#rip to my sanity and my own int fic i hardly knew ye

[reapersmarch]

it's nothing but time and a face that you lose. look before you leap, or, bel and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day start here prev • next

“You know, you look pretty good for a dead man.”

Bel sinks further in his seat. This is not how he’d anticipated a reunion would go.

For one, he didn’t anticipate a reunion, period, full stop. He’d been dead so long, he figured everyone had moved on and he’d be able to get away with everything without worry—more worry. Worry was always an issue for Bel. Stress didn’t value him as much as he seemed to value it, given how often he put himself in situations that would make a hummingbird croak, but he figured Sidestep had faded out of the limelight by now, had to’ve. Nearly a decade on, there was no way he occupied anyone’s thoughts any longer. One less thing to worry about.

So he thought.

For two, he had envisioned it much, much more romantic than this.

Well. ‘Romanticized’, would be the more appropriate term.

He didn’t picture bumping in to his… ex…? They had never put words to it, never needed to until Bel felt he suddenly did need to. So much so, he torpedoed the entire affair to spare himself the grief later. Counterintuitive, perhaps, but at least he was right in the end: it really didn’t matter once he died.

Regardless, he didn’t picture bumping into his past here, in this shitty, greasy little diner, so far out of the way of civilization, while he looked his absolute worst—hair sticking out in every direction beneath a beat up baseball cap; last night’s clothes; the worst five o’clock shadow; glasses off, head back, eyes closed, while a cigarette burned away between his lips. The bags beneath his eyes did him absolutely no favours, but the caffeine counteracted what little sleep managed to track him down. If he wasn’t wandering his own nightmares, haunting himself from within, then he was haunting himself from without—staying up to evade the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, throwing himself wholly into this metamorphosis he was cocooning for.

Perhaps it was a bit arrogant to feel so vain, but in his mind, when he did entertain the fantasy of maybe reuniting with Ortega, it was much more forgiving. It was far more dramatic and windswept than this. In this elaborate stageplay he’d crafted, there was a big reveal, a heated exchange, tears! Laughter! Reminiscing! Maybe even a kiss or two.

General frivolity. 

How apt, then, that the most tragic thing Bel could have conjured in his head paled in comparison to the actual tragedy occurring here, now, live.

“Yeah.”

It’s all he can think to say, really.

There’s not a whole hell of a lot you can talk about when one of you has been technically and legally dead for seven years.

It is, however, about as awkward as you’d expect.

With the dust settled and the hugs hugged and the questions answered, it was uncomfortably awkward. Both had so much to say, and neither of them knew how to say it.

How have you been? simply wouldn’t cut it. Neither would, what have you been up to lately? or, nice weather we’re having, huh?

“You, uh…” Bel bounces his leg beneath the table, arms crossing tighter as he turns his attention out the window. “You look pretty good, too, for having just stepped out of the retirement home.”

Ricardo huffs out a laugh. “Yeah. Gotta be back before curfew, though. They only let me out for day trips every once in a while.”

Bel cracks a smile at this. In his left hand, he turns the bolt earring over and over, thumb grazing back and forth against a spot where he’d worried it down some.

“I can’t believe you still have that.”

“Have what?” He cocks a brow, then purses his lips when Ricardo points at his hand.

“The earring.”

As quick as he’d tried to be, Bel’s reflexes had dulled from years of disuse. He didn’t unclasp it fast enough once Ortega had spotted him, and couldn’t shove it in his pocket surreptitiously enough before he got to the table.

He scoffs.

“What am I supposed to do, get rid of it?”

“Whatever you want with it,” Ricardo replies gently. “I’m… glad you kept it, though,” he admits. “It’s kind of nice to see.”

Bel opens his palm, using his thumb to nudge the earring forward some. The truth was this wasn’t the original, of course it wasn’t. That was discarded forever ago, when they scraped the splattered mess he made off the pavement and into the back of the ambulance. This was the other one.

