It's been months, and Van still sees Dre. He pulls up to the corner, stopping for a red light, and as his eyes scan over the few passers-by he catches sight of Dre's sunglasses glinting in the bright sunlight. Or he'll be getting milk at the supermarket, and watch Dre turn a corner. It's like seeing ghosts, only Van doesn't want to tell himself they aren't really.
Van's not crazy, but sometimes he wonders if this is entirely normal. If he were to say anything to Billie, she's just look at him with sympathy and barely disguised pity, saying something too easily ignored about the grieving process and how the best way to work through things is to work harder. Obviously, he doesn't talk to Billie. Even if this is just some way his head is compensating for the loss of his partner, his best friend, his fucking family for christ's sake, he'd rather see occasional flashes of Dre from the corner of his eye than dismiss all this and bury himself in his work. He's not Billie.
He always drove, with Dre. They never argued about it, mainly because Dre always styled it as letting Van drive and Van thought of it as letting Dre ride shotgun. Either way, Van drove and Dre never grabbed on to the security bar in the car, no matter how many times Van saw his fingers twitch. It was reassuring to look to the passenger seat and see him sitting there, relaxed into the leather, staring out the window. Now there's only an empty seat and sometimes it feels like Van has lost a limb.
The grief has stopped being overwhelming; Van can go out on assignments now without feeling nauseous and unprepared. Billie accompanied him the first few times, managing to feign herself as a ditzy girlfriend as an excuse to grip his arm with lethal strength, a painful reminder of who they were and what they were doing. So many times, though, he would have to go out on his own, and it felt as though he couldn't breathe right without Dre's solid presence behind him.
That was one of the problems about having a partner for so long, Van thought in his more sober moments. Reliance on each other becomes most important, trust and dependability are paramount. You have to know your partner is behind you. Dre and Van had worked together for so long that half the time they didn't have to speak to know how a situation should be handled. It didn't stop them from trading barbs and jokes and stories about their lives before this gig, but it came in handy for those times when they didn't need to be so talky, else the bad guys would hear them.
Van carries two guns now, one in his rear holster and one in his ankle holster. It's inconvenient, and he isn't a great shot without his steadying left hand, but it makes him feel a little better to have the extra power behind him. It reminds him of the Bruce Willis movies Dre was always talking about, the ones where, despite impossible odds, Bruce came through in the end, saving the city, getting the girl, and rescuing the kitty to boot. Van had always been amused at how into Willis Dre was; it was funny to hear him wax poetic about Die Hard or The Fifth Element as if Bruce held the secret to defeating all criminals everywhere. Van very wisely didn't mention the ones where Bruce Willis had been the bad guy.
The California sunshine seems almost profane in light of the mood Van sports these days. He wears sunglasses and always keeps the windows rolled up. Dre's things have been boxed up and put away. They make things as normal as they are able, and one day Billie comes in with determination written across her face and says that the brass have located another partner for Van. It's like closing shutters on a window, the way his face just stops, expressionless. He can almost feel the words registering on his face, and when Billie doesn't say anything, he walks away.
Standing under the shower later, he wonders when he'll be able to let this go, to stop seeing Dre in the reflection of a store window and stop carrying loss and frustration around as if he had extra weight on his shoulders. It's making him a little reckless, a little more willing to confront the dangerous situations he sees everyday with less caution. He's never been a very deliberate guy, which was why Dre was so good for him. Dre stopped him from doing stupid shit, and Van egged Dre on so that they used both instinct and intelligence. Van has less to lose now, and he feels it in every step he takes.
When Deaqon Hayes first crosses his path, it's like a shock of cold air hit his lungs. He sees Dre in the way Deaq turns his head, says words like fuck and pain in my ass, and Van isn't quite prepared for the rush of...something that floods his body when he realises Deaq isn't going to go away. It's like reliving that day over and over again, but at the same time there's something so fundamentally different about Deaq that Van is relearning everything he thought was set about having a partner.
His sense of humour is returning. That, Van thinks, is the first sign that things are changing for him. He looks in the mirror now, and he's not as pale as he was because Deaq went on a tirade about how fucking white he looked and made him go outside to take his lunch break. It's like having a momma and an asshole partner all at once. Van isn't sure he likes it. But it's better than the walking corpse he was, and even Billie's commented on the loss of the act that was getting him through these months. She tapped a finger on his shoulder and said something about the real Van Ray, finally, with a startling smile on her face. He didn't realise he was changing until he made a lame joke back at her about being a clone, and she actually chuckled. So it's a bad sense of humour, but it's his, and it's been missing for a long time.
When Van turns to the passenger seat, he sees Deaq, who's bitching about not driving, and it's all too easy for Van to snipe back at him that he's the driver, thank you very much, and would he please shut up about the turning radius on the car. He's not Dre. But he doesn't have to be. And that seems almost manageable, now.
The End