Chapter Text
Illario leaves the bar early, and it saves his life.
The woman he’s flirting with—trying to flirt with, if she would get her pretty face out of her phone for two seconds—is too young for him. Hasn’t stopped him before. But there’s something about her lip filler, and her fake lashes, and the watery drinks, and the endless loop of indie sleaze playing ironically overhead that's slowly curdling his mood.
And people keep coughing.
It’s spring, people have allergies or whatever—God knows his cousin never shuts up about his—so the coughing shouldn’t bother Illario, but it does. Now that he’s noticed it, he can’t tune it out.
The bar’s even less crowded than usual for a Hump Day, but there’s a group of guys over by the pool table laughing too loud and coughing, open-mouthed, at each other. Illario can practically see the spit flying. They’re stumbling around, already drunk off their asses even though they just got here.
People in this shithole town have no self-respect.
Illario tips back the rest of his vodka soda, grimacing more at the bar’s rancid vibe than the taste of what they’re passing off as top shelf.
“Stacy. Hey, Stacy—”
The woman keeps staring at her phone. Her tongue darts out to lick her tooth gem. He didn’t notice the tooth gem before, and its glint in her mouth sends a disgusted thrill up his spine.
“Hey,” he snaps, bending down closer to her eye-level. “I’m getting out of here, you want to come?”
She finally glances up, gives him another once-over.
“My name’s Heather.”
“Whatever. Do you want to get out of here?”
Stacy-Heather blinks at him before her eyes cut over to the hyenas at the pool table, then back to her phone.
“Nah.”
Bitch.
“Whatever,” Illario says again, and tosses a twenty down on the bar.
His phone is already in his hand as he pushes through the door, Grindr already open before he’s crossed the sidewalk. Not that many options, but enough. He could still pull. He could stop somewhere else. But that sour feeling in his chest won’t go away. His last girlfriend teased him about these moods. His “emotional acid reflux,” she called it once, like it was something cute.
He’d told her to find him some emotional Tums or fuck off. Now he’s single.
There’s a parking ticket tucked under the passenger side wiper blade when Illario gets to his car—his car tonight, not the company car with the giant roach logo on the side.
Someone in this family needs to have standards.
And someone needs to have a chat with the cops about which cars need to feed the meters and which ones don’t. Illario crumples the parking ticket and tosses it onto the cracked pavement.
Fuckin’ rookies.
His reflection in the rearview mirror scowls back at him when he slides into the driver’s seat, then instantly smooths over. Two faint, but permanent, vertical lines are developing between his eyebrows, thanks to shit like this.
He flips to a classic rock station as he puts the car in gear. The song’s familiar, some old geezer singing: I'm tired of screwin' up, tired of going down. Tired of myself, tired of this town. Illario won’t admit it, but he likes classic rock. Those old geezers get it.
Windows down, music loud, streetlights arcing overhead, he races the traffic lights down Ocean Heights Avenue towards home.
The ocean is a fifteen minute drive east, but the smell of saltwater stings his nostrils when the wind is right. For a lot of people, it’s enough to make Treviso’s usual stench—marshy low tide, rusted metal, and sun-bleached wood—bearable. Combined with the tourists that crowd the city every summer, and the airport and casino fifteen minutes in the other direction, and it’s enough for people to trick themselves into thinking they live somewhere nice. Desirable, even. But Illario sees it for what it really is: the landlord special of cities. A garbage heap coated in glossy white paint.
The geezer on the radio gets cut off mid-song by the DJ.
“Uh, hey folks…the news out of Antiva City is—”
A muffled cough interrupts the DJ, then Illario’s phone rings. He lets out a sigh through his nose before letting Caterina’s voice fill his car.
“Have you talked to your cousin?”
Never a hello, how are you from this woman.
“Not today. He had a job down at those apartments off Rialto.”
“Not for the past few days,” she corrects him. How she knows these things, he’ll never understand. Grandmother’s intuition? Because yeah, now that he thinks about it, he hasn’t seen Lucanis since last week. And if Lucanis isn’t checking in with Caterina…
“How long for you this time?” he asks with another sigh.
“Six days.” That weight in her voice.
“Caterina, he’s fine. He hasn’t missed a job.”
