Work Text:
“Right,” said Elliot, “there is no way this will end poorly.”
“The last time anyone said that, you were conceived,” Leo told him, standing a safe distance away and checking his pockets surreptitiously for his first aid kit. “The last time anyone said that, Humpty Dumpty became Fianna House’s new mascot.”
“Firstly, fuck you, secondly, no they didn’t, they said ‘this is a great idea for fun and for profit’ and then it wasn’t, and now my mother’s joined a cult and Gilbert ran away,” said Elliot, carefully tying the apple—red, shiny, and the biggest he could find at the market—to the top of his head. “Don’t be a pussy and get out your gun.”
“I am not fucking doing that,” said Leo.
“Who pays your bills?”
“Your rich daddy, and getting paid to be your friend does not mean that I’m shooting you in the head,” Leo told him, taking another step back.
“Chicken.”
“Who’s chicken? You’re an idiot with no regard for your or anyone else’s safety, that’s all, and you’re not pulling me into it.”
“Yeah, because you’re a wuss, ” said Elliot. “Come on, you brained me with a chair literally last week. This is so much less bad than that.”
“Bullshit it is.”
“If it misses it’ll hurt a hell of a lot less than that chair did,” Elliot said, and Leo took a sharp breath and turned and started walking away. “—Hey, wait, come back! That was a good one! That was funny. ”
“No it wasn’t!” Leo shouted, turning sharply on his heel to face his idiot friend. “Your death isn’t funny!”
“It super totally definitely is,” said Elliot, “at least if the joke is you killing me, since you wouldn’t, given literally all the provocation and excuse in the whole entire universe you still wouldn’t, which is actually fucking insane, you know.”
“That’s a damned lie,” said Leo, “and Oz Vessalius would back me up on it.”
“Nah, he wouldn’t, he likes me better,” Elliot said, which Leo would have believed a week or month prior, depending on who was counting, but definitely didn’t now, “and besides I’m fucking right and you know it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I gaslit you for years about multiple things including the deaths of your own siblings, and I stole your song and gaslit you about that too. If you were gonna kill me you would have smothered me with a pillow over that years ago. You didn’t, ergo you wouldn’t, ergo jokes about you killing me are funny.”
“Humpty Dumpty,” said Leo quietly, “counts as killing you.”
“Does not,” said Elliot, “not least because I didn’t die.”
“Death of personality,” Leo said, because he couldn’t give the other argument, because the only person who knew the other argument was Oz Vessalius—and maybe Jack Vessalius, and maybe the past Glens Baskerville, but who knew because nobody had seen hide nor hair of Jack in months (a week for Leo and hopefully Oz) and Glen Baskerville was sealed again, which meant that the asshole Greek chorus in Leo’s head was still muzzled.
“Bullshit that was death of personality,” said Elliot. “That was just me being enabled in being a coward and a real asshole to you. Totally not your fault literally at all. Come on. Stop being a wuss and fucking shoot me. I mean the apple. On my head.”
“No.”
“Your aim with a gun is ass and you need practice.”
“Are you even hearing yourself?” said Leo. “I can’t use a gun for shit and so you want me to shoot a tiny thing on top of your head? No, better question: are you actually stupid? Or just suicidal?”
Elliot flinched at that, and Leo had the horrifying, sickening realization that he might have just hit the nail on the head.
“You’re not suicidal,” he said, voice low and furious and dangerous. “You fucking aren’t. Fuck you.”
“Yeah, obviously I’m not, who am I, Oz Vessalius?” Elliot said, which was a mistake, because he was a bad liar, always had been, especially to Leo. Even with the world blurred behind thick glass and shielded with once-more overlong bangs it was obvious, and Leo’s stomach lurched and he thought about how Elliot had died the first time around, rejecting your Chain, certain death, honor and strength of will Vincent had called it, and Leo had never thought of it differently, but Vincent had then entered into a suicide pact with him immediately after so maybe Vincent wasn’t the most reliable of narrators.
