#stranger things s3e1 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

almostfoxglove · 5 months ago

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I'LL CARRY IT

written for my angst challenge

Rating: Explicit (18+)

Pairing: Javier x f!Reader

Word Count: 5.9k

you can read on ao3 too, if you like!

SUMMARY: Your childhood best friend returns to Laredo a celebrated hero. When he shows up at your bar shackled by grief, you drag him home for the night. CW: Heavy alcohol consumption and brief reference to the death of a parent. A fair bit of yearning.

Takes place somewhere in S3E1 after the wedding but before Javier returns to Colombia.

part II | series masterlist | masterlist

12:00 A.M.

At first you mistake it for a good thing. Last shift before your weekend, two hours to go, and the long-gone local hero back in his hometown smoking a cigarette at your bar. Your break over, you slink from the backroom into the riotous din of The Last Man Standing—one of Laredo’s many dives—to reclaim your post behind the bar. Place is a hellhole as often as it is crowded and tonight’s no different, and yet you’re halfway to a smirk. Pleased to see an old friend.

He hasn’t looked up, hasn’t seen you yet, so you busy yourself with the guy who flags you down to order the second he spots you. Fine by you, the guy tips well the later it gets and it’s already after midnight, and regardless, you don��t mind having an excuse to observe The Javier Peña, DEA agent extraordinaire, at a distance. Top button undone, cigarette vanishing in his hand, eyes glued to the ring-stained bartop as smoke shivers out between his lips. Quite the celebrity now. Been home three weeks if the rumors are true but you’ve yet to see him. You figured he’d call, but he didn’t—not that you’re surprised.

Eight years feels like nothing now. Maybe he’s a hero to everyone else, but to you Javier looks exactly the same as he has his whole life—all that’s changed is the depth of his misery. How he doesn’t look up for anything or anyone, except to shrug off the occasional shoulder clap from some drunk stranger.

When you’ve served the guy his drink and collected your tip—30%, thank you sir—you shake the nerves loose from your shoulders and slide up, glass in hand.

“Well shit,” you say when you’re in front of him, and Javier slowly lifts his eyes. You smile, all rogue. No shake to your voice at all as you pour a whiskey blind. “This the part when I ask for an autograph?”

Javier’s dark brow dips in the middle and you might as well be twenty-eight again. Twenty-one. Eighteen. Eleven. All the ages you’ve been with him in all the years you’ve known him. Because this, right here—that little furrow that looks like a frown if you’re not looking close enough—is exactly how he’s always been. How he’s always looked at you after time spent away.

Sure, there’s never been this much away . This much radio silence. The kind of parting that comes with getting older, getting further—something you once would’ve sworn only happens to everyone else. You’ve made your peace with it. Wished him well from the wrong side of the hemisphere. You’ve had lives of your own.

Seems he can still cut a tiny hole in your chest when he withholds a smile.

Javier spears smoke from the corner of his mouth as you slip his empty glass behind the bar and replace it with the fresh pour, watching as he nods in a tired, humorless way. “Not signing shit for you,” he gruffs, and snubs his filter into the crystal ashtray beside his glass.

One-two-three-four-five others sit beside it, ashed in their grave.

So he feels about as bad as he looks.

“Awful snappy for a man hoggin’ a barstool,” you reply.

The corner of his mouth flinches but doesn’t pull. He picks up his glass, eyes sagging away from you. “Nice to see you too,” Javier concedes.

1:00 A.M.

Friday means it’s crazy, means the rest of your shift slingshots by, and most of the night someone else is working Javier’s side of the bar so you lose track of his drinks. The windows of the bar have fogged, giving the world beyond a kind of eerie glow.

You do your best to watch him, holding in your stomach a knot of newborn worry, but there’s always someone shouting for another drink. Now and then you catch some guy in a cap lumbering up to him to boast loudly of his pride, and though it’s microscopic—invisible maybe to everyone else—you see the way Javier shrinks in on himself. Folds.

The smoking, too, goes on. You sweep past him on your way to a booth in the corner, tray of shots balanced in hand, and accidentally inhale a sour cloud as he blows it out. You try to stifle your cough as you reach the table, doling out the silver glasses slick with tequila. On your way back to the bar, Javier catches your eye and snuffs the spent cigarette with an apologetic look. Pendant lights sway in his eyes like fireflies. You shake your head like he’s being silly, squeeze his shoulder briefly as you pass, and the roar of his body beneath your palm blazes like a campfire. The kind of heat that blackens everything to char.

You think he’s had four drinks, maybe five, but not for sure.

2:00 A.M.

Only the drunks remain to kick out into the bog of late-summer, all that humidity that ruins your hair. You like most of ‘em. Most swagger out with a slurred night, sweetheart as you usher them safely into their cabs. Then all that’s left is your childhood sweetheart slumped over at the bar. Dated for two weeks in sixth grade—broke up over god knows what, probably him stealing your favorite gel pens—and were inseparable ever after. The second that kid sloped into your classroom, all gangly limbs attached loose as rubber bands and dark curls drifting vagrantly into his eyes, you just knew. Didn’t know how, didn’t know why—but you knew that boy would be home, and he was for years.

Look at him now. Passed out drunk, lips parted, cheek squished flat beside his empty glass. His cigarette flares from his limp hand beside his face. You shoo off your coworker with a friendly gnight before slipping the cigarette from Javier’s fingers to crush in the crystal tray with its brothers.

You go about cleaning up around him. He doesn’t wake for anything—not even when you have to count all the coins in the till for the night—which also, is new. Javier’s always slept like shit, even when you were kids and there wasn’t much to sweat over. Woke up if someone in the other room dared to breathe too deeply.

