Special Episode: Back
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
It’s been a windy day, gradually turning to a ferociously windy night. The dark blue of the sky is silvered with blustering clouds, haloed with moonlight. Birds have been tumbling more than flying through the air all day. Leaves have been rustling against the windows of Ralph’s house, branches tossing and swaying.
He remembered the bird's nest he’d seen being built in the tree behind his house. He had shot a photo of the parents at work a few days ago. He went out there to check on it, and found to his relief that there were no eggs in it yet. Anything there that might break could be rebuilt, with some work.
But the wind still hasn’t let up. It’s only grown stronger as the night has grown darker.
Ralph sits alone at the table with his chin propped on his palm, watching the gusts beat against the windows of the deli. Lashing whirls of leaves spin through the moonlight outside.
Ralph is anxiously trying to calculate whether the wind will be enough to get the plans called off. He shouldn’t have gotten here so early, just in case. Just because he was willing to battle through the wind to get here, it doesn’t mean they’re gonna do all that for him. They probably don’t know how much this means to him, so why would either of them put themselves through-?
Ralph stops and closes his eyes for a moment, takes a deep breath.
Fucking stop it, he growls at himself in his head. They want to see you and hang with you. That’s not something beyond you, or above you. Aiden made that plain, didn’t he? Let yourself fucking see it, like he said.
Still, Ralph can’t help but anxiously and rapidly tap a fingertip on the table. He hangs his head for a moment. Feeling ridiculous, his heart burning with frustration at his own incompetence. He hates feeling like he’s bad at shit, and it’s even worse when he feels helpless at something.
Believing what he’s trying to tell himself right now is something he feels helpless at. But he’s forcing himself to chip away at it, piece by nerve-wracking piece. He came here tonight, didn’t he? He believed it enough to do that, but god, this shit is so hard for him…
His mind drifts to a distant memory.
He was curled up on the couch, his backpack and lunchbox left where he dropped them when he came in. He had his knees drawn up to his stomach, his cheek pressed against the couch.
He was watching with one eye open as his mom had a screaming argument with her then-boyfriend Kevin. A woman had come stumbling into the house with Kevin when he got there. She was red-eyed and messy-haired, her makeup smeared around her eyes.
She staggered over to Ralph as the argument raged on. Ralph’s mom didn’t watch her do it. She was busy hurling accusations at Kevin. Ralph didn’t understand all of them, at the time. The ones he did, he knew were all true, but for some reason Kevin was angry and shouting, too.
The stranger bent over Ralph, who turned his head to look up at her through blurred eyes, breathing raggedly.
“Hey,” she’d slurred, looking down at him, her eyes filled with alarm. “You alright, kiddo?”
Ralph was far from alright. A serious flu was going around his school, and he’d been sent home that afternoon with bad symptoms that had grown worse and worse ever since. His whole body was hurting him, his face burning hot and too cold. He was too spun out to even answer her, although he vaguely registered what she’d said.
“Hey,” the woman said again, straightening up unsteadily to look at Ralph’s mom. “I think your kid-”
“Stay out of this, Sandra!” his mom had snapped sharply. “What are you even doing here?” And then, to Kevin - “What is she doing here?”
The argument flared up again, and Ralph tried to gather in a mouthful of air, enough to speak with.
“Mommy,” he stammered, lifting his head.
He never really called her that anymore, not by that point. After his dad was gone, Ralph had put up an instinctive, valiant fight to try to make his mom happy. At least to keep her how she was before. He used to run into the house every day and go right to her, throw his arms around her legs. Mommy, mommy! Guess what happened at school today?
This rarely got any response, so Ralph gradually stopped doing it. Stopped even calling her that. Some part of him felt like he had failed her, like he should have kept trying - but his desperate little voice trying to make her talk to him, increasingly distraught - he hated the sound of that too much.
Being sick must have knocked some old instinct loose in him, though, because he reached for her and tried again. “Mommy...”
