narcolini - Tumblr blog

narcolini · 2 months

Text

we are so back

do i know you? chapter nine

gifsource

[ chapter nine — 8.5k words ] [ masterlist ] [ prev chapters: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight ] "i never fucking asked you to!" richie jerimovich x reader, past mikey berzatto x reader, slow burn

just outside your apartment building stands mikey, hunched against the wind and smoking. he gives you a friendly nod and you grant him a nod in response, guarded but polite.

you never know what you’ll get with this guy. he alternates between foul moods that verge on frightening and a brilliant good temper that tempts you to shine your phone in his eyes to see the confirmation of pinprick pupils. he has moderate nights, but they’re becoming rarer and rarer.

still, his company beats the emptiness of your apartment. like a creature taken to a faraway zoo, you haven’t acclimated to your new environment in chicago, haven’t learned how to take this much loneliness; that’ll come later.

for now, you’re still standing on your separate little patches of sidewalk, familiar strangers engaged in tacit truce, when it comes flying out of nowhere.

fuck.

mikey snarls it so savagely that you look over for threat assessment, just quick enough to catch him looking up at the pitiless hard sky, profile: once-broken nose, twisted mouth, adam’s apple. wild gleam of desperate dark eye, more startling than the snarl. sudden rage from a man is no surprise, but this one looks worse. this one looks caged.

you can sympathize with that.

what? you say gruffly.

his eyes shutter, his jaw pulses. nothing.

you shrug, turn away. resume the truce.

in your peripheral, you can see him looking down and firing off a text. and you think that’s it, that’s all, but then he turns to you and says, you’re good at getting people to fuck off, yeah?

his voice is the voice of a friend, low and familiar, warm and a touch wry. his dark eyes the same. you’re looking at each other directly and it feels like a touch.

a laugh startles out of you. you’ve been pretty direct about rejecting his attempts at conversation, belligerent, sweet, or otherwise. but here he goes again, trying, and you’re tempted.

mikey turns so he’s facing you, chucks his cigarette, and sticks his hands in the kangaroo pocket of his big gray hoodie. for some reason, that does it.

yeah, you say, i’m a world-class expert at getting people to fuck off. they should be giving me tenure, the way i could teach that shit.

then you’re the one i wanna talk to.

you’ve got nobody else in this godforsaken city except patients and threats, and so it’s probably a side effect of loneliness, nothing to do with the man himself, but still: it feels good that somebody wants to talk to you.

you hesitate, fighting it. he exhales.

who’s after you? you say. debt collector? ex?

my brother, actually. there’s an odd space, flicker grimace, between brother and actually. he’s not proud of this. again, you can sympathize.

why do you want your brother to fuck off?

he says nothing, rubs his shoe against a lump of hardened gum on the asphalt. ‘s complicated.

with that, your sympathy—never in abundant supply to begin with—goes down the drain. if he’s gonna play the whiny teenager, making you beg him for his deep dark secrets, fuck it. compassion isn’t your style anyway.

okay, you say flatly. you turn towards the street, keeping him in your periphery just in case. the silence grows heavy, but you ignore it.

fuck it, he mutters. then, louder, it’s not that complicated. carmy’s the baby, and ma was always telling us to keep him out of trouble. i guess it stuck.

that’s such an innocuous way to put it, pulled from childhood. what about the rage from earlier, his trapped eyes? sense tells you to end things here. don’t be a trash bag for this man’s problems, whatever they are.

the thing is, though. it does feel good to have somebody talk to you like you’re a person.

what’s the trouble? you say.

he sighs, settles in. you ever seen a house on fire?

no, i’ve seen a helicopter on fire, but that’s…you look over at him, and you can tell it’s not the flames he’s talking about. no. you?

sort of. he pauses, and the silence is full enough that you know to wait for the coming story. so when i was little, i used to sneak down to the basement, right? i was supposed to be babysitting carmy and sugar, putting them to bed and all that good shit, but some nights i’d get bored. and they never got in much trouble without me.

they must’ve been pretty well-behaved kids, you say.

he laughs. he’s beautiful when he laughs, you can’t help but see it. not exactly.

i’m just saying, if my brother told me to stay anywhere, i would’ve been out the window by the time he’d gotten down the stairs.

mikey gestures with his cigarette at exactly the wrong moment, and the wind snuffs out his cigarette, but he’s so caught up in his story, he doesn’t even notice.

nah, i knew how to play it. sugar was going through this phase where she was fixated on us taking her seriously, so she loved the responsibility. and what was carmy gonna do about it? he was like five. he smiles, remembering. so anyway, before i would go down there, i’d put on my little light up sneakers, cause the stairs to the basement were dark and scary.

you find yourself smiling too. you can picture it.

and my mom would be down there in the dark, watching the tv, sitting in my dad’s old chair. she was usually drunk or sleeping, but sometimes i think she noticed i was there with her and she was okay with it. or, i don’t know. he laughs, short and sharp. she definitely never changed the channel on account of me. i saw all kinds of crazy shit on tv before i was twelve.

mikey pauses, then looks to you. what the fuck am i even talking about? there’s no real embarrassment in it, only appealing self-deprecation.

it works on you. you do want to know where this is going. house fire.

house fire, he echoes, pointing at you. okay, so one time i’m sitting on the floor next to dad’s chair, leaning on it, and i fall asleep. i wake up to this woman screaming. at first i think it’s real, but then i realize it’s from the tv, right? there’s a house on fire. the whole neighborhood is standing there watching, and there’s this old woman screaming, but they don’t look sorry for her. and after a second i figure out what she’s saying. she’s screaming at the firefighters to go in. and i didn’t get it, like, why is no one listening to her?

it scared him, you think. it must have. someone was in there?

i don’t know, i never found out, mikey says. mom woke up, and she saw that i was freaked out, so she got super fuckin angry and, uh. made me go to bed and all that. standing there and holding a cold cigarette, he looks tired. but when i was walking to the stairs, the woman stopped screaming. so i looked back and i saw on the tv that the house was gone. the whole thing collapsed. the roof must’ve caved in.

the silence lingers, then mikey looks across at you like a question. why should it matter whether you understand? why should you care? but your heart is in your throat.

it was right for the firefighters to stay outside, because if they’d gone in, they would have died. the roof was always going to crumble. whatever was inside the house, it was already gone.

you think you understand. so you’re inside the house.

nah, mikey says, i’m the house.

in the aftermath of christmas eve—gold chain, two generations, soup—christmas itself passes quietly without hurting much.

save for a handful of texts, completely unexpected.

> what’s the fastest way to infect people with food poisoning?

richie, of course. you don’t even bother to play coy by letting a few minutes elapse, like you had something better to do. he wouldn’t be fooled by that. he already knows better.

> it’s that bad?

> not fatal food poisoning, just the regular kind.

> it’s that bad? x2

> i think if we all threw up a lot we’d be having more fun.

> you want me to fake an emergency? pull a fire alarm, stage a bomb threat? i’ll drive the getaway car.

> your mind jumps to terrorism way too fast. you’re just looking for an excuse, aren’t you.

> seriously.

> you’re the third guy. it’s al qaeda, then isis, then you.

> seriously, get out of there. come get an unfrozen burrito, if you’re hungry.

no reply. not even three dots to show he’s drafting. with your left hand, you drum a nervous beat on your kitchen table, and with your right, you send another text.

> you can bring sugar and carmy with you.

and there they are, those three dots. you don’t know if you’re more worried about what will happen if he takes up your offer, or what will happen if he turns it down. you don’t talk about carmy to richie, though richie talks about carmy to you. he knows that. you like tina and you don’t mind his other coworkers, but you avoid the berzattos like the plague. richie knows that too. your reasons are your own, but if it really comes down to it—

> it’s fine. all the people i want to save wouldn’t fit in the car anyway.

relief. yeah, that’s relief, and you feel a little guilty for it, but it’s just easier this way: you in the kitchen and no one else.

> you have jumper cables in your trunk, don’t you? just tie pete to the top of the car like a christmas tree

> like i’d bring pete.

