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It’s times like these where Robert forgot just how foreign smiling had become. When he felt the slightest stretch in the corner of his lips, a terse wave of nostalgia washed over him, enveloping him like a warm hug. He could feel the brisk air against his teeth, and he could hear the faint rasp in his own voice as the first authentic guffaw trickled from his lips. And in between the apertures of time, even as the clock hand moves second by haste second, the planet seems to stop spinning on its axis. Everything is still, and the first wave of relief washes over Jimmy— who watches with almost disbelief— as he realizes that he didn’t completely lose the man he grew to love in the new decade that came to them with no remorse.
Robert peers blankly at Jimmy, his heart growing heavier, his mind recycling thoughts like an artist starting a new canvas; over and over until it was almost incessant. And as quick as the laughter came, it was swallowed down for the familiar lump in his throat to take its place. Tears welled in his eyes, and all he sees is the blurred image of Jimmy’s smile collapsing.
“Robert—“ He cuts himself off, his hand reaching out and finding its place on the former frontman’s shoulder. And Robert feels that if there was anymore weight put there, he’d just curl into a ball and wait for his own body to decompose. “Robert, tell me what’s wrong,” Jimmy tries again, and abruptly, this sadness that spurned from a mere flash of humor is corrupted, a broiling surge of vivid anger taking its place.
He quickly wipes his tears, bitterly pushing Jimmy’s hand off of him, eyes narrowing. He glares at Jimmy— Jimmy, who was as gangly as the hung man Robert saw in his own nightmares. Jimmy, who was so far gone that Robert felt he’d lost more than one person who meant the utter world to him in the same year.
“How could you ask that? Don’t you know what’s happening? Don’t you know what happened?” Robert no longer sees a vast sea of flowers in a green field when he closes his eyes. He no longer feels the radiance of the sun, because it ostensibly fails to reach him every time he goes out these days. Instead, he’s sinking into this abyss, one where his beloved friend Bonzo couldn’t reach him from the grandiose heights of Heaven.
When Robert closes his eyes, he sees red.
He pinches the bridge of his nose, relishing the feeling of each breath that he worked into his body, letting it go with the same sense of hope, hope that it could take away his pain with its departure.
“Maureen is going to leave me soon,” he whispers, and he doesn’t look for any sign of consolation from Jimmy. No, his eyes remain closed, that world of red engulfing him. “I’m forgetting what my own kids’ faces look like, and Logan’s only so young. How is he going to grow up with a father, though only to find out that he’s been without one the entire time?”
Jimmy is reticent, as though he’d made an escape without Robert’s eyes on him. But the latter didn’t care enough anymore to confirm that thought. He was losing himself in this world of red, bathing in it, existing in it as though a world of green and blue was not where he belonged.
“I’m falling apart, Jimmy, and I need you to bring me back together. I need you to be my other half again, I need you to be the glue that keeps me in one piece again. I need you to breathe life back to me. Why are you all that’s left? How could you be all that’s left?”
A soft sigh sounds from beside Robert, and he couldn’t tell whether he was relieved or not that Jimmy was still here.
“You need to quit relying on me; that’s what your problem is—”
“Don’t you dare tell me what my problem is,” Robert spits harshly.
Red. Red. Red.
“You, you’re so fucked that you think you know what’s going on? You don’t, Jimmy! You just- You don’t!” Robert inhales sharply, and the air no longer feels replenishing. Instead, each breath comes to him like a dozen piercing knives, so much pain that it was almost tangible in the worst way imaginable.
And Jimmy was just so high that Robert couldn’t reach him, just the way he couldn’t reach dearest John.
He opens his eyes, just barely witnessing the glinting tear that streams down Jimmy’s cheek before it falls onto his lap, seeping into the light blue denim, forming a dark spot that serves as the only evidence of its existence.
Robert reaches out, his fingers lacing themselves into dark, oleaginous strands of Jimmy’s hair, no longer as thick and healthy as it used to be.
“Come back to me,” Robert whispers, pressing his forehead against the other man’s, his eyes not daring to close for another moment as he experiences reality.
“Come back to me, Jimmy.”