Who: Eddie and Muerte Where: Los Tacos When: Right after the party What: a little bit of friendship fighting. a little bit of party reveal Warnings: For a limited time only: Eddie swears!
The hotel had taken a lot away from Eddie. His wit, cunning, verbosity, and his dexterity. As an oversized punk rocker, he couldn’t dream of repairing a computer or fiddling with tiny tools to make something glow. Of course, he didn’t realize that the party let him keep his creativity and unique scrapyard ingenuity, but Eddie wasn’t always the best at introspection. And, once the party spit him back out into Gotham with his green suit and tiny, nimble body, he only wanted to spend his time upstairs in his secretive server room. It felt good to be up there alone, consumed by keys, motherboards, wires and lines of code. Each time he squeezed past a giant server tower or crawled to look at the readings of one of his inventions, he found it easy to push the memories of the night out of his head. And, just as he was starting to feel like himself again, he got the call from Los Tacos about an inky, black octopus-haired woman who decided to have one too many tequila shots. Eddie thought about just paying one of his guys to go get her for him, but this was Muerte and ignoring her was akin to abandoning her in his mind.
So, Eddie changed out of his riddled PJs and into a not-Riddler cream colored suit. Something almost tropical or at least worthy of a yacht party. He thought about not wearing a hat, but he was in a hat kind of mood so he went for a Sinatra, straw fedora. The get-up made him look like something out of an old film that played for quarters at the cheap theater. A gangster and entertainer rolled into one, prowling the lower streets of Gotham under the shadow of Arkham City. Not like his neighborhood seemed scared of the mega-prison’s wall. They strung up lights, cheap and dollar store, all across the street between apartments and around telephone poles as if to remind the rest of Gotham that this was where all the color was. This was why Eddie loved living here the most. This was why Los Tacos had his number on speed dial. This was why his best friend was some kind of supernatural being that got handsy with Jesus or maybe one of the Apostles.
Unlike the party, he slipped through the street crowd without knocking anything over or barreling into unsuspecting citizens. He caught attention, he always did, but it felt like his kind of trademark instead of something more suitable to one of his goons. When he got to Los Tacos, the place was pretty quiet. Most patrons had their food and left for hotter spots or sat around big, tiled tables chatting. Eddie’s entrance was always the same. He opened up his arms with a bright hello (though today he had to stop himself from asking how the fuck everyone was feeling as were remnants of the party) that earned a friendly, familiar response. He thought about immediately getting himself some nice fruity drink or a shot of tequila, but he liked the feeling of being sober too much to let it go. Instead, he stood up on his toes, slight, small frame looking around for Muerte before Miguel pointed her out to him.
Eddie frowned at the sprawl of messy black hair and table decorated with empty shot glasses. It was impressive, he’d give her that, but more troubling than he anticipated. He walked over to her, voice clear and oh-so Riddler. “Greetings, Madam of Morbidity. I am here to escort you back to the macabre abode from whence you came.” It was important to note that Eddie was talking weird. Like he was trying to impress a caped crusader, weird.
She hadn’t been prepared for the vulnerability. The feeling of being not only human, but being too human and too innocent. Someone that couldn’t defend herself at all, that didn’t even know she needed to half the time, and it had ended oh-so-predictably. And maybe that would have been fine, with a bit of time, with Iris staying on her side, with a chance to think about it and work past it. Maybe it would have been alright, if she hadn’t so recently died once already. But she found herself not in the back of Iris’ mind, but in Gotham, manifested and so human again, and if she was going to keep being human, keep being a target, she didn’t want to be sober when she was found and fucked over.
Maybe Los Tacos hadn’t been the smartest place to go. Somewhere that the staff knew her, where some of them knew her and what she was, knew that there was someone else in Gotham who knew her. But the place was familiar and safe, and had what was required to get her drunk enough to forget her own fragility when human. A tray of drinks was what she ordered, and then another, the tequila making her warm and her thoughts swim. She contemplated telling Miguel to just bring her the entire bottle, but hadn’t quite yet made it to that point. Glasses but no salt, no limes. She didn’t care enough to cut the burn of the alcohol with anything.
Two trays was enough to get her past sloppy, enough to have her laying her arms on the table and resting her forehead on top of them. She hadn’t passed out, was in fact as aware as she could be in her drunken state, on alert for anyone coming close enough to touch. There had been too much touching, and she was done with that.
She supposed she should have expected the staff to turn on her at some point. After enough shots, she had started saying things. Not constantly, but the things she said were too pinpoint accurate, too edged for anyone to be comfortable. Things about relatives that had passed away decades ago, things about lifestyle changes that would maybe add a year or two to someone’s life. She knew she should stop, but the words sometimes just spilled out. But calling Eddie was a low blow, and once she heard his too-literate Riddler voice, she could only sigh and slur out in loud Spanish without even lifting her head: “Miguelito, how dare you betray me like this.”
