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sinofwriting · 2 years ago

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Sweet Nothing - Clay Spenser

Words: 4,912

Note(s): This is a long one that I honestly did not want to end. Also this is x reader but she goes by the nickname Mira. And anything in italics unless stated otherwise is them speaking Urdu. (Oh, and title is of course from a Taylor Swift song)

Tagging @nerdyreaderpapi who said they were really excited for this. Hope they and everyone else enjoys this.

Summary: Clay has a wife and no one believes him. He’s been a part of Bravo for eight months, the wife excuse is getting old, got old after the first month and yet he sticks to it, despite the fact that they never met her, don’t know her name, or seen a single picture of her.

Turning his phone on, a tired smile crosses his lips at the sight of his lockscreen and he can’t help the way his thumb caresses the screen as he mouths the words on it that he knows by heart, a yawn leaving him in the middle as he adjusts to being awake.

The always there ache in his heart, grows now that they’re so close to being home. And he has to resist rubbing at his chest. He didn’t need to catch Trent’s attention, the medic was like a mother hen to all of the team, but especially him since he was the youngest.

Unlocking his phone, he goes to his texts and scrolls through his missed texts, body relaxing into his hammock as he looks at the texts from his wife. Some just random tidbits of things she had to translate, or things she had to buy that they ran out of, things she made for dinner, how she forgot to pick her meds up but not to worry because she did end up getting them, just a week later than she should’ve and he can ignore the email from the pharmacy about it, and that yes Clay she knows she hopeless without him and she’s more than okay without.

He lets out a chuckle at one of her texts telling him that she wants a dog and he needs to stop dragging his feet about it.

“It’s been nearly a year, husband. The longer we go without any paws running about, the more I’ll want.”

He lifts his eyes from his phone, letting them drift around until they land on Brock who’s also laying in his hammock, though he’s more upright, Cerberus in between his legs.

“Hey, Brock.” “Hmm?” Clay doesn’t notice that the rest of the team have also turned their attention to Clay. It wasn’t often that the kid was talkative after missions, especially one like this one. “I’ve been meaning to get a dog, anything I should keep in mind with Cerb?” The dog lifts its head at his name, tail wagging as he looks at Clay. Brock runs a hand over the dog's head. “I’d say once they settle in, we introduce them, just in case.” “What kind of dog you getting?” Clay shrugs, “not too sure yet. It’ll be a puppy, that’s for sure.” His wife would have his head if they’re first pet together wasn’t a puppy. “Puppy? That’s a lot for our job.” “Yeah, who’s getting to watch it when we get spun out or are on deployment?” “My wife, who absolutely exists.” He throws up a middle finger at Sonny, already knowing what comment was going to leave the Texan’s mouth. He makes a noise and half hearted denial, but doesn’t say anything, jaw twitching as Clay tries to press that he had a wife on them again.

“She going to pick you up?” Clay’s eyebrow raises, and he pockets his phone as he feels a shift in the altitude. They’d be landing within the next thirty minutes. “I drove myself. So, no.” Ray makes a noise at that and he has to resist the urge to snap at him or one of the other guys who was staring at him.

“Join us for beers tomorrow?” Sonny asks, as they all step out and start heading to their cars. “We just spent nearly two weeks together, next time absolutely.” Sonny grunts. “Fine, but just remember what you're missing out on, GQ. I could get you a great girl.” “Married.” He shouts, as he rushes to his car. The door shuts before he can hear Sonny’s reply and with it comes a sigh of relief.

The drive home passes quickly and before he knows it, he’s in the driveway of his house. His wife’s car parked in its spot and the porch light on, with its automatic timer set to turn on at eighteen hundred and shut off at four hundred.

Clay feels the ache in his chest grow, being so close and yet still so far away. So, he doesn’t bother grabbing his go bag, even though everything needs to be washed, he just climbs out of the car, barely remembering to lock it and running up the steps to the front door.

Opening the door, he quickly steps into the house, kicking off his boots as he closes the door behind him.

“Baby?” He calls, anxiety and excitement warring inside of him. “Mira?” He uses the name that her parents started calling after learning that he and her grandmother had taken to calling her Miracle in Urdu. “I’m home.” He hears the sound of feet rounding the corner before a cry of his name greets him and he’s got an armful of his wife.

He holds her tight, lifting her off her feet, his hands moving down to her bottom to hold it as her legs wrap themselves around his waist.

“Fuck, I missed you.” He whispers into the skin of her neck, tears pricking at his eyes, as he takes in the feeling of home, the smell of it, of her. “Missed you too.” Her arms loosen from around his shoulders and she pulls back slightly, looking into his eyes as her hands come up to his face. She sighs, thumbs rubbing his cheekbones. “You got even more handsome. I think you can’t, then you leave me and somehow it happens.”

His cheeks turn pink at the compliment, the one she always gives him when he comes home to her. At one point he had denied it, thought she was just saying it, that she didn’t mean it, but with over a decade together, he knew that she meant it. It was clear in her face, the way her eyes were lit up in awe and they couldn’t stop looking at him. Clear in her body, how her breath still sped up, heart hammering in her chest.

Emotion bubbles up in him, how overwhelmingly he is in love with this woman and has been since they met, since he was fifteen. And he knows that if he speaks right now, he’ll stumble over his words, so instead he presses their lips together.

And the ache that had been plaguing him vanishes at the contact. At the soft lips pressed to his. Her hands slip from his face to his neck, her right pointer finger tracing the shell of his ear making him tighten his grip on her and press his tongue to the seam of her lips, gently touching them, before retreating. Even with the sigh into his mouth.

“Do you have anything cooking?” “No.” She breathes, “take me to bed, soldier.” He grins at the command, pressing their lips together, once than twice before starting the trip to their bedroom. “Yes, ma’am.”

—

“Stop looking at me like that.” She murmurs, eyes scanning the menu. “How am I looking at you?” She lifts her eyes off the menu, her husbands grinning face staring at her. “Like you won the lottery.” His grin grows wider, eyes alight with amusement. “Everyday with you is like winning the lottery, miracle.” She has to look away for a moment, lips pressing together to suppress a giggle. Fuck, her husband was a charmer.

Her eyes drift back towards the menu. Despite having dinner two hours earlier, she was hungry again, but not hungry enough to eat something all by herself, so it was a good thing she had Clay with her. She swore sometimes he had more than one stomach on him with the way he ate.

“Want to share a chicken strip basket with me?” “Sure. You want a beer?” He asks, looking out for a waitress. “Please, just whatever you get.”

Resting her chin on her hand, she watches as he orders for them. Seamlessly keeping the waitress's attention off her.

“It ran over. Complications?” She asks when the waitress leaves, curiosity pulling at her. He nods, “Intel was bad. HAVOC nearly blew a gasket.” “But, no injuries.” “No injuries.” The whole team had basically been glorified bodyguards for two weeks. “It was a milk run that went long. Only reason we were there for so long was because of the intel and having to get new contacts.” She hums, switching back to english. “This place seems nice.” She takes a glance around. “Only opened up a month or so ago. Kids aren’t allowed after eight.” “Yes, sir.” The waitress says, setting down two beers in front of them. “And the last family we had just left. So just a warning the music will be going up and our cook is only here until ten.” “Thank you.” She smiles at the waitress. “Of course. Let me know if you need a refill and your food should be out shortly.”

“She’s nice.” “Hasn’t worked long enough in food service.” Her eyes roll. “Says the man who's never worked in food service.” “But you did. Worst six months of our marriage.” Her mouth falls open, “you were deployed for all of it.” He shrugs, “you were miserable working at the place. Me not being there just made that worse.” “Such a softy.” Clay smiles, tangling their fingers together on top of the table. “Only for you, my miracle.”

They're halfway through their beers when the music gets turned up and their basket of chicken strips arrive. Grabbing one, she hisses at how hot it is immediately dropping it back down. She shakes her hand out, rubbing the pads of fingers together.

“Cut it?” “Please.” He doesn’t say anything, sending her a fond look before grabbing the fork and knife that had been resting on the table and cutting the chicken up.

Nearly an hour later and on her third beer and last one, since Clay was also stopping at three since he was driving, the door opening to the bar and raucous noise catches her attention.

Turning her head, she eyes the group of six men and two women, military she noted by some of their stances and they way all the men seemed to be surveying the building. It’s then that her eyes focus on their faces and her eyes widen, recognizing some of them.

“Clay,” she kicks his shin lightly. She hears his sharp intake of breath and she blindly reaches for his hand, squeezing it tight. Her heart thuds painfully in her chest when he grasps it tight, clinging to it. “Do you want to leave?” “No.” “Are you sure?” “It's your choice.” She takes her eyes off his team, going to protest, but he stops her. “No, it’s your choice. I know you don’t particularly like them.” His face twists at that, because that was a light way of putting it.

His wife nearly despised them for judging him just because he had the last name Spenser. Add on Sonny’s treatment those first few missions and how Jason treated him after that first time he worked with Bravo. He was surprised that she hadn’t stormed onto base using her clearance to give the Master Chief a piece of her mind. It wouldn’t shock him if them meeting eventually resulted in that happening. She wasn’t one to hold back, not when it concerned him.

She eyes her husband, remembering how he had come home practically collapsing in her arms because of Bravo, because he had the last name Spenser and more stupid military men weren’t willing to not judge a book by its cover. Remembering their refusal to believe that he was married, all because he won’t introduce them or talk about her, because he was a kid, despite being twenty-seven. But she also remembers the light in his eyes as he talks about Cerb, Trent’s mother henning, Ray’s quiet accompaniment to the range. He’s been with them for nearly a year and she knows that they’ve become like family to them, so close to being brothers in not just name but also bond. And she knows that the only thing that is stopping him from letting them in and really see who he is behind that cocky façade is her. And she can’t deny him family, more people to love him, so she squeezes his hand again.

“Let’s stay.” “Really?” She nods. “They’re your brothers, honey. I can’t deny you people that love you, just because of my misgivings.” He looks at her in awe, blue eyes shining. “I don’t deserve you, not one bit.” He sounds reverent and before she can deny it, protest, he’s leaning across the table, crushing their lips together in a passionate kiss.

A loud whistle breaks them apart and he’s still looking at her in absolute awe. “You, Mrs. Spenser, are going to be spoiled so much later.” She swallows harshly, thighs pressing together at the promise. “And I can’t wait, husband.” His eyes flash but the sound of a chair being pulled out stops him from kissing her again.

“I’m going to take these up and get something else to drink. You want anything?” She asks, grabbing their beer bottles. “Water, please.” She nods, flashing him a smile before standing and heading to the bar, a slight limp in her gait.

He watches her, heat simmering inside of him.

Clay looks away when someone sits across from him, knocking their feet together,

“Would ya look at that, GQ. Said you didn’t want to come out drinking with us and we still ended up at the same place.” The Texan accent makes him sigh. “Sonny. First stop of the night?” “Yeah, even managed to get Blackburn to join us.” Clay spots the rest of the group in the corner where there’s pool tables, brows going up seeing Naima standing next to Lisa. He had forgotten that her parents were in town this week. “Naima eat?” “You think Ray would’ve let her out of the house to drink without food in her stomach?” “I don’t think Ray tells her to do anything.” Sonny laughs, “right you are, brother. Last time Ray tried to tell her to do something,” he whistles. “I don’t think I’ve seen a man regret something so much.” He chuckles, he hadn’t been part of the team for that but he could imagine it. “Lisa text you, we were coming here? Decide to join us anyways?” “No, I actually,” he begins before he can continue, two glasses are being put on the table and a familiar weight is settling on his leg that’s planted outside the booth.

