Rena | Alex

Eleven minutes. Rena had counted them on the drive over here, one after the other. Only eleven minutes between where he existed and where she’d spent night after night silently crying, pleading, wondering where he was in the world. She couldn’t get past it, nor did she believe she would ever. She’d searched the whole world for him while he’d been walking the same sidewalks, shopping at the same stores, driving the same streets, looking at the same stars. It stung in a way she didn’t think she was capable of feeling after everything they had endured.

“How long have you lived here?” Her intelligent brown eyes scanned the street he lived on, somewhere she’d driven multiple times. Somewhere she’d driven once to get away from Michael, to break down and cry in isolation so she wouldn’t poison his flawlessness with the imperfection of her emotion. She could live in his perfect life as his perfect fiance most of the time, but she had learned how to manage it. It hadn’t been easy, she’d spent a lot of time in tears in the beginning feeling as if loving someone else was wrong and she’d never be able to love him properly. Being back with Alex was reminiscent of that time in her life, it filled her with the same feeling of emotional excruciation she’d once been forced to dwell in. She couldn’t stop herself from rethinking her future, considering the possibilities. She was at a crossroads and she was putting herself there--she was the one even slightly considering allowing this event to change the entire course of her life. It kept her from living completely in the moment, from suffocating in the tension between them that was making it difficult to breathe. Why didn’t it feel like this with Michael? Was it because she hadn’t allowed it to? Was this also her fault, another offense on an endless list of transgressions to feed the endless feeling of shame she felt?

They reached the stairs. He turned to face her, and for a moment, the memory of that hallucination--that kiss--haunted her. She almost cringed, not at the gesture but at the lack of likelihood that it would have gone down in that way. It was so unlike them in every way, yet the notion captivated her, it consumed her. If it were ever to happen, it would not have been like that, she convinced herself. It would not be like that. She internally cringed again, realizing her lapse of judgment in considering kissing someone while she was engaged to be married to another. She was so consumed in her own thoughts that she almost forgot Alex was speaking.

“It’s probably a mess, I’ll just sort it out once we’re in.”

“Alex, please,” look at me. See me. “It’s me.” I would never judge you, I’m physically incapable of disliking any facet of who you are and what you do. Do you remember the night I cleaned your scars as if they were my own? Do you remember me the way I remember you? She entered the apartment, looking around in a way that she hoped soothed his self-consciousness. She felt it as if it were her own, though he’d said nothing about it. She turned back to face him. “You haven’t been here long, have you? It’s not... you.” She got quiet suddenly, fearing what would happen if she continued to speak her mind like she used to. If she revealed to him that she still knew him like she used to. “Sorry,” she showed shame on her face, “it’s an old habit.” Michael doesn’t think I’m extraordinary, he doesn’t believe I’m the novelty that everyone else does. That you do. I can’t speak my mind without fear of silent judgment anymore.

She watched him shut the door with more force than was necessary, realizing that he was as scarred by the life they’d been forced to live as she was. They had the same tells. All this time, I felt so misunderstood. I feel so misunderstood. But you understand me. “We’re safe now. As safe as we can be.”

When he offered to sleep on the couch, she remained silent. She was too weary to argue with him, to tell him otherwise. Not long after he’d said that, he asked if she needed anything. “No, do y-” His gaze stopped her in her tracks, he was looking at her. Really looking at her. She fell silent for a moment, studying his eyes from across the room. She couldn’t find words with her heart beating out of her chest, with the reality of her feelings hitting her in the way they were. Finally, after what felt like an eternity of their eyes connecting, she got the words out. “Do you? Need anything, I mean.”

Rena | Alex

A year. An entire year. When Rena had driven to Michael’s place for the first time, Alex had been moving in down the street. She hadn’t even tried to hide the shock on her face--his candid answer had taken her breath away and put her into shock. This entire time he had been eleven minutes from her. Why hadn’t fate, God, or anyone else allowed their paths to cross? If they had, things could have been so different. Would have been so different. If she had only known, Michael would not have even been an option. He wouldn’t have received a second glance. Not with the way she cared for Alex--the way she still cared. Even now, even hours later, when she’d expected the emotions to run dry, when she’d expected to go numb, to love Michael and to feel indifference for Alex, she couldn’t keep the emotions from bubbling over and drowning her from the inside. She looked like she was going to cry, like she could cry. Everything had changed.

