By noon the following day, Alaster was
still passed out on Blue's couch. He had at first requested the bed,
half asleep when Blue led him up to the apartment, but Blue had
denied this request, even when he offered to share the bed with her.
“You're drunk, just do what I tell you,” she'd scolded him as she
made up the couch for him and helped him take off his sneakers. She'd
also forced him to drink another glass of water before allowing him
to fall asleep once more, and made sure his blanket was snug around
him before at last retiring to her room to mess around on the
computer until she fell asleep herself.
“I'm starting to worry,” said
Roger. He and Blue were drinking coffee at the kitchen table,
watching Alaster's sleeping form on the couch. Luckily, neither of
them had work that day. “Are we certain he's still alive? Maybe he
died in the night.”
“Pretty sure dead people don't snore
like that,” Blue replied. She smirked at the picture Alaster made
at present, sprawled across the couch with his mouth hanging open,
snoring to beat the band. “Anyway, I don't think he sleeps very
well under normal circumstances, so I'm going to let him sleep in as
long as he wants to.”
“You have a blind spot for this guy,”
Roger said, giving her a look. “I know you don't want to hear it
but I'm worried about you. I don't want you to tie yourself down with
somebody who's never going to change. You always feel like you have
to take care of other people, and don't act like it's not true
because you even do it to me. That's not a good way to start a
relationship.”
This was not the first time Roger had
said as much to Blue, but as usual, she didn't let his comments
bother her much. She knew her own mind well enough, and she knew that
even if it was true that she felt like she had to take care of other
people, she liked to do it. There was nothing wrong with being a
caretaker, in her mind. Sure, she was smart enough to know that for
some people, taking care of others kept them from taking care of
themselves, but that wasn't her.
“Who's gonna do it if I don't?” she
asked Roger. “I'm not saying that's why I do it, I'm just saying
that the only other person he's got in this world is Fae. And he's
not a bad guy, Rog. I know I say that all the time but it's true. You
know, he got drunk yesterday because he was upset that I didn't want
to be in a relationship with him.”
“Okay, that's emotional manipulation.
You can't be with a guy because he says he's gonna go get drunk if
you won't. You know that, right?”
Roger meant well, and it wasn't like he
was giving her bad advice. He wasn't saying anything that Blue
wouldn't have said to him if he was in her shoes. Maybe Roger could
see the big picture better than she could, being outside of the
bubble. Nonetheless, she couldn't help feeling protective of Alaster
when others talked about it him like this.
“He's not trying to manipulate me,”
she said, and she felt confident about that. Alaster wasn't nearly
cunning enough for that anyway. He really was just a mess. “Besides,
I'm not with him. We slept together once. Granted, it was night
before last. And Al's gotten way more serious about it than I
expected he would.”
It fact, Blue had been surprised that
Alaster actually wanted to sleep with her in the first place. There
was a sort of easy chemistry between them, for some reason, but Blue
was sometimes uncertain that Alaster recognized it. Yet, they'd slept
together and Alaster was apparently all torn up about it.
“He's just a little broken,” she
said. “Or maybe a lot broken, but either way, he's my friend.”
“It's not your job to fix him,”
said Roger.
With a groan of irritation, Blue pushed
up from the table and gathered up their breakfast dishes. She
prepared a plate of the leftovers for Alaster and stashed it in the
microwave. The guy needed to eat more, she decided. He was skin and
bones.
“You're just going to ignore
everything I've said to you, aren't you?” Roger asked.
“I ain't gonna to ignore it,” said
Blue. “I'm just going to do what feels right anyway, even if it
don't seem like a good idea to you.”
“You're stubborn.” Roger finished
his coffee and pushed back his chair. “I'm going out for a while.
I've got an exam coming up that I need to study for so I'll probably
be at the university library if you need me.”
She waved to him, distracted, as she
set about washing the dirty dishes that had begun to pile up in the
sink.
