Work Text:
Fito never thought he would miss the mountain, but on some days it is difficult not to. His bed is too soft, his house is too full, and the city is too loud. Some days he just wants to leave - to pick a direction and keep walking until he finds the emptiest field in all of Uruguay and just sit there with the sun and the grass and the silence.
But Fito also finds it just as difficult to leave his house and go anywhere in Montevideo. Reporters don't show up at the door anymore - they've all moved on to different stories or bigger personalities - but that doesn't stop the people in the streets from gawking at him or whispering behind his back. Not all of it is negative attention. Fito can see that sometimes strangers will look at him with something that feels almost like great admiration tinged with a gentle sadness. But Fito just wishes they wouldn't look at him at all - that he could visit all his favourite parks and take his walks along the beach without being noticed or being special in any way.
His sisters have taken him out to cafes and restaurants - holding his hand through his favourite places much in the same way Eduardo's siblings have done with him. But all his favourite places feel like they've changed - or perhaps Fito himself has changed too much - and he can't look at a table with an ashtray next to him without feeling a great emptiness where his cousin Dani should be.
So Fito no longer goes out anywhere. His father says he should return to school but his mother argues that he can delay a year if he needs to. Fito isn't sure what to do. No one will want a cannibal rancher and that word is all he is to so many people now.
He sits quietly at his bedroom window, listening the the sounds of the neighborhood from the other side of the garden walls. The sun is bright but it feels almost mockingly so as Fito does not feel his spirits lifted much by warmth and air that used to comfort him. Next to him, his turtle basks silently in its terrarium. Did the little creature miss him, he wonders sometimes, or did it never realize he was missing at all? At least a turtle is too primitive to understand its owner has come back from an ordeal any different from what he was when he left. Perhaps, thinks Fito, that is of some comfort.
A distant murmur of voices pulls him slowly from his drifting thoughts. At first he thinks people are speaking outside, and carefully peers down from his window to try to see the intruders. But there is no one around. It is not until he gets up to go look in the hall and see if someone has brought a guest over that he realizes the voices are coming from within his bedroom itself - or, rather, they are drifting up from the vent in the floor.
Eduardo is in his bedroom. They discovered when they were small children that the vents between their rooms connected and would talk quietly to each other, murmuring secrets that no one else in the house could hear. They also squabbled through the vents, usually as they got older and took a small amount of joy in interrupting the other person when they clearly wanted privacy.
Fito knows he shouldn't spy on Eduardo, but when he hears a second voice join the conversation he can't help but strain his ears to listen. It's the quiet, even tones of Marcelo speaking and Fito goes very still, desperate to hear and cling to every word. He never sees Marcelo anymore - hasn't seen him since the last time they were all grouped together in front of a podium to blink at flashing camera bulbs and answer questions about what they had done.
A lot of reporters have wanted to know about Nando and Roberto, have asked them about their hike through the mountains. They paint them as the heroes of the narrative for getting them all home, but many have also turned their notepads and tape recorders towards Marcelo. He was the rugby captain and even though most of those who returned home weren't even players on the team, the idea of “rugby team survives plane crash” is an easy story to sell. But the story of a rugby team puts its captain in the center of it, and while everyone who was on that mountain knows it was so much more than that, in some way people like Fito are glad that it is someone else in front of everyone and not him.
That is until the reporters begin writing stories about how the trip was Marcelo’s idea. How he planned it all and charted the doomed plane. For every question he’s asked about how his role as their captain helped him lead them, there is another that wants to know how hard it was or asks him if he thinks he bears some responsibility for what happened.
Fito knows that the only reason Marcelo puts himself through it all is so that no one else has to. But Fito has also seen the look in his eyes - like a caged animal, trembling with fear and looking for an escape. He saw that look on the mountain - first when they were starving and realized that only one option was now left to them, and then again sitting in the dark cramped space of the plane buried beneath a raging blizzard.
Fito always feels that he should say something. He should stand up and tell off a reporter like Roberto has or give them a cold hard look like he's seen from Nando. But Fito is less brash now, more tempered by the personalities and presence of his two cousins. He finds he looks to Daniel now more for what to say and when to say it. But Daniel has not returned to Montevideo and instead has retreated to a summer home somewhere in the interior.
But then he never sees Marcelo anymore either, and Fito no longer listens to the radio so he can't hear whatever cruel or sensationalized things reporters want to say.
