Chapter Text
New York, New York
Even in The House of the Dead where they had their own King, all the Ghoulies fell on their symbolic hands and knees when Javier Lodge walked through their territory. Whispered cautions and wary eyes followed the Lodges as they made their way through The House. Heads bowed in respect and impressed, almost longing sighs. They were guns held to chests and knives between long fingers but it meant nothing as the head of Lodge Cartel saunters through, men at either side and more fierce than any Ghoulie in their presence. With nothing to lose, fear doesn’t break bread with Javier’s men. And he drinks from no cup offered to him with respect.
The weapons are almost reduced to toys when Javier Lodge is in the room.
Hiram Lodge quickly hurries behind his father, trying to match every step. Hiram knows he has no men at his sides but it’s only a matter of time. He only tries to match every step because one day soon, he’ll be trying to follow his father’s footsteps, leading the way.
It was elegiac that he would be face to face with Gladys Swan. One moment they’re both students of Riverdale High and in this moment, amongst the fucked up empires both of their families have built, they’re some messed up version of heirs to thrones.
Hiram watches his father intently. His father was never, ever one to take business matters into his own hands, not when he had built his empire from the ground up with his blood, sweat and tears. He had many men who helped run his Cartel, there was no need for him to be in the frontline.
But here he is, Javier Lodge speaking to the President of the Ghoulies. Their hands meet in the middle. Hiram watches from the side.
He can’t take his eyes off Gladys. Even at sixteen, she wears the Ghoulies kutte like she was born with it as a skin. Her eyes are dark in their clubhouse. And they seem deeper than an ocean. Burning with a fire.
A Queen to a throne.
“My son, he’s rising up the ranks,” his father says, slapping a hand against Hiram’s back. It knocks the breath out of him. He doesn’t think he’s ready.
Gladys sniggers quietly and he shoots her back at glare.
Gladys’s father doesn’t hesitate in shooting back at Hiram’s. “My daughter is already at the top…” A twitch in his hand to a sawn off on his hip’s side.
And just like that, Hiram knows, they’re no longer children.
They’re heirs to thrones.
Thrones sitting on top of a pretty pile of chopped up dust.
They’re ruling the underbelly. It’s only a matter of time.
It’s a mess of blues and greys. And they’re both sitting in a metaphorical mess of not being able to be high school kids and not being able to be adults either.
On one hand, Sweetwater River is where they spend the summer. On the other, he doesn’t know how many bodies turn the river a mess of blues and greys. Murky and bloodied.
He’d heard the stories. And he was only eight years old when he sat in the back of his father’s car as his father put a barrel to a man’s head and watched him fall into the river.
Red is so bright when it rises to the surface.
Red is so bright when it’s covering your father’s white, pressed shirt.
It’s winter and the river’s running past them. Blue water in a grey chill. Hiram feels weird asking; “Did you finish that English assignment?”
It feels jarring against the way she offers him a stick of Jingle Jangle and he takes it. “I don’t think you should be using your own product,” Gladys sniggers. “But yeah, I finished it.”
Hiram ponders, rubbing his nose. “How much do you charge?”
Gladys punches him square in the nose before scrambling for her pocket, ripping out a pocket knife and holding it to his throat. One swift move, all pretty like a scene out of renaissance painting. “Ask me that question one more time and you’ll see that you pay in blood,” she hisses. He swears her hair blows in the breeze. Her black-painted nails against the pretty-pink handle of her switch.
His own bitten down nails cling on to the gearstick of his car.
Hiram’s throat sits on his tongue and his heart beats its way so aggressively out of his chest, it feels like it’s cracking a rib. “Fuck, Gladys!” he yells. “I’m only asking how much I need to pay for you to do my homework!”
In one quick click, her knife is tucked away and her eyes still frown, but her lips turn upwards. “Oh,” she says quickly. “Twenty…”
Hiram takes a deep breath, shaking his head, he reaches into his pocket. “Here’s fifty.”
She takes it without hesitating. “I’ll be saving this cash to buy the Drive In,” she explains. “Every dollar counts.”
She starts right then and there, scribbling notes for his homework that he’s just paid for while they sit in his car.
Kids .
She wears her Ghoulies kutte and he’s strapped up.
Sin .
He finds it hard to convince Mary that he’s doing any sort of homework. He’s not good at lying, and especially not to her.
Her room is small and there’s a lot more yellow in the place than he would have thought. He really thought she was a pink girl.
Hal’s hunched over on the floor, brow knitted with concentration and he’s chewing the end of his pencil so much, it’s reduced down to nothing. Hiram just lies back on Mary’s bed, legs crossed at the ankles and he reads over the same line of their trig book until he’s sure the words don’t even exist in the English language.