Guess a bathtub’s worth of whiskey will take anybody out.

When it’s time to go, you slip your hand up his spine to rest between his shoulder blades. “Alright, cariño,” you say softly. “Time to go home.”

Javier stirs, but only barely. A grunt, a shallow breath, a flutter in his lashes. You pat his back firmly, not harshly, but enough that he sniffs and grunts again, awake.

“Blue’s still up there,” he mumbles with his eyes closed.

Grinning, you lift your face to the ceiling fan overhead—one of two dozen in this place, none of which run and all of which droop with a rainbow of bras tossed into the rafters. Above you now sways the strap of a pale blue bra mildewed with dust. Would’ve been your twenty-first when you shot that up there, and it’s never fallen.

“I’m a decent shot,” you say.

Now he grins, just half his lips, but a real one all the same. “I remember.”

“Course you do, I was better than you.”

At your teasing, the grin snaps clean off his face and his real frown replaces it. “No’anymorre,” he slurs.

Your heart plummets. You can see, now, the bruised darkness beneath his closed eyes as you rub a small circle in the middle of his back. If you were already home you’d pull him into your arms, but he can’t rot on this stool all night. In your silence, Javier cracks one eye at you. “Can’t drive,” he groans.

“No shit,” you say, forcing a soft grin, and he mumbles some gibberish that sounds like it’s supposed to be Spanish. “Come on, work with me here.”

His eye shuts again as he grimaces, face still smushed against the bartop. His hair’s a mess so you comb it back, but the fucker still won’t budge. Rolling your eyes, you lift his arm and drape it over your shoulders to help him off the stool, his body warm and pliant. More solid than you remember him being before. Layers of slender muscle built up like the rings of a tree.

When he rises, gravity lurches and you stagger under his weight, catching yourself against the bar.

“Careful now,” you warn him playfully.

Javier turns his face towards yours, close enough in this awkward position that his nose presses against your cheek. He reeks of smoke and shitty whiskey. A little of sweat. You’d mock him for it if he were anywhere within a hundred miles of sober, but he’s a lost cause for now. Your arm fits snug around his waist. To his credit, he makes an effort to stay on his feet. Turns his head down to watch his boots as you walk him outside like he’s focusing intently on putting one foot in front of the other. You pinch his side and he hmphs at you.

“Could’a just called, you know,” you say as you walk him to your car. The street is all empty parking spots and shuddered windows and packs of thirsty mosquitos, cicada song chirping densely in the air. Your car sleeps down the block alone, black as the sky and in need of a wash, green-strung beads hanging in a loop from the rearview mirror inside.

“Wanted t’ seeyou,” Javier says.

You nudge your head against his cheek gently. “I missed you too,” you say.

As you drive, streetlamps stripe past the windows. Brick buildings sit squat and lightless, bodegas shackled for the night, and a wilful trash bag balloons with a passing breeze, blowing across the road with a quiet, swimming grace. In the passenger seat, Javier slumps against the door, temple pressed to the half-open window. You think he’s asleep until he licks his bottom lip.

“Saw Lorraine,” he mumbles, those dark eyes closed away, like he can hardly keep himself awake.

You turn back to watch the empty road. Stop at the stop signs just for show. No one’s out here but you at this hour—Laredo is a ghost town.

“Heard Danny was gettin’ married,” you reply.

Javier exhales profoundly: slow, labored, loud. He’s always been a pouty drunk, but this is something else. “You weren’t there,” he says.

“Had to work.”

“Liar.”

You roll your eyes even though he isn’t looking at you to see. He’ll feel it. Always does. Drumming your fingertips against the steering wheel, you fight back a smirk. “Fucked one of the groomsmen last year,” you admit. “Didn’t feel like havin’ a reunion.”

When you glance at him again, Javier has opened his eyes a sliver to smirk at you, the corner of his mouth pulled into his dimpled cheek. “Julien?”

You frown at the road. “Mateo.”

“Shit,” mumbles Javier, still smirking.

“Somethin’ like that,” you agree.

At the next red light his eyes are closed again and despite the fact that he’s, what, thirty six now? Javier looks like a child to you. Spine hunched, torso sunken. Shoulders broader than ever but curled in on themselves, like if he only had the room he’d be small as a seed. Fetal and miserable. A thousand years older on the inside than anyone should ever have to be.

“Starin’ a’me,” he scolds, his words slumping into each other.

You huff quietly, caught. “Shut up,” you say. “Just remindin’ myself what you look like. Think you got uglier.”

He growls darkly, unamused.

As you turn at the next light, the green-beaded rosary sways from the rearview mirror. If he had his eyes open Javier would recognize it. His mother’s—passed to you before she died. You aren’t one for praying but you’ll die with it in your hands, you think. That’s the kind of person she was to you. Eternal.

Beside you, Javier mutters something unintelligible, his breath fogging the window.

“Hm?”

“Seein’ anyone yet?” he repeats, and shifts to loll his head back against the seatrest.

You gasp softly, feigning offense. “Yet? Ouch, baby,” you tease.

“Didn’t mean it like that,” he grumbles.

“I know,” you say, as you turn into the suburbs. Quiet starter homes lurk in the dark, kids’ bicycles lying like skeletons in their yellowing lawns. “I’m being mean.”

“I like y’mean,” Javier replies, and finally opens his eyes as if he can sense you’re getting close to home, even though he’s never seen this place. He stares through the windshield glazed and distant, and you try not to stare like you’re concerned. He looks destroyed, you think. Obliterated. Sure, you’ve kept up with the news. Devoured everything you could about the quest to tackle Escobar, terrified Javier’s name would appear in the black ink that stained your fingers, reporting he was dead. That he’d be another casualty, and you’d not have said goodbye.

You know you’ve got no clue what really happened down there. That you never will. But you can see it choking him, hanging from his neck like a noose that’s just biding its time before it pulls.

“Nah, it’s just me,” you say, dragging your eyes off him again. “Think the two weeks we dated was about the closest I ever came to love.”

You’re joking, all foxish grin, but Javier doesn’t laugh. He just stares into the middle distance looking like a ghost. “Sixteen,” he mumbles.

“What?” you say.

He sighs. “Was sixteen days,” he annunciates, and your heart sputters.

Then his face folds in on itself suddenly; he pales, then greens. “Gonna b’sick,” he says.

3:00 A.M.

“Christ, you got heavy,” you groan, hobbling slanted up your porch steps. Though more alert, Javier is no less useless in walking, and though he mumbles shame-riddled sorrys he can’t much help you here. You hold him tightly to you, fingers pinching into his hip as he leans, hot as a furnace against your side in the worst of summer. You don’t care.

It doesn’t matter that it’s been eight years. It could be forty, and if Javier showed up on your doorstep ready to fall, your response would only ever be give it to me. I’ll carry it.

He grunts as you prop him against the side of your house to fish out your keys. “All muscle,” he teases, voice deep and coarse.

“Glad you haven’t shed your ego,” you snark.

You give the door a shove as the lock turns. Javier tips his face up to look at the sliver of moon left out to wink from the sky as if he’s saying a prayer. He reeks of sick—his shirt stained in one spot on his chest where he failed to aim away from himself—and while he stares up at the dark rash of night you work open the buttons of his shirt to take it off. Despite puking in your car, he’s still too lost to the world to notice your hands until you’re halfway down. Maybe in another life you’d be staring at his chest as you uncover it. The broad slopes of muscle, his stomach, the dark path of hair trailing towards his jeans. But in this life, you aren’t that to each other. You don’t get to be.

“Cariño,” Javier says, and one of his hands covers yours as you pinch the last button. Looking down at you now, concerned through hazy eyes. Summer hangs wetly in the air; his curls lay damp against his skin, licking his temples, the nape of his neck.

You shrug his hand off yours, offering a small grin. “Gotta get this in the wash, Javi,” you tell him. “Not allowed to get in my bed smelling like puke.”

Cicadas sing from their trees. Your house, small as it may be, is a welcoming place. All red bricks and white shutters. The swing on the porch sways behind Javier, giving the occasional squeak. You shuck his button-up off his shoulders and ball it in your hands before catching his eye. “Can I trust you to stay upright while I put this in the wash?” you ask, one eyebrow arched.

He scowls, all pouty bottom lip—trying to make you laugh, even now. You huff as if exhausted, sarcastic and a little pleased. He’s in there, the person you’ve loved. Somewhere buried.

When the laundry is running you find him on your porch swing, horizontal. One bare arm dangling off the seat, his eyes closed again. Skin that’s usually golden washed silver by moonlight. In this heat there’s no reason for you to cover him but still you feel the nagging urge. Even with you here with him, you hate the thought of anyone coming out onto their porches or lawns to see him like this—out of control. You rouse him just enough to lift his head so you can sit at the end of the swing, then lay his head in your lap. He hums. A low, gravelly sound of pleasure. Glad to feel you beneath him in this small way.

“M’sorry, baby,” Javier murmurs groggily, nuzzling his cheek against your leg as you stroke the hair away from his face again. He’s flushed, damp and sweaty, and even with the shirt gone could use a shower but you’d never say so. At this point, you’ve seen him in every state—sunny and terrible and everything in between—and don’t fear any of them. Don’t hate any of them. Never could, because all of them are him, so how could you.

“Cleaned up your puke before,” you reply. “Nothin’ I haven’t seen.”

He sighs, and with no small effort rolls himself onto his back with a grunt—the swing sways with the movement, rocking you both. Then once more, this time to his other side to face you. You chuckle softly as he settles, one of his arms reaching behind you to wrap around your hips, and for a while you drift back and forth with the porch light off and the moon’s claw cutting through the dark.

It’d be something close to heaven if it weren’t for his pain.

“Wanted to call you,” Javier sighs, after a long while of cricketing quiet. “After—”

Nothing.

You wait.

The rest of whatever he was going to say dissolves, never follows. Never becomes something for you to hold, to know, to carry. He keeps all the weight.

“Could’ve,” you say, hand in his hair again, how he always used to like. Even when you were kids he always wanted to be touched. His head in your lap, your hand in his hair to scare off his bad dreams. You could never tell a soul without destroying him—and you never wanted to. The way you were for each other was just that: for each other. Everyone knew you were close, inseparable at school. But the depth of that bond was a secret no one had to know. How his body needed to be close to yours to settle, to breathe, sometimes to sleep.

Javier’s nose scrunches as he fights off some stabbing thought. You stroke your thumb across his temple, trying to get him to look at you, but he won’t.

“Tell me,” you whisper.

Two words you never say. A question you never ask. He’s so far past drunk he’s practically a child—maybe it’s wrong to ask him like this—but you’d do anything to relieve even one ounce of this suffering.

Eventually, he exhales deeply, breath warm against your hip. Behind you, you feel his hand stroke your back, slipping beneath the hem of your shirt. “Thought you’d hate me,” he mumbles.

Your heart splinters. Every cell in your body wants to pull him against you, pull him into you, swallow the ache. “Should know better than that by now,” you say.

The shoulder he isn’t laying on bobs with what must be a shrug. “Been a while.”

“Been a long time,” you agree. Not angry, not bitter, not blaming—it’s been a long time. It’s nothing to you now but a fact. Seeing him again has erased the nag of your neglected longing.

With a gruff, Javier’s arm tightens around your back and he pulls himself closer, his forehead nuzzling your hip bone. “Feels like a’undred years,” he says, his voice hoarse and broken.

There isn’t anything you can do but card your fingers through his hair, scratching his scalp with featherlight nails. You let your head fall back against the brick of your house. Exhausted, but you won’t sleep. You’ll stay awake with him all night if he needs it, if he asks you. Even if he doesn’t.

4:00 A.M.

“No more water,” he begs. “Please.”

In your kitchen, just the stove light on, he’s sobering. Not sober —but he can stand up on his own. Leaning back against your counter, both hands outstretched to rest upon the laminate. Cool light splits his face in half—one bright and weary, one lost to shadow. You roll your eyes and hold one hand out to accept his water glass which he passes you with a grateful sigh.

You listen to the harsh rush of water draining into the kitchen sink—a stark disruption to the eerie quiet of the middle of the night in which it feels like you and Javier are the only people left on earth.

Behind you, Javier groans, watching the glass fill again.

“It’s for the nightstand, baby,” you assure him as you pass it back.

He pouts at it, arms drooping at his sides. Trying again. Digging for your laugh. With expectant eyes you pick up his hand and cup it around the glass, and when you let go and he doesn’t drop it you let a smile creep slowly across your face. Satisfied, he straightens a little, swaying slightly, and nods. He looks down at the floor, his bare feet, and his face blues. Darkens like he’s remembering.

You lay the palm of your hand over the center of his chest and beneath it Javier’s heart throbs steadily. His lungs expand. His blood moves. Alive—whether he feels it or not—and a comfort to you.

Though you’ve lived in this house only three years and Javier’s never once seen or stepped foot in it, he trails through the narrow halls to your bedroom like he knows it well. Sloppy footsteps, yes, and always with you behind him braced to catch any sudden fall, but he makes it in the end. Water sloshes over the lip of his glass as he sets it down. Then—still in his jeans, which hug his thighs so tightly you’re surprised he doesn’t try to peel them off—he crawls into your bed, on top of the duvet. In the doorway you pause to watch him and get a vision of another life in which he does this every night, at ease in your home because it’s his home too.

It is a terrible thought, weak and troubling. It’ll burrow if you let it, so you kick it away. While you strip free of your work clothes, you watch him in the small mirror above your dresser; his head flops into your pillows, cheek smushed, eyes sliding closed. Those dark lashes, those parted lips. Always exactly the same. He doesn’t even glance in your direction—he doesn’t need to peek at your body. He’s seen you before. You him.

“Was Mateo worse than me,” he asks from the bed, like he’s read your mind. No surprise. For years, you would’ve sworn he could.

You blush, though he’s not looking. “Javi,” you say softly.

“Sorry,” he sighs.

In a t-shirt, you pad around the other side of the bed to crawl over the covers and curl onto your side to face him, one hand beneath your cheek. “Sex in college is supposed to be bad,” you tell him, grinning.

His brows pinch together, bracketing his forehead. “Shouldn’t've been with you,” he mumbles.

Yes, he’s how you remember. Ever chasing some rabbit hole to plummet down to avoid the cavern to which he’ll give no name. He’s got one hand buried under his pillow—how easy it is to think of your things as his—and the other lies between you, limp. You take it in your own, pull it to your lips, and press them to his knuckles. “We were kids,” you say, sure to smile against the back of his hand so he’ll feel it.

He huffs. “Drunk.”

“That too.”

“Better now, I swear.”

You laugh. Can’t help it. Silver light from the moon puddles over you, illuminating half his face, the curve of his shoulder, the slope of his arm. Even miserable, probably in a blackout, one foot hanging sadly off the edge of the mattress, Javier is someone who draws laughter out of you with ease, same as when you were kids. You kiss the back of his hand again, still grinning, and watch the frown dissolve from his face. He’s always been beautiful in a way that never seemed fair, but you think it might be getting worse with age. No one should look so good in this state, but there he is.

“Sure hope so, baby,” you tease.

Now he cracks one dark eye to squint at you, the corner of his mouth loosening, curling into his cheek. Then there’s that dimple. Your heart patters. You’ve missed him. “Could show you,” Javier smirks.

You roll your eyes. “You aren’t showin’ me shit right now.”

His bottom pink pops again, pouting as he broods, yanking another chuckle from you while he murmurs something you miss. Something that ends with good though.

“Hm?” you say.

“You smell good though,” Javier murmurs, and though soft you hear it this time. That almost whine.

“Well, when you put it that way,” you tease, and like magic, he laughs. Smile lines crinkle beside his eyes, nose scrunching. Beautiful. It is, you think, the best of him—how he looks when he actually laughs. It takes over his face.

As you both settle, he scooches closer on the bed, squeaking the mattress. You feel the warm plume of his breath whisper over your face as he sighs. He has, it seems, only a match of levity at a time. It sparkles, flares, and smokes out too quickly.

It isn’t a frown that replaces it, but despair. “Gonna feel like shit tomorrow,” he mutters, no louder than a whisper. No need to speak any louder when you’re lying this close. Your lips press to his knuckles again and this time he squeezes your hand, the muscles in his forearm briefly tensing. Freckles dot his bicep like stars.

“You feel like shit right now,” you whisper in reply.

Javier nods, face folding like he wants to cry. But he almost never does, not even in front of you.

5:00 A.M.