“Six days, Illario.”
Wherever she is, it’s crowded. Probably the casino. She’s talking loud over voices in the background. Slightly out of breath, like she’s walking fast.
“I’ll check on him in the morning,” he tells her, because it’s what she wants to hear.
“Now. You’ll check on him now.”
“Caterina—”
“Now, Illario. Tonight.”
“Fine, fine.” He makes a left instead of a right at the next light, then seizes the opening for some leverage. “But you gotta talk to your guy at the precinct, I got another ticket.”
“Fucking rookies. Don’t pay it.”
She coughs a little into the phone, closed-mouth, like she’s trying to hide it. Like when she pretended to quit smoking a few years ago. Illario rolls his eyes.
“You know I won’t.”
“Are you almost there?”
“Where, to Lucanis’s? I’ll be there in five. I’ll text you.”
“Text me.” A long pause, just her hurried breath and the slamming of a metal door. Her voice echoes off parking garage walls when she says, “Don’t come into the office tomorrow.”
Illario resists the urge to frown. “Why? I said I’m going, didn’t I?”
Her car door thumps shut. “This isn’t a punishment, Illario. What have you heard about that flu?”
“Not much. A few cases in Antiva City?”
Illario doesn’t pay close attention to the news, honestly. Why bother, when it’s all bad?
“Word is it’s spreading.”
“What word? Please don’t tell me you’re listening to Viago, the guy’s a conspiracy theorist. Is he closing the Salle branch?”
“Just—” She breaks off for another feeble cough. It’s a reminder of how old she’s getting, and Illario bats the thought away immediately. “Just stay home. Tell Lucanis to stay home, too.”
“He’s supposed to help with that beach house in the morning. They’ve got rats chewing through the wiring and the first tech we sent couldn’t find shit.”
“Someone else can handle it.”
“But Lucanis is the rat guy, it’s like his whole thing.”
“I don’t care.”
Illario almost laughs. She doesn’t care? Since when?
He turns onto Lucanis’s street and drives past rows of condos that all look identical in the dark.
“They’re paying top dollar.”
“Send someone else.”
“Like who? We’re booked.”
“Figure it out.”
“Caterina, you—”
“Are you there yet?”
She cuts him off from saying “you’re being paranoid.” But she is. They’ll lose money on this job, and it’s his job to care about how much money they make. If Caterina would just retire and let him do his thing, they could make so much more.
But if Illario tries to argue right now, all he’ll earn is a smack upside the head next time he sees her.
“Just got here. His truck is outside.”
The Dellamorte Brothers Pest Control logo is emblazoned on the side, with the tacky cartoon roach and the even tackier Death Is In The Name! slogan. Lucanis doesn’t have another car, just the company truck. Because he doesn’t care about looking like a complete tool.
He doesn’t care about a lot, these days.
“Let me know if he’s okay,” Caterina says, then hangs up.
“Bye,” Illario mutters into the phone anyway.
He indulges in a long, put-upon sigh as he heads up the walkway. Lucanis’s duplex doesn’t have much of a front yard, but his neighbors take way better care of their little strip of grass than Lucanis ever has. There’s patio furniture on their tiny front porch, a nice little welcome mat, a kid’s tricycle butting up against the stairs. Their lights are off and there’s no car in their driveway, but there’s still more life in their half of the duplex than in Lucanis’s sad, sterile excuse of a home.
Illario wishes he was ringing their doorbell instead.
The ding-dong echoes into the quiet night. A dog barks farther down the street.
Ilario stands on the porch, hands in the pocket of his jeans, licking his front teeth. Thinking about licking that stupid tooth gem. Resisting the urge to open Grindr again.
He rings the bell a second time, jabbing his thumb in hard, leaning into it for longer than he should.
No answer.
Six days, Illario.
Someone across the street coughs and hocks a loogie. A neighbor, dragging his recycling bins up his driveway. Underneath that scraping rattle, Illario can faintly hear a commercial for Lexapro playing on the TV inside Lucanis’s living room. He’s home.
That could be good enough for Caterina. Illario could leave.
Six days.
Illario’s hand flies out of his pocket to pound on the door.
“Luca! I know you’re home!”