He feels like an asshole even thinking about it, but sometimes, the simplicity of his friend’s world’s comfort him. Sometimes the only peace he gets is pretending to study in Mary’s room and though her incessant nagging can at times become unbearable, it’s a normalcy he’d forever choose over the noise of his own world.
Like clockwork, Mary clears her throat. “The book isn’t going to read itself, Hiram…” she warns.
Hiram rolls his eyes behind the shield of the book. “How do you know I’m not reading?”
“You’re not even pretending to turn the pages.”
Hiram curses himself internally. “Right. Sorry, mom .”
Mary smiles to herself. “I’m not going to have the two of you fail on me and I have to carry that on my conscience for the rest of my life.”
“Hey!” Hal snaps, ripping his eyes from his notes for the first time all afternoon. “Speak for Hiram, but I’m working my ass off over here.”
“And what about you, Hal? Trying to become Mary’s favourite child by studying like a lunatic all day?” Hiram asks.
Hal eyeballs him from over the top of his notes. “I’m hardly competing for the place of favourite child when you make it so easy…”
Mary groans, slamming her hands on top of a book. “For the record, neither of you are my favourite child when you’re bickering like this!”
Hal just shakes his head, bowing back down to his notes. “I just need to get this all done…”
Both Hiram and Mary look at each other and back to Hal. “Don’t tell me you’re going to wait at Pop’s for Alice again, Hal,” Mary sighs. “Waiting for her to finish her shift every night… I don’t think that’s legal…”
Hiram laughs, swinging his legs over the edge of Mary’s bed. “You read one book on the law and suddenly you know everything, Mar!”
She scowls at him. “Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know which side of the law one should land on.”
Hiram feels like she’s shot him in the chest. But Mary gives him a look to tell him to say something that might talk some sense into Hal. “Look, Hal, maybe you should… I don’t know. Try a different approach.”
Hal pulls the half chewed pencil out of his mouth and tucks it behind his ear. “I’ll have you know that Alice and I have a date.”
Mary’s eyes brighten and she starts clapping quickly. “That’a boy!” she squeals. “You did it!”
Hal’s cheeks turn red and his smile is small. Running a hand through his hair. He stands up and dusts off his pants. “Just need to use the bathroom, Mar. Won’t be a second.”
Mary and Hiram both stare at each other as Hal walks out of the room. “So,” Hiram starts. “Are you going to pick up the pieces when She-Wolf rips out his heart with her bare teeth and spits it out on the ground before stabbing it? Or me?”
Mary sighs. Shaking her head, she replies; “We’ll take turns I guess.”
Hiram lays back on Mary’s bed, staring at the ceiling. Today is just a normal day.
He wishes every day were the same.
Papi had given him strict instructions. Deliver the product, they hand over the cash.
The exchange is done and you’re free to go home.
Hiram’s not sure how it happened. Or how everything got so messy. But he didn’t appreciate the Gargoyle sent to pick up the product pulling a knife on him.
Somehow Hiram couldn’t contain himself when his fist was meeting the flesh of the Gargoyle’s face. And everything moved in slow motion as the knife dug itself deep into the Gargoyle’s rib cage. Powder dusts the floor with nothing but blood on white dust and boot marks as imprints. But in his defence, the Gargoyle did pull out his knife first.
Hiram only knows one number that could fix this.
“I see blood, Hiram. With this amount of blood, you’d better be ready to buy me the entire fucking Drive In…” she says, walking into the warehouse.
Hiram swallows loudly. “I -uh…”
“Jesus Christ,” Gladys almost shouts. Her voice feels like it’s echoing through his skin. “Couldn’t you have asked Hal to help you?”
Hiram’s shoulders drop and he eyes her. Scowling he says; “Yeah, I’ll just ask Hal Cooper to come and help me. Then after that, we’ll just quickly go to Pop’s for a meal before we both go to football training and then I’ll go and help him out at the Blue and Gold in exchange for him helping me - how does that not sound like the most ridiculous plan of all time?”
“You have a point, and besides, I think Hal is convalescing over Alice… probably lying on the floor in his house on Elm Street listening to music that she likes…” Gladys puts both hands on her hips, pocket knife sticking out of her fingers while she scowls back. “Maybe next time you’ll think about this moment and the way you’ve just spoken to me and wonder why Hal Cooper is the one helping you dig a fucking hole with a teaspoon and not me .”
“There’ll be no next time!” Hiram groans, knife pointing up into the air as he tries to rub his face while still holding it.
Gladys just points at the Gargoyle dead in a chair in front of them. “You’re the son of Javier Lodge, sugar. There’s going to be many more ‘next time’s’, New York.”