Eddie was used to being unwanted. Usually, it was a point of pride for him. An annoying buzzing green man who dropped in on your ordinary life and turned it upside-down with riddles and tedious puzzles. Here, though, it hurt enough to make him want to just storm right back to his computers and pj’s. Feeling an ornery wind shake through him, he stood up a little taller with his spine straight and chin tilted sharply. “You are desecrating the good name of Los Tacos.” He responded in flowery Spanish, all telemundo with a dark, deep voice and slid into the circular booth next to her. Eddie might have been a tamed super villain, but he sure as hell didn’t get scared off easy.
He afforded a singular, worried look at the mess of black hair next to him, arm draped around the other side of the booth as he kept a couple inches between them and then whistled at the tray of shots in front of them. “I always wondered how many alcoholic beverages it would take to intoxicate Lady Sebastienne.” Eddie switched back to English again, voice still very dramatico as if muttering her name would make the lights in the restaurant flicker. There was no supernatural response, however, so he stuck two of his slight fingers into one of the shot glasses and waved the empty thing in the air like a puppet. “Eight? Twelve? Muchos.”
The seat of the booth moved her when his weight settled on it, and she could hear the soft slide of fabric across the vinyl. She didn’t think much of it until she could feel how close he was, the sort of warmth and living space of another body. And she cringed away from it. Without thought, without meaning to, not because it was him, but because it was someone. She turned her head just enough for one dark eye to peer out at him from the mess of her hair, the top of a liquor-flushed pink cheek also showing itself, as she confirmed that it was, indeed, him (though who else could it have been?). Once she had checked, she rested her forehead back down again and addressed the tabletop at close range in perfect (if slurred) very old Spanish, the twists and turns of phrase not quite what they should have been for the modern day.
“More. Miguel has yet to bring me the bottle, cur that he is. But I like him, so he shall see another sunrise. ...not actually, him not being a morning person. Metaphorically.” She went silent, the table not responding to her thoughts, but she hadn’t expected it to.
He instinctively scooted a little farther away when she cringed. A recoil akin to a man who perpetually saw himself as a monster and was just waiting for the rest of the world to catch up. Eddie didn’t even notice that he did so, but now he was practically on the other side of the booth, plucking up shot glasses with his fingers and clacking them together in tiny rhythms. The nerves of being saddled with trying to make her feel better when something was obviously wrong mixed with the happiness he was to be in his own skin swirling towards impending ridiculousness.
“Edward Shotglass Hands. Get it?” He asked, all his fingers paired into empty glasses as he held them up to get her to look at him. “Mrs. Monroe showed me where the salon’s going to be. Then she showed me the back room where she takes off all her-gahh!” His movie quoting cut short by one of the shot glasses slipping off his fingers, followed by a clattering mess of rolling glasses all over the table. Looking like a boy who just knocked over another kid’s science project, Eddie got to work cleaning up the mess he made, sorting the shot glasses out so that he could properly stack them later. For attention. If she was still ignoring him.
“So, we gunna talk about this fuc-” He stopped himself, cleared his throat and started again. “Are we going to converse about this malevolent festivity that has forced you to a life of dipsomania?”
She had peered over her arms at him at the start of the clacking, surprised to find him at the opposite side of the booth when she thought he’d been so close, not even imagining that he would have moved away again due to something she’d done. She watched the jitter of his fingers, identified it as nerves without a struggle of thought, and frowned, but she couldn’t hold back the drunken snort of amusement at the identification of “Edward Shotglass Hands”. The clatter of falling glasses made her startle, but she didn’t move back or away, just watched his continued fidgeting with another frown.
She laid her head back down when he continued to talk, the words cumbersome and forced in a way she hated. And her, of course, still in Spanish. “Eddie, knock it off. Rein it in.” Then louder, a shout to the tabletop, that would likely have been deaf now, had it had ears. “Miguel! Drinks for Eddie!” She finally sat up completely, swayed just a little with the quick motion. Her hair was a mess, even after she pushed it back, her face flushed and skin warm, looking to where several of the employees had gathered, watching her. “And bring the bottle this time, I mean it, Mikey!”
“Nobody puts Eddie in a corner.” He whispered back in Spanish, completely defiant and immature as if he were daring her to keep denying him. Here he was. Taking an unneeded, unwanted break from his electronics to clean up her mess and there wasn’t an ounce of gratitude from Muerte. He could storm out of there right now and no one would blame him. Still, his curiosity and worry tended to get in the way of practicality or masculine indifference and he’d probably accidentally torch the place before actually abandoning her. This was one of the many dangers of making friends with the Riddler. “Negative, Miguel! No drinks for me. That would defeat the purpose, you see, of extracting this octopus from your eatery.” He raised a single finger in the air and then looked to see that everyone in Los Tacos were doing their very best to outright ignore the both of them.
“Alright, Muerte.” Eddie said, authority ringing in geeky highs with a devious kind of sharpness built for riddles. “I’ve been summoned to take you back to your cloud city. Either you come peacefully or we can sit here and talk like friends do until you’re sober enough to zip off on your own. Comprende?” He reached across the table to lightly grab her forearm and shake it for attention.
