...I like writing the odd/challenging pairings. This one actually got pretty sad, despite the cracktastic prompt of Butzbag (how did I write angst for a ship named Butzbag?).
Some people are meant from the start to be heroes. There's a certain quality to them, a strength or goodness or maybe just heart. They've always been meant for more. Then there are those who take a supporting role. They are less visibly impressive, maybe, but in many ways just as important as the lead characters themselves. The story could not carry on without them.
Larry isn't either.
Once, when Nick was still a theatre major and still his best friend, he drunkenly explained to Larry that his whole personality was a perfect example of comic relief. He'd been grinning, giggling sometimes into his beer and he'd looked so fond, explained it so well, that Larry found himself agreeing completely, even with a certain amount of pride.
It's been a long time since then; Larry's had plenty of chances to see the downside.
The problem isn't so much that the title isn't fitting - because it is, still, always probably. He's still just as stupid and silly and prone to shouting, to getting caught up in wild ideas and falling in love at first sight. Larry's not a good enough person to be a hero, or even the hero's support. He's too selfish, too reckless, too shallow and unreliable. No one can really count on him. He means well, when he stops to think about meaning anything, so he's not a bad guy exactly, just... the comic relief. The funny, insignificant interlude in the middle of something much more important.
The problem with living a joke is the pauses between the punchlines. Nick is a hero, he always has been - Edgey too, they were both bigger-than-life even back at nine years old. Larry's less than they are: he's an exaggeration of a person, all not-enough and too-much. He's loud and dumb and emotional and impulsive and foolish and selfish, completely selfish. He doesn't like to dwell. He doesn't want to think about what he isn't, what he won't ever be, what he doesn't have anymore.
(His parents weren't ever mean, they just didn't care. Cindy loved him, died loving him. Nick slowly, slowly stepped away.)
Larry much prefers to live at bullet-pace: rushing headlong into every experience, flinging himself forward, leaping to conclusions, hopping between simple jobs, snapping in and out of love, everything instinctive and thoughtless and not mattering much at all. It's a shallow, silly sort of life and it's what suits him best.
It's how he met Wendy.
She's the same as he is, it's been obvious since they first met in the back rooms of KB Security. Not the stupid things, although those too - she's just as loudmouthed, just as ridiculous, just as much of a flirt even, just as exactly selfish. The deeper similarity is most obvious in their effect on other people, in the bit parts they play for other stories, the incredulity, exasperation, disbelieving amusement they provoke. Neither of them intends to be a joke. It just comes naturally, and everyone else seems to just as naturally understand what they are.
Everyone except Wendy, who even after so many years of living this way still doesn't get it. She's old and resentful and whenever he slows down enough to actually listen to what she's saying Larry gets that familiar twist in his gut.
(She's a widow. She's got a son who doesn't speak to her. She's never once mentioned having a friend.)
He doesn't like thinking about this stuff, it's not like he's good enough at thinking to change any of it anyway. He doesn't like the way it makes him feel, sticky and slow and low. Larry is so often melodramatically heartbroken but looking too long at Wendy makes him feel sad, and that's so much worse.
But if he leaves her alone too long, that's just as bad. It happens after they leave KB. He starts to wonder how she's doing, if she's found a new job yet, if anyone there is able to listen to her rant for hours like he can, if they'll shout right back about something completely unrelated and if the combination of inane stories will drown out the low thoughts. He wonders if she talks even when she's alone. He pictures her sitting at an empty table in an awful little apartment, eating alone in silence while looking at pictures of her husband and son and he hates it. He has to call her, has to keep calling, to start meeting up even though they'd never been friends before, just because he can't stand to leave her alone.
It isn't pity. Larry just doesn't like the way losing her had made him feel - he's still as selfish as ever. Besides, she always picks up the phone. She always yells at him and complains about how rude he is for calling at dinnertime, but she always, always answers. No one else in Larry's life does that.
There aren't many other people in Larry's life anymore.
Girls still come and go, though he actually dates far fewer of them these days. He's getting older and his antics aren't so charming anymore. But trying to change hasn't worked out well for him, it was pointless in the end and in the courtroom Edgey had been vicious, on the mountain Nick had looked at him like a stranger. Larry sobs with a child over being a loser, tries not to think about Iris, about Elise, about Cindy or Nick or anyone else, especially himself.
Coming down off that mountain, he spends his first night with Wendy. It isn't good - he cries for real, the deep low sort, he feels that kind of awful he's spent his whole life running from and she doesn't make it go away. She makes it worse, and somehow sweeter; she recognizes everything he feels, one bad joke to another. She holds him close and kisses him first and in the morning Larry feels sick for reasons that have nothing to do with having sex with an ugly old granny.
They fight, but only about shallow, stupid things, and he storms out of her apartment swearing never to see her again. An hour later, Larry makes eye contact with a beautiful garbage truck driver, and the world is bright again. Kimberlee is so pretty, so strong and funny and she's his soulmate, he's sure of it, he can't imagine any other truth, so forgiving Wendy isn't even hard. How could she have known?
Kimberlee is already engaged to a mailman but by the time Larry finds that out he's already had a three-hour conversation with Wendy all about his one true love on his end, and entirely full of gross talk about Edgey on hers. Neither one of them really listen to the other one talking, anyway. The noise is enough.
Wendy makes him lunch two days later, and it's delicious as always, and they don't talk about what happened, don't think about it, fling it behind them like everything else too heavy to carry. They are weak; the paths they've walked are littered with stones.
And maybe it is that Wendy had understood all along and Larry has been the one confused, or maybe it is just a part of getting older, or maybe it has something to do with Larry hovering by the phone one late night of dreaming about Cindy, wondering if Nick would even pick up and finally calling Wendy instead.
But they do it again. Not just once - a pattern begins to develop. And the sex is okay, the warmth in the morning is nice enough, but it's always sad, it's always lonely no matter how close they hold each other. And Larry starts thinking, more and more, dragging lower, and he'll need Wendy and he'll want Wendy and he'll feel no better at all so he'll run again,
but when he gets tired she'll be there, so tired too, she understands him like no one else in his life ever has or will or should, because this isn't happy, this isn't what either of them really wants -
That's part of the joke, though. An idiot and an old hag, the sight of them together makes people laugh all the more. They are absurd. Ridiculous. Perfectly matched in the worst possible way.
He loves her, not like ever before, knows he'll never say it. This love is anything but comedy, lashed tight to his heart and bearing him down.
(Things Larry tries not to think: who she loves. If he numbers among all those ghosts.
If she'll be one of his, someday.)