He's here now though, just downstairs and Fito could go down and knock on Eduardo's door and see him and know that he's okay. But there's a sanctity to the deep friendship between Eduardo and Marcelo - something that Fito has been jealous of at times - and he knows he shouldn't interrupt or invade their space. Not this time, at least, not when they both sound so serious in their hushed conversation.
They're talking about rugby. Fito almost laughs listening to them as it reminds him of so many old conversations with Marcelo before the crash. But there's a heaviness to his voice, and Fito can tell that he now speaks about the sport with a great deal of reservation.
“Nevermind what the doctor said,” he can hear Eduardo say. “Do you feel ready to play?”
There is a long pause where Fito worries perhaps he might be breathing too loudly and they've heard him. But then he hears Marcelo again, and he sounds tired as he tells Eduardo that playing rugby isn't what he's not ready for.
“Black armbands,” Marcelo says. “I have to stand there as their captain in front of the cameras again. ‘It's symbolic,’ they say, but I was responsible for each name that armband represents. Each spot on the team that someone else had to fill. I… I can't…”
“Marcelo…”
They move further away from the vent. Fito can still hear them talking but can no longer make out the words. He doesn't move, however, remaining hovering near the little vent in his floor, hoping he'll hear Eduardo say something smart and bright and comforting. But all he hears is silence punctuated by the faded murmur of voices that don't carry far enough.
He returns to his spot at the window, hoping that maybe Marcelo will come out to see him before he leaves. He should at least look in on Fito, shouldn't he? They had endured so much together on the mountain and had grown so close that it wasn't really just Eduardo and Marcelo anymore. Marcelo had been their leader, but Fito and his cousins had been his support and confidantes. Marcelo had only survived and returned home because they had reached out and saved him, and had kept him going through the worst of his despair.
It's not that he's looking for any sort of reward or that Fito thinks he deserves some sort of gratitude from Marcelo. No, he would never ask for that because it goes much deeper than that. Fito hasn't forgotten the way Marcelo's hand found his in the darkness, how their fingers entwined with one another as they huddled close for warmth. He hasn't forgotten Mendoza - the one sweet blessed night in Mendoza that seems like an entire lifetime ago.
But sometimes, Fito wonders if Marcelo has.
If he hasn't, Fito sees no sign of it that night. He sits and watches the shadows grow long, but if Marcelo is staying long with Eduardo, he leaves the same way he came.
Fito sleeps the way he always does now - fitfully, propped up in his bed by the pillows at his back. In the daylight it’s easy to joke about how he will develop the back of an old man if he keeps sleeping this way, but the truth is that whenever he tries to lie down the way he should, the whole world feels wrong.
There is a cold emptiness to his bed that also follows him. Despite having been one of the most contentious of the group about personal space inside the plane, he finds that the absence of warm bodies pressed in around him has left him feeling isolated and empty when he wakes. He still finds himself searching for the press of Daniel's feet against his shoulder, of the way he and Eduardo would rest their heads against each other. He searches most for the deep brown eyes of Marcelo who never slept but instead watched over him as he did everyone else.
He knows he's in a house surrounded by so many people - his grandparents upstairs, Eduardo and his family below him, and his parents and sisters around him - and yet alone in his room they feel too far away.
To be alone meant death on the mountain. It is not an easy mindset to shake.
He's pulled from a dazed half-dreaming state by something tapping at his window. Hazy half-remembered memories of a broken fuselage dissolve back into his warm bedroom and he sits up a little straighter, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
Another tap at the window. Fito doesn't see any bird or creature that might be the source of the noise. But as he gets up to investigate, he sees a small pebble hit the glass and bounce away. Confused, he opens the window and pokes his head out.
“Finally…!” says a voice from down below. “I was running out of rocks.”
“Lalo…?”
His cousin is standing in the garden beneath his window, a cigarette clenched between his teeth and a fistful of gravel in his hand. He looks up expectantly at Fito and something in the cool evenness of his expression makes Fito suspect that he knows he was eavesdropping the day before. But if he does he doesn't chastise Fito or even bring it up at all. He simply stands there, tapping his foot a little impatiently.
“You couldn’t just knock on the door?” asks Fito, resting his elbows on the windowsill and passing a hand over his face.
“And have your mother team up with mine to try to get me to go to church?” says Eduardo. He scatters the remaining pebbles across the ground and brushes the dirt from his hands. “No thank you. I've had enough of that argument.”
Fito can't help but smile in mild amusement. He's been spared similar harassment only because he had already gone through the same argument with his mother years ago. Eduardo does not return the smile, however. He has a serious countenance this morning that Fito finds troubling.
“Come down so we can talk,” Eduardo says, stamping out his cigarette. “It's important. It's about Marcelo.”
Eduardo's words light a fire beneath Fito, but at the same time they seem to carry an air of dread with them. Why does Eduardo need to talk to Fito about Marcelo? Did Marcelo say something about him last night? Is Eduardo setting Fito up to ambush him about his eavesdropping?
When Fito comes down to meet him, his cousin has relocated himself, sitting calm and quiet in one of the garden chairs, a smouldering ashtray and cup of coffee in front of him. Fito sits quietly across from him, hands folded in his lap. Eduardo offers him a cigarette and Fito accepts it though not before he scrutinizes his cousin’s face, determined to find a hint of what Eduardo intends.
“Marcelo is having an asado today,” Eduardo says, picking up his coffee and examining it absently. He pauses, waiting for Fito to say something but Fito doesn’t have anything to say. So Eduardo continues, “I think we should both be there.”
Fito looks up to stare at the morning sky. It is clear and cloudless, the sort of bright blue ceiling that is perfect for a day at the beach, or an asado… or a rugby game.
“It's for the Old Christians,” says Fito, and it isn't a question. Fito knows about the Sunday tradition of at Marcelo's, but there haven't been any since the accident and they were mostly for the players anyway.
“Are you saying you don't want to go?” asks Eduardo, and he sounds genuinely surprised by Fito's dismissal.
“Did Marcelo invite us?”
Eduardo frowns and while it is only a brief flicker across his features, it tells Fito everything. Eduardo is asking Fito to come, not Marcelo. Fito tries not to look as disappointed as he feels. He should have known better than to get his hopes up that maybe Marcelo had remembered him.
But Eduardo seems to think differently, and Fito supposes he should trust his judgment. After all, no one knows the rugby captain better than him.
“It's going to be a hard day for him,” Eduardo says. “He didn't ask, but I told him we'd be there.”
“Both of us?” asks Fito, and he feels his heart beat just a little faster. “You told him both of us?”
Eduardo gives Fito an odd look. It is mostly confusion but there is a hint of something suspicious in it too. Fito wonders how much he and Marcelo talked last night, and how much of it was about rugby or the asado, and how much of it was about… something else. But Fito doesn't ask, and Eduardo in turn sets his own suspicions aside as he lights another cigarette and smokes it in silence.
The asado feels like Fito's own personal hell. Parties have never been his sort of thing, and he doesn't know most of the guests as well as he would like. They're almost all replacement players and vague names from a school he left almost a decade ago. The few that he does know feel somehow unapproachable to Fito - Nando and Roberto, seemingly inseparable these days, are always in the center of a crowd of admirers that Fito wants nothing to do with; Tintin has come for the food, rugby, and very little conversation; and Roy does not appear to have shown up at all.
And yet, he finds it hard to find Marcelo among the guests and loses track of Eduardo far too quickly. The first place he looks is the grill with its arrangements of different meats all set up and smoking beautifully in the afternoon heat. Marcelo usually cooked, but he isn't manning the grill today. Fito supposes that right now it would be too awkward for any of them to be overseeing the cooking of meat. The looks he receives from a couple boys as he passes by tells Fito that his assumptions are regretfully correct.
He does a full lap of the courtyard before he decides he's had enough of standing around looking awkward and unapproachable, and quietly slips inside the house for a moment of relief. As he slides the glass door shut behind him, he freezes as he discovers the two people he's spent the last twenty minutes searching for.
Marcelo is still in his rugby uniform with its crisp white shorts and bold blue sweater smeared with dirt. He's stretched across one of the sofas, laying flat on his back with one leg dangling off the side. Eduardo sits on the floor nearby, his back pressed against the sofa with his knees folded up against his chest. Neither of them appear to have been engaged in conversation but as Eduardo glances up at Fito, he can't help but feel as if he's interrupted something very private and personal.
“Tired of the party too?” asks Marcelo, still staring up at the ceiling. He sounds distant, as if he knows he’s speaking to Fito and doesn’t at the same time.