> cold hearted, that’s what you are.

nothing. no typing, no read 7:12pm, nothing at all. after fifteen minutes, you give up and toss your phone on your bed. drink your tea, though it has gone cold. try not to think about whatever’s happening in that other kitchen. try not to think about how close by it is, or how far.

the day after christmas, you’re so busy thinking about richie that you almost deliver yourself to the feds on accident.

walking to your boss’s house without an invitation is never a good idea, doubly so when your boss deals his displeasure in blood, but after so long without pay, work, and news about your carbon monoxide poisoning patients, you’re desperate. the idea is that you’ll barter your knowledge of howie and kevin’s stupid shenanigans in exchange for information. maybe you’ll even ask for severance pay.

that’s why you’re thinking of richie. you’re trying to keep calm, and he’s something to look forward to. you wonder how he’s doing ice fishing with carmy. will they get frostbite? maybe. will they catch anything? doubtful. will they end up shouting? definitely. will—

you’re just about to take a left onto the caruso’s street when you see it: about nine or ten houses down, there’s a gaggle of suburban moms gawking at the caruso house, and beyond them, cop cars.

this is it.

your stomach drops, and you look away immediately, heartbeat going full jackhammer about to drill through your concrete chest. keep walking straight, past the scene. you only got one glance before the instinct to flee kicked in, but you’re pretty sure that the cops were carrying heavy cardboard boxes out to their cars. you’re not worried about what evidence they might find—tweety bird wouldn’t let contraband be stored in her pantry, not in a million years—but you are worried that the cops were all a matched set. the navy windbreakers? that’s fed fashion. that’s.

yeah. this is it.

when you get on the bus, some part of you is surprised the driver even allows it. the end’s not here, but it is coming. only a matter of time.

as you get off one bus and get on another, taking a circuitous route in a useless effort to try and allay the feeling of being hunted, your dread coalesces into nausea, the kind you get when a headache or period cramps are left untended too long. it’s physical. you focus on the fraying cuff of your hoodie, and all you want to do is lie down.

you’ve expected the world to end for a long time, so you know exactly what to do. you’ve done research. you’ve imagined it all in excruciating detail, and you’re not bothered by the unknown, except for richie.

richie’s the one unknown. imagining the end of the world with him was so unbearable that you could never force yourself to go through with the exercise of imagining it, and you kept him at arm’s length just enough to pretend that the end of the world would somehow leave him untouched. now that shit’s real, you can’t pretend anymore. when it comes to richie, you’ll be flying blind. you could kick yourself. you could k—

your work phone rings. it’s your landlady. you ignore it, but she rings again and again and again. finally, she texts you.

> please come up to the office as soon as you can. we have discovered irregularities with your october and november payments, and unless this is fixed soon, we’ll have to explore our legal options.

your landlady was not the one who typed that message. if she’d been the one typing, it would’ve looked something like get your ass up here, give or take a few typos.

so yeah, there’s cops after you. this is it.

when you call your brother from a newly purchased burner phone, he answers immediately. what’s up?

it’s julie.

okay, he says very flatly. one nice thing about your family: minimum talking, minimum fuss. he doesn’t say a thing about the years past. he just repeats, what’s up?

i’m probably going to prison for a while, you say.

how long?

should i be insulted that you’re not surprised?

he says nothing. you don’t know what you expected, really, but you hate that you’ve become the talkative one.

stifling your annoyance, you say, like ten years max? it’s not like i killed someone, but i’m in with some assholes. i don’t know, i haven’t talked to a lawyer yet.

silence on the other end.

you pinch the bridge of your nose, nausea swelling. you can picture him, your one and only sibling, even though you know the picture must be outdated: broad-shouldered like you are, annoying, tall, decked out in some kind of colorless athleisure and the eternal baseball cap, slanted eyes narrowed even more than usual in judgment and exasperation.

are you there? you finally say.

you need bail? he says abruptly.

god, you want so badly to give him a shove, knock the stiffness out of him. no. no money. not from you, not from mom, not from anyone. that’s why i’m calling. if anyone finds out about this, just keep them out of it, yeah?

yeah.

that’s where you should shut up, unless you want feelings leaking into it, but today’s a day of helplessness and this conversation is no exception.

you say, a little desperate, i don’t want anyone near this one.

i got it, pebbles. with his particular mix of sardonic affection and condescension, the fog around you lifts, and there he is standing in front of you. you can see him clearly: pissed off at you now and probably forever, but still family. not much. but not nothing.

suck my dick, you say, awash with relief.

he snorts. and adieu.

you hang up on each other at exactly the same time.

i’m not telling you that.

you’ve worn your lawyer down to a thin veneer of professionalism through which her palpable annoyance has begun to show. and you’re not even sorry. it gives you a certain satisfaction, a sense of getting your own back—her steely, emotionless affect was getting on your nerves before.

you put all your remaining money into her retainer check because she’s not just a lawyer, but an effective one, according to your research. so it shouldn’t matter that you don’t know what she thinks of you. shouldn’t matter, but it does. you want to know her judgment, one way or another. maybe it’s because this is the first time you’ve told the full story to anyone.

or at least, as close as you’re ever gonna get to the full story.

i’ve already explained confidentiality to you, she says.

i already knew that you’re not gonna snitch on me unless i’m about to commit another crime, you say. but i’m still not telling you.

all right. let me get this straight. she spreads her hands out flat on her desk, and her wedding band clacks against the dark wood. there’s not a strand of her gray hair out of place, and her brown eyes have lost their annoyance. back to professionalism. disappointing. you’re here because you believe you witnessed federal agents bagging evidence at your employer’s house, and you believe your employer has been arrested. your employer is giovanni caruso—

hold up, you interrupt. giovanni? that’s his name?

you call him old caruso, son’s name is jack, there’s a limited number of organized crime families in the area and i happen to be acquainted with that landscape, generally speaking.

you snort. that’s so fucking funny.

if your lawyer finds you more annoying than before, she doesn’t show it. you have been working for caruso for over a year and a half in an off the books capacity as a doctor. you received biweekly payments to be on call between the hours of eight in the evening and eight in the morning, and during that time, you treated multiple gunshot wounds and other injuries, including broken bones, stab wounds, and carbon monoxide poisoning. while your clients were cautioned not to tell you their names or explain how they received their injuries, you do feel that you know enough information to be of interest to the police. you are not willing to testify.

on account of not wanting to die, yes, you say, adopting a professional tone to exactly match hers, dangerously close to mocking. you’re being an asshole for a reason. she’s tried to persuade you to testify before, and you don’t want her to try it again.

she continues unperturbed. you have been threatened with violence on multiple occasions to that end, sometimes with a weapon. so far, understandable.

now the lawyer spreads her hands out on the desk in a summary gesture.

now all of this is not necessarily as dire a predicament as you thought when you said you might ‘get ten years’. if you had proof you were coerced, i could get your sentence reduced even more, but as things stand this seems like a set of offenses that would land you around two or three years, five at the worst. you do have a medical license, so they can’t get you on practicing without. you never directly participated in any of the presumably violent crimes leading to the injuries, and you never procured the drugs and medical supplies yourself. other than the payments to your bank account, there’s not much of a paper trail because you took no notes, used neither laptop nor smartphone—yeah, you didn’t tell her about the michael and richie phone, because that would require telling her about michael and richie—and cycled through burner phones instead. so again, it will be hard for them to nail you on specifics, unless they have multiple witnesses.

i sense a ‘but’ coming, you say.

but i need to understand why you got into this in the first place.

with that, you snap. it’s been a day, and she’s using the words of a counselor with the expression of a robot. why the fuck do you care?

ma’am, she says, that glimmer of irritation just barely showing, you are paying me to defend you. i would rather not enter that fight with one hand tied behind my back.

you’re an idiot.

of course she doesn’t care about whether you’re good or bad, clever or stupid. there’s no judgment to be had. all she cares about is how defensible you are. you really are an idiot, and you’re so relieved.

with that, it flows freely.

i fucked up, you say. i was a resident at ui—university of illinois—and i was on my second to last year, everything was good. but then the carusos tried to blackmail me into getting them the medical files of one of my patients, so i freaked out and quit. it’s hard to convey to her just how much your world ended, without sounding melodramatic. in the end, you keep it brief. i burned all my bridges. but then i had no job and nothing else to do, and they knew it. shit happened, and now here we are.