“Next time we should Uber, they’ve got some interesting cocktails.” She tells him, before turning her head to look at the stunned Seal sitting across from them. “Hi, I hope I wasn’t interrupting.” Clay has to press his face against her back to hide his smile. She knew damn well what she was doing and he couldn’t love her more for it. “No, ma’am. You known Clay long?” His eyes flicker between the two. She lets out a laugh, just a little off from her normal one. “Long enough.” He squeezes her waist and she relaxes a little back into him. “Well, my name's Sonny Quinn, I work with Clay since he ain’t got the manners to introduce us.” She extends her hand, giving the Texan’s a quick shake before giving her name and they both watch as his jaw drops and his eyes widen. “But please, call me Mira. Everyone does.”

“Spenser?” He repeats, barely hearing her request. “Yes, sir. And proud.” She lifts her left hand and gives it a small shake where both his grandmother’s wedding band sits and her grandmother's wedding ring. “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you” He manages to say after a few seconds. “Mira, I don’t think you’ve met the rest of the team, but if you’d like you could join us. We're just playing some pool and drinking.”

“Join?” The french makes him blink, but he nods. “Sure.” “We’d love to.” He blinks at the language change, but nods, standing. “Alright, then. Can I get you anything to drink?” His eyes flicker to Clay, expecting to see some sort of scowl on the younger man’s face at his offer but the kid just looks amused and tension he didn’t know he was holding, vanishes. “I’m alright. I just got us some water.” She tells him, standing, grabbing one of the waters from the table.

Nodding, he watches as Clay also stands, doing the same as her, his arm looping around his wife’s waist, lips brushing her temple. They make an interesting picture, a pretty one. Cause of course Clay would have a wife even prettier than he was.

Leading them over to the corner that Bravo had commandeered, Jason spots them first, smiling at him, before a brief look of concern takes over at his wide eyes. And a quick nudge to Ray’s ribs from Jason gets everyone else's attention.

“Ladies,” he nods to Lisa and Naima, “gents. Look who I ran into?” He steps aside letting them more easily see Clay, who’s setting their waters down on a high table they took over. “Hey!” A few say at the time, catching other people's attention for a moment. “What are you doing here?” Lisa asks, smiling at the youngest member of Bravo. He tilts his head to the left, gesturing, “date night. Went to dinner then ended up here. Would’ve gone somewhere else if I knew who we’d run into.” He grins, catching the elbow his wife starts to throw before it can make contact. “You love us.” She teases and Clay rolls his eyes but the soft line of his shoulders and grin betrays him. “And who is this?” She looks at the woman next to Clay offering her smile. She smiles at the woman who Clay talks about fondly, always having their back in HAVOC, “I’m Mira, Clay’s wife.” Her smile doesn’t flicker at the sharp intakes of breaths her introduction causes. “You must be Lisa, Clay talks about you often. He talks about all of you often.” She looks at the rest of them. Naima hits Ray’s chest. “I had no idea that Clay was married.”

She quickly shakes the younger girl's hand. “I’m Naima, Ray’s wife. If Ray had something sooner, we could have set up something sooner. All of us wives and girlfriends have a groupchat. I know how difficult it can be.” “Thank you. We’ll have to exchange numbers. You have two kids right? Jameelah and RJ?” “We do.” Her smile widens at Mira remembering her kids names just from hearing Clay talk about them. “Clay mentioned them. He’s never been uncle Clay before. Came home all lit up.” He nudges her slightly. “They meet you and you’ll be Auntie.” “Damn straight, I married you for the benefits, honey.” “And my body.” He grins down at her, holding her tighter against him. She pats his chest. “And your body.”

Naima awes a bit at the young couple. She remembered when her and Ray were first together, they had also been stuck together at the hip. Now with being together for so long and two kids, there wasn’t a lot of being stuck at the hip.

“How long have you two been together? Or married?” She asks, curious. They seemed like newlyweds, just a couple of months under their belt, still firmly in the honeymoon phase. “Been together for twelve years, married for eight.” Clay tells everyone, a proud look in his eyes. “Seven, honey. We got engaged eight years ago.” She corrects, watching the shocked faces of his team. He scowls at the reminder of the near year of waiting he had before they finally could get married. “Worst year of my life.” “It wasn’t even a year!” “It was nearly a year.”

“Now, why do I feel like there’s a story there?” One of the guys says, recovering first. “Trent,” he offers his name, just in case. “That would be because there is.” She pats Clay’s hand. “Clay and I got together when we were fifteen, but there’s nearly a year between us. So, Clay turns eighteen, proposes, is already to go to the courthouse and be married and I had to remind him that we had to wait a good eight months to get married since I was still seventeen.”

“The wait was horrible.” He groans. Mira laughs, “what wait? The only thing that changed was my last name and us getting a piece of paper. Nothing else changed.” “Sex.” Sonny chokes on his beer. “We had sex before.” Lisa lets out a laugh at the exasperated look on her face, she already liked this girl. “Yeah, but it wasn’t married sex.” “Oh my god.” She rolls her eyes, not needing to look at him to know he was grinning, chest puffed out a bit.

She looks at the other women in the group, “Please save me from him.” Naima laughs at the girl, but steps over to the booth where Brock is sitting and motions for her to join. “Sit with me and Brock. I want to know all about you.”

She feels Clay squeeze her hip and brush his lips across her temple before letting her go. She sends him a smile before joining the older woman at the booth, sliding in on the same side that Naima’s sitting on.

“Nice to meet you, Brock.” She greets the man. “You too.”

Clay watches as Naima and Mira start to talk, Brock paying rapid attention if the way his body language is anything to go by.

“So, Bam Bam does have a wife.” He scowls at the Texan, “Told you I did.” “Still. Can see why you kept her away. She’s so far out of your league.” Sonny laughs, sending Clay a wink as he dodges an elbow from Lisa. He looks back at Mira, who’s laughing. “Damn right.”

He felt lucky most days that she even took a glance at him.

“Why did it take so long for us to meet her?” Jason asks. “Does she not like the job? Cause problems at home?” Clay scoffs, “god, no.” It wasn’t that they hadn’t had problems, they’d been together for over a decade they had them, but the idea of his job causing some was laughable. “She encouraged me to enlist, wouldn’t have made it as far without her. And she understands the job.” Something in his tone sets Jason on edge, “Not too much, I hope.” “Spenser,” Eric starts, realizing where Jason’s head went and it’s clear Ray did too by the way he sets his pool cue down. He sticks his chin out, shaking his head. “She’s a linguist.” He gets blank looks. “She knows as many languages as me, more. She’s been a consultant for the CIA since we were twenty. She’s got higher clearance than me.” Sonny whistles, “she’s really out of your league.” He grins at him.

“So, what was the problem?” Jason asks and god was he like a dog with a bone. He could tell there was a reason and all of them knew he wouldn’t stop until he knew why. Clay sighs, sending a look over to Mira, who sensing it, looks back at him and sends him a smile and nod. “I talk shop with her.” Jason sends him a disapproving look, but he ignores it. He liked Jason, but he wasn’t about to take relationship advice from the older man. “So, if I’ve had a bad day or something went wrong I talk about it.” “I don’t get it.” Lisa whacks the Texan on his arm, understanding why Clay hadn’t introduced her or even talked about her. He sighs, “she doesn’t like you,” he looks at Sonny. “Or you.” he looks at Jason. “What? For what reason?” Trent and Ray let out laughs at Sonny’s confusion. They could take a good guess for why she didn’t like either Sonny or Jason and they couldn’t say they blamed her. “She doesn’t have much tolerance for anyone who sees the last name Spenser and immediately assumes I’m like my father.” Jason winces at the statement and reminder of what he had first thought of Clay and how he treated him because of it. Yeah, he could see the reason for dislike. “Shit, Bam Bam. I fucked that one, huh?”

Clay smiles at the older man, “give her a year, maybe two. You’ll get off her shitlist.” “And me?” Jason asks, noticing that his eyes hadn’t drifted over to him. He winces, “that’s a bit more complicated.” Ray lets out a laugh at Jason’s face, slapping him on the back. “I told you that one of these days your big mouth and unwillingness to let things go would bite you in the ass.”

“He did not, Mira!” Naima’s scandalized voice rings out and makes them all turn their heads to look over at the booth where her, Mira, and Brock were sitting. She lets out a laugh, people’s reactions to how exactly Clay proposed never ceased to make her laugh. “He absolutely did.” Naima’s scandalized expression vanishes and her jaw locks as she ushers the younger out of the booth, turning her attention to the man they had just been talking about. “Clay Spenser!” His eyes widen at his name being said like that and he sends a look to Ray, but the 2IC just shakes his head. He was on his own with this one. “I can not believe you! Proposing like that!” She stands with her hands on her hips, lips pressed together in a frown. He relaxes at that. He knew how he proposed wasn’t normal and had pointedly not mentioned how he had to her parents or his grandparents knowing he’d got smacked upside the head. “Naima, I was eighteen.” He pleads, putting his hands up in surrender, sending a look to Mira who’s giggling. “Really, it’s funny more than anything.” “Oh, I’ve got to know this.” Sonny mutters under his breath. There would never be enough material to tease Clay with. And something from his relationship, well that was even juicer.

“How exactly did Clay propose?” Lisa asks, wondering what had the normally chill woman up in arms. “Well, honey, should I tell them or do you want to?” She asks, teasingly as she walks over to him. He wraps an arm around her, pulling her closer. “You can, miracle. Already told it once today, what’s two times?” She nods, wrapping an arm around him as well. Might as well get as comfy as she could with all the eyes on her.

“Well, you already know that Clay was very eager to get married.” “Be a fool not to.” He mutters, interrupting her which she ignores but Trent snorts hearing the mutter. “But he was really eager. My parents and his grandparents were missionaries, so they kept odd hours, were really only home to sleep and even then sometimes depending on how bad the area they were at was they sometimes would sleep there. Which meant we had a lot of time to ourselves.” The guys all grin at that, knowing exactly what that meant. “And with our luck, the week that Clay turned eighteen, they were away helping a village six hours away that experienced a horrible fire.” That earns a few frowns, but everyone is still listening intently to her.

“So, when it rolled over to midnight, I woke him up to wish him a happy eighteenth and to have birthday sex.” She earns a few laughs at how unashamed she is and she smiles at the sound. She could blame it on being a horny teenager but she still wanted to climb Clay like a tree as much if not more than when they were teens. “In the middle of said birthday sex, he just asks me to marry him. Tells me that one of the guys in the village we were in owes him a favor and we could take his truck to get married as soon as the sun was up.” “You didn’t?” Clay shrugs at the disappointed look from Jason. “I’d been thinking about it for months, it slipped out.” He defends. “It was sweet.” Mira also defends him. “Even if my response put a damper on things.” He winces at that, because yeah, he hadn’t reacted the best to hearing the word can’t right after he had proposed and then forced onto his back so she could ride him. It was one of the few times that he had stopped in the middle of sex for a reason that wasn’t cramping or someone knocking on the door. “And what was your response?”

“Can’t, just the word can’t.” She gives Clay a sorry smile. “Even in the middle of sex the logical side of my brain was working.” “Sounds like someone wasn’t doing a good job.” Sonny jokes. “Nah, I was thinking of a way to flip him on his back right before he started talking.” Sonny lets out a loud laugh at that and the way it makes Jason slightly bug eyed. “I definitely like you, Mrs. GQ.” “Can I be Mrs. Bam Bam instead?” She asks, grinning. “Rolls off the tongue better.” “You can have whatever nickname you want, Mrs. Bam Bam.” The Texan tells her, a bit more southern drawl in his voice as he gives her a wink.

#clay spenser x reader #clay spenser imagine #seal team imagine #seal team x reader

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yeyinde · 10 months ago

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fever in a shockwave

pt., iii | stagnant on my betterment

“I don't want to lose you,” he's saying, and it's odd because he never really had you to begin with.

