disquieters:
santiago blinked in surprise. you think i don’t speak spanish, santi? there’s a naturalness to his accent that cannot possibly be faked. his is not the spanish of someone who’d learned the language. it is the spanish of someone who’d lived it. at mateo’s words, santiago heart surges with a feeling he could scarcely put a name to. envy comes close, but it’s not quite close enough to encompass the breadth of the emotion. logically, it could not have been anything else. santiago is a child of three languages fluent only in silence. there is every reason to resent the boy for boasting a vocabulary santiago’s own mother denied him, spanish a bridge burnt to pull back from a culture white america deemed lesser. was it fair that he had no access to this reservoir of self-expression? was it fair that a different boy had spoken a tongue that should have belonged to him, and held more memories in a house that was not his?
yet it isn’t envy, he knows this much. lips curl into a wry smirk. “thought you were just some gringo,” he sneers, and it feels almost like an admission of defeat, because santiago knows there’s satisfaction to be drawn from proving one wrong. was that not the plan, anyway? a powerplay of sorts. if they’re still in that game, it is clear that santiago has long since lost. it was unspoken surrender the minute he grovelled at the boy’s feet in attempt to piece back something impossible to fix, and too many times after he has placed down his own pride to offer more and more of himself, his name and his salve and a minute to rest. strangely, he feels no indignation. instead, what burns in him is curiosity. there is more to the boy — there is more to mateo than he had first surmised. shame burns within once more, not for remorse, but for wanting. santiago has never known the privilege of a guilt-free longing, but this time desire screams louder than his relentless self-denial. every selfish nerve within him burns with both a need to tear and be torn apart. not destruction. a mutual dismantling. pull away the polished surface. disassemble the clockwork. take apart every screw, every rusty gear, every faulty spring, until both boys are stripped down to the barest of components — what would they find, then? santiago knows his core is ugly and monstrous and damaged, and to find it is not a burden anyone deserves. but he is an unloved boy, an in every unloved boy exists a selfish need to be known. he has never allowed himself to succumb to an emotion so primal, but the need has never burned stronger, and perhaps to mateo, santiago’s surrender would be a worthy offertory: here is my body, which will be given up for you. mateo’s fingers grip his bare skin and when his nerves surge with a sort of static, santiago surmises that the need encompassed the physical more than it transcended it. immediately, the thought is discarded, but the attempt at disposal is proves ineffective. at the back of his mind, the suppressed want lingers. the graveness of his expression betrays him, and santiago looks away, as if there were a dirty secret written into his eyes that mateo would find if he looked too close. from his peripheral vision, he catches the briefest glimpse of mateo’s gaze falling to his mouth and santiago doesn’t know whether to feel scared or satisfied. wrong wrong wrong — both hands tighten their grip around his bat to ground himself. he looks down at dante, who is silent, which was never the case when there was immediate danger. still, it’s not enough to fully assess whether abuela’s house is safe, so santiago keeps his guard up. eyebrows knitted, his expression grows severe. one foot raised, he tightens his grip even further, summoning every frustration, every grievance, every want that has turned anger under his relentless suppression, and pushes the sole of his shoe against the surface of his abuela’s door and kicks it down, hard. upon impact, the wooden plank crashes and the chorus of its collapse reverberates against rotting walls with great finality.
there is nothing, though. only a walker’s already slaughtered body laying lifeless against the coffee table, it’s decaying skull bashed into concavity. santiagoflinches at the sight. clicking his tongue, he pushes aside his disgust. with cautious footsteps, santiago and dante draw closer inside to assess for safety, but still, there are no clear signs of danger. lowering his bat, he turns his head to look back at mateo. some residue of wariness remains, but santiago strives to keep his voice steady for the other boy’s sake. “i think you should sit,” he says. “there’s something i have to look for.” much of the house has been raided. not a window remains unshattered and most of abuela’s furniture has been toppled over, fragments of shattered vases scattered on the floor under decaying flowers and spilt old soil. at one end of the living room, the piano sits, untouched — what worth was music when the civilization had fallen into cacophony? — and santiago approaches it, dante following suit. ache pangs at his chest as he catches a glimpse of abuela’s old songbooks sitting atop the piano’s, but he pushes the pain aside. this is not what he is here for. rubbing his hands together, he readies his strength, and taking one deep breath, santiago pulls the upright piano away, revealing a deep hole carved into the living room wall. “mateo,” he calls, somehow satisfied with the sound of the boy’s name in his voice, “come check this out.”
try as he might, there is no satisfaction to be found in santi’s admission. despite the sneer in the boy’s voice, mateo hears it for the forfeit it is: you win. although he tries to bury it, there is a part of him that takes after his father, that revels in watching people drop to their knees at his feet. this time, it stays dormant. mateo looks at santi and thinks maybe the point of all the back and forth that had gone on between them had been for him to realise that they are equals, if nothing else.