“I didn’t summon you,” she replied, staring straight across the table at him with the intensity of someone trying to focus through the blurred haze of too much alcohol, and winced at the on-going Riddler voice. “And if you’re here to talk, then you need to be Eddie and stop...” She waved a loose hand at him, taking in the whole picture from hat and tailored suit to the perfectly coordinated shoes she knew were present under the alcohol-sticky table. “Riddlering at me.”
The touch to her arm, the shake, took a second to register her fogged mind. She jolted once she realized there were fingers on her skin, pulling her arm back with a wrench that was automatic. She held that arm close to her body, eyes huge and dark as she stared across the table at him. It took too long for her mind to catch up and say Eddie to her, to connect that Eddie meant friend, and not someone that was going to choke the life out of her (again).
Probably.
The murmured apologies started up as her shoulders sagged and she covered her face with her hands, bowing forward to press her forehead to the tabletop again. “I’m sorry. I am. ...I’m sorry.”
“If you’re going to talk to me why don’t you speak in English-” He snapped suddenly, playful geeky high that was there came crashing down into a shattering, angry mess that was directed at just about everything. It surprised him, but not as much as her sudden pull away from his touch which earned a hurt, wide-eyed expression. Eddie stared at her a second longer, then shook his head and took his hat off. “If you don’t want me here I can leave.” He said lowly, voice finally calming to an echo of maturity. Eddie wasn’t expecting her to throw him a parade for showing up while she found the bottom of a bottle for comfort, but he had hoped she’d be happy to see him. Didn’t she use to be so happy to see him?
“The party took a lot of things from me.” He said finally, running his hand through his hair and leaning back in the booth, dark eyes up at the ceiling and refusing to look at her. “I feel like I’m putting my training wheels back on.” That was the best excuse he could give for Riddling at her. Which, if he thought about it too much, was insulting enough. He didn’t believe there was much of a difference between Eddie and Riddler. But, he couldn’t be more wrong. That difference, those moments of humanity bleeding through the green punctuation, made him a man instead of just a symbol.
“Maybe I don’t want to speak in English!” she shouted - in slurred English. The volume of it had just about everyone still left in the place looking over at their booth, but she was too busy pressing her face to the cool wood and tile of the table to notice or care. One long, shaky breath brought her volume back down, but her words at least remained in English for him. “I’m sorry. Stay. It’s not you. It’s just... too much touching. It’s not the best right now.” That particular confession delivered, she went silent again, listening to him talk about the party.
Training wheels. She gave a hollow laugh at that, the mental image of it was (for some reason) Eddie on a Segway, and she snorted once before going quiet again. “I think taking was the theme of the night,” she told the tabletop, still at close range, her eyes closed so that she didn’t have to try to focus on the grain of the wood or the palms of her hands. “But if you could just... turn it down? Just a little? Just until you leave?” The questions were plaintive, nearly pleading. “I’m drunk and I can’t handle it.”
He was listening very closely to her, though his indifferent look up and away seemed to be suggesting otherwise. His physical defenses were up, though really he was here to try and get through to her. Eddie was certain that he saw Muerte at the party and he could have done something that caused all kinds of trauma. First and foremost he wanted to make sure that whatever she was trying to drink away wasn’t entirely his fault. And, if it was as most things tended to be, Eddie wanted to make it right. The party might have turned him into a hulking mess of a cussing man, but it made him want to strengthen the bonds that he had. Muerte was at the top of the list of repairs. He was willing to put some of the riddle walls down to fix things.
“Consider it turned down to a low hum.” He said finally, arms crossed as he glanced down at her and exhaled. “Maybe I should get a drink.” Eddie regarded the sea of empty glasses. “I’m just too relieved to have old faithful running again.” A tap to the side of his head to indicate old faithful was apparently a name for his brain and he offered a tiny smile. “I had some good things happen at the party. Some really, really bad things. You know, but I managed to ruin everything I touched. Even if- I can never do what people want. It’s always got to be my way.” He mumbled, though it didn’t feel like normal Eddie rambling. He was trying to work through a puzzle he didn’t give much thought to before in an attempt to coax out what was bothering her as well.
She sighed in relief when he started speaking again and it was, in fact, turned down. She murmured a low “gracias” but shook her head against the table, her forehead the fulcrum point of it, rubbing a red spot into her skin. “Don’t drink just ‘cause I am. You’re all... sobery.” She did look up at him though, just in time to see the tap to his head and the little smile. She wanted to commiserate, to trade the things that had been good about their nights, but all she could remember... “I was scared and sad. And happy and sad. And scared and...” She kept her chin resting on the table so that her face was visible, hair forming snaked loops through spilled tequila, but she closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to look at him while she was admitting all the new, special ways she was finding to hurt. In the end, it didn’t take all that much effort on his part to coax it out.
“I found out I don’t like suffocating. I knew it, from... from the Pit being in my lungs. But... choking is a shitty way to die. I’ve done it twice now, and that’s enough of that.”
He lifted his chin back down to watch her talk, dark eyes carefully leafing through everything she told him like he was looking for clues and trying to understand the whole picture. Normally he’d love this kind of game, it was the thing he was built for. Less about logical steps and more about putting together random pieces that fit and connecting dots that no one else could see. But, then the lines he drew started to point back at him and he could feel sharp pains vibrate from under his skin. The feeling of being stabbed and bleeding out momentarily making him shift in his seat and loosen his gold tie.
