Three days after Joey's death, it was time to bury him.
Marik had never officially attended a funeral before this. When his mother died, he was too young to remember the small service held deep within the quiet catacombs that jailed him. He likes to imagine that it was some important, memorable thing set in a crowded room filled with many who had loved her and would honor her memory. Only three people stood by her casket, though, and there were only two left to miss her.
With his father, it was different. For all he knew, his corpse was still on the blood spattered floor, exactly where he had left it. People like him didn't deserve to have a funeral.
Marik stares solemnly at the casket. People were talking around him, he could vaguely register that much. But at that moment nothing felt entirely real. He felt as though he should say something— a compliment about his friend, a fond memory, anything. But as his dry lips open and make shapes, no words follow.
"I wanted to thank you guys for coming."
Marik turns around and the pained face of Joey's father greets him. He nods quickly without responding and glances away. It hurt too much to look into those eyes.
Mostly, thoughts of Joey being in a better place now is what keeps him from shattering completely, and when Bakura reaches his hand out to give Marik a comforting squeeze, he can still hear faint whispers of Joey's final song play out in his ears. Bakura couldn't let go of Marik's hand, his tight grip is the only leverage binding him to reality. If he were to relinquish his hold on him, Marik felt like he would disappear, and an alarming wayward thought breaks through the symphony— everyone would be better off if he did.
"Marik, are you okay?"
"I'm fine." He very clearly is not fine, but Marik knew that Bakura asking is just a formality and how to respond accordingly. The truth sits cramped in the tight space inbetween where their hands touch, a mutual awareness that neither of them are okay, and that maybe they never will be. Marik strains a smile anyways. Lying about himself is just a habit; one too deeply ingrained in him to shake off. Happiness is elusive, but he's great at pretending.
Bakura didn't respond after that, but he knew he didn't need to. His silence spoke volumes as he leans his head against Marik's noticeably tense shoulder. Never once did the spirit look at his face, for he knew all too well what those glazed pools of violet would hold. And never once did he let go of the other's hand, so tight he could hear and feel a heart beat, but is not sure who's it belonged to.
The familiar figure of Joey's father soon made his way through the crowd of chairs, his light footsteps cutting through the silence like a knife. He soon stands at the front of the church, and Marik noticed with a pang that he looks nothing like he had seen in pictures. He had always looked bright, beaming and full of a hypnotizing light that drew other people towards him. Just like Joey. But right now, standing before his friends and family about to speak at his deceased son's wake, he had never looked more vulnerable. Light no longer shone through his eyes, and perhaps they never would.
'Just like Joey'.
The thought involuntarily invades Marik's mind and he visibly winces.
The imagery is too much, and tears begin to pool out of his eyes despite his best efforts to remain composed. He had been shutting them in since the evening Joey had been stolen away, whisked off to somewhere beautiful. Honestly, Marik is a little jealous. If there is a hell, Marik knew that's the only resting place he deserved. Marik is too different from angels, he was tainted with dried blood on his fingertips from the age of ten, but surrounded by the damned, he would for the first time feel like he belonged.
"My son and I always were very close," His father pauses, his voice breaking. Marik could tell he is trying to hold back tears. "God, I keep waking up in the morning thinking this whole thing was just a bad dream..."
His father starts to trail off, and his eyes find Marik's in the crowd. There is no way he could have, but Marik feels like he knew what he had done. "He was so young..." He is sobbing now, and the guilt weighing down on Marik's chest is unbearable.
"He always, always touched the hearts of everyone he met. And he lo-loved music, he had so much talent, he was going to change the world," He hiccups, body quivering from the violent sobs. At this point Marik decides that for the second time that night he could not bear to watch. He glares daggers at the ground as hot tears unwillingly spill down his cheeks. Bakura's grip tightens.
"I know that, that nobody will ever forget him. Nobody ever could. Thank you."
Joey's father finishes rather abruptly, quickly deciding that he could handle no more. He hurriedly walks back to his seat and embraces his sobbing wife, rocking her gently.
