Who do the dead speak for?
Title: "Provincia"
Fandom: Boardwalk Empire
Pairing/Characters: Jimmy/Angela, Jimmy/Richard
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,965
Disclaimer: I own nothing Boardwalk Empire wise
Warnings: Drug use, illusions to suicide, graphic images
Notes: Takes place directly after and contains spoilers for Season 2, episode 10: "Georgia Peaches"
Summary: Jimmy doesn't come back. Richard finds him.
Jimmy sits in an old run down church in Princeton
Provincia
Jimmy sits in an old run down church in Princeton. Jimmy remembered it from the crumbling bricks, the awkward slanted roof and the weeds that grow wild out front.
The pew is hard beneath his bottom, his lips chapped from the cigarette he’s constantly chewing on, his eyes red rimmed and dried out from too many tears
He mashes his fingers together and bows his head.
He forgets how prayers are supposed to start.
__
Forty eight hours earlier and the long road is stretched out before him. The night is frail and jagged like a rip in a seam. Jimmy is a bundle of nerves and a jumble of emotions. He had not been back to Princeton since his school days.
That was a life full of boyish smiles, lingering looks, fragile pages of books, ink stained fingers, long afternoons on the lawn, poetry, whispers and promises.
And then the war came and changed everything: changed his family, changed him and changed his life. He only has to walk to be reminded of the shrapnel that found his leg. He only has to look into Angela’s eyes to see the chasm that’s opened between them and the vast disappointment lingering there. He only has to reach out to his son only to have him shrug him off and be distant.
He only has to live.
__
The drive is foreign yet soon feels familiar and before long Jimmy is recognizing old haunts and stomping grounds but this trip ain’t no pleasure cruise. He has work to do.
It’s late when he checks into the hotel. He doesn’t bother unpacking. He’s only going to be sticking around for a couple days though a hidden part of him, a part he doesn’t really want to acknowledge wants to stay longer. He waits for that desire to quicken his pulse and to scare him but it doesn’t come.
He thinks about it as he toes off his shoes and tests out the bed. The smoke from his cigarettes soon fills the room. It clings lowly to the ceiling like it’s ready to press in on him.
Maybe he’ll stay after the job is done.
__
He’s up at dawn, his muscles stiff from driving long hours in the night and being bent over the steering wheel. His eyes are bleary and strained from squinting to see the road and he regrets not taking Richard with him.
He had left him hasty instructions to keep an eye on Mickey, the other boys and the warehouse. Just because Jimmy works with them doesn’t mean he trusts them but Jimmy trusts Richard and that’s all that matters.
Richard never questions Jimmy but Jimmy is getting pretty good at picking up on the sharp shooter’s moods and could tell it didn’t sit right with the other man. He lowered his head and nodded but there was a curtness to it and if Jimmy wasn’t in such a rush to leave after their meeting with Chalky he would have asked his friend about it.
__
He sells some but not enough. He never dreamed it would be this hard to push liquor in dried up places.
He never dreamed it would be this hard to try to control a place that is no longer his. He grew up around authoritative figures; men with power who demanded respect.
He never dreamed it would be this hard.
The job is done but the need is still there, like long fingers over his heart it pulls him back and makes him stay.
He calls home because him and Angela are getting along for the moment and he wants to keep it that way if he can plus he wants to hear Tommy’s voice.
The phone rings for too long setting Jimmy’s teeth on edge. Just before he hangs up an out of breath and hurried: “Hello?” greets him, his mother, Jimmy recognizes after a long moment.
“Ma? Everything alright? Let me talk to Ang.”
The response he receives is a long, stretched out silence and he thinks he lost the connection.
“James…”
The hairs on the back of his neck prickle and stand on end.
When his mother starts to sob into the phone he clenches his jaw but can’t help feel light headed at the same time. He grips the phone hard and he knows he’s shouting something at her but he can’t quite hear it over the blood roaring in his ears.
“James, honey…Angela is…”
Jimmy doesn’t hear the rest. The phone falls out of his slack grasp. He stumbles backwards, sits down hard and doesn’t move for a very long time.
__
The packet of heroine that Charlie had stuck into his coat is still there. He puts it to use telling himself he’s only trying out the merchandise.
He fiddles with his wedding band for what feels like hours afterwards.
He decides they won’t sell the stuff; he can still remember her face.
__
He ignores the white envelopes slipped under his hotel door. They’re telegrams he imagines wildly-pleas and bargains for him to come home. But no one knows where he is. Where is home? Where does he belong really?
__
The small candles huddled around the front of the congregation throw small shadows on the smeared stained glass.
Jimmy wraps his coat around himself tighter trying to turn in on himself like he can disappear.
It takes him a long time to realize that someone is sitting next to him on the pew.
“How did you know where to find me?”
“We always run back to where we came from. Hmph. Our beginnings.”