Blue was not a neat freak by any
stretch of the imagination. In some ways, she was a bit of a slob,
but she liked a clean kitchen. Above all, Blue liked for things to be
efficient. She didn't like to waste time and she did like to be
prepared.
After wiping down the table and the
kitchen counter, and starting a fresh pot of coffee, she settled down
with a book to wait for Alaster to wake up. He looked untroubled in
his sleep, though she'd seen him have nightmares before that seemed
quite horrible. She thought that maybe those nightmares were one of
his reasons for drinking so much. What Alaster was trying to do with
alcohol, Blue suspected, was drown out all of the bad stuff that he
was constantly thinking about.
She couldn't imagine what it was like
in Alaster's head. His very presence was stressful to others, to say
nothing of how stressed he was himself on a regular basis. Some of
the ways in which he displayed this stress reminded Blue of Fae. The
twins shared quite a few mannerisms, but there were some stark
differences between them. They were both sad quite often, but Fae's
sadness was a kind of melancholy acceptance, whereas Alaster seemed
to rail against his own depression, fighting it like it might engulf
him entirely if he allowed it.
Fae had Shadow, of course, to help keep
her sadness at bay. Neither of them had any family, aside from
Alaster. Shadow's family had died in a tragic accident a short time
before she met Fae, but she seldom spoke of it. As for Fae, her
family was still alive, but her parents didn't speak to her. They
didn't speak to Alaster either. Blue's knowledge of the abuse that
had taken place in their home was limited, as neither of the twins
were forthcoming with the tale. Both seemed to want to put it behind
them, and Fae did manage it, to some degree. But Alaster was locked
in battle with it, his every move influenced by it.
When they were teenagers, Blue had
often seen Fae sporting bruises. She'd covered them up when she could
and never spoke of them. Blue had known her then, but they weren't
close. It had only been a few years ago now that they'd reconnected
and become good friends, and Fae had shared a little more of the
story. Fae had left home as soon as she turned eighteen, cutting ties
with her parents, which she said seemed to suit them just fine.
“I used to wonder what I did to make
them hate me,” she once told Blue. “When I started dating, they
of course were angry that I was dating women, but it started long
before that. I can't remember a time when I felt safe with either of
them. Amelia never laid a hand on me but she never stopped Aster.
There was no one to stop Aster.”
So, after Fae had escaped to live her
own life, Alaster was left alone. He'd dropped out of high school by
then. Blue remembered thinking that he was too spoiled, that he
hadn't wanted to put the work in and that was why he stopped coming
to classes. That was true, to a degree, but not the whole story. Blue
still didn't know what the whole story was, only that Fae assured her
that Aster had been just as cruel to her brother, though in different
ways.
Blue was sympathetic but she had no
experience with childhood abuse. Her mother was the kindest person
she knew, a mother hen who cared for her “adopted” children as
much as the biological ones. Her father had been a good man, smart
and talented, but he had suffered from severe depression that lead to
him taking his own life. That had been the single most traumatic
event in Blue's life. Losing him changed her, and she thought it
probably wasn't change for the better.
She knew that her father must have been
possessed of a sadness like the one that haunted Alaster. Even with a
loving family, he hadn't been able to endure. Maybe that was where
Alaster was headed, in the long run, and maybe there was no saving
him from it but... Blue couldn't sit idly by and do nothing, and she
didn't want to, even though she did not understand the connection she
felt to the man. Alaster was lost, that much she understood, and he
was in need of someone to guide him.
Of course, she'd spent the night
tossing and turning, thinking of the words he'd spoken to her at the
bar. He was many things when he was drunk, but he was never a liar.
Sober, he might tell white lies and half truths to deflect questions
he didn't want to answer, but after a few beers, the truth spilled
out of him without a filter.
That meant he wasn't pretending to have
feelings for her. She still kind of thought he was deluding himself,
but regardless, he thought it was true. It would be unfair of her not
to consider his words, considering the fondness she held for him.
