WWAWR - [02] This Fear Within of What Would Happen
Chapter Two [PG13]
This Fear Within of What Would Happen
Breakfast rolls along like any other ordinary day. There is the, "Guys, if this is my last day here, I'm so glad I'm spending it with you" coming from the mouths of several. There is also the, "What do you think we're going to do next week?" followed by, "If you could sing any song at all, what would you sing?" But there is one --no, two things missing, and Brooke notices immediately. She watches David with a motherly eye, noting that the younger man seemed very much less energetic than usual. This time in the morning, and earlier, he would already have been working on his second or third crossword, would have already been cracking more than one joke with --Michael.
Brooke's eyes quickly turn to the Australian, sitting next to Carly and moving his eggs around his plate. He, too, is so much more --oh, what's the word?--quiet is much too small of a word to describe the silence radiating from Michael--unenthusiastic?-- about the morning, and she finds this odd. In fact, it's so odd that when she catches Carly asking to have a small talk with Michael, she decides to do the same thing with David.
"Dave?" She gives him a slight nudge as he doesn't reply right away; That's odd, too. He's usually so --alert. "Dave?" When David finally turns his eyes to her, he says defensively, "I'm eating!" and then stuffs a bit of egg into his mouth.
Brooke laughs quietly, "No, that's not it." Then she adds as an afterthought, "But! I'm glad to see you're eating, though."
David smiles, but Brooke doesn't buy it; the smile isn't reaching his eyes at all. "Can we talk?" she asks in a whisper.
David leans back in his chair, tilts it back, and says, "Of course!"
Brooke waves her hand, "No, I mean" --she tilts her head in Michael's direction-- "can we talk?"
The smile disappears from David's face and a serious look replaces it. "Yeah," he says slowly, before finishing the last piece of egg on his plate and downing his orange juice. "'Scuse me." He slides out of his seat, deposits the plate, fork, and glass in the sink, and then disappears into the hallway. His footsteps up the stairs can be heard in the shocked room.
"I --is he okay?" The younger David breaks the silence that has fallen on them all.
Michael answers him with a voice that sounds like he's holding back tears, "No, I don't think so," and he, too, stands and leaves the room. The opening and closing of their front door resonates through the mansion.
Brooke catches Carly's eyes, and they nod. Carly cleans up after Michael, taking his plate, fork, and glass along with her own and placing them into the sink just as Brooke comes up behind her and does the same thing.
"You'll talk to David?" Carly speaks in hushed tones.
"Make sure you get through to Michael." Brooke gives Carly a supportive smile, before they leave the six other contestants to themselves in the dining room.
Carly exits their temporary home and finds Michael sitting down on the ground, back against the wall, legs crossed, his face in his hand. His shoulders are heaving, and Carly doesn't need to be right in his face to know that the Australian is crying. Taking a deep breath, Carly gathers herself first before she sits down beside Michael, crossing her legs and then putting a comforting arm on Michael's knee. "Mikey," she begins to say, but Michael takes his hand away from his face, places it on his thigh, looks on ahead, and says, "Don't --don't call me that."
Carly gives him a sad look, before nodding, "I'm sorry."
"No, no, don't be sorry," Michael is quick to say, "it --it isn't your fault, or --or anything."
It pains Carly to see her fellow contestant --her fellow expatriate, her friend-- to be in such a state; taking another deep breath in an attempt to soothe her heart, she starts again, "Michael. This problem between you and David isn't going to solve itself, you know. You're going to have to talk about it, let it all out."
Michael makes a sound in his throat that sounds as though it is between protest and agreement. He turns his head and looks Carly in the eye, and Carly feels shivers down her spine as she looks into Michael's eyes. There is a haunting sense of gloom in them, and Carly feels the hairs on her neck rise, feels the goose-bumps on her arm; they're not necessarily dead, no, but sadness and --and something else; possibly confusion, possibly guilt, possibly regret, but the third choice makes Carly see red, and she ignores it for now, because, after all, it's best to hear it from Michael himself-- prevent Michael's eyes from being bright like they usually are.