You drift into brief tides of sleep with the warmth of him around you, his face in the crook of your neck. For most of your life, you’ve chalked up the ease with which you touch each other to an echo of your childhoods—a time in which touch is given often and without judgment. There has never been hesitation between you, not in this way. Even now, eight years since the last time you saw him, Javier slots against you in a way that just feels right—new, broader shoulders and all.

His slow, deep breaths warm your neck, your collarbone. You couldn’t wiggle out of his arms if you tried, and though it’s warm even with the window open, even with both of you on top of the covers, you don’t want to. Eight years is a long time to go without this.

When he stirs with a tortured groan, you nudge your lips against his forehead. “S’okay,” you mumble, and the whine that snakes out of him rattles your chest and slices clean through your heart. Wrapping a hand around the back of his head, fingers threading through curls, you pull him closer, and his arms tighten around your waist.

Maybe it should feel wrong when Javier nuzzles into your neck to kiss you softly beneath the jaw, but it doesn’t.

“Baby—” he croaks, and you hush him, petting his hair.

You don’t want him to say it. You never say it. If he says it now, it’ll ruin you.

“I know, Javi,” you whisper, squeezing your eyes closed so tight you see a rain of stars. “I know.”

“Y’ never let me say it,” he mumbles against your throat, his breath fogging your skin.

“You don’t need to,” you say.

“Wanted to, you know,” he replies, his voice so gentle you feel it pass from his chest to yours in a shallow tremor.

You chuckle softly from the darkness behind your eyes, like opening them will break the spell. “Oh yeah? When?”

He shrugs, his body loose and boneless. The heat of him is making you sweat.

“The whole time,” Javier mumbles, and you wish suddenly that he weren’t so close because he must hear the sudden racing of your heart. “Pensé que me casaría contigo.”

If he didn’t hear its racing, you think, there’s no way he misses when it stops. Your Spanish is mediocre at best but you catch fragments, piece it together. I thought I’d marry you.

Your forehead wrinkles as a sudden urge to cry slams into you, shattering your bones. At least you manage to pat his back teasingly, feigning coolness, steadiness. Pretending he hasn’t toppled you.

“Think you’re confusing me and Lorraine, cariño,” you tease quietly, hopeful that the wetness in your eyes doesn’t taint your voice.

Silence stretches like an elastic threatening a snap, a sting, a burn. But Javier exhales in a way that feels like he’s asleep again, like all of this is just nonsense cooked up in some drunken dream. Soon sleep is dragging at you sweetly, loosening your limbs again. You grow heavy, face slack, your limbs indistinguishable from his. When he whispers again you hardly hear it and the words don’t stick. You’ll forget them when you next wake for real. But he says them all the same.

“Not confusin’ you with anybody.”

Then you’re gone, sucked away. Asleep.

6:00 A.M.

The yellow morning leaks through your bedroom. You wake to a glint in your eyes: sunlight reflecting off a picture frame on your dresser. You and Javier twenty years ago dressed for junior prom, hidden now by the blinding. Squinting, you groan a soft mph sound as you wake, desperate to bury yourself in sleep again.

In your brief slumber the two of you have remained braided—two strands of clinging ivy. Against you, Javier groans, humming tiredly against your throat, and you feel his hand slip up the hem of your shirt again, his palm flat over your spine.

Half asleep, you let him.

Half asleep, you let yourself remember.

You’re twenty five again. Just a few years out of college, both of you home for the summer. Out in the long grass in Chucho’s yard, you stretch yourselves out to sunbathe in the Texas summer, watching bumblebees laze drowsily between blooming thistles. Beside you, Javier lies on his back with both hands cradled beneath his head while you read, those yellow aviators over his eyes.

“Could get a place together,” he says. So casual, so simply.

Looking up from your book, you see the pink collar of sunburn around his neck and grin to yourself. “We’d get sick of each other,” you lie.

Javier only shrugs, unaware, you think, that you spent all of college in love with him. In freshman year, you’d stumbled home together after a party and he’d kissed you against your front door, waking you from what you realized then had been a lifetime of slumber. You’d never considered kissing him before, but all of a sudden it was obvious. You thought this is what your lips should have been doing all this time.

But it never happened again. The sex was awkward, clumsy—you’d only done it once before—and you told yourself that’s why he never tried again. You never tried either. Now it’s a joke you tell each other, trying to make the other person blush.

The thought of sharing an apartment with him sends a river of panic through your veins. It would kill you to watch him bring Lorraine home. To hear him fuck someone else through the wall. It's bad enough watching her starry eyes whenever he walks into a room. Bad enough watching him kiss her, hands pressed to the small of her back.

“If you say so,” he says, looking not one bit disappointed.

Half asleep, you let yourself dream you said yes.

7:00 A.M.

You don’t know who leans in—if you tilt your head down or if Javier tilts his up, if it starts in your sleep—only that when you next stir the morning is darkening to gold and orange. Panels of windowed sunlight crawl slowly across your legs, and you are kissing.

Javier’s lips melt against yours. It’s nothing like when you were kids. Eighteen and nervous wrecks, your teeth always getting in the way.

It’s different now. You know how to kiss each other like you’ve had the practice, like it hasn’t been almost two decades since last you tried. Pliant and sleepy, his tongue licking gently into your mouth. His mustache scratches sweetly against your skin. When a breathy sound whimpers from you, he cups your jaw, his other arm locking snug around your waist. There’s no rush to it, no progression. You don’t strip down and fuck—both of you content with only this: the soft murmurs you breathe into each other. The lifetime of wanting in every kiss.