Jimmy blinks up at Richard like he’s a mirage, a miracle magically appearing out of thin air
“Where did you come from then?”
Richard answers by taking Jimmy’s hand and placing it between his own.
Jimmy buries his face into Richard’s shoulder, a sob ripping through him but no tears come out.
__
Gillian had found her with her skull half missing, body full of holes, crumpled over the body of a naked woman like she was trying to protect her and it feels like barbed wire tears at Jimmy’s heart, a swarm of bees paralyze and sting his mind.
It was true when he told Ang that he wasn’t sure of anything anymore. He was never sure of her either.
Strangely it only hurts more.
__
She’s buried on a cloudy Thursday.
He hasn’t spoken in what feels like days. The words are all twisted up and withered on his tongue. He lowers his head, his hat shielding his eyes.
Tommy seems so small and fragile next to him like something that could easily be swept up and away in a stiff breeze. Jimmy leans into his space and wraps his arm around his thin shoulder. He never knew what to tell him so he didn’t tell him anything relying on his ma to fill in the gaps.
Richard sits next to him on his other side-a quiet reassurance and an anchor amongst the storm. The pew is cramped and crowded and their thighs are so close together they almost touch but Richard is as still as a statue. Jimmy can feel the heat rolling off of him in waves, his body rigid but humming, wound tightly like a spring. Jimmy looks to him because what else can he do especially now, especially after all this? The look Richard sends him is: Never again. No one will touch you or anyone you love ever again. Jimmy tries to smile but the muscles don’t quite work but he thinks it still reaches his eyes, as tired as they are. Jimmy closes that one inch until their thighs are flush together because why not play with fire if you’re already burning?
Neither moves as the funeral proceeds.
__
The church is nearly empty, like a corpse licked clean when Nucky approaches him.
His dry, gnarled fingers find his shoulder and Jimmy doesn’t know whether to recoil or lean into the touch.
Richard sits up at attention next to him, a snake ready to strike.
“I’m sorry, James. I lost mine too…I know how that is. I’m sorry.”
Jimmy lays his wedding band in the coffin before it’s lowered into the ground, the last piece of her, the last piece of them to be buried.
__
Jimmy can still hear church bells in the distance as he takes a long pull from the bottle. His trousers and shirts sleeves are rolled up, his jacket lost a while back. Richard never leaves his side even when Jimmy practically trips into the incoming tide. He thinks Richard will never leave his side again.
“What are you going to do now?” Richard asks.
Jimmy watches the waves roll and crash into each other, the low stars caught in a veil of the pale moon and foggy whispers of summer. He remembers the night on the boardwalk when Angela finally agreed to marry him; it was a night very much like this one.
“I’m going to kill him.”
__
Gillian doesn’t question him when he digs holes in the sand and burns piles of her things whether out of purification or out of spite but with Ang it was always a little of both sides of the coin.
__
They first time they fuck he tells him to hold him down and drive into him as hard as he can-obliterating any trace of her. With his face mashed against the mattress until he almost can’t breathe Richard’s calloused hands leave bruising marks on his hips.
It’s rough and exposed. The pain is a welcome thing.
Richard can’t meet his eyes after but Jimmy kisses him anyway.
Richard gives and Jimmy takes even if he shouldn’t and this is how it goes.
__
Manny is a slippery fuck and Jimmy has made too many mistakes but never enough right ones.
__
Richard helps him box up her things and move furniture out.
Jimmy pretends not to see when Richard stares and fingers at her artwork a little too long.
And when they quit for the day, their shirt sleeves rolled up and dark patches of sweat cling to their clothes Jimmy sits on the porch step and watches the boats on the horizon. Richard hands him a bottle of whiskey without being told.
Richard turns to leave but Jimmy finds himself saying: stay.
Somehow stay translates to never leave because Richard is everywhere he is. Jimmy hopes but maybe knows it’s more than a suicide watch.
This is how Richard ends up living with him.
__
“It should have been me.”
“We always say things we don’t mean.”
__
The dining table only knows the cold weight of guns.
Jimmy cleans them all meticulously.
“The road to Philadelphia is long.”
Richard throws him a hard look. “Mmph. Don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep.”
They leave that same night.
__
Jimmy wears Manny’s blood like war paint, the slick heat like a tiny push of air in his lungs.
“Love is stronger than blood.”
“I can only see one of them.”
__
It’s almost too hot to smoke but Jimmy does anyway. He scoots closer into the shade of the big willow tree nearly knocking shoulders with Richard. Richard pulls at blades of grass and inspects them between his fingers.
“You’ll find that place you’re looking for, hmph. You will and when you do they’ll all be looking up at you but I’ll just be looking.”
Jimmy takes a moment to digest the words. He adjusts his position until he’s leaning against Richard and they’re sitting back to back.