"I don't know where to start," Michael admits in a small voice, tearing his gaze away from Carly. "Do I start with the fact that despite the fact that I'm married, I slept with my best friend? Or do I start with the fact that I honestly don't know what I'm going to do? Or, even the fact that since I don't know what I'm going to do, I'm hurting him? Because, honestly, I'd rather not start with either one of them, and just --just--"
The vulnerability in Michael's voice moves Carly to tears, but she quickly wipes them away. She grips Michael's knee tightly, and tells him, "Mike. Michael. Listen to me. Listen to me, okay? It's going to be okay." Michael makes a move to get himself away from Carly, but she gets on her knees and, moving her hands to his shoulders, holds him down. "Damn it all, Michael Johns, I'm trying to help you!" He stares at her angrily, and opens his mouth to say something, but she glares at him, her eyes narrowing dangerously, and he backs down. "This isn't going to go away just like that, so let's take things one by one, all right? That's what we're going to do, Michael, we're going to take things one by one, all right?"
Michael begins to calm down, and then Carly shifts to her earlier position, taking a seat next to him again, but keeps a hand on his shoulder.
"I --I honestly don't know," he says, and it is all Carly has in herself to keep her tears from falling. Where's the strong Michael everybody's used to seeing? Where is he? "But I know one thing, for sure, Carly."
"Oh, yeah? Tell me, Mike."
"I just love him so damn much, Carly. So damn much."
She makes a point to smile directly at him, "There you go, Michael, there you go; there's a start."
"It isn't a sin to love somebody, David," Brooke insists --but damn it, I feel like it is-- as she stares down at him. Brooke had found him lying on his back on his bed, the window in the room open, and when she first made a move to close the window, he said no too quickly. She had shaken her head at him, saying, "Eavesdropping isn't polite, David," and he decides not to look at her. Of course she could hear what was going on downstairs; she would've had to have been deaf not to recognize the two accented voices two stories downstairs having what could possibly be the same conversation they were having now.
"I just love him so damn much, Carly. So damn much."
"Brooke, you don't understand," David complains, shifting his position so that he is sitting down, and finally lifts his gaze to look at her. "Michael's a man. A married man."
She shakes her head, the smile on her face as though she is talking to a small child. "That isn't what I'm talking about right now, though, David," she says, and she must've read the confusion and incredulousness on his face, because she continues after a small pause, as though she is trying to figure out how to properly say what she wants to say, "Does he make you happy?"
"I --well-- yeah, of course," he answers, although he is still unsure of what she really means by the question. "He makes everybody happy, doesn't he?"
Brooke refuses to give him an answer, and only smiles at him patiently before he caves in and tells her, "Of course, he does, Brooke. He makes me really happy."
"And, do you love him?"
You didn't even need to ask that question.
"Yeah --yeah, of course, I do, Brooke. And that's why --that's why this is just so--" David feels ready to pull his hair out.
Brooke stares right at him, as though she is looking through his very soul, and he fights to suppress his shivers. "I'm not going to lie to you," she says, looking him square in the eye, "I don't know, really, how to properly approach this, but David, let me tell you one thing. You don't stop loving somebody on command; I mean, you just can't."
"But, is it right?"
"David, how could you ask such a thing!" Brooke looks completely appalled, and David throws his hands up in defense of himself, prepared for anything Brooke might say to him. "You don't ask other people that question, because we can't answer it for you.
"You're the only one who can answer that question."
"Carly, I hope you understand," Michael says. "They're the two most important people in my life. I --I don't want to have to choose between the both of them."
He watches as she shakes her head. "Michael, you know you're going to have to choose one day, and no matter who you choose, somebody's going to get hurt."
"You didn't need to tell me that," the Australian snaps, and then immediately regrets it, but as soon as he opens his mouth to apologize, Carly is smiling at him, and waves him off.
