Clocks & Hammers
Clocks & Hammers | PG-13 | 3450
Past Gabe/William, unrequited Alex/Gabe if you squint slightly.
Thank you to miss_bilvy , since the original "heart surgery" concept is hers.
Opening quote by Paramore.
You take broken clocks to clock-makers. You take broken hearts to doctors and surgeons. Because you can't fix it alone. Because Gabe can't fix it alone, but he doesn't want the surgery. His clock, his heart, he tells himself, isn't broken.
“Maybe if my heart stops beating it won't hurt this much.”
Breaking a heart is like taking a hammer to a clock. It smashes all the fragile cogs and springs and connections, snaps the hands and glass and dislodges the center. If you try and fix the clock by yourself, you're bound to lose something. Drop something, misplace it. Maybe you'll put something back in the wrong place or put it in in the wrong way. It's something an expert has to do, to fix. You take broken clocks to clock-makers. You take broken hearts to doctors and surgeons.
Because you can't fix it alone. Because Gabe can't fix it alone, but he doesn't want the surgery. His clock, his heart, he tells himself, isn't broken. His clock has a crack in the glass case. His heart has bruises. His heart is sprained, but it isn't broken. Hearts collect damages and scars like souvenirs, nicks and grazes as they go through life. Gabe's had his heart broken before, the real kind of broken, and he took himself to a doctor. The doctor sent him to a surgeon, to a clock-maker. The clock-maker opened Gabe's chest, the casing, and put the cogs back in place.
Gabe thinks - no, knows, in the deepest part of him he knows that the clock-maker must've missed something, however tiny, because months after he was fixed, under the shiny pink scar on his chest something still hurt. Gabe was scared of having his heart broken again. He didn't like how fast the gas made him pass out, he didn't like the bandages and medication after. He didn't like all the time it took to properly recover. Gabe was careful. He broke up with lovers after about a year, no matter how much he cared, because he swore they were getting bored with him. It always stings Gabe to leave people, but those are just grazes. Grazes go away within days, weeks at a push, they heal easy. Gabe never had his heart broken again. He made sure of that, until he met William.
William was pretty and easy and let Gabe feel good. Gabe's always loved being in love. It fills him up. It's the loveliest feeling, being in love, being loved. It makes his heart feel warm, a nice comfortable weight in his chest that he carries with him always. It's a safe feeling. Gabe knew that William was special because when they argued, the safe feeling didn't go away.
“You're so love-prone,” William had told him once, and Gabe has never been sure if that's supposed to be good or bad. But William had said it with the smallest of smiles and Gabe tries to think positively.
After two years, the arguments started to hurt. Something changed. Something went wrong. Gabe never did figure out what. But when they argued, the safe feeling started to evaporate. He started to get little stabbing pains in his heart. Nicks and grazes, he told himself. Cracks in the glass. Like a scuffed knee, it hurts badly, but it heals with time. He had hoped their relationship would be the same. If it got hurt, it'd get better.
It didn't. And sudden as death, William was gone, and Gabe was alone, and his chest hurt so badly that Gabe found it hard to breathe. The pain hurt him so much that he crawled into his bed, his side of the bed, curled up under the covers with all his clothes on and he blacked out, trying to draw in short, sharp breaths, clutching his chest, trying to hold his heart.
Gabe saw the doctor after a week. Just to make sure. He didn't think his heart was broken, as much as it hurt to draw breath, as empty as his chest felt. The doctor told him, “We need an x-ray.” The doctor told him, “I think it's broken, but we've caught it early.”
“My heart isn't broken,” Gabe had responded. So sure of it. Utterly sure of it. “Can I take something for the pain?” He sleeps at night with one hand outstretched into William's ghost, the side of the bed where he used to be. He sleeps with the other hand at his chest. It's worse at night, sharp and drawing his chest in tight. In the day when he can busy himself with work and pretend his home isn't empty, it's just a dull, dull ache.
“I can't do that.” The doctor had tipped his glasses and looked at Gabe seriously, checking and rechecking, the stethoscope cold against Gabe's chest. “I really think it's broken, Mr Saporta.”
Gabe shook his head and stood up, doing up his shirt, ignoring how it stings his chest when he moves that quickly. “It's not broken.” That's when he came to the conclusion - sprained. It was just a bad sprain.
“We can make an appointment for as soon as next week, and try and make the surgery as minimal as possible - “
“It's not broken.” Gabe rubs his chest, his heart, trying to warm it through flesh and bone. “It's not broken. I didn't - I didn't give him - I didn't let him - “ Flustered, stressed. Too much makes his heart pang and pain wrack through his chest. “I have to go,” he said. “I'll get a hot water bottle. I'll avoid strenuous activity. I'll make my heart better.”
Speaking half to the doctor. Half to himself. “You'll see.”
~*~
Gabe believes that his heart isn't broken. He works as a waiter in a restaurant, and come the evenings he sees so many couples come and go. His heart doesn't hurt so much. It only hurts if he thinks about William. So he just - he doesn't think about William. He busies himself with work and when he's at home, he watches television. He doesn't go out, because as much as the house is still doused in the echoes of William, it's worse outside. Every street has something of William. So Gabe limits himself to the living room and the bed, and the bathroom. He barely eats from his kitchen any more, choosing take-outs that come in cartons so Gabe can just dispose of the waste. The house gathers dust in the rooms he doesn't go in, but he doesn't mind. Anything so he doesn't hurt. This is Gabe's way of moving forward.
The house, he admits, makes him feel distantly ill. Like a faint stomach ache. His breathing shakes and his teeth chatter but apart from that, he's fine. It's just if he thinks about William. It's like putting pressure on a broken wrist. It hurts more. Gabe thinks of the response he used to get as a child, when he'd have a sore bruise.
“Padre, it hurts when I press here.” He'd turn his big brown eyes to his father, bottom lip stuck out, offending limb or area pointed at. His father was a doctor and yet, Gabe can't remember the amount of times he helped his father recover from heart surgery. When Gabe's heart got broken, he couldn't for the life of him figure out why his father was so willing to go through it so often.
His father would respond, good-natured and amused that this hadn't occurred to the young Gabe sooner, “Well, don't press there, then.” But then he'd scoop Gabe up into his arms, or take his hand, and inspect it. He'd kiss it better or put a band-aid on it.
Gabe wishes kisses would make his heart better. Wishes his father could give him a band-aid. But he knows that bad sprains can affect someone for years, so when he gets into bed and gasps from how badly it hurts, he doesn't think too much on it.
It's like William died. When he left, he just disappeared, long and far into the night. He took a few clothes. A bag. It was like going on holiday. He promised he'd call, though he never did. Gabe remembers seeing William not many weeks after he left. He asked why William never called, that Gabe had started to think he was dead, and William just babbled about forgetting it and turned his back and ran.
So Gabe's left with William's ghost. His clothing, his possessions, his things. It's like he died. Gabe doesn't want to touch anything or move anything. Better to ignore it. Better to act like William's side of the bed - the side where he used to sleep so peaceful and pretty, the side that looks like he was never there at all - will be full sometime soon.
When Gabe saw William, he thought for a minute that his heart was really broken. It was like being stabbed. Every word that William said, the widening of his eyes, the way he bit his lip. The things Gabe loves. It hurt and hurt and Gabe thought he was going to die, that he'd be the first to die from a broken heart.
He ran home with the pain in his chest worse than an asthmatics stitch, and when he cried by himself on his sofa, it went away. Gabe felt briefly smug. Not broken. Just sprained.
~*~
After a year, Gabe realises that people are treating him differently. When he walks down the street, heads turn. At bus stops to and from work, people talk to him. At work, he's tipped more. He finally brings it up with the cook, asking, “Do I look super-friendly right now or something?” He rubs his chest absently, a habit since his heart got hurt.
“You look heart broken,” the cook responds, looking up slowly, lingering before turning back to his food.
Gabe flinches, squeezing his hand over his chest. “Well, I'm not.” The cook hums, neither agreeing or disagreeing. “I'm fine.”
“Okay,” the cook says, with a long, disbelieving pause before he mutters, “If you say so.”