“You know how much I don’t like parties,” Fito says quietly. Marcelo doesn’t respond but Eduardo chuckles, patting a space on the floor next to him.
Fito accepts the invitation, dropping down on the floor next to Eduardo and stretching his legs out in front of him. It is a little strange to sit like this much in the way he remembers them doing sometimes when they were small. Back then, Marcelo and Eduardo would be reading comics with Fito sitting quietly with his own book or little toys because he was too shy to talk to Eduardo's friend. They're missing the Daniels though, and Fito feels a longing in the wake of their absence.
“Do you think Daniel will come back to Montevideo soon?” he asks quietly.
No one answers. Eduardo offers little more than a shrug but Marcelo reaches out, taking Fito by the shoulder and squeezing gently. Fito's heart beats louder at the touch and he folds his hands together in his lap to try and steady his breathing. A simple gesture should not leave him feeling so overwhelmed, but it’s Marcelo and the time spent apart has not made his touch feel any less electric to Fito.
Fito remembers the last time Marcelo took him by the shoulder like this. He remembers the stars overheard shining beautifully even as he and Marcelo stood shivering in the dark. Marcelo had looked at him then with eyes that were dark and fierce and burning with determination.
He misses that Marcelo. The one who touches him now seems somehow smaller, weaker, more wretched. In the afternoon light, he looks older than he should, with lines and bruises beneath his eyes that betray how little he still sleeps. The black armband is still pinned to his sweater and Fito wonders how long Marcelo will torture himself with its presence.
A glance at Eduardo tells Fito that his cousin is thinking the same thing. His eyes are downcast and his body language seems withdrawn and defensive. A wave of irritation washes over Fito suddenly at the sight. If Eduardo sees what Fito sees then why doesn't he do something? Why doesn't he pull Marcelo to his feet and tear off that guilty armband for him? Fito would do it. He'd do it if Eduardo wasn't there to yell at him for it.
Fito wonders if he should do it anyway. But his nerves fail him and instead he places his hand over Marcelo’s, brushing his thumb gently across the other boy's knuckles. He can feel Marcelo's fingers twitch and for one horrible moment, Fito thinks that maybe Marcelo might pull his hand away. But instead Marcelo clutches the fabric of Fito's shirt just a little tighter.
The three of them sit in silence together, neither of them moving for what must be an hour. Fito passes the time by holding Marcelo's hand and watching the sunlight creep slowly across the carpeted floor. Eduardo even dozes for a while, but it is short-lived and eventually he yawns and sighs.
“Marcelo, we're going to have to go outside eventually. You are going to be missed.”
The hand on Fito's shoulder releases its grip and Fito is forced to let go as Marcelo pulls away. He looks towards Marcelo, expecting him to be getting up, to have listened to Eduardo’s words. But he simply rolls over, crossing his arms and turning his back to both of them and the door outside.
“I'm tired, Eduardo,” Marcelo says moodily. “Rugby has made me tired.”
“Then why did you have the asado?” asks Fito. It is an innocent question, but the way Marcelo's shoulders hunch upwards it's clear he resents being asked.
“Mi madre,” he says. “She told me that I should. She said it would cheer me up. That it would make me feel normal.”
There's a change in the air at Marcelo's words. Something about them makes Eduardo visibly bristle and he holds his knees a little tighter, his jaw firmly set. Fito thinks this is something they've argued about before but that Eduardo is holding his tongue because of Fito's presence. A pang of jealousy stirs in the pit of Fito's stomach. He feels like an intruder in their space, just like it was before the mountain.
Fito is so consumed by the thoughts that are beginning to eat away at him that he almost doesn't realize Eduardo has finally broken his silence. His temper is beginning to flare and it's directed right at Marcelo.
“You would feel better if you took off those rugby clothes,” he says. “Look at you, Marcelo, you have to stop torturing yourself about it! It's been months!”
Fito wishes Daniel was here. He is much better at cooling tempers and mediating arguments. Fito can only weakly try to calm his cousin, putting a hand on his arm to try and keep him grounded. But Eduardo yanks his arm away, getting to his feet and looming over the both of them.
“Sometimes I think you wish I hadn't saved you.”
