Jazz
Then he looks down, sees an arrow scratched into the drywall.
There it is, a picture they took a long time ago. With Clara on one side and Victor on the other and Saul between them, held up in the air with his arms on their shoulders.
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This was taken in 1899.
We were celebrating. It was almost New Year's and it was just before Victor ran off again. Selfish asshole he can be. We were celebrating. A new century was coming and we were all still here. A lot of our friends weren't.
But we were.
We celebrated that, these days we resent it. Sometimes I wish I could talk to the girl in this photo, ask her how she managed to smile so much. It's probably because she hadn't watched her brother die yet, or seen her other brother callously laugh and leave when she told him.
Vickie was hurt, I could see it, but the only way he knew how to deal with it was by inflicting pain. I can't blame him, not really, because he never knew anything but taking and doling out pain. Why would anyone expect him to be any different than he is?
But in 1899 we were different.
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Victor remembers that photo, coming up with the pose while the photographer, who was a friend of theirs who died because he was gay only a month later, watched and shook his head.
He picks the photo up from the shelf it sits on, under where the old portrait hung on the wall. The note scrawled on the wall behind it doesn't smudge when he touches it, it's not charcoal. Paint probably.
Her handwriting was still so neat.
Victor takes the photo, he tucks it into his pocket with the reverence of a Bible. He has to have this. To allow himself this, he can't do this without something. Selfish, as always. Just like Claire said. Selfish.
Selfish and emotional.
On the shelf where the photo sat, scratched into the wood, is a small carving. A doodle of a trapdoor and a tunnel.
Victor goes down the hall and opens his parent's bedroom with fear shaking his hands.
The air is heavy here, the one window closed for almost 80 years and the pattern of the sun though the window bleaching a wide stretched square across the floor and the bed. Dust motes in the air and victor holds back a sneeze, it turns more into a snort.
On the wall across from the window is the closet. His mother's clothes still hang there. Moth eaten and tattered alongside his father's strict wardrobe of button ups and corduroy. Victor drops to his knees and crawls, hands and knees, through the curtain of them and to the small door in the back. Latched closed with rusted metal hooks.
He used to hide there, play in here, before it all went to shit. Luther and him played hide and seek and on the other side of the crawlspace is a bathroom across the house. Nobody was ever able to tell him why it was there other than the fact that his grandfather was a strange man and he built a strange house.
The crawlspace is full of cobwebs, and something scrambles around in the dark. Victor smells the sweet sick scent of mice and he scowls. He's always hated that smell.
He crawls on in the dark until he finds a box, a crate of some kind blocking the exit into the upstairs bathroom. He pushes it out ahead of him until he's able to climb out and dust himself off.
It's got records in it.
Familair ones.
Victor picks up the notebook tucked between the records and flips it open.
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We needed money. But there weren't options. It was the depression and we were stuck in the American south. It was hot. That's what I remember most from ten years ago. It was hot and there were bugs. Victor wouldn't stand the bugs.
We were starving and the work we could scrape together weren't gonna do anything to help.
We didn't know if our healing would save us.
We still don't know if we can starve.
But it got desperate and we had an idea, see when we were kids mama sang a lot. She had a beautiful voice. Could have gone to be famous if she had the chance, and she almost did. That voice carried on to her kids. Even Saul but he was too shy.
So we set up on a street corner with a guitar Victor had kept like a prized possession since the 1880s.
It worked.
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Victor sighs and tuckes the notebook away in the crate. Then hefts the crate onto his hip and wanders back down the stairs to the den. There wasn't a record player when Hey were kids but now he looks again and his memory serves right.
When he first got here this morning he was a vinyl record player on the old coffee table, now he sets the crate down and flips through to find a certain record. One he and Clara were so proud to be on.
On the B side, the third song.
A duet, of LA Vie An Rose.
It fed them for a long time.
Arkady is drawn in by the music to see Victor splayed out on the old armchair like a corpse, the only movement the slight tap of his toe in rhythm with the lyrics of the song. His fingers playing across the threadbare armrests as of he still had his old guitar in his hands.
He had to leave it behind when he went to war a few years later, was never able to find it again.
Arkady goes around the back of the chair and settles his hands on Victor's stiff shoulders, kneading his thumbs into the muscle hard and deep until he knots carved into Victor finally start to unravel with a rumbling purr that stumbles out of his chest like a kitten unused to its legs.
"You never sing anymore."
Victor smiles and reaches up to catch one of Arkady's hands, turns it over to smack a kiss on the back with a grin.
"What, you want me to serenade you?" He whispers, Arkady scratches his fingertips against Victor's beard. As usual he's singularly fascinated by Victor's facial hair. Probably because he's never managed to grow anything of his own.