she doesn’t hesitate. caruso tried to blackmail you with what?

no. that’s all, that’s it. she only gets the one word.

i can’t do my job if you’re being obstructionist.

i’m not tell you that—i’m not telling fucking anyone that. i’d rather go walk onto state street bridge and blow my brains out. there’s no way she knows what you’re talking about, but some of it must creep into your voice, because she does stop for a moment and think before pressing you again, this time with a slightly milder tone.

is it sex, violence, or money? she says.

none of the above. some money was involved, but not more than a month of rent.

you paid, or someone else paid?

all right, that’s it. you charge by the hour, right? you say.

in your current arrangement, yes.

well, the retainer’s all i got. so. you pat your hands on her desk in a brisk, final gesture. i’m gonna fuck off now, you have a think, and then tomorrow i’m gonna swing by and you can tell me what i need to know about turning myself in. in the meantime, i’m gonna go get a burrito.

for a split second, you think she’s going to argue with you, and you can pinpoint the exact moment when she resigns herself to having an unreasonably stubborn client.

you do that, she says.

as far as you’re concerned, she got the whole story. it ends with prison, the way it was always going to end. it starts the way it was always going to start too: you fucked up.

so you’re inside the house.

nah, mikey says. i’m the house.

he immediately goes digging in the pocket of his sweatpants to get his lighter, refusing to look at you. the shame is how you know this is real.

it hits you then: he’s the one you want to talk to. you distrusted him before because he was so transparently on the brink of falling apart, but now you can see that that’s just something you have in common. you’re the house. you’re the fucking house. and here he is, someone who knows what that feels like, and there’s nothing else between you. what are the chances?

what about you, mikey says, relighting his cigarette. do you have any younger siblings, or is it just the one?

the question comes unexpected, and you realize that he knows you have an older brother—that you’ve talked about your family, that you’ve been drawn in that much and that easily.

just the one, you manage to say.

ping, goes a little notification sound, and there it is, saved by the bell. he gets out his phone, and you point at it.

what? he says.

i got good news and bad news.

he looks back down at his phone, grimaces at the text, then puts it away. okay. what’s the good news?

you can’t help yourself. who asks for the good news first?

he shrugs, smiles, wide open and easy. i do.

for a second, you’re both smiling at each other. but then comes your next words.

good news is, i haven’t spoken to my family since 2019. when you say it like that, you can almost make it sound like something to be proud of. so. i really am the one you want to talk to.

shit, mikey says, looking at you.

it’s the first time you’ve thrown him off kilter, and you enjoy it.

you really are the one i want to talk to. he switches his cigarette from his right hand to his left so he can shake yours. i’m mikey.

his hand is callused and cold, but his grip is firm. it doesn’t feel perfunctory. it skitters electricity up your arm that you promptly ignore.

i know, you say.

his smile is harder to ignore. you never said what your name was, though.

you only vaguely remember rebuffing him the first time you both smoked outside together. it feels so far away now.

julie, you say. you only realize that you gave him your real name once it’s too late to take it back. his hand is warm, engulfing yours.

good to meet you, julie.

likewise.

he lets go first.

you wanna hit me with the bad news? he says.

you stick your hands in your coat pockets. bad news is: if you want him gone, you have to want him gone. you say you want him gone, but you’re still texting the kid. what’s he supposed to think?

so you’re saying i should block him? you can tell from mikey’s voice that he already hates the idea.

i’m saying you already know what to do.

i don’t! he’s almost laughing, like the whole thing is so desperate, it’s funny.

yes you fucking do, you say. you just haven’t ended it because you don’t actually think things are over for you. there’s a chance that you wake up a different person tomorrow, and that’s enough reason to postpone the end of the world, right?

he’s not laughing now. he’s not angry, either. the whole weight of his attention is on you, and he’s gone so perfectly motionless, you know you’ve hit bullseye. yeah. you really are the one he wants to talk to.

so, you say, the reason you want your brother to fuck off is not because you think you’re gonna sink to the bottom of the ocean and drag him down with you. it’s because you don’t want him to watch you floundering around, gasping for air, trying to survive. cause it’s fucking embarrasing.

okay, he says slowly, so you think i’m, what. being dramatic? it’s not a rhetorical question. he’s locked in, he’s really asking. you think the house isn’t on fire here?

you lift your shoulders an inch, wound tight, focused. honest, but not only honest. trying hard to say it right so he understands.

i don’t know you, you say. i don’t know the situation. all i’m saying is, if it’s only shame, then you’ll stay floundering in the in-between forever, fuckin miserable, never in and never out.

mikey is listening so intently, you think maybe he does hear you. maybe he does understand.

and, you know. don’t do that, you say. just let the kid in, if it’s shame. it’ll hurt, but it won’t kill you.

what if it’s not shame? mikey says. what if the house is on fire?

you hesitate. you love him?

he’s my brother. there’s years in his voice, decades. you can hear every second of them, and all you can do is nod.

yeah, you say. look away. take one last drag on your cigarette, then snuff it out before it can burn you. chuck it in the makeshift ashtray, and throw away your empty cigarette box too.

wordlessly, mikey passes his to you. you’re used to menthols, not whatever the fuck these are, but you take it because he offered. the taste is his, and the slow exhale.

is watching you, but before you can gather up enough courage to look back—he’s close now, which makes looking at him feel like a risk—his phone goes off and you try to tell yourself that that feeling is relief.

this fuckin guy, he mutters, then types a reply.

you smile to yourself over the rough affection in his voice. a private smile, all yours. you’ve lost track of time out here with him, and you’ve got no desire to find it again.

carmy’s not giving up, huh, you say.

what? it takes a second for his mind to catch up. oh, that’s not carmy. that was richie.

he’s so funny. you know you just say random names sometimes like i already know who they are?

richie’s my best friend, he explains.

and are you shaking him off too? you’re aware that this is a lot to ask, and you want the answer precisely because it’s a lot to ask.

to your surprise, mikey laughs.

richie? no. he holds out his hand, and you pass the cigarette back to him. richie’s not a guy you can shake off. his wife’s been trying to leave him for like a year, but he keeps hanging on. he’s that kind of guy.

you attempt to withhold the judgment from your voice when you repeat, for a year?

he shrugs. on and off, but it takes two to tango. it’ll work out.

okay, companionship only goes so far, no matter how much you like mikey. you’re not about to stand here and let a man tell you that keeping a woman in a marriage against her will is a good fucking thing.

it takes two to tango, but it only takes one to leave, you say. and i bet she has her reasons.

look, whatever she has, richie’s not a quitter, mikey says. fuck, i couldn’t shake the guy if i had a gun to his head.

you smoke in stony silence, thinking to yourself that this richie sounds like an absolute fucking nightmare. for a while, your thoughts and mikey’s veer off on such diverging paths that you’re almost about to make your excuses and go back upstairs, the feeling of camaraderie gone. and then.

hey, mikey says. there’s an odd note to his voice, nearly gentle. how did you shake your family, can i ask? what did you do?

you look over at him and hold that look for a long moment, fighting the urge to swallow.

there’s a lot you can give to mikey, and you’ll find out just how much in the coming year. but that. you’ll never give him that.

instead, you give him what you think he needs, what you’ve turned over and over in your mind during so many sleepless nights: the conclusion you finally came to, long ago.

you gotta make absolutely sure the house is on fire, you say. because if you’re not, if you leave your brother and live on, then you’ve done something unforgivable and you’re not even dead enough to escape.

there’s only one more thing you need to do before you turn yourself in, and despite the overwhelming urge to duck it—be a coward, find a way—you force yourself to walk all the way to richie’s apartment building. the exercise is supposed to wear you out, take some of the fight out of you, but it fails. now you’re just waiting for him with sore legs and recurring nausea.

you don’t have to wait long. one second, you’re grimly watching the smoke from your cigarette drifting upwards, and then there’s a flicker of motion down the street. you look, and there he is. richie’s coming towards you in long strides, his hands shoved into the pockets of his leather jacket, a man on a mission. he’s clearly spotted you.

hey, he calls, when he’s still stupidly far away. what’s going on?