Bel didn’t need two bolts, it seemed like overkill, so he wore one and pocketed the other, keeping it locked away with the other things he’d deemed important enough to lock away. When he’d found it again, beneath the emergency cash and IDs, it was like being anchored ashore after floating adrift at sea for so long. He had been spinning out of control, caught in a whirlpool of neverending turbulence; assailed on all fronts by every bitter feeling he was forced to choke down, all the hurt and rage and sorrow.

And grief.

It was always grief.

A mourning for what was, and what never will be; for what was lost, but never found again. A funeral dirge for the you that has left; an elegy for the you that still lives.

Then, the earring. That stupid fucking earring. He couldn’t be rid of the shadows that hounded him fast enough, but here he was anyway, with it in his palm, feeling very much like a dog person. The irony was bitter. No matter how much he’d been split apart, torn up, atomized, antagonized by the betrayal of abandonment—he always came back to Ortega.

Always a tether.

Always a brick tied to the ankles.

“It kept me grounded on my worst days,” he tells him, curling slender fingers over top and slipping it into his breast pocket. “…Still does.”

Why am I telling him this?

Because it’s easier than starting over.

They couldn’t go back, but Bel could pretend they were seven years younger, and none of this had happened. He could pretend the chasm between them wasn’t insurmountable, that it really could just be that easy—fall into old, familiar habits again, reach out and take hold like nothing’s changed and you haven’t been divided by distance and separated by time. He’d gotten better at playing his part.

He had to.

Starting over, relearning everything about each other because you’re no longer the same people you once were—it was too much, it turns out. At least, this iteration.

“Bel, you look like shit.”

He gives Ortega a flat, half-lidded look.

“Gee, thanks. I wasn’t aware.”

“I mean that lovingly,” Ricardo promises. “When was the last time you slept? Or ate?”

“Last night; this morning.” Bel pushes away from the table, rising to his feet, and Ricardo does the same.

“Wait,” he starts, extending a hand out towards his wrist, stopping just before contact. It takes everything in Bel not to flinch. “Wait, wait. Bel, don’t just disappear on me.” Again, his tone betrays his unspoken intent—don’t disappear on me again. “Please?”

Bel purses his lips, averting his gaze and quickly scuttling around him, all but sprinting out of the building. Ricardo, however, is faster, his stride longer, and he cuts his escape short, forcing him to stop walking abruptly. Bel rubs at tired eyelids with thumb and forefinger, annoyed. “Ricardo, I am fine,” he insists.

“I’m just worried about you, Bel,” Ricardo emphasizes. “Heartbreak—”

“Was a long time ago,” Bel cuts in, sharper than he means to, once again stepping around the taller and broader of the two of them, desperate to be done with this. “We all dealt with it differently, I’m sure.”

“Did you deal with it at all?” Ricardo challenges from behind. Bel’s expression sours. He needed a cigarette, badly.

How? He wants to shout. How was I supposed to? 

How could I? I was a slab of meat and tubes for the better part of two years, then strapped to a table for the other five. You got to move on; I didn’t.

Maybe that isn’t fair. Maybe he didn’t know.

He had to. He had to have known.

He had to, or everything Bel has been carrying with him has been for nothing. Every thread of betrayal that had woven itself so deeply into the tapestry of who he was, all the despair that found a home in him, swelled up like a balloon and kept him buoyed—if Ricardo didn’t know, then Bel certainly didn’t know where to put it all.

“In my own way,” he lies, wrapped up in a promise with a bow of feigned sincerity. “I’m dealing with it.”

Ricardo doesn’t believe him. Of course not. Why would he? He wasn’t wrong—Bel looks like shit. He knows he looks like shit, he feels like it, too. He jams his hands into his pockets and lifts his shoulders. “Believe it or not, I’m coping.”

Ricardo pinches at the bridge of his nose. “You should be more than coping, Bel.” 

“Is it my fault you have the worst sense of timing?” he asks testily. “Look—” Bel sighs through his nose, pressing both palms against his eyes and rubbing until he sees stars. He needed to get into character. He needed to take the starring role in that Shakespearean epic he’d concocted in his head, grab hold of the narrative, and direct it like he’s been doing. Like he’s gotten so good at.