Because you have wanted him, you realize. Not just in college, but before then and every day since. Maybe from the first day he walked into your sixth grade class and felt like home. Even these last eight years when you’d accepted that he was gone from your life for good, your friendship having reached the end of its life, you wanted him.

He grunts when you nibble gently at his bottom lip, and you smile. Then he moans. And it’s perfect, somehow, like he’s dug around in the cabinets of your mind to know exactly how you want to be kissed. Deeply, patiently. All tongue and breath and yielding lips, your hands in his hair, the fire of him enveloping you.

You say nothing; you talk with your touch.

He stripes his tongue along your bottom lip: I’m sorry.

You tug at his curls: I’m sorry.

He kisses the corners of your mouth: I’m sorry.

You lick the hinge of his jaw: I’m sorry.

His thumb strokes the apple of your cheek: I’m sorry. I’m falling asleep.

You tilt your head to better taste him: I don’t want to fall asleep.

But you do. The tide drags you out, your body molten, exhausted, hypnotized. Your lips still touching as you fall into a dream.

8:00 A.M.

When next you open your eyes, you’ve rolled towards the window and the weight and warmth of his arms is gone. You don’t bother turning over. Don’t bother reaching for him.

You know the bed will be empty on his side, cold.

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queenclaudiabrown · 1 year ago

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Living Legend | Chapter Three: Night At The Museum

Content warnings: canon violence, references to events of media used, uncensored cussing, Arthur Harrow, Media: Moon Knight S1E1 “The Goldfish Problem; Primeval S3E1 Word count: 3,175

Night fell, and the crescent moon rose. Steven, dutiful as ever, remained at his kiosk doing inventory. Sarah was happy to help him, fetching and delivering things even as the museum lights switched to the dimmer nighttime ones. Try as she might, she couldn’t shake the sense of foreboding that clung to her like a too-tight jacket. She tried to tell herself it was just being in a museum at night after the morning that everything changed; the dim lighting and the looming Ancient Egyptian artefacts drawing her back into her past. A Pristichampsus that ate her colleague while looking like the demon goddess Ammut, groups of strange people all around her. Surely it was just bittersweet nostalgia mixed with a hint of trauma. Her past was catching up to her tonight with those memories, memories brought to the surface by the mention of the soul-eater.

“What did you see?” The blonde woman Sarah would later know to be Abby Maitland asked gently.

“Ammut.” Sarah replied, moving forward hesitantly. “I saw… I saw the goddess Ammut.” Abby sprinted away, and the others exchanged skeptical glances. “Look, I know what I saw, okay?” Sarah insisted desperately. “And- And it looked… it looked like that.” She pointed toward the same statue head she had shown her tour group of small children the evening before, the one depicting the crocodilian head of Ammut.

“Look, I believe you saw something.” Professor Cutter told her. “I've seen things that confused me too, but… I just don't think it was Ammut.”

The memory of the semi-argument with the then-stranger had Sarah blinking back tears. She missed the slightly (very) insane Scottish professor, his excited ramblings and his chaotic anomaly prediction matrix that worked just once and then died with him.

Steven was, at long last, ready to leave. He shouldered his bag and came out from behind the desk, and in his awkward but ever-polite way he extended an arm to Sarah. Bypassing the awkward ‘hold-hands-or-link-arms?’ misunderstanding that had happened more than once, Sarah hooked her elbow through his, flashing him a tired smile. A doglike squealing noise emanating from deeper in the museum made them both pause and look behind them. “Oh, bloody hell.” Steven whispered.

“I’m sure it’s nothing. Maybe a security guard slipped on some wet tile.” Sarah suggested, indicating the janitor a few meters ahead of them.

But it came again, longer and a tad louder, an almost pained sound. Steven began walking in its direction and Sarah stumbled along after him, worry rising in her gut once more. “Hello? Donna?” He called.

“Don’t talk to it!” Sarah hissed. “Have you never seen a single horror film?”

He didn’t answer her. “J.B.? No pets allowed in the museum.”

“Well, evidently someone’s brought one in.” Sarah told him. “It’s not ours, it’s not our business.” Nerves had her gut churning, and all she wanted to do was get them both to their respective homes, although she was seriously considering sleeping over at Steven’s flat (or having him stay at hers) in case Arthur Harrow came calling once more.

“Here, boy.” Steven called, now addressing the possibly-nonexistent dog. He whistled, and Sarah cursed his bleeding heart. It was really none of their business, and all she wanted was to get them both safely home unless that Harrow freak decided to come calling after hours to kill Steven. Pursuing Schrödinger’s hound that probably didn’t even need any help if it even existed was not a good idea, not tonight. “Hello? Where are you, you little bugger?” His ‘calls’ were so quiet they could be counted as inconsequential, honestly. “What are you doing, Steven?” He muttered to himself.

“That’s what I’d like to know.” Sarah agreed pointedly behind him. Her fingers drummed against the strap of her bag where they held it tightly.

“Here, boy.” Steven repeated, whistling again after. “Hello?” They were back in the Egyptian section again, much to Sarah’s dismay. “Oh, classic.” He said, but gave no further context aloud. “I hear you. Can you hear me?”

He paused suddenly, turning around in a circle as if seeing or hearing something she couldn’t. “Yeah?” Then he was off again, moving back toward the doors he’d escaped through earlier in the day. Then he stopped short, and Sarah didn’t need a PhD in anything to read the absolute tension and terror in his body language at whatever he saw. But Sarah couldn’t see anything- not a person, not a creature, not an anomaly, not even a shadow.