it’s okay, you want to say, but the words won’t come. as much as you’ve kept hidden from richie, you don’t like lying to him much. so you just put out your cigarette in case you need to leave quickly, and you wait.

when richie finally reaches you, he’s evidently curious, but you speak first.

how was ice fishing?

not too bad, weirdly enough. he settles in and lights himself a cigarette before continuing. maybe he’s under the illusion that this is one of your normal companionable nights, just happening in a different location. turns out carmy still sleeps better in a moving car, so i actually drove the long way home and i think it did him some good.

feels like it did richie some good too. he tried to take care of somebody and for once, it worked. you’re glad. he needed it, after that hell of a christmas.

you can sense his weary contentment, and you know you’re about to ruin it.

that’s good, you say quietly, and at the same time, richie says, what?

looking up into his face, your heart sinks right along with your hopes. his blue eyes are sharp enough.

goddammit, but he’s caught on. he knows something isn’t right, and you’re not asshole enough to try and claw back an ease that’s gone for good.

i gotta go away for a while, you manage to say.

how long is a while? he says, uneasy.

you can’t do this.

hey, he says, a little softer, and you have to look away. you shouldn’t have even come. you shouldn’t have even fucking come. five minutes with him, and you’re already fighting to keep your face under control.

can we go upstairs? it’s fucking cold. you feel exposed, visible to anyone who might drive by, and you can’t shake the rising urge to hide.

yeah, richie says. yeah, we can go upstairs. it’s not that cold out compared to your countless nights spent outside together, and he knows it, but he just opens the door for you.

the elevator ride is long and painful. you can practically smell the worry coming off him in waves, festering, so you don’t make him wait. as soon as his apartment door is shut and locked behind you, you say, how long i’m away kinda depends on the prosecutor.

you, uh. he runs a hand over his mouth, thinking. fuck. what are the charges?

we’ll see. i, uh, i have this feeling there’s feds involved. tomorrow i’m going to turn myself in.

fuck, he says again, hard. he runs his hand from his forehead back over his skull, then just stands there for a second, head half bowed and hand gripping the back of his neck. you want to comfort him, but shouldn’t. you want to run, but can’t.

instead, you take this opportunity to get in one last long stare. richie is the same as ever. his hair is dark and close-cut, his beard too. his eyebrows are scant, and there’s a ridge on his forehead as if to make up for it. his nose is straight and straightforward. there are bags under his eyes, because of course there are, but his eyes themselves are as blue as summer, so blue they’re barely believable. that’s him, that’s his face.

then there’s the eternal black leather jacket, oversized and complete with unnecessary shoulder straps for all the bags he’ll never carry. he smells faintly of smoke. he’s allowing you to stare at him, an indulgence that you can’t question without being a dick. he makes you want to not be a dick. all this is here, all this is real.

richie says, what can i do?

he looks at you, and though his voice is subdued, you can tell he’s dead serious. thank god. you thought you’d have to beg for it, but here he is, offering. you really want to know?

he nods once, tight. anything.

that one hurts, because he knows just how much a person can ask of him, and he’s standing there offering it anyway.

i want you to stay out of it.

dead silence. a muscle tics in his jaw. why?

i don’t want to make things messy. i don’t want to cause trouble, and there’s—you try to eke out a laugh, downplay it. but your laugh is raw and you can tell in his eyes that you’ve only made things worse. there’s some fuckin trouble in this.

okay. he digs out his phone, swipes a couple times, and then points at the round blue logo of the jpay app. you see this? his voice is tight. i don’t know what makes you think you’re so special, but this isn’t the first time i’ve had a friend catch a charge and it probably won’t be the last. so you don’t need to look so freaked out, you’re not gonna infect me. i’m fine. i can help.

fucking richie. the one night you need him to be unreasonable, and here he is making arguments, using logic and shit. exasperated, you try to argue your way out of this.

you were dealing coke just a few months ago.

richie scoffs. so what?

fak found out about that, didn’t he? you give him a look. fak, richie. fak. fucking—

he raises both hands, palms spread in irritation, voice rising. would you stop saying fak?

irresistible. fak.

i don’t—

come on.

okay. he gestures widely, in an exaggerated motion used to indicate he’s the sole light of reason in a dark world of total bullshit. maybe i've been exaggerating a little. maybe fak’s not the worst guy in the world. i mean, he can be a lot. clingy, sure. but a snitch? nah. he told carmy, but carmy’s not a cop, so that's different. it’s fine. we’re fine.

i'm just saying. if fak knows and carmy knows, other people probably know too.

it’s not even relevant, richie says. so i moved a little weight, who cares?

look, i’m not trying to be a dick, but i don’t think the cops were were hunting that hard for you. if they start digging into me, that’s gonna change. cause i’m not a snitch either, and i know they’re gonna want me to flip, so they’ll leverage whatever against me, and… yeah, you can tell he’s not finding this convincing. a bad feeling is growing in the pit of your stomach. just get it over with.

there’s one surefire way to make him flinch, and you push that launch button, voice casual.

you helped michael get painkillers too, right? you say.

takes a second, but he finally admits, yeah. i knew a guy.

michael was not keeping it neat and tidy, you know what i mean? it takes so much effort to seem this careless. but it works. he looks a bit more like he should—guarded, almost suspicious.

what are you saying?

i’m saying i knew he was using within a month of meeting him. and. you can tell you’ve hurt him a little, but still, your arguments aren’t working, your wild swings aren’t working, he’s not listening to you, nd desperation wells up in you. is there nothing you can do? just, can you please stay out of this. you didn’t mean to say please, but it burst out of you. i don’t know what’s gonna go down, and i just want everyone clear of this. i know they’re coming for me, i know i’ll lose, and i don’t—i don’t want you anywhere near it all.

richie is silent for a moment, thinking hard.

you rub your thumb over your wristbone. can we just…

what’s your plan? he says. that’s what i wanna know. like, you’re not fighting here, and i don’t get it. what happens after you turn yourself in? you’re not gonna get a deal if you don’t talk, so what? you’re just gonna sit there and take the twenty-five to life?

twenty-five to life? you echo. richie, what the fuck do you think i did?

after one long moment of the both of you staring at each other, he hums a little james bond.

your face lifts into a wide, incredulous smile. you think i’m. he does. he absolutely does, look at him. you could kiss him. you could shake him. you start to laugh.

his face twists like he just got pinched hard. no, i—what do i know, man, i don't know that much about the law or whatever, i just—

twenty-five to life!

—don't get fucking offended, okay?

i'm not offended.

i'm just a well-read guy with a very active imagination, and maybe i got a little carried away, but—

his shoulders are up by his ears, he’s so defensive.

richie, you say firmly. i'm not mad.

what? there he is. finally listening. eyes looking directly at you, electric blue, raw current.

you hold that silence a little longer than you need to, just to feel it. then, deliberately giving each word its own due weight, you say, you thought i’d killed somebody, and you were gonna help me?

richie shrugs helplessly.

i thought you had your reasons, he says. i always think you have your reasons.

that shakes you to the core.

goodwill, you already knew you had his goodwill. but faith? jesus. you’re the last person on earth that anyone should believe in, but richie doesn’t know how wrong he is and you can’t tell him, so you just to stand there under the weight of his belief and try not to crumble. at this point, prison would be a fucking mercy.

you have to get out of here.

it'll be five years at worst, you say. your voice sounds strange even to your own ears, but you keep going. the feds will be shaking me like a fruit tree hoping some juicy information tumbles down, but everything i did was pretty boring. you think of the factory, the bodies laid out like so many logs. nonviolent, anyway.

doesn’t seem very james bond to me, he says you fuckin drama queen.

bottom line, you say, the thing is enough of a mess already, so just let me do my time and we can hang out after. i don't want you anywhere near this. you start heading for the door. i gotta go anyways, i have—

you serious? he cuts in, suppressed and flat. warning bells are going off in your head, but you walk on.

dead fucking serious, you say, unlocking the front door. i don’t even want anyone to know that we’ve met.

dead silence, and then, richie says, well maybe you don’t get a fucking choice.

