Reyes | Chase, Drew, Sullivan

“Drink, drugs, and hot people. All of which are plentiful in this vicinity…”

Reyes couldn’t help the snicker that escaped his lips, though it had little sound and was more properly labeled an abnormal pattern of exhalation. “You’re wise beyond your years,” he retorted in his typical tone: whimsical, serious, and poetic, not resembling the sarcasm his words implied in any way, shape, or form. Sullivan’s expression showed his inability to detect what Reyes meant with his comment. Had he been serious, did he mean that? He was a weird enough guy, nothing was out of the question in the eventer’s mind. Drew was equally weird, and it was for that reason that everyone who knew them expected that they were or would be much more than they were in that moment. Sullivan couldn’t really tell what that was, either, but he reasoned that he didn’t have to as long as they did. He knew they didn’t know any more than him, though.

It hadn’t taken long for Drew’s attention to be drawn elsewhere, and as soon as he’d watched the woman come, Reyes watched her leave once more. Sullivan had gone elsewhere, or perhaps he’d left the vicinity altogether. Though he was quite convinced it was the latter, Reyes didn’t stop himself from scanning the crowd for that familiar face, or any other he wouldn’t mind sharing space with. He knew himself better than to consider having any sort of conversation with anyone here, he simply wanted to silently share intellectual energies with someone worthy. His dark eyes continued to scan the crowd, looking for people he recognized. Too loud, too energetic, too silent, too dim-witted, too self-focused. In other words, no, no, no, no, no. He paused, watching another figure near the campfire, near Drew. He was alone, but looked oddly familiar. Reyes froze--he simply stopped functioning. He knew where he recognized the dark-haired man from, and every piece of him was uneasy from that point forward.

By the time Drew returned, Reyes was sitting beneath the tree, sulking alone. He was lonely, bitter, and distraught, and the silence he typically drowned in had been shifted to angst. The rational side of him declared that there was no way this wasn’t the man he thought it was, that out of the billions of people on earth the only one he didn’t want to see was here. The narrative in his head served the angst he needed to continue fueling, and that was all that mattered.

When she clung onto him, Reyes flinched and tried to peel her off of his large frame. Don’t touch me, he thought to himself, the resentment building as his upper body stiffened. Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me. Then began the ramblings about tattoos, which he initially attempted to tune out. The tone of her voice only annoyed him more and more, causing him to reach a breaking point. He couldn’t even see clearly with the angst-turned-rage he felt coursing through his veins.

“Go home, Drew,” he said coldly, peeling her off of him with enough conviction to succeed, “or find a man who can be this for you, because he’s not me.” With that, he took off towards the dormitories without as much as a glance back.

Rena | Alex, Max

“So you’re not the lucky guy she’s engaged to? I don’t mean to pry, I just noticed that she had a ring and you didn’t.” The two men were sitting side by side in the waiting room while the doctors worked on Rena. Alex looked as if he were something out of a crime scene, so covered in her blood, and though he still appeared to be in pain and not properly restored to full health, he refused to be seen. Max was completely healthy other than a twisted ankle and a couple of scratches and bruises from his sprint through the woods, so he took the opportunity to ask all of the burning question that had been on his mind for hours. “Even I thought you’d be the one in the end, the way she acted with you… she was different.”

...

Rena awoke with a troubled gasp, her eyes wide with fear and concern. Alex was sitting beside her bed, Max beside him. She watched Alex with the deepest concern and bewilderment as if asking, that thing I recall, did it happen? His eyes flickered over hers for only a moment, and the confusion in his expression indicated that it probably hadn’t. Still, her eyes begged the answer to a question she couldn’t bring herself to ask, and in a strong enough fashion that it caught Max’s attention.

“Are you guys good?” Max asked with no level of sensitivity to the situation. When all he received was another glance between the two of them, who seemed to be making it a habit of communicating through eye contact instead of words, he moved on. “Katarena, how are you feeling?” He gestured to Alex without using his name. “He said you got shot and by the time he found you you were unconscious. You were unconscious for almost a full day.”

