AN: Runaway Artist, thanks for the review! I'm in much the same position as you. I only logged into this account again for sentimental reasons, and now I'm wasting a ton of time writing this when I should be packing for Seattle, haha. Oh well. I'm glad you took time out of your day to check back in on a fandom you hadn't looked at in nearly a decade, too. I wasn't really expecting any returns on this entirely self-motivated piece, so thanks a ton for dropping a line in the reviews.
In more general news, there might be two more chapters after this one. Depends on how much time I have. See you tomorrow.
"This is bullshit," said Jack. That was his mantra lately. These last few years. "This is bullshit. This is bullshit. Fuck." He'd come home from a tough case, like the McGunn-Trenor case when Missus McGunn cut herself at home with her bread knife and came to testify with bloodied sleeves, and Jack was pacing in front of the bookshelves, worrying his hair with his knobby fingers. That day he wore his button-up with the faint bloodred pansies stitched into the stripes, the black tie Ralph bought one Christmas and promptly forgot about. "This is bullshit," he said then, said now. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
They'd paid for their burgers and baskets of bottomless fries and went to the car, Jack's staging ground. He took the passenger seat and Ralph readied himself behind the wheel, orchestrating comebacks in his head, staring off at the nighttime ocean horizon beyond the marina at Weymouth. They were an hour or so from home. Ralph put the car in gear and followed Maurice and Rowen's bike out onto the main stretch, through the neon-lit tourist joints packed with saucer-eyed Americans and Koreans and, more recently, Egyptians with their tiny families. Jack fiddled agitatedly with the radio controls.
"There's nothing to fucking listen to," he complained.
"Stop," said Ralph.
"What? Stop what? There's-fuck, Ralph! You barely speak at dinner at all, and now you tell me to stop? Fine. You do the talking. I'm done with tonight. I'm catching a bus back to the hotel."
"You can't."
"Don't tell me what to do."
"Jack, don't leave me alone with them." Ralph whispered, "Please."
Calm down, calm down, Ralph recited. He rocked forward, closer to the windshield, narrowed his eyes against the tears. Tears on the tongue. Ocean sun. A beach, somewhere, any beach. Fire in the bone. Jack put his hand on Ralph's shoulder gently. "Hey, Ra-Ra. Get it? Like a war cry. Ra-Ra!" He pumped his fist. A weakness and uncertainty in the joint of the gesture. "I won't leave, you know. Of course I won't leave."
"You're overreacting." Ralph hiccuped and sniffed.
"You're right. I'm overreacting. You know me."
"It's going to be fine. Rog-Rowen seems to be doing really well. I'm happy for her. And even if you're not, can we just get through tonight and go home? And we'll never have to do this again. Promise."
Jack sighed. He lowered his head. "Yeah, okay. Promise."
"Thank you, boyfriend-Jack."
"Thank you," said Jack, smiling. "Boyfriend-Ralph."
When they arrived at the club, Jack left to pick over their drafts menu, a glowing LED screen over the backsplash with a gif of a little dancing mouse in the corner. The bar was off the main street, through a foot-traffic-only section of town. Brightly lit, cheerful, with a stone face and blacked-out windows. For the first time in a long time, Ralph had to show ID at the door. The club was called Virgin Isle. The logo featured stick figures under a black palm tree-a woman, a man, and an alien, like on standard bathroom signage.
Ralph lost the others when Jack walked away, and took a moment to orient himself. Virgin Isle took its tropical theme seriously, with big moldy planters around the raised platforms their dancers danced on, tanks of backlit fish with parrot-faces, some of the ugliest fish Ralph had ever seen. He felt an intense and sudden urge to douse himself in their candy-blue water, feel the purifying chemicals and salt open his pores and leak down the back of his shirt.
Rowen snagged him from his reverie, tagging him by the elbow. She gestured him to sit on the edge of one of the planters, patting the concrete encouragingly. She'd had time to change since arriving. Somehow. Or maybe she'd immediately slicked off her shawl and dress, and had this on underneath all along. An excruciating bustier with metallic buttons girding up the sides and an equally excruciating silk high-waist thong, attached with lace to some sort of thigh-girding bands, turning her shaved legs red near the top.
"Hi," said Ralph.
And Rowen, after a calculated pause, said, "Hi, Ralph. You look terrible, dude. I mean, you really look like utter shit."
"Thanks."
"Sorry. I feel like I've been saying that a lot tonight. Well. Sorry for being sorry."
"It's okay. So, mood stabilizers."