WARNINGS: angst, pining, yearning; eventual smut; trauma; grief and the existentialism of moving on; recovery; poor/unhealthy coping methods; codependency; reference to drug use (but it's just weed); reader has a backstory; spoilers for the series

WORD COUNT: 14,7k

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an update; this isn't the final part lmao dangerous words coming from someone like me oops. there's probably going to be three more parts after this.

There is no sense of closure when you watch the jagged pieces of a broken man fall to the floor by your feet. The splintered edges offer no succour, no victory, when they come to rest along the scattered ruins of a delusional love affair: alcohol bottles—Kraken, Captain Morgan—and grease-stained boxes of takeaway, most unfinished in favour of satiating yourselves on flesh, sex.

(Booze, more often than not.)

Seeing him struggle to find meaning in what you say—watching that ethanol-soaked resignation filter through hazy, electric blue—brings a fresh pain instead, taking space in the hollow gaps where you expected vindication and self-worth to bleed through.

You're doing the right thing, after all. Aren't you?

Aren't you? (please, someone, anyone, say yes—)

Uncertainty is an uneasy, nauseating feeling inside your guts. Much like a broken bone, it emanates a visceral sense of perturbation through your body. Every synapse fires in protest; every nerve screaming out. They bellow one thing in unison: something is wrong and not quite right.

You feel their cries deep in your being. Each muscle twitch and frayed thought that passes carries the echo of it.

This pain, it seems, is cracking your ribs apart and exposing the rotting marrow to the open air. Slurping from the putrefying sludge, satiating itself on the sickness eroding you from within.

It's all wrong. It feels wrong.

Bear swallows. You watch the way his throat works around the bitterness that lashes across the cut of his brow; gyres darkening in his eyes. Storms on the horizon.

(You think you'd welcome the squall. Might embrace anything to get out of this place—)

“That's what you want?” He rasps, thick and gritty, and you think about the last time he sounded like that—all torn up, and broken. Words mangled in his throat. Husked out when he told you about Rip, about the boy, his daughter, and—

No. No.

None of this is what you want, and it pains you that he can't see that.

(Such a selfish, broken man.)

Inside the festering slurry of your marrow, an urge wells up. Bubbles in the putrid pools until it's frothing, raging against the walls keeping it trapped until it seeps through the cracks, leaking into your muscles, your tissue, your bloodstream.

This silly little body of yours carries it up to your heart where it sinks talons into your pericardium, subsumes the serous in this terrible essence, this idea, this whim—

(“what?” the scoff he lets out trails on the coattails of what might have been a laugh in another life. if he was another man, maybe. you, more honest with yourself. but you are just two broken people in a run-down bar. humour exists somewhere in the muzzle of a loaded pistol. “got a saviour complex or something?”

or something. or something—)

Because the thing is: you do.

You spend most weekends wandering around antique stores because you're convinced that everything deserves a home. A place of its own. You find the unwanted, the unsellable, and you let it take space in your lonely, cramped apartment.

And why not? No one else will buy it. You're, technically, helping the environment. It's a win-win.

(and more lies you tell yourself.)

These false promises are always made that one day, one of these days, you'll find something to do with it all—maybe you could learn how to make something out of it; stitch all the unuseable parts, the unwanted pieces, and create something that everyone will want—but so far, none of your rescues has ever been finished. Saved. They sit in a corner taking up space. Untouched. Unused. Collecting dust.

That insidious whim curls inside of your heart, and whispers:

it's never too late to try again. maybe this time, it'll work out for you—

It's the same one that lures you in, making you purchase a complete set of ugly-looking dolls because some ladies were recoiling at the sight of their lumpy, antediluvian faces, and you felt bad thinking that they were doomed to end up sitting on the shelf until they were unceremoniously tossed into the bin with all the other things that won't sell.

And the one, now, that stares at the terse set to Bear's shoulders, the lines rucked across his broad, the helplessness etched into ashlar, and considers that maybe all he needs is someone. A friend, maybe.

(And maybe, maybe, that it could be you—)

“Bear—” it would be so easy to swallow the words back down until you choke on them.

You breathe in. Taste nicotine in your throat; the phantom burn of a memory from long ago: one once buried under the rubble of your crumbling foundations, now rearing into this yawning abyss as you waver on the precipice. This vacuum that syphons you dry. Leaves you empty, gaping.

It’s your mum leaning over the railing of a mezzanine as she smokes a cigarette—the eighth in the last three hours, pack near gone—and tries (and fails; always, always, always) to find some temporal kinship with a higher power as you sit on the porch swing and drink in the scraps she tosses your way.

(Today, it’s the way the smoke curls in the periwinkle sky like a naked gospel; grand televangelist to a crowd of one.)

She scrambles within the ruins of her own making to seek answers to compensate for the lack of worth that slips from the cracks. Left behind again. Again, but it’s not her fault. It’s never her fault.

(You should know best, she tells you—you suckled from the shattered parts of herself before you broke away from the cradle of her arms. Genetics leaves you wrecked for company, for permanence.

It’s just not made for us, baby. We’re unloveable only because we love too much—)

An epiphany comes in the middle of her eighth cigarette, and she divines enough wisdom to come to the succinct conclusion that those broken pieces are not the cause of her misery.

(How could they be when they’re a part of her and she’s a part of everything?)

Can't fix a broken man, she murmurs into the midmorning fog, blood-red mouth splitting into a sneer. There was beauty, you thought, to be found in the pale yellow of her teeth against the pastel dusting of dawn. Rapturous, almost. You couldn't look away even as the words snaked through the underdeveloped fibres of your mind. They're like someone who's drowning, you know? They'll grab on to anyone that gets too close and try to pull them under, too. Maybe because they want to save themselves, or maybe because they don't want to die alone. Better to leave them behind.

Can't fix a broken man, (but maybe—)

Your dad tried to fix me, she adds, and it comes in the same cadence of an afterthought, blase; but the thinness in her voice, the reedy pitch of barely veiled urgency, all feigned indifference to the topic, all give her away. She's been waiting for this, you know. Gearing up in steady increments so that the blow lands harder when it's thrown.

Isn't that stupid? And he couldn't even bother to stick around. What a joke… But I guess some people are like that, huh? Couldn't be me, she scoffed, jabbing her finger in your direction. You could see the yellow of her nails beneath the pock marks in her chopped, blue nail polish. And don't let it be you, either. The best thing you could ever do for yourself and someone else is leave. Don't cheat. Don't be the other woman. Just fucking—

The bubble bursts, and in that breaking, a truth is revealed to you in some strange, hangover-induced epiphany brought on by dehydration, malnutrition, and the terrific idea of going home with a man who has never once talked to you while being completely sober. It screams—first and foremost—you are an idiot, but beyond that, you really are your father's child, aren't you?

Lost amid your memory, the emergence of a forgotten fallow, it’s Bear who shakes you awake when he reaches for you after the silence sat for too long. Fingers touching, too tender and too rough at the same time, and the juxtaposition makes you quiver as it ploughs disquiet into your being.

Tears pebble in your lash line, threatening to spill over. You haven't cried in a long time and yet, yet—

His hand folds over your wrist, tight and unrelenting. Shackles against your bones. Grinding them into soft, fine powder.

“C’mon,” he slurs, pleads; tugging you closer as if distance is what makes you say these things to him and not the heavy, overwhelming scent of alcohol wafting off of his numb tongue. “You don't know what you're saying right now—”

His fingers tighten. The midnight scabs on his knuckles tear from the strain, the stretch. Blood wells under the slit that lifts from his broken, battered skin. Pebbles like a tear-drop on the wrinkle of his bruised knuckle, and then sheds itself free. Running down the yellow mess of moulted flesh until it meets the cliff edge of where his palm rests against yours.

“You don’t mean it. You can’t mean that. Stay with me, stay—”

The alcohol makes him sway where he sits, eyes upturned but focused inward, lost to thoughts and feelings and places unreachable to you. Ephemeral lines in jaded, blue sands. It slips, too, from between his fingers. Uncatchable to anyone but the flush under his skin, the slur in his words.

Can’t fix a broken man.

The motion dislodges the droplet and it waterfalls over his palm until his blood kisses the clean, unmarred skin of your hand.

He doesn’t notice the way he bleeds on you (through you, in you; drowns you in it, in him—): outside of a thready determination built on drunk devotion, he doesn’t seem to see much at all. Clouded. Overcast. Those hazy eyes regard you with a thin, untouchable distance. Filmed over and too far gone for you to pull him back—

(and you can’t help but wonder if he even notices you or if, in those unending crevasses, an icy, broken bergschrunds, the misshapen silhouette of you strikes a different chord to him; if these slurred hymnals are just a hollow orison for someone else in your stead.)

—so you stop trying. Let it sit, let it rot. Smell the infection in the air as the wound splits apart. Gangrenous and beyond palliative help.

Something must flicker across your face sharp enough to cut through the fog he drowns himself inside because his eyes widen slightly, and his hand tenses around your wrist. Tight. Unyielding.

As his fingers dig in over your pisiform, deep enough to bruise—to mark you once more with his stain, his touch—you’re struck by the sudden thought of brittleness. It’s not something you’d ever considered yourself as—delicate, fragile—but with the way he holds you now, not at all dissimilar to the way he held on last night, fingers loosely wrapped around your wrist as he used your joints as a stress ball to calm himself down, you feel vulnerable. Swallowed whole, caught.

What once felt like a comfort, a sense of security as you moulded yourself into an anchor point, a lighthouse on the sandy, dark shore, for him to find, to swim for amid the roaring waves dragging him down, now feels like dead weight.

For the first time since you've met him, you taste chlorine in the back of your throat. Feel the pull of the currents dragging you down.

You know all too well what it feels like to drown.

You pull away. He clings tighter.

“Bear, please—”

Please, you think. Please, please, please—

(If you keep stripping yourself bare, you'll be nothing but bones—)

He doesn't even notice. Nothing, it seems, will pull his fixed attention from every minuscule expression that flickers across your face as if the mere notion of weakness, of hesitancy, will give him reason to hold on just that much harder.

“Can't just give up on this—” the words are tangled in his throat, caught on the end of a snarl, and vicious. He tugs on you, pulling you closer. “On us.”

“There's no us, Bear.”

And it isn't a lie. Of course, it isn't.

There's an empty chasm between you both, void of any tangible substance. Whatever he thinks this is, it can't work. Won't. Not in the real world. Not outside of the bottom of a bottle.

You won't be his crutch. His bad habit. His midlife crisis amid a downward spiral.

You can't be.

Won't be.

(you will not be the other woman. you will not be your father's child.)

And it isn't remotely the same, you know. Bear's wife is—

Dead. Gone.

—and yet, this whole situation still makes you feel like a homewrecker even though the home you demand he returns to is empty.

Selfish, you think, but you can't even begin to know who you're referring to in this beautifully devastating moment. Bear, for chasing ghosts, drowning them in alcohol and bad choices and vices that end with bringing strange women back to his lonely hotel room just to feel more than the vicious bite of grief in his chest.

Or you, for pulling away from this drowning man because you're not strong enough to save him and yourself at the same time.

(or—something sneers—you just hate the idea of being like either of your parents, but what can you do when you've stolen all of their bad parts for your own?)

You think of the man in the bar. One hundred dollars to send him back home. Where he belongs.

(...he can't destroy himself like this. You'd know that, though, as his friend.

send him home, alright?)

“Go home,” you say, harsh and severe. All the things that your mother wished she said to him. Regurgitated words spat out by his feet because borrowed doctrines are you've ever known.

A fissure crackles across his expression, cutting through the fog. It's anger, bitterness, pain—some strange, fantastical amalgamation of the three—and it coalesces into broken defiance where it sits, clinging to the glossy grease around his brow, his nose.

It makes your fingers itch with the urge to soothe—to unfurl the wrinkles in his brow, to tuck this grown man close to your chest until the tension in the thick set of his shoulders liquifies in your hands, and he melts into malleable putty.

