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"Hey you," Juan croons, however John doesn't feel like moving from his side of the bed. Today was another good day on their ever-lasting journey through the Americas, and he was exhausted. John just wanted to sleep, and no matter what Juan decided to do, he will surely sleep it off.
"I know you can hear me, you stupid. Answer me already," Juan continues to pester John, and he wonders why did an idea of going to America with this man ever feel appealing. "No," he answers, while snatching the tattered blanket they carried with them around everywhere. They found it abandoned on some train and have been carrying it everywhere with them ever since.
"Why not? I know you can't fall asleep fast the same as me. So why don't we talk until sleep falls over us?"
John wants to deny it on principle, but knows in the end Juan is right about their predicament. He sighs in defeat and turns over to see Juan looking at him in the dark. The Irishman can feel Juan's gaze burning through him and huffs a laugh at the intensity of Juan's staring. At first it was a bit disconcerting, the amount of staring the Mexican used on him, but nowadays he had to get used to it, or it would have made him run for the hills ages ago.
"Have any conversation openings?" John mockingly asks and he can feel Juan narrowing his eyes in challenge. "As a matter of fact Sean, I do." Uh, oh. Using that name means Juan got mightly irritated. John guessed he maybe went too far.
"I wanted to ask you about the life you would have had if you hadn't met me," Juan continues and John looks at him, confused at the sudden question. "I would have continued to work as a silver prospector probably. If not that I would have moved somewhere else to work on something else that would feed me and clothe me."
"No, no! That is not what I meant. I wanted to know what would have been your ideal life before me. Who would you have lived it with?" The Mexican asks curiously, making John glare at the presumptuous bandit. "I see you are as nosy as ever," John complains and then falls silent.
"Well of course I am! We have known each other for years already! And I told you everything there is to know about my family! But you never talk about yourself or your past. I want to know more about you, is that such a crime?!!" Juan's voice rose to a louder octave when he arrived at the end of the sentence. The Irish man wasn't really surprised by his reaction. Juan was a passionate person through and through.
"There is a reason I don't talk about it," John lamely tells him in the end, feeling a little pathetic at his stupid excuse. Juan apparently feels the same because he says: "And there is a reason I do. So find your own reason, goddamn it." John doesn't really have anything else to say to that, so he stays silent and fumes in his own mind.
Juan starts to talk about something unrelated, while John only nods his head in a passive response, and doesn't say anything during his tirade about something related to his past. The constant chatter lulls him into a sleepy daze, and he wonders if maybe Juan is right about some things.
Namely the sharing of the past, which in truth Juan has done, but John didn't. In a way, it was a bit unfair, though it's not like you needed to know a man's past to really get to know him. Although now that he thought a bit deeper about it, maybe the Mexican was right.
"What was that last question?" John cut through Juan's tirade and the other man goes silent. "Will you really answer it? You must swear you will."
"Yes I will. Will you now open your bloody mouth?"
"I asked what kind of life would be like in your dreams if you haven't known me? A life before me? A picture perfect life, an ideal you strived for?"
John thinks about the answer. Really thinks about it. And feels everything inside him tear apart. Is Juan really worth all this pain? Is he worth telling this to? John also thinks about this and wonders why does the answer come so easily to him.
"I would have probably spent it with them. My two best friends. Nolan and Coleen. I met them so long ago I am not really sure when that was, but I do know that meeting Nolan probably had something to do with the Army. And Coleen, beautiful Coleen...... She was just always there beside me somehow. Probably lived close by, so we always met around on purpose or by accident."
"If there ever was an unbreakable trio, it was surely us. We spent almost every waking moment together. We were inseparable. And then one day, Coleen told me she loved me."
"Ah, I see. The mighty Fire cracker had love troubles too, like the rest of us. I suppose her confession broke all of you apart?" Juan asked almost mockingly, though John knew he didn't really mean to hurt him. It still made it pretty hard to tell Juan the next part of the tale.
