The hyena returns, stinking of Grady and bits of fried dough. The whole barbershop stinks of Grady, Wes realizes to his own chagrin. A candle that would smell like anyone's favorite scent. A candle that gives feelings of peace, just from breathing it in. That's what he'd asked Sodder to help him give to the others, and that's what she'd delivered to him, knowing Wes better than he understands himself sometimes. He thinks of the air mattress next to the laundry room in his parents' home and the nights spent cross-legged with Grady, letting his partner's fingers count the footsteps overhead. Map out the distance between each shout, and eventually beckon him from the uneasy silence that followed into the black and moonless night. Wes thinks of the pull of his partner's spine and the arc of his fists, driven haphazardly but with adolescent adrenaline at anyone caught walking behind him, shouting at his back. Caught snapping their fingers around the soft curls on the crown of his head. Caught doing a single thing to hurt or to humiliate.
Anything Grady can say, he's already felt. If only they'd gone home. If only they hadn't split up. If only he could've heard the crunch of footsteps in the snow, or Malvo's voice in Grady's ear. He knows it's his fault his partner died. The man who spent his whole life protecting Wes, left squirming alone in the blood-red snow. How many times has he tried to return that gift of his own life in exchange for something sweeter, even if that is just an oblivion?
Wes can feel Grady before he can see him, thanks to the string wound around his ring finger. He raises his eyes from his work to see the man storming down the sidewalk. Isn't it always him chasing after Grady, demanding the other man give him the benefit of his sightline for a little attention in return? He turns to face the window, drawn by guilt, by desperate hope, by the vibration of his affection for Grady binding them across time and space and possibility.
No, you mean you're not leaving until you're finished with me. What? What else do you want me to know? That you'd already decided it was your last job? That if we'd left like you wanted, we could have been done for good? What else was my fault? Tell me what you want me to know!
Even if he couldn't understand the words, the conflict in Wes' expressive face is easy to see. Someone less well versed in the intricate geography of the man might back down, but Grady finds something to hope for in the flash of those green eyes and the way Wes throws his thoughts out into the space between them as if defying him to have a problem with a single one. He's not done fighting; neither of them are done fighting for what they have, and maybe they'll never be done fighting for it. Maybe that's the problem, that they don't know when to give up. That they've spent too long in the trenches and the foxholes and they can't work out how to survive somewhere that isn't cut up with gunfire.
Stubbornness runs through Grady like a seam of coal, buried deep in the places where pressure has forced the core of him apart. The red string that drifts eerily through the glass between them finds fertile ground there, reaching through those fissures until he feels a strange, stupid giddiness just to have Wes looking at him, just to be this close, just to have this chance.
Still, it's not easy. Habit makes him want to run. But there's no way out of Deerington, and he can't find it in himself to turn away. He remembers a boy standing beside a river, pushing a body into the icy water. He remembers silences and scars, negotiations, burned coffee, motel room fights and making up and arguing over the best place to get breakfast. And years, so many years.
I want you to know I'm sorry. W-E-S. His partner's name feels odd on his fingers; he's not used to saying it like this. He closes that fist and circles his chest again, and again and again, watching the reflection of himself repeat the gesture in the sunlit window. Wishing he could go back and say it to that kid he failed, to the young man who hoped for an escape. For everything. All of it. I know that's not enough. That's all I've got left.
Guilt is not an easy emotion for Wes, but regret? He feels that in spades. It sticks in the spaces between his ribcage and presses against his lungs until he can't pull in a full breath of air. Until he's sure sometimes that he's suffocating, and the harder he tries to break to the surface for a fresh gasp the more he feels the frigid lake water rushing down the back of his throat. He knows it's Malvo who deserves the responsibility of what happened to Grady, but in a thousand different ways Wes is certain that he could have set them both on a different course. He's had years to retrace every step back to a multiverse of points where it might have been possible to write them a different fate. More than enough time, too, to think of what he might've done if he'd known it would be their last cup of coffee, their last conversation, their last night together...
