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Cheap whiskey, creaky wooden floorboards, shitty live music, and the faint scent of warm vanilla.
Rain doesn’t know it yet, but an old friend has just walked through the door. She walks in hidden between a circle of friends who are unfamiliar, but her scent wafts off of her and splits through the thickness of the atmosphere tainted with sweat, dust, and the utter filth of humans. It takes him a moment to catch it, but the second it hits his nose it causes him to freeze like he’s been doused in ice-cold water. Warm vanilla, a hint of coconut, fresh laundry; her .
He sits with his back to the bar, an ornately decorated rocks glass perched between his fingers, and stares at the wall where a faded poster of some local vodka brand hangs from rusted tacks. He’s honed in on her scent and feels the way that she passes somewhere from his left side to his right until she settles somewhere in the bar. This can’t be happening , he thinks and stares down into his glass. He must be drunk. He has to be . The honey-colored liquid swirls around as he anxiously spins the rim against the table and tries to figure out what to do with himself. It can’t be her , but it is, because he knows her scent more than he knows his own. It’s unmistakable, potent, and his hands begin to shake with the realization that his entire world has stumbled into the same dingy bar as himself. He isn’t even supposed to be here. He’s supposed to be back at the abbey in the practice room, mentoring and helping the new touring ghouls with the songs and adjustments, but he hasn’t been there to help in months… maybe even years… he can't remember. Time runs together; a blur. He isn't even sure the new summons would know who he was if he showed up like he’s supposed to. He should be disappointed with himself, but that feeling had become numb sometime far in the past.
He’s become a shell of himself. The light within his eyes left when she did. His spirit did, too. He was retired from touring a little over eleven years ago and since then has spent his time wandering the halls and stringing guitars with arthritic fingers. The rest of his pack was sent back to the pit when they retired only a handful of years ago– Rain wasn’t allowed to. They said it was because they needed help with the new summons, but he knows deep down they don’t trust him to not be self-destructive. It’s pathetic. Everyday he longs to go home, to free himself of this purgatory, but something unexpected has happened for the first time in years and suddenly he feels like the walls are collapsing on top of him.
Warm vanilla . It feels like secret meet-ups in broom closets and fleeting kisses in the halls. Coconut . Dates on the lake and fingers intertwined. Whispers of ‘I love you’ spoken into the other’s ear while gentle fingers brush hair behind an ear bloomed pink with blush. Fresh laundry . Rumpled sheets and clothing discarded on the floor.
" Will you ever be back? " He’d whispered into her skin on the morning she’d left. He couldn’t even look into her eyes. He’s had plenty of time to think about it. Avoiding the inevitable only scarred him, made him bleed. It still makes him bleed.
" I don't know. "
Crushing. Devastating. And the sound of her voice in his head makes him wince.
He was a coward then for allowing her to walk out that door. He still is.
His foot taps anxiously against the footrest of his stool and there’s still a drink of whiskey left in his glass. He swirls it until it whirlpools and throws his head back, letting the liquid burn the inside of his throat and coat his tongue in fire. For anyone else they’d call it a lick of courage. The liquor taunts him the entire way into his belly and sits in there; mingles with shame and longing for what once was. He needs another one whether his stomach agrees with him or not.
Feet and head argue with each other. He tries to make himself get up, to turn around towards the bar and motion for another, but his feet stay glued to the stool. He shakes, trembles all over, and the feeling eats away at his muscles until he thinks he could sob.
She’s here. Somewhere just behind his back, like a dream he wants so badly to revisit. But if he falls back into it, it would most certainly spiral into a recurring nightmare. His ribcage expands with air, swirls in his lungs until they struggle to take in any more, and he lets it out. Finally, his legs allow him to spin. He forces himself to stand.
There was no denying she looked older and her hair was darker than all of the old photographs he’d kept. Her crows feet were more defined—as were her smile lines—but her smile was all the same. Her eyes still sparkled the same way when she laughed and her tongue still poked out between her crooked teeth. There was no doubt that this woman in this dingy bar was his old lover. She was the same, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, simply aged roughly twelve years.
He feels a sharp guilt stabbing at his chest as he rolls the bottom edge of his glass in circles on the wooden table. He imagines himself gathering up the courage to say hello, to walk himself over to the table and reintroduce himself to the same person who promised to never forget him. She'd look up at him with those big eyes and stare into a face that remained unchanged, while he would look into one that reflected the only fear she'd ever run from. He could picture the confused expressions on her friends' faces as they watched as a man who appeared a decade younger than all of them introduced himself as an old friend. Little would they know that he was actually a thousand years beyond death and reborn again under the light of ancient stars. Or maybe they would know exactly who he was. Maybe she'd broken her promise of secrecy and told the unbelievable story of her past devotion to a ghoul.
Maybe this was all a bad idea.
He should leave.
A pained sigh falls past his lips as he drops his head into his hand and watches as the last droplets of whiskey swirl in his glass. He suddenly feels so thirsty. He looks up, catches eyes with the bartender, and motions for another. The bartender gives him a nod and turns for the cabinet. He settles back onto his stool, paralyzed with emotion, and watches from a distance. Invisible cuffs emerge from thin air and secure him there. He lets them.
She looks so happy, so carefree. It makes his lips curl upwards into a sad smile. And then she laughs, that same deep laugh that comes from the belly that she always hated, and Rain feels like laughing, too. He wants to know so badly what it is that is causing her to laugh. He wants to be the one that causes it. There’s a hole in his heart that it could heal, could ease back together and allow some of that light that had seeped out to become contained again. It gnaws at his bones and he almost goes until a glass of something dark is placed next to him and the cuffs around his ankles and wrists become heavy again.
He takes the glass in hand, brings it to his lips, and lets it rush past his lips. It burns. He cringes. His vision wobbles in minutes, the curse of his empty stomach, and he becomes lost in the background noise and his own cowardice.
Deep in his vessel he finds the confidence to go up to her, to introduce himself and watch the way her face contorts into something reminiscent and hopeful. Somewhere in there he finds the nerve to ask her to meet him once the doors have been locked and the bar has gone quiet. And hours later she’d grab his cold hand and cover it with her own. It would be warm, like it always was.
" Can I see you? " She’d ask and he’d furrow his brow. " I'm here. "
" No, you ."
And he’d allow his glamour to fall for the entire world to see. A world that only contained himself and her. And she’d smile, maybe shed a tear, and replace his clawed hand for his scale-covered face. She’d hold him, take in the unchanged features of his demonic self, and tell him he was more beautiful this way. Natural. Himself . Just as she’d always remembered; as she’d always loved.
And then finally, he’d whisper so softly. Shaky. Terrified.
“ Will you stay with me again? ”
Just to hold against his own body, to touch her skin and taste her one last time. To feel what he once took advantage of, and never to take advantage of again. To smell and be engulfed in her love one more time… It would heal a part of him that got torn open that night.
But if he were to ask that question she’d escape back into the night, dissolve back into the background, because deep down he knows it’s supposed to be this way. Plagued with eternal life, he could never love a mortal soul despite how much his heart screams at him to.
And so the ghoul spins back around on his stool, swirls the last of the whiskey in his glass, and throws it back. For the last time during the night he feels the burn and waits until it hits his stomach to mix with the rest of his shame. It would be better to bleed out than to endure this pain. He yearns for the past. But he’s a coward.
The cuffs around his ankles and his wrists hit the floor and he leaves the bar, leaving behind the woman he loves more than anything.
Again.
She’ll never know he was there at all.