They both just stare at the body on the floor. Blood keeps running. It feels strange that even though it runs, there’s no life.
Hiram always thought that if something is running, moving, it’s a sign of living. So why is the blood still running even in death?
The thoughts give him an aneurysm.
Hiram points the knife at the Gargoyle. “So,” he starts. “What do we do?”
Gladys rolls her eyes, taking a seat on the floor next to the body. “What?” she groans, looking up at Hiram.
He grimaces and shakes his head. “I find it fundamentally disturbing that you’re sitting so casually next to a body!”
Gladys laughs. “I find it fundamentally disturbing that you’ve killed a person - I can say hand on heart I’ve never done that . I’m usually sitting at home writing shit or, you know, doing my fucking homework! Maybe we should take a leaf out of Hal’s book,” she continues. “Lie on the floor in our bedrooms and convalesce after Alice!”
Hiram inhales noisily, exhaling, he opens his eyes. “If my father finds out I’ve completely butchered this whole thing, he’s going to kill me.”
“Maybe then you’d understand how it feels then,” she shrugs. She turns to the body and places a hand on his chest, giving the body a quick pat. “Eh buddy?” Gladys drones. “Not too fun being killed by the big meanie, is it?”
Hiram groans, throwing his hands in the air. “Can you help me or not?”
Gladys stares at him for a moment before standing up, brushing dust off her pants. “First we have a cigarette,” she says, handing one from out of her pocket. “Gather our thoughts.”
She lights it for him before lighting her own. They stand in silence for what feels like an eternity before Hiram asks; “Now what?”
She looks down at the body again. “I have plastic in the back of FP’s pick up -”
“FP’s here?!” Hiram spits, choking on the cigarette.
“- Calm down, Hiram, god damn ,” Gladys moans. “I took his truck because you urgently needed me and I don’t own my own! My daddy didn’t just buy me a car like yours did. And I can assure you, if FP were here, this would have been a lot tidier!”
“Right… you won’t tell FP, will you?”
Gladys chuckles, shaking her head. “No way - he hates you.” She waits a beat. “Are you scared FP might mock you for having to ask Poor Ol’ Gladys for help?”
“Well that is fantastic for the ego,” Hiram says with a roll of his eyes. “The Serpent hates me . And I didn’t ask for help… simply guidance .”
“Well, here I am. Your fairy godmother, coming to guide you.” Gladys claps her hands together. “Plastic in the truck, we get him on the back and then we do it.”
“Do what?”
Gladys’s eyes darken. Pitch black in midnight. “Roll him into the river. Get ready for school in the morning. Ain’t that a tale for the kids.”
Hiram watches Gladys as she wraps up the body in plastic, tucking in corners and smiling at her job well done with blood on her face.
He has a lot to learn, he concludes.
They’re both standing awkwardly at Sierra’s party, tucked into a corner. Gladys chews on the rim of her plastic cup and Hiram can’t believe he’s drinking rum out of plastic at all. Hal has two cups in hand, scowling at the scene in front of them.
They all want something that seems so out of reach.
Hermione is hanging off Fred Andrews. Hiram’s tie has never felt so tight. It digs into his throat. “Don’t worry about it,” Gladys says into his ear. “I’ve got it on good authority that Hermione Gomez says your name when she’s having sex… it hurts FP’s ego just a bit…”
Hiram grins, raising an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”
Gladys nods. “Yeah. Calls out your name and everything.”
“You’re lying.”
“Nope… Change of subject; I didn’t realise that FP was a doctor.” This time Gladys leans into Hiram’s ear.
“What?” Hiram laughs.
“Must be examining her god damned throat to be that deep in there,” she yells again.
Hal is on Hiram’s other side, he swears that Hal even has tears sitting on his lashes. He downs both drinks in less than a second and groans out loud. “And whose idea was it to come here and watch FP eat Alice’s face? Is this Predator?”
Gladys reaches across Hiram, offering something to Hal on the other side. “Joint?” she asks. “I promise you if you and I both smoke this, it’ll burn this cheap porno out of our minds, Cooper. I think you and I both could use a little help trying to get rid of that image from our minds.”
Hal looks at it sideways before shaking his head. “Nah,” he says loudly, trying to get to Gladys through the sound of the music. “Maybe this is good for us. Maybe it’ll remind us why we shouldn’t be pining over them.”
Gladys throws her head back in laughter. “I’m not pining over FP Jones, Hal.”
All three of them know it’s a lie.
FP can barely stand up, Hiram’s sure the only thing keeping him upright is the fact he’s anchored by his mouth on Alice’s.