‘ i take after my mother, ’ he says simply, and those five words contain more truths than santi can decipher, like–– anthony is not my biological father, and i had a mother once. it is lost on the boy who’s never met mateo’s foster father – and he doesn’t think santi cares to know these things about him anyway, not in this new world where family only means more people to lose – but it doesn’t matter. for a boy like mateo who is used to the taste of lies, every truth admitted, no matter how small, is almost liberating.
you remind me of your abuela, mateo thinks, but doesn’t say. on his bad days the elderly woman would take his hands in hers with a quiet ¿ qué pasa ? while watching him knowingly, her gaze far too lucid for someone who only ever saw ghosts. he’s told abuela jacinta a great many of his secrets over the years ( temo convertirse en mi padre, he had told her once. she had held him, whispered, no eres tu padre, and that was that. ) and even if there had always been something about her that inspired honesty, it had been all too easy to split himself open for someone who wouldn’t remember any of it. santi, though––
anything mateo says now, santi will not forget. and that should be reason enough for him to keep his mouth shut to prevent any more forgotten truths from slipping out, but he sees the curiosity in the boy’s eyes and surprises himself by just how much he wants to lay himself bare. mateo is no stranger to taking others apart; at one point he had thought that if he’d broken enough people open he might find someone like himself, only stopping when he’d realised that he’d remade them in his own image when he put them back together. he is the dante in everyone else’s stories, but he refuses to let this be the case with santi.
the front door is kicked down, torn completely off its hinges and leaving the entryway of the house wide open like a gaping wound. mateo is less surprised by the unnecessary force than he is by the fact that someone like santi is capable of it. you don’t know him either, a voice in his head that sounds strangely like the boy in question himself says, but the reminder only makes the corners of mateo’s lip twitch. i want to, he returns, and the voice goes quiet. mateo had made the mistake of thinking of abuela’s house as a holy ground, that santi’s desire to return had been fueled by sentiment more than practicality. he remembers his own house going up in flames and is reminded that there is no god in this wasteland and no sanctity to be desecrated. the prayer beads feel heavy in the pocket of his coat and he thinks maybe he is the sentimental one of the two of them.
they step into the house and it is a far cry from what mateo remembers of it, evidence of strangers traipsing through the place left behind in the form of overturned furniture and broken glass. he has to push down the surge of irrational anger at the state of the place, giving the other boy a nod as he makes his way to the living area, nose wrinkling at the odor of the rotting corpse as he finds a relatively clean armchair to sit on and tries not to drown in the memories of all the other times he’s sat there. shrugging his coat off is the hardest part, and then after that the cleaning of his wound is simple enough. his thoughts drift to santi as he applies the salve to his slightly flushed skin, and it takes him a moment to realise that he hasn’t imagined santi calling his name.
‘ ¡ ya voy ! ’ he calls back. even when it stands in ruins, spanish will always be mateo’s first language in abuela’s house. he makes quick work of re-dressing the wound, pulling his crumpled shirt out of his bag and putting it back on along with his coat before making his way over to where the other boy is. ‘ what is it ? ’ he asks as he approaches, but it turns out to be a question that doesn’t need an answer. there is a hole in the wall that looks too neat to be an accident, and sure enough, when mateo peers in, he spots the guns and ammunitions in the dark. there is a warmth that threatens to bloom in his chest –– a part of mateo thinks it is stupid of santi to show someone with no true loyalty except to himself a stash like this, although he wonders if this is proof of the boy’s naivety or if it is a deliberate show of trust. either way, he is honoured all the same.
‘ someone was prepared, ’ he remarks after letting out a low whistle. reaching in, the first gun he pulls out is a glock not unlike the one mateo already carries, only much, much newer and – upon ejection of the magazine – fully loaded. he clips the magazine back in, making sure that the trigger is seated backwards before holding it out to santi. ‘ has anyone ever taught you how to shoot a gun ? ’ it’s an offer as much as it is a question, the unspoken i can teach you hanging in the space between them, along with everything else they haven’t said.
