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“You’re doing good work, Daniel.”
Ricardo means it, in the momentary leaning on a comrade while covered in blood kind of way, and Daniel, thankfully, takes it that way. “Thank you. I hope so.”
They’re both too tired to play games right now. Both too keyed up, on the edge, despite the easy, distracted smile that graces Daniel’s face after being near River for two minutes, if that.
“Is she doing okay?” Ricardo asks. Because — he’s not so prideful he can’t admit it while at the depths of his exhaustion, at the very least — Daniel can get River to talk about the things she fastidiously hides from them both. She thinks she does a good job of it, too, hiding things from them, which would be funny if it wasn’t so…not.
Ricardo just knows better than to chase those dogs, anymore. Not if he wants to keep her close.
Daniel’s expression flickers from passive happiness to mild distress. “I would say try to drive slower but…” He slips into an anxious laugh. “You shouldn’t. We should just get her there as fast as we can.”
Ricardo nods, taking a pull from his water bottle. He hasn’t let himself sit with the revelations about The Farm. He can’t. If he does, he’s not sure how the rage will come out — just that it will be ugly.
Seven years he thought she was dead and gone, but it had somehow been worse than that.
“Ricardo…”
Right. Here it comes. Another long-needed confession in a night of them. Ricardo focuses on screwing the cap back on.
“You know we…she is…I’m…” A frustrated huff of breath, and then: “We sort of went on a pre-date the other day and we kissed and I really, really don’t want to roll up to your mother’s house without us…acknowledging…that.”
Do you have any idea how absolutely terrifying it is to be in love with you?
He knows it wasn’t a lie. The cold mortification in her eyes was real. The fury, the frustration, haloed by that golden string that keeps bringing them together. Keeps her together.
“I told her we would talk about it with you together,” Daniel continues, voice fast, hand running through his mussed hair, “but she’s so…so scared. She almost…this was…”
His eyes squeeze shut.
“I know,” Ricardo says. “And I had a feeling.”
Another bubble of nervous laughter. “Yeah, I imagine you do.”
“You aren’t exactly subtle, you know?” But the smile is warmer than even Ricardo expects. “It’s nice to see her smile like that. And you,” he tacks on, but he finds he means that, too.
Daniel smiles back — he’s good at that — but it fades quickly into something shadowed by moonlight. “She loves you. I think you should know that, if you don’t.”
A flash of something there. Uncertainty. He can see it in the way Daniel’s mouth turns downward, the way he looks elsewhere. Because while the history between River and Ricardo is sometimes as frustrating as a brick wall, it also binds them like chainlinks — and Daniel isn’t part of that. Doesn’t have something that sturdy. He just has hope. Just has throwing himself into the sky, believing it can work.
Ricardo tilts his head and stares at the asphalt. “I—”
“She needs you. I mean it.”
He turns to meet Daniel’s gaze, surprised by the intensity of the unnecessary rejoinder. He does mean it, in perhaps the most unselfish-selfish way possible. He knows River loves Ricardo. That it may define her in that thorny, bone-deep way, like it has come to define Ricardo, too. But Daniel also knows that this is what heroes do, making sure their happiness comes last, and he won’t be anything less.
Fucking hell is it like looking into a funhouse mirror, sometimes.
“I could never walk away from her,” Ricardo says. This fucking day. It’s entirely the truth, too painfully bare. “But she doesn’t let many people in. You know that.” He thinks about it for a long moment. “She’s lost enough in her life. We’d be real idiots if we tried to…I don’t know…fight dramatically in the street over it.”
His eyes widen. “So you aren’t…”
And this time Ricardo laughs for real. “No, you’re stuck with me. We’re dealing with this. Somehow.”
Daniel’s smile is…
Well, it’s not innocent, he can say that for certain. There’s a knowing there that’s…
Hmm.
“I’ll pretend to be surprised when we talk,” Ricardo says, “if she doesn’t figure out you spilled the beans before then.”
Daniel laughs. He laughs in the face of that danger. He laughs in a way that makes the situation feel fizzy and bright and not cold and dangerous and yawning like a chasm. He gives a small salute, pulls his goggles back on over his face, and spirals away into the sky like that’s a normal thing that humans do.