But Steven could, and with wide eyes he began to rapidly back up. Sarah backed up as well to avoid him bumping into her, but a moment later her back met a display case, and Steven collided with her from the front. She grunted and he stepped aside without even an apology- no manners? He was really scared-, grabbing at her wrist to pull her along as he backpedaled away from this unseen horror. He only went so far as the opposite side of the display case before he got down on the floor behind it, silently urging her down with him.

There was an unexpected chime, and then Arthur Harrow’s voice flooded the museum. “Steven Grant of the gift shop, give me the scarab and you and your lady friend won’t be torn apart.”

Sarah bristled at the title on instinct, but the irritation was almost immediately overshadowed by fear at the psychopath’s acknowledgement of her (“He can see me,” she thought. “He knows I’m here.”) and his corresponding threat.

Although… the threat (spoken or just implied) of being torn apart was almost a relief, in a twisted way. She hadn’t ventured into the field much until after Danny, Connor, and Abby had vanished in the pursuit of Helen, but during her first encounter with the anomalies and every following field mission the danger of being torn apart had been present at the back of her mind- sometimes the front, too. Her close call wasn’t something she’d forgotten, not with its connection to her sudden arrival in this universe and the scars that marked her body. But despite the fear and trauma she associated with it, the threat of being torn apart was familiar territory, and she felt herself slipping back into those instincts- instincts largely shaped and formed by Becker’s training and guidance- like an old, comfy jumper. The fear, the adrenaline rush was still there, but the panic waned ever so slightly. Her hand went into her purse again, fingers quickly finding the knife she’d left near the top just in case, along with her tiny pepper spray. She had no idea what Harrow was threatening to sic on them for the purpose of tearing apart, but she wagered that it probably had eyes and a throat and blood vessels, and these two pitifully small weapons might be able to buy them some time to escape or find better weapons.

Just moments after Harrow’s threat had been made, Steven took off his bag and tossed it aside. It had barely stopped sliding across the floor when what Sarah could only describe as an invisible monster attacked it, sending the bag moving again. She jolted at the sight- not that there was much of one, just a bag moving seemingly on its own- and she would later be ashamed of the fact that it was shy, terrified Steven who had more presence of mind in that moment than her. He got to his feet and wrapped his hand around her arm, eyes still fixed on that unseen creature as he pulled her to her feet.

Backing up once more, neither of them saw the illuminated pedestal until Steven knocked into it. By some miracle, he managed to catch the unbalanced vase and steady it again, preventing an expensive and telling crash. Unfortunately, it seemed to not matter, for a moment later Steven shouted and took off in a run, half-dragging Sarah with him. His gaze was, both bizarrely and unsettlingly, on either the ceiling or the highest part of the wall beside them. Sarah couldn’t see it, but the only thing her mind could conjure was the future predators- the same kind that nearly killed her in that car, but so often skulked among rafters and ceiling pipes.

Just seconds later, whatever was pursuing them crashed into them from above, bringing them to the floor. Before she could even register it Steven was pulling her back up and running again, yelling all the while. They turned a corner and fled through more of the Egyptian section, only for Steven to lead them toward the loos of all places. She still couldn’t see or hear the creature itself, but she could hear crashing noises as pedestals and a filing cabinet were knocked over by it. Steven paused and turned back in the hallway, tipping a ceiling-high rack laden with boxes over behind them. Then they were moving again, Steven shouting in horror as he fumbled for his museum pass. Sarah’s was still clipped to one of the belt loops of her trousers, and she tore it off to frantically plant it against a red-lit scanner next to a door. Steven was attempting one on the other side of the hall, but Sarah’s opened first, and she thrust out a hand to seize the collar of his blue cardigan and yank him with her into the loo.

Miraculously, they shut the door without incident, and backpedaled away from it down the length of the loo. A line of sinks with mirrors over them was either side of the terrified pair, providing no weapons, no hiding places, and no escape routes.

Steven jolted suddenly, looking back and forth between the rows of mirrors as if he could see and hear something she couldn’t. “Is it in here?” Sarah managed to ask, the words tumbling from her lips shakily as she watched the silver-gray metal door, their last line of defense warping with heavy dents caused by the blows an impossible monster was inflicting.

“N-N-No, it’s not that, it’s him again.” Her friend corrected.

Her face scrunched in a confused frown. “The American bloke from your loo mirror?” What a sentence.

He nodded jerkily in answer.

“Well does he have any bright ideas to get us out of here, or is he just being ominous and mysterious again?”

Steven didn’t answer, but a moment later he whirled around to face the floor-to-ceiling mirror at the back wall. “No, what- control of what, what are you talking about?” Steven inquired of his reflection, which- to her eyes- was an ordinary reflection, a backwards image of him in real time.

Steven jumped around to face the door again, and a moment later his terror shifted to… anger? Frustration. “Damn it, no! No!” To her shock and horror (a slightly different horror than the one that had already seized her entire being), he began smacking himself in the face, as if to wake himself up. “You’re not real!” The emotional cry of those three words nearly broke her heart, distracting her halfway from the very real, very urgent threat of gory death looming over them. “No! You’re not real, none of this is real. Oh, God. I’m gonna die. We’re gonna die.” He met her eyes at last, tears and terror amalgamated in their brown depths. “Sarah, I’m so sorry, I should never have let you stay behind with me, you’d be safe at home now-”

“You’re my friend, and friends don’t leave each other alone when they’re in danger.” Sarah cut him off, wondering in the back of her mind why she was bothering to reassure him when they were about to meet a grisly end in a matter of seconds. It was sinking in, the fact that that bizarre stranger in grey and white had only given her six months. She’d been living for half a year on borrowed time, and now in a different shape than before, her fate- gruesome death by teeth and claws- had come calling for it back.