you turn and meet his eyes. there it is again, that stomach-churning nausea that you thought you’d managed to quell. the plummeting feeling of having no control. it stops you in your tracks.

what? you say.

i mean, i’m not going anywhere, so fucking deal with it? the life has come back to his voice, and with it, all the anger. his blue eyes are sparking with it, he’s gesturing, he’s gathering momentum, and you try to stop him but you already know it’s useless.

richie—

look, i don't run when things get bad, i’m not that guy. i’m here. he smacks one hand into another. like i’m in it. that's the whole fucking point.

the point of what?

you know what i’m trying to say.

the point of what, richie?

his face twists. oh, don't do that. don't do that thing where you act like you know everything that goes on in my head.

but i fucking do, though.

yeah, well i fucking hate it.

if you hate it so much then why did you give it to me then?

his voice goes higher. i'm not just gonna drop you!

i am literally begging you to drop me. somehow, you’ve crossed the room, you’re up in his face and he’s not backing down and the words are flying so thick and fast as you talk over each other that you can barely make out yours, much less his. i want you to drop me, i specifically—i did so much shit so that you could drop me, i was so fucking careful—

i never asked you to!

i got rid of my phones and i stuck to my rules and—

i never fucking asked you to!

if you get involved, it's gonna be fucking awful and it won't help, it won't even help, if that's what you think—

i can help! i'm not, fucking useless, like. you guys always—

that one, you hear. you guys?

why don't you ever fucking talk to me? he says, like the words are getting torn out of him.

who the fuck do you think you’re talking to right now? for a second, you just look at each other. breathing hard. when you finally speak, your voice is quieter. richie, you are the only person i ever fucking talk to. but it doesn’t matter. there’s nothing anyone can do.

i don't believe you.

you don’t know how to get around that. after a beat, you say, okay, what is it, richie. cruel. what is it you're gonna do that's gonna help. you asked me to explain my plan, now it’s your turn. you tell me how you’re gonna help me with this.

fucking…he looks up for a second, and then back at you. i know what you’re doing.

you don’t even know what the fuck you’re doing at this point, but the way he’s looking at you is frightening. you could almost believe that he knows. and honestly, you don’t want to find out.

what am i doing, you say.

he turns and walks away, towards the bed. after a second’s hesitation, you follow. he sits down on the bed so he can crank open the window, light up, and smoke out of it. you stay standing. you really don’t know why you haven’t left yet. you were supposed to ages ago.

sit down, he says.

fuck you.

fucking sit down.

no.

jesus. he exhales, slow. you can see him settling a little. do you know why carmy was opening the tomato cans?

what is this, storytime?

patiently, he repeats, do you know why carmy was opening the tomato cans.

to make spaghetti.

he points at you. exactly. but the reason he was making spaghetti is cause he’d just gotten mikey’s note. deep breath. this isn’t a story he’s happy to tell you. see, mikey had left him this note on the back of a the spaghetti recipe, but i—i didn’t give it to carmy until there was this day. syd and marcus were gone. shit had gotten bad.

i remember, you murmur.

i was in the front, and i heard people yelling fire, so i came running into the kitchen and carmy was watching it all burn. just standing there. not moving. his eyes were open, but it was like he was asleep.

and that’s why you gave him the note?

yeah. i know i should’ve done it before. but.

he looks up at you, and you can see him appealing to you for some kind of mercy. maybe comfort. this is the thing he’s ashamed of. you understand that, you understand him, you understand shame better than anyone else, and there’s a sick comfort in it, knowing he’s that much more like you. at least he was able to change course in the end. you never did.

you don’t tell him that, though, because you’ve realized something else.

this is the thing he’s ashamed of, which makes it usable.

so i’m carmy, in your off-base and condescending metaphor, you say, callous. you're gonna come and save me? you're gonna put the fire out.

his eyes darken. no, you're not carmy.

no?

you're mikey.

fuck you.

so fucking selfish, he says bitterly. it’s as close to hate as you’ve ever heard from him. but you’ve gone so far, you’re not stopping now.

richie, what the fuck do you want from me?

you know what i want! his voice goes quiet when he adds, did really you think there’s anything that could keep me away from you for five fucking years?

you know what he means.

can’t put words to it, can’t accept it, can’t fucking bear it—won’t—but you do know, you know exactly what he’s trying to say to you, what he’s trying to give.

you don’t deserve it, but it’s not for you anyways, it's for michael. it's all for michael, and it would be beautiful if it wasn't such a fucking waste to love a man when he's dead. richie’s gonna throw everything he has onto the fire in the hope that it will quench the flames. that just makes it his pyre, but he’ll never see it.

okay, you say. my turn at storytime.

you sit down next to him on the bed, accept his cigarette. take a drag, then lean on the wide wooden sill as you breathe smoke out into the cold. lull him into it. relax his guard.

you thought you inherited me, right? you say. conversational. no heat. you were gonna take care of me for him, that was the plan. i’m mikey.

that’s not what i meant.

you have it backwards, is the thing. you can feel yourself sinking into it, talking like you have time, matter of fact, cruelty showing at the edges. like you’re an entirely different person, which is, of course, your goal. michael didn’t give a shit about me. i was just there. i was just a woman who happened to be conveniently close by, and lonely, and he fucked me. and that was fine, that was convenient for me too, but he got worse and it got out of hand. he got hard to be around. i found out he’d started stealing from me, so i broke up with him. he found a way to get back into my apartment anyways, and he guessed the code to my safe and stole pretty much everything. so i told him tina shouldn’t call me for help next time he overdosed. i told him he could finally die, for all i cared. and he did.

you’re looking at the sheets. you’re still able to talk, somehow. you feel numb, detached, like you’re watching yourself say it.

the only reason you know me is because i felt guilty. i was gonna take care of you for him, that was the plan, but now this is getting out of hand and i’m fucking done with it. so here goes. it wasn’t just money he stole out of my safe. go take a look in the police report. i’d bet my life that there was a sig p365 in his hand when they found him. that was mine. i’m the reason he’s dead. you want to be loyal to someone? be loyal to him.

you crush the cigarette against the fake wood of the headboard. ash falls on his pillow.

playtime’s over. stay the fuck away from me.

this time when you leave, he doesn’t stop you.

on the train, hollowed out and swaying, you are approached by an elderly woman. her eyes are rheumy, concerned.

are you okay? she says.

hm?

you’re shaking.

you look down at your hands in your lap. she’s right.

there’s nothing else to say.

[ next chapter pending ] [ masterlist ]

a huge thank you to all readers.

taglist: @garbinge, @narcolini, @drabbles-mc, @beingalive1, @eternallyvenus, @cerial-junkie, @jackierose902109, @shinebright2000, @scorpiolystoned, @fancyvoidtragedy, @justficsandstuff, @fromirkwood — if anyone else wants to be tagged, let me know.

49 notes · View notes

narcolini · 6 months

Text

now THIS . this is my MCU. THIS is my multiverse of madness. i am fucking chewing through the brickwork right now. i knew knew knew you were on one with this cross over and yOU WERRRRRR this is fresh cooked up insane brain rot i am GAGGGGEDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!

| The occupational hazards of living |

⁂

Narcos: Mexico/True Detective Crossover

Pairing: David Barrón & Rustin "Crash" Cohle & OC! Ziggy Morenas & OC! Ernesto "Chato" Quintana Colmenaro

For @narcosfandomdiscordNarcOctober - Day 22 - Day of Cross Pollination

Prompt: Create a fanwork that includes at least one Narcos character and at least one character from another fandom & fanwork with the plot or setting stolen from another fandom

Word count: ≈ 4.5K

TWs: Canon-consistent violence, Light Prison Racisms, swearing, racial slurs, drug use, references to trauma/domestic abuse, white supremacy ..? that’s a trigger, right?

