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He must make a sorry sight to see. Bent over his half-drained glass of the cheapest beer in the joint, staring detachedly at the grain of the bar-top, clenching and unclenching his jaw so people didn’t think he was dead. Though more and more these days he felt that, in all aspects except physical, he was dead. He was only a few years off of 30 but felt like he was knocking on the door of an age much larger.
He knew everyone had left pieces of themselves on that beach, but Tommy’s had a face.
A face that even after nine long, long years since he’d last seen it, it woke him up at night more often than not. Made him feel like he couldn’t suck enough oxygen into his lungs no matter how hard he tried. It didn’t matter the violence- the deaths in their hundreds- that he saw afterwards, that one piece he’d left at Dunkirk stung the worst.
It wasn’t normal to be mourning the loss of someone he’d known for so little time- someone he’d shared so few words with, someone who’s name he didn’t even know- for such an extended time. He called him a name that belonged to someone else, someone who’s body now lay decomposed under the sands that had seen thousands of bodies just like his.
Tommy couldn’t shake the man’s face from his skull. The grateful curl to his cold-purpled lips as Tommy passed a canteen between them, the furrow between his brows as he trotted over the rickety board, hands holding the stretcher in a white-knuckled grip, the horrified roundness to his eyes as a gun is pressed between them.
Tommy swallows drily- finishes his glass to soothe the scratchiness. Orders another round. The bartender watches him a moment, before collecting the glass and pressing the tap to the rim- the wet ‘schwoop’ of the liquor filling the glass loud despite the din from the jukebox.
“Sweetie- do you want me to call someone?” the man asks as he carefully slides the glass back towards Tommy- he has a lisp that sharpens the ‘s’s in his words, and he must be covering for the usual bartender because the usual bartender knows there’s no use asking- to just shunt glass after glass until Tommy can blink without seeing those round green eyes and can go home and sleep dreamlessly for a couple hours before he wakes up to the neighbour’s with their small pack of young, loud kids who’d rather be sleeping than leaving for church before the sun rises over the horizon.
Tommy doesn’t look up at the man as he mumbles a no, and the bartender hesitates again before moving down the bar to serve someone else. He hoped the other bartender would be here next time. It had taken months for Tommy to find a pub that catered to his short but specific list of needs- needs that included cheap beer and staff that wouldn’t ask him difficult questions.
When the man returns, Tommy is prepared to make a hasty retreat under threat of further questioning- but when he notices a glass full of something more refined than the cheap stuff he’d been drinking for years is placed in front of him, he looks up from the grain of the table he’d been studying to fix the bartender with a puzzled look. Was he really that pathetic?
“It wasn’t me! Man from down the bar bought it for you,” he stated as soon as their eyes meet, gesturing vaguely to Tommy’s right before scuttling off to clean glasses. Tommy swallowed thickly- this wasn’t the first offer, and he was sure it wouldn’t be the last.
When he meets eyes that are shadowed by the dim light of the bar but green nonetheless he almost forgets to breath. Can feel the way his chest tightens and crushes down on his diaphragm and makes him feel like he needs to claw his lungs from his chest just to suck in a single breath.
But they’re not the same. Having seen them nonstop for years, Tommy could recognise them in seconds- it’s not him, but it is someone Tommy hadn’t seen for a long, long time.
He’d blamed Alex a lot for it- for killing Gibson, for threatening to kill Gibson. He’d spent hours upon hours conjuring narratives where Alex drowned him, where Alex didn’t tell him to swim, to survive. He’d spent all that time villainizing Alex to avoid the thoughts that would follow that blamed him. That told him that he did nothing to save Gibson. That Gibson had saved them time and time again, and the one time he needed them to return the favour, Tommy didn’t.
Alex has changed- time had been kinder to him than it had been to Tommy. He was worn and ran-down, but he still looked like the Alex that Tommy had pulled from the water all those years ago- was the same Alex that shouted and screamed at the soldiers in the lifeboat refusing them boarding after they’d been torpedoed. The same Alex whose eyes had glazed over with something feral in the Dutch ship and demanded Tommy force Gibson onto the deck or do it himself in his place.