“Muerte.” Eddie muttered like an old woman would under her breath when her favorite cat died. Regret heavy in the tiny fidgeting of his fingers. He knew the woman in the greenhouse was familiar, all of the women he ran into were familiar, but he had hoped that she wasn’t Muerte. After everything they went through with the Lazarus Pit and the things he shouted at the garden girl when he buried her. He hoped it wasn’t Muerte. “I didn’t mean to. You know I didn’t mean to. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but you stabbed me for killing some stupid flowers and I just- I lost it and-” He slumped down in the booth, shoulders only a couple inches above the table as he clutched the edges of it. “I’m not a thug. Deep down. I’m not some stupid thug.”
There was a hanging moment of silence before Eddie started talking, and what he started saying made the crease of a frown form between Death’s eyebrows. She pushed herself up from the table as she opened her eyes, leaning back in the booth while the room spun just a bit and she looked at him. Things he was saying started sounding familiar to her drunken mind, but one thing stood out. “Eddie,” she finally interrupted, “I didn’t stab anyone. Couldn’t’ve if I’d wanted to.” She shook her head, immediately stopping when she realized that was a bad idea in the way it made everything roll in the wrong direction. She lifted her hands to grip the edge of the table as she continued to frown.
“If you killed someone, it wasn’t me. It wasn’t you,” she finished, thinking of the man that had taken her into the bedroom. No, she couldn’t believe that was Eddie. The suit had been well-tailored, but she refused to think that he would have had the sort of sadistic joy on his face while pressing the life out of her. It didn’t stop the shudder from climbing up her spine, though, and she closed her eyes, trying to force away the memory. It took too long, but the things he was saying slowly started slotting into her own memories of the night. “Thug?”
Eddie’s gaze narrowed. He didn’t feel bad about killing a stranger, especially one that attacked him first, but the moment it turned into someone he knew and cared about something in him changed. It was an uncomfortable feeling of not wanting to make things worse with the people he kept close. A fear, a real and embedded fear, that he’d always manage to hurt anyone who trusted him with the important stuff. “She attacked me first. I was acting like a brute, but she attacked me first.” A weak line of defense for his own brand of crazy, muttered lowly at the sea of shot glasses like they were the jury and judge of the things he did the night of the party.
He finally looked up to her. Dark eyes flickering with passing ideas and spinning thought webs that were starting to get tangled up in each other. “Yeah. It spit me out as some ridiculous pumped up Johnny Rotten type.” He said dismissively, sitting back up just a little in the booth. “See, I thought I saw you there. I was bleeding out after that woman stabbed me and I thought it was you who helped patch me up.” A thoughtful hum and raised finger. “Not at first. Too nice to immediately associate with you. But, towards the end. She hurt her foot and I-” Eddie shrugged, a small sharp motion of his shoulders and smiled uneasily at her. Talking about the Lazarus Pit and what happened to Muerte’s feet after she went wading into it was still difficult for him. Like a taboo word he didn’t want to utter.
She gave one last shudder at the memory of the too-slick man from the party before she opened her eyes again to look at Eddie. And yes, there it made sense. The cursing, almost clumsy punk that she’d helped and then run through the party with. The one that had needed to leave her to find someone else. Of course. She let out a breathy laugh and covered her face with her hands again for just a second. “Frosting.” She shook her head with a very small smile. “And I’m nice. I was worried you were going to bleed out in that pool.”
His eyebrows raised at the laugh, followed by a bright goofy smile at the word frosting. “You’re not nice.” He pulled himself to sit back up in the booth like an adult and leaned back with a relieved, amused laugh. “Still weird. That’s what tipped me off. You’re really f-f-f-fantastically weird.” Eddie stuttered away from his knee-jerk impulse to swear and laughed again, this time a little louder than he had promised to keep his volume at. “I liked that part. I liked before when I made something for a statue. I liked after when I helped someone find her man. Maybe it wasn’t so bad, but it was still a big mess.” His smile stayed on his face, easy and effortless as it always tended to be most of the time. Directed at her without silent insecurities that she didn’t want him to be there at all.
“It made me miss you, Muerte. Goddamnit, after all of this I just miss being your friend.” He admitted closing his eyes with an unapologetic shrug. Eddie was a sap and a little too sweet to the people he cared about sometimes, but that’s what made him feel so much more alive in this Gotham than back home.
She looked across the table at him and managed to raise an eyebrow at him. “You’re pretty fantastically weird yourself, you know.” It came out as a tease, easily knowing how the curse should have spilled out. She didn’t claim again to be nice, though. Even drunk, she realized that “nice” had never been used to describe her, and for good reason. She shook her head again and realized that the room was slowly starting to spin less. Miguel had cut her off too long ago. She sighed, not quite ready to be sober again yet.
It was too easy to study him when he had his eyes closed, and after a silent moment, she sighed. “I miss it too, Eddie.” It was a whisper, a painful one that didn’t want to be forced from her throat, one that was too final and had to be followed up by something more, something different, before it cut away at her. “Did you find her?”
