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Summary
The old Harry is gone, and the only thing left of him is on Jean's arm.
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It’s an honour, they’re taught, to have another’s words written upon you. That’s how you know it means something/
The shitkid doesn’t even remember..Why would Harrier Du Bois ever have to deal with a consequence he could avoid or pass on to someone else?/
(On darker nights, he wonders if the old Harry could’ve done this, too. Could’ve found a way to become like this Harry. Gotten better (7 months sober). Made the stupid, itching, aching mark on his forearm something- he doesn’t know what. Not better, but less painful, maybe. Something to mark the past but not the future. Now it’s just the world’s shittiest epitaph.)//There’s no reason for Jean’s chest to feel so tight. It’s not like he died, except for how it is.
Harry went to Martinaise and came back. Harry went to Martinaise and never came back. //
Harry is looking at the black, bold words twisting down the inside of his right forearm.
I don’t want to get better. I want to get worse.
..The sound of the light switch flicking on is loud, the buzz of the lights louder. Jean can almost hear the gears turning in Harry’s head before he asks, hesitantly, “Did I know?”
Jean pulls out a shirt. It’s torn at the left wrist, caught on a chainlink fence, but it’s long enough to cover what needs to be covered. It’ll do. “You were there.”
// “Nothing. You did nothing. You said… that… and then you took one look at my arm and left.” For all the vitriol in his voice, he keeps it clinical. Doesn’t mention how it had been a screaming match. Doesn’t mention how the gut punch of hearing that mixed with the searing fucking pain of those words carving their way onto his skin. Doesn’t mention the ringing silence and the look on his face before he ran away, leaving for Martinaise. It doesn’t matter. Not anymore. Not to anyone but Jean.//
“Does it hurt?”
A laugh startles out of him, short and mean. He knows that tone. “Of course you want to do the can opener routine *now*. Yeah, shitkid, it does. Hasn’t stopped since I got it.”
Harry chews on his lip. “I don’t have a mark.”
Jean breathes through the sudden tightness in his chest. “I figured. That defined our partnership pretty well. You saying something fucking horrible, and me carrying it around for the both of us.”
//“He was (sorry) too, I think.”//
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“Talk to me,” Harry says. And. It’s stupid. It’s so *fucking* stupid, but it’s like a knife to the gut. Jean doesn’t flinch, but Harry’s eyes catch and sharpen on him regardless.“… I used to say that to you, before,” he feels out the words slowly, watching Jean’s face.
Jean swallows. Back, before it got bad, Harry’d gotten a sense for when Jean needed to get out of his own goddamn head. “Talk to me” had meant a lot of things. Meant there was nothing that the two of them couldn’t figure out. Meant the promise of however-fucking-long it took, beating the thing to death, shitty coffee growing cold and stale and packs of cigarettes disappearing between the two of them. Meant them against the whole fucking world, for the world. Idealistic shit that fell apart the second Harry did. A phrase that means nothing now, because this Harry doesn’t know what the fuck he’s saying.
“Jean,” he says lowly. “Talk to me. Please.”
Jean feels his face contort in a reflexive sneer. But before he can say anything, a sharp sting on his right arm stops him.
No. No fucking way.
Through the tear in his sleeve, letters slip into his skin again, pulled through like a threaded needle.
Talk to me. Please.
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He’s not sure what this means. Sure, he’s got a handful of theories starting, burning in his brain with implications that are, frankly, a little fucking terrifying. But there’s no way to know, to really know if this means what he wants it to.He can’t believe he’s even considering… Again? Doing this again? Really? Didn’t get enough punishment in those four years, gotta go back for seconds? He survived the last go around- maybe not unscathed, but he survived nonetheless. No guarantee of that if he tries again.
But fuck him, he hates not picking at a mystery. And maybe the universe knows that.
(And maybe there’s a little seed of interest he’s been ignoring, rooted in his chest under all the grief, about this known-unknown man.)
“Fine,” Jean says, pulling his arm away with a sharp tug. “You say you’re different? Better? You say you still fucking… *care*… fine. Prove it. Do better. But if you leave another mark on me, I’ll punch your teeth in.”
Harry’s face lights up. It’s embarrassing, sometimes, how easy to read he is now.
“I w-“ Harry starts to say, then yelps, slapping a hand to his still bare chest. Under his hand, the words Prove it. Do better. spell out in the same thick ink that lines Jean’s arm.
They stare at each other.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Jean says.
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Bookmark Notes:
ENDLESS PAIN. ENDLESS AGONY. MOVE ASIDE HARRY, YOU ARE NOT THE POOR LITTLE MEOW MEOW ANYMORE. JEAN, YOU ARE THE *MOST* PATHETIC POOR TRAGIC LITTLE MEOW MEOW LEFT IN THE RAIN. THIS. HUUUUUUURTS. AND THIS. HEAAAAAALLSSS. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHFJXJVKAJHFKCUKjckajfmdjzNncnvivjambc
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