“I’ve changed.” His voice was cold. He was struggling to keep it together just as much as she was, but instead of bringing her that emotion, he was using it as a weapon to push her away. Anything she could think to say was far too intimate, was far too vulnerable. Regardless of how her feelings were failing her, she was responsible for the husband-to-be she had at home. At his home. Their home. That was eleven minutes away. From here. Where she’d searched the world to be, only to give up and find herself closer than she ever had been. She felt like crying, like breaking down. She couldn’t look at Alex in any other light than the one she always had: her human being. Out of all of the ones in the world, this was the one she would protect, she would heal, she would die for, she would die with. She’d proved that today. Her own words echoed in her mind, that she’d rather die with him than live without him. And for as much pain as it was causing her, pain was an emotion--the first one she’d felt after years of numbness. Maybe it was the only one she was capable of feeling anymore, after everything that had happened to her. After everyone that had happened to her. She didn’t think she could turn it off if she tried, she didn’t want to. Admittedly, a longing from deep within her begged it to stay forever and ever, to haunt her until the end of her days. The absence of Alex was more of a feeling than the presence of Michael ever had been or ever would be.

“Take the knife out of your pocket, then,” she imitated his tone: cold, unforgiving, ruthlessly pained. She had seen the outline of the weapon in his pocket ages ago, but didn’t say anything out of respect for him. You haven’t changed, don’t lie to me. The truth is all we have left. It’s all we can have.

“Do you drink tea?” She didn’t know how to answer that. She didn’t, but considering the chill in her bones from more than a day of freezing, and--more admittedly--the sight of Alex in the kitchen, something she had envisioned seeing much more of in the future that had him in it, she nodded softly.

“Sure.” Today I do.

He was standing there, in the kitchen, a distant expression on his face. She wore one similar, deep in thought as she checked her phone again. She hadn’t felt a need to in hours, though she wouldn’t admit to herself that the reason why was that the people that had surrounded her were enough. “Can I ask you a question?” She drew in a deep breath, she couldn’t take back the initial question, and she couldn’t change the one that was to follow. “If you love someone, you notice when they’re gone, right? And you check on them, to make sure they’re okay? If you loved someone, wouldn’t you notice if they were gone? Wouldn’t you search the ends of the earth to make sure they were okay?” She put her phone down. Was the distance between her and Michael as glaringly obvious to someone who wasn’t paranoid, who didn’t need to put on pretenses to keep the facade they called a relationship up?

Finally, he handed her the cup. A drop of blood ran down the side, and without missing a beat, she said, “how bad is it?” When he looked back, confusion on his once-gentle expression, she added, “you’re bleeding. You may say you’ve changed, but I haven’t. I’ve only tried to.”

Reyes | Drew, Hunter, Sullivan

Reyes hadn’t gone home that night to receive the attempt-at-a-talking-to his roommate had probably been working up the courage to think about maybe, possibly verbalizing a small portion of. He’d done exactly what he vowed he wasn’t going to do again, he’d come unhinged. It started with snapping at the one person in the world he was convinced was truly wholesome, and it ended with a night of drunken self-loathing in a field in the middle of nowhere, somewhere quite a ways away from the farm. In fact, he hadn’t remembered where he was or where he’d parked his car before he started walking, so he had to consult one of the dressage riders in the barn who was particularly enamored by Reyes to find him and give him a ride home. He could figure out his car situation when he was thinking more clearly, whether that was days, weeks, months, or years from now.

The girls name was Jessica, he thought. Or maybe Chloe. Or was it Rachel? He was good with names, but he didn’t care what hers was. She had dressed up to come get him, which filled him with disgust. Have some dignity, he thought, ashamed for her. If you saw me the way I see me, you wouldn’t even give me a second glance. I’m nothing, I don’t exist. There’s no breath in my lungs for as long as the breath in hers is filled with declarations of love for someone else. Her perfume was suffocating, as if she’d bathed in it before she’d come. Her mascara and eyeliner were fresh, meaning that she had applied it after she’d awoken due to his text. He sighed softly, annoyedly, as she changed the radio station for the nth time, saying something about ‘what do you usually listen to’ and ‘you can change it to whatever you want, I’m super flexible, like, so flexible, like, anything goes, I’m down for whatever.’