Hiram watches Gladys, she sips a little. Then the whole entire contents is spilling it’s way down her own throat. Hiram just shrugs while Gladys frowns at the empty cup. “Trying to forget the mess?” he asks.
She nods. “Would have preferred to sit in the empty Drive In throwing rocks at the fucking screens.”
“Maybe you should have that joint.” He hands her his cup. “Down the rest of this, I’m going to get some more.”
Gladys and Hal both look at each other. “Come on, Hal,” she says, shaking the joint in his face. “You’ll thank me in the morning when you have a splitting headache and you can’t remember anything…”
“But then I won’t remember to thank you in the morning,” Hal says in all seriousness.
Gladys just laughs. “I’ll take the thanks now and run with it. You find me more booze while I take Hal out, won’t you?” she asks Hiram. “I could really do with drowning out my entire reality.”
Hiram walks away, trying to find more alcohol. He knows FP will forget everything in the morning.
He’ll make sure Gladys will too.
Save her soul a little bit of breaking.
Just how she humours his .
It’s three months until Hiram has to ring Gladys again. And this time, after trying every person and number he could think of, he found her on the other end of FP’s phone.
She came all the way out to Greendale with FP’s flannel on and no makeup. She laughed with her head thrown back and all her teeth showing.
Hiram doesn’t like it.
“I don’t need babysitting,” he complains, feeling every little bit the kid she’s making him feel with her amusement.
This time the victim is some enemy of his father’s from New York. As he begged for mercy he let it be known that he had a wife and children. They were waiting for him at home.
Hiram wishes he felt a bit more. The more he forces himself to feel something, the more Gladys’s laughter gets under his skin.
“Can you pull yourself together?” he snaps, gun flailing around in the air.
Gladys ducks and stands up, shoving Hiram in the chest. “Look, New York!” she hisses, shoving him again. “I get you’re a big boy now and you’ve got a taste for killing people but you shouldn’t be waving your guns around at your friends -”
“I don't have a fucking taste for killing people and you’re not my friend, Gladys!” he snipes back.
The silence is deafening.
Everything feels like concrete for a second that seems to drag on for an eternity. Suddenly the body lying in front of them seems like marble. Gladys’s face seems to shatter like glass when her face drops.
And Hiram feels like his heart sits on the very tip of his tongue. “Gladys - I.. I don’t know what I’m doing or how to do this.”
She doesn’t say anything. Flipping out plastic on the floor seems to make so much noise, the room crumbles. She gets to work without a single word and Hiram stands there, watching as if it were some show.
He helps lift one end of the body and Gladys continues, never looking at him.
They make their way to Greendale’s side of Sweetwater. And it’s not until they’re on their way back to FP’s pickup that she says. “You might want to say a few prayers at St. Vincent’s this weekend, New York. Someone’s going to have to save you. Because I can’t.”
They walked past each other one day in town. He went to wave and she showed him the shimmer of her switchblade in the sun so he didn’t stop to see what it could do and what it would do to him .
Hiram wanted to apologise.
He believes Gladys isn’t really used to the gesture.
He didn't say anything that day.
It feels out of place when he sees Gladys at Pop’s. She’s tucked into a corner booth with FP Jones leaning against the table and she doesn’t even tear her eyes away from the book she’s reading to look at him. Hiram likes it. Any inconvenience for FP Jones is something he’ll forever enjoy.
He hadn’t spoken to her in weeks and even when they sit next to each other in English, she’s got a pretty stubborn way of pretending he’s not there. And never existed. And all his calls to her house always go unanswered.
Hiram spots the reason he’s there. He hates the food at Pop’s and yet, the staff isn’t bad.
Hermione smiles when she spots him too. Golden eyes wrapped up in yellow cotton and chocolate smears. It’s small town. It’s homely . It’s something he wants.
Sometimes, sugary-sweet small town is exactly what he needs to feel alive and he does when she’s smiling at him.
She wipes her hands on her apron and as she brings them back to the counter, he grabs them. They’re slightly sticky and her hair has flyaways but her small town feels are a perfect match with dark and deep and for a moment with sticky chocolate in his hands he feels like maybe, just maybe, he’ll sleep better tonight knowing that she lets him feel something .
“Mi amor,” he says, closing his eyes, wishing Sweetwater River away. “Will I see you at service this Sunday?”
Her cheeks are a rosy pink and the body of Christ clings to her skin. He can still see it sitting over her Pop’s uniform. “Sunday, as always,” she promises. “I’ll be there with mami and papi.”
“You’re such a good girl, Hermione,” he says, kissing the top of her hand before letting it go. He plays with the menu for a little bit before deciding on just a shake.