Gabe frowns and takes meals out to the customers. An elderly lady slips $5 and a boiled sweet into his pocket as he serves her.
When he gets home, he strips down and stands naked in front of his bathroom mirror. He touches across his skin, frowning at dry patches, the bump of his ribs under his skin. He presses his palm over his heart. He tilts his head and says out loud, “I am not broken.” He rubs his hand across his lower belly, sort of comforted by the rough texture of his hand across his dusting of hair and smooth skin.
“I'm just tired,” he tells himself. “I work hard. I work every day except Sundays. I don't sleep well. I have - a sprained heart. A good nights sleep, and I'll be fine.” He's trying to convince himself. He doesn't really believe it. He doesn't feel himself as of late.
“Just a sprain,” he whispers, looking into his own eyes. Gabe tries to see the flaws or the signs that seem to give people the impression that he's got a broken heart. He can't see it. He can't find anything in his eyes. He just looks weary. He's not surprised by that. He really does work hard.
“I'm just fine,” he murmurs, and he almost believes it.
~*~
“Gabe, let me help you.” The cook appears, out of nowhere, and Gabe shakes his head firmly. He's on his knees in the kitchen, picking broken glass and plate off the floor. “Gabe.”
“Stop it,” Gabe looks up, frowning. It strangely, almost randomly crosses his mind that he's worked here since before he dated William and yet he never learned this cooks name. The thought of William makes Gabe wince and hiss with pain, doubling over. Tears sting his eyes and he pushes them away.
“Gabe, are you - “
“Stop it!” He doesn't mean to shout, but he does. “I just have shaky hands! I'm not feeling well - I'll be fine - “ He just shook. And slipped. And dropped the plates and the glasses that he's usually so adept at balancing in his arms. “It's nothing, I promise, just leave me alone, please.”
“What happened to leave you like this?” The cook ignores his demands and kneels down, helping Gabe to clear the shattered porcelain and glass away. “Something awful must have happened to make you hurt so much.”
“Shut up,” Gabe demands in a whisper. “I'm fine.”
“Who broke your heart?”
“It's not broken,” Gabe responds, as he always does, and he falls back to sit properly, his chest stinging and panging, his breath coming short.
The cook stares at him and reaches out, “Who did this to you? Who did you love so much?”
“Stop it,” Gabe hisses, teeth gritted, eyes watering. His heart is burning. It feels like it's bubbling through his chest, searing, on fire. “Stop it.” He gasps for air and staggers to his feet, and the cook follows him. Gabe needs the cook to stop. He needs to stop thinking about William. William who he loved so fucking much. William who meant everything to him. William who left him - for nothing, for no reason, and left his ghost in the house and Gabe can't breathe in that place, and now he can't breathe at all - his old lover's face fresh in his mind, biting his lip, blinking, smiling, the way he looked in the midst of passion.
“I can't breathe,” Gabe cries out, and the cook catches him, and Gabe's heart pulses hard in his chest. He swears he can hear it. He swears, he can hear his pulse, crooked, complete with a heavy murmur. “Help me.” He's falling, he thinks, and as he falls, he's aware of arms around him. He doesn't feel safe. He feels lost.
And his heart, he thinks, is beyond broken.
~*~
Gabe wakes up in pain. He wakes up in soft sheets. He wakes up in what he instantly knows is a hospital. He goes to clutch his heart and feels bandages around and across his chest, and gasps for air. It hurts as it goes down and fills his chest. But his heart doesn't hurt. It feels tender in his chest, but it doesn't... hurt.
“Gabe.” He looks around, and sees the cook, slumped, tired, exhausted looking in the chair in the corner of the room. He looks like he's been there all night. He probably has. “You're awake.”
Gabe swallows and tries to talk, then coughs, hugging himself before finally saying, “Water. Please.” The cook nods and climbs up, disappearing out of the room. Gabe looks down at himself and frowns, rubbing his hand over the bandages, heaving himself into a seating position. His head swims and he groans, covering his eyes.
“Mr Saporta.” He moves his hands down slowly and the cook is stood in the doorway, an expectant looking doctor beside him. A nurse is hovering behind them, and bustles past, handing Gabe a glass of water. He accepts it and thanks her quietly. The doctor continues, “Glad to see you're awake.”
