Eikasia, RPS HL/RSL (Section 3, Pt 3)
Fic: Eikasia (Section 3, Pt 3/4)
Author: Nakanna Lee
Pairing: RPS HL/RSL, H/W
Rating: PG13 -- Mature
Disclaimer: None of this is true or means any harm.
Warning: RPS
A/N: Thank you to the readers for all the enthusiasm and speculation. Hope this provides some answers.
RECAP
Section 1 (4/4):
Part One, Part Two ,Part Three, Part Four
Section 2 (4/4):
Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four
Section 3 (2/4):
Part One, Part Two
----------------------------------------------------------
Hugh had stumbled outside to take the remainder of the call. He leaned against the side of the diner, the metallic edging of the facade digging into his lower back, and listened as Jo irregularly explained. She’d wanted to tell him, she said, but it had felt right, safe, consoling to be with someone.
“It doesn’t absolve me,” Jo said-Hugh despised the word for its connotation, as if mystically, some greater power could swoop down and make everything better-“but you’re always gone, Hugh. The kids are out all the time, what am I supposed to do, what am I supposed to have?”
A sting stabbed the back of his eyes. He lowered his head and rubbed at them, swallowing the tightness in his throat. Her sentences rushed together in blurry, half-cries, cutting themselves off at random syllables as she inhaled shakily. He wondered where she was, if she was crying in their bedroom or out on the porch, someplace quiet where he hoped desperately the kids couldn’t hear. He wanted to hold her. The distance felt the same as if his arms had been sloughed off.
“It’s okay, love,” Hugh tried. He lifted his eyes up slightly and took a breath, swiping at his face and rubbing the wetness off on his jeans. “Please, Jo, I love you, I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” Jo nearly laughed, which frightened him. “I’m the one-” Her sentence ended in a muffled, hiccupping exhale.
It wasn’t her fault, Hugh thought bitterly. If he hadn’t left, if he hadn’t stuck her with the responsibility of holding the family together, if he hadn’t slept with Robert. Divine intervention was shit meant for intimidating purposes, but if karma had any basis, then he deserved whatever pain should be thrown his way. Hearing Jo break down over the mobile, however, was punishing the wrong person.
He held the phone closer to his ear, suddenly aware his hand was shaking. “It’s all right, we’re going to be all right, Jo.”
“You don’t understand,” she said. Her voice was still cracking but the rapid gush of grief had subsided slightly. “Sometimes, Hugh, I don’t care. And I want to so goddamn badly, but sometimes I don’t.”
It was as he were drilled through the chest and propelled on his back. This was why Stephen hadn’t wanted him to call by phone from the beginning. There was a door between them, and conversation passed like irretrievable telegrams beneath. One spurred on another spurred on another unguarded. Conversation was a dangerous thing when upset and alone.
“Jo. Jo? Listen to me. I love you, I love being with you. I couldn’t imagine not being with you, we’re a family-”
“I’m so tired, Hugh.” Jo’s voice was thick and uneven from crying. She sighed, and he saw her dark hair a mess, eyes red, face smeared and wet-the way she looked when the kids were born, when his parents died, when they fought. “I’m just tired.”
“I know. Please, Jo, I swear to you, we’ll fix this. Together. I know you’re tired, I am too, but we’ll help each other. Promise me. If you take the plane-”
“I can’t.” She interrupted him, “I want to. I just can’t be with you right now. I feel so sick, Hugh, I wanted to call for weeks, but every time I saw that damn phone I lost my nerve. I didn’t know-I didn’t know what to tell you. That I missed you? That I hated you for not being here? That I found someone, that I wish I could take it all back-”
“Or I could go see you,” Hugh cut in. He felt he could never speak quickly enough against her slow, empty voice. “Let us talk about it. We’ll work it out, we can get counseling, whatever you think this needs, Jo. Whatever will help.”
“The kids and I are going to stay at Mum’s in Exeter for the weekend,” Jo wearily explained as if he hadn’t said anything. “It’s so close to the end of your season, isn’t it? Maybe we’re better off waiting to see one another. Maybe distance will help.”
“Jo,” Hugh pleaded, “don’t let me lose you.”