"Daddy, why are you talking about big brother like that? He just wented on a trip and he'll be back soon! Right, momma?" a young voice pipes up. Joey's brother tugs on his father's suit, egging him on. The question is filled with such naivety that the older man could do nothing more but fall to his knees in a heaping mess, sobs wracking his body.
Rex stumbles as he approaches Joey's casket. It was shut, the trauma to what little of his body hadn't been eaten was severe, easily deemed much too macabre by the funeral director to allow an open casket wake. He is grateful for that, and when he closes his eyes he can remember Joey as he was before, not as the torn apart remains hidden underneath.
Some people say that they feel void after the loss of a loved one, but Rex doesn't feel empty without Joey, it's the opposite. He feels too full. The butterflies that once fluttered in his stomach were long gone, and were replaced instead with heavy weights burdening him down, making it difficult to move. There isn't room for anything but that immense tension.
"Hi, Joey. It hasn't been that long without you yet, but it already sucks." Rex grazes his hand over the wood, the pressure bearing down on his heart only intensifying with each choked out syllable.
He's hit with something during the small pause ensuing his hello:
This is real; Joey could never greet him again. He wasn't expecting a reply from a corpse, he isn't that stupid, but it was strange, and it hurt to be welcomed only by silence.
"I'm gonna miss you so much, Joey." Rex mumbles it like a promise, and he repeats his name like it's the only word hes ever known. His shaking legs give out then, but he grabs hold of the coffin to steady himself.
It's hard to breathe, and there's a half-composed apology lingering on his lips. Rex is sorry for a lot of things (every insult — even the honest ones, being hard to handle, pushing him away just to be chased after, the words that were left unsaid), but he swallows them all down. In their place he mumbles a chaste "I won't forget you, I love you, goodbye", after he said it, all that's left is a bitter taste in his mouth.
Now, he's said goodbye three times; the first with his hands caressing that terrible, broken body, the second with his lips pressing softly against Joey's, the third vocalized finally with words. No amount could ever possibly be enough, a hundred farewells wouldn't relieve the ever present longing for just one more.
He steps away from the coffin to turn, surveying the grieving faces mourning silently in their seats (god, there were so many), and they all looked up at him expectantly. Rex could recognize a few of the people present, but most who he saw blinking up at him he couldn't pinpoint ever meeting. Some could have been distant relatives, but it's far more likely that the greater share were fans.
"Um, hey," Rex awkwardly clears his throat, interrupting the long, uncomfortable silence sitting heavy in the air. He's never spoken publicly in front of a group this big before, and he's suddenly aware of just how hoarse his voice is from crying. "There are a lot of things I could say about Joey, but I'm not too great with words, so I'm not going to bother with that. Instead, I'd like to share with you all the last song he wrote— the one he wrote for me."
Rex's trembling fingers clamp down hard on the flimsy sheet of paper squeezed in his hands. The scribbles there were remnants of Joey that couldn't ever be taken away, his heart may have stopped beating but in his song he is never ending.
"I've heard there was a secret chord," Rex croaks, pausing to bite down on his quivering lip. "That David played, and it pleased the lord, but you don't really care for music do you?"
Freshly fallen snow crunches satisfyingly beneath Rex's feet. Onward he stomped, his ears and nose tinted red from the freezing winter weather. He adjusts his hat, pulling it further down his messy bangs, and by the time his hands returned to his side he had arrived at his destination. A quivering hand rises to ring the doorbell, and as expected the door opens like the pearly gates of heaven. Rex smiles in spite of himself at Joey, and just for a second the blonde had reminded him of an angel.
"Rex, did you walk here? It's freezing! You could have caught hypothermia, or had your toes fall off!" Joey chides upon laying his eyes on Rex's shivering body. Rex grins lopsidedly.
"I brought movies," he speaks, tone wavering and held up the DVDs that were firmly clutched in his reddened hands.
