Fic: Once And Again (4/5)
Emmy looks more confused than anything when Alex tells her. “I’m sorry,” he says helplessly, doesn’t know where to go from here. She’s just looking at him, staring at him from across his kitchen table like she wasn’t expecting this at all. And that look, it’s making this all harder. It reminds him of the one he gets from Ryan when they’re sitting at breakfast in a hotel, Ryan’s what the fuck are you doing, exactly look, usually earned by building castles out of sugar packets. This is just a shade different, like everything Emmy is. This lacks that amusement, this is just confusion. “I just… I don’t know what I want, and I don’t want to-”
“It’s okay,” she says, unnaturally gently, and all he sees in her concerned gaze is the look he gets from Ryan after staggering back to the bench following a hit. “If I’m not the one, I’m not the one. It’s not your fault.”
It is, though. Alex is fully aware of this. As he looks at her, he still wonders whether staying would have been easier, smarter. He remembers all the things he loves about her, simply because they’re what he loves about Ryan, and he can’t look at her anymore.
“I just…” Alex stares down at the table. “I’m so sorry.”
“Even if I’m not the one, there’s someone that is,” she says, “and that’s who you deserve to be with.”
“It’s not that simple,” Alex says quietly.
“I know.” The way she says it, so much sad sympathy, it’s almost like she knows that it’s impossible, and he wonders if it’s really that obvious, how ruined he is.
0o0o00o0o
Émilie doesn’t look as hurt as Ryan had thought she would. She looks kind of sad, maybe, but not all that surprised.
“It’s not like… anything happened, or something, it’s just… it’s my fault,” he says. She’s looking at the floor, doesn’t say anything for a moment.
“Mais…” God, but the French just kills him. It makes him think of Alex, and this, it feels like giving up on having even the idea of him.
“I’m sorry, Émilie, I really, really am. It’s… there’s… someone else, kind of.”
“Someone else,” she repeats, something unreadable on her face. He bites his lip, looks away.
“I was in love with someone before I even met you,” he says softly, “and I don’t think… I can make that go away. I tried, and I just…”
“You shouldn’t,” she says gently, “you really shouldn’t try to.”
“It’s complicated.”
“It’s not,” she insists, in that way she has, the one that reminds him of Alex. “S’il te plait, Ryan. You’re lucky, to love someone this much.”
“I don’t feel lucky,” he admits, and it’s maybe the most honest thing he’d said to her in all the time she’s known him.
“Not yet,” she says, but the look on her face is like the one he sees on Alex’s, when they’re down in the third, and the crowd is screaming their names, impossible to tell if it’s encouraging or damning. The silence afterwards is like the one that overtakes the arena, when the game is over, lost, the night ruined.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0
The night they get home after the road trip, Kevin’s phone rings at eleven thirty at night, loudly.
“Tabarnaksticalisssssseee,” Maxim growls, burrowing under the blankets.
“Did that even mean anything?” Kevin asks. Maxim kicks him. “I’ll get it, I’ll get it.”
“Don’t get it, kill it.”
Kevin ignores this extremely helpful advice, opting instead to just answer his phone.
“They dumped me,” Emily says, before he can even say hello.
“Finally, good news!”
“Not exactly.” She hesitates, draws in a slow breath. “Kevin, they didn’t dump me because they’d finally got what they wanted, they did it because they were giving up.”
Kevin’s grip on his phone tightens, and he feels a soft hand at his back, Maxim’s arm sliding around him. “How do I fix it?”
“I don’t know,” her voice gets softer, “Kevin, I’m just an actor, I can’t write the script, and these are real people.”
“But… it can’t have been that bad.”
“It was so sad,” she says, “God, Kevin, you should have seen the look on Alex’s face, and then, when Ryan told me he was in love with someone else he’d never have…” she draws in a shaky breath. “I just don’t know,” she finally says.
After she hangs up, Kevin lets Maxim pull him closer. “What happened?” Maxim asks.