It all boiled down to whether or not
all the problems he had, all the things that her friends pointed out,
mattered more than the bond that had slowly developed between the two
of them. Truth was, it wasn't just that she didn't think there was
anyone else who could support him like she did, but rather, if there
was another person who could do it, Blue didn't want Alaster to end
up with them instead. She'd grown so used to his company that she
didn't like to think about someone else taking her place.
However, who knew what Alaster was
going to say today. He was defensive at the best of times and
belligerent at the worst. Sober, his powers of denial were quite
incredible. There was a good chance he would refuse to talk about his
admissions from the evening prior and she wasn't sure if pushing him
into it would be a good idea.
At present, he showed no signs of
waking. Blue made herself comfortable in the armchair and turned her
attention to The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
–
Alaster woke with a
dull headache. It took him a moment to remember why he had a
headache, but he grimaced when yesterday returned to him in full.
What he'd done was go out and get drunk, only to make an absolute
fool of himself when Blue had turned up to fetch him. By then, he'd
been too far gone to censor himself and had spilled his guts to her,
which he knew was going to come back to bite him in the ass.
With a suffering
groan, he opened his eyes to the light of midday streaming through
the windows of Blue's apartment. He was stretched out on the couch –
he loved this fucking couch, it was so comfortable – and someone
had even given him a pillow and a blanket and took off his shoes.
That last part made him shudder a bit, but he noticed his socks were
still on, so that was something.
As he pushed
himself up on his elbows, he saw that Blue was sitting in the
armchair, watching him with an amused smirk on her face. He glared
back at her and raised one hand to rub at his temple, trying in vain
to ease the throbbing.
“Morning, Glory,”
said Blue, a little too cheerfully. It seemed like his pain amused
her. Alaster was not surprised by this, she often laughed at his
misfortune. “How's your head?”
Alaster considered
this question and the level of pain he was experiencing. “Not
terrible,” he admitted. “Though, not great either.”
His companion set
aside her book – a different one than yesterday, he noticed – and
sauntered into the kitchen. He watched her pour him a cup of coffee,
for which he felt pathetically grateful. That was one of the things
he liked best about her. She understood the value of good coffee.
“There's
breakfast in the microwave,” she told him when she brought him the
cup. “And you should drink some water.”
“You should do
this professionally,” Alaster commented. “Look after drunks, I
mean.”
She gave him a grin
and sat back down in her chair. “It's all I can do to keep up with
you.”
“So why do you?”
he muttered, carefully sipping his coffee. It tasted wonderful and he
couldn't help the soft sound of pleasure that escaped him, his eyes
closing. When he opened his eyes again, he saw that she was watching
him with a solemn expression on her face. It made him uncomfortable.
“Well?”
“I don't know,”
she said. “Someone needs to, I guess.”
The blow to his
pride was only slightly softened by the knowledge that she was right.
He'd proven that much yesterday. He wondered if Fae knew about it
yet. Probably. After all, he hadn't made it home yesterday.
Still, his first
instinct was to tell Blue to fuck off, that he didn't need looking
after like an errant child. How many times had he bitten his tongue
and managed not to say that to Fae? She meant well. She loved him.
She treated him like an invalid and it was hard to change, to... to
get better when it felt like his sister had no faith in him.
“Because I can't
do it myself?” he asked her with a scowl.
“You could,”
Blue said, shrugging her shoulders. “It would just be easier if you
let me help you.”
His shoulders
slumped and he stared into his cup of coffee, trying to distract
himself with the rich brown liquid. It was strange, how well she
seemed to understand him. But he didn't deserve her understanding,
and if she knew half the shit he'd done in his life, she wouldn't
want to understand him anymore. It would only be kind of him to push
her away, to protect her from himself.
He knew he should
break it all off with her, never bother her again, but he couldn't
make himself do it.
