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tunastime · 1 year

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On Life Series Season 4

for those of you who voted for jimmy and tango: this is for you.

also known as: I have very complex thoughts about rancher reunion for season 4 and monolith is a group of known enablers.

(1545 words)

It’s the end of the world. Or, at least, it feels like it.

The grass is green and the sky is orange and red and Jimmy Solidarity is alone. He’s standing, half-stilted, leaning hard against the weight of the sword in his hands. It’s stone, just like the building. The rough cobbles form a tower. A defense. It’s all he’s got, here, in another death game. He’s got that, and another chance to die for nothing.

He tries to breathe normally, like he’s taught himself to keep level headed. It’s not doing much, considering that Jimmy feels something odd and aching boiling over in his chest. He feels like an unwatched pot, tipping over his lid, and his arms shake with it. It’s a feeling that pools in his wrists and the back of his knees, sharp and prickly. He can taste something vile in the back of his mouth. Words, laughter, bile. He isn’t sure.

It’s darkening. His building is on fire.

“Jimmy!”

It’s a voice he’s memorized. Gravel on the low notes. Whispers in the middle. Footsteps in the dirt. He thinks there might be blood under his nails, but he thinks it might also be soil, because nothing smells like blood and nothing about him stings. The voice that cuts through the dusk is too familiar, too safe. He staggers.

Jimmy’s house isn’t on fire, he is. He feels it coiling in his chest, licking at the inside of his lungs, hot, too hot, or maybe not hot enough. If he breathes out he fears it might be smoke. His hands are shaking. He swallows. He can’t make his lungs inflate.

Part of him thinks he deserves this, to know he’s mocked from the start, because he can remember the words about his house, about the rumors around him, he can remember the anger boiling up to an overflow. His house is burning. He made it out of stone this time. That wouldn’t burn, he thought. But his hands are hot. There were words he said, isn’t there? Things that punched out of him as soon as he saw a familiar face that had to crane to meet his eye again. What was it that he said, when he ran into Scar first? Joel? When they told him good luck both times? Was it something cruel to match the curling in his chest? Was it the brief glee on Joel’s face, knowing he got under his skin, that made him snap back? Who else was there?

There are other words being said to him.

What happened back there? I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Someone said you nearly punched Joel? And Scar? Jimmy—

Feet on the grass. He’s not there though, on that hillside with Joel, not anymore. He’s staring wide-eyed into bright red eyes, arms stretched out, a perspective that forces him to look at only him, at Tango in front of him.

It’s Tango, terrified. It’s Tango, and Jimmy can swear he can feel Tango’s heart thudding away helplessly in his own chest. It’s Tango, and for a moment he feels like his hands are burning and that the noise is deafening around him.

Except there is no noise. He fights to get forward, lands himself into Tango’s shoulder, hears the audible thud and oof as he does, as Tango digs his heels into the earth and refuses to be pushed aside. Tango pushes him back, trying to hold him steady.

“Jimmy—that wasn’t—this isn’t you,” Tango says, and his voice borders on confusion, on despair. Jimmy makes a noise somewhere half in his chest in response. “Snap out of it.”

“He’s just—he—he’s—” Jimmy struggles for a moment, squirming against the arm that holds his elbow. He didn’t see Joel like Tango did, scared and alone. He was the sneer over a wall Joel built. He was feeling himself picked up by the scruff, unable to fight back. He was watching a town crumble and it wasn’t even his fault. He was bleeding out on a bridge and someone was laughing. It’s gloating, it’s—someone is laughing and it isn’t Tango and it isn’t him.

Jimmy struggles. Why is Tango stopping him? Isn’t this what he should be doing? Standing up for himself? Jimmy deflates. Wouldn’t Tango be proud of him? Isn’t this what he wants? Every nerve in his body feels like it’s lit up, hair standing on end. Something watches (it isn’t Tango, and it isn’t him.)

“This isn’t you,” Tango manages.

Jimmy feels himself pushed back, but the hands are firm on his shoulders as his arms start to ache. His shoulder feels aflame where Tango holds it, warmth spreading from one point of contact through his muscles. He’s looking at Tango now, just for a fraction of a second before looking away, not able to hold his eye. His vision isn’t clear. It goes fuzzy around the edges, unfocused like he might be drifting off into space. He’s seeing bright red eyes under the brim of a hat. He’s seeing blue flames across the way. There’s someone in the pocket of his side and he is safe.

He takes what feels like the first breath of air in a long minute and his mouth doesn’t taste like smoke. He feels a hand peel from his shoulder, something that slides up to his face. It cradles his jaw in one warm palm, then two, fingers curling around the shell of his ears. He blinks, even has his vision blurs completely. The back of his throat burns. He feels like his nose is pinched shut. He swallows, and it takes everything in him to focus on the warmth of the hands over his cheeks.

“Jimmy, look at me. Look at me,” Tango’s voice tugs at him, firm. He lets his eyes drift back to a face that he knows. Tango’s eyes are wide, eyebrows upturned, lips in a fine line. He’s swaying, maybe not on purpose. He’s shivering, maybe not on purpose. The sky was never burning, it was just red. Jimmy feels his weight start to drop. It’s Tango. It’s Tango.

“It’s me, it’s Tango, your rancher,” he watches the wisp of a smile form on Tango’s face, through the wobble in his voice. He inhales sharply. “Remember?”

Cows! a voice calls from the doorway as Jimmy tries to circumnavigate the small herd chewing at the bundle of hay in his hand, on the sleeve of his shirt. This was many months ago. This was the first instance. There comes a day where Jimmy will sit a little too close and Tango will decide to slot himself in the curve of his arm at night and soon enough one bed was enough space and too much all at once. Hands fitting hands. Arms fitting around shoulders. We’ll rebuild, his voice says, to wipe the look of desolation from his rancher’s face as they stand in the broken husk of a house. It was never the home, anyway, was it? It was the people inside.

Something in Jimmy’s chest twists the strings of his heart in a knot. He sees Tango expression wavers as he shuts his eyes, swaying forward. He only manages a breath before it breaks.

Jimmy collapses into his arms and the smell of burnt matches is like coming home.

Tango sags with him, sinking them to the ground. Jimmy presses his face into the side of his neck, and safe, held close, he cries. It’s a horrible sound, one that pulls from him brokenly as he buries himself in Tango’s arms. He chokes on the sob.

“It’s empty,” he says, and the words are haunting and choked into his shoulder. Tango holds to the back of his neck, to the base of his spine, even as Jimmy’s hands tangle uselessly in his sweater. It’s all Jimmy can manage. He repeats it in the inhale that he takes: It’s empty. I’m alone.

Tumble Town is empty, and he knows it’s his fault.

Or maybe it isn't. Because what else could he have done, except convince them to stay? What could’ve been done that hadn’t been already, that he hadn’t already tried? What could he have done that would’ve made any difference, anyway, besides leaving himself?

Jimmy cries. Tango’s hands run up the base of his spine. They pull Jimmy to him, holding him close, holding him tight. Tango’s voice is a barely audible thing, through the gasps for air, between the calculated inhales and exhales Tango tries to have him copy. He repeats it like a mantra, pressed into the side of his head, into his hairline: “You’re not alone, I’m here.”

I’m here now and I won’t leave. Your home won’t be empty and your hearth won’t be cold. Your arms won’t be empty and your chest won’t be cold. I’m here.

Tango holds him in the grass and the dirt. Even when the sky is no longer pink and orange, even when the stars have started to peek out in the blue that blends with the fringes of sunset.

If only by one person, he is loved.

Jimmy breathes.