The deadbolt finally clicks, and his cousin stands there in an old Antiva City Angels t-shirt and dingy sweatpants, frowning up at him. He smells like Dial soap and Monster Energy and looks like he hasn’t slept in days.
“You high?” Illario demands.
“No,” Lucanis says immediately.
The answer is always “no.” Sometimes it’s even true.
Illario snaps a picture of Lucanis just as he’s opening his mouth to add something bitchy, and sends it to Caterina.
“What the hell?”
“Proof of life. Text Caterina, she’s worried about you.”
“I forgot to charge my phone.”
Not a great sign.
Illario shoulders his way inside to get a look around. There are tells, when Lucanis has been using again, and Caterina will want to know.
That surly, hangdog expression on his face could be one. But his pupils look normal, and he always looks at Illario that way now. The living room is tidy, barren almost. TV, a sofa, a chair, a coffee table with a cell phone sitting face up, its screen dark. Blank white walls, millennial gray floors. You wouldn’t know Lucanis has lived here for years.
But it’s better than the last time Illario was here, right after Christmas. The dirty clothes and half-empty takeout containers and Lucanis’s stumbling, half-hearted attempts to hide them when Illario was sent to find out why he wasn’t showing up for work.
“How was the Rialto job?”
“Fine. Mice in the crawlspace.”
Illario knows. He saw Lucanis’s report come in. But it’s something to talk about while he pokes around.
The kitchen is a little messy, but it means Lucanis has been cooking. Another good sign.
“Any snakes this time?”
“One.” He cuts a pointed glance at Illario. “Guaranteed to be more at that beach house tomorrow.”
The commercial break ends. A reedy voice on the TV shouts “Inconceivable!”
“Caterina wants you to sit that one out.”
“Why? I told you, everything’s fine. I’m fine.”
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
“I’m clean,” Lucanis insists.
Illario’s starting to believe him. It’s been a few months at this point. Maybe he’ll make it to a year. Get a new key tag. Not that Illario thinks he’s actually still going to meetings.
“She’s worried about that flu.”
“I thought that was a Ferelden thing.”
“You know Caterina.”
Lucanis nods, his hangdog eyes softening just a fraction.
“She’s always been a little paranoid about stuff like that.”
A calm, flat voice interrupts the movie. Lucanis is the only person left in Treviso who still watches basic cable, so it takes Illario a few sentences to realize it’s a news broadcast.
“…the outbreak is confirmed to have spread far beyond its borders. As of this broadcast, there are over nine hundred cases reported in Antiva City, and two-hundred-fifty-two fatalities.”
Lucanis and Illario share a glance. He trails into the living room, and Illario follows. The newscasters looks serious. Grim. But that’s their job, right?
“Public health officials are urging people to stay home, and if you can’t stay home, to wear a mask. We know the Denerim Flu is highly contagious. Early symptoms include fever, muscle aches, and a dry cough.”
Illario hears Caterina’s quiet coughing. Those guys at the bar, louder. The radio DJ, the—
“Please, remember not to panic. We’ve seen flus come and go before.“
Lucanis’s phone dings.
The screen lights up, and Illario’s eyes catch on it before catching Lucanis’s furtive glance as he grabs it off the coffee table.
“I thought your phone was dead,” Illario says. The newscaster is still talking, but the only words Illario can focus on now are his cousin’s.
“It was.”
Lucanis holds the phone down at his side, the screen pressed against his leg.
“But now it’s magically charged?”
“No, I did charge it, I just haven’t texted Caterina back yet. Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”
He peeks down at his phone, like he can’t resist checking. That sour feeling seeps back into Illario’s chest.
“Literally anywhere is better than this place.” Illario crosses his arms, looking around. Refusing to take the hint. “Why don’t you get some art or something? Or a rug?”
“Sure, I’ll get one.” Lucanis gestures towards the door. “You can tell Caterina I’m fine. Just tired after spending half the day in a crawlspace. You remember what it’s like.”
His phone dings again in his outstretched hand. Illario can see the notification between his fingers.
“Who’s texting you?”
“No one.”
“Is it Zara?”
“No.”
“Then who is it?”
“None of your fucking business, Rio. Can you leave already?”
