Chapter Text
Sunnydale Bus Station, Sunnydale, California - November 4th 2001
Rupert puts on a cassette for the drive, JJ Burnell’s half sung-half shouted lyrics drowning out all the words they’re not saying to one another.
John stares out of the window, his fingers tapping a rhythm on his thigh. Rupert can’t seem to stop himself from glancing across at him, committing to memory all the ways John’s changed since they were young, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth, the way the blond of his hair has started to fade, and all the ways he’s stayed the same. Wonders what he’d look like if things had been different. If he’d have lost that feral cornered-animal tension if it hadn’t been for Newcastle. If he’d still be magnetic if he had a whole soul.
If the world would be better or worse or gone entirely if John had settled down and had a family instead of stumbling his way through thwarting angels and demons alike.
It’s not a long drive, and the opening chords of No More Heroes are just making their strangely appropriate entrance as they pull into the bus station. All the same, Rupert is glad to be out of the car.
John’s got papers and baccy in his hand before they’re even fully stopped, and Rupert is surprised and strangely touched that he waited until he was out of the car to light up. When John hands him a second rolly, unevenly rolled and no filter (John’s usually a tailors man but maybe he can’t get a brand he likes out here) he accepts it without a word and lets John light it for him.
They smoke in a silence that feels achingly familiar. Sitting around the wobbly table in Giles’s flat, both too hungover to speak, waiting for Ronni or Gaz or Richie to take pity and make them something greasy to eat. Or on the rare occasions when Rupert was the only hungover one, sitting with his head in his hands trying not to vomit while John fried eggs to rubber and sang Cilla Black songs off-key and too loud but mercifully never tried to speak.
It had been no way to live, and in that moment Rupert misses it so much he feels hollow with it.
John hasn’t got any luggage, or anything at all except the clothes he stands up in and whatever it is he keeps in his coat’s voluminous pockets. Presumably there’s a wallet in one of them, but Rupert doesn’t bother offering, just steps up to the booth to buy the ticket that will take John to San Francisco.
It might have been a lifetime ago, but he remembers how to be John’s friend, the good and the bad of it.
“You remember the night we saw the Adverts in the Roxy?” John asks, accepting the ticket without even looking at it.
“We were drinking lager and black,” Rupert says. “Fuck knows why. I’ve never had a hangover like it.”
John laughs, sudden and unexpected. “That is a bloody lie. Remember Beano’s twenty first? Gaz brought two barrels of rough cider off some bloke he met in the Trinity, and Chaz had that stuff he claimed was genuine morrocan hashish.”
“Fuck, don’t remind me. God, why did we do that to ourselves?”
“Well I was doing it because I was fucked-up beyond any hope of saving even before I discovered magic. I never really knew why you did it.”
“Because when I was twenty, being a disappointment to my father seemed like the best thing I could do with my life. And because I was young and stupid enough that I remembered the good times and forget about the consequences, even when the conseqences were waking up with someone else’s vomit on my boxers.”
“That’ll do it.”
“And because… because you made it look effortless. Exciting. You made being in the scene look like the only worthwhile way to live.”
John snorts. “Sorry about that.”
“I wouldn’t have traded it. God, I thought I was the cleverest bastard on the planet and still… You probably don’t even remember, but there was this one night I ended up sharing someone’s spare bed with you and Mitchell. I think it was the first time I actually met him. I woke up in the middle of the night and the two of you hadn’t been to sleep yet, you were just talking and staring into one another’s eyes and you could have cut the sexual tension with a knife and I thought… I thought what would it be like, if it was me you were staring at? Me you were fucking?”
“It would have been a bloody disaster,” John says bluntly. “You know it would. God, we’d have been terrible together.”
“Yeah, probably. Especially because I didn’t even really fancy you. Might have been worth it anyway just for the scandal it would have caused. Can you imagine the look on my dad’s face the first time I took you home for Christmas?”
“Imagine the look on Cheryl’s face the first time I took you back to Liverpool and she heard your accent,” John counters.
“She met Roni didn’t she? She was way posher than me.”
As soon as he’s said it, he knows it was the wrong thing to say. John looks away, his shoulders stiff and his jaw tensed. Rupert wants to apologise but he doesn’t know what for until John says very quietly, “No. She never did.”
“Oh.” He hadn’t thought John had any regrets over Roni, but this John is older and sadder and weighed down by so much more guilt than the laughing punk in Giles’s memories. “I didn’t know.”
“She always wanted to. I kept putting it off. She’d never wanted for anything, and she wouldn’t… She wouldn’t have understood.”
Understood poverty, and broken homes, and a complicated relationship with an abusive father he means. Rupert wouldn’t have either, at that age. He’s not entirely sure he would now, but at least he knows enough to recognise his own ignorance.
“Has Zatanna ever…?”
“Once. Nick never did, even though he’s the only one who would have understood. We were talking about it, before… before. We didn’t get a chance.”
And God, there’s the reminder Rupert hadn’t needed of all the ways John’s life has been fucked up and all the ways Rupert is responsible.
Behind them a bus pulls in and someone yells that it’s boarding for San Francisco.
“That’s my queue,” John says, pinching out the end of his cigarette and tucking the dog end behind his ear. “I’d better get going.”
It’s now or never, and John wouldn’t want an apology but Buffy was right. Maybe Rupert needs to give one all the same.
“John, before you go… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
John looks surprised. “For what mate?”
“Newcastle. You called me for help, and I was too cowardly to actually give it, even though you’d always been there for me. Maybe I couldn’t have stopped it, but now I’ll never know and the thought that I could, that I might have been able to help… God, I’m so sorry.”
To Rupert’s dawning horror, John actually laughs. “Don’t worry about it mate. Hand to God, I’d forgotten I’d even asked.” He smiles, and there’s none of the sun-bright manic joy Rupert remembers in it. His teeth are crooked and tobacco stained, and he has old half-faded scars that Rupert doesn’t recognise, and his eyes are very very old. “Water under the bridge.”
He pulls Rupert into a rough hug. “See you around, you great Southern pansy.”
“Not if I see you first,” Rupert says, his mouth acting on auto-pilot, a call and response so familiar his brain’s input isn’t required.
And then he stands there, and watches John walk away, and thinks about the fact that he was right all along.
Some things you don’t get absolution for.