2021-01-22 - Band Aids Don't Fix Bullet Holes

It's been a rough few days in town, and for once, it's not the Art that's making trouble. Oh sure, there's still those shenanigans afoot as well, but nothing on the level of a warehouse exploding or a literal showdown inside police headquarters. Maybe August should be counting his blessings, but he's not in the mood for generosity. The universe is on his shitlist.

And as usual, when the universe is on his shitlist, he throws himself into work. Clearing snow from the inner yard area, exercising the animals, working in the garden, working at the shop. Today, it's checking on the replanted maples cuttings, daughters and sons of the trees that went into Itzhak's violin.

They're coming along well; tall, gangling teenagers, protected from hungry deer by simple wire fencing, naked in the winter snow. He moves among the lot of them, checking for signs of damage like an overly protective parent.

When Itzhak schleps along, he's schlepping indeed. All bundled up, he's moving stiff and weary, his expression exhausted, big dark circles around his eyes. It all makes him look a good twenty years older than he is, without any of his dark hair showing under his knit cap. Slow, without any of his strut or swagger, he crunches over the snow to the maples and to August.

"Hey," he says, voice rough. "How's by ya." In spite of how wrecked he looks, he's giving August a careful going-over, eyes narrowing a little, making sure the older man is okay at least on the surface.

August feels Itzhak long before he hears him. The exhaustion and the pain from his injury cast a long shadow, and it's not like August hasn't been on the look out. He's slow to straighten from tucking in leaves around the base of the smallest of the saplings, studying Itzhak with a tense, unhappy expression. For his own part, August is achey from the cold and damp, though otherwise hale and hearty. More so than usual, as he's been careful with his Glimmer lately, and reaped the rewards of fewer Dreams.

It won't last, of course. Not if the last few days are any indication.

He's in a dark purple, UW hoodie, denim jeans, work gloves, knit cap, and heavy hikers. The exertion means he doesn't need a heavy coat, though he'll curl up against the woodstove sure as anything the moment he goes back inside.

He sighs, full of regret and banked anger, moves to Itzhak as he approaches. "How's everyone holding up." He's aware, of course, that the answer may well be 'badly', but has to ask. (Has to.)

Itzhak slews his gaze away, something ashamed in his eyes. "Uh. Not that great. Cavanaugh's losing his shit. Kelly took a couple to the chest, and, uh, well, I took one too." Yep. Definitely shame. Then he laughs, bitter and short, sharp as a fox's bark. "This week has fucking sucked." One hand goes over his eyes, which he has to move his shoulder awkwardly to do. "Fuck. I'm sorry." His voice is clogging up. "I'm really, really fucking sorry."

August blinks, surprised, head jerking back. He'd known it was bad (warehouse exploding equals bad), but Itzhak's reaction casts this in an entirely new light. Which, in turns, pushes him to a different reaction.

He comes over to Itzhak with a purpose and pulls him into a hug. He's been outside a while, so he's a bit cold, and thus the hug isn't the warmest hug possible. He can't even hug him too tight, owing to the injury, has to set his teeth against it. "What the hell do you have to be sorry for," he whispers, fierce. "You're alive. In one piece. Given the bullshit that went down I'll settle for that."

Itzhak really, really, really needed that hug. He grabs August with his uninjured arm and clings to him, stuffing his beaky face into August's broad shoulder. There he rocks back and forth, breathing stuttering in his chest. "I--I--I just--just--" Words fade away. Itzhak signs something where August can't see it, a muscle-memory flick of his hand. Several long moments while he does this, clinging to August like a liferaft and rocking in place. And maybe crying a little bit. Don't notice.

Then, totally not crying, he sniffs hard and shifts to dig out his hanky. "I'm a mess," he mutters, trying for aggravation, and missing.

August wants to insist it's okay, except he knows how this all works. It's not okay, and his desire to go deal with the source of the problem intensifies with every shake of Itzhak's frame, every pulse of that wounded arm. August can't get to Them, but he can sure get to a regular person out here in the Real.

No, no. He promised. He sighs, sad and furious. His own eyes are a little wet, from tightly wound anger more than anything else. Can't the universe leave this town alone for ten seconds?

He loosens his hold enough to let Itzhak pull out his hankie. "Oh yeah you are," August says on a bitter laugh. "But we'll get you through it. We'll get everyone through it." His tone is hard and unyielding; he's not going to settle for less.

He glances down at the arm. "You want me to patch that up?"

Itzhak winds a hand into August's hair, gripping for just a moment, before he lets him go and leans back to look at him with red-rimmed eyes. Words re-engage. "You're real fuckin' mad," he says, mouth turned down in a woeful kind of almost-smile. "I don't see you this mad so often. But you got plenty to be mad about. Shit, we all do."

He glances at his arm too. The wound is right where the pectoral meets the bicep, fairly shallow for a bullet wound, but obviously painful enough. "Wouldn't say no," he murmurs. "Can't play my violin like this. Can't bow right. Be nice to do it and not wait three months or whatevah, but...it's up to you, yeah? It's always up to you."

"When I get mad, I break shit," August says. This isn't something Itzhak, of all the people, couldn't guess, but August seldom admits it out loud. "And I spent years training myself to not do it, but these assholes have tested my ability to stick to that." His jaw works, he licks his lips. "I know I shouldn't--probably can't, even. But...yeah. We've all got good reasons to be mad right now." Bad enough they torched Abitha's livelihood, beat Joe within a millimeter of his life, and were putting the screws to half the town's businesses. Now this.

He can't do anything about it. But...

"It might be up to me, but I'd rather ask." He chases that with a gentler smile, one unspoiled by resentment or anger at their circumstances. "It means a lot, for people to accept it. You know?" He rests his fingers on Itzhak's jacket, right over the wound, eyes going unfocused. It's a slow build, as it always is with him; marshaling tissue to regrow, easing the swelling so the nerves will calm, encouraging blood to flow through new vessels. By the time he's done he glances away, coughing sharply once. He's paler than he was, but not lunging for a convenient spot behind a tree. Progress--sort of.

"Please tell me Kelly has a plan to deal with these shitbags."

Itzhak smiles back, a little wavery. "Yeah. I know. Hit me, boss." August hits him, reknitting tissue and nerve--Itzhak winces, hissing in a breath as nerves reconnect--and reweaving blood vessels and muscle. Then he's sighing a bone-deep sigh from the bottom of his singer's lungs, relief and pleasure in the relief, and bonks his forehead into August's shoulder again. "Gevalt, that's better. You okay?" He grips August's upper arm, moving easy now, his usual lanky grace restored.

His eyebrows go up and his mouth goes wry at August's mention of Kelly. "Yeah. He does." He doesn't say 'and that abandoned dock warehouse going up in a fireball is part of the plan', but does he need to? He just looks at August like August should be able to figure it out. Especially combined with a bullet hole in Itzhak.

August nods, coughing a little, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "Yeah," he says. "I'll be fine." He loosens his hold, now that it doesn't seem like Itzhak is going to fly apart into a hundred little pieces, though doesn't back away. Itzhak's relief is August's; as the pain spikes from regrown nerves and drops off in the wake of further healing, so does August's expression tighten, teeth set, then ease. He lets out a slow breath.

He grimaces, indicating that Itzhak need not specify the warehouse was part of Joey's 'plan'. It was the opening salvo--from Kelly, which is better than the alternative. "Three bullets in him--he need patching up too? I can't imagine he hopped on down to the emergency room."

He's quiet a moment, then without waiting for an answer about Kelly, he says, "de la Vega alright?"

Itzhak does seem calmer; the pain gone surely helps. (He may have strategically kept a few of de la Vega's little bottles when he went through the house and collected them.) He keeps his hand on August, trying to steady him, although honestly he's not that steady himself. He's swaying a little, but at least it's not the compulsive rocking trying desperately to comfort himself. This is more gentle, more just a little woozy maybe.

"Can't imagine Kelly would say no," he says, mouth quirking. "He got stitched up too, but," he shrugs with his newly healed shoulder. "You know what it's like. It ain't great. He kinda got fucked up."

About Ruiz, he puts on his wryest look. "I love that guy and he'll never, ever admit he's not okay." He scratches his head up under his cap, where his hair is, well, gone. It's just a rasp of stubble.

August takes a half a step back, watches that scratch of Itzhak's head with a wince. "Gonna be months growing that back. If they really wanted to fuck with us, that's the shit they'd do--shave us." He leans over on reflex, knocks a hand against the trunk of an obliging aspen.

He nods, glances down at the ground for a long moment. "I'll stop by, see how he's healing up." Or not healing, as the case may be. "I know Nicole can shape, but..." But maybe Kelly's going to need a lot more stitching up in the days to come.

That wry look is answered with a grunt. "Yeah. But you'd know," his eyebrows go up, "if anyone would, it's you." This is one of those things August does; he's not asking to be told, just suggesting Itzhak get up in his man's business about it. "You don't have to yell it out of him, just..." He makes a face. "Fine. Maybe you do. " A shrug. "Whatever works."

"I might need to yell it out of him," Itzhak admits. "Nah, I won't, though. I got other ways." That's his life now: de la Vega management. A life he chose and that he would never give up. "Yell at him, he just vanishes. The prick." Which he growls with all the aggravated love in his thorny heart. "Cruz came by and gave him a ration. Said de la Vega leaving the party gave people ideas. What the fuck does that mean?" Genuinely confused, he looks at August. "He wouldn't tell me. What's 'ideas'?"

August coughs a laugh, nodding. "I mean, it's that or yell back, and maybe he'd rather not do that with you. You know? Not about something...like this." His mirth fades, replaced with a reluctant sort of wince. 'Something shitty and terrible, like a crime turf war,' that means.

He narrows his eyes, frowning. "Ideas," he echoes, turning it over in his mind. "What kinds of ideas are there to have." He snorts. "Any time I see them in public, they always sound like they're thirty seconds from an argument with their fists. Cruz acts like himself, and unlike a tired old bastard such as myself de la Vega has to response. Is that the 'idea' Cruz means? Because we all know they want to kick one another's ass." He stops just short of saying 'we all know they hate each other', because he's not sure he can go that far. But neither can he recall a time they've seemed friendly.

Itzhak shakes his head. He looks very aerodynamic these days; no mane of curls to peek out of his cap or catch the wind. Really puts his face on display, featuring dat schnozz. "He said--I mean Javier, not Cruz--Javier said...okay, look, when Cruz proposed to Dante is when he lost it." His eyes go wide. Lightbulb goes on. "Oh shit. Do you think that means maybe people think that Cruz and Javier...? Okay, but that's not true, they really do hate each other. Maybe that's it. Cruz mad because he thinks people are gonna think that." He grimaces, pulling all the lines on his face deep. "Fuckin'... I swear to God, don't we have enough bullshit to cope with?"

August blinks slowly. It's the deliberate blink of someone who is only now considering another possibility. "...oh." He coughs, looks away. "Ah, I mean, given how both of them seem to be into rough trade, maybe hate fucking isn't the craziest conclusion someone could jump to." He pulls a face, shakes his head. "Doesn't seem like it's the kind of thing the average person would assume, not around here. Sure, maybe you or me, but..." A half-hearted shrug. "I dunno why Cruz would figure de la Vega exiting in classic de la Vega style would mean anything to people not us. At worst, they'll think he got loaded and drunk and was mad about New Years Eve being turned into a public engagement." He raises his eyebrows. "This town might not be the most conservative place on the planet, but it's not exactly the Village."

"He wouldn't be mad about that," Itzhak murmurs, staring at the ground. He kicks into the icy dirt with the toe of one boot. "Anyway. He ain't okay. That's what I mean. Not me neither. I had to--"

he cuts himself off, abrupt as a guillotine. "Do. Stuff. With the Song. That wasn't ...it wasn't good. Not just fighting, I fight with it all the time, but... this was different. It wasn't anything bad, exactly, but it was something I never did before and didn't know if I could really do and...I just wish it wasn't like that."

August makes a low sound of acknowledgment. It's not that he didn't know, but Itzhak speaking of it that plainly means it's maybe worse than August had assumed. (Also not good, as given what he knows is already pretty bad.)

He frowns, concern redoubling. "Do stuff," he echoes. It's an invitation to elaborate, if Itzhak cares to. He's said it wasn't bad, except he's also upset about it. "Weird stuff because it was weird, or because it was new?" He sighs, though, about the last bit. "Yeah, it'd be nice if we got to just, learn this stuff in a quiet moment, not while everything is exploding around us."

Itzhak turns his head to look blankly at August. Then he looks at the saplings, and reaches out to stroke a cold, slender branch. "Your ma's in my violin," he whispers to the sapling. This one's from Shalom Zion. His fingers caress the tiny, dainty twigs. As if talking to the tree, he says quietly, "You know how in Minecraft you can go in the Nether and come out a long ways away in the overworld? I was playing it and I started thinking. It's kinda like that, except real, right? And I thought, I bet I can do that for reals. I bet I can. I bet I can make two portals and travel across them and get roughly where I wanna go. But I didn't get a chance to test it, and suddenly that's how we were getting out... so I just did it. I just did it. And... I hate that I did it. That I did something like that for--for the wrong reasons."

August's eyes shift to watching Itzhak touch the tree, though his gaze is unfocused, distant. He's trying to imagine what Itzhak's said in his mind. The Minecraft visual, despite how much of a gamer August isn't, helps a good deal. (So there's another thing he can thank Rachel for.)

"Wow. So kind of using it like a subway." His attention resettles on Itzhak, expression softening. "I don't call getting yourself and others out of a tight spot--no matter how much you didn't want to be in it--a wrong reason. Sure, it'd be nice if you didn't have to," he gestures, "do, any of that. But." But here they were. "I'm glad you figured it out. Because if you hadn't this conversation would be a lot different, and maybe in a hospital. So."