make excuses for me

by Painted_LadyBones

Summary:

This is the first day without him.

There will be many more.

Or maybe not.

Should he care?

Notes:

"He came back in on Raging Bull, and he stayed till Killers of the Flower Moon."-Martin Scorsese, 2023

This is the first day. 

It isn’t the first time he’s done this, but rarely has the span of time between here and gone been so long. 

48 years. 

The incompleteness nags at him. 

It could have been 50, if he’d just hung on a little longer. 

That’s an unfair thought, but it passes through his mind all the same. 

More than half his life. 

He should be grateful. 

And yet. 

He can’t help wanting a little more. 

 

ᒥᒧ

 

There was a time they lived together. 

Years. 

Bits and pieces of him still litter this house that has, gradually, become his home. 

A guitar in a case. 

Lyrics in a frame. 

Pictures carefully pressed into a book. 

Funny, it seems he started making a museum to Robbie long before it actually became necessary.

 

ᒥᒧ

 

He knew it was coming. 

Robbie had been honest with him about that. 

But he hadn’t let him be at his side. 

‘There’s no point,’ he had said. 

It would only cause him pain. 

Everything that needed to be spoken between them already had been. 

They’d had their goodbyes. 

Still, though - he’d been robbed of a choice. 

Left with a new, lingering doubt. 

How important was he to him, really, if he hadn’t wanted him there at the end? 

 

ᒥᒧ

 

There shouldn’t have been new pain when it actually happened. 

He’d known, he’d been prepared for the inevitable. 

Emotions, though, were not slaves to reason. 

As hopeless as he could see it was, something in him had clung to a dream of an alternate future. 

It was a stupid hope. 

He would have laughed at him for it. 

And he’d miss that, being laughed at by him. 

He’d miss everything that he’d been and the man he himself was, when he still had Robbie. 

 

ᒥᒧ

 

They weren’t really the type for pet names. 

Everyone called him Marty, it was informal enough. 

Everyone called him Robbie, it was informal enough. 

But in his mind, there was another word that floated around. 

Sphinx. 

The cool, quiet, knowing creature. 

Just in his head, just for himself, that was the Sphinx. 

His Sphinx. 

 

ᒥᒧ

 

So what, if they got old? 

If you were lucky enough, everyone did.

It hadn’t changed anything. 

Not what mattered. 

He’d never set that much stock in his own looks. 

His Sphinx, befitting one so ancient and wise, started to go gray. 

Why should he care, anyway, if the hair that ran through his fingers was still as thick and curly and soft as ever? 

The glasses suited him, no matter how much he complained about his fading eyesight. 

 

ᒥᒧ

 

He should be grateful. 

Instead, in the tiny back garden Robbie had laughed at him for wanting in the midst of a green city, and yet planted for him all the same, he felt robbed. 

Of time. 

Of love. 

Of him. 

He took a draw on his smoldering cigarette and watched the smoke sit in the still August evening like a ghost. 

Robbie had helped him quit, all those years ago. 

But he didn’t feel much want to be saved right now. 

 

ᒥᒧ

 

If it had been his movie to direct, the filmmaker would have left the screen long before the songwriter.