Joey blinks once and then gives a smile that radiated so much warmth that Rex could practically feel it melt away the cold. Or is it the blood pounding through his body due to the sudden quicken of his heartbeat?
"You knucklehead," Joey laughs, grabs his hand, and leads him inside.
"It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah"
"Ouch, fuck—" Rex hisses under his breath. Just thirty minutes before he was having the time of his life, and now he's stuck sitting on top of the counter in Joey's bathroom. The porcelain underneath him is cool at least, a stark contrast to the scalding heat outside.
"You're the one who went and got yourself all messed up like that. I'm just helping with clean-up duty," Joey gestures once to the new array of scrapes adorning Rex's arms and legs, and then wildly to the perpetrator resting in the corner of the bathroom. It was a scuffed up skateboard, and Rex unquestionably was not Tony Hawk.
Ignoring Rex's protests isn't an easy task, but Joey manages to endure it somehow. He's hunkered over him, one hand adamantly holding Rex in place, and the other preoccupied with lightly dabbing peroxide at the cuts. Rex eventually gives up on squirming, choosing instead to slouch back against the mirror behind him.
"If you think I look bad you should've seen the half-pint," Rex announces proudly, reminiscing on the long grazes that had been left all along the concave ramp. He finally manages to shake off Joeys persistent hands, so he crosses his arms over one another with a self-satisfied smirk.
"Half-pipe," Joey corrects, unable to prevent the responding snicker. "A half-pint is more like what you are, and don't look so happy about getting me off of you— I was kinda finished."
Rex rolls his eyes, and if Joey had a nickel for every time he did that, there would be band-aids covering all of Rex's cuts. Paying bills tended to take priority to replacing used up medical supplies.
"Feel any better now that I'm done though?" Joey adds. Rex deceptively winces in reply, cackling madly when Joey worriedly furrows his eyebrows.
"It still stings pretty bad, no thanks to you," he says while grimacing, but there's a smile in his voice.
"Want me to try kissing it better?" Joey shoots him a toothy grin, expecting Rex to scowl and stick out his tongue. It's only a half-joke though, so when Rex shrugs his approval, Joey stretches his arm out and places his lips to a graze on the back of Rex's hand.
Joey gives his body a full review, checking up on every last scratch.
"Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah"
"Aren't we supposed to hold hands or something?"
"You tell me, it was your stupid idea anyway."
Joey inaudibly groans at Rex's brash response. At that moment his hands were awkwardly moving from his shoulders, to his arms and to his waist in a miserable attempt to recapture any familiar pose of any familiar dance.
"Yeah, but it was your idea to drag me to your geeky middle school dance, kid," Joey sneers back at him, playfully ruffling his hair. All Rex can do is scoff and try to ignore the ever present flutter in his heart and the rising heat to his cheeks.
"You do it like this, idiot," he says quickly (Joey smugly makes a mental note of how visibly embarrassed he is), effectively changing the subject and grabbing one of Joey's hands while placing the other on his own waist.
"Now just like, move your legs to the beat. Or something," he grumbles. It doesn't take long for Joey to catch on, and soon they are swaying together, revolving in perpetual circles as if they were born to do so.
"Why didn't you tell me right off the bat how to do it if you already knew?" Joey asks quizzically.
"I was just testing you. Didn't wanna show up and teach you how to do everything, I mean you are the upperclassman here," Rex responds dryly and his voice is dripping with sarcasm.
Joey doesn't say anything to that, but he gives a short laugh. The song ends and is replaced with one of a more slow rhythm. The pair respond accordingly and slow their movements considerably, and Rex doesn't notice that he pressed his head to Joey's chest until he can hear his heartbeat pounding softly in his ears. Rex also doesn't know that in that moment, gently swaying together, their hearts were beating in perfect unison. As if they had become one.
"Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah"
"You can just take my bed, I'm fine with the couch," Joey offers, denying Rex the finer option would be unbecoming. First impressions were everything, especially if he wanted him staying overnight to mold into a regularity.