“I don’t listen to music,” he deadpanned icily. He didn’t, it made him different. The only time he had ever enjoyed music was when she played it for him. She backpedaled again, now onto another rambling, nervous conversation he wanted no part of. He wanted silence. He wanted loathing. Hate me, he begged, I already hate myself, I need you to give me more reasons to.

“Listen,” he said in the same indifferent, haunting tone. He was bitter, so bitter he knew he could inflict the damage he was inflicting on himself on anyone. He wanted the world to despise him the way he did, he craved that feeling. He needed to drown in his own pain, in his own wounds. “I will never love you. I need you to move on from me to someone who deserves you, because you clearly have feelings for me and I clearly can’t and won’t ever reciprocate them. I don’t deserve love. From anyone. Of any kind. You don’t want to get involved with someone like me, you deserve better.”

Silence. The very silence he’d craved for what felt to be hours. How far had he traveled? Time was irrelevant, it felt like seconds later that they reached the long, grandiose entrance to the farm and he was certain it was more than that. He mumbled a ‘thank you’ to the girl whose name he still hadn’t cared to remember before stumbling into the barn, the earliest rays of sunlight peeking out from the dark obscurity of the treeline. He wore his drunkenness as well as his shame, and only Sullivan had noticed that something was wrong with him. Luckily, this was before he got on the horse he’d tacked up poorly and had begun to lead out to the arena.

“Reyes,” he lowered his voice, “are you-”

“Drunk? I’m fine.”

“No, out of your mind! Give me the horse, go sober up, and you can do the rest of your string this afternoon.”

…

Despite the fact that he’d taken to drinking to forget, everything was painfully lucid when he awoke the next afternoon. Still, confusion lingered when he saw people there that he could typically avoid. Today, Drew was at the top of that list. The pain in her green eyes touched him, it filled him with a sense of resentment and shame and made him want to change, to be a better man. That was exactly why he had to push her away like all the others. He listened to her respectfully, not intending to speak. Once she had walked away, he replied. He at least owed her whatever kind of explanation he could manage. “Drew, wait.” He turned, watching her regretfully. “I think it’s best if you stay away from me for a while.” His words were so normal, so measured it was as if someone else were speaking for him. He was the puppet and his shame and guilt were the ventriloquist. “You’re going to get hurt, and I can’t let that happen.”

The remainder of the afternoon passed into the evening, and despite the hours that Reyes had lost, he’d made up the list of horses at a reasonable hour with Sullivan’s help. A reasonable enough hour that he found himself at a bar, drinking alone for the second night in a row. In the midst of wallowing in his resentment and regret, he received a text from Sullivan. He had forgotten that, long ago, he’d allowed the man to track his location in the case that, one day, this happened.

[Sullivan]: I’m in the parking lot of the bar you’re currently in.

[Sullivan]: [image]

[Sullivan]: There’s your proof. Now come outside, I’m taking you home.

[Reyes]: make me

[Reyes]: go home sullivan

[Reyes]: i’m a monster

[Reyes]: i don’t want to hurt you

[Reyes]: but it seems i never have a choice

After Sullivan had gone in and retrieved Reyes, he took him home, allowing the truck to fill with silence. He’d sit the man down tomorrow and set him straight, but there was no point in doing anything tonight. He’d walked the man back to his room, which was down the hall from his, checking his watch. It was three in the morning, giving them about two hours of sleep each. The eventer dreaded the morning, for he felt that the friend he was trying so hard to protect would end up hurting himself anyway. He doubted he’d show up, and he wasn’t sure how long Kholo would put up with the acting out the man was doing. Still, what Reyes did was out of his control. He couldn’t take it on, he already took on too many of other people’s problems.