There was a lengthy pause. If he hadn’t heard her breathing, he would have thought she’d hung up, dropped the phone, walked away.
“Why?” she asked quietly. The word was brief, short. “Why shouldn’t you want to?”
Confused, Hugh stammered but Jo continued,
“Because I’m trying to remember, Hugh. It’s been years since you were with us. I understand your job. It’s a commitment I made as well. And the possibility of moving out there with you was always there, like a consolation prize we’re never going to get to see because you don’t find American television reliable enough to warrant a move. And the kids-the kids can’t move. Friends, school, they can’t, not now.
“There’s a routine, Hugh. We’ve fallen into routine. We don’t expect you home all the time so we’re not disappointed when you’re not. You visit in the summer and then you’re whisked away again. And we’re happy with that. How can we be fucking happy with that?”
“I’m not,” Hugh insisted. “It’s hard, I never expected the show to seize such a monopoly of my life, our life. But we’ve made it work up until now. We can get it back to how it was.”
“Do you want to?” Jo asked bluntly. It was such a candid, sincere question. It caught Hugh off-guard.
“Of course I want to,” he said. He wished he could kiss her. Sweep her off her feet, smile at her, stroke her cheek. He wished now of all times fiction would usurp reality and give him the most powerful, heartfelt line of dialogue ever put on paper. But the words just repeated. “Of course I want to.”
“All right.” Jo had gone quiet again. Her breathing had calmed. Hugh was about to speak again when she continued. “But do you love him?”
* * *
Robert drove them back towards West Hollywood. A strange, disconnected section of Hugh’s brain wondered why they just hadn’t gone straight to Santa Monica, which was closer from the diner. The numbness mused on. Maybe Robert hadn’t intended on changing directions, maybe the phone call altered plans.
Hugh’s forearm burned slightly from where Robert had touched him moments ago, when he’d found him outside the diner staring into nothing. From there it was a few steps to the Jetta, the detached feeling of the passenger’s seat beneath him and the choking strap of the seatbelt. He assumed Robert had paid for coffee and he had no idea how much of the mobile conversation he’d heard. Hugh still wasn’t sure what he himself had heard. Pieces were breaking off in sharp fragments and piercing spots within his head. He felt ill and delusional.
“She knew,” Hugh murmured. He felt Robert’s eyes on him but couldn’t place the look-concern, maybe fear, anger. “And fuck if I couldn’t tell her.”
Robert stayed silent. Hugh spoke aloud as if he were rearranging files and memories in his head, not for anyone else.
“She said the show gave parts away. Not everything. Acting. But because I’d stopped talking about Robert. Because suddenly I didn’t mention him at all, when he always came up in conversation before. And yet my mood hadn’t soured. So if there wasn’t strife between us, certainly there must be something else.” He stopped, eyes focused on a blank point in mid-space. “I let her have her affair. I practically sent her off to do it, with ignoring her, lying to her. And still she regrets what she did.”
“No one isn’t guilty,” Robert murmured.
“She regrets it. And me? God. And me. Bobby, fuck, if you knew how many times I thought-” he broke off, feeling the car lurch a little as Robert hit the accelerator unevenly before steadying it again.
“Shut up, Hugh. I’m not even joking. Just shut the fuck up. You keep beating yourself up over this, like I shouldn’t be the one getting shit thrown in his face.” His voice came sharply, as if each line were metallic sheets. “I’m the one who knew you were married and kept pushing you anyway, remember? How the hell do you think I feel? I managed to make every single person I should care about miserable-Gaby, you, Jo. God knows I must have depressed Stephen enough, too.” He laughed, quick and breathy. “So don’t even fucking try to take all the blame for this one. Just don’t.”
“Bobby, I knew quite well what I was doing when I was with you.”
“Ever break up a marriage before? Come talk to me then.”
Hugh stared at him but was having trouble interpreting his face. A dangerous, lightheaded mist crowded his thoughts.
“You didn’t break up anything,” he said. “We’re not getting a divorce. We’re upset, we’re out-of-sorts. But we love our kids. We won’t do that to them.”
Hugh hadn’t noticed they’d pulled up to his flat, but he slowly realized they’d been sitting there for at least several minutes. Robert was still gripping the steering wheel and staring between his hands.