There are tears shining in Eduardo's eyes. It hurts Fito to see and hear such things spoken by his cousin. Why would anyone resent the friend who had saved him? Why would any of them have wanted to stay behind? He holds his breath, waiting for the argument to come - for Marcelo to bite back. But there is nothing but silence and Fito realizes with a sickening lurch of his insides that Marcelo isn’t arguing back because Eduardo is right. Eduardo appears to come to the same realization as Fito as his eyes widen and his face crumples before he turns and swiftly walks away.
Fito is too stunned to react. He knows he should go after Eduardo for surely his cousin will need him but he finds himself frozen in place, unable to move and instead wanting to disappear. He feels like he just witnessed something he was never meant to.
It's not until he hears a rattling breath behind him and a distinct sniffling sound that he's able to pull himself together to turn towards Marcelo. He still has his back to Fito, but his shoulders shake with silent cries.
Fito feels like his heart is being pulled in two different directions. His heart breaks for Eduardo just as much as it does for Marcelo, and at first he doesn't know who he should comfort. But if what Eduardo said was true then Fito thinks Marcelo shouldn't be left alone right now.
“Get up, Marcelo,” he says gently, getting to his feet. “You're tired, you need to rest, but not here.”
“No, Fito,” Marcelo says. “Leave me alone. Your cousin needs you.”
“I can't,” Fito says, and he feels his own eyes beginning to burn with unshed tears as his chest tightens, “because you need me too.”
Marcelo turns slightly, peering at Fito from over his shoulder with tired eyes. Fito's hands are balled into fists, not because he wants to fight with Marcelo but because he's full of so much nervous energy he's afraid his hands will begin to tremble if he doesn't do something.
“Please,” says Fito, trying one more time to coax Marcelo off the sofa. “You'll feel better in clean clothes in a clean bed.”
Marcelo sighs, but he finally turns back over and sits up. He rubs at his eyes and as Fito watches him, he thinks that Marcelo suddenly seems very small and almost frail. He is slow and seems to move with incredible reluctance, but eventually he rises to his feet.
“Alright,” he sighs, “but only because my mother will be upset if there is dirt everywhere.”
Marcelo does not ask Fito to go with him, but he doesn't tell him to go running after his cousin either. He doesn't ask Fito for anything, but instead turns and leaves the room, disappearing further inside the house. For a moment, Fito is left wondering what he is expected to do next. Maybe he should go look for Eduardo. Maybe he needs fixing next.
But the creaking of the staircase draws his attention back to Marcelo. He can’t help but worry the rugby captain might somehow hurt himself and so resolves to follow behind him. Eduardo would do the same, he tells himself.
Fito finds himself sitting in a chair outside the bathroom like a silent sentinel, Marcelo's soiled rugby clothes folded in his lap. Behind him he can hear the sound of running water as Marcelo washes himself up. Fito pretends that he’s there to distract any party goers who come looking for Marcelo. In truth, he’s there because he doesn’t want Marcelo to feel alone.
The rugby sweater is brand new. Fito can tell by the stiff starchy feel of the fabric. He's not sure why he's surprised - Marcelo's old sweater is somewhere in the Andes, either buried in the snow or rotting away somewhere. The black armband stands out like a scar against the deep blue material as Fito removes the safety pins holding it to the sleeve. It's only a simple piece of fabric, but he understands that it holds many names invisibly stitched together within its threads.
He tries to recite them all inside his head and wonders if this is what Marcelo does. But when Fito tries to picture all of their faces they are cold and lifeless with empty eyes and he is the last sight they see, standing over them with that broken piece of glass.
“Primito? What are you doing?”
Fito looks up to find Marcelo standing in the doorway, freshly bathed with a towel wrapped around his waist. He blushes sheepishly at the realization that he had been lost in his own thoughts so far away that he hadn't heard the water turn off.
“Nothing” he says, for it is nothing important, at least not right now. “Just thinking, I suppose.”
“About what?” asks Marcelo, and Fito notices his eyes travel to the black fabric clutched in Fito's hands.
Fito swallows, twisting the fabric anxiously in his hands. He wants to be strong for Marcelo just like he was on the mountain, always calm and forward thinking in his practicality. But since returning to Montevideo, Fito finds that every day it is harder to be strong. His quiet contemplative demeanour feels more timid than it should, more anxious and uncertain. On the mountain, Fito wouldn't have sat quietly while Eduardo said horrible things. But on the mountain, Eduardo wouldn't have ever spoken to Marcelo like that either.
Everything feels wrong and he doesn't know how to explain it.