Not long after Sullivan had gone in, Reyes left the room he shared with Hunter once more. The man seemed to be peacefully asleep, and even if he wasn’t, Reyes knew he wouldn’t do anything about it. Despite the fogginess of his mind, his legs knew the way to Drew’s room as if it were the only path they were made to walk. He knocked on her door, less quietly than he imagined he had.

“I don’t know why I’m here,” he said gently, filled with negative emotion and desolation. “I know I told you to stay away from me, and I meant that. I’m a monster, Drew. I can’t protect you from me. But,” he paused, if only for dramatic effect despite the pained earnestness he portrayed. “You’re my good. And damn if I don’t need one good thing.”

He gently cupped her cheek with his hand, his soulful gaze finding hers. Their foreheads touched, but he didn’t try to kiss her. He simply made it the logical next step. “I want this to be your choice,” he whispered desperately. Love me, he pleaded. Show me I’m not a monster. Prove to me I’m worth loving. “I can’t make it for you.”

Alexander Littlewood | Rena

Alex tensed visibly, fingers closing around themselves to stop their traitorous shaking. There was no answer he could give, no way that he could prove her wrong without actually proving her wrong. I’ve changed, is what he wanted to say. But not like that; not for the better. I wish I hadn;t, honest to god I do, but I’ve done what I’ve done. It’s too late to turn back. His hands were quivering again. Suddenly, forcefully, every piece of his body language pulling against what he was doing, he put his hand in his pocket, closed his fingers around it in an entirely different way than what he’d been longing for barely a minute before. His jaw was set, it almost looked angry, except that he knew that she knew him too well to believe that - she only thinks she knows you, she would never look at you like that if she truly did. She would never love you if she truly did. Still, that didn’t take away from the fact that it was obvious, obvious to the person he’d shown so much to, that his expression was one of torment, or maybe stil of anger; directed at himself, though, not her or anyone else. Now it wasn’t just his hand that was shaking, but most of his arm as well. Why was this so hard? It was simple; it was easy; or at least he knew it should have been.

Alex laid it on the side table, fingers closed around it so tightly that if they were on the blade they would surely have bled, eyes jerking between it and Rena. This was simple; it was supposed to be simple. He was torn; one side of him needing to prove to Rena that he was fine, he was better than fine, and the other side needing to prove just the opposite. I can’t do this without you, Rena. I don’t want to do this without you.

Finally, with more effort than it warranted, he pulled his hand away - without the knife - as if he’d been burned. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds that he’d hung in the balance, but already he was regretting it. He couldn’t look Rena in the eye, couldn’t check whether she had noticed how difficult it was to let go. Leaving to make tea was a welcome escape. His skin was crawling inside of him, as if a million tiny bugs had buried themselves there, and it took all he had not to run his fingernails over the barely-healed scabs and do what he could even without the blade. The need to run was greater than before. Was that what she was trying to do? Chase him away before he could do or say anything to break this weighted silence. Or push him over the edge where he was already teetering, until he had no choice but to leave her forever, leave everything forever, or never take his eyes off her again.

Alex glanced over his shoulder when she spoke, still avoiding any eye contact, but it was impossible to ignore her for more than a few more minutes. Gravity. She was scrolling her phone, reading what he could only assume was a message from Michael; again, there was the insufferable knowledge that he had no right in this time warp they found themselves in. It was only when she carried on that a flicker of something he couldn’t name - didn’t want to name - stirred.

“I-- I don’t think it’s my place to answer that.” What he meant to say was, I always noticed you, but some remaining piece of sense stopped him before he could get the words out. It doesn’t matter whether you’re with me or not. I always notice you, Rena. But the time and place for that had disappeared, if he was bold enough to believe it had existed in the first place. And then, softer, “I don’t know if you want the answer.” I think you already know what it is. But that wasn’t his place, not even slightly, not when the man he would be attacking was the one she loved. There was no way of him knowing that he wasn’t motivated by jealousy, not care for her wellbeing. It was always safer to stay silent; usually easier as well, but there was something about her presence - just her - that made him want to talk with her until dawn and beyond that.

He had to pull his gaze off her to pick up the cups, pulling his sleeve down a little lower as he did so. There was something familiar about this, as if in another universe, another lifetime, this might have been a future. Their future. Had this ever been a possibility in this world? Could it still be? He couldn’t let himself think of that spiral. (Which was almost ironic, considering the rabbit trails he let his mind wander down daily, whether they were beneficial or not.)