Abruptly, Steven’s head snapped to the side to look back at one of the mirrors, and Sarah watched in something between fascination and dread as his facial expression shifted from one of justified fear to hesitant curiosity, then… something else she didn’t know if she wanted to label.

She hadn’t really noticed the fluorescent lights flickering before, but she did now as hieroglyphs of all bloody things flashed on the tile walls. Steven nodded, perhaps in self-reassurance, or the answering of a question she hadn’t heard. And then his head tipped back and his body seemed to spasm, and before her very eyes greyish strips of cloth sprung into existence, wrapping themselves rapidly around Steven’s body like bandages on a mummy. The danger faded into the background as astonished realization struck her like a physical blow. Mocha eyes wide, Sarah saw that Steven had been replaced with none other than her mysterious rescuer from six months ago- the cloaked man with glowing white eyes and superhuman abilities. Too absorbed in the impossible sight before her, she didn’t even register the door finally being knocked down behind her until the monster hit her from the back, tacking her front-to-front into Steven.

One of Steven(?)’s arms came up and shoved Sarah aside, sending her under the sinks as the other arm tore the body of the unseen creature off her. A mirror shattered, and the faucet under it broke off into the corresponding sink basin. He was on his feet in a moment, and Sarah half-scooted, half-crawled until her back was to the massive mirror at the end, the last sink still partially covering her body. It was an incredible and strange thing that Sarah would’ve laughed at in a film to see a man fight an invisible monster, but there was no comedy as Sarah witnessed it, lived it. He grappled with it, punching it, clawing at it with gloved fingers, throwing it into sinks and mirrors- slamming it into sinks and mirrors. All around them, reflective glass and bone-white porcelain broke explosively, and water from the broken pipes and faucets sprayed out. A sink, torn from its counterparts (no pun intended), sailed out the doorway, and the man stalked toward it before reaching down and seemingly grabbing the creature, dragging it back through rubble and puddle before apparently throwing it down on the floor less than a meter away from her. He kicked it, then bent to punch it one- two- three- four times. At last, the fight seemed to be over, and he stood straight at last. His glowing white gaze all but burned as he stood unaffected by the damage around him. He panted, broad and bandage-coved chest heaving for a few moments as he turned back toward the doorway. He took a step or two toward it, presumably looking to see if the creature he’d apparently slain had any companions.

Seemingly satisfied, his shoulders relaxed slightly, and he half-turned to look back down at her. “You okay?” The American voice from so long ago asked.

Sarah didn’t answer. She was shaking with fear- of the creature, and, of this man (what the hell was going on with him? Why was he pretending to be Steven, or the other way around? Was she a witness that now needed eliminating?)- and that compounded with the millions of thoughts racing through her head had utterly stolen her voice. Instead, she just sat there, soaked to the bone and surrounded by shattered glass and porcelain, staring up at her savior with wide eyes.

The man sighed. “Okay. Moving on. I don’t want you getting in trouble for this, so I need you to do exactly what I tell you to, okay?”

“What are you gonna do to me?” The words burst from her lips before she could stop them, and immediately she turned her head away and squeezed her eyes shut, fearing his response.

This was not Steven anymore. This was someone capable of great violence and destruction, but she had no way of knowing whether or not he would turn those on her.

“Sarah, look at me.” He said. She didn’t so much as open her eyes. He sighed. “I’m not going to hurt you. I promise. Now look at me.”

Reluctantly, she opened her eyes, blinking the tears of terror from her eyes as she turned to face him. The strange suit was gone, and the man underneath looked identical to Steven. Same eyes, same hair, same face, same clothes. But his expression was changed, and instead of Steven’s friendly, soft demeanor, this stranger bore a cold, stern mien.

“You’re not Steven.” She stated.

“No, I’m not.” He admitted, not so much as batting an eye. “But that doesn’t matter right now. Right now, what matters is getting you out of here. But first, are you injured?”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”

“That’s good. Now, I need you to trust me.” He said. “I want you to shut your eyes and act like you’re knocked out. That means you go limp and don’t make any noise or facial expressions. I’m gonna carry you out of here.”

Sarah frowned. “Why?”

“For one, this place is a mess, and I don’t want you hurting yourself. And when they review the security footage tomorrow I’d like you to be free from blame.”

Reluctantly, Sarah nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay.” With a little maneuvering on both their parts, he picked her up into his arms, and she laid her head against his shoulder and shut her eyes. The action brought a sense of déjà vu from the night he had rescued her six months ago, except she was bleeding significantly less and confused significantly more.

He picked his way through the rubble left behind from the attack with ease despite carrying a grown woman in his arms. It made her wonder how Steven could be so clumsy, with his tripping feet and windmilling arms that she had always found endearing. Dazed (and consequently wondering if she’d suffered a head injury in the chaos), she barely even noticed Steven(? Marc?) pausing in the middle of the floor to glare up at the security camera before moving off again, continuing to the entrance.

He set her down beside her bicycle. “You need to go straight home and lock the doors as soon as you’re inside. You got that?” She nodded jerkily. “Good. Now go, and let me handle the rest.” With that, he strode away again.

Tense and strung like a wire, Sarah biked home as fast as she dared, tears streaking down her cheeks. She fumbled with her bike lock with shaking fingers, then ran upstairs to her flat with her keys between them, knuckles white. Locking herself inside, she pressed her back against the door and let out a breath. That was when she sank to the floor and pressed her face into her palms and burst into tears.

She really missed the ARC.

Chapter title is a reference to the movie series of the same name.

#primeval #moon knight #living legend #sarah page #steven grant #arthur harrow #nick cutter #abby maitland #ammut #egyptian jackal #queenclaudiabrown

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