“What do I do now?”
“Live.”
Fandom: Boardwalk Empire
Pairing/Characters: Jimmy/Angela, Jimmy/Richard
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,965
Disclaimer: I own nothing Boardwalk Empire wise
Warnings: Drug use, illusions to suicide, graphic images
Notes: Takes place directly after and contains spoilers for Season 2, episode 10: "Georgia Peaches"
Summary: Jimmy doesn't come back. Richard finds him.
Jimmy sits in an old run down church in Princeton
Provincia
Jimmy sits in an old run down church in Princeton. Jimmy remembered it from the crumbling bricks, the awkward slanted roof and the weeds that grow wild out front.
The pew is hard beneath his bottom, his lips chapped from the cigarette he’s constantly chewing on, his eyes red rimmed and dried out from too many tears
He mashes his fingers together and bows his head.
He forgets how prayers are supposed to start.
__
Forty eight hours earlier and the long road is stretched out before him. The night is frail and jagged like a rip in a seam. Jimmy is a bundle of nerves and a jumble of emotions. He had not been back to Princeton since his school days.
That was a life full of boyish smiles, lingering looks, fragile pages of books, ink stained fingers, long afternoons on the lawn, poetry, whispers and promises.
And then the war came and changed everything: changed his family, changed him and changed his life. He only has to walk to be reminded of the shrapnel that found his leg. He only has to look into Angela’s eyes to see the chasm that’s opened between them and the vast disappointment lingering there. He only has to reach out to his son only to have him shrug him off and be distant.
He only has to live.
__
The drive is foreign yet soon feels familiar and before long Jimmy is recognizing old haunts and stomping grounds but this trip ain’t no pleasure cruise. He has work to do.
It’s late when he checks into the hotel. He doesn’t bother unpacking. He’s only going to be sticking around for a couple days though a hidden part of him, a part he doesn’t really want to acknowledge wants to stay longer. He waits for that desire to quicken his pulse and to scare him but it doesn’t come.
He thinks about it as he toes off his shoes and tests out the bed. The smoke from his cigarettes soon fills the room. It clings lowly to the ceiling like it’s ready to press in on him.
Maybe he’ll stay after the job is done.
__
He’s up at dawn, his muscles stiff from driving long hours in the night and being bent over the steering wheel. His eyes are bleary and strained from squinting to see the road and he regrets not taking Richard with him.
He had left him hasty instructions to keep an eye on Mickey, the other boys and the warehouse. Just because Jimmy works with them doesn’t mean he trusts them but Jimmy trusts Richard and that’s all that matters.
Richard never questions Jimmy but Jimmy is getting pretty good at picking up on the sharp shooter’s moods and could tell it didn’t sit right with the other man. He lowered his head and nodded but there was a curtness to it and if Jimmy wasn’t in such a rush to leave after their meeting with Chalky he would have asked his friend about it.
__
He sells some but not enough. He never dreamed it would be this hard to push liquor in dried up places.
He never dreamed it would be this hard to try to control a place that is no longer his. He grew up around authoritative figures; men with power who demanded respect.
He never dreamed it would be this hard.
The job is done but the need is still there, like long fingers over his heart it pulls him back and makes him stay.
He calls home because him and Angela are getting along for the moment and he wants to keep it that way if he can plus he wants to hear Tommy’s voice.
The phone rings for too long setting Jimmy’s teeth on edge. Just before he hangs up an out of breath and hurried: “Hello?” greets him, his mother, Jimmy recognizes after a long moment.
“Ma? Everything alright? Let me talk to Ang.”
The response he receives is a long, stretched out silence and he thinks he lost the connection.
“James…”
The hairs on the back of his neck prickle and stand on end.
When his mother starts to sob into the phone he clenches his jaw but can’t help feel light headed at the same time. He grips the phone hard and he knows he’s shouting something at her but he can’t quite hear it over the blood roaring in his ears.
“James, honey…Angela is…”
Jimmy doesn’t hear the rest. The phone falls out of his slack grasp. He stumbles backwards, sits down hard and doesn’t move for a very long time.
__
The packet of heroine that Charlie had stuck into his coat is still there. He puts it to use telling himself he’s only trying out the merchandise.
He fiddles with his wedding band for what feels like hours afterwards.
He decides they won’t sell the stuff; he can still remember her face.
__
He ignores the white envelopes slipped under his hotel door. They’re telegrams he imagines wildly-pleas and bargains for him to come home. But no one knows where he is. Where is home? Where does he belong really?
__
The small candles huddled around the front of the congregation throw small shadows on the smeared stained glass.
Jimmy wraps his coat around himself tighter trying to turn in on himself like he can disappear.
It takes him a long time to realize that someone is sitting next to him on the pew.
“How did you know where to find me?”
“We always run back to where we came from. Hmph. Our beginnings.”