"Maybe I do." He finally answers.
"Maybe I will." Is Victor's quiet answer.
The record spins off to the next song with a silent half second of static and it has Victor leaning forward to prop his elbows on his knees and his cheek against the knuckles of one hand.
"Claire danced better than me. It's why I picked up instruments. So I didn't have to dance. Not when she did. I never looked as good." He said, Victor stands up and sighs and takes the needle off with a crackle. His hands shake more than they should, he's too tired to try and stop them.
Beside him Arkady picks up the cardboard that held the record. He flips it to the backside to see the songs. Victor watches those red eyes trace across words until he looks up to catch victor staring.
"Youre unlisted. You didn't give a name?"
"We didn't want to keep records of us. By then we knew we weren't aging right. At least we knew I wasn't. Claire insisted, she'd seen something happen but I never knew what. She just kept saying she don't want to end up some sort of lab experiment." Victor scoffs. "Ironic. Weapon x got their hands on her anyway. I'm just glad she wasn't alive when they did."
Arksdy puts the cardboard down and pushes Victor to sit down in the armchair again.
He crawls into his lap once Victor is settled and drags his fingers through Victor's hair. Both hands untangle the knots that always seem to form there. As if Victor has been rolling in the dirt for hours.
Rough hands find their way to Arkady's hips, they simply stay there. Victor closes his eyes and lets it happen. It's something he just managed recently. This couldn't have happened even a few months ago, being cared for was so foreign he wouldn't let it happen.
He was scared.
"What's next?" Arkady whispers, Victor shakes his head and pulls Arkady close. Flush against his chest. Victor's nose is cold where he tucks it against Arkady's neck and Arkady laughs, something quiet and rough.
"I dont-"
Thunder cuts Victor off and shakes the house with its force. Instinctually Victor hauls Arkady close to his chest with a growl. He likes storms fine but he hates to be surprised.
Arkady shushes him and sits up again. To Victor he is miles away, even if there's only a foot between them.
"Lets sleep, you can finish this tomorrow." Arksdy said, he moves off of Victor to stand and stretch. Victor hears the metal snap of Arkady's coils extending and then Arkady is holding his hand with one of them and pulling him to the door.
It opens to a dark thunderstorm. Unfortunately they aren't going anywhere.
Arkady goes to speak but Victor just slams the door and stalks back to the den.
"Well just sleep here." Victor said, it pains him. He's never wanted to spend another night in this house. Much less in a storm, the roof leaks sometimes.
But Arkady grabs his waist and pulls him close. He settles his chin on Victor's shoulder with a hum.
"You sleep, I'll take watch." He whispers, Victor almost whimpers. Arkady's ability to know exactly what he needs is a gift. Even if he only knows because he spent a long time stalking victor. Still, it's helpful.
Victor pulls a blanket from his duffel and lays out on the couch, Arkady sits on the arm of the couch with a smile and pets through Victor's hair.
After a while they start to talk, nearly at the same time, but Arkady shuts his mouth and waves for Victor to continue.
"I feel like a scared kid again," Victor throws an arm over his eyes. "I miss my sister red." Its barely audible, like he doesn't want Arkady to actually hear it. Arkady pauses his petting but continues quickly.
"I think I would have liked to meet her. I have trouble with women, you know that, but she seems just as strange as you. Maybe that would have helped." Arkady twirls one of victor's curls around his finger, "Tell me about her."
Victor snorts.
"She was stubborn. That's the first thing anybody ever said about her. Stubborn girl." Victor moved his arm to grab onto the back of the broken down couch. "You know my parents tried to marry her off when she was 12? They wanted rid of her so badly."
Arkady doesn't speak but this is their usual routine. He listens.
Victor talks until he does off with a snort and Arkady stands up.
He leaves Victor in the den and heads towards the kitchen, where Victor left Clara's first journal.
And maybe his stalking says aren't over, maybe his invasion of privacy gets this far?
But it…doesn't.
He puts the book down before he opens it and drags a hand down his face.
If it was anyone else…he thinks to himself. Anyone else and he'd be memorizing every word, every weakness.
But it's Victor.
Victor who snorts and rolls over on the small couch on the other room. Victor whose feet are well past hanging off the end. Victor who cries in his sleep.
Victor.
Arkadys chest aches and for a moment he thinks he's having a heart attack again, but some part of him knows he isn't. That part of him that pulses like a wound when Victor is nearby. That bled like the devil when he wasn't.
Arkady goes back to the den and sits on the ground beside the couch, humming the song Victor was playing and letting his eyes track every shadow in the room.