@spiderslung xoxo
it’s the first time he’s been back to france in three decades, and the world is falling apart.
for everyone else, it’s the war. gritty and violent and destructive. weapons we’ve never seen before, the headlines tout. the war to end all wars. finn’s already lived through one, but he doesn’t plan on seeing this one through, to see if they really mean to end all this suffering.
his hasn’t ceased since he saw peter die, held him in his arms, stroked his hair away from his paling face out on the plains of california. nothing can exorcise that kind of ghost. nothing can take away watching peter’s eyes dim, empty, vacate.
finn wishes he could drink. alcohol, of course, because drinking blood is what keeps him alive, half-alive, vaguely here, and he’s not sure he wants that anymore. a stupor would be preferable. sometimes he gets a taste of it one people who’ve been imbibing. cordials are too sweet. whiskey reminds him of his father. absinthe hits a sweet spot somewhere, makes him just the right kind of numb.
it’s what he’s hoping to find when he enters the bar. full of soldiers, like it always is at night, and just as full of gorgeous women, gorgeous men, doing their best to tempt a night away from the americans. finn’s got his eye on a handsome private and the girl in the floral, linen dress he’s talking to, heading over, knowing he only needs one to quench his thirst tonight, but gorging himself is all he is, until --
a voice at the bar. a bowed head. the slope of a familiar spine.
it can’t be, it can’t be, it can’t be, i watched him die, blood on my hands, dark in the eyes, he’s gone gone gone gone --
“peter?” hope bleeds into his voice. no, it hemorrhages into it. finn is gushing with it, some disgusting, beautiful, toxic bloom growing in his chest, fighting off any logic or confusion that try to combat it. “peter, is that you?”