Kevin shot him a look, his eyes blazing with anger. He was constantly irritated with Ralph, simply because he was there. Something else competing for his mom’s attention. Ralph didn’t know the reason at the time. But in some childish, intuitive way he sensed the hostility, the why can’t you just go away in every glance Kevin spared him. Ralph was already familiar with that before Kevin came along. He’d had it from all the previous boyfriends, too.
Kevin’s seething glare was the only response Ralph’s little cry got. Kevin turned back to his mom.
“Listen, I’m the man of this house,” Kevin snapped. “What I say is gospel, so if I say I need money-”
“You always need money!”
“Then you’re always gonna give it to me, and that’s that!”
“I don’t even have any, Kevin! How am I-?”
“Hey!” Sandra suddenly interrupted, having managed to pull some actual force into her raspy voice. “I think something’s seriously wrong with your kid.”
Ralph instantly decided that he loved Sandra. This swaying, slurred-speaking stranger was the best person to set foot in the house in as long as he could remember. He thought fitfully and frantically that she was probably going to leave, soon. Maybe she would take him with her, if he asked?
Ralph’s mom looked at Ralph, who was wheezing into the couch, his arms hugging his stomach.
“Oh, see?” she snapped, twisting back to Kevin. “Look what you did! Now he’s upset-”
“Fucking kid is always upset, someone should teach him how to be a man! But it’s not gonna be me, ‘cause I’m sick of this shit. I’m fucking out of here. I don’t give a damn about you, anyways.”
He strode across the living room, snatched Sandra by her arm, and dragged her staggering out through the door.
“What - Kev!” Ralph’s mom sputtered, her tone of voice completely changed. “No, wait, baby - don’t say that, wait, wait-”
She went rushing after him outside, and the living room fell silent.
Ralph lay there for a long moment, struggling to get his breath back, then slowly managed to roll himself off of the couch. He had reached out for his mom as she went past, afraid that she would forget about him if he let her get far away enough. He couldn’t reach her, though, and he knew that now it was too late.
Ralph staggered into the kitchen and slowly climbed his way up onto the counter, then opened up the cabinet where all the medicine in the house was kept. He ran his eyes over a bunch of unfamiliar bottles of stuff, his head swirling as he tried to read the labels. One of the kids in his class said that her mom had given her Dayquil, and that it had helped. Ralph didn’t know what that would look like, but none of the labels he read said that.
Ralph stumbled back to the couch empty-handed, dizzy. It seemed to take him forever to get there, and when he collapsed back onto the cushions, he realized that he should have gotten a blanket for himself. But he was just too tired to get up again.
He heard the screech of tires. Kevin driving away, and then Ralph’s mom driving after him.
Perfect silence fell over the house. Ralph curled up on the couch, breathing hard, waiting for the fever to break.
He was coming to hate feeling helpless and small, but at moments like that he wanted nothing more than to be smaller again, small enough to fit in his dad’s arms, the last place he could really remember feeling safe, feeling wanted…
Ralph blinks hard, drawn back to the present by a forceful gust of wind rattling the door of the deli.
His eyes go right to the windows, but he doesn’t see anyone out in the windblown night. Despite his best efforts, he’s starting to feel crestfallen. Are they still coming? They’re a few minutes late… did they forget? Should he text them, or…?
Ralph winces at himself. He’d forgotten completely that his real self is so goddamn unbearably shy and anxious, but he’s painfully aware of it now.
He nibbles hard on his lip, then looks quietly around at the deli, trying to let the atmosphere sink in and relax him. He’s always loved this place. Open twenty-four hours, low-lit at night, colorful with the glow of the three old arcade games up against one wall.
Ralph’s hand has drifted to his dad’s camera. Without thinking, he slips it free from its case and carefully removes the lens cap. He aims the camera at the old man at work behind the counter. He’s polishing the display case with the cakes and pies inside. Everything is saturated with vivid color from the glowing games.