The two most important things anyone can do is give life and take it. But with how often both happened, it seemed people didn’t consider the gravity of either near enough. Killing wasn’t a trifling thing. Barrón has had it up to here with these Neo-Nazis and Rustin Cohle is there to support his teaching them a lesson. Also a couple of notes: La Eme = the letter M but stands for Mexican Mafia carnal = (pronounced carnál) made man of La Eme, putting in work = Doing Crimes, particularly violent ones in service to La Eme, vica = vice president, usually of a prison cellblock llevero = keyholder/shotcaller, Eme carnal who oversees a specific geographic region outside prison or an entire prison camarada = non-made Eme members, affiliates crimie = (pronounced crim-ee) short for criminal contra = short for contraband la raza = literally the race, but more the community/the people (similar to gente but more exclusive)

… but first! Let’s meet the cast:

Ziggy

Chato

Ginger

⁂

The most startling thing about prison wasn’t the violence. If witnessing his first drive-by shooting when he was six didn’t acclimate Barrón quickly, his old man’s habit of bouncing him and Matteo off the walls certainly did. So, while the tactics and flavors were new, the violence wasn’t. He likened it to living in a war zone. If you panicked about every shell that blew a road to bits, you’d drop dead of a coronary in no time.

No, the most shocking thing about prison was the tribalism. As a plebito in Logan Heights, he had friends belonging to almost every ethnic group the melting pot of San Diego had to offer. The project neighborhoods were chock full of families of different races, countries, ethnicities: Samoan, Filipino, Black, Japanese, Mexican, Guatemalan, El Salvadorian, and the like. It didn’t matter where the neighbor kid’s family was from, when all they wanted to do was play like Bruce Lee from Way of the Dragon in the scrapyard across the street.

So, when he arrived at his first Youth Authority facility, Rancho Del Campo, just outside the dirt town of Tecate, and was told by some of the older Sureños about the “rules” against consorting with Black or White prisoners, he thought it was a joke.

“Wait, you fucking with me?”

“Nah, lil homie. Deader than dead serious,” Eddie Monstruo aka Eddie the monster, Eme vica for his block, set him straight.

“Even if I knew ‘em on the outside? I can’t just eat a meal with ‘em?”

Eddie shook his head in lamentation.

“Trade contra? Say hi? Nothing?”

“Nothing. Con la raza baila el perro, sin la raza bailas como un perro. And they won’t tell you twice, te lo juro, guey.”

He remembered thinking, Are you kidding? This is America. So indignant. What he wouldn’t give to be that green again. But what really bothered him was how the rules weren’t the same for everyone. Like how the Sureños were more simpatico with White prisoners because La Eme was aligned with the AB. Aryan Brotherhood.

He rarely saw White kids on the outside save for when he sold them dope down by the boardwalk. He sure as fuck didn’t have any whiteboy homies. Shoot, on the outside, whitey was The Man. So, it was a blow when he found out the camaradas were aligned with the AB. The way it was explained to him, the Sureños did it out of “necessity” because of the longstanding alliance between the Norteños and Black Guerrilla Family. Norteños, or Nuestra Familia, were Eme’s sworn enemy. Sometime in the 70s, the top carnals saw the need to boost their profile and numbers with a similar alliance, so they took up with the AB.

Barrón never said shit, but the AB didn’t sit right with him. For guys who were supposedly the “cream of the crop,” the “superior” race, they were really a bunch of lazy, disorganized hicks. They talked a lot of shit about the white race being the “one true people,” “purest of the pure,” acted like they shit gold. But then they had to be off-this-planet high on whatever the crank of the month was, just to put in work. That, or they shot up places indiscriminately. No creep to ‘em. Worse yet, no concern for bystanders.

Barrón knew everyone in the game skated a line of amorality, but he drew a few more lines for himself. One from the beginning: at all possible costs, no bystanders. The other line came with time. After he’d been around the block some, he stopped getting blasted on dope and booze before a hit. He didn’t begrudge some of the guys that did and he had his fair share of early jobs where those gears needed greasing. But after a while, being spun on top of spun felt disrespectful. To the job. To his victims.

The two most important things anyone can do is give life and take it. But with how often both happened, it seemed people didn’t consider the gravity of either near enough. Killing wasn’t a trifling thing. So, what did it say about him if he tried to escape, check out by getting high? What did it say if he couldn’t, with his full faculties and finger on the trigger, look the person in the eye and feel the depth of what he was about to do?

There was no off the hook. Actions have consequences. Guilt and remorse? They were occupational hazards of living if your brain was wired like it was supposed to be. He knew there was a worthy place for him in hell. The least he could do was be an adult about it. It’s not that he fancied murder an honorable business. He just hated cowards and hypocrites. That’s why he hated the AB.

That and they just plain sucked. Best way to ruin a party? Be sure to invite the neo-nazis.

The last time he agreed to work with an AB affiliated outfit was a few years after he got out of San Quentin. The Logan Heights llevero, his old homie Mando, called on Barrón to help some biker gang take back one of their stash houses. Apparently, some AB higher-up named Geronimo Jerry was collecting on a favor Mando owed from back when they did time in Folsom. To pay up, Mando put together a team to back Jerry’s guys up, but a couple of his original soldiers got dropped by the cops and another got arrested, and he needed replacements for the six man operation. The minute Barrón heard whiteboys were involved, he tried to get out of it. But Mando was a full-blown Eme carnal by then, a made-man of the Mexican mafia.

Barrón had seen The Godfather countless times as a kid, one of his dad’s favorites. One of the few good things he could remember about the man at all. At five years old, he thought it entirely innocent when Vito said in that whisper of a voice, “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” Like Vito was offering Woltz a deal so sweet, he couldn’t pass it up. It wasn’t till later on, when Mando asked him to do this job that Barrón got what Vito Corleone really meant. When a carnal said “jump,” he had no choice. He was locked in.

Thankfully, the two others Mando put on it were Barrio LH guys Barrón already knew. He and Chato had been buds since back in YA and had already done plenty of rip-n-runs together. He’d never worked a job like this with Ziggy Morenas but Ziggy was a known quantity around Shelltown as a reliable soldado. He was also Matteo’s best friend since grade school, so naturally, when they were old enough to start puttin’ in work, they did it together. Matteo only ran with the best and taught Barrón to do just the same.

But it was tricky with Ziggy. Barrón got along with him fine but they’d never been close per se. Unofficial Big Bro Ziggy might’ve been more accurate. Still, when Matty died, they fell out for a bit. They’d only reconnected recently because Ziggy started going out with one of Cheli’s friends, Leó. Even then, the void of Matty was always there. A void they shared but could never relate to each other through. Plus, competent a soldado as he was, the thing about Ziggy? He could be a little serious even for Barrón’s liking, which was saying something. Frankly, Ziggy could be a downright prickly motherfucker. All that noise aside though, he’d take serious over reckless any day. There was no mistaking Chato and Ziggy were solid guys.

The AB crew, on the other hand. Well truly, he’d never seen a more unprofessional group of crimies, save one of their affiliates Barrón had met a few times before, a bony-faced, severe-looking guy named Rust who went by Crash. He had the rangy, haunted look of a starved alley cat and commanded an Ivy League vocabulary that, through a watered-down Texas drawl, betrayed just how whip-smart he was. He also seemed to be the only one who could hold his liquor and his crystal, a fact alone that should’ve meant he was the one calling the shots. Unfortunately for them, the actual “leader” of this mess was a brawny, bald guy with too-wide, glassy blue eyes and a long, braided, red beard, who they fittingly called Ginger.

The “safe house” they met at was a piece of shit, rundown bungalow owned by Jerry. Outside, it looked like an elementary school portable. Inside, it was a hoarder’s paradise. When Barrón, Chato, and Ziggy arrived, there were group of about nine or ten guys huddled around Ginger at a foldable picnic table in the kitchen area. Crash was the only one off to the side, smoking by himself in the corner.

As the three of them passed through the living room to join the AB guys, Barrón was overwhelmed by the stench of cat piss, lighter fluid, and an amalgam smoke mixture of PCP and cigarettes. The shag carpet was crawling with roaches and littered with cigarette butts, stag mags, and Skymall catalogs. And fuck finding a place to sit. Barrón had to slide clothes and stacks of papers off the arm of a dank couch that jutted into the dining area just to lean against it. Chato and Ziggy opted to share the edge of the coffee table facing the kitchen.

They all watched as Ginger laid out the half-assed plan they cooked up. Barrón caught Crash out of the corner of his eye, whose gaunt face seemed caught between an apology and a defeated look of warning, like he was telegraphing the breath and time he’d already wasted trying to reason with these idiots and that he shouldn’t be bothered.