(Another trinket to collect dust on your mantle.)

You swallow it down—the salt and blood, and the pathetic pulse of your heart, and all. Hurt him, you think. Hurt him deeply. Deeper, still. Push him away and run. Run. Keep running until your legs give out, until your lungs collapse because if you don’t, if you don’t, you know you’ll stay with him until he throws you to wayside, until he wakes up one morning and decides that you are not enough compared to the big, wide world just outside his door; that your walls and your roof are not big enough for him—

“Please. Go home. Go home, Bear—”

Your words land like you knew they would, and he reels back for a moment, as if struck, but the anger, the twisted pain etched in the lines of his unkempt beard, his greasy brow, make stand firm. Unmoving.

You catch the acrid scent of gasoline on his skin when he leans forward, forcing himself back into your space with his chin dipped low, eyes blazing with a defiant inferno. His scarred, battle-battered hands drop to his splayed knees, gripping tight. Holding firm.

(Or holding himself back—)

His voice is a matchstick when he speaks. Smouldering embers sparking to life. Renewed with a sense of purpose you can't make sense of. What set him off? What made him flip—

(You're not worth it. You're not worth it—)

“M’not giving up on this.”

His jaw is slack. Laxed. The words slip out slow, languid. Curling with a touch of humid derision, mordant humour, at the idea that after all of this, everything (nothing, you think—nothing, nothing, nothing), you could just walk away unscathed.

If I burn, the crackle in his throat says, promises: then you're burning with me.

“Bear—”

“I'm not giving up on us.”

He leaves, and takes another part of you with him.

(You sever a part of yourself and leave it in the mouldering hotel room that still reeks of stale sweat, cheap whisky, and sex.)

The aftermath goes like this:

A tsunami of regret and indecision dredges up terrible, awful things—phantom memories and stains in the shape of fingerprints that pollute the inside of your psyche—ones that should have been left to rot at the bottom of your buried trenches. It makes leaving harder than it should have been considering the abrupt nature of this—whatever it is.

(Untitled. Unnameable. Unknowable.)

There's betting on losing dogs, and then there's this:

Pacing all your cards, all your coins, on one that wasn't even in the race.

One foot in, one foot out doesn't apply when Bear has never even stepped over the threshold. That notion roots itself in the scorched fibres of your chest, knotweed in your alveoli, as you scent liquor on his breath when he speaks. A cavernous distance grows between want and reality.

You thought you knew him. Learned and memorised all his hard lines, his soft valleys, the thick thatches of hair that dust his body like the dark depths of a riverbed; a nebula of loosely connected scar tissue—Orion's belt made of fine, silvery lines—and pock marks from blemishes and bumps born from the rich, enigmatic tapestry of his life beyond the mere sliver of you. Crows' feet in the corner of his eyes, but only when they're crested in pleasure, twisted in that tender sort of humour only comfort brings.

It takes you a weekend to map out the burly topography of a man, and only seconds to realise you know nothing about him outside of this rapacious intimacy.

And even though you want to feel like this was the right choice—because it is, it was—you can't seem to stem the sheer brutality in which regret tears through you as you stand alone in a desolate parking lot under the waning sun. A whimpering ending to a desolate beginning.

Was it loneliness that brought you here, or just the mundanity of fearing failure? It's these unanswerable questions, these skewed thoughts, that tumble over themselves, struggling to stay buoyant in the molasses of your sicky grey matter.

(Let them sink. Let them drown.)

These distant sentiments barely echo in the gaping vacuum of that is your mind. Untethered, whispering by as you stare, transfixed, at the broad strokes of pretty pastels in periwinkle, tangerine, and bluebonnet are rapidly consumed by the darkening sky that opens like a chasm above your head. The sight of it a little too close to the colours that danced in the aether when you both broke, finally, meeting somewhere in the middle, tangled webs. Broken people coming together in a cataclysm that was always, always, headed down a single path to devastation.

(The perfect conclusion to a story without a beginning.)

It's something you shouldn't think about. Let them sink. Let them drown—

This looping, knotted thread is a dangerous one to follow—the agony of watching Bear storm off (even after asking, demanding, that you let him drive you home; an offer you quickly refused) is still raw and gaping; a pulsating wound in the back of your throat—but you're brittle enough to want it to hurt, maybe. Chasing that unequivocal high only self-flagellation brings.

Masochism in failure. In heartbreak by your own design.

And it should hurt, right? This lonely climax (not with a bang, but a fizzle) should devastate you. Cut you to the core. Leave false starts on your bones. Scars on your ribcage. A meteor shower in milky white. Something tangible. Permanent.

But instead, it feels unfinished. More of a sudden paroxysm than a defining choice you've made. Concretely. Absolutely. It's a hollow win for your bruised ego. Your battered pride. It slinks, somewhere, in the depths of this renewed pain, and licks at the tender wound made when you pierced your chest and ripped your heart cleanout.

Threw it at the floor by his feet.

Quid pro quo, maybe. Or a desperate bid to rid yourself of the Bear-shaped hole now taking residence inside.

(It's fine, though. That pesky thing, all wrapped up tight in thick layers of duct tape, has never really felt like it belonged to you, anyway—)

It's all such a beautifully horrific panoply, you find. Paradoxical. Oxymoronic. Smothering and somehow claustrophobic at the same time. Being burnt alive and dying from hypothermia.

The cudgel of pain to your chest is white-hot and vicious, but there's a seismic polynya in the lavascape of sadness that drapes through the topography of your being like a sluice, and in that little island of ice sits the unrelenting sense of flat resignation.

You left Bear of your own free will, but in the jaded fibres of your being, you know it was all—

Inevitable.

And fuck—

(fuck, fuck, fuck—)

Was it? Was it all inexorable or are you just making up flimsy excuses for yourself?

Yes, you think. And then: no. Maybe. Maybe.

(you are your father's child—

and your mother's broken daughter.)

You want to cry, and scream, and break the pain against something willing to fight back, to cut you just as deeply as you hack at it, but all you have are fragmented memories swarming you in this vacant parking lot on the wrong side of Virginia Beach, and—

(don't let it in, don't—)

—you chase it, lure it all in as you compare the blue in the sleepy gloam to the colour of his eyes, and then—

Your back against a brick wall, his knuckles sticky with blood closing around the nape of your neck, pulling you closer. Closer. The wide expanse of his palm swallowing your wrist as he led you to his truck; then, heavy on your thigh the entire—ill-advised—drive to the Motel 6 down the road where you stand now, fragile, raw, and all alone.

When this all started, when you finally had the cobbled remains of Bear’s lucidity in your arms, the flat press of his attention against your jugular, you considered it to be a victory—

(a victory in amber)

—but hindsight is a cruel, mocking laugh in the back of your head. Twisting the knife deeper, severing the fraying threads that anchor you to yourself. With a sadistic glee it tells you that while you might have won the battle over the bottle, you lost the war (—abysmally, and without even the haze of a fever in your veins to numb the hollowness of your loss).

You just can’t fix a broken man, and you certainly can’t keep him afloat all on your own when you’re too busy trying not to drown yourself.

It's just that the weight of your shared brokenness was incompatible and insurmountable to the grief in Bear’s heart, but really. You just wonder if it was inevitable that everything you offered would be passed over in favour of numbed indifference at the bottom of a bottle. For someone, something, else. And while you might have been the one to leave first, but somewhere in the misplaced hurt inside of your chest threatening to collapse in on itself, folding into a black hole that devours all of your messy, ugly parts, you know that Bear was never really there, anyway.

That thought stings more than it should because you know, you know—

It’s just not made for us, baby.

—and maybe it’s all your fault for forgetting that inevitability in the first place.

(shame on me—)

The thread you warned yourself not to chase gets tangled around your throat, choking you with the very same line you should have stayed far away from. It feels like hollow cyclicity—a gluttonous ouroboros gorging on itself—when it all, eventually, leads back to the beginning.

Your fault, again, for trusting broken guidelines in the dark. For betting on losing dogs. For picking up another stray who already had a home. Another trinket to gawk at that ended up being chock full of arsenic, killing you with every touch.

But He's gone, now, despite the fire that raged in his eyes, he still left you here to burn on your own.

(inevitable—)

You should learn when to let go, you suppose, and fight the urge to bite your nails down to the wick just to taste blood in your mouth that isn't his.

For the most part, though, you’re fine.

You’ve always been a good liar (“terrible, actually,” Bear snorts, and it’s the closest you’ve ever come to seeing him roll his eyes. “Jesus, never play poker if I'm not around—”), and especially to yourself, so after a moment of self-reflection in the form of a scalding bath and a purging cry in your car as you shoddily cut the Joe Graves-shaped cancer from your aching heart before it can metastasise and infect you further, you come out of it all standing, somehow.

It might be the pastiche of indifference you slip into; a facsimile of the one, jaded and so bone achingly tired, that fell over you when you stumbled out of the bathroom, ready for something more only to find a man half-gone already to a bottle in the span of a few moments alone with his thoughts.

Regardless of what it is, it works (—in shades, and only as long as you cling so tightly to anger that your fingers bleed and your joints ache—), and you let the familiarity of your unpractised trot to some gnarled finish line lead you forward.

A clean break, you think (—hope: plead, bargain; wishing so hard on every eyelash that falls, every eleven you come across so that something, someone, listening might cradle the delicate splinters in their arms and nurse this whim, this want, into fruition), and you'll be fine. Fine.

You have to be.

But the thing is this:

Despite your best efforts to put some sense of distance between you and the heartache that must be, at least a little bit, on par with being gutted, a clean break is never clean, is it?

Case in point—

Thinking about him makes you bleed, and you think about him constantly.

(Regret, then, is a wellspring in which the pain drinks and you didn't know a body could thirst this much.)

And it's made even worse when you realise just how bullish a man like Joe Graves can be.

Maybe it's the thought of everything that had built up between you shattering into pieces that awakens this sense of urgency within him. Clinging, perhaps, to the only form of comfort he knows. The only one who toughed it out—in part, due to your employment obligation; the rest? an unresolved saviour complex when it comes to the people even a contrarian wouldn't place a bet on. Maybe.

(Probably. Undoubtedly.

You stopped trying to find the reason why you kept picking up the strays who always bite you in the end.)

Whatever the reason, Bear is persistent. Relentless.

He makes it Wednesday (you'd left him behind Sunday evening—day of the Sabbath, you learn; how fucking ironic) before his campaign starts.

It's forty-six missed calls, half a dozen texts (because he doesn't like texting—he likes talking. Face to face. No fallacies, no bullshit), and thirty voicemails (twenty-seven of which are drunken ramblings you don't even bother to listen to, and the rest—

Pick up. We need to talk.

Listen, I—

I fucked up. I fucked everything up—

Delete. Delete. Delete.

What are you supposed to do with any of that, anyway?)

The crux of the issue that Bear seems to miss swims in ethanol and leaves behind a five-minute voicemail filled with slurred I miss you's amid a background chorus of a rowdy bar. Then, a woman's voice—a woman who isn’t you—urging him back for more shots.

You can imagine how the rest of that night unfolded.

(You wonder if the word meant for you—I miss you—was still on his tongue when he followed her back.)

It's your fault (again; always) in the end because while you don't answer him—neither text, nor call; all voicemails deleted—you can't bring yourself to block him, either.

You let it sit somewhere in the murky middle. Untouched but looked at. Longed for.

It would be so easy to just give in. To let Bear back into your life—properly this time, maybe—and to take him up on those slurred promises made at two in the morning about coffee shops on the boardwalk, and breakfast at the Gulfstream, and movies and dinner, and talking until three in the morning, fucking in the back seat of his pick-up truck—

But that's the thing about yearning, isn't it?

Everything seems sweeter when you want it bad enough.

So, you drown yourself in him. Stand as close to the fire as you can without burning alive.

