Ficmas 2k14: Elizabeth
merry fuckin ficmas, elizabeth anatolytrumper. saved yours for last, just to irritate you ;) you asked me for arik/roger and i don't completely hate the way it turned out. i love you and you're a nerd, i can't ucking wait to see you. hopefully this time next year we'll be together.
trigger warnings for #alcohol, #manipulation (sort of), #terminal illness
-
Of course, he knows the story well enough. His brother had been more than candid about his loathing for the kid, and he’d always had a bad habit of calling Arik up when he knew that his brother didn’t want to talk to him – not now, not ever, and especially not about whatever the hell he was rambling about right now.
According to Anatoly it went like this:
Freddie, young and impressionable as a baby chick, got lost one day on the way home from school after a fight with some big bully and was taken under the hideous wing of this cigarette-smoking, leather-jacket-wearing, silver-studded junkie of a hoodlum.
Of course, anyone who got that description would have assumed Freddie was thirteen. Trust Anatoly to dig his hole even deeper…
But Arik doesn’t particularly care about people who think his brother is a pervert. He doesn’t particularly care about anything to do with his brother at all, these days.
That’s an improvement – hell, that’s an accomplishment.
But here he is, Roger Davis in the flesh. He peers from beneath his overgrown, long-unwashed hair at the man seated on the stool nearest his, slumped listlessly over the bar.
Of course, after Anatoly’s trial, it had been obvious that he’d been provoked – the assault charges had been dropped and Davis had gone home in a huff, escorted by his anxious little chaperone. (some generic name – Marcus, something like that, all that Arik knew was that he looked about the same brand of pathetic that he’d come to associate with Anatoly, and he’d bet his entire liquor supply that they’d fooled around at least once)
Freddie had already been admitted to a clinic. Roger, it seemed, wasn’t trusted to be in the same ward – he was sent to a smaller scale hospital, closer to the slum he apparently lived in – and while both of them were issued misdemeanors it was obvious who got off with the raw end of the deal.
Freddie had no idea where Roger had ended up, and vice versa.
And Anatoly hadn’t heard a word since. Which apparently suited him just fine.
Arik, though, had been intrigued. Here’s a kid he could have been: desperate, cocky, hopelessly addicted. Here’s a kid he could have been, diagnosed with a terminal illness at nineteen, future sucked into some terrifying black hole of careless mistakes he’d spun all by himself. Trying desperately to drag someone, anyone, in with him.
Anatoly has no idea how close he came to being the Freddie to Arik’s Roger.
But it’s been months since then – long, tedious months in which Arik slowly began to accept that he wasn’t going back to Russia and found that he didn’t really miss it – and Roger looks like an entirely different person now, bedraggled and miserable.
Diagnosis – positive.
Once again, Arik finds himself forcibly reminded of himself at that age. Lost. Hopeless. Self-destructing. He starts to wonder if perhaps it would be best to just leave him there, go back home and –
And what? The entire reason he was here was to avoid Anatoly and his sickening love affair. His only other option was Florence and Svetlana’s home, and that was crawling with teenagers. Not the Roger type, but the young and naïve and wholesome kind, which he couldn’t stomach for the life of him.
No, he was safest here at the bar.
Roger stirred, groaning quietly. Arik wonders what he must look like, staring at this child over his glass, like a snake about to strike.
He relaxes his shoulders discreetly. He doesn’t want to appear too unapproachable.
Some buried curiosity is burning in him, wondering, connecting without his consent. He scowls at his own pathological synapses, but it’s no use. He’s helpless, as he always used to be – to Anatoly, to cocaine, to everything, until finally he burnt himself out and had to be fished out of someone else’s bathtub covered in vomit and hardly knowing his own name.
He thinks that this boy probably understands that precise feeling all too well, and another pang of sympathy makes him grit his teeth.
He finishes his drink and calls for another one. He’s not fucking drunk enough for this.
I am never drunk enough for anything.
He puts his lips to the glass again and refuses to glance over, although he can feel those weary, confused, half-heartedly angry eyes on him. I don’t care.
But he does. He does care.
He hates caring. He thought he’d stamped it out of himself years ago.