"No. It went a bit differently, than your typical love triangle," he said and sighed, preparing for the next part of the story. This is where it turns weird.
"Well come on then! Don't keep me in suspense! I want to know what happens next!"
Bolstered by Juan's exclamations, John slowly starts again: "As I said it hadn't really broken us apart in the sense you meant. While telling me she loved me, Coleen also confessed something else. She loved Nolan too," John admitted still feeling as confused as he then did.
"What?!" Juan whisper-shouted, his eyes widening in the light of the moon. His reaction made John smile, because: "That is precisely how I reacted when I heard her say that. Even before I wasn't sure what to feel or say, but in that moment I was completely confused and lost. While I was reeling inside, she patiently waited for my answer or my reaction I don't know. In that exact moment I understood how much courage it took for her to come before me and say everything she said. I was yet again surprised by her, and I feel in love with her all over again"
"Aha! So you did love her?"
"Yes I did. But her whole confession as you could imagine was a bit unclear. So I tried to calm down and we spent that whole night, going over what she said and what that would mean for our future. What it would mean for us, for all of us. I don't really remember all that we discussed then, but I do remember the visceral fear I felt when she suggested we tell Nolan."
"Yet again I wasn't really sure what I was feeling. Anger, sadness, jealousy, fear of ruining our friendship? It was all a bit mixed up. But Coleen as always forged forward. Our brave, beautiful Coleen. Sometimes I wondered if she ever feared anything. So when she succeded at persuading me, we set a date when to tell Nolan and parted in the evening."
"But what would you tell him? I just don't get it!"
Juan's genuine question, made the Irishman laugh and he asnwered soon after: "I wasn't really sure either. However Coleen knew exactly what she wanted, so I decided to let her take the lead. And she did. The look on Nolan's face when Coleen presented her idea, was probably similar to my own in that situation. Both of us didn't believe she suggested what she did."
"And what was that?" Juan asked sounding extremely eager. Well the man was as dramatic as you could get, no wonder this story appealed to him as it did.
"To date both of us. At the same time. She proposed something even more outlandish at the time, but I was still stuck on this one point."
"What? Something even more unimaginable than her dating two men? You must tell me what it is!"
"Well......"
For some reason this next part, made him embarrassed all over again. "She suggested Nolan and me also date each other"
"Oho! What scandalous lady! Did she even know what that would bring on to three of you?!"
"I am not really sure. She was always the most optimistic out of all three of us. Maybe she was aware of the scrutiny we would have on us, maybe not. I never really asked her. Though I did ask her once how she came up with this idea in the first place."
"She just told me it made the most sense to her. She knew her feelings, and they told her this was the right path. Anyway we told Nolan, and similar to me, he wasn't really sure how to react. He asked us for three days to think about it, and he practically ran away. Those three days were one of the most painful experiences I had to endure in my life."
"Why though? Didn't you say you weren't sure of your feelings then, and that your emotions were mostly negative?"
"Yes, that is true. Although I also didn't want to lose my friends, which was also the truth. And I felt this situation had the possibility of turning into something like that too. Which did not make it easier for me to think about."
"Were you also behind Coleen's plan? Did you want to date her along Nolan too?"
"Well, it wasn't the ideal situation I imagined, but if I had to share her with someone there wasn't anyone else I would have agreed with. So I suppose it didn't bother me as I thought it would. Then three days have passed and Nolan returned. He also didn't seem particularly happy with the situation, but I got the feeling he was also of the same mind as me. After coming to a consensus or better said agreement between the three of us, we both started dating her."
"And how was it? I must say I never heard of that kind of dynamic before"
"Me neither. That is one of the reasons it made it really hard for the three of us. We didn't really know what we were doing at all. But somehow against all odds, it worked for a while."
"It did?"
"I know, I was surprised too, but yes it did. We were already stuck at the hip, so seeing us going around together wasn't really that different than what we did before, the only thing that changed is that it was sometimes more similar to a date, than a friendly outing. We also had to be careful. Extremely careful, and we mostly were. No one can really miss all the gossip and insults, but we managed somehow. The one thing that did completely change, is when one of us was left alone with her. That usually happened inside or somewhere hidden and then it really felt like we were lovers instead of friends."
