Work Text:
It was spring when Albert saw him. Scrawny little boy, huddled in an alleyway. Blue lips. Shivering in his ragged clothes.
The leaves were budding and the birds were singing on the street. In his alleyway it was cold.
Albert remembered tugging on Miss Medda’s sleeve.
-Look, Medda, there’s a boy in the alley.
Miss Medda took the boy in. He said his name was Finch. No one questioned it. Names are precious.
Miss Medda said Finch was a prodigy. Albert didn’t know what that word meant, but he agreed with her anyway. When Specs told him what it meant, he agreed even more.
Finch was smart. He wasn’t smart the same way Race was, or smart the same way Specs was, but he was smart all the same. Privately, Albert thought he was smarter than them all.
At night Albert would creep into Finch’s room and they would sit there long into the night, sharing stories of their childhoods.
It became common to come into the room in the morning, and see them sprawled across the bed, limbs tangled and eyes bleary from lack of sleep.
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Albert fell in love with Finch in the summer.
Sunlight shining golden on leaves speckled with the morning’s dew. Ice cream after dark. Finch’s hand in his.
It was summer when Albert kissed Finch the first time.
Ice cream after the movie. Laughing as they walked. He remembered leaning in. Remembered Finch’s lips, soft and warm. His lips tasted like chocolate.
Summer was the hazy memory of their youth. Prank wars with Race and Spot. Double dates with Jack and Katherine. Stargazing late into the night.
Summer was fleeting.
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Their daughter was born in the fall. Laura Maria Cortes-DaSilva, their first and only child.
It was two years after they married when Laura arrived, red-faced and screaming with all the power in her little lungs.
Stubborn as a mule, and as headstrong as Albert, she was both their greatest challenge and their greatest joy.
Finch cried when he held her for the first time. Albert cried too, though he’ll adamantly deny it if you ever ask him.
They don’t talk about their other children. They don’t talk about their other babies, the red clumps of blood streaming through Albert’s fingers.
Blood and death and tears. Pain and joy. That was the way of life in the fall.
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Finch died in the winter.
Tears staining Laura’s cheeks. A final Christmas, just the three of them.
He died three days later. A part of Albert died with him.
Days and days spent in the hospital. Finch, lying on his deathbed. A sheet of paper, delicate fingers unfolding it. Carefully, ever so carefully.
Finch’s hands were made for playing the piano, for playing a guitar. They were made for tickling Laura’s stomach, for combing through Albert’s hair. They were not meant for smoothing out his will, not meant for clutching to Albert as he died.
Finch’s voice was made for singing. For singing and speaking in languages unfamiliar to Albert. For patiently teaching their daughter the languages he grew up speaking, Portuguese and Spanish and French. For trying in vain to teach Albert some of the speech of his youth.
Albert wishes he had paid more attention to those lessons. He wished he could have that to hold onto Finch as well.
Finch’s body was made for dancing. Lean and strong, he was built for leaps and spins. Lazily waltzing around their kitchen together, spinning away only to meet again in the middle. Dancing that transitioned to merely turning around in a circle, clumsily bumping their lips together whenever they drew near. Smiles and laughter and love.
Finch’s mind was made for problems, for arguing and solving and justice. He was made for the courtroom, for fighting for his beliefs. Fighting for others.
Finch never started a fight. But he could damn well finish one.
Albert remembered Christmas. Remembered Finch, whispering to him that he would have to get Laura an extra gift, for Finch, once Finch was gone. Their friends had all visited, each saying their goodbyes with the unspoken knowledge that they would not be seeing Finch again. Spot, Race, Jack, and Katherine had stayed a little while longer than the others.
Jack had been desolate. Always the caretaker, always the problem-solver, yet he was faced with a problem he could not solve. Katherine had been comforting, joking with Finch, trying to pretend Finch wasn’t days away from death.
Even after Jack and Katherine had gone, Race and Spot remained. Spot had begun talking quietly with Finch, about some sort of prank they were planning for April Fool’s. He was trying to pretend too. It was easier for them to pretend. Race had sat there, subdued for once, a steady comfort to Albert then and now.
Once they too were gone, it was just him and Finch and Laura. Just their broken little family. Finch had his poem with him. He always had it with him that week.
Albert remembered Finch’s smile. Constant and bright and reassuring. Even at the end, when Finch was little more than skin and bone, that smile had remained.
Finch was strong, stronger than Albert and Laura combined. Even when they had broken down, Finch held them as he lay there in his sickbed. He held them until he died.
He remembered Finch’s fingers, shakily unfolding a piece of paper. Reading to them in a tremulous voice:
Nature’s first green in gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.