darker_london | Ghosts and dead girls (Leon, Joss) [backdated to just after Carly]

Joss was still awake when Leon came home, in the early hours of the morning as a flurry of raindrops were starting to fall. He’d heard the car come back and had drifted from the lounge toward the kitchen to pick at the remains of dinner and wait for Leon while pretending he wasn’t waiting for Leon.

“What’s up with Carly?” Joss asked, casually, as Leon joined him in the devouring of the cold chicken while the kettle boiled.

“It’s a pretty involved story,” Leon said, dropping hot chocolate powder into two cups. “I think the two of you should have a chat sometime.” He didn’t add ‘instead of asking me about each other’.

“Mm,” said Joss, and gathered up his chicken and his drink to take back into the lounge, where the tv was playing ‘best of the eighties’ music videos and where he’d made himself a nest of blankets, used mugs and weathered looking books from the university library. Leon followed him in and took the other half of the couch, and they drank their hot chocolate and watched the Pixies wonder Where is my mind?

“Can I admit something?” Leon asked, and Joss replied as he often did with the slight lift and fall of one shoulder. “Carly reminds me of Margo. I’m not sure why it is.”

“Reminds you?” Joss asked. “You barely know Carly.” There was a shadow across his face, and part of Leon regretted speaking. Another part of him did not, because he wanted to talk about something real with Joss. “You barely knew Margo,” Joss added, quieter. Leon wasn’t sure if it was intended to hurt or not.

It did hurt, but perhaps only because it was true. “We never talk about her,” Leon said.

Joss just said: “No.”

See, Margo belonged to Joss. She was his, his tragedy. He was the one who found her in the bath. His was the only name on her note. He was the one who had to call Leon in Europe because his parents had been useless.

It was the kind of hurt that at times he longed to talk about, but he refused. He didn’t want to put her into words and turn her into a story. Joss was practised at keeping her to himself.

And Leon wanted to ask, because she was on his mind, because it was very late at night, because he wasn’t ready to let this conversation slip out of his fingers. “Tell me about her, Joss,” Leon said, and Joss huffed a long sigh out his nose, annoyed that Leon could not read his mind.

“She was better than us,” Joss said bitterly. “Out of all of us, she should have been the one of us who made it.”

Well that was depressing, if not unexpected. “Why her, and not you?”

Joss closed his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about dead girls, Leon.” He pretended he didn’t hear Leon sign. It wasn’t a dramatic sigh, not even a disappointed one. It was a sign that was a little too hard to read.

“Okay,” Leon said. “Okay, it’s late, and we both have things to do in the morning. Let’s try and get some sleep.”

He stood, and almost missed Joss’s quiet voice when he spoke again. “You know I thought I saw her once.” Leon stopped in the doorway and turned around. “Last year,” continued Joss. “When we went to the country. I saw Kenzie, and I saw her. And Kenzie was real. Really there.”

“Oh Joss,” said Leon.

Joss raised his eyes and looked at Leon for the first time all conversation. “What if she’s a ghost, Leon. What if she’s spent all these years on her own. That fucking kid,” he said, and his voice broke as his face crumbled. “That fucking brilliant kid.”

Leon sat down beside his little brother, and looped his arms around him.

“I saw her at the accident too,” Joss whispered, barely audible. “I felt her there. I felt her with me.”

Leon squeezed him gently, back and forth, because sometimes in a conversation you had to know when to speak and when a person needed a hug.

He had to believe him, as he’d believed Carly about her strange, deathless self. Even though the only two times Joss claimed to have felt Margo was when he was high on ibogaine or just after a horrible car crash. But these days, nothing was impossible.

“Just say we’re haunted,” Joss said, morose. “Haven’t you felt haunted, Leon? All these years, haven’t you felt haunted?”

“Oh Joss,” Leon said again, his voice soft as a comforter wrapped around Joss’s shoulders. “I know ghosts exist, but so does grief. Don’t convince yourself that it’s one and deny the other, okay?”

Joss shook his head, and pulled away from Leon. He didn’t know where grief ended and where ghosts began, but he did know he should have stopped talking at I don’t want to talk about dead girls. He pulled the blanket up to his shoulders. “I’m gonna sleep on the couch,” he muttered, though his plan for the night was to listen to the music and bury himself in a book till it was time to go to uni.

Leon highly suspected that this was the case, too. But he knew when Joss was cutting off a conversation and besides, he was tired, and he did have to open the café in a few hours. “Okay,” Leon said, giving his little brother a warm and tired smile. “Goodnight, Joss. Do try and sleep, though.”

Joss gave him a smile in return that was as crooked as it was bitterly sarcastic. “Sure thing,” he said, topping it off with a salute. Leon dropped his hand on Joss’s head and ruffled his hair like he used to when Joss had hair, instead of the short dark fuzz he was sporting these days.

“Piss off to bed,” Joss said, turning the volume up another couple of notches. “I like this song.”