Hiram appreciates the peace. The quiet simpleness of the diner and the focus being school for the next few days. It’s not until FP Jones walks past, Serpents kutte on his back and a toothpick that hangs halfway out of his mouth and says; “You always get what you want, don’t you Hiram.”
Hiram swallows loudly, looking up at FP, he smiles back, straightens his shoulders. Lets the Serpent try and strike. “I’m a man who works hard for what he has, FP,” he corrects him.
FP sniggers as he continues out the door, not even looking back, he shouts; “You’re not a man, Hiram. You’re still a kid until you get your own hands dirty!”
Hiram has no idea what he means. It makes him feel exactly like what FP said.
A kid.
Gladys’s parents were in Toledo and she didn’t really want him coming to her house, he can tell.
At first, she just looked at him through a gap in the door until he said; “Come on, Glad, let me in. I won’t bite. Not like FP the snake…”
She thought it was funny. Which was just as well, because he really has no humour when put on the spot. “Come in.”
He takes his shoes off. “I’ve been coming here for days trying to find you.”
“Been at the Drive In,” she explains. “Trying to tidy it up. Maybe if the Ghoulies can get enough money, we’ll be able to buy it and fix it up.”
He walks through her house with his hands in his pockets. It’s small but tidy. Warm and clean. He sees what he feels is a shrine to her dead brother. “How long ago did he die?”
“A year.”
“How?”
Gladys sighs, looking at her brother’s photo. “Casualty of war…”
“Veteran?”
Gladys laughs humourlessly. “Veteran of the war of the underbelly…”
Hiram swallows thickly. He doesn’t want to know what it means.
They both sit on the sofa in her living room. She gives him coffee. Instant. Tastes like dirt but he smiles when he thanks her and she sits down next to him. “So what owes me the pleasure of Hiram Lodge coming to visit me at midnight?”
Hiram doesn’t know where to start. Somewhere between the entire world sitting on his chest. How his throat always feels like there’s a knife wedged in it.
How, somehow, in some fucked up twist of fate the only person who remotely understands what he’s going through is the girl sitting next to him in her house on the border of Greendale who’s the next in line to ruling a gang of men .
“I’m sorry… about everything. Is it too much to say that I miss you? It really does feel foreign coming out of my mouth but… I don’t think I’m truly taking this whole… ram by the horns and -”
“Did you just turn your apology to me into something about yourself?” Gladys laughs. “Ram by the horns? You really are fucking full of it.”
Hiram shrugs, trying to come back with humour. “I’m a Scorpio, Gladys. I cannot change what the stars have told me to be.”
Gladys raises an eyebrow. “I’m a Scorpio too.”
“Explains why you can kill a man. Both in body and in ego.”
She sighs, leaning back and pushing her head into the back of the sofa. “Maybe this is why we make a good team.”
“So, is my apology accepted?” he asks.
“Fuck me, you’re pushy aren’t you.”
“I just don’t like it when you don’t talk to me and you try to pull a knife on me in the street…”
Gladys shakes her head. “It wasn’t a knife,” she mumbles. “Just a little one.”
They both sit in silence, staring at the wall at her dead brother’s shrine. Hiram looks around at her house and world. Trying to piece it all together.
“I don’t get it, but I’m trying to understand it, Gladys. How do you fit into this world?”
She takes a moment to light a cigarette, flicking the ash into an empty coffee cup that sits on the table next to them. Looking him dead in the eye, she answers simply. “I think you get to a point where you know you can’t run any more, so you have to live with it.”
It’s not poetic or prophetic. It’s not even what he wants to hear. He wanted something profound.
Something to tell him there was a way out of it all.
“It’s a lot,” is all he can say. “And sometimes it’s like I’m drowning.”
Gladys shrugs. “You’re religious, aren’t you? God wouldn’t give us these lives if he didn’t think we could handle them…”
Hiram sits on a sofa with crocheted blankets and Gladys’s fishnetted legs are pressed against his. A Ghoulies kutte hangs on the door in front of them that Hiram almost swears is calling his name. His tie is loose around his neck but it still feels like a noose and his Rolex ticks so loudly on his wrist, he’s scared it’s going to drive him mad.
They both sit on her sofa, the thin material scratching at his slacks. He looks at the time, feeling it waste away. And Gladys’s cheap body spray and half-smudged eyeliner doesn’t fit in the world he’s built up around him.
He feels her move closer. Time has no meaning when you’re lost and confused. It’s almost like the size of his hand fits on the shape of her thighs and her darkened lips look nothing like the fullness of Hermione’s, but sometimes, weakness isn’t just for the weak.
It’s for those who carry the world on their shoulders. And who fight dirty with every single ounce of strength in them.
He gives in, just a little. He might be a strong man but even he has a side of weakness when he wants to feel something .
