2020-02-20 - Freezing Our Beytzim Off

Oy vey, what a week it's been. And now Alexander's not home, avoiding Isabella, and exhibiting all signs of a full Alexander-style meltdown? This won't do. Itzhak has opinions. And so he's on approach to the docks, sauntering along on his funny rolling stride, bundled up against the cold, cigarette drawing a line of smoke behind him. His mental presence, stronger since The Change (as he's thinking of it, bay'tevdikayt), suspects Alexander might be hereabouts. Maybe. We'll see. Violin music, felt-not-heard, touches whatever minds he can sense, tasting them for those brilliant glass stars.

After meeting with Patrick and checking in with Bennie, Alexander clearly decided that his day of stalking Isabella wasn't quite over yet. So he's on the docks, having picked one far enough away from The Surprise to have plausible deniability, but still with a good view of the boat. He's sitting on the edge, legs dangling over the churning, grey water, eyes locked on the distant boat, shoulders hunched under the weight of his ugly purple sweater and green jacket.

Oddly, he's toying with a cellophane wrapped mini-bouquet; just three dahlias, whose petals he's stroking in place of fidgeting as he watches. He picks up on that mental touch as it approaches, the sensation of stars dimmed but cutting, spinning in slow and dangerous dance through an aching void. <<Itzhak?>> His mental voice, at least, is strong, and his eyes don't leave the boat even as there's a thread of curiosity. <<Looking for something?>>

The Surprise seems like a good target. (There's two Surprises in dock now, one Isabella's, one Joseph's.) Itzhak is angling that way when he picks up Alexander's signal. He pauses, looking up--there's no 'up' to look at, but that's the direction the kythe comes in for him. <<Alexander.>> His violin sings. Fernlike fractal tendrils spool out, reaching, touching, tiny popping sparkles. <<Lookin' for you.>> The song of his mind is layered with discordance, conflict and struggle creating atonal melody. Grating. His boots carry him to Alexander, thunking gently on the weathered planks until he's standing by his side, tall thin tower of a guy that he is.

<<For me?>> A moment of surprise shivers along the stars, a cool flash. He projects his location without looking around - he's oriented on Isabella's of course, watching it as patiently as any devoted lover. Or predator. When that lanky shadow falls over him, he waves at the dock next to him. "Join me, if you want. Are you okay? I heard Javier is..." he trails off. "I heard he's having some difficulty right now."

"Ferkakt." Itzhak mutters the sharp, spiny word. "You heard he's ferkakt. And he is." He folds himself down, like a hinged yardstick, setting down next to his friend and letting his long, long legs swing off the edge of the dock. Not close enough to touch. Itzhak tries, as much as he wants to cuddle Alexander to death, not to touch him, in wordless respect for his difficulties with it. "Fuck, this wood is gonna freeze my beytzim off. I'm not so okay, but that ain't why I'm here. I'm here because I wanna talk to you." He follows Alexander's line of sight to Isabella's craft.

"Yes. I'm sorry. If I can help, I will," Alexander says, as if it needs to be said. His gaze shifts sideways as he watches Itzhak fold himself down and take a seat. A ghost of a smile appears as he complains about the cold. Not that he's not right; the wood is damp and freezing, in a way that penetrates even through layers like a punishment. "Alright," he says, tonelessly, to Itzhak's desire to talk to him. "I like talking to you. But if you're not okay, maybe you need to talk to me, more?"

Itzhak plucks his cigarette from his lips, flicks the butt to ash it. The ash falls away into the breeze, taken apart into nothing. "Yeah. I know you will." But he leaves that there. Instead of responding to the question, he says, "Heard what happened on Valentine's Day." His eyes are on the Surprise, but then then flick down to the dahlias. Poor dahlias, out here in the cold.

"Oh." Just that. Alexander takes a deep breath, lets it out with a sigh, and turns his attention fully to Itzhak. His fingers still on the petals of the flowers. "For the record, I'm not and have never been suicidal, so if you're here because you're worried that I'm going to do something stupid to myself, let me both reassure you, and say that I've already had that conversation." At least he seems more amused by it than offended, despite the tired redness of his eyes.

Itzhak finally looks at Alexander, studying his face, taking in data. His eyebrows hike up his forehead. "What--no. No, no, I don't think you're gonna hurt yaself. I mean. I do. But on the inside." His gloved hand, cigarette poised between his forefinger and middle finger, taps his chest. "That way, I think you're hurting yourself. But it's okay. It's not okay," he interrupts himself, aggravated with his failure to words. "But...I know what it's like, you know? To do that. Just fuckin' maul yourself because you can't stand what you did."

He trails off, frustrated, not sure how to say what he wants. Then he digs into the inner pocket of his peacoat, produces a flask of rum, and unscrews the top. He takes a swig, offers it over.

"Oh," Alexander says, again, although the tone is different. More abashed, maybe a little ashamed. He grimaces. "You're not wrong." And it seems like that might be all he's going to say about it, but when Itzhak offers the flask, he accepts it, sniffs it dubiously, then takes a small sip, before handing it back. "Thanks." His gaze falls to the churning gray water. "I hate being me," he says, casually. "If I could tear me apart, all the way down to the smallest part of my soul, and build myself back, I could do a better job, I think. But I'm also terrified of trying. Terrified of losing myself, no matter how regrettable I am. But it doesn't mean I have to take other people with me."

"God I know how that is," Itzhak says, with feeling. "I always think, if only my stupid heart was an engine. I could tear it down. Clean out all the gunk, polish out the dings, put 'er back together all neat and clean and shiny. Then maybe I could get some shit done, yannow? Instead of limping along on half a cylinder." He tips the flask up for another swallow. "Hate being me, gotta cope with all my mishegoss. Hate making other people cope with all my mishegoss."

He sniffs, wipes the tip of his nose. "Yeah, well. Other people are gonna go with you whether you like it or not."

Alexander nods, slowly. "Yes. I hate being broken. I wish," his eyes go back to the boat, docked peacefully in its place, "I wish I could be the person that the people who I care about deserve. But I'm not. And they don't deserve to have to deal with, to be endangered, by what I am." It's a dull admission. He pauses, then says, "I think I can make people forget things. People. Me. If I wanted to."

Itzhak hitches his eyebrows in a Yiddish shrug. "Yeah. Bet you could. You're strong. Real strong. You could make anyone believe anything you want." The rum sloshes as he tips it for a drink, then offers it over again. "You know what, though? You told me before it's not fair of me to try to keep people out of my bullshit. That you and Izeleh and Roen and all are adults and you get to decide how much you want to deal with me."

"It's not the same," Alexander snaps. He does accept the flask. "There's nothing wrong with you. You just think a little differently and you're hurting a lot. You might punch someone if you got mad, but you wouldn't reach out and beat Javier or Isolde down until you snap their fucking necks, would you?" He takes a sip. "And, more importantly, if you did - they wouldn't let you. And they wouldn't forgive you afterwards, like it was somehow something they did that you needed to be comforted for, rather than being sensible and sane and getting as far the fuck away from you as they could." The words are low, rapid, and vicious with self-loathing, and he's clearly not talking to Itzhak anymore, not really.

Itzhak sucks rum from his bottom lip. "It is the same. It's exactly the same. You don't think there's anything so wrong with me. No matter what I showed you that I did, you'd tell me I had my reasons, I was tryin' to survive, I was fighting for my life or someone else's life. Well, it's the same for you, bruddah. All that shit counts for you too. Much as you don't want it to."

He glances over, his clear gray-green-brown hazels lighting on Alexander's eyes in rare direct contact. "Pretty sure they'd let me, actually," he murmurs. "If that happened. Pretty sure. And I know they'd forgive me. Because I'd forgive them. Shit, I was on my goddamn knees begging Javier to come back to me after he ripped me up." He jerks his head in the direction of Surprise. "S'how I know she's goin' crazy without you."

"Fucking logic," Alexander grumbles, his shoulders hunching. "Fine. I'm scared, Itzhak. I close my eyes, and all I can see is Isabella dead, and my hands, my h-h-hands..." He doesn't finish when his voice starts to break, just wipes angrily at his eyes, which seem to have received this treatment a lot in the past few days. "Crazy is better than dead. If I can't trust myself, then I can't be around her. I can't hurt her."

He looks down at the dahlias, and idly flicks a petal. "I've killed a friend before. I can't do it again."

Itzhak's mouth presses into a flat line. His violin sings pained empathy, the ache of his heart to know Alexander suffers. Pity, never that, but to suffer alongside his friend? That he can do.

"Yeah," he whispers, looking down at his hands and the cigarette almost burned down to the filter. "I can tell you're scared. It's okay, you know? It's okay to be scared. Christ knows I'm terrified of what I might have to do if Javier..." he doesn't finish the sentence, but it rings like a bell in the kythe. If Javier tries something I need to stop.

Alexander trembles at that pained and painful empathy, fighting the urge to reject it, and take refuge in fury and fire. Weirdly, despite all of the stress and pain that the man is clearly under, the tempestuousness of his mental landscape is less than it's ever been, even in distress his stars have a kind of terrible, sharp order to them. It keeps him in line, and with the slightest of sighs, he leans just enough to lay his shoulder against Itzhak's, lightly. "We'll figure out how to help him, Itzhak. We will. Whatever Peregrine did to him."

Those hazel eyes drift shut a moment. That slightest touch of Alexander's shoulder to his blooms through Itzhak with a warmth better than the rum. "I know," he murmurs, voice rough, and he's lying. He doesn't know that Ruiz can be cured. But he's trying to talk himself into it. "We'll figure it out." He sighs blustery through his teeth. "I love that meshuggener mamzer. He told me that he does too. In like, actual words." A little huff of a laugh, and Itzhak rubs his eyes. "Can you believe that shit? De la Vega, telling some asshole ex-con that he loves him?"

"We will," Alexander says, quietly. There's a thoughtful pause. "I don't know that Peregrine would do this to him and not have a way to undo it. He kills hope. And to kill it, there has to be some there in the first place. But I think we'll have to be very careful when we figure out how to bring him back, because that's when he'll strike. I think." He leaves his shoulder lightly touching the other man, and gives him a sidelong look. "Yeah. I can believe that shit. You're very lovable." It's solemn, not a trace of joking.

The smile that wavers its way onto Itzhak's face, wobbly as a newborn fawn, is as pained as his grimace. Pained, but a better pain, a good pain. "Hope and purpose, you told me, right? Spit in Their eye." He laughs again, a single breath. "Oy. Listen to you. Callin' me lovable." But for once, he doesn't argue. He sits there, quiet, soaking in Alexander's presence, even as distressed and in pain as Alexander himself is. Those stars, ferocious in their order. The ache of the void between them. Alexander.

"I didn't come to tell you that you oughta go back to her, or quit hurtin' yourself, or do anything different," he says quietly, after a time. "I just came to tell you I got your back. Whatever you decide to do."

"Yeah." Alexander falls silent for a bit, swinging his legs in a slow and steady rhythm that exactly matches the spin of his stars in tempo. "Mr. Carver did some research on my behalf before leaving town, and he discovered that Peregrine or someone like him may have been the inspiration for Dr. Faustus. The original deal with the devil type. Although the devil in this case is some sort of Dark entity. He had a fountain in his...refuge? With a creature. It was all...tentacles and horror. Along with the snakes. And the..." Alexander goes quiet and thoughtful, his eyes turning back towards the boat. "I might have an idea."

But Itzhak's words divert him for a moment, and he returns those quiet words with a smile. "Thank you. I...mean that, Itzhak. I may not know what to do with it, all the time, but I'm glad to have a friend like you."

"Huh." Itzhak only knows one Faust story, and he sings a few lines of it in a rough murmur. "One day he pushed a broom - Nothing in his news but doom and gloom - Then he lit a fuse and give him room - Stand aside and watch that mother blow... So you're saying the Dark is Audrey II." He perks up, a little, hearing that Alexander has an idea. "I like your ideas." Are they often bad ideas? Sure, but since when did Itzhak ever meet a bad idea he didn't like?

Nudging him lightly with that shoulder, Itzhak's smile is a little more genuine. "You're an amazing guy. I know maybe you don't feel like it all the time. But you are."

"Audrey...two?" Alexander looks briefly confused - he has to think a moment to access osmosed pop culture. "Oh, the eating plant. Um. Not exactly. But maybe." He nods. "Peregrine has an affinity for a certain sort of flower. A lily. I wonder if we staged some sort of garden show if we might...lure him out. For curiosity if nothing else. We could shove him into the Veil and deal with him there, maybe." He stutters to a halt at the shoulder nudge, and shakes his head, making a noise of acknowledgement, but not agreement. He doesn't choose to argue about it, though.

Itzhak quirks his eyebrows, thinking about it. "Well, we know a guy who can put on a garden show. And a guy who can shove someone over the border." That'd be this guy right here, the skinny one with the big nose. Then he smiles sidelong, affectionate, at Alexander's not-quite-denial. He stands up, long tall drink of Jew that he is. "Okay, look, you can keep freezing ya tuchis off on this fucking dock, but I'm goin' in."

"Yeah. We have those," Alexander agrees. "It's worth thinking about, anyway." When Itzhak gets up, Alexander tilts his head back so he can watch, and smiles. "Go take care of your tuchis. I have to go check on Bennie soon. I'll just stay here a little longer. Promise." He doesn't define 'little', though, but rather his eyes turn back to the boat and settle there with a fixed intensity. That doesn't stop him from adding, softly, "Thanks, Itzhak. You're a good guy. You shouldn't doubt it."

And Itzhak? He doesn't argue. Clearly he is letting Alexander do what he feels he needs to do. "Okay, you promised," he says, nonetheless, mock stern. "I will bring you dinner out here, don't test me, Clayton." Then a quirked little tug of a smile. "Hey. Thanks. And it goes for you too. Just gonna have to cope."

He tips a gloved finger at him, and makes his way off the dock, boots going thunk.