“I'm thinking about how much I miss Daniel,” he says instead.
It's an evasive answer at first. Fito misses Daniel the mediator, Daniel the calm problem solver, Daniel the older cousin who loved and protected all of them. It's Daniel who he needs now because Daniel always had the intelligent and thoughtful answers to all of Fito's frustrations and questions. But all Fito hears of his older cousin now are occasional updates from his mother when she talks to his aunt on the phone.
But there's something else that lurks when Fito feels Daniel's absence. Watching Eduardo and Marcelo fight has drawn it closer to the surface until it stares back at him from within the fabric of the mourning band. He thinks about how fractured they are now instead of the five young boys they all were once, causing mischief and playing together in the garden.
Five.
Because Fito misses Daniel. He misses the Daniel who didn't make it home. He misses the Daniel that Marcelo and his teammates played in honour of today.
It hits him so suddenly that Fito is barely aware of what's happening to him. But something inside of him suddenly breaks loose, dislodging itself from where he had kept it firmly close to his heart and with it all his emotions suddenly begin to unravel without warning. His eyes fill with tears, hot and wet as they stream down his cheeks. He tries to hold it in, but all he can manage is a single shuddering breath that does little to stem the flood that's been set loose.
“Fito?!” Marcelo’s voice sounds alarmed. It’s the first time all day he's sounded present instead of detached and distant. “Fito, hey… hey, it's okay. Daniel's not gone forever.”
Fito cries harder, a sob wrenching itself from his throat as he buries his face in his hands. He feels wretched. He shouldn't be like this - not here, not now. He's supposed to be helping Marcelo; he's supposed to fix things with Eduardo. But the thought of both those things only makes the tears come faster.
He feels like a fool. Marcelo must be thinking he's gone insane, sobbing like a child over someone who just left the city for a little while. But he can't find his voice to correct Marcelo. And perhaps he is crying over both of his cousins at once even if it's for different reasons. He doesn't really know. He just knows his chest aches and he can't stop it.
Marcelo crouches down in front of Fito and gently takes his hands. Marcelo’s hands are damp from the shower or maybe Fito's just gotten his tears all over everything. He isn't certain. He can barely even see.
But he can feel. A pair of hands cup his cheeks, gently cradling his face. Marcelo's fingers brush away some of his tears, and Fito wishes he could laugh at how futile the effort is. But he doesn't laugh, instead taking several sharp shuddering breaths that make him feel like a drowning man gasping for air. Marcelo says something softly to him that he doesn't quite hear at first, but the words don't matter so much to Fito as their tone. Marcelo's voice is low and soft… and emotional. He sounds like he's on the verge of tears too.
“It's all right, Fito, it's okay,” he says softly, and the way Marcelo's voice cracks with sudden unexpected emotion makes Fito's own breath catch in his throat. “Just let it come.”
“I wanted to bury him,” Fito sobs, and then it all comes spilling out. All of his regrets. All the emptiness that has been eating away at him. The way he's afraid to go back to school, the way he doesn't want to play rugby anymore because Dani isn't there. Dani who he quarrelled with right before he died. Dani who he found all those weeks later still frozen in the snow, who didn't have the chance to consent like everyone else, who looked up at Fito with the same glassy lifeless eyes and pale face that he thought he had grown numb to. Dani who would collect rocks and frogs and milk caps when they were children and give them all to Fito when he grew bored of them. Dani who had given Fito his first cigarette when they were teenagers. Dani who would cheer Fito up when Eduardo was too busy for him. Dani who had wanted Fito's seat to better see the mountains.
Marcelo starts to ask Fito what it is he's talking about, but trails off as realization dawns on him. Fito can hear it in Marcelo's voice and then for the first time all afternoon he moves quite suddenly, grabbing the rugby uniform from Fito's lap and tossing it aside before he takes hold of Fito and pulls him down onto the floor next to him.
Marcelo's arms are surprisingly strong despite how he still hasn’t gained back all the weight he lost on the mountain. They wrap tightly around Fito, pulling him into a warm embrace against his shoulder. Fito can smell the freshness of soap and shampoo that clings to Marcelo from the shower. It’s a wonderful scent and almost soothing as Fito presses his face against Marcelo’s skin. He struggles desperately to pull himself together, knowing that they must look like such an awkward sight like this - Fito crying into Marcelo's shoulder while Marcelo sits in nothing but a towel and hair that hasn't even been combed yet.