She breathed a sigh of relief, feeling the air in her lungs. She realized that she was no longer shivering and she could breathe. Her body ached but it wasn’t convulsing with pained shivers every few seconds. She was mumbling in Romanian, but her words lacked coherence even to the other Romanian in the room. The two men looked at each other before pressing the button to call the nurse in. After running some basic tests to ensure the woman’s stable condition, he left the trio in the room together again, assuring them he’d be back in a few hours to ensure her condition was improving and to bring the discharge paperwork once he was sure she was recovering. She’d lost a lot of blood, and though it’d been restored through various transfusions, the unconsciousness and incoherence were concerning.

Rena felt like hell, even with the meds in her system. Whatever story Max had told the doctors about why she looked the way she did must have worked because they never even mentioned the police, much to her bewilderment. She had expected to leave with a questioning at minimum, especially with the awful blue, yellow, and green bruises that were starting to show up all over her body. She looked like the highest level of an assault case, putting it lightly. Between the stitches below her collarbone, the bruises, and the look of hopelessness in her eyes, she looked traumatized beyond belief and unlikely to have been in just a minor accident. The painkillers they had given her weren’t doing much for the pain, and only seemed to be making her emotions extremely unstable. She had gone from laughing to crying at least twice by the time they released her, and had done so with specific instructions for her spouse--Alex, because no one corrected them--to keep an eye on her and to ensure no problems arose in the next twenty-four hours.

By that time, Sofia had returned with Luka. They’d gone to get the trio new clothing to replace what had been damaged after everything they’d been through. Max had been hesitant to let Sofia go with the stranger, but after all of the history Sofia had claimed to have with the same organization he and Viktor had been trapped in, he’d conceded. He made a joke about regretting that decision due to the quality of the clothing they’d brought back from the convenience store across the street, though Rena was just happy to be wearing something that wasn’t covered in blood. She stood at the sink in the t-shirt and sweatpants she’d replaced her old clothing with, rinsing the remainder of the blood off her hands, arms, neck, and face. Her hands shook as fear ravaged through her weak body, reminding her of where she’d been, what she’d come from, where she was going. She felt like a young child in the dark, overtaken by the overwhelming desire to run to a safe place--a safe person--to escape the evils the world harbored. Yet, greater fear came from the realization that there was no safe person. The person she deserved to feel the greatest comfort from made her feel nothing, and the person she did feel comfort from could only create it in her at the cost of guilt, shame, and discomfort for as long as they remained in this situation. The only person who could have given her any comfort or clarity on the present or future had died to save her, leaving her with nothing. What good was a life if it was lived like this?

“You good?” Max asked softly, standing behind her. She watched him in the mirror, her eyes glassy and threatening to spill once more. She shook her head no, tears spilling once more. She turned and flung herself around him, crying silently.

“I don’t know what to do,” she whispered softly. In his fixed, narrow mindset, Max assumed she was talking solely about her love life. She was talking about so much more than that, she had nowhere to go, nowhere to be, no set purpose in life. All of the things that had once been so black and white were now blended together in various shades of gray. She couldn’t see her future anywhere or any way. If she married Michael, she’d impress everyone including herself. He had the perfect job, he was attractive, and he always knew what to say to everyone. He did all the right things. He opened the doors Rena needed opened to be successful in her career, and he’d supported her with her classes so she could study and graduate impressively early. Yet, Michael was the ‘safe’ option. There was little passion with Michael, they never fought. He was too healthy, he was accepting to the point where she thought he didn’t care. She couldn’t tell if living in his house and being a successful, attractive woman amidst the London elites would really make her happy or if it was, in fact, the ‘safe’ option. Would she end up divorced in a few years anyway, wishing she’d broken her engagement? Would she realize the single life was best suited for her, or would she go digging up past loves, only to find them married with families? Would Alex ever move on from Rena, if he’d loved her in the way he described with his dying breaths?

