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He saw Beck for the first time at a party. Her eyes had caught his from across the room. He’d been high, dangerously so, so very close to doing something disastrous. She was pretty. Blonde curls, the flash of a gold necklace dangling over her unbuttoned blouse. Her face though had been a terrible thing. Her hands had trembled at her sides. Her throat had been coated in dark plum bruises. And he knew, knew with as much certainty as he ever had that something horrible had happened. He stumbled towards her, pushed some drunk asshole out of his way without much hesitation. But when he’d gotten to where he’d seen her, she’d vanished, and the same asshole had tackled him into a glass coffee table. No one else had seen her.
…
She starts showing up in his classes. Curls swaying over her shoulder. She sits very still in the seat besides him, and he does his best not to ogle her, especially when someone else sits there and she is displaced in a shimmer of light. She does not speak to him. But she is looking, and he feels her eyes penetrating him, and he wonders idly if she even is real. Hallucinations aren’t a normal side affect—he’d already checked with his dealer.
…
“I’m Beck,” She tells him, when he’s drinking his coffee one morning. He chokes on his sip. Coffee, splashes out of his mug with his flinch.
“You can talk?” But then, more pointedly he addresses the bigger issue. “Why are you in my apartment?”
Her eyes are big and doelike. Her hand rubs against one of the bruises on her throat. “I—I don’t know.”
And she blinks rapidly, eyes tearing up.
He steps closer. “It’s okay,” he starts. “Hey, it’s fine.”
But when he reaches out to touch her arm she vanishes.
…
“Something happened to me,” Beck tells him. She’s sitting on the edge of his bed. His alarm clock, all red light and distant blurs into focus. It’s three in the morning. He sits up and turns the lamp on with a clumsy movement.
“What?” His voice is groggy. He rubs at his eyes, feeling hungover and miserable as ever.
“Back in New York.” She is staring at him again. “I don’t know why I’m here. I think—” her voice cracks. “I think I’m dead.”
“You’re a ghost?” He asks, but the problem is he believes her.
She shakes her head, biting her lip. “I’m just Beck.” She tells him.
“I’m Forty.” He says feeling a bit stupid. He’s never met a ghost before.
“I know,” she says. Her eyes are piercing.
…
She’s never there very long. A minute, sometimes longer, then she vanishes—she doesn’t know what happens when she goes.
She doesn’t say much at first. There are the terrible bruises ringing around her neck like a horrible garnet necklace. And he avoids looking at them overly long—it upsets her, and she vanishes when she gets upset.
…
She doesn’t seem dead always. Sometimes she is as solid and as real as anyone you would bump into on the street. But later, sometimes, in horrible, quiet moments, the flush of life escapes her; she shimmers, turns nearly intangible, fades to something like mist. And it freaks Forty out because she’s not just Beck, the gorgeous blonde, who’s funny and sweet and laughs at some of his worse jokes, but she’s supernatural and not human and probably actually dead like she claims to be. A spirit bound to this mortal realm thirsting for revenge, and Forty think he’s supposed to help her. It’s like Shakespeare, or something. And he would know, because it was one of the few classes he’d managed to attend somewhat regularly during his brief stint at college. He’d been high most of the time, but a light high, you know. Manageable.
…
He'd managed to pick up a girl at a bar. Sweet, gorgeous Monica with long dark hair who had smiled at him at the bar all night after she’d seen his credit card.
She’d followed him home without argument, and he pointed her towards the bedroom.
It didn’t get very far.
He’d come back with a bottle of wine, and two glasses gripped in his other hand.
“You have a girlfriend,” Monica has observed with her unfairly sultry voice.
Beck had been laying in the center of his bed, hair slung out like a halo around her. She’d blinked then.
And her voice had come out like a whisper, “Forty?”
“It’s a bit complicated,” Forty had started.
Beck’s eyes had widened, latching onto Monica quickly.
“Beck this is Monica,” he’d continued recklessly. “Monica, Beck.”
“We still could—” He waved his hands in a way that certainly didn’t help his argument. “Might be fun?”
“Absolutely not.” Beck had snapped. “You, idiot, Forty. You’re disgusting.” She managed to grab his pillow and sling it through the air at his face.
It him with a thump that left him laughing with delight.
“It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity,” he said gleefully.
“I’m dead,” Beck had shrieked. Then she’d chucked the other at him with a groan.
A huge smile had lurched across his face. “You’ve never done that before. That was amazing!”
Monica had slunk away at some point; he hadn’t even noticed when.
