped into the warehouse whose door they’d just blown clean off.
“What the fuck?” Michael’s voice rang out clear as the dust cleared and his outline appeared in the smoke, materializing in front of them. Very clearly wearing pants.
“Way to play it cool, Turney,” Lindsay muttered, earning herself a jab in the side from Meg’s elbow.
“Wait, but where’s the-“ Gavin started to ask, but stopped short when the rest of the smoke cleared and a second body became visible. A prone body. A prone, bloody body. With bullet holes in their chest. And head.
“Aww, did you guys come to check on me?” Michael teased, holstering his gun in the waist of his pants and concealing it under his jacket.
“We definitely did not think you were cheating on us!” Gavin blurted out, and getting a slap to the back of the head from both of his girlfriends for his troubles.
“Well, that’s good,” Michael said, poorly concealing his laughter. “So you just came here because you were in the neighborhood?” He started twirling a set of car keys (not any keys he recalled Michael owning, Gavin noticed, for a Rolls Royce,) around his finger. “Since you didn’t think I was cheating on you.”
Meg groaned, lowering her gun and letting her shoulders slump. “Ugggh, you’re going to be so annoying about this.”
“Oh, it’s going to be relentless,” Michael agreed, grinning, then turned on his heel, walking back over to the body.
Lindsay, for the first time, really took in the corpse that had been sitting on the floor when they walked in. He was old, pretty fucking old, actually, probably in his sixties, and impeccably dressed. He seemed vaguely familiar to her, maybe a kingpin that Geoff had worked with before.
“Pardon me, you old fuck,” Michael said, reaching into the old man’s pants and pulling out his wallet. “Now, listen, I’m not gonna be so mean about this, because believe it or not, I get it.”
He walked back to where they were standing and swung an arm around Meg’s shoulder.
“Because it’s me, you guys are totally overreacting,” he said. “But if it had been any of you three?” He blew out through his nose, shaking his head. “I’d’ve ripped them in half almost on the spot.”
Gavin, for his part, looked rather touched by the statement.
“Now, since you guys have been so good and didn’t at all think that I would cheat on you and had total and complete faith in me,” Michael rattled off, flipping open the old guy’s wallet and digging around in it, while Meg threw her head back and groaned at this prodding.
Her attention was recaptured, however, when Michael pulled a sleek, black piece of plastic out of the wallet.
“How about a shopping spree?”