He opened one eye and smirked at her. “You mean you, not it.” Eddie corrected her, pointer finger threatening to rise up in the air. “If a human tells you that they miss you, the correct response is: Yes, weak human creature. I miss you too.” He closed his eyes again, wiggled his eyebrows and grinned at his own cleverness. Only a week before when she was just barely trying to return to the world, Eddie would have traded in the friendly teasing for something a lot more biting. When she came back, he was still so bitter about what happened and the belief that he had caused her to push herself too far along with the peanut gallery weighing in on their friendship turned him cold. But, something changed. Something urged him to stop being petty when it was never a very good color on him in the first place.
“I found her. I always find her.” Eddie said, smile turning soft and affectionate for a blonde bat that wasn’t there. “She was different. Worried and weak and tied up. But, stubborn and sassy. Even as a lumbering punk rocker, I couldn’t ignore that.” He tilted his head and looked to Muerte. A moment passed and then the smile slowly faded from his lips. “Tell me what happened after I left?”
After a moment to think over what had been said, she rolled her eyes at his haughty grammar lesson and shook her head. Yet again. “No. You said you miss being friends. I said I miss it too. It works, Mister Pedantic.” A little slurred, but ‘pedantic’ mostly came out correctly. She sighed then, “And “weak human creature”? That’s not really appropriate right now, is it?” She gestured vaguely at herself, a mess, pink-faced from the alcohol and hair everywhere, so obviously drunk. Did he honestly think she was anything other than human at the moment?
Drunk and human probably wasn’t the best way for her to have this conversation. Or any conversation with Eddie. But she didn’t have a choice, not with him sitting across the booth from her. Her voice was frustratingly quiet when she replied, soft in a way that had some bitter along with the sweet. “She should have more confidence in herself. But good. If you ever don’t, I’ll come back and kick your ass.” She smiled at him, still with that little twist to it that might be sadness, but at his question, it all faded. She didn’t say anything for a long moment, eyes on him the entire time, but then she dropped her gaze and made a frustrated little face before saying anything. “...No.”
Eddie shrugged again, hands behind his head as he leaned back in the booth. “I don’t care how drunk and human you are right now. Your perspective stays the same, doesn’t?” His voice changed to something more akin to a crypt keeper. “Puny humans! I have come for your tequila and mortal friendship. Bow to me!” He shouted at the end, surprisingly raising zero odd looks from the Los Tacos regulars because they had long gotten used to his eccentricities. Still, Eddie gave a mildly disappointed frown at the lack of response and instead turned back to look at Muerte as she fell silent.
He scooted a little closer, still leaning back with his head cradled in the palm of his hands as he looked at her. “Alright. You don’t have to talk about it. I should have stuck around with you. Don’t know what kind of weirdos were at that party.” He said, a moment of maturity washing over the riddled man. “I don’t really want to talk about the garden thing either.” Eddie admitted with a sigh. “I want people to keep thinking I’m harmless. I want to keep thinking I’m harmless.”
Her expression almost shifted into a roll of her eyes, but she managed to pull it back at the last second. “Never said “puny humans”, Eddie. And being human is... different. It feels different.” She waved it off with one still-drunk, loose hand, and watched as he scooted closer. Her eyes shifted to his hands, making sure he wasn’t reaching out too much, and sighed.
“Not your bother,” she murmured. “You had more important things.” Her expression shifted into a slight smile, but with a sort of seriousness that was almost sad in her eyes. “You want to pretend it all didn’t happen? None of it until you found Steph? Might be better that way.”
Eddie offered her a dry grin, then suddenly slid out of the booth and walked over to the small bar. “Hola, Mikey.” He pushed his hands down on the counter, looking up at Miguel. The one guy who was both glad that Eddie brought so much new business to Los Tacos and mildly irritated by the weird trouble he dragged in. “Gimmie something fruity and virgin.” Eddie and Miguel stared at each other for a moment and then the little green man muttered a tiny fuck. “You know- a Baha- one of those bright blue things.” He rolled his hand in the air until Miguel begrudgingly in a slow sarcastic pace brought him a coke with grenadine. “Or...a Roy Rogers. Yeah, I can work with that.”
Miguel plopped a cherry in the drink, pushed it towards him and then Eddie was circling back to Muerte’s booth. “Pretend what?” He asked, picking up a conversation that he abruptly dropped minutes before. Sipping from a bright red straw with his eyebrows up and innocent. “Did I cross a line whilst believing I was a punk rock hero?”
She startled as Eddie slipped quickly out of the booth, watching after him as he went over to the bar. She stared at his back, frowning and not entirely certain why he’d gotten up from the table. She was at the point where she wanted another drink more than she wanted to sober up more than she already was. Instead of saying anything, she just laid her hands back on the table again, and folded forward to rest her forehead on top of them.
She knew when he slid back into the booth, but didn’t look up again. “Pretend that you showed up and found Steph. Not that you were running around before that. Takes care of everything.” She didn’t explain any more than that, figuring that he should know what she meant.