Ralph snaps the picture, then slowly pans the camera across the deli, looking at it through the lens - and stops.
Through the camera, he sees Aiden walking in swift, long strides outside. Battling his way towards Ralph through the relentless wind. His head is down against it, his hand keeping his snapback in place.
Ralph lowers the camera sharply as Aiden looks up and sees him. He catches Ralph’s eye from outside of the deli, widens his blue eyes, tosses his head at the wind, then mouths - what the fuck?
Ralph laughs quietly, his heart leaping. He’s suddenly flooded with some confusing, almost anguished mixture of affection and nervousness and warm brotherly love.
Aiden pushes his way into the deli and hurries to close the door before too much wind can come in with him.
Okay, Ralph thinks, hastily capping his dad’s camera. That’s one.
Aiden clasps Ralph’s shoulder before he drops to sit down across from him in the booth. “Hey, man.”
“Hey,” Ralph says, weak with relief, trying not to let it show.
“Glad you came.” Aiden shrugs out of his jacket, flashes Ralph a smile. “Thought it would be good if we hung out before the actual wedding.”
Ralph is beyond grateful for that, even if he suspects that the idea came from Jamie.
“I know we were gonna go to the ledge,” he answers, “But I thought tonight we might want to stay here, given the fuckin’ maelstrom out there.”
“Wow.” Aiden shakes out his windblown hair and settles his snapback over it. “First time I think we ever actually got a table at the deli, instead of taking it to go. It’s a new day.”
“It is, isn’t it,” Ralph says beneath his breath, somewhat dazed by all of this.
So strange to be back here with Aiden, after all this time. They haven’t been here together since they were eighteen. Ralph looks at Aiden, taking in all the subtle differences. The thick and dark layer of stubble on his straight-razor jaw, his face all filled in. The fine lines at the corners of his eyes that look like they started out of stress, but grew deeper from laughter.
The biggest difference is in Aiden’s eyes, though. Ralph used to be able to recognize the hollow loneliness in them, given that he had the same thing. But where that used to be, Ralph now sees a bright, warm glow shining out through the blue. Like if the ocean was lit from below, instead of above.
So different from the look in his eyes before.
Aiden may still be Ralph’s brother, but time has passed. Things have changed.
Ralph is sharply aware of this. It’s part of why he’s so anxious. Aiden and Noah may have forgiven him - fucking miraculously, and Ralph still can’t get his head around it - but all three of them are different people than they were before. Aiden and Noah kind of have to get to know Ralph all over again.
Some part of Ralph is deeply afraid that even if they don’t hate him, they won’t like him, either. That maybe the real version of himself is too different, and the old easiness and camaraderie and laughter between the three of them won’t come back, and things will gradually fade out. No one’s fault. Just inevitable.
It’ll hurt so bad, if that happens. Because this is the real version of himself that Ralph is putting on the line, exposed to potential rejection.
At least you’ll have gotten to go to the wedding, he tries to reassure himself, as if it’s already happened.
A stab of distress moves through him at the thought. He tries not to let it show on his face. He reminds himself for the millionth time that he just has to be himself, and hope for the best.
“So,” he manages, glancing over Aiden’s head at the windows. “You think that Noah is actually gonna brave th-? What…? Oh, my fucking-”
Ralph breaks off into disbelieving laughter. Aiden instantly does too, as soon as he twists to follow Ralph’s gaze.
Noah is being blown down the street by the wind, helplessly carried on it like a piece of paper, bouncing around like popcorn. Even from inside the deli, Aiden and Ralph can hear the muffled sound of his shouted curses as he snatches hold of a bus stop sign and clings to it for dear life. He takes a few steps back, winding up, then flings himself at the deli and catches the door.
Aiden goes over to wrench him inside, and Ralph sinks down in the booth with his hands pressed over his mouth, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter.
“Jesus!” Noah sputters, tossing his wildly disorganized hair out of his eyes. “Fucking goddamn shit, what the fuck is up with that wind?” And then, with a nod to the old man behind the deli counter - “Evening, sir.”