She smiled slightly. "Mood stabilizers and estrogen!" She waved her hands erratically, framing her words and stretched-out expressions. "Miracle pills, swear to god." Gah-aawd. "Those little bitches, and acrylic nails with my manicurist Cho, and hair extensions." Ecks-sten-shuns! The way she emphasized her syllables fascinated him. He wanted to live inside the gaps between her syllables. She gripped his thigh tight to steady herself on the narrow ledge, so tight he wanted to tell her to stop, but still he waited silently for her to speak. Could he dust off this new voice and hear Roger's underneath? No, not really. She spoke with an effortless tinniness, or brassiness, or something otherwise light and friendly and metallic that had only manifested in Roger's voice as venom. "Mo and I cleared out the Goodwill when I transitioned. You wouldn't believe some of the stuff we came home with." She paused. "Do you mind if I talk about this?"
Ralph gazed at a point behind Rowen's head. "No, not at all."
"It's just that no one else cares. Do you think they think I'm faking it?"
"I don't know what they think."
She stared into his face, open, wanting something more than what he could give. Ralph couldn't breathe. This wasn't the face of a killer. This wasn't the face of anyone he knew. This was, unlike the rest of them, the face of a child. A born-again child, trying to orient themselves in a world they'd been cruel to, that knew only how to be cruel to them. And Ralph was bad at taking and doling out cruelty. Historically.
"You get it," she insisted. "I can tell. Jack might not get it, but you do. I'm new, right? I was sick before. I'm better now."
"I think I get it," he said.
She shifted her hands onto his forearms. "I know you do, Ralph. You were the best of us. I mean that."
"I don't want to talk about the island."
"I'm sorry."
"You might understand, Rowen. You were sick before and got better. I'm still sick. I might be sick my whole life. It's not anything I can even go to a doctor for. It's not in my body."
She nodded empathetically, gently seeking consent before placing three fingers on the center of his chest, where the ribcages formed a furrow, a convergence. "Maybe it is," she said, and quietly laughed. "Maybe. Maybe it isn't."
Jack returned with two tallboy White Claws. Rowen lifted airily off the ledge of the planter, waving goodbye through a toothy smile, that blessed snaggled tooth, and returned to the poles. Ralph asked for the black cherry can and got it. He held the cool metal in both hands, close to his chest, to keep the warmth from tearing through him. Tears on the tongue. Tears on the flesh. The ribs. The flesh. The tongue. Come apart. He commanded his body: come apart. Nothing. Of course, duh, nothing. The music overhead continued to blast its harrowing way through the cavities in his head. He felt it vibrating in his mouth, rattling his molars. Jack looked up at the speakers.
"Ariana Grande," he muttered. "It's like they knew we were coming. Fresh off the island into the strip club."
"I think it's okay," said Ralph.
Jack scrutinized his boyfriend with a raised eyebrow. "Uh-huh. It's a strip club, Ralph."
"It's more of, you know, an exotic dance bar. And it's not just for straight people, you know. There're men around. They hired Rowen, and she's trans."
"He's a sociopath."
"She. Don't be like that, Jack."
He rolled his eyes. "Whatever."
"Stop."
"I'm sick of you saying that."
"I'm sick of you using me as a sounding board for your pessimism," Ralph shot back. Jack looked shocked and pale in the oscillating dance lighting. Then he looked grim. His fingers made dents in his White Claw can. But now that Ralph had the words out, he was on a roll. He was rolling with it. Tops of the teeth and the tip of the tongue. Tearing through the histories. "So stop, Jack! Jack Merridew! I know you! I know you! You're the shithead who wanted me dead until you hit puberty late and finally figured out what people use their dick for! You're the idiot who would've flunked out of Art History if I hadn't helped you, and you're the one who pressured me into sleeping with you that first time even though I wasn't ready, and you're also the one who talked me through Stats homework, and performed Shakespeare in the dormrooms when we got bored of our English assignments, and brought me bottles of Barefoot when I was feeling bad, and you're the one who's come back time and time again because you can't stand being alone with what you've done, knowing I'm ruined for life, ruined for anyone else. I'm ruined, Jack. I close my eyes, and I'm still there, and sometimes when I see you, all I see is who you were when we were children, and it's because of things like this. When you say things that just make me want to knock your lights out! So stop! For the love of fucking Christ! God! If you want this to keep working with me, stop."
"Jesus, man. We're in public. Our friends are here."
"Our friends? Who? The cowboy with the pedophile mustache? Postman gone postal who can't seem to keep shit from falling out his mouth? Or the dancer you keep deadnaming for shits and giggles? God bless Mo, at least he's stable!"
"Ralph! You're making a scene!"
"You're making a scene!"
Jack hissed, "Can't we talk about this later?"
"No! I love you, Jack. I want to talk now."
Jack reeled. "You love me," he murmured.
Ralph sucked in a breath. He stopped to wipe salt from the corners of his eyes. Ocean. Water or fire. Where was he now? Oh, right. The lights orbited Jack's pretty head and, somewhere behind him, to much applause and whooping, Rowen's body orbited a golden pole.
"Christ, Jack," Ralph sobbed. "I love you, and I don't want to break up with you. But I have no idea what to do anymore. Everything's stalled out. I don't even know what we're doing anymore."