He leans into her, eyes wide open, mouth hungry and desperate to forget every single minute detail and feel every single loud, brash and suffocating bit of his world. Her lips are soft, even if they only brushed against his for a moment.
But Gladys’s hands are on his chest and her lips are screwed tight. She smiles at him - it feels better than a knife to his throat.
“Come on, Hiram. You and I both know this is never, ever fucking going to happen.”
She’s right, but it still bruises his ego a little. He chuckles falsely, brushes it off with a; “A moment of weakness,” he shrugs. “Not a want , just a… distraction. I’m sorry, I acted on an ill-placed impulse and now I’m sure I will regret it for the rest of my life.”
“We all want a little distraction, New York,” she replies with an amused grin. “How very Scorpio of you.”
But she leans her head on his shoulder and takes his hand in hers.
Even in the pits of Hell, this almost feels like peace .
With her words, Hiram decides one thing. He’ll live his life. He’ll rule.
It’s God’s will.
She’s crimson and ruby - painted reds in a bloody baptism. Blood beneath her nails and some smeared against her cheek.
Hiram’s suit is both wet and drying. The wet sticking to every single part of his body - the dried patches crunch with every move. His gun still weighs heavy haphazardly in the strap against his chest. Blood that clings to his own fingers gets lost on the tips of two cigarettes he pulls out, sticking both between his lips. Lighting both in a flame.
“How’s the Drive In?” he asks her.
“Not mine,” she grumbles.
“Well, that’s true.”
Gladys is groaning as she heaves the heavy body out of the trunk of his car. “Little help?” she says, spitting on the ground at his feet.
He hands her a cigarette which she eyes suspiciously, grabbing it from his drying, bloodied fingers she puts it between her lips, taking a drag. “I meant with the body, Hiram.”
He watches Gladys for a moment, the way she rolls the body out of the trunk, admiring the obvious expertise of her body-wrapping work. As if it’s some fucked up Christmas present that she lovingly wraps with a bow on top. She stops only for a moment, all contrasted with bloody-crimson, gun splatter ruby - sun setting on her skin in some sort of bloodied baptism. She puts her booted up foot on the body, closes her eyes while she takes another drag. “Enjoying the scenery?” he asks, hands shaking ever so slightly.
Gladys just tucks her hair behind one of her ears, flicking the ash beside the body. “You gonna explain this one to me, Hiram?” she drawls. “Or is it just another one of your secrets you can’t share with your best friend?”
Hiram runs his tongue across his teeth. Looking down, he can see the shiny blood sitting on the stops of his brand new shoes. Gladys amuses him while they stand in the red of the setting sun, clashing with the icy blue of Sweetwater River. The icy blue of the river can be felt on the tips of their fingers and in the way Gladys crosses her arms across her chest, barely covered in mesh and only protected by the kutte she wears. She’s funny.
And can kill a man.
Hiram knows she’s a good person to keep on his side.
Or possibly the last person he’ll ever see if she’s not on his side.
Hiram stamps out the cigarette in the dirt before bending over, picking up the bottom half of the body. “You’re hardly my best friend, Gladys,” he says, rolling his eyes.
Gladys picks up the other half, teeth gritting together as they lift. “I’m covered head to toe in some poor fuckers blood because you don’t know how to keep things tidy and you’re out here telling me I’m not your best friend? Wow, Hermione is right - you are an absolute prick.”
The sound the body makes as it hits solid water makes Hiram shiver. Each bubble that rises to the surface and shatters at the surface is a nod to each moment of the guy’s life that Hiram had just stolen from him.
He feels nothing.
No sympathy to the weak, he thinks.
Gladys just stands at the water’s edge, boots covered in dirt, face covered in blood. Cigarette still hanging halfway out of her mouth but the way her hands sit on her hips and the scowl she wears comically cuts against the setting of a body sinking forever to the bottom of the river makes Hiram feel guilty. He speaks up, reaching into his suit pocket. “It’s probably a little broken but I assure you, I had nothing but good intentions to use this chocolate. Happy seventeenth, Gladys. Couldn’t fit a cake in here but I’m sure this will suffice.” He holds the chocolate in the air, shaking it while Glays stares at it. “Please take it, I feel shit enough that I’ve had to ask you to come and bail me out. Eat the fucking chocolate.”
Gladys frowns as she snatches it out of his fingers. “You didn’t forget…” she trails off, eyeing the chocolate in her hand.
“No, believe it or not, Gladys, I did not.”
She sniggers. “And what makes my birthday important enough for you to remember? Trying to get on my good side so I can keep helping you with dead bodies?”