"Don't worry about it, Michael," she assures him. "I understand this is hard for you, but it was going to get harder if you didn't talk to anybody about it." Her grip on his shoulder tightens, and she continues, "Nobody should ever bear such a burden by themselves; it's going to eat you alive, if it hasn't already started to."
He shivers as he listens to the words that come out of her mouth, but it isn't because of the temperature, because it is bright and sunny and warm --he resists the temptation to snort, because the weather right now is a complete one-eighty from what he is feeling right now. He shivers because he knows Carly is telling him the truth. He shakes his head, "I'm not sure what to do anymore."
Carly smiles supportively at him. "Of course you do."
Michael stares at her in confusion, because he knows he doesn't know what to do.
"Follow your heart, kangaroo."
And then she leaves him alone to himself.
Brooke leaves their bedroom, and David is alone. He stays like that for a few moments, quiet and pondering, before there is a knock on the door. Having no energy to get up, he simply says loudly, "S'not locked!"
The doorknob turns and he hears the door open, and the footsteps that come into the room are so familiar that he doesn't even need to look at Michael to know it is him. "Hey, David," he offers as a start, taking a seat next to him.
David opens his mouth to speak, but Michael holds up a hand, and David silences himself. "Look," and then Michael puts a hand on his knee, "I know I haven't been giving off the best signals lately. But I want you to know that no matter what, I love you, David. So much. I don't want to take everything five or ten steps at a time, because if I'm going to do that, I'm going to leave somebody behind. And I don't want to leave you behind. I don't want to have to think of the future and make stupid decisions right here, right now, but I want to think of you right here and right now. I want you to think of you, of me, of you and me, and I want you to tell me whether or not you want that. Because no matter what you choose, I'll understand."
David raises his gaze and stares at Michael as though he's grown a second head. "You're asking me whether or not I want to keep on loving you?"
Michael begins to shake his head, "Well, if you prefer to answer my question in that form, then, yes."
"Damn it all, Michael Lee Johns!" erupts from David's mouth as he stands, the warmth of Michael's hand on his knee disappearing as soon as he gets off the bed. Taking a few steps away form the bed with his back to Michael, he inhales, exhales, and then turns to face Michael. "I --I've been wanting this for weeks, Mike. You don't understand how painful it was for me to --to have these feelings for a man, for a married man, and I didn't understand it, not at all." He pauses, letting his words to sink in, "And then comes last night with the dancing and the kissing and the sex --and let me tell you, Michael, it was un-fucking-believable-- and I was having the best time of my life. Until this morning."
Michael stares at him, slightly open-mouthed, "I --I never knew--"
But David just isn't quite finished yet. "This morning was torture. You have absolutely no idea how horrible I felt when I saw you looking at your wedding ring like you regretted what happened between us."
"Is this how it started?" Michael interrupts, holding up his left hand. "Because of this ring?"
"Yes!" David's tone is exasperated. "And now you're asking me whether or not I want to keep loving you?" The younger man begins to tear. "Yes, of course I do! I mean, I want to be able to hold you, to kiss you, call you mine --but, that's just it. You aren't mine, and --"
Michael's standing up distracts David from whatever he is about to say, and as Michael draws himself up to his full height, he saunters over to David, and captures his mouth in a kiss. It is raw, hungry, powerful, all of their emotions released into that one kiss --but it is also tender and loving, and David knows immediately that he wants Michael to kiss him like this over and over again.
"Right now," Michael says breathlessly, "I don't want to be anyone else's but yours." He cups David's face and looks him straight in the eye, an affectionate smile forming on his face. "Right now, I'm not mine, I'm not Stacey's, I'm not the world's, David; right now, I'm yours."
David collapses into Michael's arms, tears of happiness falling from his eyes and onto Michael's shoulder.
Downstairs, Brooke and Carly are listening to their iTouches. They exchange a look, and Carly sings softly, "Come together, right now, over me."
Brooke laughs delightedly.
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