Dousing yourself in the scent of ethanol cleaner. Clinging to broken pinky promises. Thinking about peanut butter and bacon staining your fingers. Prying information from rotting timber, and keeping the saprophyte that falls off the wood in your pocket for safekeeping. Filling space on a drumroll because you talk too much, anyone ever tell you that?

(ad infinitum.)

Taping the ugliest bible verses to the back of your eyelids just to get closer, to feel closer, only to come to the realisation that you have no stake in religion to care about the deeper meaning behind it all. Metaphors and imagery are hollow when they mean nothing at all.

There's no comfort, no succour, to be found in the thin pages.

(You roll them up and smoke them instead. Easier to digest that way, you find.

Bear would probably hate it, and that alone balms the hurt some. Marginally, infinitesimally, because nothing can cauterise this gaping hole in your chest so you might as well fill it up with paper mache instead. Origami cranes with how much you hate him miss him need him want him written on the inside.)

You ache. Moulder. But you let it all rot inside of you until it's a congealed mess of putrefying memories and the moulted remains of the yearning you kept locked in shackles; the one that keeps biting, gnawing at the limbs of its cage to free.

It's easier to let it all decay together in a controlled space so that you can bisect the necrosed mass in a single go. Sever the limb to save the body. It's a mantra you repeat as you call in sick to work over and over again.

The flu, you say, and if the sniffle you give is from crying, and the cough from the weed you've been smoking all morning (blue dream, the shaggy-haired kid tells you with a nod; adds: the good shit), well. No one—especially your shitty boss and his shitty work ethic—has to know. You balm the hurt in a way that makes you feel good, smoothing it all over with trashy reality television (though, the Japanese dating show you end up dozing off to is pretty good, admittedly), and junk food.

Moving on—even some sad, pathetic facsimile of it—helps. Routines forged in wilful avoidance take the edge off of the livewires inside of your body, nerves overstimulated and burning up with a fever much too hot, too vicious, for you to palliate with home remedies.

And so, you throw yourself into it. Become a human battering ram against the ghosts in your head.

Things quickly become more of a coping mechanism than a potential, but that's fine. It's all fine. It'll work in the long run until the bruises that line your flesh fade along with the want and the hope, and the terrible memories, too.

(Terrible, in the way only a desperate, all-consuming one-sided love can be.)

All of it up in flames, in smoke.

You burn through an ounce in retaliation while watching his name flicker across your screen, and then spend an hour googling whether or not weed is really addictive (it isn't, but the routine, the habit, can be), before deciding that this whole affair is stupid, anyway.

It's a carousel of self-pity, spite, and masochism that feels like it might never end. Your efforts to palliate the sickness amount to a week of paid sick time spent watching a slew of old romantic dramas on repeat, and ignoring the string of texts that pour through (talk to me, let me fix this, let me—). All voicemails are immediately deleted before you can even hear the hitch in his voice.

It's duct tape over a gaping wound. Drifting aimlessly along Lethe, careless and indifferent, but all the while, desperately reaching down and cupping water into your palm for a sip that never seems to quench the thirst in the back of your throat.

You think you could drink until you're just standing in a dry riverbed and still feel parched. Effloresced by your own hand.

(as usual. as always—)

But this wound is still raw, still tender, even beneath the tape.

Ignore it. Ignore it—

(—before the edges begin to tear. Cloved down the middle.)

Another buffer is born when you get a text message from your boss—u comin in tmrrw?—and realise you can't avoid it, work, forever.

The prospect of going back on Friday evening—tomorrow, you suppose (the days have been slipping like molasses through your spread fingers)—makes you nervous.

You're not ready to see Bear.

But more than that (deeper than it, too), you’re not ready to see Bear unaffected by all of this. Sitting in his usual spot, in their chair he barely fits in, ordering the same drink over and over and over again.

Moving on, too—in his own way. Meeting someone else.

(His horoscope holds no punches when it tells you a past relationship may re-enter your life, which may open your eyes to a world of new experiences—)

It isn't as if he usually pairs celibacy with his whisky, and with the plethora of ignored messages (read receipt turned off), unanswered phone calls, and deleted voicemails, you know it's inevitable for him to give up. To get the hint—whatever that might be. Move on, maybe?

(get your shit together and chase this properly, Bear, jesus christ—)

You consider calling in again, but without any paid sick days left at your disposal, you know you can't afford to. So, you swallow it.

(And if it takes a little longer than usual to get ready for work, then so be it.)

Even with all of the false bravado you can scrape together come Friday, your nerves are frayed. Raw. The anxiety rolls off of you in waves, noticeable enough that even the regulars loitering outside (the ones who usually try and bum smokes off of any passersby, yourself included) offer you a cigarette.

(Politely turned down, but fuck—fuck—you wish you took it.)

The first hour into your shift is spent trying to pretend you're not aware of the way your roaming eyes skirt to the door in thirty-second intervals. Traitors. Or the involuntary flinch each time the door opens.

It would be easier to get lost in the familiarity of this desolate dive bar on the fringes of town, and so, you do.

(Try to, anyway.)

Immersing yourself in the routine of it all—the motions of pouring drinks, sizing the newcomers up (profiling their personage down to a drink and a random idiosyncrasy); the astringent scent of alcohol, the mild barley and hops; the noise of hushed conversations lulling between the static rumble of the television (sports, per usual).

The clock ticks down the seconds, the minutes, hours. You pour drinks. Clock the local gossip. Listen to the patter of condensation dripping into the tin bucket beneath the hole in the roof. In between the threadbare stirrings of routine, you find yourself waiting with dread gnawing at your insides until they're shredded and raw, pulsing ligaments burning with the fever of infection.

But it's moot. All of it.

He doesn't come back to the bar.

Where you expect to see his broad shoulders slouched over the counter, head hanging low over his steady accumulation of shot glasses (a drinking challenge with only one participant; his demons the spectators), the seat he usually occupies remains empty.

And maybe you're idealistic and stupid and wet behind the ears, but a part of you expected him to. To wander up to the counter with roses and chocolate and sobriety etched into the Neptune blue glow of his eyes, and to pick you, to choose you, but—

A fairytale.

The box on the counter—complaints—$5—is picked up by some wayward frat boy, and the mocking laughter that follows makes you think of cobalt blue, and peanut butter and bacon burgers in the empty parking lot near the beach, watching the endless midnight black ocean rock against the sandy shore. Talking. Talking. Talking.

Everything. Nothing. All the things in between.

You told him about college—failed the first semester, and then my dad… well. Anyway, had to drop out for a bit. But. I went back. Stupid, I know, and it doesn't matter but—

His hand falls on your arm, fingers a little greasy from the sweet potato fries, the ones he kept sneaking from your pile when he thinks you aren't looking, and he says:

It matters to you.

And it did, but only because it was something your dad mentioned a long time ago—I'd be proud if you followed in my footsteps—and despite everything he'd ever done, his attention, his affection, was all you'd ever wanted.

Yeah, you'd said, and stared out at the vat of blue until your eyes burned. Yeah, I guess so.

Well, he had peanut butter staining the corner of his mouth when you blinked the sting from your eyes, and turned to him. What do you wanna do?

Nothing. Everything.

Your dad once picked you up from practice, hands tight around the steering wheel. He filled you in about his day (stupid fuckin' guy from upstate came down and bought all the houses we were fixing to sell), complained about your mother (god, you know, that woman didn't even tell me what school to pick you up from? Said I should know where my daughter goes to school, as if I'm not working all damn day to keep you fed, and—), and gave you the biggest piece of advice you'd ever get:

"Look, no job is better than real estate. All that crap you think you want to do? Not important. All you need is four walls and a roof, and that's it. The rest is secondary."

(If that was true, why weren't you enough for him? Why weren't your four walls and roof enough to keep him?)

A shrug. I don't know. I've never been good at anything. You think of bruised knees. Scraped skin. Chasing a car, a dream, that never once slowed down. Can't even run right, it seems.

I can teach you. He clears his throat when you look at him, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand twice but somehow misses the dollop of peanut butter tangled in his beard. M’used to training men, I'm sure I can whip you into shape. Teach you how to run. Put you through the wringer until you come out sprinting on the other side.

"Teach me how to swim instead."

The bark of laughter he let out was cut off when you held your pinky up.

His brows bounced, incredulous. "Really?"

"A Taurus always keeps their promise."

"Christ's sake," he shakes his head, and you count the lines on his forehead when he turns, and rubs his fingers against his temple so hard, you wonder if he's trying to chisel through his skull to get at where it hurts the most. "I might not even be a Taurus."

"When were you born?"

His tongue pokes out from between his teeth, chin dropping to his chest when he huffs. You watch the way his shoulders shake, the flesh softening around his neck when he dips it low, and wonder if this is what it was like to yearn.

His eyes spark, Neptune blue, when he looks up. He says nothing, but holds his pinky up to yours, the digit swallowing yours whole.

It's a promise. He squeezes your hand in three pulses. One. Two. Three. You think you might get lost in the canyons that keep dividing inside of his eyes.

"Bet you were born in April."

"Not even close." He grins, all teeth, and drops your hand. Motions to the fries spilling over your console with his chin. "Finish up."

"Oh, did you even leave any for me? Thought you ate them all."

"Watch it."

Your stomach churns at thoughts, the memories. Plagued by him, it seems. So tantalisingly out of reach, and yet—your phone vibrates in your pocket; another voicemail left for you to listen to in your car and pretend that this whole thing is fine—so close.

He's everywhere, it seems. The scent of this place makes you think of him, and the stench of sickness—

Every square inch brings back some reminder of him.

When he got too trashed the first few visits and stumbled into the washroom. His bulk falls into the cheap door frame, and sends the ugly photo of what might have been the boardwalk crashing the floor. His call of: take it outta my tab when it shattered into pieces.

(You didn't. You hated that picture, anyway.)

When he knocked over his shot of tequila when you told him you thought he'd look really handsome in a beanie—a touch too bold, high off of the ethanol that leaked from his pores—and the rubescent smear over the bridge of his nose that followed. The ruddy stain on the counter—nail polish, you think, from that time a group of bridesmaids stumbled in after a wedding on the beach, and used the washroom to freshen up—matches the shade of his blush.

You spend an hour before closing scrubbing the counter down until your fingers are cracked and dry and burning from the chemicals you douse on the cheap, aged wood. It doesn't come out. Nothing you do will ever make the table unsticky. It's too far gone.

Like him. Like—

"Whisky," a man barks, slapping a dollar bill down on the stain. "Two shots."

Four walls and a roof, right? Right. Right. Right.

The walls here bleed condensation from the humidity outside, and the roof leaks when it rains. Always. It's patched up with duct tape and pipe dreams.

(Like you—)

The box on the counter catches his attention, rheumy eyes skimming the words. He scoffs. "Funny. Make me a drink worth a tip, and maybe I'll—"

"You know what?" You snap, throwing the wet cloth down with a splat that sends droplets pelting across his abdomen. There's a vindictiveness in seeing the splatter on his smooth, unwrinkled shirt.

Your eyes sting from the bleach, the lemon cleaner. Pebbled tears in your lash line threaten to spill over, but you swallow it all down. You won't cry. Not now. Not anymore.

Your hands twitch, an aborted motion to scour the wetness from your lashes, but you stop it in time. Curl your fingers into fists instead.

(And stupidly, nonsensically, you have the sudden, passing regret over washing your hands of the blood he'd spilled on your skin.)

"I don't work here."

"Since when?"

"Now. Get your own whisky, and take your shitty tip, and shove it up your ass—"

Quitting your only source of income certainly isn't the wisest decision you've ever made—but you've never been wont to make good ones, anyway, and so, you think it's all perfectly fine, considering.

Considering.

