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Satrio's Indonesian has always been worse than Dimas's, and four years at Stanford hasn't improved matters any. Dimas mines this handicap for his own personal entertainment, which just goes to show that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Goodbye, law degree. Goodbye, green card. Hello, being the butt of jokes in languages he can't speak. Again.
They're on their way to a haunting in Tennessee, and Dimas is in full form.
"What's with the lemon face?" Dimas asks. "Perlu berak, nih? Sakit perut?"
Satrio rolls his eyes. "Dude, must you? I get it, okay?"
"Apa? Nge-get apa?" Dimas grins, and Satrio figures the best way to go about this is to just let his brother Indonesia himself out. It's not that Satrio has anything against his mothertongue, but Dimas speaks it like he's making a point. Look at me, look what I am, look what you can be too, what you can still be again. Dimas persists through forgotten vocabulary and the diminished reflex to roll his R's, and perks up when Satrio concedes to speak it.
"Coba kalo ada genderuwo di Amerika, ya?" Dimas says. "Kok nggak pernah ada genderuwo disini?"
He raises an eyebrow. "Why would there be genderuwos in the U.S.?"
"Because, kalo ada jinn dari Arab and, what, buruburu dari Jepang, kan genderuwo dari Indonesia juga bisa, kan?" Dimas shrugs. "It's possible."
"If you want to hunt genderuwo, probably your best bet is going back home," Satrio mutters.
"Yeah, well, someday."
Satrio leans back in his seat. "Sure."
The ghost in Chattanooga is a simple salt-and-burn, and as they watch the body catch flame, noxious fumes invading their nostrils, Dimas clasps Satrio's shoulder and says, "Good job, soldier. We'll have you killing werewolves again in no time."
"I can take a werewolf any day," Satrio says automatically, and Dimas just laughs this delighted laugh, so whole-hearted that Satrio can't help but smile.
"Ah, 'Tri," he says. "It's like you never left."
And then there's the usual post-hunt six-pack in the motel, and more bilingual conversation, but its edges are softened now by victory and beer. They used to speak like this all the time, Dimas slipping into Indonesian and Satrio staying almost exclusively in English, but there would be no malice in it, none of this two-headed monster that now stalks their tongues.
"But I couldn't help myself," Satrio is saying. "I was kinda strapped for cash, and a Sriracha-drinking contest seemed like an easy way to make some. I mean, the guy was from Ohio. Also drunk." He tries out a "Dasar bule."
"Da-sahr boo-lay," Dimas mimics.
"Oh, fuck you," Satrio smiles, throwing a bottlecap at him. "It's not like you don't have an accent either."
Maybe they're just rusty, Satrio thinks. Years of not talking to each other, and now they are each other's confidantes again. The difference is that the languages that once bound them have become a battlefield. A tug of war, at the very least. But maybe they just need more of this, more of each other to straighten it out, familiarizing what has become alien. Which is funny, because considering the past few months, you'd think the answer would definitely involve less Dimas, but Satrio thinks maybe he has different questions now.
Dimas raises his eyebrows. "'Loe menang, kan?"
"Well, of course," Satrio says. "But jesus christ, I had the shits for like three days."
"You do us proud," Dimas says, raising his bottle, and Satrio clinks their drinks together and says, "'Ma kasih, dude."