Title: Amaranth
Author: Mercury
Rating: R for strong language, some drug use and upcoming violence.
Author's Notes: And so begins the Danny epic, a fic I've been developing for a while now. Huge thanks go to CTB for her awesome Spanish-speaking skills, especially since my knowledge of the language is extremely limited; and to babythunder for her amazingly helpful beta and encouragement. Enjoy!
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Amaranth:
1: a flower that never fades
2: undying, everlasting
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The sun above them shone with an inescapable intensity without so much as a single cloud to shield the rays from the city of Hialeah, Florida. Two thirteen-year-old boys made their way up the grimy streets of the city, stepping over the scraps of magazines and newspapers that lined the curbs and filled the gutters of the streets.
"So I told him that if he wanted a piece of me, he could come right up and get some, right?" Trying to conceal his heavy breaths from the strenuous uphill journey in between his words, he kicked an empty beer bottle to the curb and watched it shatter. Next to them, laundry hung from clothespins on a thin rope like old makeshift ghosts.
"You're full of shit, Andres." Replied the other boy, removing his baseball cap and tiredly fanning himself with it.
Filled with indignation that his friend would doubt his story, Andres puffed out his chest and assuredly replied, "Am not."
"Yeah, I'm sure you fought him off all by yourself." Danny responded, the sweltering July heat making him annoyed and cranky rather than amused at the tall tale.
"He ran off before I could make my move, but if he'd stayed I woulda kicked his ass."
The boys moved to the side of the road and sat on the edge of the sidewalk, picking up rocks from underneath them and tossing them into the potholes of the street as Andres continued, full of bravado. "I was fucking Scarface, man, I could've taken Pedro and all his boys down just like that if they hadn't been chicken." He snapped his fingers and grinned.
The elderly man sitting in a plastic deck chair across the street from them peered at the boys as the blades in his fan spun around and around lazily in an endless, monotonous routine. "Daniel! Andres! ¿Deberían ustedes estar en la escuela?" Shouldn't you be in school?
"No, Señor Colombia." They chanted back in unison. "It's summer." Andres added.
"Man," Danny said, eyeing the old man lying in his chair and tossing another stone into the road, "I hope I'm not gonna end up like that, some wacko old dude goin' crazy on my front porch, right? Not even knowin' it's July of 1985, just totally zoned out."
"I ain't gonna end up like that, I'm gonna end up like one of those rockstars with the chicks and the mansions and that shit." Andres' cheeks were flushed as images of the boyish ideals of fame and fortune raced through his mind.
Danny managed a smile as the sweat dripped from his brow and fell down his face, where he wiped it off with a bare arm. "I've gotta go. If I'm not home by five Consuela'll probably be sendin' out search parties and shit."
The two boys said their goodbyes and parted ways.
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The apartment was even hotter than it was outside, and the fan Consuela had set up in the kitchen wasn't doing much to help. "Hey, Danny." She said absentmindedly when he wandered into the room, where she was helping with the baby at the table. It had been crying for the past hour and she was weary, fatigued from heat and constant responsibility for the children constantly entering and exiting and demanding.
"Hey." Opening the refrigerator, he grabbed a plastic can of Coke, leaving his head inside the cool area for one beautiful moment more.
"Close the door, honey." Consuela said falteringly, too tired to chastise him.
Reluctantly he closed it and took a sip from the can before heading to the next room wordlessly. Spending a year with Consuela and Bobby and the rest of the kids assigned to them by the court had been more awkward than spending twelve with Mami and Papi, he felt. Their saccharine sweetness towards him and Rafael only encouraged him to push their limits so he could see their reactions -- would they care if he got into a fight, or punish him if he got into serious trouble? Rafael had already pushed them and found them to be too weak to stand up to him, so he had gone further, leaving Danny stuck somewhere around the middle, cautiously doing small, stupid things like not doing the dishes when he was supposed to or sneaking some beer to give to Rafael.
Rafael quickly tried to hide the needle underneath his pillow when Danny walked in, but Danny was too hot and tired to care. He flung himself on his bed, staring at the ceiling.
"Yo, you gonna cover for me tonight?" Rafael was pulling on a clean shirt (how he could stand to wear black in such heat was a mystery to Danny). Outside, the sun was beginning to descend, harsh yellow giving way to vivid shades of orange and pink that covered the town.
"I'll try." He murmured, entranced by the sunset. He had seen innumerable sunsets, watched the sun fade before his eyes many times, but he had never witnessed a sunrise. Descriptions of the sun's entrance at dawn from books and magazines he had read just didn't help in conjuring the image of a sunrise in his head -- he had to see it, see just one and preserve that memory in his mind forever.
"Chévere, gracias." The radio was playing something by Prince that Danny truly despised, and he reached over to turn it down. "I'll be back around eleven, if all goes well. We're -- "
Danny held up his hand, halting his brother in the middle of his sentence. "I don't want to know, Raffi. I don't care what you do, I just don't wanna get involved in any of your shit."
"That's cool, fine." Slicking back his hair, Rafael admired himself in the mirror. "Ain't no fucking cops gonna catch us tonight. Wish me luck, man."
As his brother crawled out the window and down the fire escape, Danny felt a twinge of guilt. Part of him always hoped that Rafael would get caught and finally put away, and maybe then he could stop covering for him and watching on helplessly as all the good deeds he did for him by covering for him amounted to just more shit flowing through his bloodstream. He thought about that, that and a million other things, and before he knew it he was asleep.
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i know this is a dream but i don't care
he's riding a bike down a hill and the wind is in his hair, and he knows that later ahead there will be an end to it (even sooner than he expects it to be, so he tries to be happy about it right now) but for now, the world is whizzing by and he doesn't care about any of them, not Andres or Rafael or the crazy old man or Mami and Papi
(people asked him why he only cried once when they were gone and he had said they weren't gone, they would always be there in their boxes for him to talk to, even though he knew Papi wouldn't be listening from his place in Hell)
and the bike goes faster and faster
(but that was before he realized they were gone and it was his fault)
and why does everything good in his life have to come to such a sudden stop so soon?
sometimes i don't want to wake up (a veces no quiero despertarme)
When he awoke all he could remember was a bicycle and the image of Mami and Papi in their coffins, and it was dark out and Rafael was back, and the blades of the fan were still spinning endlessly.