“Dear god in heaven,” Aiden laughs, steering Noah towards the booth.
“Man, I lost my elastic,” Noah complains, gesturing to his hair as he drops down into the booth.
Ralph wishes that he had one to give him, and instantly feels stupid about it.
“Honestly, man,” he says to Noah, still half-laughing. “Should we pop you in a pinball machine? Pretty sure that’s the only other thing I’ve seen get thrown around quite like that.”
Noah sticks out his tongue at him, but then smiles brightly.
Ralph looks at him gratefully. He thought it would be pretty damn hard to walk with his head up around Noah, given that he’d basically had to throw himself on Noah’s mercy the last time they talked. But Noah hasn’t done anything to make him feel weird or bad about it.
Ralph feels the same, almost painful burst of love in his heart that he felt when Aiden got here.
He looks into Noah’s grey eyes, and sees them full of that same soft light of happiness glowing in Aiden’s.
There’s a reason Ralph can pick it up so easily. It’s because Calla has put the same thing in his eyes, too. He caught it in the mirror after she left the other night. They’re taking things slow, so she hasn’t stayed over yet. But Ralph could happily live forever in the feeling of sitting curled up on the couch with her before the fireplace. How she cozies up against his chest, lifted slowly up and down by his breaths.
Things are so good there. It’s here, with Aiden and Noah, that Ralph is anxious and uncertain.
He glances back and forth between the faces of his brothers, hope and doubt battling it out in his heart.
The old man shambles out from behind the counter with a notepad, and Ralph has the strange experience of hearing himself, Aiden, and Noah order what they always used to order. None of them had to glance at the menu, even though it’s been close to a decade since they were last here together.
“You boys look familiar,” the old man observes.
“You do, too, Mr. Sandberg,” Aiden rumbles, and the deli owner blinks.
His eyes slowly narrow, then widen in recognition as they travel again over Aiden, Noah, and Ralph.
“My god,” he laughs, shaking his head in amazement. “You three, together, back in my deli! After all this time. Some things never change, I guess. Just as close as you ever were, huh, boys?”
He heads back behind the counter without waiting for an answer, leaving a heavy, tense silence over the table.
Ralph, Noah, and Aiden all turn back to each other uneasily, the smiles falling from their faces. Nobody seems to know what to say.
Ralph drops his gaze to the table, desperation mounting in his chest.
“I mean, there’s still time for us to be, right?” he blurts out, unable to look at either of them. And then, in a very thin, soft voice - “Right?”
He winces, mortified at how that came out, sensing that Noah and Aiden are exchanging a glance with each other on the other side of the table.
“Yeah, man,” Noah says quietly, reaching across the table to slap Ralph’s shoulder. “There’s still time.”
Overpowering relief and gratitude crash into Ralph’s heart, multiplied to the extremes when he tentatively lifts his head and sees Aiden looking at him in silent confirmation.
Ralph lets out a heavy breath.
My brothers, he thinks weakly.
Something is becoming more and more clear to him. He had already sensed it, but now it’s unignorable.
All the love that Ralph withheld from his brothers over the years - what he tried to crush down and treat as unimportant, what he tried to never let them see - it didn’t just go away.
Now that Ralph has opened the floodgates, he feels full to overflowing with everything that he’s been saving up for so long.
It’s kind of hard for him to even look at Aiden or Noah right now. But his eyes blink to Aiden when he sees him reaching into his jacket pocket.
“Guess what, boys?” Aiden rumbles, sliding something to the middle of the table. “I came prepared.”
Ralph lets out a dazed laugh when his eyes land on the hot sauce.
“Oh, yes,” Noah sighs happily. “This stuff is the best. Remind me to snag some for the wedding.”
“How’s that going?” Ralph asks, pouncing on the opening. He’s been afraid that they might not have anything to talk about, and there’s no drugs or alcohol to make the words flow easy. “Planning for the wedding? Need help with anything?”