“I’m sorry, Ricardo,” he says, and he means it, his expression softening and tone easing off. He doesn’t need to fake it—the guilt seeps through every word. “I don’t mean to be so irritable, I just… you caught me on a bad day, Ric. I mean, look at me.” Bel gives a mirthless little chuckle, gesturing to himself. “I’m hungover, running on fumes, and I look properly pathetic—retirement is going swell, by the way.” He takes a step forward then stops, takes a half step back. Five feet. This is as close as he would allow. This is his line in the sand. “This just… wasn’t something I was prepared to face today.”

It’s a small mercy, Bel thinks, that the parking lot is sufficiently empty; only little pockets of others like them, sparsely peppered across the asphalt, tucked out of sight between cars. No one would pay any attention to their conversation, and he would ensure it remained that way.

When he left his apartment this morning, he’d been hoping for a little bit of quiet. The diner was good because he could shut his brain off for a time, have a coffee and a smoke and allow himself the space to wallow. More importantly, though, he could blend in. No one paid any mind to another scruffy looking nondescript guy loitering in a corner booth; they all melded together after a while.

It was out of the way. Discreet. Definitely not a place Ricardo would frequent.

In that case, statistically speaking, there was no reason for them to be sharing space currently. Right? It just shouldn’t have been possible. Six degrees of separation scarcely mattered when you never maintained contact in the first place.

So, if the question is as follows:

What are the odds that, of all places on all days in all cities, the two of them would encounter one another here—at this diner, on this day, in this city?

Then the answer must be broken down as such:

Scenario one: Is one person searching for the other? (Yes. Endlessly. In every window, in every doorway, in every crowded space; I keep hoping I’ll catch a glimpse of your face as it was when I saw it last, kept fondly in a part of me I’d rather forget.)

Scenario two: Are neither looking for one another? (You cannot search for that which does not wish to be found. It comes to you when you least expect. This is what it means to haunt. To be haunted.)

Scenario three: Are they both seeking each other? (Yes. Still. Always.)

In a city the size of Los Diablos then, sans the ability to sense the other telepathically, it works out to:

OPTION 1: 0.23% chance of finding the other person.

OPTION 2: 0.0084% chance of bumping into one another.

OPTION 3: 2.46% chance of finding one another. 

Results: Unlikely, but not impossible. ‘Nonzero’ is still not zero.

Bel never did believe in serendipity.

He did believe, however, that somewhere along the way, he must’ve open-mouth kissed the devil.

“I don’t think you look pathetic,” Ricardo says, interrupting the frenetic mental pacing Bel was doing in the annals of his fraying mind. Leave it to Ortega to hone in on the one topic that isn’t even relevant. Of all the things he could’ve pulled from that, why is that the one he latched on to?

Bel shakes his head, as if to clear it. “What…?”

“I don’t think you look pathetic,” Ricardo repeats, taking a step forward. Bel takes another half step back. Five feet. It was like dealing with a cornered feral cat—any sudden moves, and he might bolt. “I think you look like you. It’s just you on a bad day, Bel. And—” he pauses. “Yeah. It is a lot to deal with, huh? I don’t really know how you prepare for it.”

That’s the thing they don’t tell you about resurrection: it’s less a blessing, and more an absolute fucking nightmare.

The world doesn’t stop turning, even when yours feels like it’s ended, even when yours has ended, and when you come back, it’s to places and people you no longer recognize. You’re no longer you. They’re no longer them. And the last piece you have of each other is an outdated fragment of a memory, viewed through the tinted lenses of nostalgia.

You’ve changed.

So have they.

But you still look like you. And he still looks like him.

“I have to run, Ricardo,” Bel says quietly, voice just above a whisper, walking backwards away from him, the canyon stretching further. “I’ll think over your offer, okay?” Despite it all, “It was good seeing you.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, smiling faintly. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “You, too.”