Leo Baskerville had never had the best of tempers, or the best self-control when he saw red. He had not thought his actions through after losing it even once in his life; Elliot took care of that, usually, or Elliot died and Leo lost his whole entire shit. This time was no different; Leo cussed like no hidden cult leader should ever dare to cuss, lowered his head, and charged at Elliot.
“I’m not!” Elliot shouted, a useless lie now that Leo had already seen red and put the pieces of the previous timeline together. “I’m fucking not! Shit!”
Leo hit him like a speeding carriage, like a runaway Clydesdale; he hit him like a broken heart transforming into a broken nose, and then he recalled the metal in his hands and gave Elliot an object lesson in being pistol-whipped. Only once they were both bloodied and broken and covered in sticky-pulped apple and stickier blood was Elliot able to sit on top of Leo, pin his arms to the ground, and finally stop him from attempting to beat Elliot to death while screaming at him to not fucking die.
“Jesus Fantasy fucking Christ, Leo!” said Elliot. “I’m not dying!”
“You tried to get me to shoot you in the head, you—”
One of the former Glens—Levi, who was only somewhat less of an asshole than Oswald—provided him with a laundry list of slurs. Leo recited these at Elliot’s face until he ran out of breath, and got kindly punched in the nose for his troubles. He continued reciting them, blood draining from his nose down his throat until he choked on it, and then Elliot flipped him over and pounded on his back until he coughed it all up.
“You’re a fucking asshole,” Elliot said, “you know that, right?”
Leo coughed and called him another one of Levi’s slurs.
“Are we gonna talk about this like grownups or not?” said Elliot. “Also, that doesn’t even apply to me.”
Leo didn’t give a shit. He said it again.
“Look, fine, I’ll put the apple somewhere else. —The next apple,” Elliot amended, as the original was no longer a solid. “Though, I mean, look, the odds of you actually shooting me in the head are only slightly better than you actually hitting the apple in the first place, your aim su— OW FUCK THAT WAS MY GOOD ARM YOU RABID BITCH.”
Elliot’s blood tasted different from Leo’s own; this was, perhaps, one of the differences between Baskervilles and humans, and it was that sobering thought that had Leo calm down enough to start drinking Elliot’s blood directly from the wrist he’d bitten into, and then calm down enough to realize that that had been really fucking weird of him, actually, and hang on, when you realized your lover was suicidal maybe the best response wasn’t to beat him within an inch of his life and then call him every slur in the dictionary and some that weren’t.
Leo took his mouth off of Elliot’s wrist, flushed, and looked away. “Sorry,” he muttered.
“Huh? What for? That was really fucking hot, actually, why’d you stop?” said Elliot.
“You’re into getting your ass beat and getting called slurs?” said Leo. “Wow. You’re, like, actually crazy.”
“I don’t want to hear that from you,” Elliot retorted, his face red. “And I meant, like, you drinking my blood. That was hot, you loser, not whatever mental fucking breakdown you just had.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re fucked in the head?” Leo said.
“No, but thank goodness you’re saying it now.” Elliot grinned down at him, bloodied and missing at least one tooth. “Feeling better now?”
“Maybe a little,” Leo muttered unwillingly.
“Great.” Elliot rolled off of him and started rooting through the grass. “Super cool to know you can hold your own in melee but honestly the question there has always been can anyone hold their own against you. But you still need to learn how to shoot a gun.”
“Do I, though?” said Leo.
“Yeah, you do,” Elliot said. “Gilbert says it’s a more impersonal weapon. Easier to not care who you’re shooting with it, and all that jazz. You need to learn.”
“I really don’t see why.”
“Don’t you?” Elliot said, finding what he was looking for—his tooth, oh dear, hopefully the Nightray family doctors would be able to put it back—and turning back towards Leo. “Look, Pandora doesn’t know if or when Humpty Dumpty’s coming back, or even how it disappeared in the first place. Odds are when it does— ”
“It won’t,” said Leo; Elliot ignored this.
“—you’ll be the first to notice, because I’ll suddenly be a majorly cowardly asshole again.”
“What else is new?”
“Okay, yeah, but like, I’ll be worse, ” said Elliot.