“What happened?” Gabe asks quietly, dread lurking in his tone. He whispers, “My heart feels swollen.” That's exactly it. Swollen. Sore. And each pump of it, he swears he can feel.
“We had to put the old ticker back together.” Gabe makes a face, and the doctor looks more serious, “Your heart was nearly broken beyond repair. We lost you twice in the surgery. Your heart gave in and stopped beating. You're going to have a long, long road to recovery, Mr Saporta. We had to open you up and put you back together.”
Gabe looks into the glass of water. He sips from it and focuses on it, rather than the doctor's eyes. He listens, though, always listens. “When your heart breaks, you can't wait to see a doctor. It needs immediate repair. This is one of the worst cases we've ever had. But a heart... can nearly always be mended when it's love-broken.”
Gabe glances up as the cook shuffles across the room and sits in the chair again. Then he looks back at his glass. He says, “I thought it was just a sprain. Just a bruise.” He breathes in and it shakes, and he says, “I've had my heart broken before, and.” He swallows and his hands tremble as he starts to cry, “I didn't want to be like that again, I didn't want to go under a knife - “ his chest heaves, his swollen, bruised, fixed heart beating strong, “I didn't want to admit I let someone get to me like that - I never wanted things to be that way, I didn't want to be the one whose heart kept breaking - he said that I was love-prone - “
The doctor reaches out, a soothing hand on Gabe's shoulder. “Relax. Sleep. You have a very long road to recovery.”
Just like that, they're gone, and the cook says, “I can help you, if you'd like. I could help you make your heart better and strong again.”
Gabe looks up, sharply, brushing away his tears. Stubborn even in defeat. “I don't even know you.”
The cook tilts his head sadly, “Even though we've worked together for years?”
“I don't even know your name.”
“Alex,” the cook says. “Alex Suarez. There. Now you know my name.” He twiddles his thumbs and chews his lip, in a way that makes Gabe think of William, and it doesn't hurt. Not his heart, anyway. But memories still hurt, in a different way. Like poking a bruise, but not as painful as pressure on a broken wrist. “I could help you.”
Gabe shakes his head. He knows how this goes. Someone comes to his rescue. And Gabe falls in love. “No. I can't. I can't.” A lonely heart is better than a broken heart. That's what they tell the people whose hearts get broken too often, who have surgery too often. When their heart can't take the constant repairs any more they're refused treatment and taught how to be alone. Because a lonely heart, a lonely, weak heart, is better than a weak, broken heart.
Gabe has to fix himself. So he sends the cook, Alex Suarez, away. He promises to come back to work, but he knows he won't go back there. Gabe knows the story so, so well. Vulnerable in his feelings he'd lean on this stranger who was there for him, a familiar stranger, and he'd fall in love. And he'd get his heart broken. Or he'd break Alex's. Either way, Gabe can't do it any more. He can't live for love any more.
He gets his bandages changed that afternoon and considers, who would want him anyway? The stitches are fresh in his chest, thick and black, red and raised. He bleeds a little bit, nothing serious he's told. The dressings are changed and Gabe knows that when it heals he'll have thick scars. He knows that if he were to love or be loved, he would be damaged goods. Fall once and you made a mistake. Fall twice and you're a pity story.
He lies in his hospital bed that night and decides, he will lock away his heart. Love will not get him through. Love has never gotten him through. Gabe will never let this happen to him again. He's not strong enough. He isn't his father, breaking and being broken repeatedly over the years.
He will keep himself neat, and healthy. Polished. But not for sale. Not for anyone. Sometimes a heart can't be fixed, sometimes it's just too broken. Missing pieces of a clock. Gabe is lucky that they could put him back together this time, but he won't risk it. He can't let someone take another hammer to his clock, because it might just stop ticking. His heart might stop beating out of broken love.
When he gets home, three weeks later, he buries himself into William's side of the bed. He spreads out evenly into the middle, then curls back into his ex-boyfriend's side, and he cries, and cries, until he sleeps, hugging the pillow and trying to catch the last of William there.
In the morning, things look better. Clearer. His heart beats louder and stronger. Gabe smiles.