And now Anatoly’s jerking him around again, and he’s seeing himself in quasi-strangers in bars that he’s terribly fond of and unwilling to start avoiding, and there’s absolutely nothing he can do about it short of going on a drug binge.
He pauses and considers it for a moment, half-tempted. It’s been a good five years since he’s had one of those…
Maybe it’s time to –
“Hey. Hey. I know you.”
He doesn’t give any visible sign that he’s heard the boy, but internally he’s already wishing he’d escaped while he’d had the chance. Anatoly will be upset if he finds out about this later…
Well. All the more reason to do it, then.
“You were at the –” He glances over just in time to see Roger choke off the end of his sentence, going mottled red. His roots are growing out, his hair unwashed and looking as though it hasn’t seen a comb in all the months since Arik had seen him. He’s thinner, ghostly, and pale, and there’s at least three days’ worth of stubble unevenly gracing his gaunt cheeks. So much for youthful beauty.
“The trial?” he suggests, a wry smile creeping onto his lips. Roger scowls violently and shoves himself off of the stool, stumbling back. Before he knows what he’s doing, Arik is reaching out and grabbing him by the bony wrist, steadying him. “Yes. I was there. That was my brother, who you were testifying against.”
Roger looks more wary – maybe afraid? – than angry now. He yanks his arm away from him and rubs his wrist absently, eying him. “I could have guessed that.”
Arik looks down at himself impassively. He doesn’t look that much like Anatoly anymore, something he’s vaguely proud of and more than vaguely glad for. Apparently, though, the difference still doesn’t overcome the similarity.
“Good for you,” he says, finally, shrugging as he turns back to his drink. Let him go, then – Arik’s days of chasing possibilities were long over.
Roger seems to sense this; after a long, tense moment of hesitation, he slides back into his seat, glowering at Arik with barely concealed confusion.
“Come to gloat?” he mutters, and Arik snorts, covering his mouth.
Arrogant, isn’t he?
“For your information, I do not really care about your plight,” he tells him, lips still twitching at the thought. Lord, he can’t even remember being that caught up in his own misery. If he cares for no one, it’s only fair that no one cares for him. It doesn’t even hurt anymore. Roger seems to be realizing this, and his mouth takes on an uneasy slant.
Yes, it’s going to happen to you, too. Brace yourself.
Arik has a feeling that there’s a good reason he’s never mentored anyone.
“I did hear about your little disease,” he says slyly just as Roger’s opening his mouth to protest. The younger man glares at him and snaps it shut, but doesn’t move away. Arik finds it rather amusing. “I am jealous, frankly.”
“It’s a death sentence,” Roger says flatly. “And it’s none of your business.”
Humming, Arik glances over him again appraisingly. Attractive, even for what he is… No wonder my brother felt so threatened.
“Regardless, I do know.” He shrugs and puts on a disarming smile, wondering if it still works. Roger blinks at him owlishly. Perhaps it does. “Perhaps you’d be willing to extend your gift.”
“Gift?” His mouth works, half-horrified, half-incredulous. Arik is pleased enough with his plan – it was hastily put-together, but he recognizes an opportunity when he sees one.
Life is so tedious…
It would be undoubtedly excellent to have something hanging over his head like that, a safety net, a guarantee.
Nobody would even have to know.
“I am not enchanted with life,” he says, lowering his voice conspiratorially. Any care he’d felt for him is overridden by his own interest, now. There are certainly plenty of ways to contract a terminal illness, but this would be such a sweet risk to take, such a thrilling, dramatic ending. “I would not mind…”
It seems to click, then, and Roger’s face twists in pale fury. “Fuck you,” he spits, spinning away and stomping for the door. Arik watches him go and calmly sips his drink, contemplative.
Ah, well. Perhaps he’ll run into him again, convince him…
There’s no hurry. Death will come, eventually.
He exits the bar just in time to see Roger, skinny and shivering and pulling his jacket tight around him, turning the corner and racing away. His chest twinges again.
Despite himself, he wonders what it would be like to live – to love, or at least to care for someone again. To have an understanding.
He makes a decision. He will definitely be coming back to this bar.
Somehow, some way, he’ll change his life, and he’ll use this boy to do it.