This chapter is based on the song "Winter" by Tori Amos (I know, so girly).
Trigger warning: bed wetting.
I know that this, as well as some of the other stuff in this fic, might be off-putting to some readers. I enjoy giving people what they want-smut and danger and swoon-worthy boys-and I will continue that, but I don't write Gary Stu's. No one gets to be the Fonz in my stories. I really enjoy writing deeply human love stories. Sometimes heroes who kick ass and take names also cry-snot and piss the bed when they're traumatized. And sometimes we love them anyway and love them more for it.
That, dear readers, is the kind of fic I'm writing. Can you hang?
Jimmy hadn't even known that his mother was sick. The others, Elsa and Dell and Dell's estranged wife Desiree, claimed that she was, that that was why she'd chosen to end her life on her own terms. Jimmy heard the words and the sobs, saw the mess and the carnage, but it didn't make sense to him. It played out in his periphery, numb and far, like a movie.
Dead. His mother, the great Ethel Darling, teller of harsh truths and fantastical bedtime stories, fixer of busted cars and small hearts, protector of geeks and pinheads and embarrassingly sensitive boys, was dead. Gone. Jimmy couldn't cry at first. He couldn't even breath.
The funeral, especially without Dandy, was brutal for him. Even Bette and Dot were mysteriously absent, a fact that Jimmy ordinarily would have wondered and asked about. But now he was too beside himself. How was it that just a few weeks earlier his life had been beautiful, a storybook of children's games and friendship and cartoons and sex? Now his heart was shattered, and his three dearest companions weren't even there to help shoulder the hurt. He was too emotional to make it through the Emily Dickinson poem he'd brought to read over Ethel's grave, too distraught to be embarrassed when he broke down sobbing in front of everyone. It wasn't even manly crying, if there was such a thing. His were the pitiful sobs of an orphan.
Jimmy cried so hard that Dell and the rest of the men had to pull him away from the coffin. Maggie attempted to hug him, but he barely felt her embrace. He had no emotional energy left to feel it, or to remember that he was angry at the strongman.
Snow can wait / I forgot my mittens / Wipe my nose, get my new boots on / I get a little warm in my heart when I think of winter / I put my hand in my father's glove...
"I just... I never got to say goodbye, ya know?" Jimmy choked, downing another swig of whiskey and wiping his nose with the dish rag atop the small bar. Dell's caravan was cramped and bright, full of empty liquor bottles.
"I know, son," said Dell gently, patting the younger man's back. "She was awful proud of you, though, you know." Again his face wore the mask of stoicism he'd long perfected. Only the slight gleam of his eyes revealed his own grief. "...And so am I, Jimmy."
Jimmy leaned forward with a whimper and embraced his estranged father, throwing his long arms around Dell's neck like a little boy. He was too drunk and too broken to have any pride left, too desperate for comfort to hold onto any more grudges, no matter how big.
I run off where the drifts get deeper / Sleeping beauty trips me with a frown / I hear a voice / "You must learn to stand up for yourself cause I can't always be around"...
"I'm s-sorry I h-hit you..." He sobbed into Dell's shirt.
Dell gave a small, sad chuckle. "That's okay," he said. "I kinda deserved it."
"Yeah..." agreed Jimmy, laughing slightly through all the tears. "Yeah, you did."
Tough doesn't mean you don't hurt. That was the story of Dell Toledo's life. He didn't show the pain inside and he didn't let it define him, but he still felt it. He still hurt-now more than ever, both for the woman he'd once loved and for the boy he'd abandoned. But he couldn't weep; Jimmy knew that. So Jimmy wept for him.
When you gonna make up your mind? / When you gonna love you as much as I do? / When you gonna make up your mind / Cause things are gonna change so fast...
He didn't remember his dreams. He woke up in the middle of the night, wet and disoriented. At first he panicked, not sure whose sleeping body it was next to his in bed. Was it Dell? Maggie? The twins? In an instant he recognized the form as Dandy's, remembering that he was back at the mansion. Traumatized, he must have sleepwalked to the other guy's room.
He was soaked, though, and cold. In a horrible flash Jimmy realized that sleepwalking wasn't all he'd done.
"No..." he whimpered, turning and putting his head in his hands. "No, no, no... I thought I stopped doing that... oh god..."
"Jimmy?" muttered Dandy groggily, stirring. The two hadn't spoken since that night in the car. They'd each stuck to their own quarters, easily avoiding one another in the large house.
"How did I get here?" Jimmy moaned. "God... I don't remember coming in..."