"I could have never imagined it, but I got used to it. We even started to joke about it between us, sublty of course, when no one was around us, or when there was a big and loud crowd around us. It became the norm, an everyday occurence. I thought there was no more surprises in my life, and that everything unbelieavable that could have happened to me did."
"And then one day while we were having sex, I wanted to kiss Nolan, and my world shattered again. It broke into a couple of thousands pieces, and I knew I could never return to what I was before. I started to become more aware of his presence, I watched him almost as much as Coleen, it was...... it was all around weird. I wasn't sure what to do next," John deeply sighed, remembering that period in his life and his inner turmoil at everything that was happening. He looked over at Juan, who looked at him raptured and with full attention.
"I of course asked Coleen about it. She told me to go for it. To ask Nolan to a date too, and to see how it goes. At first I tried to find an excuse, to say that I wasn't really feeling what I was feeling, that it was a lie. Coleen didn't let me keep deceiving myself, so in the end I caved and promised her I will do something about it. So I tried to see and gauge how Nolan's reaction would be to these news. I watched him more closely, I tried to find every little intention and secret behind his words, his actions. We did know each other like the backs of our hands, but I still tried to get closer to him still. And in the end I concluded, along with Coleen's observations that maybe it would all turn out alright. I couldn't be sure if Nolan would accept my changing feelings, but he would at least listen to them and think it over. That is all I could hope for."
"However I unfortunately waited too long. The skirmishes became more frequent. When you are fighting a civil war, you can't really tell your friend about your feelings for him. And then he betrayed me to British soldiers, and I killed them along with my friend. So I had to run away and I did. That is how I ended up here in the end. Though unlike when I met them, meeting you was a pure coincidence in this case"
"Or maybe destiny."
"Yeah, maybe. And that is the whole story of my sordid past."
"Wait, wait a minute! What happened to Coleen? Is she still alive? Somewhere back at Ireland?"
"No, she isn't. After I ran away, she soon died because of some disease. And I found that when I got one and only letter from her mother. I really don't know how it even came to be in my possesion, but it somehow did. It was a fairly short letter that only said that she died recently, and that she was buried in the town cementary. That is all I really know," John finished his tale, falling silent because of grief that suddenly cut off his voice. He knew he couldn't say anything more, so he didn't try.
What surprised him is that Juan stayed silent and participated in his grief with that silence. Though he shouldn't have been surprised. The Mexican lost a lot more than he ever did, so if there was someone who would understand pain and grief it was him.
"And then you met me," Juan whispered after a prolongued quiet between them. John chuckled at that and agreed: "And then I met you."
"Makes it all worth it, doesn't it?"
The Irish man burst out in laughter, Juan joining him with his own booming laughter. "Like hell it does!"
"Don't lie to me! I changed your life didn't I?"
"I could say the same to you! If you never met me, you would still probably be a petty bandit, and not a revolutionary hero!"
"Shut up you! If you never met me, you would still be searching for some stupid silver around the desert!"
"You shut up! You don't know what you are talking about!"
"YOU don't know what you are talking about!"
They continue to yell at each other, wrestling in pretend anger, and totally forgetting about the need for sleep. When Juan turns out to be the victor of their contest, they clean the mess they caused around the room and return to the pretend-bed and their miserable blanket.
"I think it is time we set aside this talk of painful memories and really go to sleep now," John finally declares and turns around to see Juan smirking back at him. "Yeah, Fire Cracker I agree," Juan concludes and starts to move over to the mess of a bed they left behind. In that trek, he accidentally (or maybe not?) brushes over his arm, and John blinks at the way his body reacts to it.
"Good night Sean. Sweet dreams," Juan says and covers himself with the blanket. John stays standing where he is, only now realizing the full extent of this whole situation.
Oh, no.
Here we go again.