Past Gabe/William, unrequited Alex/Gabe if you squint slightly.
Thank you to miss_bilvy , since the original "heart surgery" concept is hers.
Opening quote by Paramore.
You take broken clocks to clock-makers. You take broken hearts to doctors and surgeons. Because you can't fix it alone. Because Gabe can't fix it alone, but he doesn't want the surgery. His clock, his heart, he tells himself, isn't broken.
“Maybe if my heart stops beating it won't hurt this much.”
Breaking a heart is like taking a hammer to a clock. It smashes all the fragile cogs and springs and connections, snaps the hands and glass and dislodges the center. If you try and fix the clock by yourself, you're bound to lose something. Drop something, misplace it. Maybe you'll put something back in the wrong place or put it in in the wrong way. It's something an expert has to do, to fix. You take broken clocks to clock-makers. You take broken hearts to doctors and surgeons.
Because you can't fix it alone. Because Gabe can't fix it alone, but he doesn't want the surgery. His clock, his heart, he tells himself, isn't broken. His clock has a crack in the glass case. His heart has bruises. His heart is sprained, but it isn't broken. Hearts collect damages and scars like souvenirs, nicks and grazes as they go through life. Gabe's had his heart broken before, the real kind of broken, and he took himself to a doctor. The doctor sent him to a surgeon, to a clock-maker. The clock-maker opened Gabe's chest, the casing, and put the cogs back in place.
Gabe thinks - no, knows, in the deepest part of him he knows that the clock-maker must've missed something, however tiny, because months after he was fixed, under the shiny pink scar on his chest something still hurt. Gabe was scared of having his heart broken again. He didn't like how fast the gas made him pass out, he didn't like the bandages and medication after. He didn't like all the time it took to properly recover. Gabe was careful. He broke up with lovers after about a year, no matter how much he cared, because he swore they were getting bored with him. It always stings Gabe to leave people, but those are just grazes. Grazes go away within days, weeks at a push, they heal easy. Gabe never had his heart broken again. He made sure of that, until he met William.
William was pretty and easy and let Gabe feel good. Gabe's always loved being in love. It fills him up. It's the loveliest feeling, being in love, being loved. It makes his heart feel warm, a nice comfortable weight in his chest that he carries with him always. It's a safe feeling. Gabe knew that William was special because when they argued, the safe feeling didn't go away.
“You're so love-prone,” William had told him once, and Gabe has never been sure if that's supposed to be good or bad. But William had said it with the smallest of smiles and Gabe tries to think positively.
After two years, the arguments started to hurt. Something changed. Something went wrong. Gabe never did figure out what. But when they argued, the safe feeling started to evaporate. He started to get little stabbing pains in his heart. Nicks and grazes, he told himself. Cracks in the glass. Like a scuffed knee, it hurts badly, but it heals with time. He had hoped their relationship would be the same. If it got hurt, it'd get better.
It didn't. And sudden as death, William was gone, and Gabe was alone, and his chest hurt so badly that Gabe found it hard to breathe. The pain hurt him so much that he crawled into his bed, his side of the bed, curled up under the covers with all his clothes on and he blacked out, trying to draw in short, sharp breaths, clutching his chest, trying to hold his heart.
Gabe saw the doctor after a week. Just to make sure. He didn't think his heart was broken, as much as it hurt to draw breath, as empty as his chest felt. The doctor told him, “We need an x-ray.” The doctor told him, “I think it's broken, but we've caught it early.”
“My heart isn't broken,” Gabe had responded. So sure of it. Utterly sure of it. “Can I take something for the pain?” He sleeps at night with one hand outstretched into William's ghost, the side of the bed where he used to be. He sleeps with the other hand at his chest. It's worse at night, sharp and drawing his chest in tight. In the day when he can busy himself with work and pretend his home isn't empty, it's just a dull, dull ache.
“I can't do that.” The doctor had tipped his glasses and looked at Gabe seriously, checking and rechecking, the stethoscope cold against Gabe's chest. “I really think it's broken, Mr Saporta.”