Grady's apology doesn't land in the soft spot that needs soothing. Not because Wes finds it disingenuous, but because his sense of anger is fueled by something he knows he can't hold his partner accountable for. It's an impotent rage that makes him rail against the loss of the only man who knows his heart. For years he's had nowhere to direct it. No one to hold accountable. He'd dreamed every night of what he'd do to Malvo until he found that it'd already been done. And when he did, Wes felt nothing for the man's death but the stench of his own vitriol that he wasn't the one to make it happen. That someone else got there first and might have shown him any amount of mercy. That his own death might've been more dignified than the one he'd given Grady.
Wes feels the ember of his anger doused as it has been so many times before. So many things forgiven under the consideration of the man he keeps welcoming back, time and time again. It's too much, he disagrees through the window. All of it? That's easy. He pantomimes gathering and sweeping a pile under the rug, dismissing it all with a single gesture. Show me you mean it. Stick around. Come to the cabin.
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no subject
Anything Grady can say, he's already felt. If only they'd gone home. If only they hadn't split up. If only he could've heard the crunch of footsteps in the snow, or Malvo's voice in Grady's ear. He knows it's his fault his partner died. The man who spent his whole life protecting Wes, left squirming alone in the blood-red snow. How many times has he tried to return that gift of his own life in exchange for something sweeter, even if that is just an oblivion?
Wes can feel Grady before he can see him, thanks to the string wound around his ring finger. He raises his eyes from his work to see the man storming down the sidewalk. Isn't it always him chasing after Grady, demanding the other man give him the benefit of his sightline for a little attention in return? He turns to face the window, drawn by guilt, by desperate hope, by the vibration of his affection for Grady binding them across time and space and possibility.
No, you mean you're not leaving until you're finished with me. What? What else do you want me to know? That you'd already decided it was your last job? That if we'd left like you wanted, we could have been done for good? What else was my fault? Tell me what you want me to know!
no subject
Stubbornness runs through Grady like a seam of coal, buried deep in the places where pressure has forced the core of him apart. The red string that drifts eerily through the glass between them finds fertile ground there, reaching through those fissures until he feels a strange, stupid giddiness just to have Wes looking at him, just to be this close, just to have this chance.
Still, it's not easy. Habit makes him want to run. But there's no way out of Deerington, and he can't find it in himself to turn away. He remembers a boy standing beside a river, pushing a body into the icy water. He remembers silences and scars, negotiations, burned coffee, motel room fights and making up and arguing over the best place to get breakfast. And years, so many years.
I want you to know I'm sorry. W-E-S. His partner's name feels odd on his fingers; he's not used to saying it like this. He closes that fist and circles his chest again, and again and again, watching the reflection of himself repeat the gesture in the sunlit window. Wishing he could go back and say it to that kid he failed, to the young man who hoped for an escape. For everything. All of it. I know that's not enough. That's all I've got left.
no subject
Grady's apology doesn't land in the soft spot that needs soothing. Not because Wes finds it disingenuous, but because his sense of anger is fueled by something he knows he can't hold his partner accountable for. It's an impotent rage that makes him rail against the loss of the only man who knows his heart. For years he's had nowhere to direct it. No one to hold accountable. He'd dreamed every night of what he'd do to Malvo until he found that it'd already been done. And when he did, Wes felt nothing for the man's death but the stench of his own vitriol that he wasn't the one to make it happen. That someone else got there first and might have shown him any amount of mercy. That his own death might've been more dignified than the one he'd given Grady.
Wes feels the ember of his anger doused as it has been so many times before. So many things forgiven under the consideration of the man he keeps welcoming back, time and time again. It's too much, he disagrees through the window. All of it? That's easy. He pantomimes gathering and sweeping a pile under the rug, dismissing it all with a single gesture. Show me you mean it. Stick around. Come to the cabin.