“What you said
last night,” she began, breaking the silence that had grown between
them, “about me stomping on your heart? I didn't mean to do that. I
mean, I did it on purpose but not to be cruel. I guess I didn't know
you felt that way about me. I was protecting myself. I'm sorry.”
Surprised, he
looked up at her. She didn't really have anything she needed to
apologize for. He'd just been sitting here thinking that she'd be
better off without him. No part of him could blame her for coming to
that conclusion herself. She was a hell of a lot smarter than he was,
except she still put up with him, and that was truly stupid.
Now's your chance,
he thought to himself. Tell her you were drunk, that it meant
nothing. Ask her to drive you home and never talk to her again. It's
the least that you could do for her, after everything.
“Don't,” he
managed to say. “Don't apologize.”
She leaned forward
in her chair, observing him with sympathy. “I'm sorry. I hurt you.”
Alaster shook his
head. What was he supposed to say to her? For months now, she'd been
looking after him. She always knew where to find him when he went off
on his own to get drunk, probably because she'd memorized his usual
haunts. Even if it was all just a favor to Fae, the woman went above
and beyond what anyone expected of her.
“For the love
of... Don't apologize to me again,” he said. “I'm not worth it,
okay? I bloody well know I'm not, I act like a child and drag you
into it.”
“You do,” she
agreed. “But I have my reasons for letting myself get dragged into
it.”
“Maybe you
shouldn't, then!” Alaster put down the cup of coffee and stared at
her, holding her gaze. “Look, I'm fucked up. I have been for
basically as long as I can remember. And I'm not like Fae. I can't
take all the shit that's happened and rise above it, or whatever.
Whatever it is in her that lets her come to peace with all of that, I
don't have it in me.”
The woman didn't
look away, just met his gaze with a practiced calm. She nodded, like
it made sense to her. Alaster didn't know how she could possibly
understand. She didn't know what it was like in his head. No one did.
Fae came closest, but she was too good on a fundamental level. She
would never sink to the levels that Alaster had sunk to, no matter
what had happened to her.
“Fae struggles in
her own way,” Blue said. “Trust me, I've been her friend for a
while now. I know she can seem like she's perfect on the surface but
there's not a single part of her life that hasn't been impacted by
what she went through. And she doesn't expect you to be able to
overcome it either.”
“It's not the
same.” Alaster shook his head. “What our father did to her was
unforgivable. She never deserved a minute of it and I... I just stood
by and watched. Do you see? I let that man abuse my sister and I was
never brave enough for a minute to do anything about it. Hell,
sometimes he had me convinced that she deserved it. She never did,
but I... I deserved it. I was a disappointment.”
The words left a
bitter taste in his mouth. He hated talking about Aster, hated
admitting his own part in all of it, hated how weak he'd been to stay
in that home and endure Aster's anger even after Fae managed to
escape. Fae had run away, changed her name, cut it all out of her
life, but Alaster had been too afraid to follow suit. He'd believed
that if he stayed, he'd be fine. But he hadn't been fine, and he
still hadn't been brave enough to stand up to Aster, not even to
protect himself. Fae had needed to rescue him after all.
“You know she
thinks she was a disappointment too?” Blue asked. “Neither of you
deserved it.”
“How would you
know?” Alaster sneered. It wasn't anyone else's business if he
deserved it or not, or if he thought he deserved it, or whatever.
Blue was one of those blessedly good people who thought they could
fix everything, and some people, like Alaster, just needed to stay
broken.
The woman shrugged
her shoulders. “I believe all people deserve basic human rights.”
A rather
undignified snort escaped Alaster at that. “Not all people. Some
people forfeit the right. Some people deserve what they have coming
to them.”
“Maybe,” agreed
Blue, “but you're not one of them.”
He recoiled,
scrunching himself back into the corner of the couch, and stared at
her. Nothing in him wanted to talk about any of this with her. In
truth, he didn't want her to know all of it, or even a little of it.
She already knew too much. Why did she want to know any of it at all?
“It's none of
your business,” he muttered. “Leave it alone.”
“Hmm. Alright, if
that's what you want.” Blue stood up from her chair and went back
to the kitchen. She took out a plate of food from the microwave and
placed it on the table with a fork. Alaster watched her, slightly
befuddled, as she poured a glass of water and placed it beside the
plate. She looked back at Alaster with an arched eyebrow. “Come eat
some breakfast. It's good for you.”
Nothing she ever
did made any sense to him. She was smart, maybe the smartest person
he'd ever met, and yet she worked in a coffee shop. She was pretty
but she didn't dress herself up. She was self-righteous but somehow
selfless. And even though he'd called her names and insulted her and
made a general nuisance of himself, she let him sleep on her couch
and made him breakfast. He'd never met anyone like her before.
Cautiously, he
unfolded himself and and pushed up from the couch. He wasn't hungry
but it didn't feel right to turn down the food. As he approached the
table, Blue took a step back, as if to give him space. She beamed at
him when he sat down in front of the plate of food.
“Pancakes,” she
said. “My mother used to make them for me if I'd had a bad day.
They're comfort food.”
There were three
pancakes stacked on top of one another, drenched in butter and syrup,
with three slices of bacon. Alaster stared down at the fare for a
long moment before he picked up his fork and carefully cut a portion
of the pancakes and stuck it in his mouth.
His eyes grew wide.
It wasn't that he'd never had pancakes before but these were somehow
better than any he'd eaten in the past. The pancakes were fluffy, the
syrup had a rich flavor and the butter was perfect. His stomach
growled, suddenly interested in the food, as he chewed and swallowed
first one bite and then another. Blue watched with a look of
satisfaction on her face.
“Good?” she
asked.
“Incredible,”
Alaster said between mouthfuls.
“They say the way
to a man's heart is through his stomach,” Blue remarked, “but I
didn't think that would be true with you. I hardly ever see you eat
anything. I was starting to think you ran on coffee alone. Well, and
beer.”
Alaster glanced at
her, wondering about why she was trying to find her way to his heart
in the first place. Yesterday, she hadn't seemed so keen on it.
Surely she hadn't changed her mind just because of his drunken
ramblings. If anything, last night had illustrated for him why it
would be a bad idea to start a relationship with her. She deserved
better than him. He was a drain.
“About
yesterday,” she said. “We should talk.”
They probably did
need to talk but Alaster was too embarrassed. He looked away from
her, afraid she'd see it in his eyes. She was so perceptive
sometimes, and so dense other times. To his own mortification, he
remembered everything he'd said to her last night. The worst part
was, he'd meant all of it, he just hadn't meant to say it out loud.
“You said you
think about me all the time,” Blue prompted. “And that I feel
right when nothing else does.”
His grip tightened
on his fork and he stared down at his plate. “Yeah,” he muttered,
his mouth dry. “I guess I did say that.”
“Did you mean
it?” she asked.
By all rights, he
thought, he should tell her that he hadn't meant a word of it, but he
didn't think she would believe him. He wasn't ready for this
conversation but he also knew he couldn't put it off forever. It
wasn't fair of him, but fuck, he wanted her. More than that, he
needed her. She made him feel as close to whole as he had ever felt.
Without her, he was afraid there would just be a hole in his life
shaped like her that he'd never be able to fill.
“Listen,” he
said, putting down his fork. He couldn't make himself look up at her
again as he spoke. “The thing is, whether or not I meant it, you'd
be better off running in the opposite bloody direction if you know
what's good for you. I'm not... I'm not good for you. I'm not good
for anyone and I know it. I'm a fuck up, always have been, and I'll
just end up dragging you down.”
“Al, that... that
ain't true,” Blue insisted, her face pinching in a grimace.