Illario ignores Lucanis’s scowl. He keeps his arms folded, and he sits down on the couch, and he puts his feet up on the coffee table.
“No. I think I’ll stay. I love the Princess Bride.”
If he doesn’t stay, Caterina will kill him.
Because Lucanis is lying.
Lucanis's dealer is late, and it saves his life.
“You got any vodka?”
The words cut through his distraction, pause his fumbling efforts to silence his fucking phone without Illario noticing. His response catches in his throat like crushed glass. Like breathing in years of dust, dead bugs, and rodent shit when you’re allergic to all three.
“You serious?”
“What?”
Illario’s expression is all innocence.
“I’m in recovery.”
Lucanis’s phone dings again.
Fucking phone.
It’s Cal, of course it’s Cal.
Lucanis was sure he’d flaked, and the desperate high of seeing that name pop up on his screen is punctured by Illario’s shit timing. If Lucanis believed in signs from the universe, this would be a giant middle finger aimed right at him.
But he can save this. He has to save this.
Cal: Pharmacy was packed, just closed up. Heading your way now.
“You’re a drug addict, not an alcoholic,” Illario reasons. He’s sitting on the couch with his arms folded, looking at the TV without actually paying attention to it.
He hates the Princess Bride. He gave Lucanis so much shit about wanting to watch it when they were kids.
“You don’t really get to pick and choose,” Lucanis says.
Why is he arguing about this right now?
“Yeah, but you never had a problem with booze before,” Illario says, eyes still trained on the TV.
Before I fell off a roof and broke my fucking back? Yeah. I didn’t have a problem with a lot of things.
Those words stay behind Lucanis’s teeth as he watches Illario not watch TV. He got a haircut. Or Lucanis hasn’t seen him recently, but his bun looks stubbier. That, combined with the—Lucanis counts—four buttons undone on his shirt and the slightly-too-intense smell of Acqua di Gio, means that Illario is single again.
“I might have a few beers in the garage fridge,” he concedes. “Or is that too many calories for you?”
If he goes to the garage, he can tell Cal to meet him outside. Illario can stay and drink his beer and be an annoying prick, and tell Caterina everything’s fine. Because it is.
Lucanis just needs something to smother the pain. Help him sleep.
“Is it light beer?” Illario asks with a sniff.
“I think so.”
“Sure. One beer.”
Lucanis heads back through the kitchen, past the dinner dishes and leftover steak and eggs he needs to put away, his phone clutched in his hand.
He knows exactly how many beers he has and exactly what kind they are—four IPAs from a local brewery. In the back of the garage fridge, exactly where he left them after chugging two last week then getting sick of himself and avoiding the garage ever since.
Illario’s right. Alcohol’s not even his thing.
He didn’t toss the rest though, did he?
The garage fridge is right next to the door to the kitchen, so Lucanis doesn’t bother flipping the light switch. What’s there to see anyway? The spot where he usually parks his truck? Equipment he’s unpacked from old jobs and hasn’t bothered returning to HQ yet? Shelves of random shit Caterina buys him every time she goes to Costco?
Light from the fridge illuminates a slice of those shelves, neat rows of boxes and cans. Lucanis stands in the glow, hunched over his phone, thumbing the volume all the way down.
Lucanis: Come to the garage door not the front
It’s only a ten minute drive from the pharmacy where Cal works. He’ll be here any minute. That’ll make everything worth it. Sitting through Illario’s bored, smug commentary, sitting up straight, acting like his spine doesn’t feel like it’s still splintered into pieces, acting like he cares. Lucanis can do all of that if a plastic baggie of pills is waiting in his pocket, ready to knock him into a sleep past dreaming as soon as Illario leaves.
Just this once. Illario doesn’t need to know. Caterina definitely doesn’t need to know.
Cal: Had to make another stop
Lucanis’s nostrils flare with a sharp intake of breath. The sudden movement sends a violent twinge deep into the marrow of his upper spine, same as when he lurched for his phone earlier. Same as when he jerked back from a snake earlier than that, belly down in a dark, dank crawlspace. Just him and a hundred mice and the never-ending ache between his shoulder blades.
His thumbs hover over the keyboard and he stares at Cal’s text until the letters swim.
