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Eli stands over the crumpled, crying, and steroid-addled goon that brought back something he thought he’d never feel again, looked back at the man he thought he’d never see again. Junior meets his eyes and crows.
“Hot damn! If I haven’t missed this,” mirth dances in his very tone, in every movement of his lean body, “you and me busting some poor fucker’s head in. Only thing’s missing is daddy yelling to get a move on. Not today, no sirree.” He lopes closer, a fox closing in, but Eli can only sigh as he shakes his aching hand out.
This is why he left, why his heart followed Aimee Lee up and away from the blinding lights of a boxing ring that mingled his blood with others. Eli wasn’t dumb; he knew that the only reason he wasn’t in a ditch like Junior’s daddy was, wasn’t because of his grit or strength, but because he left that goddamn history behind and out of his sight. Eli knew who he was from day one, and it wasn’t a hired thug, he’ll tell you that much. Preacher, risen and redeemed from goddamned Memphis - a made-for-TV special.
“Not that I didn’t enjoy visiting the past with you today, but I can’t be doing this. I have a church to run,” and his voice changes, deeper, devout. “I can’t have people seeing me punching the lights out of a random nobody-“.
“-people, huh. You mean your kids, Eli? You, I respect, but those snot-nosed brats? I’ll never understand it - how they came from you. Maniac kid! Man of the lord.” He licks his teeth and moves his body like oil closer towards him, nothing like the brute muscle his daddy and Eli possessed. They’re standing in the parking lot of a dive bar, almost sharing breath at this point, blood dripping from knuckles and whimpers lost to the wind. Someone’s eyes flick down and away. Nothing’s changed.
“Junior,” Eli whispers. He says it almost as if the past ten minutes could disappear if he was quiet enough. Sorrowful, tired.
And Junior knows when it’s time to back down, reeling backwards and lighting a cigarette he magicked up. “Well! What can you do, right? Kids. I never got round to having one of those; too busy chasing my own tail.” He leans back against the car door and chuckles, airy, light, forced. “One of these cancer sticks will take me out before I get round to it no doubt. Care to take a step further in the grave, old friend?” Shakes his cigarette at him.
“Thanks but no thanks, Junior. Left those behind when I went backwards into water and into the embrace of my wife. She never liked the smell.” They both chuckle, an easy joke. “..Ah hell, just for old time’s sake.”
Eli takes it between his fingers, wraps his lips around the warm seal of a shared cigarette. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale-
“-jesus fuck, Eli, your old man lungs giving out on you? Haven’t seen you choke on a smoke like that since we were kids.” Junior laughs off the glare he receives in absence of a response, crowds closer and leans in.
Inhale, exhale.
The taste of the meal he watched Junior eat echoes in his mouth alongside the gentle easing in of smoke. It’s something they used to fuck around with when they were younger. Shotgunning. Two poor fucks on the last of the pack Eli weaselled from a joe with empty pockets - it seemed like genius to share, right up until they did. Then they were just two dandies in a locker room. Didn’t stop them though, the fuck did it.
Eli rips away, almost stumbles over in his haste, but the meat bag from earlier scrambled off long before, and the lot is empty. He still wipes the spit from his lips and graciously ignores the flash of hurt in Junior’s face.
We’re not boys anymore, he wants to say. But how can he? When he stood there with his bag of bones and pressed forward anyway. Gulped Junior’s air down and then some. He could blame it on Junior’s figure, lithe and soft; the man had no curves to speak of but Eli’s hands sought to his hips and rested there, right at home. But just for a few seconds. Just boys being boys.
The silence grows loud and long enough that Junior is spited, embarrassed of an old rejection, an old wound, “I don’t wanna hear it, Eli, don’t fuckin’ look at me like that. I was fooling around like the old days. Not my fault you could never handle something other than one of those fancy cigars. You ever tell her about you and me, huh? Did some pillow talk with a spliff in one hand and my dick in the other-“
And that does it, the side of his face meets the fist of Eli Gemstone, just like every other poor shmuck that pissed him off.
“Two in one day, Eli?” Junior doesn’t stop, the blood in his mouth seems to only spur him on. “Better bring out the old tighty-whitey’s and renew our vows instead, never mind the lord’s or-“
“Enough!” Eli closes the distance yet again, but he doesn’t do much else. It’s becoming harder to remember how he felt before Junior sneaked on back into his peripheral vision mere hours before. He reeks of the old days, of hazy smoke and leather bags of sand. It’s too much. It’s too soon. Eli’s hunched over him like some sort of demented gargoyle, doing nothing but sharing the air between them. Junior knows him like no one else does anymore. She’s not there to know him anymore. He thinks of Junior during prayer, face turned away but hands clenched, hurt, touched.
Inhale, exhale.
“Coward,” he mutters as he peels out of the dive bar’s lot. Rain begins to spatter his windscreen beneath the dim wash of street lights, and the figure in his rear view mirror is blurred into obscurity. He grips the steering wheel, feels his knuckles burst open. “A coward is what you are.”