If anything, it's better than waiting around for the inevitable collapse of this shaky, patchwork foundation of paper-mache you cobbled together (reinforced with pipe dreams) to come crumbling down around you when Bear wandered in.

(If he ever would—

Fuck. You hope he does. Hope he doesn't.

Get better. Come back—)

You sit in your car at the end of your shift—the very last one after several odd years of growing roots down into the worn floorboards, and keeping more secrets about the occupants in this town than you care to admit—and just—

Breathe.

Sort of.

It's twisted in a way that makes you entirely too aware of what everyone would think if they knew about it. So, you cup this little secret between the palms of your hands, and cradle it to your chest, only exposing it to the outside world when things become too much. It's easier to say you count to ten—in, out, in, out—than to admit that your methods of self-soothing, of quelling the visceral sense of anxiety from pinballing around inside your guts like a marble, is to lean back, close your eyes, and pretend that you're back in the deep end of the swimming at the local chapter of a YMCA.

Drowning, of course.

Or some fictive version of it.

It comes to life in smeared yellow against hazy blue. A cacophony of muted sounds in the background—exultant shrieks of children, splashes in the distance, the low chatter of garbled conversation—is all you can hear in your underwater sanctuary, but only just. Noise is distorted and strange. A warbled mimicry of noise.

Your world is pressed into a cerulean marble, untouchable and inescapable. You linger in the centre, floating aimlessly in stagnation.

Down here, nothing matters. Everything is dissolved in the heavy chlorine that saturates the cold waters, and whatever resilient pieces remain sink low to the pool floor, scattered around the yellow goggles just within arm's reach.

You sink with them. Your thoughts become liquid; mercury slinking around your head. Intangible. Nonsensical. And above all else—silent.

Or they're supposed to be.

But even down here where nothing can touch you, where no one noticed you haven't surfaced in ages, your thoughts are carried by the lulling currents. Saved from your murky grey matter, from the sap that traps them in the mouth of a pitcher plant, they buoy to the surface, unmoored now. Free to scream at you in whispers.

You think of Bear.

Or rather, you think about not thinking about Bear.

About other things. And nothing—forced white noise. Static. What you're going to do now that you don't have a job. The scabs on his bloodied knuckles. No. Work, maybe. Finishing up that degree you promised yourself you'd get, if only to fill some absent void in your chest—or a futile obligation to a man who forgot your birthdays. Who spelled your name wrong on holiday cards—on the rare occasions he ever bothered to send them.

Other things. Other things—your faucet is leaking. You'll need to call the property manager to fix it. You need to get gas, too. Groceries.

Faintly, you catch the musk of his cologne still clinging to your passenger seat when you breathe in. Hold it, count to ten. It makes you remember the warmth of his humid breath on your cheek when he leaned in close, tapping your console as he pointed out your CHECK ENGINE light was on. Had been, you confessed sheepishly, for a few weeks up to that point.

Stupid pothole, you grumbled around the electricity running down your spine when his arm brushed yours as he leaned back with a derisive snort.

You caught the headiness of white oak, musk, when he turned his face to you, decidedly unamused by your answer, and flatly told you that you were driving around in a death trap.

Things not even on its last leg—it's in the damn grave.

Whatever, you shrugged. I'll just hit another pothole on the way home and it'll turn off.

Jesus Christ—

He didn't smell terrible. Faded cologne from a few days ago. Something woodsy. Cedar, maybe. Leather, smoke, pine. Sweat from the unrelenting humidity. Loam clinging to his skin. Spiced rum around his collar when he spilled his drink down his chin (you, eagerly, hungrily watching the amber droplet roll down the length of his neck—). He always seems to smell like he had been working in a thick, taiga forest in the dead of winter. Cindersap. Evergreen. Sweat-soaked leather. Chopped wood.

It congeals in your senses. Glueing to soft tissue, embedding itself in your skin. Permanent, unshakeable.

Unwashed sheets shouldn't be appealing. Motel shampoo. Cheap soap. The muted smell of old, stale cigarettes.

And yet, in this marbleised world, you think of it.

Of his skin, and the way it feels against yours. The slight sheen of grease along his nose when it nudges the soft slope of your neck. The rough drag of his beard over your pulse. Wry curls that end up on your tongue after he'd kiss you.

Any plans on shaving?

He dragged his cheek over your collarbones, eyes lidded, heavy. None at all. That a deal breaker?

You hold your breath until your lungs start to quiver, to ache; until you're dangling precariously on the verge of hypoxia with ink blots splashing across your vision in a garish Rorschach (they're all butterflies. with knives. what does that say about me, doc?). Phosphenes scatter in a nebula of colour. Your throat constricts around nothing, empty. Empty. The urge to swallow follows on the coattails of a pitifully fleeting euphoria. Temporal and untouchable, but you still reach out, grabbing and grasping with straining fingers because you'll hate yourself forever if you don't try. Scrambling, desperately, to catch cosmic dust on the tips of your fingers. To imbue your disjointed cracks with the chemical makeup of a Magellanic cloud until your broken parts burn incandescent. Kintsugi in cuts, scraps, of Andromeda.

But for as much as you want to shatter your lungs into infinitesimal pieces, and scatter them across the universe, your body has a failsafe against stupidity.

It forces you to gasp, gulping down thin, crisp air until you feel the burn in your chest from overexertion.

You open your eyes, and wish the world around you was still draped in teal and hazy yellow. That you could taste chlorine in the back of your throat. It's a brutal awakening to find a gossamer of silken midnight draped over the parking lot in the back of the dive bar. Empty, barren, save for yourself and the chef. A man you guess you'll never see again.

Soft, crushed ochre smears a hazy ring in the east. The dawning sun of a new day.

Leaning against the old leather of your car, your eyes cut to the console briefly. The CHECK ENGINE light is off. You made Bear groan, out loud, when you hit a pothole on the freeway and it flicked off, like you knew it was. Problem solved. More duct tape over what is probably something wrong with your engine (probably dented the filter in your catalytic converter, Bear grumbled, and you nodded along, pretending like you knew what that meant).

A light catches your eye. Your phone buzzes on the dashboard, screen illuminated in the reflective surface of your window.

You could pretend you were getting a call from RAEB if you tried hard enough. Answered it, maybe, and feigned ignorance while you chatted away to him like nothing happened. Like you sometimes don't try to drown yourself on land.

You reach for it, fingers tingling at the last vibrations before the screen cuts out, and bring it close.

It takes a second, but the voicemail icon pops up in the notification bar beside a text from your friend sent hours earlier begging you to come out next weekend (haven't seen you in forever okay?? come out w us!!).

You don't know why he keeps trying. Why he's so persistent over something that is, quite decidedly, nothing.

The icon taunts you. You hate seeing it—always have. It can't be swiped away. Can't be hidden. It irks you somewhat, seeing this little symbol.

Make it go away—

You shouldn't. Not when your insides are this raw, this fractured. Broken. But you turn your phone over in your hands for a moment, mood mulish and itching for something. A fight, maybe. Something to be angry about, justifiably. To vent your frustrations.

You tap it before you really think things through, watching as it dials VOICEMAIL and the automated message pops up after a ring.

Please enter your password—

You have one new message. To play your messages, press one—

It starts shaky—like he's moving. You can hear the shuffle of his body, the rasp of his shirt. A door slams. He huffs.

Look, uh. I'm not… I'm not good at this kind of thing. I was hoping—hoping we could talk… but. I guess I, uh. Anyway—

It goes quiet. You reach up to hit SEVEN on the keypad, delete the message like all the others, but a noise stops you. The screen hums under your finger.

I've been thinking lately. About a lot of things. The team, myself. You. I made—some bad calls. Got some good men…uh, into some trouble. The kind of trouble you… don't walk away from.

It made me think about Rip. I told you about him, right? In the—the motel. Rip is—Rip was… important to me. To us. Saved my life. In Iraq. Mosul. Bullet nearly hit me but somehow, he pulled me back just in time, took the bullet instead. Right in his stomach. And you know, he, uh—he huffs. It sounds like a laugh, but one he's choking on. He got right back up and took the bastard out. Just—wasted him. I owe him my life. Always have. It's muffled, as if he has his hand pressed to his mouth, keeping the words in. Should have saved him, but I couldn't. Couldn't do a damn thing to help him. I let him get that bad and I knew. I fucking—I knew. I saw it. Watched him spiral. And now—shit. Now I'm—uh, talking to your voicemail at four in the morning—

You think you catch what am I doing before the line cuts out.

Fog settles in the midmorning dawn. You lean against the headrest, clutching your phone, and try not to think at all.

(wash, rinse, repeat)

The hole in your chest, filled in with clay and papier-mache, crumbles under the seaspray.

What am I doing. It stays with you.

These flimsy excuses become a house of cards.

It doesn't surprise you much at all when they wobble, falling on top of you.

It's his name flashing across your screen—just Bear—as you lay in bed days later, pretending not to think about him that starts it all.

(again, again, again)

This is all a cruel sort of timing, you think, and feel the harsh thud of your heart so strongly against your rib cage that you wonder if the silly thing might break through them yet.

You shouldn't answer. Know, without any hint of uncertainty, that Bear has the potential to pull you back in—fish to a pretty, glimmering lure—and that the moment you acquiesce to one thing, others will immediately follow in rapid succession, much too quick for you to keep up with.

There will be no stopping the deluge once it breaks.

And yet—

What did you expect?

The words thrown back into your face echo in the small of your flat as the walls around you wobble, teetering on the edge of collapse.

Like most things when it comes to him.

After the second buzz, one that sends a thrill through your spine that you refuse to give attention to, you hesitantly press your finger against the green answer key and slowly bring the phone up to your face, inches away from your nose, before stopping. Abruptly.

You can handle Bear at a distance, you think, and so, deciding better than to have him murmur directly into your ear, you quickly tap the speaker button, and stammer out a muzzy greeting.

“...Bear?”

There's a sharp inhale that threads through the speaker, and you know, all at once, that he hadn't expected you to pick up. Was, instead, ready to meet and reluctantly embrace the cool, blithe distance of your voicemail.

“You answered,” he hedges, and you wonder if the wariness in his tone means anything deeper. “I didn't think you would.”

Despite his honesty, there are shades of derision tainting the gruff timbre.

“I wasn't going to,” you volley back, matching the fickleness of his misplaced scorn with your own.

“Then why did you?”

“You know why,” you admit quietly.

No one is around to see your boundaries crumble. To watch as the cards you kept so close to your chest dip once, quick enough for him to glimpse them, to see what is tucked in the palm of your hand.

In that loneliness, you find a sense of freedom that you had been missing. One tinged in the bitter coat of nostalgia.

It feels too much like those nights spent arguing about the meaning behind the perfect pour (and why yours would always be trash), and showing him abysmal creations on Instagram in a thinly veiled attempt to make him see that you weren't, objectively, the worst at it.

Back when you held the patchwork remains of your bruised, duct tape heart out over the countertop that never seemed to ever be clean as an offering to a man who bluntly looked down into the nozzle of his bottle instead.

He huffs a little, then. Put-off, maybe, by the distance you pitch when giving in is always just within reach. “I don't see the problem.”

“Well, yeah…” you mutter, shuffling in bed to get comfortable. You drag your knee to your chest, as the other stretches out in the sheets, and lazily wrap your arm around your shin, fingers digging into your flesh. Bruising, biting. It centres you, this fleeting pain. “You wouldn't, but I'll have you know—”

It's comfortable. The thought is a battering ram, one that hits hard, vicious, and dredges up the realisation of just how much you missed this. And just how easy this all is with him, even know when your heart is in tatters and you can hear the slur in his words (though, that might be his usual mumble—the man is hard to understand on a sober day, what with his penchant to grit words out between his teeth, as if he needs to tear them to shreds, to chew on them, before forcing them out), the normalcy in all of this, or as normal as this abnormal situation can get, is a bludgeon to your resolve.

