Work Text:
Los Santos Transit Authority welcomes you.
Please mind the gap; that’s the area between the train and the platform.
Thank you for riding the Los Santos subway.
Ray inhales a deep breath as the train comes to a jolting halt. Her hand feels sweaty around the strap above her head she has been holding on to in order to keep her balance. She clenches her jaw at the pain stinging her legs after standing in the busy car for a long time; the subway bustling with people itching to get home quickly after a stressful day of work. With a hiss of the engine the doors open and she steps onto the platform, immediately checking her surroundings.. Someone has been (im)patiently waiting for her to return to the city. Home . Releasing a nervous breath, she grabs her suitcase and heads towards the stairs.
The sign above the stairs reads;
Los Santos International Airport Terminal 4.
The same station she left from about a month ago. A mixture of dread and excitement fills her stomach as she climbs the stairs. The passageways are just as busy as the trains. Ray tries to maneuver her way through the crowds of people, her suitcase hitting the back of her ankles over and over. It doesn’t register in her mind. Her mind is set on looking for the familiar figure she is so desperate to meet again, even if she doesn’t know what she’s searching for. A lot of things have changed since she left.
What does he look like now? Is he wearing one of the spare masks he keeps in the closet at the Funhouse - or did he buy something new? Does he even wear one at all?
He had given her a part of himself to remember him by. As if she could ever forget . She has been storing it safely in the depths of her backpack for the last few weeks. Having a piece of him with her is making her return so much easier. Her heart starts beating faster at the thought of making him feel whole again. And to feel whole again herself. His heart is a piece of her after all, too.
She turns around the corner and it doesn’t take her a second to recognize him.
He’s wearing suspenders. Of course.
His face is covered by sunglasses and a black bandana, his hair dark and slicked back. It’s an odd feeling seeing him like this outside of their own little bubble.
Her stressed frown turns into a smile.
“Chatty!” Ray yells as she runs towards him, hastily squeezing past the turnstile with her luggage.
Even with the bandana covering the lower half of his face she can see his bright smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling. The red roses in his hands drop to the floor as she flings herself at him, embracing him tightly for the first time in weeks. She takes a deep breath and realizes how relieved she feels to be home. Everything else seems to fade into the background.
As soon as they pull apart reluctantly, she cradles his face in her hands to take a closer look at him, making sure she still remembers every detail of his face. Her hands move towards the back of his head, carefully untying the bandana and taking it off entirely, letting it fall onto the ground next to the long-forgotten bouquet of roses. Seeing his smile up close almost takes her breath away.
“What are you looking at, Cups?” She watches as his lips move, the left corner of his mouth raised in a lopsided smirk, and yet she doesn’t register his words. After a few seconds she finally moves her gaze upwards to meet his eyes.
“What?” Embarrassment flushes her features as she comes back to, still holding onto his face. Her thumbs start gently caressing his cheeks, feeling the prickly stubble of a beard he probably shaved a few days ago. His hands settle on her waist, making her feel grounded and taking her back to the real world.
“Hi.” He lets his gaze wander across her face before fixing it on her eyes again. She can tell he didn’t expect her to be back, at least not right now. “You came back.”
“Chatty, I asked you to pick me up.”
“I know, I just thought that maybe I was hallucinating. Are you actually here right now? Are you okay? Or am I having more…”, he stops his mumbling to pull her into another hug. Ray buries her face in his chest, relieved to find his heart beating just as fast as her own.
“I’m here. I think I’m better.” He pushes her away slightly, looking at her with a raised eyebrow and a concerned frown line on his forehead. “Are you? Because I’m not taking you back to that yuckin’ therapist. I’m not letting you get locked up in a padded room.”
“I dunno. I just tried to learn how to exist again, but as my full self. I’m not gonna lie, it’s still really hard. I don’t think I have it all figured out. But we… well I, um… when I was still fighting with myself, we both wanted to come back at some point because we agreed that the city is our… my home! We both have something we wanted to come back for.”
A moment of silence passes before Chatterbox asks, “You agreed on the reasons too?”
Ray nods. “Of course! I have many people I care about. As you know, like… my family…” She draws out her words on purpose, making him wait, “April, Vinny, Kitty, Max… the clowns, Twinkles, Sooty, Kirk… and you .” An audible sigh of relief escapes his mouth, “Why do you always have to do this to me?” She giggles softly in response, so he can’t help but join in.