But Marcelo is crying too now, his voice quivering as he tells Fito he's sorry. “It's my fault. It's all my fault. I'm sorry, Fito, your primo, he…”
Marcelo's apology stirs something in Fito enough that the tears begin to finally slow. He's heard Marcelo apologize before - to him, to Daniel, to Eduardo, to every single one of them again and again. It's always for the same thing - the plane crash, the mountain, every one of their painful losses. When Marcelo had first apologized for the death of Fito's cousin, both Fito and Eduardo had snapped at him - not unkindly, but perhaps a little too firmly. Fito remembers the look on Marcelo's face, how he seemed to shrink and withdraw even as Daniel tried to find understanding between both sides.
Fito feels calmer this time, perhaps because whatever had broken loose inside of him has washed away amidst his tears. It isn't quite a calmness that has settled over him, but it is perhaps the closest to one he can hope for.
“It isn't your fault,” Fito says, choosing kinder words this time. “He asked me to change seats with him. I said no. He kept asking. I was about to give in when… If I had done it, he would have made it.”
“Fito, no. ” He feels Marcelo take in a sharp breath and stiffen against him. The arms holding him protectively loosen their embrace and Marcelo grips him by the shoulders, staring intently at Fito with eyes that are bright with tears. “It happened the way it happened. If it had been different then you would have died and… and I…”
Fito holds his breath, waiting for Marcelo to finish his thought. A warm feeling flutters inside Fito's chest, like the sudden spark of hope he had felt yesterday when he had heard Marcelo's voice downstairs. Marcelo swallows and his fingers dig almost painfully into Fito's shoulders, but no words come.
Fito takes Marcelo's hands and removes them from his shoulders. As he does, Marcelo begins to shrink away as if the moment of their connection has been severed, but Fito doesn't let go, instead holding Marcelo's hands in his own trembling ones. He looks at Marcelo, at his tired eyes red from crying. Fito wonders if they will ever end, or if there is no bottom to Marcelo's grief even though he made it home. Was survival not enough?
Maybe surviving was never enough - will never be enough on its own.
“Was Eduardo right?” he asks. “Do you really wish he hadn't saved you?”
Marcelo looks down at his and Fito's hands. The way his shoulders slouch, Fito thinks he already knows the answer and can feel his heart sink ever downwards as Marcelo clears his throat. But to Fito's surprise, Marcelo squeezes his hands, returning Fito's strong comforting grip.
“Sometimes,” he says, and while his eyes are still downcast there's an odd tone to his voice, as if Marcelo is deep in thought, contemplating something important. “Sometimes I do. Sometimes I think about how peaceful it was. How I wasn't afraid. How nothing hurt and I was free. But then sometimes I think about…”
Marcelo's voice waivers and he takes in a shuddering breath. Fito squeezes his hands again gently, encouragingly. Those deep brown eyes glance up at him and for a moment, Fito thinks he sees something different in them - something of the old Marcelo before the cold and the fear could get its claws into him.
“I think about Eduardo's voice,” Marcelo continues, “begging me to breathe. I think about how frightened he sounded and that I don't want to frighten him like that again. Sometimes I don’t think I should be here, Fito… and I don't like it…”
“It won't feel that way forever,” Fito says, and he's not certain if he's saying it to Marcelo, to himself, or perhaps both of them. It can't feel like this forever, because then why did they come back? Why did they survive and get a second chance at life if it wasn’t going to ever feel like living again?
“You don't know that…”
“You're right,” says Fito, his voice firm in its conviction, “but neither do you.”
He gets to his feet - his hands still firmly holding Marcelo's - and with a great effort, pulls Marcelo up off the floor after him. There is more that Fito wants to say to him. He wants to tell Marcelo that not coming home would have broken him just as much as it would have Eduardo; that for all Marcelo struggled, his very presence was a strength and comfort to all of them; that no matter what the reporters say, Marcelo is loved and adored by all of them - Fito most of all. So much about them has changed, but not everything. Inside Fito is still the anxious heart of a little boy who saw Marcelo smile at him and felt butterflies.
But when Marcelo lifts his gaze towards Fito's, it feels like the worst of the mountain is staring back. Marcelo's eyes are dull, empty, and full of doubt. And Fito finds himself wondering if this Marcelo ever really returned from the mountain at all.