He just needs to sleep. He’s tired, and he needs to sleep, even though it means waking up tomorrow stiff as hell with a spine that will only unbend after he bites the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming.
He should go to PT again.
He should go to a meeting.
He should do a lot of things.
Lucanis: Hurry the fu
“You get lost?”
Light from the kitchen spills into the garage and Lucanis’s head snaps up. A burst of pain spots his vision. Illario leans there, backlit, staring at Lucanis over the refrigerator door.
Fucking Illario.
“Just distracted. I need to clean this fridge out,” Lucanis says.
It’s true, in a way. The fridge and freezer are both crammed with more of Caterina’s Costco finds. The woman couldn’t be bothered to come to his NA meeting when he asked, but she drops off grocery bags like thirty-six Babybel cheeses and a gallon of iced tea will be what keeps him from relapsing.
Lucanis grabs a beer and hands it to Illario. Wipes the bottle’s cold sweat from his palm.
“You’re missing the sword fight, it’s your favorite part.”
His favorite part is when Buttercup throws herself down the hill after she realizes the Dread Pirate Roberts is, in fact, Westley. But he doesn’t correct Illario.
“I’m right behind you, just give me a sec,” he says instead.
“What, you gonna clean that fridge out now?” Illario scoffs. “Come watch the movie.”
Lucanis grips his phone so tightly it might break. He could ask Cal to leave the baggie outside. But Cal won’t leave without payment and he only takes cash.
“I just—”
“Come on, dickhead.”
Illario opens the door wider, waiting, forcing Lucanis to step past him into the kitchen before he’ll close it. Any hope Lucanis had that the next hour could go smoothly slips out from under him like a loose roof shingle.
Illario knows. He knows Lucanis isn’t acting right. Even if they’ve only been friends in the loosest sense of the word for years, it doesn’t erase the years they spent growing up together under Caterina’s roof.
He knows, and Lucanis is so fucked.
The sword fight is just ending when they sit back down on opposite ends of the couch.
Minutes crawl by. Illario sips his beer. Lucanis waits for a buzz from his phone. He waits for a knock on the door. Neither one comes, and they’re almost at his actual favorite part when the movie cuts off.
Those same newscasters from earlier appear on the screen, only now they’re wearing masks, the kind doctors wear during surgery. They’re silent for a few seconds, staring into the middle distance, at a prompter maybe. Long enough that it gets weird.
One of them clears her throat.
“We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming with breaking news on the Denerim Flu. Health officials have officially labeled it a pandemic. New cases have been reported in Salle, Treviso…”
Wait, Treviso?
Lucanis stops listening and turns to Illario, who’s already looking at him.
“Here?” Illario asks, his eyebrows lifting.
“It can’t be that bad,” Lucanis says with a certainty he doesn’t feel.
“…and Seleny. The Antivan death toll—” She swallows, blinking fast. She looks…scared. “—as of this broadcast, has surpassed three thousand. Authorities are advising—”
“Anna, if you’re watching this, take the kids and leave the city,” the other newscaster blurts out. His fingers are laced tightly on the desk in front of him. “Get out of the city. Go to my parents’ lake house, just stay away from any—”
“Bruno—”
Bruno’s head drops into his hands, and his hunched shoulders twitch with a sob. Or a cough. “It’s too late for us here. I love you, baby, I—”
The news broadcast cuts off abruptly.
Buttercup falls down the hill.
“What the fuck was that?” Illario breathes into the silence.
Lucanis swallows. It can’t be that bad.
What did the newscaster say the first time? How many dead?
“How many people live in Antiva?” Lucanis asks, trying to keep his voice light.
“Way more than three thousand, right?” Illario catches on, matching his tone.
“Right. Way more,” Lucanis confirms.
“How long ‘til Caterina’s calling us about it, do you think?” Illario jokes. It sounds forced.
“We’re not gonna hear the end of it,” Lucanis agrees.
It’s hard to think about Caterina watching that news broadcast though. It’s hard not to think about the guy. Bruno. The way he said it’s too late for us here. And what did the other one say? Highly contagious.
Illario takes a long swig of his beer.
“Yeah. Maybe I’ll head out, actually. I know how it ends.”