Gabe shook his head and stood up, doing up his shirt, ignoring how it stings his chest when he moves that quickly. “It's not broken.” That's when he came to the conclusion - sprained. It was just a bad sprain.
“We can make an appointment for as soon as next week, and try and make the surgery as minimal as possible - “
“It's not broken.” Gabe rubs his chest, his heart, trying to warm it through flesh and bone. “It's not broken. I didn't - I didn't give him - I didn't let him - “ Flustered, stressed. Too much makes his heart pang and pain wrack through his chest. “I have to go,” he said. “I'll get a hot water bottle. I'll avoid strenuous activity. I'll make my heart better.”
Speaking half to the doctor. Half to himself. “You'll see.”
~*~
Gabe believes that his heart isn't broken. He works as a waiter in a restaurant, and come the evenings he sees so many couples come and go. His heart doesn't hurt so much. It only hurts if he thinks about William. So he just - he doesn't think about William. He busies himself with work and when he's at home, he watches television. He doesn't go out, because as much as the house is still doused in the echoes of William, it's worse outside. Every street has something of William. So Gabe limits himself to the living room and the bed, and the bathroom. He barely eats from his kitchen any more, choosing take-outs that come in cartons so Gabe can just dispose of the waste. The house gathers dust in the rooms he doesn't go in, but he doesn't mind. Anything so he doesn't hurt. This is Gabe's way of moving forward.
The house, he admits, makes him feel distantly ill. Like a faint stomach ache. His breathing shakes and his teeth chatter but apart from that, he's fine. It's just if he thinks about William. It's like putting pressure on a broken wrist. It hurts more. Gabe thinks of the response he used to get as a child, when he'd have a sore bruise.
“Padre, it hurts when I press here.” He'd turn his big brown eyes to his father, bottom lip stuck out, offending limb or area pointed at. His father was a doctor and yet, Gabe can't remember the amount of times he helped his father recover from heart surgery. When Gabe's heart got broken, he couldn't for the life of him figure out why his father was so willing to go through it so often.
His father would respond, good-natured and amused that this hadn't occurred to the young Gabe sooner, “Well, don't press there, then.” But then he'd scoop Gabe up into his arms, or take his hand, and inspect it. He'd kiss it better or put a band-aid on it.
Gabe wishes kisses would make his heart better. Wishes his father could give him a band-aid. But he knows that bad sprains can affect someone for years, so when he gets into bed and gasps from how badly it hurts, he doesn't think too much on it.
It's like William died. When he left, he just disappeared, long and far into the night. He took a few clothes. A bag. It was like going on holiday. He promised he'd call, though he never did. Gabe remembers seeing William not many weeks after he left. He asked why William never called, that Gabe had started to think he was dead, and William just babbled about forgetting it and turned his back and ran.
So Gabe's left with William's ghost. His clothing, his possessions, his things. It's like he died. Gabe doesn't want to touch anything or move anything. Better to ignore it. Better to act like William's side of the bed - the side where he used to sleep so peaceful and pretty, the side that looks like he was never there at all - will be full sometime soon.
When Gabe saw William, he thought for a minute that his heart was really broken. It was like being stabbed. Every word that William said, the widening of his eyes, the way he bit his lip. The things Gabe loves. It hurt and hurt and Gabe thought he was going to die, that he'd be the first to die from a broken heart.
He ran home with the pain in his chest worse than an asthmatics stitch, and when he cried by himself on his sofa, it went away. Gabe felt briefly smug. Not broken. Just sprained.
~*~
After a year, Gabe realises that people are treating him differently. When he walks down the street, heads turn. At bus stops to and from work, people talk to him. At work, he's tipped more. He finally brings it up with the cook, asking, “Do I look super-friendly right now or something?” He rubs his chest absently, a habit since his heart got hurt.
“You look heart broken,” the cook responds, looking up slowly, lingering before turning back to his food.
Gabe flinches, squeezing his hand over his chest. “Well, I'm not.” The cook hums, neither agreeing or disagreeing. “I'm fine.”
“Okay,” the cook says, with a long, disbelieving pause before he mutters, “If you say so.”
Gabe frowns and takes meals out to the customers. An elderly lady slips $5 and a boiled sweet into his pocket as he serves her.