Noah blinks at Ralph, surprise in his grey eyes.
“Holy shit,” he says beneath his breath, then breaks into a small, warm smile. “Thanks for the offer, dude. Nice of you. But I’ve already got my errands buddy, and that’s-”
Ralph isn’t going to get jealous when Noah says that it’s Aiden, he isn’t going to, he’s past that kind of shit -
“Nikita.”
Ralph opens his eyes, caught off-guard. He scans through his brain for the name.
Aiden arches an eyebrow at Noah. “You’re bringing Nik with you on your wedding errands?”
“Duh, bro. I want her opinion on stuff.”
“What?” Aiden laughs.
Ralph is certain now that he doesn’t know, so - “Who’s Nikita?”
“Noah’s baby,” Aiden answers, and Ralph chokes.
“What?”
“Yeah, man,” Noah says brightly, slipping his phone out of his pocket.
He lights it up and holds it out so that Ralph can see the lock screen picture. It’s a shot of a tiny, round-cheeked baby with an adorable tuft of black hair, curled up on a gleaming wooden surfboard.
“That’s my girl,” Noah says happily.
“Your girl looks about ready to stomp ass,” Ralph answers dazedly, taking in the furious glare on the baby’s face.
“Right?” Noah sighs affectionately, his eyes brimming with pride.
“Wait a second, what-?” Ralph shakes his head slowly, doing some math in his head. “How - when did-?”
“Raj and Mel made her,” Noah explains. “But she’s mine, too.”
“Oh.” Ralph is struggling to let this all sink in, but something tells him he was supposed to say more than that. “Um - congrats, man. Holy shit.”
Noah blinks in surprise again, then cracks a smile at Ralph. “Thanks. You’ll get to meet her soon.”
“I’m terrified,” Ralph answers honestly, and Noah laughs.
It strikes Ralph that he, Aiden, and Noah didn’t work their shit out until one of them was literally a father. They met each other when they were kids, and this is the first time that Ralph is fully, completely letting his real self show around them.
Ralph closes his eyes in heartbroken, self-directed frustration. He’s wasted so much time.
But Aiden and Noah said that there’s still time. There’s still time.
Ralph opens his eyes, casting his mind around for something to say. Aiden’s gaze has dropped to the camera, which is resting on top of its case.
“What’s the deal with that, man?” he asks, nodding to it.
Ralph isn’t sure why he brought it. He took it without thinking on his way out of the house, and then he didn’t want to leave it in the car.
“It’s my dad’s old camera,” he hears himself answer. “I’ve been…”
He fades off with a vague gesture. Noah looks down at the camera, then glances questioningly at Ralph, who gives him a nod.
Noah takes the camera in his tattooed hands and turns it on. He looks down at the photo that Ralph took right before Aiden got here, the one of the deli owner polishing the display case.
Aiden leans in to look at it, too. They’re both silent for a moment, and then their eyes simultaneously lift to Ralph.
“That’s like - pretty fucking cool, dude,” Aiden says suddenly.
Ralph blinks at him, frozen.
“Sick nasty, honestly,” Noah puts in. He lifts the camera in the air, waves it at the deli counter. “Yo, Mr. Sandwich!”
“Sandberg,” Aiden groan-laughs.
“Sandberg! You’re a model, did you know that? Serve it, deli man!”
“Christ, Noah!” Ralph lets out a gasp of laughter as Aiden drops his forehead onto the table. “Leave that poor dude alone!”
“I’m taking whatever that was as a compliment,” Mr. Sandberg calls back, and Ralph tosses his hands up in the air.
“Seriously,” Noah murmurs, clicking through the other photos. “These are dope, Ralph. You’ve gotta show Ripples.”
“Show ripples, what in the hell does that mean?”
Ralph’s question doesn’t get an answer, because Noah and Aiden are both leaning over his camera again, looking intently at the pictures he’s taken.