Eddie propped his chin up on the palm of his hand, fingers curling into a half fist as he sipped at the Roy Rogers and watched her. “See. But, I have to tell her what happened.” He said after a moment, pushing the straw away with his nose and then sighing. “The statue girl before. The garden where I murdered someone. The frosting escapades with you. I have to tell her all of it because we don’t keep secrets. And, if you asked me? I don’t think I did anything wrong.” He paused and then added flippantly, “Except murder someone. I’m still getting used to non-lethal takedowns. Not my fault.”
He sighed, edging for another sip of his drink and then sat up a little straighter. “I did make you uncomfortable.” Eddie snapped his finger at her slyly. “Oh my god. The great and powerful Santa Muerte can’t handle a little dress painting.”
She figured that he was watching her, but she didn’t look up at all to confirm it. What did it actually matter? It made her voice more muffled, still to the table. And the sound she made, somewhere between resigned and accepting, was also softer than it might have been. She had known that there wouldn’t be any sort of secrets. She was just tired of Stephanie being mad about any and everything to do with her. But she wasn’t going to say that, even when drunk.
The sound turned to annoyed, frustrated, at the snapped fingers and tone of voice. “Everything made me uncomfortable. A dog made me uncomfortable.” She squeezed her eyes shut even tighter, even though she already had them shut, and shook her head, rocking it on the backs of her hands. Her voice slipped into something softer, her answer more for herself and not as much for him. “The touching. There was... so much touching. Everyone.”
“It was a party, Muerte. A party where most people had only a faint echo of themselves rolling around in some dirty little reflection of their souls. Touching comes naturally when your mind isn’t all there.” Eddie lifted his finger in preparation for more teasing, but stopped himself short when he managed to read between the lines. Sure, it was awkward that he verged on the edge of flirting with a girl that ended up being Muerte, but that wasn’t the problem here. “I understand this anecdote won’t perfectly relate to your sensibilities, but I’m going to tell you anyway and you can put the pieces together if you want to.”
He cleared his throat, voice going a little softer without the question marked edges. “When you died, and yes I’m going to keep bringing that up I’m sorry. When you died, I tried to cut out the part that hurt. I challenged Stephanie to a race because I didn’t want to talk about crying for an hour in my bunker. I wanted the good. I want the good of being anything beyond a f-f-f-f-fucking supervillain without experiencing the bad side of it. Because it hurts. A lot. So, when you go all human for the day to walk among us there’s going to be a lot of bad things that happen to you. But, you don’t have to come here and drunk octopus all over the place alone.”
She nearly snapped at him in response to the blase remarks about the hotel and what everyone had been like, but she ended up just listening quietly to him, especially after he lost the edge to his voice. That was the Eddie she found to be easier to handle, particularly when the rest of her world was turned on its head. When he fell silent, she finally lifted her head again to rest her chin on her hands instead of her forehead. “I didn’t want to be touched. I’m not used to it. It’s too much.” She was uncomfortably honest with the alcohol in her system. “It would be too much right now, too.”
The table was still a disaster area, and she stared at him across the wood and tile. “I’m not good at being human, Eddie. Not last night. Not now. Maybe it’ll get better, I dunno. But right now, being drunk sounds like the best thing. Maybe shouldn’t have come here, but...” Her shrug was half shoulder and half hair, and she sighed. “It seemed safe enough.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, I didn’t want you to die.” He smacked the top of the table with his fist suddenly, sending a chorus of the shot glasses twinkling against each other and rolling across the wood and tile. He made a frustrated noise, running his hand through his hair with a tight expression as he tried to keep his cool. Careful, Nigma. A moment passed and he stuffed the sugared cherry in his mouth with a couple harsh chomp, chomps. “Fine. You want to be like this. Fine. Fucking fine.” His voice was loud and sharp now, broken from feeling like they weren’t connecting after he was so sure that things could have been patched up after the party.
He threw the red straw away, landing somewhere in the mess of empty glasses and downed the rest of his drink. “I’m leaving. You can’t stay here, Muerte. Mikey is going to give me a call in ten minutes and if you’re still here I’m bringing my boys in to drag your ass out.” Eddie grabbed his hat and moved out of the booth turning to leave before pausing and spinning back around to look at her. “Hey. Look at me.” Eddie leaned his hand on the table, fingers spread out as his other hand balled into a fist and sat on his hip. “Last night I saw you. I saw the last remnants of our friendship somewhere between bleeding out by the pool and running through the forest. I saw it. And, if you’re too busy feeling sorry for yourself, I can’t help you. Because I still feel lousy. I still feel so fucking lousy that you died.” He smacked his hat against the table a couple times and then stormed towards the door.
She blinked as he lectured at her, the words pelting her like stinging pebbles, and she had a hard time figuring how how she was supposed to feel. She could only stare, silent, taking it all in until he started walking away. Then her silence snapped, pushed by everything that she’d been trying to (poorly) deal with in the past weeks. “No!” She shouted it at him across the room and actually threw a shot glass at him out of anger. It came nowhere near hitting him, her aim awful enough to be nearly non-existent. “No! You don’t get to say all of that and then fucking walk away from me! Get back here!” She spilled out of the booth, losing her balance at first until she scrambled back to her feet. She stopped to dig in her pockets, pulling out far more money than the restaurant was due for what she’d been drinking, and left it laying on the table before she crossed the room toward him. She knew that they should keep going, at least take things outside, where Los Tacos wouldn’t have to deal with the two of them, but she stopped near him.