“I’m not leaving you home by yourself,” Robert said eventually.
Hugh didn’t have the energy to make much of a joke. “You have me on watch now, Bobby? Afraid I might throw myself out a window? In case you haven’t noticed, I was the one unfaithful for a far longer time. I deserve this.”
Robert stared at him briefly. “It’s seriously, seriously fucked up that you think that. And I’m not leaving you alone. I’ll take the couch, you can lock the bedroom door if that makes you feel less guilty about being near me. You can call Stephen tomorrow and then I’ll leave.”
“I don’t need you here. You should go back to your flat and ready yourself for the trip.”
“I’m not going to New York anymore.” Robert opened his door and walked around the front of the car, waiting for Hugh on the porch steps. Hugh couldn’t decide if Robert was canceling the trip because he wanted to keep an eye on him or because the mood for laughs and entertainment had been killed.
Inside the flat, Hugh returned from the bedroom with the spare pillow and sheets. It was close to three a.m., and fighting Robert right now required energy he didn’t have. Robert accepted the items and let them drop nonspecifically onto the sofa.
“This was the last thing I wanted for you,” Robert said, looking at him seriously. “You know that, right?”
Hugh nodded subtly. “I have no doubt.”
They stood across from one another for a moment, not speaking. Hugh figured it was well past the time for explanation and apologies, for both of them. Whatever had been there between them, or was still there, would have to be gone. He had too much invested an ocean away, and one more slip here would easily cost him it all. He didn’t doubt that, either.
“Go to New York tomorrow,” Hugh said. It suddenly felt extremely important that Robert do so. He couldn’t shut down, too. “Lewis finagled those seats for you. Go. Then you can tell me about it when you get back.”
Robert hesitated between the blank and withdrawn expressions on his face.
“I’m not leaving until Stephen gets here,” he finally decided.
“So he’ll arrive in time for you to make the flight.” Hugh waved a hand, eager to push on somehow. “It isn’t a problem.”
“Yeah.” Robert looked as if he were at a loss. He tried, “I can call you when I get there” as if he were reading off a line that fell from the sky.
It was good enough for Hugh. He nodded and left him standing by the couch.
tbc
Author: Nakanna Lee
Pairing: RPS HL/RSL, H/W
Rating: PG13 -- Mature
Disclaimer: None of this is true or means any harm.
Warning: RPS
A/N: Thank you to the readers for all the enthusiasm and speculation. Hope this provides some answers.
RECAP
Section 1 (4/4):
Part One, Part Two ,Part Three, Part Four
Section 2 (4/4):
Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four
Section 3 (2/4):
Part One, Part Two
----------------------------------------------------------
Hugh had stumbled outside to take the remainder of the call. He leaned against the side of the diner, the metallic edging of the facade digging into his lower back, and listened as Jo irregularly explained. She’d wanted to tell him, she said, but it had felt right, safe, consoling to be with someone.
“It doesn’t absolve me,” Jo said-Hugh despised the word for its connotation, as if mystically, some greater power could swoop down and make everything better-“but you’re always gone, Hugh. The kids are out all the time, what am I supposed to do, what am I supposed to have?”
A sting stabbed the back of his eyes. He lowered his head and rubbed at them, swallowing the tightness in his throat. Her sentences rushed together in blurry, half-cries, cutting themselves off at random syllables as she inhaled shakily. He wondered where she was, if she was crying in their bedroom or out on the porch, someplace quiet where he hoped desperately the kids couldn’t hear. He wanted to hold her. The distance felt the same as if his arms had been sloughed off.
“It’s okay, love,” Hugh tried. He lifted his eyes up slightly and took a breath, swiping at his face and rubbing the wetness off on his jeans. “Please, Jo, I love you, I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” Jo nearly laughed, which frightened him. “I’m the one-” Her sentence ended in a muffled, hiccupping exhale.
It wasn’t her fault, Hugh thought bitterly. If he hadn’t left, if he hadn’t stuck her with the responsibility of holding the family together, if he hadn’t slept with Robert. Divine intervention was shit meant for intimidating purposes, but if karma had any basis, then he deserved whatever pain should be thrown his way. Hearing Jo break down over the mobile, however, was punishing the wrong person.