“Never knew you could do this, Ralph,” Aiden says quietly, his eyes focused on the little screen.
“Guess I didn’t, either.” Ralph shrugs his shoulders, rubbing his elbow nervously. “Got time for more stuff, now that I’m not sinking it all into megalomania.”
Aiden and Noah both look up at him in surprise, but Noah looks confused.
“Did you want Chinese food, dude?” he asks, pierced eyebrows knitting. “Why didn’t you say so when we asked you to meet us at the deli? Actually, I’ll probably still have room after the sandwich, if you guys do want to go get some noodles. Where would have a mega version, though? Great Wall?”
“What…?” Ralph stares at Noah, baffled, then lets out a burst of startled laughter. “No, man, not Mega Lo Mein, that’s not a thing - I said megalomania.”
“Oh.” Noah’s eyebrows furrow deeper, the gears working hard behind his grey eyes, but clearly turning up no results. “Say it again?”
“Megalomania, it means - it…”
Ralph trails off, feeling helpless. A powerful burst of deep affection is suddenly rushing through his heart as he looks at Noah. He drops his head for a second, reeling.
“Shit,” he whispers hoarsely, rubbing his eyes. “God.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Ralph hastily lifts his head again. “Just, um - glad you like the pictures. Hope you don’t mind, I was planning to bring the camera to your wedding?”
Noah hands the camera back to Ralph. “Have to get Nik’s opinion on that before I give you an answer. I’m getting her opinion on everything for the wedding.”
“Yeah?” Ralph asks, still in disbelief over this particular discovery. “Based on that baby’s expression, her opinion of everything is punch face.”
Noah breaks into a huge grin, and Aiden lets out another laugh.
Ralph looks at them, feeling strangely euphoric, the camera held in his hands.
“Hey,” he says, before he can think too hard about it - “Should we…?”
He holds up the camera. Aiden and Noah both stare at him in surprise, and he feels his cheeks start to redden -
“Fuck yeah, man, let’s do it,” Noah says brightly. “Move over.”
Ralph moves down in the booth. Aiden and Noah crowd into it next to him.
“Oh, god,” Aiden grumbles. “We so don’t fit.”
“Whose fault is that, A?”
“Yeah, Aiden, you’re the skyscraper. Can you actually bend down far enough to be in this picture, or?”
“Oh, it’s like that, huh, Noosh? Well, your hair is looking pretty great from all that wind, I’m sure it’s gonna look fantastic for the picture-”
“Oh, god. Ralph, fix it.”
“For fuck’s sake, dude, it looks fine - oh, no, actually, let me fix that part - okay, Jesus Christ, are we all happy now?”
“Yes,” Aiden and Noah say together.
Ralph bites back a startled smile, then holds out his arm and turns the camera to face them.
“Okay, everybody pull it together,” Aiden says, slinging an arm around Noah’s shoulders. “Ready?”
Ralph goes to press the button right as a delivery boy pushes open the door of the deli, letting in a tremendous gust of icy wind from outside. Aiden, Ralph, and Noah all gasp and grab each other as it sweeps over them, sending Noah’s long hair flying up into their faces - then burst into startled laughter as soon as the door closes.
Ralph feels his finger snap the shot.
“Shit,” Aiden gasps, settling his snapback onto his head again. “Did we get it?”
Ralph turns the camera around so that they can take a look. His heart stops when he sees the photo.
Aiden is to the left, half-groaning, half-laughing, his eyes closed. One hand thrown up to catch his snapback, his other arm around Noah’s shoulders. Noah is sagging into Ralph with his laughter, his hair swinging around his shoulders, still half-falling.
And Ralph is smiling, looking at Noah and Aiden.
“Oh, man,” Aiden groans. “None of us looked at the camera! Should we take it again?”
“No,” Ralph says, without a trace of doubt or hesitation. “No. This one is…”
He fades off, smiling down at his dad’s camera, and finishes the thought in his head.
This one is perfect.
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