Following her gaze, he glanced down at his wrist. Shit. Of course she would have noticed. Of course she would have seen more than the blind mask he was so terrible at holding around her. He should have seen this coming, taken the time to wipe it off enough to make it invisible for the seconds her gaze might have landed on it. “Oh. That.” His face twitched under the weight of everything he wasn’t saying. Everything he couldn’t say. “It’s...I’m fine. It’s complicated.” It was the weakest excuse, especially given that the one person who would be willing to sit through the broken mess, but it was the best he could give on the spot. “I mean...it’s nothing. It’d take hours just to sift through what’s important and what’s not.”

He sat down tentatively, cradling the mug in one hand. Accidentally or purposefully, he was on the opposite end to Rena, sitting too straight for it to be natural. The tea was cooling in his hands, but that didn’t feel important any more. He was only forced to break his vacant stare at the floor to drink some of it when his trembling hand threatened to spill the tea. Maybe that was what broke his silence, or maybe that was what he liked to blame it on. The room had taken on a similar air to that long-ago night in the passage, after she’d almost bled to death, when they were less than friends but also closer than anyone he’d met in a long time. Their gentle confessions, escaping only because of their exhaustion.

“I didn’t try to change, and I think that’s the problem.”

Rena | Alex

“I don’t know if you want the answer.” Tears welled up in her brown eyes, rolling down her cheeks in a peaceful way that contradicted the current state of her being. She’d stopped even glancing in his direction, her gaze stuck to her shoes, biting her lip to avoid the tears that she lost control over. This was how it always was, the onset of her breakdowns. He’d seen one or two in previous times, and if he knew her the way that she thought he did, he knew she had nothing left to give, no more energy or sanity to pretend. She had to give up the facade whether she wanted to or not, for her body, her mind, and her sanity had finally reached a point where she had to pay attention to them. She could no longer ignore or neglect them, she was being slapped in the face with almost three years worth of emotion that had been swept under the rug.

“You’re right,” she whispered, her voice breaking. Her tone was so soft, so vulnerable, all because she was still trying to retain her dignity, retain her indifference. If he didn’t know how she was feeling, she could go on living lies she’d turned into truths. Now that she’d lost that option, she felt she had no choice but to bend to the other extreme--to tell every truth she’d convinced herself was a lie. “I don’t want the answer. You know why?” Her head was foggy, filled with a lack of words and a numbness she rarely felt. Normally her words were perfectly scripted, planned out minutes in advance. This was different, she stumbled over her words. She stared at the wall, massive gaps between speaking and thinking. Other times, the words were rushed, they lacked cohesion. Finally, she stared at him. She mustered up the courage and a simple, lifeless, semi-rehearsed sentence she knew she’d regret. She met his eyes in an act of desperation. “It should be you.”

She cried a little harder, yet, instead of stopping to regain her composure, the burst of emotion seemed to spark fluidity in her dialogue. “I held you in my arms today as you were dying, and all I could think about was how wrong everything was--how wrong everything is. Look at you, you’re a shell of the shell of the person you used to be--you’re not even living, you’re not even existing. You left me when I needed you most, when I would have given up any of the few things I had left to just. be. yours.” She sighed softly, wiping her tears away, though so many had already dripped onto her sweatshirt. “I searched the world for you and when I finally got over you, you had the nerve to walk back into my life.” She stopped to take a breath, her voice cracking with raw emotion still but her breathing beginning to regulate despite the constant flow of teardrops. “And you know what the worst part of all is?” Now she was shaking like he was, feeling weak in the knees from the power of her emotions. “I wanted it to happen. I prayed for it to happen. For weeks, months, years. And I would have prayed for it to happen for years after, even if I never saw your face again in this lifetime. Even if I never heard your name again in this lifetime. Even if we had lived eleven minutes from each other for the rest of our lives, narrowly escaping fateful encounters for the rest of our days. I wanted it to be you. I will never stop wanting it to be you. Because goddamn it Alex, I love you. I will never stop loving you. Not a day went by that I didn’t look at Michael and know in my heart it was supposed to be you, but now it can’t be.” She cried a little harder, hugging herself as she sat in a fetal position on the couch. “Because I made a promise to someone who doesn’t deserve to feel what I have felt, over and over and over again. I will not leave Michael, because I will not do to someone else what has been done to me. And if I’m being honest, I don’t know how I’m going to live like that--live like I have been living every second of every day since you left--but I have to. I don’t have a choice.”