Hiram’s eyes darken in the semi-set sun. “Believe it or not, Gladys-the-Ghoulie, you are, in fact, one of my friends. We’re both Scorpios, it’s bound to be one of these days this month.”
Gladys turns to follow Hiram, slinging her arm across his shoulder “Yeah, you’re not too bad yourself, New York. But listen here - if you so much as try and kiss me again, I will cut your tongue out.”
“Fair enough call,” he shrugs, putting his arm over her shoulder too.
“I’m not about to do Hermione like that,” she replies with a wink. “And New York really isn’t my city…:”
Hiram smiles to himself as they make their way back to his car. No, New York really isn’t her city, he thinks.
Something up in flames and packed with carnage would be better suited to Gladys.
Like the depths of Hell.
Hermione Gomez is wrapped up in his sheets. He loves it when it’s like this.
He finds that now, the small things are what he lives for.
He snorts up dust. She eyes the packet. He relaxes on top of the sheets with her still lying in them.
Her hair is soft and he loves to run his fingers through it. Her lips are full and ready to be bitten.
And New York calls him, just as it always has. A chance to run away - rule from a far. The more distance he has between himself and the thick of the Cartel, the better. Papi was right.
No need to get your hands dirty when you have people working for you.
Hiram wonders for a moment if New York will be what gets him away from the mess. The blood and the blood lust.
He knows Hermione would fit in New York too, somewhere he can keep her safe.
He kisses Hermione gently. “What do you think about New York?”
Her expression answers the question. She’s golden honey when he touches her and every time she’s in his presence, he can’t get enough.
He drowns himself in her. Gives in to greed. Trying to soak up every single ounce of her.
In his mind, they’re already in New York and she’s in his arms and they’re happy .
“Runaway with me,” he says. Half begging, half longing. And hopeful . Hermione’s eyes widen. Hiram can tell that she can’t believe the question. She looks at him confused. “It’s where I was mostly raised, mi amor. It makes sense. I would love nothing more than for you to come with me.”
She opens and closes her mouth, searching for the words. “But… I mean, I’ve always wanted to move from Riverdale. But I don’t know what mami and papi would say and to move away from all of my sisters…”
Small town lives proudly in Hermione, Hiram can see the Riverdale in her.
But he wants what he wants and he wants her. A future. Something that for once, he has control of. And as pathetic as love can be, he has it for her. And he wants to protect it at all costs.
They lie in his bed, her fingers on his skin and his lips on her shoulders. It feels like the entire Sunday has wasted away until she says; “I’d love to come to New York with you Hiram… let’s finish school first.”
For once he feels ease .
Gladys and Hiram are sitting in an old, battered pickup eating Pop’s. She told him to try the chocolate shake and she went on for at least an hour telling him he’s the most ridiculous human on earth for never having tried a Pop’s chocolate shake.
He was more of a strawberry shake kind of guy.
The pickup may be old and battered but it was hers. She begged him not to get it for her but it truly was the least he could do for all she does for him.
She has a mouthful of cheeseburger when she asks through chews; “So, do you think you’re gonna marry her?”
When he closes his eyes, all he can see is Hermione in the light of stained glass covered in white. “Of course.”
Gladys chuckles. “Seems a little premature to be thinking of marriage when we’re only eighteen…”
Hiram looks at her from the corner of his eye. “You’re telling me you don’t love anyone? Or even have thoughts of getting married, settling down?”
Gladys looks at his side ways. “You’re telling me that you do?”
“You always need to have an end goal, Gladys,” Hiram says with a mouthful of shake. “You always have to strive towards something, not just be content with however the dice rolls, you know?”
Gladys shrugs. “I guess that’s the difference between you and I,” she says, putting her cup to his in cheers. “Shit happens and that’s that.”
Hiram turns to look her in the eye. “You don’t want to get out of here? Leave the Ghoulies? I know you’re an amazing writer, you don’t want to do anything with that?”
Gladys smiles to herself. “I’m sure it hurt you just a little to give me that compliment, admit it.”
“Well, I do hate that there’s something else you’re good at that I definitely am not.”
“If I leave the Ghoulies, Hiram, then who’s going to run the forefront of your little Cartel, huh?”
“You have a point,” he agrees. “But it doesn’t mean you need to resign yourself to the fact that Riverdale is all there’s going to be in your life. Have you ever been to New York?”
Gladys looks at him, lolling her head to the side. “Do I look like the kind of bitch that just pops on off to New York for the summer?”
Hiram shrugs. “Maybe. One day. Come and visit me and Hermione.”
She laughs loudly again. “Sometimes your ego just astounds me. I hope she gets out before it’s too late.”