Joey's household could be considered modest at best. There is a very long list of effects he didn't have that Rex so desperately wishes to provide for him, least of all a guest bedroom. It really isn't fair, their family can't even afford brand name cereal. From the second he scoped out the kitchen cabinets, Rex had already made the decision that Joey is going to visit his house next, and he's going to pour him the most delicious bowl of Frosted Flakes he's ever eaten.
"Nah," Rex half-says, half-yawns. He reaches a hand up to lazily rub the sleep from one eye, daydreaming already about showing Joey the wonders his Jurassic Park poster clad bedroom held.
"The bed is way more comfortable, trust me! Besides, I'm pretty sure it's past your bedtime." Joey glances over at the clock, it blinks it's answer up at him in neon green: 10:30 pm. Yeah, definitely past his bedtime.
Rex places a palm on his bony hip, a small gesture of defiance. "Are you even listening? I already said no."
Joey has long since grown used to Rex dragging out petty disagreements to their fullest. It's a game, and maybe it's just that Joey has always liked games, or maybe it's the way Rex's face reddens all the way to the very tips of his ears when he doesn't get his way, but either way he plays.
"And I'm saying yes."
"Looks like you're going to have to make me then."
There's a challenge glinting in the small black of Rex's eye, and Joey steps instantaneously forward to seize hold of him. Pushing him back onto the bed is surprisingly effortless, and then he's completely ragdoll beneath him, laughing. Joey likes that he can feel the short rhythm it creates against his own chest.
"You do realize I'm going to get up as soon as you let go, right, stupid?"
"Guess I'm not going to let go, then."
A little smile plays at Rex's lips as he tilts his head to the side, eyeing him up. "Guess not."
Rex wakes up in the morning to find the sheets scattered on the floor, finding a home alongside the other clutter. He hadn't gotten cold in the middle of the night, though, Joey's arms wrapped around him was all the warmth he needed.
"Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah"
"What flavor do you want?"
"I already told you. I only want chocolate vanilla swirl."
Joey exasperatedly rolls his eyes.
"And I already told you, the chocolate vanilla swirl machine is broken. They have strawberry, or plain chocolate, or plain vanilla," he tells Rex, who is standing next to him with his arms crossed. The shorter boy glares daggers up at the menu, as if to think the more he scowled then the faster the employees would fix the busted machine containing his perfect ice cream order.
"Then I don't want anything," he barks and turns his head away pointedly.
Joey doesn't respond and just starts digging through his pockets, pulling out the little money he owned.
"Well, I'm gonna get myself something. So go wait over by the bench and I'll meet you there," he says, unfazed by Rex's sanctimonious sneer. Rex nods and trots away, taking a seat on the bench that the two had met up at when they decided to get together for some ice cream.
Minutes later, Rex looked up from drawing a velociraptor on the ground with a nearby twig to see Joey walking towards him...struggling to carry one cone of ice cream and two bowls.
"What the— "
"One is vanilla and one is chocolate, so just mix them together...or something." Joey flashes a lopsided grin and his eyes are gleaming especially brighter with the rays of sunlight reflecting through them. He hands the two bowls to Rex, who is still staring up at him incredulously. Finally, he clears his throat and speaks.
"...Next time, don't waste your money on stuff like this," he mutters, suddenly turning away to avoid eye contact, suddenly feeling guilt. "I was just— "
"Rex, don't worry about it," Joey cuts him off mid sentence and Rex glances back up.
"I'm alright with doing this kinda stuff for you!" he laughs and sits down next to Rex, giving him a noogie. The smaller boy doesn't reply but grins back at him, mirroring his friend's expression.
'Only for you,' Joey thinks, but decides not to voice the thought, and the two enjoy their ice cream in serendipitous silence.
"Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken— "
Something in him burst then, and fragmented off into fine, irreplacable pieces. He drops to the floor and pounds his fists into the ground over and over again, hoping to feel something, to feel anything other than the burning sting in his chest. His knuckles would be bruised in the morning, Joey wouldn't be there to kiss it better, and it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah.