Title: Call Waiting
Author: Kelandris the Mad
Fandom: View Askewniverse, post-Amy
Pairing: Holden/Banky
Rating: PG, but heavy heavy angst, pain, despair...you get the idea. Spoilers for the end of Amy.
Status: New
Archive: You must send an email to me and let me know where you intend to archive. Private 
archiving allowed as long as you don't intend to publish. Behave.
Email address for feedback: kel@crazysheep.net
Series/Sequel: Should be a one-shot.
Disclaimers: All characters belong to Kevin Smith and the View Askewniverse. So Kevin, Jason 
Lee, Ben Affleck, please do *not* decide to kick my ass.
Notes: Dear gods, and I thought the end of Chasing Amy was sad *before*. Bear with me, I'm in 
an angsty mood for some reason and Jay and Bob won't behave and give me some nice cheerful smut 
to work with. So this is what you get. 

===========================================

"Call Waiting" by Kelandris

Three a.m. and the phone rings. No matter who or where, it's never a good sign. Three a.m. and 
the phone is ringing, ringing, pulling a hand out from under the covers to fumble towards the 
nightstand.

"Whatha...mmmoldon..."

A stray shaft of moonlight spears the room briefly, revealed from between passing clouds. It 
illuminates the finely turned shoulder, the lightly muscled arm of the man reaching from the 
bed. His face comes into view all too briefly, the features aristocratic, the hair and eyes dark 
even under the moon's glow. Holden McNeil picks up the phone.

"Whazzit?"

His voice is as blurred with sleep as his features, as the moon slips behind cloud cover again. 
Holden falls back against the pillow, the handset of the phone between him and a more 
uninterrupted rest. He listens. He hears nothing.

Pulling himself from sleep by force of will, he concentrates. There is something, but it's hard 
to place properly. Breathing? Low breathing? Someone's on the other end of the line.

"Whozere? Is it--?"

And just like that, like ice water splashing against his bare skin, he knows. He sits up, the 
covers sliding back to reveal a trim chest lightly dusted with dark hair. One hand scrubs at his 
eyes unconsciously.

"...Bank?" he asks. "Is that you?"

There may have been, just may have been, a slight gasp on the other end of the line. Some kind 
of suppressed inhalation. He shakes his head, trying to clear it. The moon surfaces just long 
enough to reveal the look of concentration, even as the dark eyes drift closed, before clouds 
scud over the silver sphere again.

"Banky, say something."

Holden waits, eyes opening again. Were anyone in the room with him, they would see the sudden 
stab of pain across his features, pain that never seems to go away. His entire life 
disintegrated after that last talk with Alyssa Jones, with Banky. Nothing was the same. Hooper 
didn't talk to him for months. Tricia Jones--all the Jones girls--were irked at him for making 
Alyssa cry. Jay and Bob had gone off somewhere insane, and the comic had died in the interim, he 
and Banky drawing the last few issues in separate studios, across town from each other. Then the 
last issue had been published, and he hadn't talked to Banky since.

But he'd seen him. Every time he closed his eyes he saw that stricken look on Banky's lean face; 
heard his voice tremble as he whispered "Yes". Yes, to an impossible request. Yes to something 
he would never have agreed to, had he not seen it as his one last chance to get Holden, to have 
Holden. And at the time Holden himself had been oblivious to all of this, thinking it was his 
last chance to keep Alyssa. Only afterwards?after he'd torn out Banky's heart, set it afire and 
handed it back to him, still smoldering?had he realized how Banky had felt. And the next morning 
Banky had seen the realization in his eyes, and took it for pity, not pain.

Pity. The last thing he would have felt for Banky, of all the complicated emotions he'd felt for 
Banky, would have been pity. But Bank didn't see it that way, and shredded him on his way out. A
week later, he'd moved everything of his from Bank-Holdup, and that had been the end of their 
collaboration. That had been the end of everything.

Since then it had been day after day of Bank behind his eyes, the stricken look, the barely seen 
tears causing a glitter in Bank's wide, wide eyes, the stiff tension in his lean frame. And the 
questions, the questions struck at him constantly, day and night. *Why? Why had it happened? Why 
had he loved Alyssa more than Banky, why had he never seen it in Banky, in himself...Why had 
Banky ever loved him, why couldn't they just forgive each other...Why did it all have to 
change?*

And now the call, and the handset dangling against his head. His lips began to tremble, trying 
to force words he didn't want to say out, out into the world, out of the thoughts circling in 
his head.

"Bank...if it's you...I'm sorry."

Had that been a breath? Shuddering, out of control? He threw everything into listening for a 
long moment, and heard a faint, faint buzz of feedback tone, as if someone had thrown their hand 
over the receiver, causing distant echoes to ping, distorted, down the wire. But he wasn't sure. 
He wasn't sure.

He tried again.

"Listen," he said, his own voice catching, trembling. "We need to talk. I need to talk. I..."

And now the words rushed from him, unchecked, as tears began to trace silver trails down his 
face. The moon, pitiless, shone bright just then, picking up every fallen salty drop on the 
rumpled counterpane. His hands scrubbed at the stains ineffectively, scrubbed at his face, fell.

"You call me, Bank, okay? When you're ready to talk. When you're ready to talk...I'm ready to 
listen. I...I need to talk to you, okay?"

He stopped. He waited. He heard...something. Another hitch of breath, a sigh, a sob suppressed 
by sheer will...he wasn't sure. He couldn't be sure. And then dialtone, dialtone shocking 
through him as he hung the handset on the cradle once more.

Crying in earnest now, he lay back down, throwing an arm over his face. He thought he'd be 
awake the rest of the night, but within five minutes, he was sleeping, and all his dreams were 
full of the sound of uneasy machines. And into the largest of them, an unsettling hulk stamped 
"TRUE LOVE", he kept walking, pushing Alyssa Jones before him, pushing her into its wet, open 
maw. The grinding sounds of steel against flesh weren't half as disturbing as seeing Banky come 
out the other side, broken and bleeding.

All night long. All night long. All night long.

END