When he gets home, he strips down and stands naked in front of his bathroom mirror. He touches across his skin, frowning at dry patches, the bump of his ribs under his skin. He presses his palm over his heart. He tilts his head and says out loud, “I am not broken.” He rubs his hand across his lower belly, sort of comforted by the rough texture of his hand across his dusting of hair and smooth skin.
“I'm just tired,” he tells himself. “I work hard. I work every day except Sundays. I don't sleep well. I have - a sprained heart. A good nights sleep, and I'll be fine.” He's trying to convince himself. He doesn't really believe it. He doesn't feel himself as of late.
“Just a sprain,” he whispers, looking into his own eyes. Gabe tries to see the flaws or the signs that seem to give people the impression that he's got a broken heart. He can't see it. He can't find anything in his eyes. He just looks weary. He's not surprised by that. He really does work hard.
“I'm just fine,” he murmurs, and he almost believes it.
~*~
“Gabe, let me help you.” The cook appears, out of nowhere, and Gabe shakes his head firmly. He's on his knees in the kitchen, picking broken glass and plate off the floor. “Gabe.”
“Stop it,” Gabe looks up, frowning. It strangely, almost randomly crosses his mind that he's worked here since before he dated William and yet he never learned this cooks name. The thought of William makes Gabe wince and hiss with pain, doubling over. Tears sting his eyes and he pushes them away.
“Gabe, are you - “
“Stop it!” He doesn't mean to shout, but he does. “I just have shaky hands! I'm not feeling well - I'll be fine - “ He just shook. And slipped. And dropped the plates and the glasses that he's usually so adept at balancing in his arms. “It's nothing, I promise, just leave me alone, please.”
“What happened to leave you like this?” The cook ignores his demands and kneels down, helping Gabe to clear the shattered porcelain and glass away. “Something awful must have happened to make you hurt so much.”
“Shut up,” Gabe demands in a whisper. “I'm fine.”
“Who broke your heart?”
“It's not broken,” Gabe responds, as he always does, and he falls back to sit properly, his chest stinging and panging, his breath coming short.
The cook stares at him and reaches out, “Who did this to you? Who did you love so much?”
“Stop it,” Gabe hisses, teeth gritted, eyes watering. His heart is burning. It feels like it's bubbling through his chest, searing, on fire. “Stop it.” He gasps for air and staggers to his feet, and the cook follows him. Gabe needs the cook to stop. He needs to stop thinking about William. William who he loved so fucking much. William who meant everything to him. William who left him - for nothing, for no reason, and left his ghost in the house and Gabe can't breathe in that place, and now he can't breathe at all - his old lover's face fresh in his mind, biting his lip, blinking, smiling, the way he looked in the midst of passion.
“I can't breathe,” Gabe cries out, and the cook catches him, and Gabe's heart pulses hard in his chest. He swears he can hear it. He swears, he can hear his pulse, crooked, complete with a heavy murmur. “Help me.” He's falling, he thinks, and as he falls, he's aware of arms around him. He doesn't feel safe. He feels lost.
And his heart, he thinks, is beyond broken.
~*~
Gabe wakes up in pain. He wakes up in soft sheets. He wakes up in what he instantly knows is a hospital. He goes to clutch his heart and feels bandages around and across his chest, and gasps for air. It hurts as it goes down and fills his chest. But his heart doesn't hurt. It feels tender in his chest, but it doesn't... hurt.
“Gabe.” He looks around, and sees the cook, slumped, tired, exhausted looking in the chair in the corner of the room. He looks like he's been there all night. He probably has. “You're awake.”
Gabe swallows and tries to talk, then coughs, hugging himself before finally saying, “Water. Please.” The cook nods and climbs up, disappearing out of the room. Gabe looks down at himself and frowns, rubbing his hand over the bandages, heaving himself into a seating position. His head swims and he groans, covering his eyes.
“Mr Saporta.” He moves his hands down slowly and the cook is stood in the doorway, an expectant looking doctor beside him. A nurse is hovering behind them, and bustles past, handing Gabe a glass of water. He accepts it and thanks her quietly. The doctor continues, “Glad to see you're awake.”