“They both dumped her, but not to get with each other.” He closes his eyes, tries not to imagine what’s going to happen now.
Maxim’s unnaturally quiet, and Kevin turns to look back at him. “What?”
“Well…” Maxim frowns, deeply thoughtful look on his face. “I think- maybe-”
“You know how to fix it.”
“Kind of.”
This should be great news, but Maxim doesn’t look happy, looks almost scared, and so, so worried, that look that’s been on his face far too often lately.
“It might work,” Maxim says, in a tone that adds it might not, and things would be worse off than they are now. “It might get them to tell each other.”
“Maxim,” Kevin gets it suddenly, from the hesitance in Maxim’s voice to the fear in his eyes, “no, that’s not-”
“Unless you think of something better,” Maxim says firmly, “that’s what we’ll do.” He curls back up against Kevin’s back, and Kevin knows he’s only pretending to sleep.
0o0o0o0o0o
Alex used to love road trips. He loved that Ryan claimed the seat next to him on the plane for every flight, loved sharing a room and arguing over TV channels, loved that foreign cities became the home where he spent every day with Ryan.
Road trips have lost their draw. He hadn’t realised he was fooling himself, but the dark that Ryan’s new girlfriend cast over the trip was unmistakable; Alex hadn’t thought part of him was hoping something would happen on one of these trips, but when that part vanished, he felt the absence acutely. The undeniable proof that Ryan will never want him came in the form of that French-Canadian, something that feels like a personal insult.
After their loss against San Jose, the atmosphere in the locker room is muted, and Alex is glad for it. When everyone else is excited, he feels more out of place, unable to feel the same way. Now, no one bothers him when he sits on the bench in silence, towelling his hair dry and trying not to think about anything. Ryan eventually wanders back over from the showers; the bruise on his cheek has darkened. He got into a fight in the third, for no real justifiable reason; when Alex asked why, Ryan had just shrugged, said he didn’t know.
“You okay?” Alex asks. Ryan shrugs, and the look on his face confuses Alex, the residual anger and a kind of helplessness to stop it.
“Fine,” Ryan says. Alex looks away again, doesn’t think about how the French-Canadian girl will take care of Ryan once he’s back home.
It feels like it takes hours just to get to the airport, and Alex is one of the first onto the plane. He doesn’t usually like having to fly back after a game, but today’s had been early, and really, he kind of just wants to go home and sleep. He takes a window seat and doesn’t look over when someone takes the seat next to him, figures it’s Ryan. By the time the plane takes off, he’s nearly asleep, and flinches back awake when his seatmate pokes him.
“Hey.” It’s not Ryan, it’s Maxim, and when Alex turns to him, he looks nervous as hell, which isn’t a look Alex recognises on him.
“What’s up?”
“I, um.” His voice is quiet, like he doesn’t want to be overheard, even though most of their teammates seem to be asleep. “Have something I wanted to, um. Tell you.” Every word worries Alex more, because Maxim, he’s loudmouthed and brash and outgoing, he’s not like this, just short of terrified.
“What?”
“I just, well, we thought… ‘ve kept stuff from you, and I wanted to… tell you.” He looks up at Alex as if for permission.
“What is it?”
“Kevin and I. Nous sommes… ah, we’re… together.”
“Together,” Alex repeats, and then, then it hits him. “You’re…” Maxim bites his lip, nods. “That’s, uh, that’s cool? For how long?”
“A little over a year.”
“Oh.” He can’t really process it, can only think why did it happen right for them?
“I’m sorry we didn’t… tell anyone, almost no one knows, at all.” Maxim still looks worried, searching Alex’s face for some definitive reaction.
“It must’ve been hard,” Alex says finally, the only coherent thought he really has. Maxim smiles.
“Worth it, though.”
0o0o0o0o
Kevin is relieved when Maxim finally comes down the aisle and sinks into the seat next to him. “How’d it go?” he asks, trying to glean any clues from the look on Maxim’s face.
“Good…” he pushes up the armrest and scoots closer, and this, this is how Kevin knows it was okay. