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It had been months since the funeral.
Nick really wasn’t surprised when they fired him from his job. Or maybe, through the unending haze of alcohol, he simply didn’t care.
Jay Gatsby was dead. Dead. Dead.
Nick slouched against the mantelpiece, bloodshot eyes staring at nothing. There was nothing but silence to accompany him tonight. Nothing but silence and drink, to which he had lost so many days to. The clock had stopped long ago. Not that he was keeping track of time, anyway. The weeks quickly blended one into the other without Gatsby’s parties to mark the ends of them.
How long had it been since the nightmares? Vivid images of Gatsby’s bloodied body floated to the forefront of his mind, and he chased them away with another swallow of liquor. So lost was Nick in his disoriented fog of despair that he failed to notice the knock on his front door, and the subsequent tentative squeak of the doorknob. He barely looked up when a figure stepped cautiously into the room.
“Nick? It’s me, old sport.”
As if suddenly awakening from his stupor, Nick jolts up to locate the source of the voice, eyes roving clumsily around the room in a drink fueled desperation. A shaky hand reaches longingly towards him before Nick clumsily withdraws.
“Back again, are you?”
“Back?” the voice speaks slowly this time, as if savouring the word.
“I’ve only just come back, old sport, are you quite all right?” again, with a tinge of creeping concern.
“Yes, yes,” Nick babbles, “I know. You left a few days ago, didn’t you?” He laughs, bordering on hysterical, and takes another swig from the bottle. “I saw you. I watched you leave me again, and again, and again.”
“A few days ago?”
“Yes,” Nick says, impatiently this time. “You left a few days ago. Come, you weren’t so dull last I saw you.”
He shifts clumsily in the ensuing silence, trying to find purchase on the slippery floor tiles and only managing to further crease his outfit. It didn’t matter. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d bathed, anyway.
“…old sport?” the voice again, cautious this time. “Do you know who I am?”
“Of course,” Nick snorts. “You – “ a hysterical giggle escapes as Nick scrubs roughly at his watering eyes.
“You’re Jay Gatsby. You’re dead. Stop playing games, we’ve done this a million times already.”
Jay Gatsby stands from where he is crouched in front of Nick Carraway in his abysmally filthy kitchen, utterly perplexed.
“Nick. Nick!”
“What?” Nick snaps. He's sick and tired of this, and some part of him knows he doesn’t want to unleash his rage on Jay Gatsby, but a larger part of him tells him he fully deserves it.
“Go away. I’m sick of you always coming back and torturing me. My life is a living hell already, can’t you just stay dead?”
Gatsby flinches.
Suddenly exhausted, Nick collapses back against the mantelpiece and closes his eyes.
He hears the dejected retreat of footsteps and the soft click of the door closing before he is lost to unconsciousness.
Three days later, Gatsby appears in Nick’s living room again. This time, Nick is sprawled unceremoniously on the couch, shirt askew and surrounded by empty bottles. He could be drooling, Nick thinks distantly, but there’s no one around to care.
He’s dead. Why is he walking around? Why isn't he standing there like he usually does?
Suddenly, Gatsby is right in Nick’s face, and his eyes are just as warm and brilliant as he remembered and Nick feels his heart clench as he starts sobbing all over again. When had he stopped crying, anyway? Gatsby freezes as Nick proceeds to cry, great heart wrenching sobs filling the air around them both.
“Nick, Nick, old sport, what… what can I do to fix this?”
His chest fills with rage once more as he whips round to face the figure.
“Nothing!” Nick shouts.
He swipes furiously at the tears still streaming down his face and tries to pretend that he isn’t completely and utterly broken over the loss of Jay Gatsby.
“You can’t do anything, because you’re dead!” Gatsby watches in stunned, silent horror as Nick sinks down to the floor and buries his head in his knees.
“Why do you keep coming back?” Nick mumbles.
“Well… because… you are my dearest friend, old sport,” Gatsby says, hesitantly.
He is met with silence.
Gatsby leaves.
The third time Gatsby comes back, Nick sees red.
“Nick, please –“
“No!” Nick roars.
“You don’t get to do this anymore. You were all I had!”
Perhaps it was the alcohol. Perhaps it was the persistence of the memory that would not stop haunting his very existence and the culmination of all his rage at the world that let this fate befall Jay Gatsby that made Nick hurl whatever he was holding at the figure with all his strength. This happened to be an empty glass bottle, which Nick fully expected to fly through Gatsby and smash against the wall in a horrific explosion of shards like they normally did.
However, it did not. Gatsby dodged quickly out of the way, but not before the bottle grazed his arm and exploded into hundreds of tiny splinters at his feet. Nick couldn’t breathe.
Specters didn’t do that.
They weren’t real, corporeal figures… not like the one standing before him. Nick only realized he wasn’t breathing until he dimly observed that everything before him was growing fuzzy. He gasped, and flinched back from Gatsby, who reached out to him as he tried to pull him back upright.
Nick didn’t miss the pain that flashed across Gatsby’s handsome features as he wrung his hands, wanting to help but desperately unsure. He blinked rapidly, trying to take in as much of Gatsby as possible.
He couldn’t be real. It was impossible.
The very vivid, very real and very much alive figure of Jay Gatsby swam before him and all he could feel was joy, and betrayal, and anger, and everything all at once, and the last thing he heard before blacking out was that voice, desperate, calling out to him.
Nick came to with a pounding headache.
There was silence.
So it was only a dream after all.
He was bitterly, devastatingly disappointed.
Until he heard the squeak of the doorknob and the slam of the door, and Jay Gatsby was standing in front of him once more, looking as real as he could be.
They stared at each other for a few seconds.
Eventually, Nick broke the silence.
“Where… where did you go?” he asked, hoarsely, disbelievingly.
“I went for a walk…?” answered Gatsby uneasily, looking endearingly and infuriatingly confused.
An incredulous chuckle escaped Nick.
“Never have I wanted to punch someone in the face so much before.”
“Ah,” said Gatsby, and he slipped out of his stiffened posture to sag his shoulders and rub sheepishly at the back of his neck.
“I probably deserve that.”
“You’re real,” Nick whispers, “you’re really alive.”
Gatsby smiles uncertainly. “I certainly hope so, old sport.”
“Can I…?” Nick reaches out slowly towards him with trembling fingers.
Gatsby shuffles closer, and Nick’s fingertips brush the stiff fabric of his suit. A ragged gasp escapes Nick’s throat, and suddenly, he is grasping at Gatsby’s suit jacket with both hands, desperately trying to pull him closer and convince himself that this Gatsby in front of him would not simply disappear like all the others. Gatsby allowed it, standing silently as he observed the sobbing man clinging to him.
He would spend the rest of his life atoning for what he had done to sweet, trusting Nick Carraway, and grimly allowed the feeling of guilt to worm its way into the center of his heart. Nick was all but hugging Gatsby now, soaking his shirt front with tears and sobbing into his chest. There was a choked gasp from the man before him as Gatsby slowly gathered Nick in his arms, pulling him even closer and swallowing hard when he realized Nick was so thin it was like holding him together, and he would surely break at any moment.
None of them spoke, and sagged to a heap on the floor, clinging to each other as if the other would fall to pieces if they let go as the rays of the morning sun broke through the house that had for so long been filled with darkness.