“What happened?” Gabe asks quietly, dread lurking in his tone. He whispers, “My heart feels swollen.” That's exactly it. Swollen. Sore. And each pump of it, he swears he can feel.
“We had to put the old ticker back together.” Gabe makes a face, and the doctor looks more serious, “Your heart was nearly broken beyond repair. We lost you twice in the surgery. Your heart gave in and stopped beating. You're going to have a long, long road to recovery, Mr Saporta. We had to open you up and put you back together.”
Gabe looks into the glass of water. He sips from it and focuses on it, rather than the doctor's eyes. He listens, though, always listens. “When your heart breaks, you can't wait to see a doctor. It needs immediate repair. This is one of the worst cases we've ever had. But a heart... can nearly always be mended when it's love-broken.”
Gabe glances up as the cook shuffles across the room and sits in the chair again. Then he looks back at his glass. He says, “I thought it was just a sprain. Just a bruise.” He breathes in and it shakes, and he says, “I've had my heart broken before, and.” He swallows and his hands tremble as he starts to cry, “I didn't want to be like that again, I didn't want to go under a knife - “ his chest heaves, his swollen, bruised, fixed heart beating strong, “I didn't want to admit I let someone get to me like that - I never wanted things to be that way, I didn't want to be the one whose heart kept breaking - he said that I was love-prone - “
The doctor reaches out, a soothing hand on Gabe's shoulder. “Relax. Sleep. You have a very long road to recovery.”
Just like that, they're gone, and the cook says, “I can help you, if you'd like. I could help you make your heart better and strong again.”
Gabe looks up, sharply, brushing away his tears. Stubborn even in defeat. “I don't even know you.”
The cook tilts his head sadly, “Even though we've worked together for years?”
“I don't even know your name.”
“Alex,” the cook says. “Alex Suarez. There. Now you know my name.” He twiddles his thumbs and chews his lip, in a way that makes Gabe think of William, and it doesn't hurt. Not his heart, anyway. But memories still hurt, in a different way. Like poking a bruise, but not as painful as pressure on a broken wrist. “I could help you.”
Gabe shakes his head. He knows how this goes. Someone comes to his rescue. And Gabe falls in love. “No. I can't. I can't.” A lonely heart is better than a broken heart. That's what they tell the people whose hearts get broken too often, who have surgery too often. When their heart can't take the constant repairs any more they're refused treatment and taught how to be alone. Because a lonely heart, a lonely, weak heart, is better than a weak, broken heart.
Gabe has to fix himself. So he sends the cook, Alex Suarez, away. He promises to come back to work, but he knows he won't go back there. Gabe knows the story so, so well. Vulnerable in his feelings he'd lean on this stranger who was there for him, a familiar stranger, and he'd fall in love. And he'd get his heart broken. Or he'd break Alex's. Either way, Gabe can't do it any more. He can't live for love any more.
He gets his bandages changed that afternoon and considers, who would want him anyway? The stitches are fresh in his chest, thick and black, red and raised. He bleeds a little bit, nothing serious he's told. The dressings are changed and Gabe knows that when it heals he'll have thick scars. He knows that if he were to love or be loved, he would be damaged goods. Fall once and you made a mistake. Fall twice and you're a pity story.
He lies in his hospital bed that night and decides, he will lock away his heart. Love will not get him through. Love has never gotten him through. Gabe will never let this happen to him again. He's not strong enough. He isn't his father, breaking and being broken repeatedly over the years.
He will keep himself neat, and healthy. Polished. But not for sale. Not for anyone. Sometimes a heart can't be fixed, sometimes it's just too broken. Missing pieces of a clock. Gabe is lucky that they could put him back together this time, but he won't risk it. He can't let someone take another hammer to his clock, because it might just stop ticking. His heart might stop beating out of broken love.
When he gets home, three weeks later, he buries himself into William's side of the bed. He spreads out evenly into the middle, then curls back into his ex-boyfriend's side, and he cries, and cries, until he sleeps, hugging the pillow and trying to catch the last of William there.
In the morning, things look better. Clearer. His heart beats louder and stronger. Gabe smiles.