He approached slowly, with a limp that Tommy noticed almost instantly before he tore his eyes away and back onto the grain of the benchtop.
“Almost didn’t see you there,” he started awkwardly- his voice was deep- rougher than Tommy remembered. It lacked the spark it had back then.
“What do you want, Alex?” Tommy hadn’t expected for himself to talk- had blurted it out when he met those green eyes and felt a swell of anger in his chest at the fact that they were a shade too blue. That they weren’t Gibson’s.
Alex gulped- Tommy saw the bob of his throat and the sheepish aversion of the man’s eyes from his face. He was meek- meek and… sad. He’d left his fight in 1945- like Tommy had left his piece of himself in 1940.
“I…”
Silence.
“I’m,”
Another gulp.
Tommy is almost knocked from his stool when he’s hit with the solid, warm force of Alex. The only thing that had stopped him from falling off completely being the arms holding him upright.
Tommy is standing now, and when he uneasily presses his hands to either side of Alex’s waist, he can feel the shuddering breaths racking the brunet’s body. He must have just come in from outside because his nose is still cold where it rests in the junction between Tommy’s neck and shoulder.
He can’t remember the last time he was hugged.
He didn’t see his family anymore- would rather break his mother’s heart in one clean snap with his absence than pick it apart over the years as she watched him turn into something unfamiliar and pitiful. He’s not her little boy anymore, he’s the skeleton in the closet.
He hasn’t let go of Alex, and Alex hasn’t let go of him. He’s crying into Tommy’s coat and Tommy buries his face into his shoulder until the face on the backs of his eyelids is muddled and mutilated by the pressure. He wonders if Alex carries his ghosts with his like Tommy does, he wonders if they look like Tommy’s. Does Alex remember Gibson like he does?
Is this Alex’s way of repenting? Is he still the villain that Tommy remembers him as? Or was he just a scared, cornered, beaten down man then like he was now?
Tommy’s hand slides up the middle of Alex’s back, coming to rest on the nape of his neck, holding the taller man against him- it brings on a new wave of sobs that shake the both of them, but Alex’s arms tighten around Tommy’s shoulders. He’s mumbling something over and over into Tommy’s coat and without thinking Tommy lets a long, soft ‘shh’ fall from between his lips, carding his fingers through the short hair on the back of Alex’s head that he’d last seen choked in oil that he knew took a week to fully wash from his own hair.
When they separate, Alex doesn’t look at him, staring down at the floor and furiously wiping at his eyes, like the shame of admitting what had just taken place would eat him alive. Like Tommy’s shoulder wasn’t wet with tears and repentance.
Tommy lets him have the drink Alex bought for him when they settle back on the stools- Tommy telling him that after years of stomaching the cheap stuff he probably couldn’t handle a real drink- like when he came back from his final deployment and after years of active service eating hard tack and sludge he could barely manage a few mouthful’s of the real stuff without feeling ill. Alex took long pauses where he stared off into nothing often and Tommy didn’t mind because more often than not he was doing the exact same thing.
They talked about nothing that mattered when they did talk. Both unwilling to address what both were thinking- why they couldn’t bear to look each other in the eye properly, why they’d had bags under their eyes from lack of sleep for years without change. Why they hadn’t seen their families since the end of the war and why they hadn’t moved on like the world wanted them to- why they were choosing to be ghosts instead of men.
Tommy feels a strange emotion bubbling under his skin- something akin to guilt, but without the usual bite guilt often came with. Perhaps seeing Alex face his own form of retribution had banished the demons temporarily. Perhaps seeing the key to many of Tommy’s nightmares had thrown something off within him.
They’re down to the last few songs before everyone is sent home for the night. Tommy isn’t feeling as fuzzy as he’d usually be by this hour, but Alex is swaying on his stool across from him, staring vaguely at the ring of condensation that had been left behind after the bartender took Tommy’s empty glass away.