When it became clear these morons hadn’t done any legwork beforehand, Barrón asked if they had an alternate route to get out of the complex they were hitting in case they got boxed in. “Only one way in and out? In only one car?”**

Eyes buzzing with a kind of feral, wildcard edge that didn’t instill the slightest confidence, Ginger nodded slowly, licking excess coke off the edge of a credit card.

Ziggy too, looked unamused, the tell-tale whites of the skin spreading over his knuckles, visible as his hands balled into fists. Chato noticed too because he and Barrón exchanged uneasy glances.

Dropping some well-timed Spanish, intended only to be understood by the three of them, “Es lo que ya les pregunté. Todo se fija a ser un espectáculo de mierda,” Crash floored the whole room before calmly taking a drag from his cigarette like an asthmatic on his inhaler.

A big guy named Mitch leaned over close enough to graze Barrón with his beard, and freebase-exhaled this poetry, “We hit trouble? Just gotta fuck it in the ass. Scoop out the soft brains and eat right out the skull.”**

One of the strangest attempts at reassurance Barrón had ever heard. Like he agreed, Crash scoffed at Mitch and rolled his eyes. Homie knew shit was about to go down. Probably because Ziggy looked like he was about to pop his lid. Barrón choked back a chuckle of surprise that Ziggy didn’t slug the fat fuck in the face, right then and there. It wouldn’t have been out of character. Or unwarranted.

Because this was typical AB. These guys never bothered to come up with a plan. They never needed one. Life cut them all the breaks and of course it did. They’d designed it that way.

But as fate would have it, Barrón was actually one to break. He’d reached his limit and put one of their guys down with a bullet in both kneecaps. It was after he questioned their exit strategy.

Some skinny dude, a guy called Whizbang, who’d been spun for probably 48 straight hours, accused him of asking too many questions. Undeniable proof he was an undercover cop. Funny thing was, this moron wasn’t even gonna be part of the actual boost.

“This spic doesn’t say shit the whole time. Now he’s askin’ about tactics? Shifty-eyed motherfucker hasn’t touched shit since we got here.” Whizbang pointed to the curated assortment of drug paraphernalia next to the assault weapons on the table. “What’s wrong? You some kinda beaner cop, ese?” He pronounced it ‘ess-ay.’

Barrón met him with a wall of inscrutable nothing.

The little creep walked over slowly. “You laughin’ at me motherfucker?” Funny, ‘cause he wasn’t even close to smiling.

Relaxed as ever, he drowned the room in a silence that put everyone’s hackles up. Especially Ginger, whose eyes couldn’t get any wider, the whites of his eyes near engulfing his eye-sockets, swallowing his irises along with those pinprick-sized pupils. The look of bored resignation Crash wore every other time Barrón crossed paths with him was now replaced with a smirk of satisfaction; someone who walked through life craving the unexpected and getting more than he’d bargained for.

“Got nothin to say, huh? C’mon Sancho, prove you’re not a cop.”

As he drew closer, he tried his level best to look menacing or as menacing as anyone named Whizbang might hope to be. Patience wearing thin, Barrón’s wall broke and he rolled his eyes and looked off to the side, muttering against gritted teeth and his better judgement, “Can’t believe we have to deal with this shit.”

Whizbang didn’t seem to notice. “Let’s go Sancho, talk or take a bump. Show us you’re not a cop.”

Almost close enough to be nose-to-nose now, he took out a dimebag of what looked like PCP from the pocket of his kutte and waved it in front of Barrón’s face. No one but Ziggy and Chato caught his hand nearing a spot at the base of his back.

Eyes blazing like molten tar, nostrils flared, it was a preamble, simple and quick. “You talk too much.”

Then before anyone could blink, two loud pops and poor, skinny-ole Whizbang crumpled to the floor, howling and clutching his knees as blood spurted out all over his hands and seeped through his jeans onto the carpet. Barrón fixed his nine millimeter on Whizbang’s face, trying to decide if he was going to let the skidmark live. But, spotting a wooden crate on the floor next to the table, he aimed there instead.

A moment of stunned silence passed, until everyone realized what he was aiming at and then all the AB guys scrambled for the weapons on the table. Everyone except Crash who was laughing at the ground now, unperturbed and cracked-in-the-head in a way that indicated the guy had seen some shit in his life. What it was, Barrón could only guess.

Crash cut through the chaos with a whistle and a, “tsk tsk, I’d think on that, boys.”

They all froze and looked at him, then at Barrón, then to the barrel of his gun, then to the wooden crate that was filled with over a dozen live grenades, then back at Barrón. Just to hammer the point home, Barrón shot right, then left, on each side of the crate.

The AB guys looked green. Chato and Ziggy looked torn between panic and hysterical laughter, though he swore he detected a hint of approval on Ziggy’s face. Crash looked on the verge of straight-up applause. Based on the sheer glee this little turn of events brought him, he couldn’t have been with the AB. That must be why he wasn’t in charge.

Looking Ginger square in the eye, Barrón explained, voice quiet and even, “We do this my way or I can nuke us all, right now.” He waited a beat but stunned-stupid Ginger still said nothing. “So Chief, what’ll it be?”

Crash ventured, smirking with an I-told-you-so superiority only somewhat softened by the drawl, “Far be it from me to speak out of turn, here, Ginger. But based on the last few months I just spent in Ojinaga and Juarez, uh– I’d say– well, yeah, just– you’d be wise to take these motherfuckers serious, right brother.” He tacked on brother like an afterthought, maybe to soften the blow or maybe just to sound like a condescending prick. Somehow it worked on both fronts.

Ginger stared at the ground and clenched his jaw so hard it looked like it might dislocate. Then spat out, “Fine. Fuckit,” rolling his head around, glaring through half-lidded eyes, “what does Big Beaner over here propose?”

And just like that, Barrón was in charge.

So, of course then, the heist went off without a hitch.

∴

After the job was done, the loot counted and distributed among all interested parties back at the safe house, everyone exchanged tense, albeit still-amicable goodbyes; good will engendered, no doubt, by fact that the whole thing went off seamlessly. Still, Crash was the only whiteboy to shake their hands.

“Nifty little stunt you pulled there. I’d call you a crazy motherfucker, if you hadn’t saved me the headache of getting my ass greased,” he turned around to look over at Ginger’s crew, back to snorting PCP off the foldout table with plastic straws, “and buried six-feet-under with these fuckin’ imbeciles.”

Barrón smiled and nodded diffidently.

Chato spoke up for the first time since they’d gotten back. “Hey, we’re ’boutta grab some grub before we head back to give the lowdown to the big homie—” Crash nodded at Chato like he knew exactly who Mando was. And maybe he did, since he didn’t seem to be rolling with the AB. Just another soldier filling out the ranks like them. “—wanna roll out with us?”

“Sheeit.” Eyes alight with a crystal-meth vigilance that would’ve been off-putting if he weren’t so devil-may-care all the time, Crash surveyed the room, and shrugged. “Beats climbing the walls here with these assholes. Yeah, lemme take you up on that, buy you friendlies a round somewhere.”

Barrón smiled at Chato, little social butterfly. He, himself, would never have thought to invite the guy, but he was glad Chato did. Following Chato’s lead, he asked Crash, “Yo, you need a ride?”

“Nah, I’ll follow on my bike. Y’all know what’s good.”

The three of them looked at each other blankly until Ziggy offered, “Stoney’s?”

“Any place with booze’ll do just fine.”

“Oh, but we gotta make a pit stop at Micky D’s.”

They all looked at Chato like he’d been an extraterrestrial this whole time, and they’d only noticed just now.

“What?” He asked earnestly. “I want a McFlurry.”

They all just kept staring at him.

“Well, they don’t have McFlurries at Stoney’s, obviously.” Like they were the dumbest people on the planet.

Amused, Crash chuckled, shaking his head. “Can’t say I’m in a position to judge, but he’s an odd duck, ain’t he.”

“Aight.” Ziggy cracked a rare smile, the kind really only Chato or Matty could get him to do. “Let’s get the kid a McFlurry. Then Stoney’s.”

