bakerstreet | YOU WANT, UH, A TISSUE? MAYBE SOME SOAP? NEW CLOTHES?

YOU WANT, UH, A TISSUE? MAYBE SOME SOAP? NEW CLOTHES?

COVERED IN BLOOD MEME

So you're a bit of a mess. Or you're stumbling upon a mess. What happened? There's blood everywhere, what the hell? Is it your blood, animal blood, the blood of someone you murdered? Hell, maybe you ran out of tampons. Anyway, no matter how it got there, you're (or someone you know is) covered in blood. Can it be explained away? If not, is someone going to prison? The hospital? Going to die of blood loss? Get in trouble for playing catch with the blood bags? Man, we don't know. The point is you have a mess to clean up. Or roll around in gleefully, you nasty fucks.

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He'd have to cross that bridge when he got to it, but no one would be shocked if he went that route. Seth would forgive him. He always did.

Richie wonders if Seth saw his nose crinkle up out of the corner of his eye. He's bit his brother before, and what he said then still stands.

"Blood is the conduit of the soul, brother. You want me to tell you that your soul is tasty?"

It's also a little fucking weird, though he'd do it in a pinch. Better that than the potential alternative. Besides, he's taken enough bullets for the team. It's the least he could do to make it up to him, though he knows his brother would disagree.

"Now are you gonna drive or are we just gonna sit here and chat about what your blood tastes like?"

That bite to Seth was buried in the back of his mind. Under the ink, and hidden behind a lot of seemingly years spent on that trail that had come from a needle. A lot he needed to forget about because in the end, Richie was here, and they weren't doing this alone again, and that was all that mattered.

Except for making Richie make that face.

"Do you have any fucking idea how good it feels knowing you're going to spend the next hour thinking about me asking that and what my soul tastes like?"

He laughed, a short sound but he was amused even as he put the car in gear. "We don't got to talk about it at all, but you'll be thinking about it. You're welcome."

"Oh fuck off."

He scowls from the passenger's seat, arms crossed over his chest petulantly as he waits for Seth to start fucking driving so he can have some damn silence for even two seconds.

Actually, no. He's gonna keep talking because being Richie he's not about to let this go. Getting laughed at like he's the dumb child is probably his least favorite thing in the entire world.

"I don't need to think about it because I already know. Maybe the next time I fucking take a bullet for you, you can pony up and I'll get to find out if you've actually aged at all or if you still taste like fucking motor oil and rubbing alcohol."

An extreme exaggeration, but he's annoyed and it's not like Seth is gonna know if that description is legit or not.

Seth chuckled, steering the car easily from the parking lot onto the road despite the sand that could have caught their tires and sent them sliding. Instead he watched the road, smirking as he watched Richie pouting from the corner of his eye.

"I haven't seen that look on your face since you were ten," he pointed out. Which probably wasn't true but it was a bit of an attempt at salt in the wounds. Because if he couldn't give his brother's shit, what was the point of living?

Seth's head turned, eyes narrowing. Looking at his brother, then to the road and then back to Richie. "Wait wait. Was that about the fact that I gave it up to the queen?" He couldn't help but ask that, given he'd turned his brother down that day. "Oh come on. This isn't about that, is it?"

Not bothered by the idea of motor oil and running alcohol. He knew his soul wasn't clean, after all, but he had one and he was okay with that. Which made him wonder about his brother and the others, and despite his needling comments, he damn well wasn't going to suddenly wonder out loud just what remained of Richie's soul. What mattered was he was back with Seth, despite all the bitching and whining between them.

His lips purse at the mention of him being fucking ten, but if Seth thought that was going to be what rubbed salt in the wound, bringing up that of all things was a million times worse.

Richie's history with Santanico was about as complicated as anything could be. While he wasn't jealous, per say, there was a lot of baggage that came with literally everything involving her, and shoving it in his face doesn't help matters.

"No it's not fucking about that." And it wasn't, really. Mostly, anyway. He just didn't want to think about it. "Just seems kind of hypocritical of you, alright?"

Neither of them were pure anymore. In Richie's case, he's not sure he ever was, but it didn't really bother him, either. They'd both done the best they could under the circumstances, and they did what they had to do with what they were given. They lived without regrets as best they could, and they looked out for each other when it actually mattered.

All the rest of it fell to the side. The needling of his brother, pushing buttons, letting past bitterness and guilt come to the surface, all of it was forgotten in that moment. Because in the end, that was not what it had fucking been, and he thought that Richie knew that.

"For fuck's sake, Richard. Seriously?"

His gaze is darting fast from the road to his brother and back, a constant movement that was starting to give him a damn headache and making him dizzy. So instead he went with the only answer he had. Slamming on the break and jerking the wheel to the side, steering them with a swerve of tires on sand to the side of the road.

"Richard, do you not even fucking get it? It wasn't being a fucking hypocrite. It was knowing you and knowing that you weren't fucking going down. No matter what. I knew that no matter what you lost, what hit you took, you would keep going. She on the other hand was going down and quick and I didn't trust her to push on like I knew you would. And we needed everyone. So I had two choices. Lose someone we needed, or fucking let her take a taste of what she's never going to fucking have again."

Despite the hard edge of his words, the sharpness of his voice, Seth was being bluntly honest.

"So I told you fuck you because you could handle it and keep going." And he didn't have to think about the last time, or the heroin, or fucking detoxing from that shit. All of it that went with his brother's fangs on him.

Richie's quiet for a long time, head leaning back against the headrest, staring straight ahead onto a road that's no longer running under their wheels. He's agitated, partly because he let some of his bullshit slip out through his words, and partly because Seth was tugging at things he didn't want tugged at.

He liked to live in a word of logic because emotions could be fucking hard sometimes and it was easier to deal when he thought things through with his head. In his head, it didn't make any fucking sense to him that Seth would bitch and moan about Culebras, hate what Richie had become because of that so-called queen, and then offer up his arm the second she needed it to heal.

It was a smart move, he'd said as much back then. He knew that, but it was also irritating to constantly hear about how everything Richie was now was some kind of liability or curse that his brother had to deal with and never wanted to acknowledge. It was just something Richie was supposed to 'deal' with all the time, even if it was because Seth knew he could.

"Yeah, well just because you hate that I've got all this going on doesn't mean that I do."

Power was something he'd always wanted, and having an edge over humans gave him that without him needing to be some sort of big shot anymore. In some ways, it's what had given Richie the ability to force others to see him as Seth's equal instead of the lesser half of their duo. He knew they were better together, especially now, but he wanted other people to see him as something other than the sidekick.

The pounding in his ears was louder than the engine of the car to Seth. Staring at his brother's profile, knowing that these fights weren't going to stop. Not any time soon. There was too much they had been through, that they hadn't put to rest, that they would constantly be tugging and pushing until they worked it all out amongst themselves. Which given the two of them, might be never.

Logic, in Seth's mind, was fucking bullshit. Not when it meant things like Richie taking off with Santanico, and the ideas and concepts that had led them down the primrose path that had nearly gotten them both turned into corpses one way or another.

"Nobody fucking said you had to." Except Seth had and was. Constantly. All the fucking time telling his brother what was wrong with the culebra and all they stood for. "But Jesus fuck, Richie. All of it nearly took you from me. Santanico and her mind games with you in Texas. All we've fucking been through. You going off with her. Why the fuck am I supposed to like your little club when they did all that shit to us, to Kate, all of it."

Not that he hadn't been the one that got them in on the job, and he could bet any minute Richie was going to remind him of that too. He had gotten them into bed with Carlos and it had all gone to shit from there.

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YOU WANT, UH, A TISSUE? MAYBE SOME SOAP? NEW CLOTHES?

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