Chapter Text
“SONNY DE LA VEGA!"
Usnavi de la Vega slammed his fist on the counter and sighed. According to his watch, it was almost three o’clock. The bodega was empty except for him and Sonny’s stupid candy bar wrapper sitting on the counter next to him. He knew he should throw it away, but that wasn’t the point. For the principle of the thing, he should wait until his cousin came back in and then demand that he take care of his own shit. So the candy bar didn’t move.
Sonny was out back sorting the trash. Well, Usnavi thought, “sorting the trash.” He used the phrase loosely for a multitude of reasons: 1) Sonny looked FORWARD to doing it every day, anxiously fidgeting until two o'clock came around and then practically running out to the back, 2) actually rummaging through trash shouldn’t take SO DAMN LONG, and 3) nobody grinned that hugely after coming back from a wallow in old filth. Sometimes he heard voices coming from the dumpster behind their bodega, loud laughing and happy conversation drifting through the air.
Usnavi just hoped Sonny wasn’t hanging out with Graffiti Pete. The punk was the worst possible role model for his cousin, himself included. His eyes narrowed and he prickled with anger whenever the stupid vandal followed Sonny through the doors of his bodega, singing a stupid sales pitch or bragging about his latest “project” (read: his initials and some color plastered on an empty wall). He prickled even more when Sonny looked back at him, laughing, talking, defending him against Usnavi’s protests. Their conversation was too friendly and their laughs rolled off too easily for his taste.
Thinking of the pair caused an all-too familiar throbbing just above Usnavi’s right eye. He rubbed it absentmindedly. The pain was always there, but sometimes it hit especially hard; when he thought about Vanessa (which was more often than he’d like to admit), when he listened to debates on TV, and when he heard certain phrases (Some odd ones being “ten duel commandments” and “non-stop”). Abuela Claudia said it was his encephalitis, caused by a recurrence of measles. Or something. He kind of tuned out all the medical talk. He’d have to go to her apartment and get another dose of the blue pills she said kept the problem at bay.
Thinking about Abuela brought a smile to his lips, despite the throbbing pain pounding insistently at his eyebrow. She had always been there for him. He’d returned to the barrio about four years ago after he got out of the hospital. Well, “returned.” He was very confused; he had woken up in a hospital bed next to a couple in adjacent beds who mumbled to each other as if they were the only two in the world. The nurses told him that those were his parents, and that they had gotten the same brain disease that he had (so they didn’t recognize him, not that it was much of a problem, seeing as he didn’t recognize THEM either). They told him that the three of them (him and his parents) had lived in a little place in Washington Heights, and that his parents owned a store on a corner there. However, Usnavi didn’t remember any of it. He didn’t try very hard, of course, because it brought on the eye-throbbing with such tremendous force that he’d cry out, and the doctors would rush in and inject some sort of chemical into his IV line until the pain subsided.
Abuela lived a few rooms over from him, but he was in her house so often it was basically his. She was the first one to greet him after a black car had dropped him and a tiny suitcase off on a freezing cold corner in the middle of winter, a couple of days after his parents had finally gotten sick and passed away. He had been startled when she immediately pulled him into a hug and whispered, “Usnavi. ¿Cómo estás?” From there, he had been led by her hand, quite literally, into his new (or, well, old?) life.
Abuela Claudia had introduced him to Sonny, who was apparently a cousin of his. He was also greeted by a few people who passed by on the street: the owner of a dispatch station, a piraguero, and some girls who stuck their head out of a salon just in time to see him walk past. The only face he found familiar belonged to a man his age they called Benny, who was apparently a childhood friend of his.
“And this is your store,” Abuela had said, gesturing to the building on the same corner he’d been dropped off at after taking a round-trip around the neighborhood. Abuela had kept a running commentary the whole time, but Usnavi hadn’t been paying much attention. He was looking for something, anything, that looked familiar. Thus far, only Benny.
He looked at it apprehensively at her words. “MY store?” He’d asked.
“It was your parents’ before they passed,” Abuela replied gently. “It’s yours now. Your cousin Sonny was in charge of it while you guys were in the hospital. He’s in there now.”
Usnavi had looked up at her. “Why don’t I remember any of this?” He’d asked. He watched her kind eyes and wrinkles get smaller as her lips tugged into a gentle smile. “All in good time, Usnavi. Paciencia y fe. I will take you to your apartment and we will talk more there.” They had gone to their apartment and Abuela had explained more about the infection, the encephalitis, all the pills that it required, and a crap ton of other medical stuff. His amnesia was apparently caused by whatever brain inflammation he had suffered. The only thing that wasn’t entirely clear was why his head hurt so damn much, but she’d chalked it up to a side effect of his sickness, and Usnavi was inclined to believe her. He’d only really known her for an hour then (well, in lucid memory), but he already knew that she’d never lie to him.
She had tried to make up for the lack of explanation by talking more about his past life. Apparently, he’d lived just on the edge of Washington Heights in a house with his parents. He had a couple friends in the Heights from high school, and his parents had owned a bodega in the heart of the barrio.
He’d pretended like some of the story was familiar.
It wasn’t.
“Jesus,” he sighed under his breath. It was so frustrating how vividly he remembered that first day four years ago, but how murky the day before it, or any days before that, were. Of course, he’d grown to love the barrio, and all the people in it. It had only been a matter of days before faces started to look familiar, regular customers and new (or old) friends. And it had only taken the entire four years to ask Vanessa out (well, technically Sonny did it for him, but still). But sometimes he looked out of his bodega window and wondered what would happen if he left, if he went to where his parents were from (Dominican Republic, according to the little stuff that he could remember them rambling about). He wondered if things would come back to him, if the dying embers of their stories would spark memories in his own mind.
“YO USNAVI!” A voice shook him out of his thoughts and he jumped, turning toward the source of it. It was Jose, a regular customer. “Where’s the motherfucking rice?”
“Aisle three,” he responded. This was a normal exchange for them; Jose was loud and brash and owned the liquor store right down the street, which explained his constant lack of self-awareness. Daniela had mentioned he’d been sleeping with Julio, too, which was just another piece of information he’d added to his running memory bank.
He knew his regular customers like the back of his hand. There was Jose, and Julio, the constant flirt, and Yesenia, Julio’s girlfriend (or, rather, ex-girlfriend, he supposed), Yolanda, who didn’t speak english, Pablo, who only came in for sour lemonheads, Gina, who never came in when Sonny was around because apparently they dated and it hadn't ended well, and a whole bunch more. Between the bodega and the salon next door, he figured that they knew more things about the people who lived there than anyone else. They certainly knew more secrets and gossip than they would have liked, that was for sure. Something about the ambience of the place, he assumed, made people believe that it was like the confession booth of the ghetto. It was just something he’d come to accept with the territory.
Jose paid for his (motherfucking) rice by walking out with a sack of it on his shoulders and calling out, “just add it to my tab.” Problem was, he didn’t have a tab.
Usnavi sure as hell wasn’t going to call out an angry drunk on the fact, though, so he sighed and picked up a pen, scribbling the cost down on a slip of paper. Jose was usually sober in the mornings before work, so he’d remind him about it then. He was always apologetic about the stuff he did when he was drunk, so he’d pay it back immediately.
The bodega bell chimed again and he looked up to see Yesenia. He gave her a smile, but it appeared that she was trying to hide her face because she ignored him and made a beeline for the freezer.
Poor girl, he thought. As much as he knew about the happenings around town, he’d made a promise to himself long ago not to get too involved with them. Still, he hated seeing people so sad. He made up his mind and gave her another smile as she walked up to the cash register with a quart of vanilla ice cream and a plastic spoon, still hiding her face.
“Rough day?” He asked, and she just nodded.
He offered her the metal spoon he used to stir coffee and she finally looked up at him. Her eyes were a little puffy and bloodshot, and her cheeks were all red. She sniffled, confused.
“You can’t let any anger out with that flimsy plastic spoon. Use this instead,” he told her, handing her the metal one. She took it slowly and looked back up at him.
“And don’t worry about the ice cream. It’s on me.”
Oh, how good it made him feel when he could make somebody smile. She sniffled again as she picked up the ice cream quart and put the spoon on top, but he could tell her mood had brightened.
“Thanks, Usnavi,” she smiled, nodding before turning and heading out the door.
He watched her go, smiling despite himself. The bodega bell rang cheerily again as she exited. You’ve got to stop giving stuff away for free, he reminded himself, but then ignored the thought. It was for a good cause, anyway.
Usnavi turned around at the sound of the back door opening and closing, and composed his face just in time to glare at Sonny as he emerged through the doorway, grinning widely.
“Sonny, you’re late. You were supposed to be back half an hour ago.”
“Chillax, cuz, you know you love me.”
“Shut up and do something productive. Get some dirt on those Nikes.” With that, Sonny’s smile grew even wider as he shuffled to a side room to unpack boxes. Usnavi sighed, watching him leave with a growing annoyance, both at his nonchalance and the fact that he'd forgotten to remind him about the candy wrapper.
Goddammit, you had ONE FUCKING JOB, Usnavi, he thought, frowning until the bell on the front door indicated a new customer.
He turned around and met a very strange sight indeed.
There was a man, not much taller than him, standing frozen just past the doorframe. The door behind him closed, sending a whirl of wind through his curly brown hair. Freckles covered his face and hands, and had he not been wearing a jacket, Usnavi would have seen the dots splashed across his arms, too. He stood stock-still, one arm slightly behind him in an attempt to catch the already-closed door, his feet paused mid-step, as he stared at Usnavi.
And he was gorgeous.
Usnavi never stood still. If he was nervous, he’d bite his lip, or drum his fingers on the counter, or tap his foot. Now he found himself doing all three. Feeling more than slightly uncomfortable under such scrutiny by such a handsome man, he directed his gaze to the stranger’s eyes, opening his mouth in an attempt to form a greeting, and immediately closing it, helpless.
Cute Stranger had brilliant green eyes shaped like almonds, with wide, dark pupils and thick eyelashes. Usnavi was staring back at this point, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Besides the fact that the man was built like a fucking god, his eyes sparked something in Usnavi’s mind.
He was sure he’d seen this man before. He tried to place the face, and realized abruptly that the throbbing in his eyebrow, which had always beat dully when he thought about his past, was now completely silent, gone.
The man broke him out of his reverie, his green eyes wide, as he took a step forward tentatively, almost as if Usnavi would dissolve if he moved any faster. His lips parted and he seemed to be struggling for words. Finally, a single word escaped from his mouth, barely a whisper.
“Alexander?”
It was Usnavi’s turn to stand frozen.