Hiram grins. “She won’t. I love her. It’s enough to keep going. Maybe one day you’ll feel it too. Maybe one day, you’ll actually acknowledge your feelings for FP and he’ll become a better person, you know, because he’s absolute shit, and it’ll all work out for you.”
He watches Gladys’s face change. It falls easily into a scowl. “Feelings,” she mutters. “How un-Scorpio of you.”
They sit in silence for a bit, watching the sunset. Once the sun goes down, Hiram takes a deep breath. “Did you remember the shovel?”
Gladys throws her thumb over her shoulder. “In the back, next to your trigger-happy buddy.”
They both jump out of her pickup and move the cover that was over the body. “At least this once was somewhat clean,” Hiram says.
Gladys sighs, pointing to her chest. “Yeah, real clean,” she says sarcastically, pointing out the blood. “We’re burying this one right here?”
Hiram looks around the Drive In. They’re right on the edge of the property, just beyond a line of trees. “As good a spot as any, wouldn’t you think? And if all goes well, it’ll be yours anyway.”
Gladys throws the shovel at him. “Yeah, in my dreams,” she mumbles. “You can get your hands dirty this time, New York.”
Hiram gets to digging and Gladys sits on the tray of the pickup next to the body, dragging on a cigarette. “I think I’ll miss this when it’s all over,” she tells him.
“Watching me dig a hole? This is why I can’t wait until I have my own henchmen.”
“The fact that you’ve called them ‘henchmen’ makes you sound like a stupid Supervillian.”
Hiram stops for a moment, leaning on the shovel. “I’m sure you’ll appreciate it when I have my henchmen and you’ll need to help me dispose of bodies no longer.”
Gladys nods, pointing her cigarette in Hiram’s direction. “This is true.” He carries on for a bit longer before Gladys starts up again. “Do you think Hermione will get used to this life?”
“She’s a good person,” he replies. “I don’t know… Maybe I’ll keep it from her.”Gladys’s eyes darken again and a frown appears on her face. “What?” he pushes.
Gladys inhales deeply before exhaling her smoke. “I think total disclosure, Hiram. Hermione’s not as weak as you think. Not as meager. She’s a lot tougher than you’ll ever know and I don’t think you should take that for granted. Tell her everything.”
Hiram eyes her sideways. Not sure what exactly she’s eluding to. “What do you know about Hermione that I don’t know?”
Gladys jumps off the back of the pickup and they both reach for the body, dragging it down into the hole. Hiram starts filling it back up as Gladys wipes her hands on her shirt. “Girl code, dude. I’m not breaking it. But just be careful - she knows a lot more about the world than even you do and if she ever needed my help getting rid of you, I wouldn’t even hesitate.”
Hiram scoffs. “You’re my friend!”
Gladys just shrugs. “Girl code, dude.”
They sit at the edge of Sweetwater River. It does feel somewhat final now that Gladys is sitting with him, staring out to deep, icy blue when she’s head to toe in black. His shirt is unbuttoned and it’s unseasonably warm. The end is nearing.
He was leaving for New York sooner than he had wanted. Saying his goodbye to Hermione that morning only left an empty space in his heart and anxiety echoing through his veins.
He knows Gladys feels it too. FP was going to the army apparently and as much as she says she hates him, Hiram can’t help but feel like he wishes FP was staying, if only for Gladys to have someone around.
“Did you say goodbye to Hal?” she asks.
He nods. “Have you seen Alice?”
It’s a sore spot. He regrets it. She replies with; “Who?”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
She offers him a cigarette and he takes it. A quick head spin would be enough to keep his mind from Hermione for a few minutes. “I really thought she’d come…” he mumbles.
Gladys exhales. “To be honest, New York, I know you’re used to getting everything you want, but you’re asking a girl to leave her home to be with you and she’s barely a month out of school… give her time.”
Hiram nods in agreeance. “Aren’t you just a bucket full of sage advice.”
“I’ll miss you when you go. I’ll send you postcards and shit.”
“Make sure the Ghoulies behave themselves, or they’ll have to answer to me.”
Gladys raises her eyebrows. “Oooh, threatening - I like.”
Hiram stands up, clapping his hands together. “Well, shall we?”
“Would be rude not to,” she says. “Considering this will be the last time we do this before you roll on out of here and all the way to New York.”
They roll a body out of the back of his car. Watching it sink to the bottom of the river.
Not even the pits of Hell are as deep as Sweetwater.
Or as deep as Gladys, he thinks.
“I’ve bought you the Drive In,” he tells her quickly. “I know how much you love that place.”
And in one swift movement, she has her arms around his neck.
No words spoken. A lifetime of friendship.
“New York, New York, baby,” she whispers against him.
The water laps at their feet.