“...what, huh? What'll you have me know?”

You'll get suckered back in again, but this time, all the way to the event horizon. Inescapable.

“You know, Bear.”

It's flimsy when he huffs, and sounds too much like relief when he growls: “Then why fight it?”

“I don't want to talk about this right now.”

The line goes still, but you catch the hitch in his throat all the same. “We should. I can fix this. We can fix this. You can't just decide—”

You can, you think, and drop your forehead to your knee, letting the phone slide down the valley of thigh and stomach where it comes to rest on the clothed crease of your hip bone. A prison. Your body is the cage.

Not being able to see him gives you some sense of power back, and you reach for it. Needing to wield something decisive and distant before the rough timbre of his voice, his desperation, scoured your resolve into thin powder.

“ Just give up, Bear. It's over. There's nothing to fix because there was nothing there to begin with.”

“Nothing there, huh? Is that what you think?”

Overtaking the bitter resignation is anger. A bone-deep fury that simmers to the surface, dredged up from the bottom of the bottle you thought you lost him to. You can hear it in the sharp breath he takes, the little growl he lets out.

“Fuck that,” his viciousness stabs into your defences like a battering ram. Unrelenting, dizzying. You make to step back, but he fights you on it. Keeping you close. Blazing anger so hot, it nearly burns you. “You waltz into my life, chasin’ after me and then, what? You just decide it's too much for you? I warned you. I fucking warned you, didn't I ?”

“I—I know. I just—”

What, you wonder. What? Because was it ever as simple as wanting a hurting man to be a little less lonely in an empty pub?

It's moments like this that make you contend with your self-sabotage, the unmaking of yourself (morality, compassion, kindness) by your own hands. Your complicity in all of this is staggering, and suddenly the idea of a clean break feels vile.

How could you drop a man you spent months pursuing, expecting him to change overnight?

Your faults, and flaws, soften the part of you that wants to run, fleeting into the dark to avoid the consequences of your actions.

It takes two to tango, and the idiom bludgeons through the headache like a battering ram.

“I guess I just wanted to help, at first. To be your friend. You seemed so—” lonely. Sad. One bad day away from slipping too deep into the bottle that he couldn't climb out again.

His laugh is ugly, biting. “What? Pathetic? A sorry fucking drunk—”

“Alone.”

It quiets him, this soft confession.

“Can't save everyone,” is what he says after an agonising beat, and you think of the priest he tore into viciously for uttering the same sentiment. Bruising with his words, his tone, instead of his fists. Creating walls from the craters it left behind.

“Doesn't mean you can't try.”

“Wasted your time, don't you think?”

“No.” The word is immediate. Forceful. “With you? For you? No. But Bear. The thing you don't get, what you don't understand, is that you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped. And maybe it's selfish, and honestly, I know it is, but you always risk your own life whenever you try to save someone from drowning, and I know I'm not enough to help you.”

He's quiet. “Reading up on being a lifeguard?”

“In my spare time.”

A huff. It's barely a ghost of laughter. “Yeah. Yeah. Well. Hope it all works out for you.”

You can imagine the grim twist of mouth as he says it. The downward pitch to his chin, dipping in his misery.

“I hope the same for you.” You whisper, and it feels like finality.

Moments ago, the thought might have brought a sense of bitter relief to you, but now it just feels sickeningly like loss all over again.

“Shit,” Bear grouses suddenly, and then draws a sharp breath once more. “I miss you,” he rasps on the exhale.

You don't know why he would, but you understand, maybe, because you do, too.

(So much, so much, so much—)

“I miss you, too, Bear.”

The tentative words seem to shake him, and all at once, he's commandeering again. Authoritative, in that way only he can be.

“I'm getting better,” he rumbles. “I gotta. For the—for the team—”

It's the wrong thing to say, though, and he seems to realise it midway through. A quick course correction comes with a rushed, and for me, too, that reminds you too much of all the times you heard this same thing from behind the counter as you topped up their third, fourth, fifth glass.

You know better than to believe in this hollow gospel, this midnight epiphany, and for the most part, you don't. It's all empty words. False promises from a prophet, spoken as a defence mechanism against the ugly reality of what happens when people catch on to their bad habits.

But it's Bear.

Out of everyone who murmured the same phrase in that exact tone, you believe in him just a little bit more than the rest.

(Stupid, stupid, stupid—)

It's his intense tenacity. That gritty determination seems ingrained within his very being. Inseparable.

You wonder when you started divining truths from its scripture.

“I don't want to lose you,” he's saying, and it's odd because he never really had you to begin with.

“Bear—” It's late, and your thoughts are just running themselves aground. Turning into a tangled, indecipherable mess. “I need to get some sleep. Can we—can we talk about this tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow? Will you answer?”

It's deserved, of course, but you know that particular knife twist hurts him just as much as it does yourself, and whatever little vindication he finds from it is swallowed, quickly, by regret.

“I just…want to talk to you.”

You imagine that somewhere between the lines, the things unsaid, sits the glaring truth of his sudden devotion, his obsession:

there's no one else.

(never anyone's first choice—)

“Sure. Okay, yeah, we can. We can talk. You're—” you need distance. You need space. A minute, maybe, to sort through the ugly thoughts making webs in the back of your head. “You're my friend, Joe. We're… we can be friends, again.”

“Friends?”

It's not what he wants. That much is clear by the threadiness in his tone, but at two in the morning and with your thoughts liquifying into syrup, it's all you can offer him, all you're willing to give.

Friends. It makes you remember the limbo you sat in before, the murk and heartache of watching him ply himself with overpriced liquor and then stumble out the door, sometimes with company but most often, all alone and with just ten minutes to spare before closing. The yearning. The pining. The want that made you feel sick to your stomach with guilt for some unseen, unknown woman back home.

(“Dead. She's dead—”)

It sickens you even more to think about that. The ring he kept, the sadness that draped over his shoulders in a swath of agony. The one he didn't take off, not even for you. The warning signs were there.

You just ignored them all.

Friends, you murmur again, and wonder where, in all this, you went wrong. The beginning, maybe, when you looked at him and couldn't bring yourself to look away. Friends. We can be friends, Bear.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Best friends,” you echo back, hollow and thin. “With matching bracelets and everything—”

“Thought it was a tattoo?”

“That, too.”

“Okay,” he acquiesces quietly, but you can hear the threads of obstinacy in his voice when he says it. The combativeness, the steadfast refusal to fully submit, rears in the things he doesn't say, pitching bivouacs in his tone. This isn't over, it says. You're not over. “Friends.”

It's scornful, and you hate the way it blisters under your skin. Burning hot, the same feverish delirium that turned you incandescent with just his touch.

Everything about Bear tells you to relent. Submit.

It would be so easy to just give in.

And the thing is:

You want to. Desperately, achingly.

His certainty, his acuity in all of this, has a way of dismantling your sense of reason. Or, at the very least, your rationale for why you're keeping him at a distance. It's not just being diametrically opposed, though; this is the unerring knowledge that your complicity needs to be curbed. That you are, in small parts, responsible for this barren husk of a man. For aiding and abetting in his spiral, sure, but mostly for expecting him to greet you with sobriety when he woke up, as if spending an entire weekend between your thighs was enough to negate all the demons clawing at the walls of his skull. Scarring bone. Chiselling into marrow.

Simply put: you're not enough. You knew this, and yet—

Pursued, persisted. Laughably, even echoed the same words you repeat now to a man on the verge of going nuclear under the pressure of his rage, his grief.

It's impossible to make a levee out of skin and bones, and no matter how much Bear might want to try—maybe has tried with his late wife, with a bottle, with vice, with bloodied, bruised knuckles and a chip on his shoulder deeper than a canyon—it's just not feasible.

Too bad, you think, that this bone-weary epiphany didn't come sooner. That you didn't kick him out when you realised those beautiful valleys in his eyes were really just trenches.

Hindsight, of course.

(How were you supposed to know that the rough growl in his timber wasn't a security blanket against the world but just the aftereffects of inhaling too much artillery fire?)

You should have, though. Your mum was a how-to manual on the things to avoid. She could channel wisdom directly from a man's marrow, and you—made in her spitting (vitriolic) image—seem to have learned nothing at all about divination.

And you—forgotten ilk—can barely tell the difference between a portend and good fortune when you sift through clumps of barley tea at the bottom of your cup.

For all of her stolen wisdom, you make a promise to yourself that you won't tear yourself into pieces just to make a safety net for him out of your flesh. Or set yourself on fire to keep him warm.

(Not anymore, anyway—)

But then, cruelly, viciously, you wonder if you ever really helped him at all, or if this is just a manifestation to assuage your own guilt. Doubtless, you find. What have you done for him that wasn't, in some part, mutually beneficial? All this time, you've been gambling equivalence with a broken man, and then ran the moment those jagged pieces cut you.

And maybe a little bit of this hesitancy is rooted in fear as well. A fickle thing you try to ignore in favour of something that makes you seem more altruistic than you really are, but still lurks in the shadows, in the words you, too, won't say.

Things like:

He's never met you sober. Not completely. And certainly not in a way that counts.

Each interaction is marred with some form of a buffer between you both. Distance shaped in sips of his (fourth, fifth) beer; a shot of whisky.

What if he doesn't like what he finds sober?

You heard enough jokes at the bar about falling in love drunk and then waking up sober. If this is that, you don't know how you'd regain any sense of ground back.

The precipice you clawed your way up to is endlessly steep, treacherous, and yet: you still let yourself fall. Still took the risk in opening your hand just to show him your still-beating heart.

Return to the sender, you think a touch hysterically, deliriously.

In the suffocating silence, his voice rings out. Quiet, rough, as if his vocal cords were made of charred wood, smouldering embers, and not warm, wet tissue. It's just your name, but the sound of it seems to drag you down to yourself, if only in increments.

“You good?” He asks when you hum noncommittally in response.

With your forehead braced against the slope of your knee, it feels like bowing your head in a confessional when you whisper, paper soft, “I'm tired, Bear.”

It sounds like he is chewing on glass when he sighs. Throat torn, raw. The ghost of it whispers across your chin; fingerprints tapping over a tender bruise.

“Haven’t been sleeping much these last few days. Been thinkin’ of us. Of you. And the team. All the people I let down—”

“Bear…”

“And I—I want to see you soon. When you're ready. I'm not going to rush things this time. Not gonna mess it up again—”

He speaks like this is settled. Over. As if you've already climbed into the palm of his hand, and all he has to do is just close you up tight in his fist. A little flower he can carry around in his pocket. Kept safe. Kept close.

It's—

A lot. Overwhelming. He sounds sober enough, and you know that he's not wholly dependent on drinking—it’s palliative; a coping mechanism to numb himself from the reality of everything else that happened to him—but there's a real crutch there that can't be erased by determination alone. But thinking about that—the future—makes your chest feel like it's going to cave in on itself; collapse and become another black hole in the Milky Way, swallowing everything down.

You need to breathe. You need to think—

“You should get some sleep, Bear. And—”

Don't drink. Stop. Get help. Talk to someone.

But the words are empty. Hollow vessels to placate your sense of responsibility. Your own guilt.

Coward. You've always been so good at running—

“Take care of yourself.”

“Yeah,” he rasps. The hushed timbre makes you tremble. “You too. Get some sleep. I'll talk to you in the morning.”

And so, this delicate dance made of putting duct tape over fractured promises and palliating the sickness in patchwork hope begins again, working in pieces.

There's a distance that lingers between the folds of you both, unspoken hurt and distrust—a lingering symptom of letting yourself get swept away by the idea of a man rather than the flesh and bone cut of one—but despite it all, each misgiving that passes your mind when you see Bear’s name flash across the cracked screen of your phone, it works.

Somehow, somehow.

