you're too young & eager to love

Because, because, because, because, becaaauuuseeee.

(Because of the wonderful things he does.)


-

He calls him "Frankenstein" because he remembers hearing a radio play about the mad doctor and his monster when he was a kid. It had scared the daylights out of him, and his father had whacked him on the back of the head and told him to be a man, sii un uomo; i mostri non esistono. Sometimes he wonders if that's true; wonders if he's more monster than man himself now. He doesn't think he can remember how fear feels.

He calls him "Frankenstein" and laughs every time, and after a few times Jimmy growls "cut it out, Al" in that soft and deadly voice of his. Richard always acts like he hasn't heard, but when Jimmy defends him Al thinks he almost smiles - if you can call it a smile, more like a twitch. He stops for a few days, but then he slips and says it again, and this time Richard turns his head and look at him with one hazel eye that seems to have the sharpness of two. Al feels the back of his neck prickle.

"Frankenstein... is the doctor," Richard says, in his voice like rocks in a tin can. "Not the monster. In the book."

Jimmy smirks.

Al blinks. "Well, 'scuse me, college boy," he says, forcing another laugh. "Ain't everyone's had all the time for readin' books like you. I dropped outta school when I was fourteen. Had to get a job."

"Hmm." He's still studying him, his unreadable eye roving over Al's face. For one strange moment, he wants to turn away, but not to avoid seeing - to avoid being seen. Somehow, he suddenly feels like the scarred one. "Didn't... read it in school. I brought it with me ...to France."

Al says nothing. Without really trying or wanting to, he can picture it; the image assembles itself in his mind: Richard, unscarred, unmasked, dark-haired and handsome, crouching in a trench with his rifle over his back, hunched over a book in a light rain, perhaps, smoking a cigarette down to the very end, hearing distant explosion and waiting, waiting - somehow he can imagine his face how it was, with his hair falling into those deep eyes and a mouth forever on a verge of a smile.