In the brief moment of lightheartedness, she reaches for her backpack, unzips it and searches for his mask at the bottom of the bag. She scrambles to retrieve his mask, buried under other belongings like her make-up bag, chargers and empty snack wrappers she haphazardly threw in there. Finally, she grabs it and pulls it out of her backpack.
She brushes some crumbs off of the mask and holds it out to him with both hands and a sheepish look on her face. “Here it is.”
Chatterbox lets out a smitten laugh. He reaches out and gently takes the mask from her with his right hand, his left hand taking a hold of hers and intertwining them. “Thank you, Cups. I’ve been going crazy without my mask if I’m being honest. People keep saying I look like Pigeon. Kirk even started calling me Birdbox.”
She takes a step back and squints. “I don’t see it.”, her voice dripping with irony, “You look like a gang member though. You really became what you hated.”
He tries to fire back with his favorite line, “Well yeah, remember when you said that I’m a honorary-”
She squeezes his hand a little too hard to be accidental, “I remember! I was there!” Ray cringes at her past words but feels herself smile, that conversation is a memory she remembers vividly.
Chatty looks down at their interlaced fingers. “So… are we- are we good? Are we still…”, the pitch of his voice rises slightly, revealing how worried he is.
This time, she squeezes his hand in a tender manner. “I need to see how everything goes first. Maybe I’m not ready for anything right now, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be later.” As much as she wants to jump in entirely and pick up where they left off, she needs some time to herself. The time she spent away from the city made her re-evaluate her life choices and the people she surrounds herself with. After all they’ve been through, and with how much he’d helped her come to terms with her true self, she wants Chatterbox in her life no matter what. He’s her twin flame after all.
“O-Okay. I’m… okay with waiting. As long as it takes. I just want to be with you in whatever way I can.” Subconsciously, he reaches out to touch the engagement ring he wears on a necklace underneath his black dress shirt. His heart feels heavy with sorrow and aflutter with hope at the same time.
Sensing his inner turmoil, Ray pulls him in close and places a delicate kiss on his cheek. “You know I love you, right? I always will.” Suddenly, her fist hits his chest with a thump. He groans. “And I still need you here so don’t you dare leave now.” Apparently she still likes to give him whiplash as well.
“I won’t leave you, ever. If the police arrest me because of my warrant, I’ll be out in no time after I talk to them. I’m a god.” Ray rolls her eyes, his smug grin audible as he talks.
“What did you do now? Let me guess, you kidnapped a cop and destroyed their car by trying out jumps?” She crosses her arms as she remembers something else, her voice low. “Did you lose my ID?”
He pulls the ID out of his pocket and proudly shows it off. “I could never lose it. And that’s not what happened. Vinny asked me to storm the courthouse and PD with 50 other people and they found my blood on the scene after I got shot. I finally got my get back for Debtor’s law! Good guess though, Cups.”
She looks him up and down incredulously, “Who are you?”
For a second he’s scared that her amnesia suddenly came back. “What do you mean? I’m Chatterbox.”
She clicks her tongue. “That sounds suspiciously like gang activity. I guess you already admitted that the clowns are a gang, but doing that for CG is crazy .” He can’t find it in himself to think up a comeback as he watches her menacing grin. They’ve had exchanges like this a hundred times over, and he’s glad they’re still able to have them now.
“Okay.” He sighs and smiles to himself. “We should probably go.” As he’s moving to pick up Ray’s suitcase, he realizes that he’s been bare-faced in a busy train station for however long their talk has been. Surprisingly, he doesn’t feel the frantic need to put on his mask instantly. He takes another look around and focuses his gaze on Ray one more time. She’s watching him curiously, the bouquet of roses and his bandana in hand after she finally picked them up. “You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah… just,” he mumbles as he slips on the mask for the first time in a month, “didn’t realize I wasn’t wearing anything to cover my face.”
“Don’t worry, you’re still handsome.” She lays her hand on his cheek to caress it again, the feeling of his stubble replaced by the fabric of the mask. Kind of disappointing .
“I like that you didn’t just wear a spare clown mask.” Her eyes shine as she takes him in before extending her hand out to him. “Now it feels like we both changed in a way but… I feel the same for you as I did before everything happened. Just... wait for me, okay?” When they fit their hands against each other he feels a sense of certainty. If they can come back from this they can overcome any hurdle.
Chatterbox feels his heart skip a beat. “I love you. Even more than before.”, he mutters before he feels Ray pulling him towards the exit of the station.