“Alright, fellas, I’m going to have to chuff you off- is he going to be okay?” the barkeep asks as he returns, collecting Alex’s glass and waiting there for an answer until Tommy gave him one- he’ll be fine, I’ve got him. Tommy hadn’t had anyone since the war. It was an unwelcomed feeling- the last time he’d thought he’d had someone, they died. And now he’s sitting here drinking with the man responsible- just a pair of murderers.
He’d given up trying to excuse himself from Gibson’s death a long time ago- he’d known Alex wouldn’t help if the other man needed it, but he’d trusted the untrustworthy and he hadn’t had the balls to risk his neck to save Gibson’s. They were both guilty.
Tommy’s attention is caught when Alex stands up suddenly, shoving the stool away from himself once he has both feet on the ground. Tommy is standing in an instant, head spinning with the movement. “I love this song,” Alex mumbles slowly, wiping at his nose and starting towards the small clearing in the bar- the usual small throng was waning as patrons left for the night, but Alex didn’t seem intent on leaving.
“Alex, what are you doing?” Tommy wanted to go home- wanted to crawl into bed while his buzz remained so he could sleep without waking up at arsecrack o’clock in a cold sweat crying out for a dead man whose name he didn’t even know. Would never know.
But he couldn’t just… leave him.
“I’m dancing- because I’m too drunk to hate myself for it,” Alex is moving like a sinking ship- slowly keeling from one side to another- loose limbed and looser jointed. “You should join me- it’s a dance for two anyway,” he was approaching Tommy now, hands reached out and when they grasped at Tommy’s elbows where his arms were crossed against his chest, they were soft and needy, pulling softly at the fabric gathered at the joint. It was a slow dance, Tommy hadn’t slow danced in years- hadn’t danced in years. His head screamed at him to leave, to leave the past in the past and go home- go home to his sadness and his guilt and his ghosts.
Then they were dancing.
Tommy’s right hand held Alex’s out at their side, his other resting against the other man’s waist- they were dancing. It felt foreign and bizarre and it made Tommy’s heart ache in his chest that he was doing it with Alex in place of the man he would give his own leg to dance with, but it was nice. It felt nice to be doing something impulsive that wasn’t jeopardous to his health for once.
He leant into Alex’s chest, felt his chin brush the hair atop Tommy’s head, heard the frenzied beat of his heart under Tommy’s ear. When Alex finally spoke, Tommy could feel the rumble of his voice with every syllable.
“Do you see him?”
They’re still swaying to the slow drawl of the music, but Tommy feels as if all his joints have rusted in the few seconds it took Alex to ask the question. His mouth is dry, and he can feel his hands starting to prickle with perspiration.
“All the time,” he whispers, staring sidewards at the jukebox, glowing placidly in the corner. Stares at the artificial light until his eyes burn, leaving the outline of the machine even once he slides his gaze away from it.
“S’not your fault.”
Tommy mills over the claim for a few long moments, really chews on it. They both could’ve saved him- both should have saved him. Risked their own necks like Gibson had before. He’d trusted them- or at least chose to seek solace in them. Tommy couldn’t- couldn’t let himself walk free from it. He’d been almost conditioned to accept he was a killer- what was the comfort of another killer in telling him he didn’t do it?
He didn’t answer, just kept swaying, hiding himself from all the unanswered questions in the worn fabric of Alex’s shirt.
In the darkness he saw green eyes and dark, curly hair.
In the darkness he saw guilt and regret incarnate.
His eyes felt wet even when he squeezed them shut, fighting off the spill of tears threatening him. The song was ending soon- the world would be able to see he’s guilty of the crimes- see that he’s the evil monster he tried to convince himself Alex was.
When the song ends, he pulls away from Alex with a forced chuckle, and when he turns on his heel and starts a fast walk out of the bar, he ignores Alex calling after him.
When he gets home he lies in bed- Alex may think he’s free of blame, and Tommy may want to think he’s free of blame…
But he’ll believe it when he can blink without seeing those sad, green eyes.