Fic: The Thousand Natural Shocks the Flesh is Heir To (Jimmy/Richard
“The thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to”
“Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.” --P. J. O'Rourke
They’d known each other about three weeks when, from his room down the hall, Jimmy’s semi sleep was broken by running water and the strange barking shouts. He grabbed his gun and stole quietly to the bathroom, where the yellow light spilled into the hall. All around him sighs, moans and creaks of the girls’ work. From downstairs, music and laughter and breaking glass and deals being forged all blurred together into an audible fog over his mind. A whorehouse at night was never completely quiet.
He lowered the gun and averted his eyes for a second as they set on the naked body that could only be Richard’s, his head bent over the sink; his body scraped pink and brilliant, covered in soap. Jimmy was about to go back to bed when Richard made a noise-a different one from the score of clicks and hums Jimmy would never admit he’d memorized already. It was a sound he was too familiar with-the holding in of real pain. Then he saw the blood in the sink.
“Richard?” he called, keeping his voice level and putting the Colt away before his friend could see. Richard turned on a dime and reached for a weapon that wasn’t there. His mask was missing for the first time since the hospital. His hands were covered in blood, one of them clenched and trembling around a brush. Jimmy put his hands out in front of him as he slowly came forward across Richard’s field of vision. Sometimes he had nightmares with his eyes wide open; he wasn’t sure where the other man’s mind was now, and didn’t want to spook him.
“Hey, pal…what you got going on here?”
He spoke in a voice he’d use with his son, knowing too well that frightened men are just children in longer limbs. Richard shook his head, a spasm rather than an answer. His fingers drummed against the brush, leaving red prints, and with every twitch, winced in pain. He wouldn’t meet Jimmy’s eyes. The other man found himself hungry for the unwavering, bottomless gaze from the hospital bed.
“Did I…wake you up?”
Jimmy picked up a towel from the floor. He shook his head, hoping that might seem like less of a lie.
“Looks like you hurt yourself bad. You’re scrubbin’ too hard.”
Richard looked down at his bloodied hands and the shame Jimmy saw made him remember waking up in his rooms at Princeton and feeling like there was broken glass embedded in his face.
“Hngh. I can’t get. It out.”
“Get what out?”
Jimmy already knew.
“There’s. Mud.” Richard’s voice was harsher than usual. He shook. “Always mud. All over. No. No, don’t touch me, hmm don’t-”
As he spoke Jimmy moved quickly forward and locked his arms around his shaking body, blood, suds and all. Richard’s wounded hands twitched helplessly behind his back. He didn’t want to get blood all over him. Jimmy didn’t care. He could feel Richard’s bones against him-hips, ribs, every knot in his spine felt under his fingers. Richard was resisting, trying to pull away, but Jimmy held fast, placating in a steady voice, as someone did while he was doubled over crying and puking after his first kill.
“There’s nothing on you. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“His blood was. All over me. Hmm. One minute he was. There and the next he was. In pieces. I tried to. Hold on. Hngh. Until it was over. But he--”
The noise that followed had no tears and therefore was not a sob. It sounded like a shell exploding in and of itself and Jimmy couldn’t contain his own shudder.
“I know, Rich. Sit on down and we’ll fix these.”
That sounded like an order, albeit a gentle one. No one had ever called him Rich before. Richard nodded and sank onto the rim of the tub. Jimmy found bandages. When he touched them his mind shot back to that pale face and its clouded brown eyes wrapped in gauze. This was the room he’d been in when she had let the bullet fly. These had touched her ruined face. Jimmy looked at his friend, all strange colors and exposure against the one green eye, and turned off the water so roughly dents came back in his palm. He knelt. Under all the blood the wounds were small.
“Put ‘em up,” he demanded with a smile that was somehow still hard at the edges. Richard just stared. Eventually Jimmy took him by the wrist muttering: “Come on.”
Richard couldn’t meet his gaze. He was thinking of the last time another young man had touched him. In the trenches there’d been Davy Alistair, seventeen with his eyes like a foal and his London burr. Where the other men teased, Richard had found comfort in the boy’s soft voice and thin features, reminded of the sister who was just as good a shot as he was. The night before he died, Davey had asked his friend for a favor in a terrified whisper.
It’s just…you’re beautiful, Richard.
He knew nothing of such things. Maybe that was why he didn’t deny the boy. The next day his lips that had left that chaste, soft kiss were blown away like ash. Then he woke up screaming in the hospital.
Thank you, mate. I’ll make it up to you when this is all over and we’re headed home again.mso-bidi-font-style:italic">
“I know.” Richard startled himself with his still new, metallic voice. In Chicago he never spoke before that day with the book. “I know there’s nothing. Hmm. On my hands. Up here I. Know it.”
He tapped his temple with the hand Jimmy wasn’t taping, leaving a bloody smear like war paint.
“Mm. But I feel it.”
Jimmy gave him a look similar to when he had talked about next time; not disagreeing, but unnerved. Not willing to admit how well he understood. Richard averted his eye, a little ashamed. Jimmy rubbed the stain off his forehead with his fingers, the sort of rough, affectionate touch one might use on a large dog.
“Okay,” he said briskly He had to hold onto the sink to get to his feet. “You’ll live. Put some clothes on for Christ’s sake, and go t’ bed.”
As he turned in the doorway, Richard called-or at least tried to:
“Darmody. Thank you. Mmm. And I’m sorry.”
Jimmy turned and looked at him again with that same hard, protective sadness, and couldn’t help but wonder if he was as messed up as he sometimes thought his new friend was. Maybe that was why everyone in his life seemed further and further away from him.
“What in the Hell you got to be sorry about?” he asked. “And it’s Jimmy.”
Richard nodded.
“Okay. Jimmy, then.”