“One step at a time,” he whispered gently, not knowing what else to say. He was never the comforter, he didn’t possess the empathy or the good advice that Viktor had. A pang of grief coursed through him at the thought, at the missing figure. Viktor would have known exactly what to say, Max was just repeating the mantra he’d adopted for himself.

Rena was the one to break the embrace, her soft brown eyes hardened with the reality of what she was going home to. As far as she knew, her car was still at the university where she’d parked it several days prior, and her fiance and his family would be waiting at home for them. Had he even missed her? Did he go looking for her? She doubted it. Sarah would understand, she would comfort Rena, but she’d ask too many questions that led to too many revelations about her brother’s fiancee’s past. Rena couldn’t speak of this to them, not even a word. She knew it would suffocate her from the inside out, and she wasn’t ready to endure that yet.

Sullivan | Livvie

Sullivan had used Drew’s entrance to make a gradual exit from the situation, his own attention focused elsewhere. He had enough to drink, he’d said enough to people who barely knew him, and he was well past ready to go back to his room and sleep for the few hours he still could. He didn’t necessarily like anyone here to any great extent, and he knew Evander would be expecting him bright and early to school the first string of horses before morning lessons. The less sleep he received, the less patience he would have for his mentor’s personality.

As he made his way across the party, he caught the eyes of one of Evander’s students, Livvie. She was the only other Irish rider at White Oaks that he knew of, and from the little he knew of her, she was fairly popular--one of the popular types. Very rarely did he watch the lesson group she was in due to his schedule, but on the rare occasion he’d been present, he remembered everyone had been fond of her. He turned his gaze away as if to pretend it hadn’t happened, then, retracting his error, looked back awkwardly and offered her a nod of greeting as he weaved through the crowd towards the barn. As he fell into the darkness of the unlit pathway, he glanced back at her once, his brawny figure visible only by the moonlight. He continued on to the barn without a second thought.

Once he’d reached the barn, he pulled a large gray stallion out of one of the end stalls and led him down the aisle, towards one of the grooming areas. He clipped the cross ties to the dappled gray’s halter, picking his feet and brushing him with care. When he was done, he put sport boots on the horse’s legs, leading him out into one of the empty arenas. Under the glow of the arena lights, both horse and rider looked ethereal, as if they were something otherworldly--divine. Their shadows loomed beneath them, casting a legendary presence that stretched many feet beyond each step they took. Putting the large beast on a longe line, the eventer began to work him at a walk, then a trot, watching the way he carried himself. The wordless connection between the pair created something magnetic in the air, something of a spectacle despite the absence of onlookers around them.

Alex | Rena, Max, Luka, Sofia

If you didn’t mean to pry, you wouldn’t have asked. Unconsciously, Alex’s hand had moved to tighten around his other wrist. “No.” He was being too sharp, he knew, but he didn’t have any reason not to be. “She’s engaged to a certain Michael Taylor. Ask her about it when she wakes up.” I’m just as uninformed as you are. The phrase spoke louder about his thoughts than he’d wanted it to: I’m just as uninformed as you are; I don’t want to talk about any of this; why are we acting as if we’re friends when I have no energy for keeping up pretence? His curt tone ended the conversation as it had started. He knew that Max didn’t deserve whatever treatment he was giving him - the man had done his best to get them out of there - but he didn’t care to explain that it had nothing to do with Max. The exhaustion was more than the aftereffects of whatever they’d given him, and more to do with the back-to-back amount of time he’d spent in close proximity to other people. And, although he hated that it was like this, being around Rena drained him even more than anything else that had happened. He’d buried his emotions for so long that now it was a build-up of years that he had to process in a day. That in itself warranted tiredness, not even mentioning the stress of losing her, almost losing, still being in the position that he would inevitably lose her again.