It isn't as deep as missing puzzle pieces, because as much as you and Bear seem to connect on a level beyond sex, and booze, and fleeting highs to numb a phantom ache in the pit of your chest, the idea of soulmates seems to be frangible for your fractured selves; with all of your jagged, sharp edges, something so soft would break into pieces, shatter apart. But it is something.

And that might just be enough. So, you let it root. Let it grow limbs, and leaves, and curl around you like gentle, strangling wisteria until it reaches up to your chest.

This delicate, fragile thing makes a home, again, inside the empty landscape of your heart.

(shame on me, you think, but still pick up his call as this tender, soft thing you're nurturing snakes across your jugular where it's the warmest, leeching heat from the fever that thrums under your skin.)

Despite his bold declaration, though, he seems to waver on a full pursuit. Content, almost, to maintain this idea of closeness without shattering the bubble you've reconstructed.

It's odd, though.

Bear is a man who seeks logic out but always ends up relying on his hunches. Emotional in the sense that he places all confidence in himself beyond the scope of what he might be able to deliver. If his determination can't bring him across the finish line—well, then it was unwinnable from the start.

For a man so tenacious, so driven, his hesitation in all of this surprises you.

But something has to give eventually.

It always does.

Bear isn't terrible at texting, but he prefers phone calls. Something he admits has less to do with his occupation (no, I won't have to kill you for telling you this, you need to stop believing what you see on tv), and is more just a way of gleaning nuances he can't with written word.

Though, not always.

There's a softness when he speaks tonight, a quality you're unfamiliar with, as he confesses on a hushed memory, half musing aloud when the world is dead asleep and the sun is a distant idea in the back of your head, that he used to write letters to his wife whenever they weren't on the phone talking. Or Skyping each other.

“Deployment with a group of guys doesn't leave much room for privacy,” he says, as if he hasn't just unravelled this hidden part of himself at three fifteen on what was meant to be a rather mundane ending to your Thursday. “They're not really, uh, sensitive to that. We're on top of each other for most of it, anyway. Asking a whole room to clear out just so I can talk isn't happening. So, uh, we—uh, me and Lena, we wrote letters.”

There's a stutter in his voice when he relays this to you, and you're struck numb by it all. Lena, you think, putting a name to a concept.

“Oh,” you say, and you're not sure what to think about it. So, you don't. You tuck it aside, where all the other things you've learned about Bear go. The ones revealed to you in shambles. “That sounds— romantic. ”

It makes him scoff, and it's this terrible, broken thing. “Romantic, huh? Is that what you think?”

You hum, taking it in. The grand reveal of his ex-wife (she… we, he corrects and clears his throat like it burns: we decided to separate. See, uh… see other people), and his marital problems, you connect the dots lingering in the foreground.

You're not completely ignorant of his intentions.

It's the first move on a fresh chessboard: a show of his commitment to this—whatever it might be—and how serious he's taking it all. Where you'd been the only one to dare pry open the rusted nails keeping your secrets at bay before, he's taking the initiative to do so now, to meet you somewhere in the middle where the olive branch still grows. Placing his bets before the race. Offering himself, and his secrets, up as collateral in this strange game you found yourself in.

But does he know that you can still hear the slight slur in his voice when he speaks, or notice the way he seems to skirt around the conversation of his drinking habits on the days when it must be hitting him harder? Surely, he must.

And yet, he still calls. Still decides to gamble with your devotion in maintaining a strange facsimile of friendship with whisky on his breath, slurring his words, and gives out the pretence of playing for keeps under the table.

Maybe he knows you'll still give him the chance to keep playing no matter how many times his luck runs dry. It makes sense, considering.

You'd always had a weakness for men like him.

(Stupid—)

Outside of the tipsy phone calls, you've yet to hear him completely gone. A testament to his dedication, maybe, but you know the first week is always the easiest. When the high of the epiphany roars through their bloodstream, and the weight of the world doesn't feel as crushing as it once had, it's easy to make deals you don't have the means of keeping up with. But the debt is insurmountable to those who aren't fully invested, and the collectors are vicious.

Still. Still.

This is as close to sobriety as he's ever been, and you soak up his unbridled attention like you're starving for it.

And in all honesty, you are.

Bear is a strange, complex web of a man. Full of grit, anger. Misery curls in the corners of his eyes, hidden there amongst the powder keg of obsessive devotion just waiting to go off. You scented kerosene on his skin—napalm drenching his pores—when he'd lifted two fingers up and nearly snarled his order from across stained cedar wood.

Having the brunt of his fire listing your way is a character study in restraint, in penance. It taps against the delicate binds holding everything back, and loosens the ties with every piece of him you're given.

It's hard, you think, to stay so far away from someone when you're wobbling on the brink of devotion. Love, in shades of obsession. The taste of which settles in the back of your throat like a sickness, aching each time you swallow.

You're not sure what it is about Bear, about this particular brand of miserable, angry man, but his very existence feels like it was constructed, handspun, to make you hunger for a taste.

And then, you know. It's just that, isn't it? Miserable, angry man.

(saviour complex, maybe. maybe, maybe, maybe—)

It feels deeper than that, though. It might have been the cause for this unravelling, this unmaking between you both, but the rest—the helplessness and the anger and the worry; answering his call even when you swore you wouldn't, leaving him in the motel room like a bad dream smeared across your pillow only to pick him up again, another bad habit in a sea of others—is than just a simple desire to fix problems that are not your own.

(especially when they aren't your own.)

“Never really been the romance type,” he rumbles, shattering this strange, introspective reverie you've fallen into.

“You seem to be doing okay for yourself, though,” you volley back, a touch too cautious compared to how it all was before. When you'd read him his horoscope, and pester him about trying your audacious food combinations he'd complain about, but eat, anyway.

“Is that what you think?”

“It's what I know.”

You expect him to pick up your jab, turning it on you instead. Something caustic, something severe. Something equally mean and mordant in the way only Bear could be. But he doesn't. He lets it fall to the wayside instead, humming under his breath in something that might be acquiescence, or maybe avoidance of the topic entirely, and shifts back into neutral territory.

How was your day? He asks, as if that wasn't one of the first things he'd said to you when you answered the call.

“Fine,” you hedge, breezing the word out between your teeth. “It was okay. Bear—”

“I, uh, have a meeting tomorrow,” he steamrolls through your concern like it's made of paper instead of the broken remnants of your heartache. “Another eval., to see if I'm fit to return to training. Make my way back to being an Officer.”

More secrets are revealed to you in the slow dawn of his unfurling fist. Held out like a beacon, a piece of candy. Good job, it says when you reach for it like the good, obedient dog you are.

Pavlov's finest.

“That sounds…” You're not really sure what it means, in all honesty. Words coming together to form a sentence. The meaning is absent from between the lines. You could infer, but you've never been good at guessing. So, you stagnate. “Good. Um, really good, Bear.”

He huffs, and you take it as a laugh—or as close to one you'll get from him. “Gotta pass the eval first.”

“Should be easy for you.”

“Should be,” he mumbles, and you catch the faint end of a muffled groan. “But I've been slacking. Put on extra weight. Need to burn it all off before I can really get into the old routine. Gonna fall behind worse than a newbie.”

Newbie being growled out in his flat intonation makes you snort.

“You find something funny? ”

“Ha, no—” his words turn over in your head—put on extra weight—and, damningly, you remember what all that extra weight felt like, stretched out beneath you; arched over your body, heavy and suffocating, and—

Fuck.

Bear catches the hitch in your breath, and makes a questioning noise in response. You can't let him ask. Can't let him know that you keep painting a picture of his hairy belly brushing against yours in the forefront of your mind. His biceps. Burly is what you'd thought of him before. Thick. Husky. A heavy man, in more ways than one.

The softness around his waist belied the hard muscles below. You could feel it pressing firm against your palm when he rolled under you, bracing your hands over his chest as he let you ride him.

That's it, sweetheart. Just like that—

“No,” you swallow around the desire welling up inside of your throat. “Nothing.”

He hums, and it's tainted in disbelief. Like he knows, somehow, what you were thinking of. What you keep thinking of—especially after these phone calls, his voicemails, when you're lying in bed with your fingers whispering between your thighs—and you almost expect him to call you out on it. To demand an answer.

Instead, he offers a tender truth that nudges against the soft pulse in your throat.

“...Not drinking as much helps.”

You almost want to call him out on the as much he tacts on to the end of his confession, to question the logistics behind those two words. To quantify it in a number, in tangible data. Something concrete you can plinth your hope on. But the answer scares you.

Too much and you'll fall all over again. Too little and you'll have no choice but to run.

So, you retreat in the face of his truth. A coward.

“That's—It's good. That's good, Bear—” and it is. Of course, it is. Great, even. He isn't even yours and this silly notion of pride staples itself to the front of your chest for the world to see. “I'm, um. I'm proud of you.”

It sounds hollow, pyrrhic, coming from you—repentant enabler—but the airiness in his voice strikes something deep inside. Pulses against a dormant place that comes alive, fecund with the bittersweet stirrings of hope germinating in the fibres.

Skingraft over the wound.

“Proud, huh?”

And the sound of his voice cuts that thread as soon as it forms.

His voice is pitched low, throaty. He draws the syllables out as he says, at length, “I, uh, keep thinking about you.”

You should warn him away. Tap the impish fingers sneaking to the cookie jar—a thorough chastisement to keep wandering hands in check. Bad dog, is the passing thought, and you try to swallow down the hysterical giggle that bubbles in the back of your throat.

You should.

But you don't.

It comes out breathier than you intended when you say his name, and it sounds much too malleable in the face of this tactile man.

“Been thinkin’ about you a lot.”

“Yeah,” you whisper. Too much. Too much. “Same. Uh, me too.”

“What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Going out with some friends. Probably going to get dinner. Watch that new movie that just came out. And, um, have a few drinks after.”

“How're you getting home?”

“Taxi, most likely.”

He hums low, throaty. The sound seems to reverberate through the phone and tremble deliciously down the length of your spine. “That so?”

“I'm not going to be drinking much.” You weigh the ethics of discussing your intentions to drink, to get completely wasted, and maybe go home with someone who isn't Bear, who doesn't even so much as look like him, before waving the thought away before it can take shape. “It's just—social. Getting caught up. Haven't seen them in a while because of school and stuff.”

And because you've invested so much of your free time spinning in circles around a man who didn't even really seem to look at you (who insisted on calling you kid to force distance and indifference between you) until a few months ago, letting your social life dawdle on the wayside.

Not that there was ever much one. It's easier, sometimes, to push people away than to explain the inner workings of your borrowed scar tissue.

He hums again—and he really needs to fucking stop doing that before you do something stupid, something reckless, like remember the way he sounded when he lifted his head up after coming deep inside of you, panting in your ear from exertion, and groaned just like that when he shifted forward, inching his softening cock further you, seemingly content to stay like that as you melted into the mattress that reeked of stale sweat and sex.

“I'll drive you.”

Your breath catches. “You don't have to.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, but it's decidedly noncommittal and comes completely undone when you catch the crackle of iron in his mulish tone as he adds: “but I want to.”

And he will, is the underlying promise that brims to the surface, wrapped up neatly in a way that brokers no real room for a counterargument. Not that he'll give you the chance to make one.

Still. You try, if only to snatch at some modicum of control that slips, gossamer thin, between your fingers.

“It's fine. Making you go out all that way is kinda…”

“Don't worry about it. Beats paying for a cab, anyway.”

“Bear…”

It's firm when he says: “let me drive you home. Make sure you get there safely.” Final. But to soften the blow, he adds, voice tender like a bruise: “Just let me do this for you.”

And how are you supposed to stay no to that?

“Okay, Bear.”

(Answer: you don't.)

#joe graves x reader #joe graves x you #bear graves x reader #joe bear graves x reader #joe bear graves #barry sloane #joe graves #six (2017)#seal team six #history six #bear x reader #bear graves x you

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