Work Text:
There are many moments in Dave’s life where he feels as if someone had taken a pair of scissors and sheared out someone greatly important. There are missing, black spots in his memory where he was sure a person belonged.
It frustrated him to no end. He’d flip through photo albums, dig through drawers full of keepsakes and dig into the deepest caverns of his mind only to return with nothing but questions. Looking back on his life was like staring at a jigsaw puzzle with one missing piece, leaving a glaring eyesore that tore the whole picture apart.
He remembers his job at the paint store. He remembers handing off pink paint.
He remembers the diner and… his fist meeting skin?
He remembers holding the cold metal of his own dog tags, in the garden of some mansion somewhere lost to him.
He remembers the hesitation as he boarded the bus. The feeling that someone would come. The hope that he would be stopped.
But no one came.
Dave still couldn’t tell if that was reality or just the memory his brain fed him.
The spots in his memory stopped for a while, washed away by the craze and tragedy that was the Vietnam war. He almost forgot all about the holes in his life.
But then he remembers it. All the lights.
The blinding flash of blue, the orange glow and the glimmering sparkles from the disco ball in some Saigon bar.
But most of all, Dave remembers someone being there.
He remembers it all.
Their lanky build, the tattoos on their palms and shoulder and stomach, the long stretches of body hair that adorned their soft, soft skin.
He remembers the feeling of their lips on his. He remembers the taste of their saliva, the smell of some kind of alcohol on their breath. It was almost like a dream. Maybe it was.
Dave remembers all of it except for their face. No matter how hard he tries, no matter how much he pinches his brow and digs it’s just not there. The fog was too heavy to see through.
A stab of pain pricked at his heart. He had someone. A friend. A lover. Someone who cared for him.
Someone who he couldn’t bring himself to remember.
Someone who he may never see again.
Someone who may have never existed at all.