---

Alex’s eyes had progressively become heavier, and they were a moment away from closing when he heard Rena’s gasp. Rena, Rena’s okay. She’s going to be okay. His grip on the chair handle loosened completely with his soft sigh under his breath, but tightened again almost immediately when her gaze landed on his. Were his eyes showing everything that he had felt, that he still felt? Was he betraying himself with his own self-interest? He had to break away almost as soon as it had begun. The risk was too high; she couldn’t have remembered those moments in the snow, of his begging to her, to the Max that hadn’t yet arrived, to a higher power he’d never believed in, just to give her a little longer. Hold on a few more minutes, he vaguely remembered whispering, just a little longer. Please, Rena. Please. She couldn’t have remembered his hand in hers - he’d been the one holding it there, since hers had all but lost its strength - couldn’t have remembered his promises he couldn’t keep. Stay, please stay. I - I can do whatever you want me to. If you want me to disappear, I will. I can blank myself from your life again, but you need to have just that. Life. Please. Anything, whatever you want. (That was largely a lie, in hindsight. If she’d asked him not to make a new start again, he couldn’t have sworn he wouldn’t. Besides, it was better for both of them if he wasn’t around to mess with her perfect life, her perfect fiance, her perfect future that would crumble if he came anywhere near it. Wasn’t it?)

Alex shifted to stare at Max at his next words. Half of him wanted his gaze to be judgemental, aggressive, all the emotions he hated simply for being emotions, but somehow it came out closer to a plea for understanding. Don’t talk about that, he seemed to say. Anything but that. Was it too late to ask for some tact from him? Apparently, although he guessed it was more by chance than purpose, Max caught the hint and moved on.

The next twenty-four hours were a blur. At some point, once Luka and Sofia returned, he left for an hour or two to shower, change into some cleaner, non-bloodsoaked clothes, but although he still longed for solitude, the need to be with Rena was stronger. The chance that she could slip away while he was out - the doctors had assured him repeatedly that she was out of danger, but he wouldn’t believe such sugar coated lies - was too high, too terrifying; he’d promised himself he wouldn’t make the mistake again of being too occupied with himself to say a proper goodbye to the person he loved. The pair had offered to replace the clothing from the kidnapping, but he refused. Familiarity was one thing he would give himself, if only that. The unstained shirt, though, was almost worth it; suddenly, all of the questioning glances from staff and visitors alike seemed to have disappeared. Not fully, of course - he knew that he had a habit of skulking, as if he knew he wasn’t supposed to be there, and his tall build drew more attention than he enjoyed.

Somehow, he’d offered to take Rena home. It was everything both of them had avoided with a vengeance, being truly alone since the incident, but it felt like the last thing he could do before he left. (Again. You seem to have a pattern.) It was selfish to assume that his absence would bother her even faintly, but was it so unreasonable? He refused to believe that everything she’d said - anything, for that matter - when they thought he was dying. He had to have been delirious, or she had just been stringing him along in order to let him die as peacefully as he could. None of it had meant anything. Hadn’t it? (Is it so difficult to believe that you were worthy of love? If they had been true, they were said to his past self, to the man Rena had known in Virginia. That person had died the moment he stepped onto the plane to Heathrow. Didn’t she know that? Don’t you know that?)

“This the right street?” Alex’s voice was strangely monotone, when everything else was running wild. His heart rate, his emotions. The only things he’d managed to say during the drive were questions about the destination, or replying to one of those answers. Directions were simple, impassive, entirely disconnected from him. Directions were safe. He brought the vehicle to a halt, and was about to open the door to walk Rena out when he risked a glance at her. That was simultaneously the worst and best possible thing he could have done. The raw emotion in her voice, the tears streaming down her cheeks - smiling, as expected, which told him that whatever she asked for he had to comply; she needed it - her pleading gaze. He had never been able to refuse her, except for the one time that it truly mattered, but this was no different. A friend would do this. Wouldn’t they? If nothing else, he could accept calling himself her friend. A broken one, a manipulative one, one that brought nothing to the relationship other than his emotional baggage, but a friend nonetheless.