Jimmy blinks up at Richard like he’s a mirage, a miracle magically appearing out of thin air
“Where did you come from then?”
Richard answers by taking Jimmy’s hand and placing it between his own.
Jimmy buries his face into Richard’s shoulder, a sob ripping through him but no tears come out.
__
Gillian had found her with her skull half missing, body full of holes, crumpled over the body of a naked woman like she was trying to protect her and it feels like barbed wire tears at Jimmy’s heart, a swarm of bees paralyze and sting his mind.
It was true when he told Ang that he wasn’t sure of anything anymore. He was never sure of her either.
Strangely it only hurts more.
__
She’s buried on a cloudy Thursday.
He hasn’t spoken in what feels like days. The words are all twisted up and withered on his tongue. He lowers his head, his hat shielding his eyes.
Tommy seems so small and fragile next to him like something that could easily be swept up and away in a stiff breeze. Jimmy leans into his space and wraps his arm around his thin shoulder. He never knew what to tell him so he didn’t tell him anything relying on his ma to fill in the gaps.
Richard sits next to him on his other side-a quiet reassurance and an anchor amongst the storm. The pew is cramped and crowded and their thighs are so close together they almost touch but Richard is as still as a statue. Jimmy can feel the heat rolling off of him in waves, his body rigid but humming, wound tightly like a spring. Jimmy looks to him because what else can he do especially now, especially after all this? The look Richard sends him is: Never again. No one will touch you or anyone you love ever again. Jimmy tries to smile but the muscles don’t quite work but he thinks it still reaches his eyes, as tired as they are. Jimmy closes that one inch until their thighs are flush together because why not play with fire if you’re already burning?
Neither moves as the funeral proceeds.
__
The church is nearly empty, like a corpse licked clean when Nucky approaches him.
His dry, gnarled fingers find his shoulder and Jimmy doesn’t know whether to recoil or lean into the touch.
Richard sits up at attention next to him, a snake ready to strike.
“I’m sorry, James. I lost mine too…I know how that is. I’m sorry.”
Jimmy lays his wedding band in the coffin before it’s lowered into the ground, the last piece of her, the last piece of them to be buried.
__
Jimmy can still hear church bells in the distance as he takes a long pull from the bottle. His trousers and shirts sleeves are rolled up, his jacket lost a while back. Richard never leaves his side even when Jimmy practically trips into the incoming tide. He thinks Richard will never leave his side again.
“What are you going to do now?” Richard asks.
Jimmy watches the waves roll and crash into each other, the low stars caught in a veil of the pale moon and foggy whispers of summer. He remembers the night on the boardwalk when Angela finally agreed to marry him; it was a night very much like this one.
“I’m going to kill him.”
__
Gillian doesn’t question him when he digs holes in the sand and burns piles of her things whether out of purification or out of spite but with Ang it was always a little of both sides of the coin.
__
They first time they fuck he tells him to hold him down and drive into him as hard as he can-obliterating any trace of her. With his face mashed against the mattress until he almost can’t breathe Richard’s calloused hands leave bruising marks on his hips.
It’s rough and exposed. The pain is a welcome thing.
Richard can’t meet his eyes after but Jimmy kisses him anyway.
Richard gives and Jimmy takes even if he shouldn’t and this is how it goes.
__
Manny is a slippery fuck and Jimmy has made too many mistakes but never enough right ones.
__
Richard helps him box up her things and move furniture out.
Jimmy pretends not to see when Richard stares and fingers at her artwork a little too long.
And when they quit for the day, their shirt sleeves rolled up and dark patches of sweat cling to their clothes Jimmy sits on the porch step and watches the boats on the horizon. Richard hands him a bottle of whiskey without being told.
Richard turns to leave but Jimmy finds himself saying: stay.
Somehow stay translates to never leave because Richard is everywhere he is. Jimmy hopes but maybe knows it’s more than a suicide watch.
This is how Richard ends up living with him.
__
“It should have been me.”
“We always say things we don’t mean.”
__
The dining table only knows the cold weight of guns.
Jimmy cleans them all meticulously.
“The road to Philadelphia is long.”
Richard throws him a hard look. “Mmph. Don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep.”
They leave that same night.
__
Jimmy wears Manny’s blood like war paint, the slick heat like a tiny push of air in his lungs.
“Love is stronger than blood.”
“I can only see one of them.”
__
It’s almost too hot to smoke but Jimmy does anyway. He scoots closer into the shade of the big willow tree nearly knocking shoulders with Richard. Richard pulls at blades of grass and inspects them between his fingers.
“You’ll find that place you’re looking for, hmph. You will and when you do they’ll all be looking up at you but I’ll just be looking.”
Jimmy takes a moment to digest the words. He adjusts his position until he’s leaning against Richard and they’re sitting back to back.
“What do I do now?”
“Live.”