“You think you feel lousy about me dying? Well get in line, Eddie. I didn’t like it the first time, and I didn’t like it again last night. And both times were my fault. Between the dying and the kissing and the fucking touching last night, I’m so far out of my depth that I don’t even know which way is up any more. And the one person that might be able to help, I have to worry that I’m going to ruin your life in one way or another.” She took a shaky breath, her face even redder from the yelling on top of the tequila. “I was here alone because I’m not actually trying to be cruel to anyone, even if I do have a different point of view than most people have.” She lifted a hand to her face when something didn’t feel right, and came away with salty damp fingers, frowning at them until she realized that she was crying on top of everything else.
Eddie’s back stiffened, shoulders up like a cat caught scratching the drapes as he heard the shotglass crash and Muerte pour out of the booth towards him. The last of Los Tacos was stunned into silence. No one there had ever seen Nigma angry, much less yelling at someone like he didn’t give a damn who was listening. He had enough of trying to fit back to how things were supposed to be with Muerte and failing over and over again. There was only one person that earned his endless patience and it sure as hell wasn’t some physical manifestation of Death. “You came here. This is my place. Like you went to my bunker. That was mine. Just like you went after Stephanie after we had a fight. I belong to her. Do you see a pattern, Muerte?” He turned to look at her. Words measured with severity and anger waiting to bleed through. “You don’t want to be alone. Alright? Something in that messed up head of yours thinks you do, but you don’t. Not even now.”
He put his hands up, making little sounds like was trying to interrupt her telling him that she thought different than most people. That had to be a joke, right? His whole life was riddled by a burden of thinking so radically different from everyone else. He understood, he goddamned understood.
“Stop. Stop it.” His hands were still up like she was holding him at gunpoint. “You’re not worried about me. I know what that looks like on someone and this isn’t it. I’m not your fucking dog. I’m not going to-” Eddie trailed off, his sentence losing steam as he saw how upset he was making her. “I have to go. I’m making it worse. I have to go.”
“Of course I don’t want to be alone!” She was still shouting and wished she had another glass at hand to throw. Maybe not at him, but at something. “How many fucking eons I’ve been around, and I’ve at least always had my family, and I never understood how Destruction just walked away, because then he didn’t even have us any more. And now I don’t have them either. I have you. Just you and your stupid goddamn brain that is the closest I can get to someone understanding me, with your stupid tacos and your fucking pinball and being my friend, but of course that’s not going to happen anymore either, is it?!” She shook her head, hair everywhere and tears still damp on her face.
“So fine, Eddie. Fucking fine. I’ll take my stupid, drunk, human self and go somewhere else. It’ll be great. And you can go home to Stephanie and tell her all about this and agree that I’m awful, and everyone can hate me even more than they already do, and you all can live happily ever after.” She’d started walking toward the door as she ranted, not caring about the neighborhood, the time of day, or the fact that she was drunkenly, humanly vulnerable. She was leaving. “And I’ll leave your places alone from now on.”
“Hey, don’t call me-” He started loudly, overly insulted by the word stupid as always and blinded by the fact that now she was walking out on him. Oh no that was his gig. He was the one drawing the line and making the rules and telling her who was the real monster at the end of this story. But, fine. If she wanted to leave, it made everything in his life a lot easier. Stephanie wouldn’t be so tense. He could warp this whole story around so he was the hero and Muerte was just some kind of monster that managed to show her claws. Yes, clearly there was a tactical advantage to-
“Fuck.”
Eddie turned as the door closed, scrambling after her as he slipped back into the night with his hat in hand. “Muerte, stop. Hey.” He trotted after her, maneuvering past people without even touching them. His hand reached out to grab her, but instead he swooped around in front suddenly so she couldn’t dodge him without tripping over herself. Finger up in the air as he spoke in that geeky tone. “Clearly the problem here is that you aren’t interested in helping me solve riddles and I can’t give you the right answer. But, that doesn’t mean you get to take the title of the bad guy in this scenario.”
She was half a block up by the time Eddie caught up to her, not having been as successful as he had with dodging the other people on the sidewalk, and she’d nearly fallen more than once. Her cheeks were still pink and damp, hair falling into her face, and she tried to step around him with little success, running into him instead. With half a step back, she scowled at him and flailed out at his chest with one loose fist, too uncoordinated to actually punch him at the moment. “No! Stop that, I’m leaving. You didn’t want me in your place, so I’m going.” She tried shoving at him, both palms flat on his shoulders, but there was less force behind it than there should have been. She was breathing hard and her pulse was racing, unused to the exertion layered on top of the alcohol. “I can’t...”
She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, two steps back from him, and covered her face with both hands, shaking her head. “I can’t...” she murmured into her palms, trying to catch her breath.