His eyes were steady as they met hers - the first time he’d been able to do that calmly in a long while. “Hey, it’s fine,” he said softly. “I’m here, okay? Whatever you need.” The escape plan would have to wait a while, however long she needed. (Already, collapsing against your own emotions. I thought you were better than this. Shut up.) He was wary of touching her in any way, which was the only thing that prevented him from taking her hand and holding it to his chest. She’d have long forgotten that, but to him it was one of his most precious memories. All of the ones with her were, in all honesty.

Driving made it easier to speak; there was none of the confusion about how much eye contact was too much, too little, and how to read the situation. “I…” Where could he begin? Wherever you find the words, we can go from there. It sounded distinctly like something Rena would say, and for a brief moment he wondered whether their memories were blurring into his everyday thoughts. “I wanted to apologize. For…” Letting her get shot? Leaving her in Romania? Any and all of the countless things he’d done to hurt her. “I just needed to say I’m sorry. I should never have gone to your...to your engagement party.” He had no right to the catch in his throat when he spoke about that. “I shouldn’t have done that.” He had blink rapidly to clear his vision, and for once he knew it wasn’t entirely because he was feeling lightheaded. Did this have to be the time all of his weaknesses showed?

They pulled up alongside a small building that looked as if at some point it had been a beautiful example of architecture, but years of decay had changed that. Again, he was torn between helping her walk and knowing that she wouldn’t appreciate any of that; it would do the opposite. Instead, he walked just ahead of her up the narrow staircase, slowing his pace to make hers as inconspicuous as possible. He slotted his key in the lock, but turned to face her before opening it fully.

“It’s probably a mess, I’ll just sort it out once we’re in.” He was suddenly apprehensive of showing her this. Showing her anything, anything at all, even when nothing he did or said could be more vulnerable than those moments in the snow, in the cell, in any place where they had happened to be together. It was irrational, to be self-conscious of something that had little to do with him, and yet the fact that he was letting her into his apartment was lowering his guard. His heart was wide open in a way he’d almost forgotten, and that level of candor left him unprotected. (He wasn’t sure how, exactly, he was being open or honest or any of those words he always struggled with, but regardless he was.)

As soon as Rena was inside, he closed the door with more force than necessary and locked it just as swiftly. He might have called it caution from their recent experiences, but this wasn’t nearly the beginning of the paranoia. A sharp glance out the window - was the elderly man walking his dog spying on them? Was he, too, going to turn on them? Unable to control it, or not trying to, he pulled down the curtain just as abruptly. Better in the dark.

"I'll sleep on the couch." There would be no argument about it - Rena was still recovering, and she was a guest. And she was Rena. He'd have given the shirt of his own back to help her - he already had, ironically enough - and this was the least he could do to repay every kindness she'd given him, every betrayal he'd given her.

Was he supposed to say something, do something, act as if everything was normal? It wasn’t even close to that, but didn’t she deserve something better than what he could ever give her? Somehow, he could tell he was talking about more than just the current situation. It wasn’t clear where the line had been drawn; where the present stopped and the past, all of their past together and apart, began. “Do you...I mean, do you need anything?” For the first time since she’d asked if she could stay, he looked into her eyes. Properly looked at her, not the half-hearted glances he’d resorted to in order to keep his emotions under control.

His eyes said all the words he could never say. I can’t do this. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t pretend that you’re my friend and I yours when everything is so confusing I can’t even begin to find the end, the beginning, to identify anything other than your eyes. I can’t do this when you have a fiance I could never live up to, when my even being in your life jeopardizes it. I won’t do this. I won’t do this to you. Please, Rena. Please.