It’s not like Ricardo doesn’t get it.
Once River is all wrapped up in Mama’s loving care, Ricardo excuses himself to the bathroom to stand there and…consider the situation.
He stares at himself in the mirror. At the bags under his eyes and the lines in his face and the grays along his temple.
Of course he was confused about it. The Daniel and River situation. He kept it compressed in a ball, just beneath his ribs — a painful little burr of things he had been pointedly not thinking about. He was focused on keeping her alive, on protecting her from herself; on how determined the universe seemed to be to tear her from him, to turn her into smoke and bone and blood, over and over and over…
At least he revived her this time.
But now it is unspooling and he needs to wrangle it together before he can face her again.
He can’t stop thinking of her bursting into tears the minute Mama greeted her with wide open arms. Too many things make sense now. Of course she would…of course, if you’ve never…
No. Still too raw.
Much easier to think about how Mama noticed immediately that he and Daniel both — for the same split second — became helpless, useless boys waving their arms around trying to figure out how to banish River’s tears from existence before they remembered their professional faces. Which means they’ll have to talk about it. Potentially in front of Mama.
River is going to be so pissed.
But damn, he’ll take it. He really will. If you had told him two years ago that River would be back in his life—
No, honestly, it just stops there. He wouldn’t have cared what the cost was. And if the “cost” is “you will have to make a very interesting arrangement with the new guy on the team who makes you think a little too much” then that’s nothing. That’s less than nothing. He will pay it. So fucking gladly. Just watch.
Even if the cost becomes something sharper, harsher. Even if the cost is “she prefers him over you because he isn’t the past” or “she trusts him because she can read his mind and she’ll never see yours and it will never be the same to just say what you really think.” Even if the cost is a little pin needle like “she frankly finds Daniel handsomer than you.” Really. He’ll live.
Isn’t that what love is about?
She said it first.
Ricardo leans into the door frame. "Daniel couldn't stay because he has to go kick up dust over the trail, in case you were wondering."
River pointedly picks at invisible dirt on her blanket. “I wasn’t.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire.”
Instead of the usual exasperation, she regards him with empty…nothing. An absolute resistance to showing anything at all. Unfortunately for River, that tells Ricardo everything.
"So he talked to you?" she asks.
Is she more scared of this than…the rest of it? Maybe it’s easier to be scared of this. Ricardo covers the ache with a shrug. “Talked to me about what?”
Her expression turns brittle and strange, eyes darting to the quilt. And then she says: “I’m sorry.”
Stunned, his “Why?” comes out sharper than he expects.
“For, I don’t know, everything about it?” Her eyes are shining again, glaring and furious. Someone staring down the car coming right at them, like that might make a difference. “Not telling you first, not talking…about it all, about…I don’t even get it…”
He sees it, suddenly. Clarity. This is what she meant. Lashing out. She can’t twist herself into a perfect shape in prediction of what he’ll say and how he’ll react. She just has to be herself. And damn if that isn’t painful.
Damn if he doesn’t understand.
“You? Not knowing something?” He kneels down by her bedside and reaches for her hands and takes them harshly in his own before she can draw back. “Too many pain killers for you, I think, if you’re admitting that.”
She doesn’t pull away. Even though she says, “Dick.”
“Got it in one.”
Her frown wobbles. He watches textures of words rise to her lips and die before she lets them out. Trying so hard to exert control over a situation that is defined by the complete loss of it.
“Nothing has to change,” he says. “Nothing at all. I didn’t lie to you. And I don’t think you lied to me.”
A shadow passes through her face — the same one that comes around whenever she mentions how complicated her life has become in the wake of her not-death. He still hasn’t puzzled it out.
And then, a commendable recovery: “If you hold it over my head I will kick you in the balls.”
“With what legs?”
Her hands flap angrily in his grip, like that might banish him from existence.
“You looooove me,” he croons at her, darting just out of reach right as her hands shake free. All to watch the orange creep into her face, to watch her eyes glow with some semblance of life and fury and, he would like to think, happiness — though he hasn’t yet seen the proof. That’s fine. He’ll find it.
“Idiot.”
“And I love you.”
“Get out of here before I yell for your mom.”