“It is,” he
replied in a firm tone. “Don't try and spare my feelings, God knows
I don't fucking deserve it. And if I wasn't such a selfish bastard
I'd be making sure to burn this bridge, because you deserve to live
your life without worrying about my sorry ass. Here's the thing. I
can't make myself do it. I don't know if I, I love you or... or what
it is, but you make me better. I know I don't deserve it but if
there's a chance you... feel that way about me, I...”
He felt stupid,
sitting at her table, pouring his heart out to her. He was no good at
this sort of thing, didn't know how to do it, was worried that he
sounded like an idiot. But she'd come for him yesterday, found him
and brought him here.
“Forget it,” he
said, hoping to avoid the inevitable rejection. What was he thinking
anyway, hoping she'd return his feelings? Even if she did, she was
smart enough to know better than to throw her lot in with him, no
matter what she said to the contrary. “You're better off without me
and I know it. I fucking know it, alright? This was... this was dumb.
I'm sorry. If you'll... drive me home, we can forget I said anything
about it.”
The silence that
stretched out between them then was interminable. Alaster wished Blue
would say something, anything, even if it was just to confirm his own
suspicions. A definitive answer, one way or the other, would
alleviate this sickening feeling of not knowing where he stood with
her.
“Say something,”
he finally croaked, knowing he sounded pathetic. Fuck, might as well
face it, pathetic defined him pretty well.
Blue took a slow
breath. She looked troubled and Alaster worried that he'd pushed her
into something she wasn't ready for, or would never be ready for.
Knowing his luck, he'd just fucked up the only real friendship he had
these days, and maybe the best one he'd ever had anyway. Why'd he
have to go and make it into something more than that in his head?
That was his problem. He spent too much time in his head,
overthinking things that would be better off left simple.
“Okay,” the
woman said at last. “I want you to listen to me carefully. Can you
do that?”
Alaster bit back a
sarcastic retort and just nodded. He'd made a big enough mess of this
alright and he was, admittedly, too tired to be a jerk right now. He
felt worn down, almost ill in a physical sense, though he knew it was
all in his head. Everything was. It didn't matter if it was his head
or his body, though, he was down for the count.
“Al, what you
feel, it's not dumb.” Blue looked at him with such sympathy that it
made Alaster's skin crawl. “This is what you always do to yourself.
You make up your mind that you're not worth it before you even put in
the effort.”
Putting a hand over
his eyes, Alaster tried not to let his emotions show on his face. He
wished she'd hurry up and turn him down, like he knew she was going
to do.
“Damn it, Al, you
never give me the chance to tell you how much I think you're worth.
Please look at me. You don't even know what I'm going to say and
you're hiding from me. Are you telling me you really have no idea how
much I love you?”
“What?” Alaster
froze. He lowered his hand to look at her and found her with a
crooked half-smile.
“I said I love
you,” she repeated. “One of us has to be open about it, alright?
And you're right, there are reasons why it's probably not a good idea
for us to be together. But I've thought about it a lot – more than
you realize, I'm sure – and I don't care if it's a bad idea. I
don't think you meet very many people in life who fit the way that
you and I fit together. It doesn't feel like a bad thing to me. Maybe
it won't be an easy thing but I think that's what makes it worth
trying.”
He hadn't expected
her to feel the same way. Now he didn't know what to do with her
answer. He stared at her in shock and her smile began to widen.
“Speechless, are
you?” she asked. “Never thought I'd see the day.”
“So... You want
to be with me?” he asked, even though he'd understood her fine
before. He just couldn't believe his ears and needed reassurance.
Blue stood up from
the table. “Are you gonna kiss me or not?”
Scrambling up from
his seat, Alaster managed to knock over his chair before he made it
to her waiting embrace. He kissed her without preamble and held her
close, ignoring the way his hands trembled. Her arms wrapped around
him in return and held him. As always, she felt sturdy, maybe strong
enough to hold them both up. Her mouth tasted like coffee and maple
syrup.
TBC
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