Eddie flinched as she flailed at him and again at the weak shove like a nerd who was getting used to being bullied by everyone he knew. He didn’t miss that old punk rocker body for a second, though. Something about being a walking wall of muscle made him feel like he had to get stabbed or worse to feel anything. Here, even a drunken shove said enough. “I didn’t say that.” Eddie whispered, looking up to watch people practically cross the street to avoid them. Now that was something he had in common with his punk rock skin.
“Come on. We can go listen to karaoke for a couple hours. People are a mess there all the time. Have you see Black Velvet? I call her Black Velvet because the only goddamned thing she sings is Black Velvet.” He offered her a weak smile. “She cries about everything. It sets a nice low bar for the rest of us. Come on. The music is so loud you couldn’t hear me talk even if you wanted to.”
She didn’t notice the people crossing the street, not really, all her focus on the man in front of her. She gave a fractured little laugh into her palms at the thought of sitting at karaoke and watching Black Velvet. She knew the woman he was talking about, who yes, always sang the same song. When she dropped her hands away from her face, her whole body sagged with it, and the tears had started up again, but she did her best to wipe them away and ignore them. She looked at him, nearly eye to eye, and sighed a sad, broken thing.
“I can’t keep doing this, Eddie.” She shook her head and so tentatively reached out to smooth his lapel, where her shove had wrinkled it up. “Everything hurts so much and it makes me act like a crazy person, and I just can’t. I was going to leave after tonight. Be somewhere else when I’m all...” She gestured down at herself. “Human-y. I am. Leaving. I... was? I don’t even know any more.”
Eddie’s smile flimsied into something stronger and he put his hat on his head and hands in his pockets as she straightened his lapel. “I can promise you that there’s nothing better than listening to karaoke when you’re at exactly where you’re at.” He could feel the neurotic buzz of a man who would come up with Edward Shotglasshands fade into a part of him he still didn’t quite understand. It was calmer, older, decades older than his little riddled body. “I’m sorry I fucked things up. I can make it better. Karaoke can make it better.” Eddie inhaled and exhaled evenly like he forgot to sometime after chasing her down the street. “I’ll even sing something. I’m a lot better when I’m sober, I promise.”
She looked down at her feet and finally ran her hands back through her hair. It snagged, and she had to tug, but it was long enough that she was able to gather it in on itself into a knot that held it loosely away from her face. It was that rare-ish calm from him that finally settled everything just enough for her to push the back of her hand against her cheeks, wiping away the last of the tears. “I’m sorry I keep fucking things up,” she murmured, and shook her head, but she finally looked up at him again and tried to pull out a smile. It was a fledgling thing, just as uncertain and wobbly as baby birds, but it was a smile nonetheless. And a wary tease. “I know. I listen to you sing in the shower.”
Eddie’s eyes widened like he couldn’t believe she just cracked a joke, shock practically stopping a rolling chuckle all together. It didn’t, though and when he laughed it was rough and uneven and soft. “See, I can always count on you to be more creepy than me.” He said, voice lifting a little from the serious lows it had been stuck in. “And, that’s a serious feat. I’ve practically held the title in Gotham for the past eighty years.” He turned so he was at her side, chin tilted as he looked over at her. “So, that’s a yes. Good. We can worry about who is the bigger fuck up later. That’s a game I’m always eager to play.”
When he laughed, she smiled and shook her head as she looked down again, a carry-over from the shyness of the previous night, but then she tipped her chin up to look over at him. Her smile stuck for just a moment before it faded into seriousness again. “I’m going to keep doing it. I don’t want to, but things are so messed up and I don’t know how to deal with it.” It was a confession that could only be delivered on the tipsy ends of being drunk, and she frowned in response to any number of thoughts going through her head. “...it doesn’t feel like it’s ever going to stop.”
Eddie glanced over at her, eyes and chin tilting up towards the Gotham sky as he shrugged. “You’re talking to someone with a critical case of OCD. A laughable, unrealistic, incurable case.” He looked towards the street. Towards the neighborhood that he had grown to love. The people and shops and imperfections that he was protective over now. “I still couldn’t nab a pack of gum at a liquor store without leaving a riddle. I get it, Muerte. You don’t think I do, but I get it.” He turned back to look at her, smile still there with an edge of encouragement. “Gotham’s just one big mess anyway. That’s how I like it.”
She watched him watch his city, the way there was something like pride and affection living in the creases of his expression. She shook her head, but she listened. And sighed. “You’re too fond of messy things,” she whispered, but it was fond, not attacking, not judging. She wouldn’t change Gotham, either. The world already had its Metropolises and other cities. Gotham was just as it should be, even if everything kept fucking everyone over. “One day a century did not prepare me for this shit.”
He shrugged again with another laugh and a long sigh. It made sense, didn’t? Someone who had a compulsion would have been a lot healthier in a place that wasn’t such a mess. But, he did love it. He loved pulling apart the patterns and trying to piece them back together. “Jesus never got you wasted, huh? I always thought that guy was way more into partying than people let on.” Eddie asked, wiggling his eyebrows before stepping towards his favorite karaoke bar. Even from the street they could hear regulars belt out pop songs from years before like they were some kind of anthem.