2020-01-22 - Scars

Out into the cold, clammy, miserable night Itzhak goes. The heat of anger rolling off him seems like it oughta make the slush around his boots hiss into steam. His long legs eat up the distance, striding fast and furious away from the Twofer, as he shrugs into his peacoat on the move. Did he hear Joe shouting after him? Probably he did. He's got a musician's keen ear. He doesn't react, not at first, but when he hears Joe come out of the bar after him, he shoots him a hot glance over his shoulder, scowling ferociously.

"Don't gimme that look," Joe says, tiredly. "You don't got anything but your gut that tells you what you know, it's okay. We both know what gut instinct is worth, in this place. Sure as hell more'n rationality. That said....I'd feel a damn sight better if you had some stories you could tell me about how someone, somehow, killed one of Them. Or at least fucked 'em up so hard They ran off with Their tails between Their legs."

He keeps pace with surprising ease, but then, he's nearly as tall and rangy as Itz himself. Already fishing in his coat pocket for lighter and cigarettes. They're outside in the cold, might as well get some joy out of it. "So....be mad if you want to, but not at me. I seen plenty of good men die for the stupidest shit, not inclined to keep doin' it."

"I'm not mad at you!" Itzhak snaps. "If I was mad at you, you'd know, believe you me." He finds his own cigarettes, with the smoker's need to light one up when they see someone else doing it. His tall thin frame is quivering, but his hands are steady as he cups the cigarette's tip and lights it and inhales deep.

He exhales the smoke and the fog of condensed breath, and then comes to an abrupt halt.

"I ain't mad at you." His eyes are on the burning cherry. "I'm mad at myself." That's said low, very low, very quiet. "'Cuz I don't have an answer for ya. And. Shit, Cavanaugh. You been through so much, you deserve an answer."

Ruiz and Joe both smoke the nastiest possible old man cigarettes. Unfiltered Luckies, in Joe's case. There's the metallic clink-pop of his Zippo, and he gets the cigarette drawing, cheeks hollowing, before he replies. "Fair enough," he allows. "It's frustratin' as hell. I need to do more to dig deeper on what's known. I know there are folks doin' what they can to map and learn. It's a powerful deep pool of light They've assembled here, and if we genuinely can do something to hurt or affect Them, They're gonna regret it."

He expels a stream of smoke out of the corner of his mouth, like a gangster in an old movie. A shrug. "Deserve? Who on God's green earth gets what they deserve? And that we should be grateful for."

"I'm one of 'em." Itzhak is very busy staring at the lit end of his cigarette. "The border, it calls to me. Sings to me. Says 'open me, you're the one I love best, open me. Make love to me. See what I got for you.'" He swallows. Then he fishes his knit cap out and tugs it on over all those glossy black curls. It's freakin' cold. "I scare people. I know I do. They can smell you, ya know? You know that. They come sniffin' around, take a nibble. But it ain't really Them that put us here, Joe. I don't think it was Them. I think we're here because we're us."

"It is seductive," Joe allows, slowly. "I know it. The call of the void. The gifts They have to give, the voice of the light itself. " A glance down, to the snow-caked toes of his boots. "Individual human life, agency, it's very easy to....want to discard it, there..." Then, as if feeling he's already said too much, he straightens, tossing his head up again like a fractious horse.

"But I think you're right. We may be Their prey, but we are not Their creations...." He flicks ash into the snow, with a tap of a fingertip.

"It's like if there's a bunch of rats or mice around, there's snakes. They're attracted, right? Like predators. Okay, that wasn't the most flattering comparison, but you get the idea, right?" Itzhak grimaces; he's not too sure of what he said, himself. "Look, just. Look!" He turns to Joe, hands on the move in the classic New Yorker way, long fingers spreading. "I can't prove it to you. I can't prove nothin'. I just know."

"I get the idea," he acknowledges. Face falling into those still, sober lines, despite the remainder of the bourbon-induced flush on the pale cheeks. "You have more experience than I, by far," he adds, after another drag on his cigarette. Lids half-veiling the blue eyes - he's looking ahead, giving the musician that stark profile, rather than looking at him directly, for the moment.

Itzhak's eyebrows are as talky as his mouth; they're poised, tilted upwards like the roof of a lean-to. Something pleading there. Something yearning. Anger bubbles in him still. Anger at Joe (despite his claims), anger at himself, anger at the entire world. Restless and surging as the sea, his soul.

He's happy to participate in not looking at each other. Sucking in a deep breath of smoke, he lets it out on a juddery aggravated sigh. "Yeah. I do. I got nothin' on you except that. You're hotter, you're smarter, you accomplished more already than most people do in their entire lives. So did you fuck him?"

Him. Itzhak doesn't need to name who.

And out of left field in Yankee Stadium....

The sound effect is the world's longest record scratch.

That question drops the color out of his face like the swipe of a paintbrush, and Joe stops walking, peering at Itzhak, dropping the hand holding the cigarette just short of a drag. At least he didn't just choke.

That wasn't a statement, it was a question. He just stands there a beat, as if that'd been a spell to freeze him in place.

"Itzhak, why would you even ask me that?"

Itzhak halts, too, boots landing on freezing-wet asphalt with the sense that if he wanted, he could plunge them right through. His power is a bioluminescent ocean crashing on a rocky shore. But, as of yet, he doesn't turn any of that on Joe. He sighs again, harsh through his teeth, and tips his head back, pointing that impressive schnozz at the woolly gray heavens.

"I'm blind to that stuff a lot of the time. Autism, yannow. So you and de la Vega eyefucking each other, went right past me." He swooshes a hand over his head to demonstrate. "I thought he just didn't like you. Buddy a mine tipped me off. Said you're dancing around each other like exes still hot for each other. Tell me he's wrong." He looks at Joe, mouth twisted unhappily. "Go on. Tell me."

"And what buddy is that?" Voice light and languid....and with that faint, faint edge behind it, like a razor veiled by silk. The blue eyes are level, fixed like bomb sights....and the hand he raises to his lips to take a long drag off that cigarette is steady. But he hasn't regained that hint of booze-induced flush.

"De la Vega doesn't like me. He never has. Did we have sex? A few times, almost twenty years ago. He's not my ex, Itzhak. We weren't boyfriends. From what you just said, you're looking at this like some kind of competition. It isn't. He doesn't want me here. He doesn't want to be reminded of what we did. It wasn't somethin' sweet he has wistful memories of. It was illegal, and what I did was abuse."

A shivering breath, warmth and smoke mingled, before he goes on. "De la Vega made it abundantly clear that he will not abide anything interfering with what he has with you. I'm not such a malicious bitch that I'd try anything anyhow."

Itzhak snorts out smoke. "Wouldn't you like to know."

He and Joe may have a lot in common: tall, skinny, mouthy, with a mutual love for engineering and nerdery. But there's no sense of silk to Itzhak, no keen-edged razor. He hasn't been purposefully stropped, never forged into a weapon via the fire of military discipline. Rather, he's been eroded, the crashing waves of his life carving him into something raw and rough and jagged as a sea cave.

It's this very contrast which haunts him, makes his gut burn with jealousy. Not a competition? Hah. Only because there's no way he can compete with Joe.

He's looking at him sidelong, standing there tall and thin, fiddling with the cigarette in his long calloused fingers, listening. It's not that he dislikes Joe. That's what he's really struggling with. No, he likes Joe. Likes him a lot.

It's that Joe is a man who represents everything Itzhak dreamed of, and can never achieve.

His mouth tugs downward, a rueful expression, and he glances away, flicking the cigarette to ash it. Then his angular face softens, hearing Ruiz told Joe he wouldn't permit him to interfere with them. The look that surfaces for half a second is a terrible vulnerability, a crack in his armor that splits right down to the heart.

It seals up. "Yeah, well, he likes that stuff," Itzhak says, wry and bitter. "No wonder he ain't got you out of his system. You're like me, except better."

Most think of blue as a cool color. Clear skies, deep waters, the deepest ice of glaciers.

But it can blaze hot, too, like a flame's heart. That heat is there now, in the blue eyes. A blazing anger born of balked hunger, like a beast left chained and starveling for too long. This boy who doesn't understand what he has, can't hear the news of victory because his demons are shouting too loud.

But he tries for calm, to keep his voice level. Drops the cigarette to let it hiss out in a puddle of melt, locks his hands behind his back, almost parade rest. "Rosencrantz, you are not reading me. If you want to view it as a choice, it's been made. He chose you. If he doesn't have me out of his system, as you put it, it's because there are scars. That's it. What he and I had was never something that would bear the light of day, live in ordinary life. You have no idea what I am. No idea what I'm like. Not really."

A beat, and he adds, "But take this away with you - you're his present, and the future he picked. I am not. I'm something out of his past, and that's all."

"No. I guess I don't. Have any idea what you're like." But Itzhak knows something. Knows that when he pinned Joe's wrist to the table, they both learned something about each other--something that Itzhak couldn't help responding to. The thought of it surfaces in those clear, complicated hazel eyes, before he puts it away.

He inhales the last of the cigarette. Then he dips into a pocket of his coat and plucks something out, offers it over to Joe. It's a USB thumb drive. "Got you something."

Subject change? Capitulation? Just random attention-deficit pinging? Who knows, but he's holding out the little thumb drive expecting Joe to take it.