He held the phone closer to his ear, suddenly aware his hand was shaking. “It’s all right, we’re going to be all right, Jo.”
“You don’t understand,” she said. Her voice was still cracking but the rapid gush of grief had subsided slightly. “Sometimes, Hugh, I don’t care. And I want to so goddamn badly, but sometimes I don’t.”
It was as he were drilled through the chest and propelled on his back. This was why Stephen hadn’t wanted him to call by phone from the beginning. There was a door between them, and conversation passed like irretrievable telegrams beneath. One spurred on another spurred on another unguarded. Conversation was a dangerous thing when upset and alone.
“Jo. Jo? Listen to me. I love you, I love being with you. I couldn’t imagine not being with you, we’re a family-”
“I’m so tired, Hugh.” Jo’s voice was thick and uneven from crying. She sighed, and he saw her dark hair a mess, eyes red, face smeared and wet-the way she looked when the kids were born, when his parents died, when they fought. “I’m just tired.”
“I know. Please, Jo, I swear to you, we’ll fix this. Together. I know you’re tired, I am too, but we’ll help each other. Promise me. If you take the plane-”
“I can’t.” She interrupted him, “I want to. I just can’t be with you right now. I feel so sick, Hugh, I wanted to call for weeks, but every time I saw that damn phone I lost my nerve. I didn’t know-I didn’t know what to tell you. That I missed you? That I hated you for not being here? That I found someone, that I wish I could take it all back-”
“Or I could go see you,” Hugh cut in. He felt he could never speak quickly enough against her slow, empty voice. “Let us talk about it. We’ll work it out, we can get counseling, whatever you think this needs, Jo. Whatever will help.”
“The kids and I are going to stay at Mum’s in Exeter for the weekend,” Jo wearily explained as if he hadn’t said anything. “It’s so close to the end of your season, isn’t it? Maybe we’re better off waiting to see one another. Maybe distance will help.”
“Jo,” Hugh pleaded, “don’t let me lose you.”
There was a lengthy pause. If he hadn’t heard her breathing, he would have thought she’d hung up, dropped the phone, walked away.
“Why?” she asked quietly. The word was brief, short. “Why shouldn’t you want to?”
Confused, Hugh stammered but Jo continued,
“Because I’m trying to remember, Hugh. It’s been years since you were with us. I understand your job. It’s a commitment I made as well. And the possibility of moving out there with you was always there, like a consolation prize we’re never going to get to see because you don’t find American television reliable enough to warrant a move. And the kids-the kids can’t move. Friends, school, they can’t, not now.
“There’s a routine, Hugh. We’ve fallen into routine. We don’t expect you home all the time so we’re not disappointed when you’re not. You visit in the summer and then you’re whisked away again. And we’re happy with that. How can we be fucking happy with that?”
“I’m not,” Hugh insisted. “It’s hard, I never expected the show to seize such a monopoly of my life, our life. But we’ve made it work up until now. We can get it back to how it was.”
“Do you want to?” Jo asked bluntly. It was such a candid, sincere question. It caught Hugh off-guard.
“Of course I want to,” he said. He wished he could kiss her. Sweep her off her feet, smile at her, stroke her cheek. He wished now of all times fiction would usurp reality and give him the most powerful, heartfelt line of dialogue ever put on paper. But the words just repeated. “Of course I want to.”
“All right.” Jo had gone quiet again. Her breathing had calmed. Hugh was about to speak again when she continued. “But do you love him?”
* * *
Robert drove them back towards West Hollywood. A strange, disconnected section of Hugh’s brain wondered why they just hadn’t gone straight to Santa Monica, which was closer from the diner. The numbness mused on. Maybe Robert hadn’t intended on changing directions, maybe the phone call altered plans.
Hugh’s forearm burned slightly from where Robert had touched him moments ago, when he’d found him outside the diner staring into nothing. From there it was a few steps to the Jetta, the detached feeling of the passenger’s seat beneath him and the choking strap of the seatbelt. He assumed Robert had paid for coffee and he had no idea how much of the mobile conversation he’d heard. Hugh still wasn’t sure what he himself had heard. Pieces were breaking off in sharp fragments and piercing spots within his head. He felt ill and delusional.