Leo fixed him with a glare. “That was an insult,” he said. “I didn’t mean for you to agree with it.”
Elliot shrugged. “Well, you were right.”
“I wasn’t! You’re not a coward, and you’re not an asshole, you dick! God, I can’t fucking stand you.”
“Good thing you’re sitting, then,” Elliot said. “Look, Leo, I was the one who fucked up. I was the one who got himself hit by Humpty Dumpty, and I was the one who let it erase my memories because I didn’t want to face my own pain and failures. It was completely my fault. And I never even noticed until you and Oz Vessalius jumped me when I was about to kill Vanessa, because I didn’t want to notice. I didn’t want to see what I’d done and Humpty Dumpty helped me look away and anyway, if and when it comes back I probably still won’t be strong enough to face myself, because I’ll still be a coward, so I’m going to need you to kill me.”
“No way in hell!”
“Look, it has to be you,” said Elliot. “I don’t trust anyone else to notice, and anyway Humpty Dumpty’s MO is kind of obvious. It won’t hurt you. It’ll protect you over everyone else, including me, so you’re also the safest option to kill me if the Contract emerges again. And—and if it’s a gun it’ll probably be better for you. Less personal. Especially since it’s from far away.”
“Fuck you,” said Leo. “Humpty Dumpty isn’t coming back.”
“You don’t know that for certain.”
“I do,” said Leo. “It’s dead. Oz killed it. That’s the B-Rabbit’s power—it can kill other Chains. You remember when we met him in Sablier, right? And he had to exert effort not to kill those human experiments attacking us. He’s a Chain-killer, you idiot, and Humpty Dumpty is gone forever.”
“You can’t know that for sure,” said Elliot.
“I can and I do,” Leo snapped. “You don’t have to believe me, but at least stop trying to make contingency plans where I kill you, you bastard.”
“It’s the best option—”
“If you really think it’s necessary, make Vincent do it,” Leo snapped. “Tell him it’s Glen Baskerville’s orders. That ought to convince him. And he’s insane enough to let me run him through a woodchipper later for the crime of killing you, too.”
Elliot frowned. “Vincent is a loyal member of Pandora, why would you think he’d kill me if Glen Baskerville said to?”
Oh. Right.
“…Intuition,” Leo said after a moment. “He just kind of has those vibes…you know.”
“He just kind of has those— Watch your mouth! That’s my brother you’re talking about, you know! He’s not a fucking traitor!”
“You’re right, he’s not a traitor,” said Leo. Hard to be a traitor, after all, when you were never loyal to Pandora in the first place. But then again, Vincent wasn’t quite loyal to the Baskervilles, either…
Elliot was alive, had escaped being ruined by Leo (if at least for now), so Leo had a reason to live again. But neither Leo nor Oz had had the ability to avert the Tragedy of Sablier by going back in time, and so Vincent had still lost his everything. So history had not changed overmuch; so Vincent still wanted his existence eradicated; so Leo was still technically Glen Baskerville, and Vincent was his responsibility.
“…You should probably still talk to him about it, though,” Leo added. “See what he says.”
“Leo…what aren’t you telling me?” said Elliot.
Leo grimaced, and worried at the torn skin on his knuckles, trying to figure out a way around this. How could he say that he was Glen Baskerville? He had no proof, and even if he did, Elliot would hate him for it. And the time travel…that was completely unbelievable. Elliot would think he’d taken leave of his senses. He might even stop believing him about the demise of Humpty Dumpty.
“Never mind,” Elliot said. Leo’s head shot up; his lover’s eyes were dark and downcast, and as he stood, his shoulders were just slightly hunched, his jaw set, his hand clenched around his tooth. “It’s—it’s something you can’t tell me about, right? That makes sense. I’ve earned that. I’ll—go talk to Vincent, like you said.”
“Elliot…”
But Elliot just walked away, just like that, limping slightly and lacking that pride which he’d always carried with him, and when he was gone Leo pressed his forehead against his knees and shook in the grass and wondered how much more was still broken.