There is no movement of yours that has not betrayed you. A pace, a glance, a turn of the head, the flash of your throat as you breathe... even your way of standing perfectly still...

And he can't help it. Has never been able to help it, for all his endless study to pass. That flicker of recognition - Itzhak may not know the depths, but he has caught the glint of the surface. And Joe knows it. That's there in that blue stare. He doesn't look away, until Itz does.

But the offering, that throws him. Joe holds out a hand, takes it, turns it over. "Thank you? What is it? Death star plans?"

Itzhak shrugs, uncomfortably, going over awkward and a little shy. "Ebooks. A ton of 'em, around five thousand or so. Spec fic. I didn't know what you'd like, so I just downloaded a bunch. You ever read The Three-Body Problem? That's in there. Windup Girl, all the Octavia Butler, you know, good shit. Probably some bad shit too but I figured it'd keep you busy a while."

He's no hunter, not like Ruiz, not by a long shot. His way is different.

He's still thrown. That earlier conflict, sunk under the water, vanished as if it had never come. Joe's brow is furrowed, but he tucks the drive into an inner pocket with grave care. "Thank you," he says, gently. Is Itz reassured? He can only hope so. "It was kind of you to think of me like that. I haven't read any of those except some of Butler's. That's years' worth there...."

That color finally returning, in spades: embarrassment. Consciousness that he's been seen for what he is, if dimly. He hangs his head, just a little.

Does Itzhak know how lucky he is, to have lived a life that in at least some ways permitted him to be himself? That he can even think of risking standing in the middle of the street having a discussion about the man he and Joe have in common?

Anyway, he shoves his hand back in his coat pocket. "Thought, yannow," he mutters, and doesn't finish what he thought. His eyes tick back to Joe, and his interest sharpens when he sees that blush on him. Unfortunately, "Oh my God, quit it, you're making me do it too," he complains as he then promptly blushes along with him. "Stupid capillaries!" He rubs at his hot red cheek.

"Tell me about it," Joe says, dryly. Indeed, even with all the weathering on his face, he's still Irish fair. The blush remains...but he lifts his head, trying for some semblance of dignity. "Itzhak," he says, quietly, "I am not out, even if I'm not doing much of a job of staying in, it seems. So please.....don't discuss this further, beyond de la Vega. And ask your friend to keep it under his hat, too. The sexual politics of small communities can be very, very virulent, and I'm a stranger here."

Itzhak tips his head in a sideways nod. "He ain't, either. None a you military career types are. Not that he's doing a great job of hiding it, hanging out with me," he adds, eyebrows hoisting in some kind of rueful amusement. "Plus his ex girlfriends spread it around too." He scowls at that. "Yeah, that was virulent all right."

That stillness to him, now. Joe shakes his head, briefly. "No. He's out, where you're concerned. He may not think so, but he is. Not likely to get up and make a public declaration...." The pilot shrugs, lazily. "You see my point, then." No questions about Ruiz's ex. He doesn't want to know - there are great dark swaths of the Marine's life he'll never ask about. Ruiz has never confided in him.

Itzhak's eyebrows do that funny tilty thing again, giving him that longing look. Hearing that Ruiz may as well be out, when it comes to him? Oh, that makes inner chords sing. Almost he asks Joseph what he'd said. Almost he asks how Joe knows.

But even he knows that'd be a dick move to end all dick moves.

"See your point." Itzhak shrugs one shoulder. "Ain't gonna make you stand around in the cold no more. You want a ride home?"

Christ, that look, like a spaniel with his nose pressed to the glass of a butcher shop window. It kills him. No need to shine to see, when it's written there on Itz's face like neon.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done. Which is a sad testament to the life he's lived - self knowledge come almost too late.

"I'm a'right," he says, pulling out the pack of cigarettes again. "'s not far to walk, no matter where I sleep tonight. Thanks for offerin', though."

Itzhak pulls in a deep breath, coughs as the cold wet tickles his lungs. "Yeah. Uh. Yeah. Okay." His face isn't easy to read, now, where a moment ago it was nothing but hungry adoration. Now that expressive face, drawn with too many lines for his age, is doing something complex. Worry is probably on top, with striations of shyness and unhappiness and jealousy and yes, yes there is attraction there too. "Okay," he repeats, and, in lieu of doing anything graceful or mannerly, just walks off on that rolling, sauntering stride.

Joe watches him go, unlit cigarette dangling from his lip. No attempt at farewell. That was always the way, twenty five years, no goodbyes.

And then when Itz is a good ways down the pavement, he pulls out his phone. The light of the screen illuminating those stark bones, as he texts Ruiz one word.

Incoming