…
“That’s him.” It’s Beck. Her hand is on his arm and she’s squeezing it so tight he thinks it might bruise. Her eyes are bright, and her lips look almost blue under the fluorescents.
They’re at Anavrin. She’s never appeared there before. And Forty’s not sure exactly what he should do. He can’t talk to Beck. His sister is staring at him. Never likes to give her reason to worry. Never likes the consequences. She’ll think he’s high again. And he is, but it’s more medicinal than recreational today. He just needed something to help him focus. And it’s balanced out by his green juice.
“Who?” Forty mutters lowly. Flipping over another celebrity biography. He looks up. And She’s staring directly at what must be a new hire—his apron is a little too fresh. He’s a weedy little thing, nondescript and forgettable. He’s talking to his sister.
Beck is pale, insubstantial, more ghost than girl.
“He killed me.” Her voice is high and horrible. A stack of books beside him falls to the floor. Beck is nowhere near them. His eyes lurch to the movement but then back to her; there are tears sweltering in her eyes. Her hand raises to her throat.
He kneels and picks them up. “It’s alright,” he mutters. “We’ll figure something out.”
“He killed me.” Beck says again. And her eyes are not for him, not now. “Your sister. Your sister is in horrible danger.”
And Forty supposes his sister is. She’s smiling at Beck’s killer.
“Love can hold her own,” he mutters.
…
She reappears to him late at night. He’d been pacing in his kitchen, drinking and drinking and trying to write another screenplay that he’s knows somewhere deep down he won’t get anywhere with.
And he’s relieved when he sees her, relieved even though her lips are a tight little line and her eyes are wet with tears.
“I should tell you everything,” she starts, “but I don’t want to; it’ll ruin everything. You’ll look at me differently.”
“I won’t,” he promises immediately.
She nods. And then she tells him everything, or at least everything she can bear to.
…
“I’ll kill him.” Forty says, when Beck finishes. His hands are shaking with something like anger, though he’s not sure why.
“You have to be careful.” Beck pleads with him. “He’s dangerous Forty, like Ted Bundy meets Freddy Krueger dangerous. You’ll get hurt.”
“I’ll just have to take him by surprise then,” he says. “He won’t see it coming.”
“He’s good with surprises,” she tells him and her hands, warmer than they should be wrap around his own. “Don’t, not like this. Not now.”
Something settles in him. “Okay,” he says quietly. “But you can’t expect me to do nothing, Beck.”
…
And he doesn’t. He watches Will Bettelheim AKA Joe Goldberg intently, watches as he circles around Love with interest so obvious it’s disgusting. Love could do better, has done better, but Love for some reason allows it. And Forty has a bad feeling about why. Like attracting like or some shit. But he doesn’t like to think about his sister, rather would think about anything else, so he distracts himself with an array of delightful little pills that he bought a few weekends prior.
They don’t help much.
…
Then of course, there is another delicious sort of surprise—a diversion, really. Amy. She’s delightful. Firey red hair. Firey, warm hands. And lips that sear up his throat in the backseat of her rental car. He’s not sure why she’s so interested, but he doesn’t really mind not really.
Beck minds. He didn’t think she would.
She appears when Amy hands him a copy of a book, her book, he realizes later. Guinevere Beck. A picture of her is inside the book’s jacket.
Guinevere, like a princess in a fairy tale, but Beck didn’t get her happy ending.
And Amy is encouraging him, hand caressing down his chest. “You should use this,” she tells him. “It would make a great film; all it needs is a script.”
Amy’s lips snag onto his with well-practiced motions.
He’d like it more if Beck wasn’t standing next to them watching.
“Don’t,” Beck tells him sharply. “Don’t even think about it, Forty. You’ll make yourself a target. You already have. Candace was his ex. He tried to kill her too.”
Her eyes are sharply watching Amy or Candace or whatever the hell her name actually is. Nothing is simple anymore.
“She’s so stupid to come after him here. She’ll get herself killed.” Then, shimmering, Beck disappears.
“You better come inside,” Amy or Candace says. “My roommate isn’t here thankfully. She’s at some sort of weird kink convention. Thank God. I walked in one day and she had this guy all trussed up on the dining room table. There’s all these crazy books in the apartment.”
Her hand strokes the front of his pants.
“Wanna help me forget?”
There’s some quality in her tone. Some hint of vulnerability, a little crack in the façade of Amy Adam.
She doesn’t really want this. But she thinks she needs Forty. So he’ll help.
“Okay,” he says hesitantly.
He thinks that he might actually need Amy for what he needs to do next.
…
Later, back at his own apartment he parses through the book Candace had given him and Beck comes back.
“Why didn’t you tell me you wrote a book, Beck?”
“It’s not mine, not really. He changed things. Made it his. It was written under duress.”
Forty laughs because what else can he do, but it is a shaky unpleasant thing. “Like at gunpoint?” There’s a part of him that dreads she’ll say yes. “That’s intense. Good idea, I guess, probably would motivate me to get more done.”
But Beck barely smiles at his attempt at humor.
“No, more like he locked me in a glass cage for days. I was trapped there, and he told me to write. He could have let me starve. He could have let me rot in there. But he wanted me even when he wanted me dead.” Her voice is quiet but impressively doesn’t waver in the slightest. She scratches at her neck, and she’s so small, like a little bird. How could anyone ever want to hurt her?
“You never told me that.” Forty says quietly.
She nods. Her eyes wide and watering.
“I’m really sorry, Beck.”
…
“He won’t stop, you know.” He tells Beck, idly when she tries to argue with him about the book again. He’s been flipping through it obsessively for the last week or so. Joe needs to pay. And if he has his way, he will. Being a Quinn has its advantages—he decides to use them for once. “We know he tried to kill Candace. We know he managed to hurt you. It’s a pattern of behavior. And he’s interested in my sister, God help him.”
“You can’t.”
“Let me help, Beck. He’ll keep killing. We both know it.”
“You need a better plan than whatever this is, Forty.”
He smiles. “I have a couple of ideas. We could brainstorm some more together?”
…
Brainstorming, apparently to Beck is code for making out on Forty’s unmade bed until her face turns bright red. She pulls off her shirt. Tugs at his waistband impatiently.
Her eyes are bright. And a cheeky little grin swoops up her face. “Once in a lifetime opportunity here,” she tells him. “Don’t tell me you’re going to keep me waiting?”
He doesn’t—not that he could—it’s Beck.
…
“You don’t deserve any of this. You’re sweeter than Benji ever was.” she tells him after. She’s petting his hair, and she must think he’s completely fallen asleep—he hasn’t not yet. “And you understand me.” Her voice cracks. “None of this is fair. I wish—”
…
But it doesn’t matter what Beck wishes. Not really, not now.
She’s dead.
But Forty’s not. And he’s made up his mind. Candace or Amy, whoever, she’s Forty’s golden ticket. She’ll get him closer to Joe than Love ever could. She’s his ex, too. His ex that he tried to kill. Most definitely a sore spot.
And Forty, Forty’s really good at pretending not to know any better. Forty’s the family fuck up. Forty’s the addict being taken advantage of. She’s using him to get close to Joe, isn’t she? That’s what Joe will think.
And Forty, he’s good at playing the victim, good at playing damaged.
He doesn’t know Joe, not really, not entirely. But he has Beck’s tearful stories, and her altered book, and years of dealing with his own fucked up family.
He knows Joe’s type.
So, he texts Amy in the morning. And he’s suitably besotted, just like she needs him to be. And he invites her to the Welkend—because Love, golden child that she is will be there, and he just knows she’ll invite Joe. It’s such a Love thing to do.
…
Joe Goldberg is a shadow occupying a human host. There is a quality to his eyes, something entirely coldblooded. When he smiles, they are lifeless and too still.
Forty can’t help but think how perfectly he is suited to Love.
“Will Bettelhiem, Amy Adam.”
Forty smiles. And Joe practically flinches. He pauses for a moment. Not long. But just enough that it confirms his theory.
“Are you sure this is a good idea, Forty?” Beck murmers. Her hand has wrapped around his wrist.
And he doesn’t react. Breathes as calmly as he ever has. Joe’s flustered. As flustered as a man like him could ever be. And it’s a bitch, isn’t it, running into an ex, especially one you had a messy breakup with.
…
Late at night, he wonders what his life might have been life without Beck. A butterfly flapped its wings in China, and somehow the supernatural became natural for Forty.
Somehow, he thinks it might have been worse. And it would have been. He knows at least about Joe. He knows that Beck pulses in and out of his life like she is a heartbeat that sometimes stops. He knows that when she curls into his chest at night and his fingers comb through her curls that someone understands him more than anyone else ever had. And he knows somehow and with more certainty than he’s ever had before that death is not an ending. At least not entirely, not for everyone. He never thought much about religion before Beck. But now, maybe, just maybe, he wonders if there is something more to the universe than science can ever attempt to explain.
…
“Well if it isn’t Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Douchebag.” Joe’s identity had been revealed. Something that Forty hadn’t exactly anticipated or needed. He didn’t want Joe getting skittish; everything would be easier if Joe still felt he was in control.
A small, sick part of Forty is curious to see how Joe will react to the name calling.
Joe doesn’t lash out. But instead despondently, calmly, presses the apron towards Forty, like he’s going to resign. Like Forty would let the little fucker walk out of Anavrin and run off to go ruin some other girl’s life. Not that he would. Not that he even thinks Joe could walk away. Joe’s fixated on his sister, trapped pretty helplessly in the black hole of her orbit. And besides that, Joe still has all his old, compulsive patterns, patterns that Beck had helped him establish.
“Look, Love told me everything.” She hadn’t, she’d barely told him much of anything. Typical for her, really. Forty continues,“and while we agreed that you are a lying ball sack, we also agreed that you probably don't need to be punished twice. So just, like, stay out of her airspace for a while. Okay?”
“Are you saying I should stay?”
“Yeah,” Forty says, “You should. I went to bat for you.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Forty licks at his drying lips. “It’s nice having you around.”
…
It’s easier than he imagined, getting close to Joe.
Easier with Beck standing behind him whispering suggestions.
And he is everything Joe expects him to be. And maybe if the script writing thing doesn’t work out, maybe he should be an actor. He’s getting to be pretty good at it. Maybe even better than Love.
Not that he’d be any good at memorizing lines. There was no way he’d have anything to do with Shakespeare. But he was good at improv.
He’s fragile when he needs to be fragile. An arrogant nepo baby when he needs to be an arrogant nepo baby. A fool when Joe wants him to be a fool.
The part’s been his since before he was born.
…
The trap is simple, and all the more elegant for its simplicity. Forty knows Love—she gets jealous. And Joe, Joe is not immune to that same fatal emotion.
He flicks an envelope at Joe on a day when Love’s busy with the insufferable people she calls her friends, and if he called in a few favor’s to have her cell phone’s service conveniently neutered for a few hours, well that’s between him and a fat stack of cash.
He waggles his eyebrows. “I didn’t know you had it in you, sport.”Game.
“What?”
And it’s almost impossible not to laugh. Because. Forty has him now. The bait’s too perfectly personalized for him to ignore.
“Don’t worry, I’m not mad. I’m here to give my blessing.” Set. “And I’ve got to say the handwritten letter was very classy. Way better than a grainy dick pic, right?”
The cogs in his little psychotic head are definitely spinning now
“Make sure you wear protection.” Match.
...
The letter. Of course, led Joe to a shady motel, and then to an empty room on the bottom floor.
Forty hadn’t been there. But he’d hired a few men with bear tranquilizers and had them waiting there for Joe.
From there, Joe had laid in the back of a trunk until he’d been carted into a wonderful abandoned warehouse.
…
It didn’t take long to tie up Joe. He’d been practicing the knots for weeks now. Funny how the universe puts exactly what you need right in front of you sometimes.
It took longer to wait for the tranquilizers to wear off enough for Joe to stir, groaning. He likely had a miserable migraine. Fernando hadn’t been gentle when he wacked him on the back of the head. He might even have a concussion. All in all not a fun combo.
Forty kneels down, gun resting in his hand. “Hi, Joe,” he starts. “How are you doing, Sport? Are the ropes too tight?”
Joe blinks eyes bloodshot and unfocused.
“You're listening, right?”
Joe nods, straining again the ropes.
“Good, that’s good.”
He taps his finger lazily against the gun.
“How’s the ballgag treating you? Kinky, I know. But needs must. Borrowed it from Candace’s roomate.”
He stood up, observing the way Joe squirmed.
“Don’t worry. This will be quick. I considered drawing it out, but Beck insisted on expediency.”
Joe’s eyes widened.
“Yeah, Beck. You know her, right? Blonde. Big doe eyes. Crazy in bed. A really talented writer, too. You killed her.”
Joe made an incomprehensible noise.
Forty cocks the gun with a click. He tilts his head.
“Any last words?”
Joe makes another louder incomprehensible sound. More of a moan this time, and a trail of drool dribbles down his chin onto the concrete floor. And his eyes are wild, flashing to Forty but also, for some reason behind Forty, like there is someone else in the room. You’d think you’d focus more on the man with the gun.
“Oh, right, you can’t talk. Should I take the ball gag out?”
Joe nods frantically.
Forty laughs. “Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
He raises the gun. Breathers in. Squeezes the trigger and the gunshot rings in his head like an echo.
“Go to hell, Joe.”
...
There is a hand on his shoulder. Warm and still. And a fragrance stirring around him. The smell of vanilla, and something sweet like licorice, but it is fading.
A dark line of blood streams towards his shoes.