The three of them piled into Barrón’s Monte Carlo and rolled out. Crash chugged behind on his Harley.

The crowd at Stoney’s was just starting to pick up, so they opted for the open seats at the bar on the patio.

“First round’s on me.” Crash flagged down the bartender. “What’s everyone’s poison.”

Barrón put his hand on his chest, “Corona,” then pointed to Ziggy. “Y tú, qué?”

Ziggy looked up from the spot on the bartop he had been mean-mugging since they sat down, “Oh, uh—” then glanced at Chato next to him, who was gazing, lost in love, into his McFlurry cup, spooning bite after bite into his mouth, and just ordered for him. “Well, for the lady, a tequila sunrise and me? I don’t— eh, fuck it. Shot of tequila. Nothing fancy.”

Narrowing his eyes, Crash regarded them like he’d been conducting a study that yielded some unexpected results, then passed the order on to the bartender.

When they had their drinks, Crash finally asked what was probably on everyone’s mind. “So, contestame eso,” he slid into Spanish, unclumsily but not entirely without effort. “Ya tango que saberlo. Back there. That just a performance? Or would you’ve done it?”

Somewhat blindsided, less by the question than by who was asking it, Barrón struggled to hide his surprise while he tongued the inside of his cheek, searching for an answer. He got the impression for some reason that Crash could take the truth. There was a hard-lived, stretched-thin quality to him, evidence of a man, unmoored, maybe a bit unhinged, operating at the edge of life itself. But he didn’t want to spook Chato.

And the truth was well, he didn’t actually know. Not then and not now. He didn’t need to because of what he did know: things never would’ve gotten that far. It was a play and the play would’ve worked, even without Crash’s helpful advice to Ginger. Because those AB guys? They were always chickenshit.

Okay, so there. That was an answer. Why didn’t he just say that?

Maybe because of what he wasn’t certain of. That if he’d misjudged the situation, if it hadn’t worked, would he have tried their luck and pulled the trigger anyway? Nah, but he knew that too. Yeah, he would’ve. He meant it. Or at least a part of him. Had to be serious for them to take it serious.

But he settled on equivocation. “What d’you think?”

Ball back in Crash’s court, and the way his jaw cocked to the side, it was clear he wasn’t much for accepting non-answers for answers. “What do I think? Well, what’s the use in asking if I already know?”

Fair enough.

An impatient Ziggy piped up, turning to Barrón. “Quién se cree que es, este pinshe gringuillo?” But before Crash could answer, Ziggy swiveled back around and laid it out for him. “If he hadn’t meant it, we would’ve gone along with their cracked, cracker-ass plan. And if we went along with their plan, we’d either be in jail or riddled with bullets right now, probably buried in the middle of some dirt lot along with those crusty hicks. Okay?”

Huh. Ziggy, having his back like that, defending him. That was … nice, new. Unphased though, Crash put his hands up in armistice. “I ain’t complainin’ insofar as I’m curious as to the level of commitment to the bit.”

“Alright,” Barrón said in a sigh. “Yeah, I meant it. Had to, didn’t I?”

Finally, that seemed enough truth to humor Crash, as he nodded, mouth cocked up in a smug half-smirk, and took a swig of his bourbon. Barrón saw it then. Este güey knew it all along but wouldn’t be satisfied unless it was said out loud. Ziggy scowled and rolled his eyes, maybe still irritated that Crash had asked in the first place. But probably more resentful that he’d folded so quick, telling this outsider the truth.

Poor Chato seemed to be the only one taken by surprise, as he froze mid-bite, eyes wide, plastic spoon hanging out of his mouth. And all of a sudden Barrón and Ziggy busted up laughing. With less investment but still in on the joke, Crash couldn’t stop himself chuckling too. As they all sat there, in varying levels of stitches, Chato just looked at them all, confused. Until he realized the joke was how ridiculous he looked, and then he cracked up right along with them.

When they settled down, Barrón wiped tears from his eyes while Chato contentedly sipped on his tequila sunrise, and Ziggy flagged the bartender again for another shot.

The bartender brought his shot and Ziggy knocked it back before asking Barrón, “Yo,” voice thick as he swallowed hard, “should we work on getting our story straight? Like, what do we tell Mando?”

Chato glanced nervously at Ziggy, agreeing, “Yeah, like are we gonna tell how you kneecapped that skinny guy–“

“Whizbang,” Crash cut in to remind them his name, as if it mattered.

“–and threatened to blow the whole crew away?”

Staring ahead at all the bottles lined up on shelves, lit technicolor by the bar lights, Barrón said cooly, “Is that what happened?”

Brows furrowed, Chato looked from Barrón, to Ziggy, to Crash, then back to Barrón. “Yo, is this a trick question or—?”

“No fool,” Ziggy shot him a disgruntled look. “It’s not a trick question. And yea, fool, that’s what happened.”

“So, that’s what we tell him.”

Chato couldn’t compute, looking at Barrón like he’d sprouted a second smaller, uglier head. With an air of amused cynicism, Crash watched the three of them bickering, citizens in the town square like they were on Court TV.

“Woahwoahwoah,” Chato practically gurgled with a mouth full of McFlurry, “you forreal right now?”

“Look, Jerry and Mando go way back. He’s gonna hear about it. Best he hears direct. Besides, you can’t lie to a carnal when you go off the reservation like that.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Barrón saw Ziggy’s head gravely bobbing up and down in agreement.

Chato was still in disbelief. “Dude, he’s gonna cap you right there on the spot.”

“Actions have consequences,” Barrón explained simply, keeping his eyes fixed ahead. “I’ll see that it doesn’t blow back on you. S’on me.”

Ziggy seemed comfortable in resignation at the prospect of Mando losing his shit on Barrón. Chato was still unconvinced. Pobre was genuinely concerned for him.

Assessing Chato with something like doomed admiration, Crash pointed out, “Milkshakes aside, kid’s got the kinda heart they don’t teach in school.” Then looking around at all of them like the thought just dawned on him, he asked, “How old are you guys, anyway?”

Index finger pointing at his chest, Ziggy said flatly, “Twenty one, last month,” then pointed to Chato, “nineteen,” then to Barrón who finished for him, “eighteen.”

Crash whistled, “Sheeit. And I thought I didn’t have childhood.”

Chato still looked ill at ease. In an effort to cheer him up, Barrón quipped, “No hay tos, compa. I’m living on borrowed time anyway. Shoot, I was ready to die— what,” he smirked and glanced at the clock hanging above the doorway that led from Stoney’s patio back inside, “three hours ago?”

Chato gave him the side-eye but must’ve worked a little bit because his shoulders weren’t crunched up by his ears as much.

After a few minutes of silence, something occurred to Barrón. “Hey, why’d you ask?”

Crash downed the remainder of his bourbon in one big gulp and came back up smiling like he was waiting for that exact question to be asked. He set the empty glass upside down on the bar, and pulled out a cigarette, tapping the tip of it on the bottom of the glass, before putting it to his lips and lighting up.

Through another one of those deep, asthmatic drags, voice thick, he said, “Well, I was jus’ thinking, the kinda nuts it takes, going off book like that? But the three of you still kept your cool. Level headed nutjobs are hard to find. So, might be I got another job for you boys. If you’re interested. And Mando’ll lend you.”

Well that stumped them, as they stood there, puzzled looks on all their faces because actually who the fuck was this guy? And did he know Mando? Or he was just a that good a listener?

Crash gave them a wily look through the two thick columns of smoke that poured from his nostrils. “Y’all ever heard of a guy by the name of Amado Carrillo Fuentes?”

They came back at him with nothing but crickets.

“You might know him as El Senior de los Cielos.”

That’s when Barrón knew he’d sized this guy up correct. Crash, Rust, whoever this guy was, dropping a big name like that, guaranteed he’d seen and done some shit in his life.

And now, evidently, he was looking for business partners. Or maybe a couple of suckers. Which one would depend on whatever came out of his mouth next.

═

** indicates lines robbed directly from True Detective (Because you know I wish I came up with that soft brains line but alas, I am no Nic Pizzolato)

taglist: @narcolini @narcosfandomdiscord

10 notes · View notes