He’s already standing, gesturing to the TV with his now-empty bottle.
Where was he earlier? And with how many people?
“Yeah,” Lucanis agrees, like that’s the reason.
The thought bubbles up out of nowhere as he watches Illario cross the room: This could be the last time I ever see him. He pushes it away.
“Rio.”
Ilario turns back, waiting, but Lucanis doesn’t actually know what he wants to say. He didn’t think that far ahead. The silence stretches for a beat too long.
“Let me know when you get home, okay?”
Something he’s never asked his cousin once in their lives.
Illario’s face falls for a second, his eyebrows pinching together. Then he nods, short and sharp, before reaching for the doorknob.
Someone knocks.
Illario jerks his hand back. Lucanis shoots to his feet.
“You expecting someone?” Illario looks over his shoulder again, suspicion rinsing the concern from his eyes.
Lucanis’s heart thuds. He was so close. He just—
“I—”
“Hey, Luca, man, I got your stuff but I’m a little parched,” Cal’s voice is loud on the other side of the door. His cough is louder. A dry, rasping rattle. “You got any bottled water?”
“Are you sick?” Lucanis asks. He hears the edge in his own voice.
“No, man, it’s just been a long day.”
He coughs again. Lucanis wants Illario to move away from the door. He wants the pills in Cal’s pocket.
“Is that your dealer?” Illario asks quietly.
“No—yes, I mean—” Lucanis starts.
“Can I come in or what?” Cal asks.
“You heard about that flu?” Illario says to the door, raising his voice.
“It’s not the flu, I told you. Long day. That’s a—” Another cough interrupts Cal. It lasts for ten full seconds. Lucanis counts.
“It sounds like the flu.”
“Please.”
Cal says it, and Lucanis is thinking it. He wants the pills. He wants everyone to leave. He wants to be passed out, dead asleep, and for the world to be normal again when he wakes up.
He moves.
Illario grabs his arm before he can make it to the door.
“The fuck do you think you’re doing?”
“He just needs some water.”
“You just need your fucking drugs.”
“Illario—”
“Let me in,” Cal pleads.
“We’re not letting him in.”
Illario’s fingers wrap tighter around Lucanis’s bicep. They stare at each other as another coughing spell echoes outside. Lucanis has never heard a cough sound like that. Like a rusty rake dragged over gravel.
The news comes back on. It’s just the woman now.
“The death toll in Antiva has reached five-thousand. Hospitals are overwhelmed. Please stay in your homes and—”
Lucanis remembers being at home when he found out his parents died. In a hospital.
“Luca, man, please,” Cal croaks.
There’s a thud against the door, and Lucanis and Illario both jump.
“Rio…”
“Do not let him in.”
“Do you think he’s—”
The sound shifts and drags, slowly. Like weight slumping over.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Illario whispers.
“Cal?” Lucanis calls out.
A second passes. Five. Twelve.
Nothing.
“Is he dead?” Lucanis forces himself to say it out loud. To make the words real. None of this feels real.
His phone is still in his hand. He dials 911 and brings it, shaking, to his ear, as Illario goes to the front window.
It rings.
“It’s hard to see,” Illario says. “I can only—I can only see his feet. He’s not moving. Hey, Cal!” He shouts. “That’s what his name is, right? Hey! Cal!”
Still ringing.
“He’s not moving, Luca.”
Still ringing.
“No one’s picking up.”
“No one, who?”
“911.”
The window blinds snap shut and Illario stalks over, tapping rapidly at his phone screen.
“You think they’re gonna pick up any faster for you?”
“No, I’m calling Caterina.”
Caterina. Lucanis should have thought of that. Of her.
The phone is still ringing.
“Is she—”
“No answer.”
Illario dials again, brings the phone back up to his ear. There’s a tension in his face Lucanis has never seen before.
“Hey. Don’t be scared,” Lucanis says.
“I’m not scared,” Illario snaps.
Lucanis takes a deep breath. He ignores the ache between his shoulders. He ignores the thrum of his pulse behind his eyes. He ignores the endless ringing, ringing, ringing on the other end of the line.
“We’re going to be fine.”
He has to believe it. He has to make it true. If he doesn’t, Caterina will kill him.
Because Illario is lying.