“She knew,” Hugh murmured. He felt Robert’s eyes on him but couldn’t place the look-concern, maybe fear, anger. “And fuck if I couldn’t tell her.”
Robert stayed silent. Hugh spoke aloud as if he were rearranging files and memories in his head, not for anyone else.
“She said the show gave parts away. Not everything. Acting. But because I’d stopped talking about Robert. Because suddenly I didn’t mention him at all, when he always came up in conversation before. And yet my mood hadn’t soured. So if there wasn’t strife between us, certainly there must be something else.” He stopped, eyes focused on a blank point in mid-space. “I let her have her affair. I practically sent her off to do it, with ignoring her, lying to her. And still she regrets what she did.”
“No one isn’t guilty,” Robert murmured.
“She regrets it. And me? God. And me. Bobby, fuck, if you knew how many times I thought-” he broke off, feeling the car lurch a little as Robert hit the accelerator unevenly before steadying it again.
“Shut up, Hugh. I’m not even joking. Just shut the fuck up. You keep beating yourself up over this, like I shouldn’t be the one getting shit thrown in his face.” His voice came sharply, as if each line were metallic sheets. “I’m the one who knew you were married and kept pushing you anyway, remember? How the hell do you think I feel? I managed to make every single person I should care about miserable-Gaby, you, Jo. God knows I must have depressed Stephen enough, too.” He laughed, quick and breathy. “So don’t even fucking try to take all the blame for this one. Just don’t.”
“Bobby, I knew quite well what I was doing when I was with you.”
“Ever break up a marriage before? Come talk to me then.”
Hugh stared at him but was having trouble interpreting his face. A dangerous, lightheaded mist crowded his thoughts.
“You didn’t break up anything,” he said. “We’re not getting a divorce. We’re upset, we’re out-of-sorts. But we love our kids. We won’t do that to them.”
Hugh hadn’t noticed they’d pulled up to his flat, but he slowly realized they’d been sitting there for at least several minutes. Robert was still gripping the steering wheel and staring between his hands.
“I’m not leaving you home by yourself,” Robert said eventually.
Hugh didn’t have the energy to make much of a joke. “You have me on watch now, Bobby? Afraid I might throw myself out a window? In case you haven’t noticed, I was the one unfaithful for a far longer time. I deserve this.”
Robert stared at him briefly. “It’s seriously, seriously fucked up that you think that. And I’m not leaving you alone. I’ll take the couch, you can lock the bedroom door if that makes you feel less guilty about being near me. You can call Stephen tomorrow and then I’ll leave.”
“I don’t need you here. You should go back to your flat and ready yourself for the trip.”
“I’m not going to New York anymore.” Robert opened his door and walked around the front of the car, waiting for Hugh on the porch steps. Hugh couldn’t decide if Robert was canceling the trip because he wanted to keep an eye on him or because the mood for laughs and entertainment had been killed.
Inside the flat, Hugh returned from the bedroom with the spare pillow and sheets. It was close to three a.m., and fighting Robert right now required energy he didn’t have. Robert accepted the items and let them drop nonspecifically onto the sofa.
“This was the last thing I wanted for you,” Robert said, looking at him seriously. “You know that, right?”
Hugh nodded subtly. “I have no doubt.”
They stood across from one another for a moment, not speaking. Hugh figured it was well past the time for explanation and apologies, for both of them. Whatever had been there between them, or was still there, would have to be gone. He had too much invested an ocean away, and one more slip here would easily cost him it all. He didn’t doubt that, either.
“Go to New York tomorrow,” Hugh said. It suddenly felt extremely important that Robert do so. He couldn’t shut down, too. “Lewis finagled those seats for you. Go. Then you can tell me about it when you get back.”
Robert hesitated between the blank and withdrawn expressions on his face.
“I’m not leaving until Stephen gets here,” he finally decided.
“So he’ll arrive in time for you to make the flight.” Hugh waved a hand, eager to push on somehow. “It isn’t a problem.”
“Yeah.” Robert looked as if he were at a loss. He tried, “I can call you when I get there” as if he were reading off a line that fell from the sky.
It was good enough for Hugh. He nodded and left him standing by the couch.
tbc