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Quiet night. Rain on the rooftop. Car in the driveway. Coat on the hook. Nigel kicked his shoes off at the foot of the stairs, and shuffled in. He did not fight the sway of his body towards the sofa; he let himself fall.
He had never been good at that, had he? A graceful descent. Every single time something in his life had tried to pull him down, he had fought, kicking and screaming, brandishing lawsuits and empty threats. Consistently, this had served no purpose but making things more painful for him in the end.
Like with that Terrance Menki stuff. It would have been too easy to shut down the rumours quietly, condemn the killer, issue a solemn statement, or just stop bloody talking. Instead, Nigel had to go on the defensive— had to shout from the rooftops about how deeply he despised the killer. Nobody suspected him of having done anything untoward— certainly not murder— but that level of denial certainly didn’t look good, did it?
Today, for instance. He was doing so well— charm, charisma, the odd bit of self-deprecating humour. Reminding the audience of the good old days— the Saturday nights that glowed and pulsed in their minds like half-remembered fireworks, bright and loud and fizzling out too soon. And then the interviewer had said ‘Bonzo Butcher’, and the spell had been broken. He’d snapped— he’d shown himself for what he was, the ageing, bitter man shouting into a microphone, rather than the nebulous, wizardlike figure the audience thought they knew, many years ago.
Nostalgia was a poison, he thought, as he turned over slightly to bury his face in one of the pillows. People got so caught up in the past that they expected the present to live up to it. It was always the way— TV shows were never as funny as you remembered when you watched the reruns many years on. You hated your school years while you were going through them, but you’d look back on them like the best days of your life. You could watch the better part of your marriage slip away as you thought spitefully of those nervous, giggly first dates.
His marriage. It all came back to his marriage. She’d bought these throw pillows for the house before she left— she’d bought the curtains in the bedroom, she’d bought the lampshades and the tea towels. She’d hung all of the art on the walls; he’d only been concerned with putting his awards up. His plaques and his certificates— though of course not that final certificate, the one that signified their divorce. In the end, he couldn’t bring himself even to care when she’d said it had to happen— at that point, he had bigger things to deal with. Bigger, louder, more colourful things.
Nigel felt a presence at the doorway, and did not need to turn to know who it was. A peculiar habit of Bonzo’s— he liked to wait a while at the entrance to any given room before he made his way in. It had scared Nigel, in the beginning— there was always the sense that there was someone standing there, watching him, a tension that remained with him even when Bonzo was nowhere to be found. Now, though, he had come to recognise the feeling; it was familiar. Maybe even reassuring.
It wasn’t that he thought Bonzo was harmless; quite the opposite. It was that he knew that, as long as Bonzo was around, nothing would be able to harm him other than Bonzo. The interviewers and reporters and tabloids couldn’t get to him here— his ex-wife wouldn’t dare set foot in this house any more. Bonzo was protective like that. Loyal. And when he was in the room, everything else went away for a while. There was just him.
Before too long, Nigel heard Bonzo lumbering in, and then there came a pause. Nigel interpreted this as something akin to passive aggression— a silent nudge for him to get off the sofa. He was just preparing to sit up, and mumble a few words of apology, before he felt a large, warm hand on his shoulder.
Nigel lay still. The two of them rarely touched— in Nigel’s case, this was deliberate. The smooth, almost leathery feel of Bonzo’s skin always brought to mind the early days; the days of spotlights and theme parks, and number-one hit singles. Once, during one show, Bonzo had pulled him into a waltz while his theme song played. It was for laughs, he knew— it was comedy. Still, even back then, he couldn’t help but fall into pace with him. He wanted them to dance as partners— he wanted to create something fantastic together.
Those days were gone now. Their fame had burned out and died, and now here they were; Nigel embarrassing the both of them on television and coming back with his tail between his legs, and Bonzo getting called out for jobs he could not talk about. Usually, that was the one point of physical contact between them— Nigel cleaning the blood off while Bonzo sat patiently. He tried to be quick. He tried to be clinical. Lately, though, something had compelled him to linger— to clean with more care, and to make sure Bonzo was comfortable, or, sometimes, to fill the silence, just talking about his day. He was trying to be gentle with this beast he had created— and Bonzo, it seemed, was trying to do the same thing.
Nigel sat up. He looked into Bonzo’s eyes.
When that girl from the OIAR had come over, she’d asked Nigel if Bonzo could read, and, truth be told, he didn’t know. Nigel wasn’t even sure how those eyes could see, or those hands could feel. But though Bonzo may not have been able to read a novel or a textbook, he could definitely read him. Bonzo knew what was wrong without Nigel having to say anything. And Nigel knew how he felt without Bonzo being able to speak at all.
As Nigel looked into those eyes, he saw bloodlust. He saw tenderness. He saw every attribute with which he’d designed Bonzo, all those years ago. All that frustration he’d poured into the original concept art, all the descriptions sent to the manufacturers, stared back at him, unblinking. He saw understanding.
The past was the past, Nigel knew, and tomorrow would be another day of picking up its fragments, searching through the wreckage for the fame they’d both once had. But here— with Bonzo’s hand on his shoulder— with Bonzo’s arms around him— with Bonzo, just Bonzo, and nothing else between them— this was now. Eyes closed, Nigel fell into Bonzo— and this time, he didn’t fear what he might meet there.