She was crying once again, unable to look at him in the midst of the wreckage she’d caused. She had a moment of revelation, it hit her in the stomach, making her dizzy and nauseous and unable to bear herself. Once she left this apartment, she’d never speak to Alex again. She’d never clean the blood from his arms, she’d never be incapable of making eye contact with him, she’d never help him put his pieces back together when he was lying on the bathroom floor, shattering into a million pieces. “Oh my god,” she whispered softly to herself, incredulously. The weight of losing the only person she truly loved hit her like a ton of bricks, along with the realization that if she walked out of here like she planned, she’d still be leaving someone the way she’d been left.

Rena | Alex

“It’ll be for the best.” Her face didn’t try to hide the pain and betrayal it had twisted itself into. No, she wanted to say, but couldn’t get herself to say anything that would bring her scruples into question more than she already had. It won’t be for the best. Change my mind. Beg me to stay. Remind me that love and stability aren’t the same thing.

“You can’t honestly believe that,” her tone reflected the emotions on her face. Terrified that she was the only one who felt the weight of this, bewildered at his agreement to a statement it had pained her to say, anger that she was stuck in a situation where she couldn’t see up from down, and she couldn’t make a clear choice. He started rambling, trying to keep himself from crying. This made her cry harder, inconsolably. She had gotten herself into this mess, and she wasn’t sure which version of her life would constitute getting her out.

“No,” she whispered, kneeling down on the floor before him. She tipped his chin up so he would meet her watery gaze. “Stop me,” she whispered, feeling more confused and stuck with every strand of dialogue between them. She started crying again, crumpling into a little ball on the floor at his feet. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I’m so sorry. I can’t ask you to do that, I know what I’m doing is wrong, I know it’s not fair to you. I just- nothing makes sense anymore. It all made sense and I had everything together and I knew what my life looked like and then I held you in my arms today, and you were dying, and I don’t know how not to love you. I can turn off any feeling except this, and I don’t know that I would want to. If I could go back and have you not come to my engagement party, I wouldn’t. I just- what am I supposed to do?”

…

In time, the weight of their emotions suffocated anything but silence. The sobs had disappeared, fading into the air and bringing the atmosphere down to a place of hopeless desperation and the presence and absence of love and longing. Rena found herself lying on the floor, her brown hair splayed out around her in all directions. Her arms were crossed over her chest, which was gently rising and falling in a rhythmic way not at all reminiscent of how it had been through her tears and the fear of losing the only one worth living for. This was the first time in days she could breathe--truly breathe--despite the heaviness of the air and the tension that still lingered between them. Though, she knew that if Alex made any kind of effort to get closer to her, she wouldn’t be able to help whatever happened next.

She kept her brown eyes fixated on the ceiling, lost in thought to the point where it numbed her. She thought about all of the life that ceiling had seen, how it had watched Alex walk in and out for a year. What had it seen? What kind of person had it watched him grow into while she was out there trying to find him, trying to save herself by saving him? Her brain once again fixated on something, the same thing she had fixated on once before: it had been an entire year that they lived within walking distance of each other, yet their paths hadn’t been allowed to cross. An entire year, well over three-hundred chances and yet all of them had failed. Why now? Now that she was engaged, now that another family was attached to her, though she could not in good conscience claim them as her own. She was too far removed from love to know what it felt like, to believe them when they told her that they loved and accepted her. She wasn’t sure that she ever would.

After a while of silence, of pondering, of pain, Rena broke the silence with the gentlest, most tender question, something like a reverie manifesting off of her lips. Her eyes were filled with tears once more, the silent kind. The kind that represented the most internal pain. “If it had been us in the end, what would our life have been like?”