Dandy's eyes grew wide in the dark. "Cesare..." he muttered, enthralled. Jimmy was a sleepwalker-a real one-after all.
Then he felt the wet sheets, too. For a horrible moment Dandy thought it had been him, which further confused him. True, he'd wet the bed embarrassingly late into childhood, but he'd never done so as an adult.
"Oh god," he whispered, "...did you...?"
Disoriented, grief-stricken, and humiliated all at once, Jimmy curled up into himself and began to cry. It was a pitiful sound: a whimper, pleading and broken.
Dandy blinked. Slowly his face cracked into a sad expression, delicate and careful. "It's okay," he said softly. "Here, get up, I'll fix it."
"I'm sorry..." sobbed Jimmy into the pillow. He didn't budge or unfurl. "I'm sorry... I'm sorry..."
He stood only when he felt Dandy try to lift him, staggering to his feet before immediately sitting down on the floor, knees to his chest. There was a reason he'd never spent the night with women, why he'd always left gigs early. It was an unspoken problem that only his mother had known about. In his adulthood the episodes were rarer, but trauma-sadness, grief, bad emotions-always triggered them.
Dandy cast him an apologetic look as he pulled at one corner of the bedspread. "I don't really know how to do this," he admitted. "I... you know, let me run you a bath. I'll do this... nonsense while you clean yourself up."
He did as he said and waited outside the door while Jimmy undressed and slipped into the warm water. When Dandy heard the water settle he cracked the door open and peered in, tentative, before entering.
He sat down slowly on a bench near the tub. A robe made of thin white material was tied now around his naked torso. Under the bathroom's white lights, in the steam, there was something angelic about his appearance. His smile looked wan and understanding, his chest strong.
Dandy pressed his lips together and gripped his knees awkwardly, making his knuckles crack. He wasn't sure what to say. All the pet names and familiar endearments of their life together before that bloody ride felt off limits now, not still his.
"I heard about your mother," he said finally, his voice formal and emotional and tense. "I'm very sorry."
Jimmy nodded. Dandy reached out slowly and scooped up a little of the pristine water in his hand, washing it gently over Jimmy's pale, flat chest.
Jimmy looked down. "It's so clear..." he said softly. "Clean. I never had bathwater like this, you know, not once in my life before coming here." He looked up at Dandy with big eyes. "...I was never really human 'til you..."
Dandy grimaced, though he tried to pass it off as a smile. He looked like he'd been slapped by someone he loved dearly. "You're wrong," he whispered, his eyes glassy. He tried not to blink, but a tear escaped anyway, falling and collecting at the corner of his nose. "It was you who made me human."
He sniffled, wiped the tear away, cleared his throat and stood abruptly, clutching the robe to his chest. "Excuse me," he muttered. "I should go make the bed..."
He'd never made a bed himself before. The fine linens wound up halphazardly lumped on the mattress, more spread across the thing than really attached. The soiled bedclothes were shoved in the corner of the room for the maid. Dora wouldn't dare say a damn thing about them, the bitch.
In the clean, lumpy dark Dandy felt Jimmy's fevered body, dressed now in clean shorts, climb in beside him. Without speaking he took the boy in his arms.
Jimmy started to cry again, choking hot tears into the fabric of Dandy's robe. He couldn't control it anymore. He longed for the disconcerting numbness of just a few days prior, for the boyish stoicism of the past fifteen years. Once he'd been a leader, a fighter, a protector. Now that identity was gone. He was just broken.
"I'm sorry..." he sniffled, his voice a child's. "I'm sorry that Bette went away, I know you were sad... I know... I know you feel..."
"Shh," Dandy whispered, stroking Jimmy's damp hair, "it's fine. She isn't who I truly love."
"What?" Jimmy gulped. "...But you and Dot never even really..."
"Not Dot, Jimmy," said Dandy. "It's you. I... I love you, Jimmy... Please, say you feel the same."
"Dandy, I... I mean I can't..."
"-I'm nobody," Dandy cut in, combing his fingers through Jimmy's dirty blond mop. A sob ripped from Jimmy's body, big and shaky and grief-inducing, like an earthquake. "Who are you? Are you nobody, too..."
The bedclothes around them lay tangled and sloppy and fragrant and fine. Jimmy clutched his friend-his monster, his poor little rich boy-and cried for his mother until he was absolutely spent.
When you gonna make up your mind? / When you gonna love you as much as I do? / When you gonna make up your mind / Cause things are gonna change so fast / All the white horses are still in bed / I tell you that I'll always want you near / You say that things change my dear...