"Here?" whispered Jack. "We can go back to the hotel. Or home. I'll drive you all the way back home."
"No, no. Here. With these people. I was doing so well."
"I know you were."
"We were doing so well. We're fine until we're around other people who were there, and then you get this crazy look in your eyes, and I hate how you start talking to me, and how you talk about them. And I get like this. I can't even speak. I just. I feel like I'm dying all over again."
"I know."
"Then why? Why do you insist on waiting for them every year?"
He shrugged limply. "I guess I just-" He shook his head and sighed. "I don't know, Ralph. I really don't know."
"It's an ego-trip. Your life is an ego-trip."
"Is not."
"Sure."
Jack blew out a long breath. He rolled his shoulders back in their uneasy sockets, holstered his thumbs in the pockets of his slacks, knocked his better ear into a dominant position following the arrow of his spine. Ralph called this combination of gestures The Rigmarole. Known most often to domestics judges in Leicester, Jack's parents, Ralph. It was his stature of deference. I'm listening, I'm not listening. Ralph threw up his spare hand and threw down the remainder of his drink. Tilt the head, loosen the throat. He conjured the individual multi-colored muscles in his head. What they might look like.
Whatever.
He underhand tossed his empty Claw into the nearest garbage can, or maybe it was another empty planter. Too late to ask a bartender. Jack's eyes were closed and furrowed. Angry but trying to cage it back. Thresh it out. Drink it away.
Again, whatever. "Whatever," said Ralph out loud, just to hear himself say it. "I'm having fun."
"You're not," said Jack.
"Not yet, but I'm going to have fun. Watch me."
The others were sipping whiskeys at a round table near the front, near Rowen, who'd descended the raised dais to dole out flirtatious waves, winks, and several lap dances. A few men and women shoved wadded up balls of dollar bills toward her bikini line, and she made a show of that, too, padding out her bra in back-of-the-wallet greens and less common oranges.
Ralph charged another tallboy to Jack's tab and joined the boys at their table. He had to pull up a chair. They hadn't thought he'd come back, probably. Bill grinned in a way that cinched it.
"How was the little boy's room?" asked Sam.
Ralph stopped with his hand at the edge of the table. "Little boy's-oh! Gross, Sam. I don't fuck with bar bathrooms."
"Or in them," Sam amended.
"Sounds like a good way to get a disease," said Bill.
"Or a bacteria," Maurice put in. He flapped his hand at Ralph, trying to include him. "Get this. We had a friend a few years ago, from the therapy center, who got from anal and lost one of his balls from it."
A group-wide moment of appreciation, and a loud yeeowch from Sam.
"But that could've happened at his house, not in a public bathroom," Ralph pointed out.
"That's some Brokeback Mountain shit," Bill added.
"I don't see what it has to do with Brokeback Mountain. The movie where they don't use lube?"
"They ate beans," said Sam. "That counts."
"Fuck off, that's fucking gross, dude," Maurice moaned. "It was nothing like Brokeback. I guess it probably didn't happen in a bathroom, but I'm sure there's some stat somewhere about in bar toilets."
"Mo, even if I did fuck in one of the stalls, I'm not dipping my entire situation in the toilet water."
Maurice shrugged. "Accidents happen."
Sam snickered. Bill shook his head in disappointment. "Well," he said. "That's more than I needed to know about you, Mo."
"Big fucking accident," said Ralph.
Maurice crossed his chest. "Never have I ever accidentally or intentionally dipped my sack in the bowl. Oh, shit, actually-"
"No!" Sam laughed. He gripped Bill's jacket and shook him violently in his chair. "Spare me this tale!"
"It's not about me!" Maurice insisted. He pulled out his phone and started tapping through his camera reel. "I have pictures of that guy from the center. Wait until you see this."
"Pass," said Ralph.
"Pass," said Bill, though when Maurice flipped the phone around to Sam for inspection, he looked anyway. Ralph clicked his tongue disapprovingly.
"Traitor," he accused. Bill shrugged. A guy gets curious, he supposed. Then he laughed. It was a ridiculous way to know people, having grown up with them. The additional layer of running wild and naked around an island with the lot of them only complicated things. What would've happened given more time? If the royal navy never came? They wouldn't be looking at testicle photos on Maurice's smartphone, surely. For the love of God, Ralph still remembered the time Bill shit himself in the ship's cabin on the journey back. He refused to tell anyone and walked around like that until someone forced him to shower.
"I should be dead," said Ralph, still laughing hysterically. He sipped his White Claw only to have it pour out his nose in a painful spray at the giggling fit persisted. Sam laughed, and soon the whole table was laughing. "We should all be dead. Fucking dead."
Bill raised his double-wide shot glass. "To not being dead?" he suggested.
Maurice raised his back. "To not being dead!" And then he added: "And it's not like they didn't try killing us or convincing us to do it ourselves!"
"To not being dead in spite of the odds," Sam finally agreed, and everyone toasted to that.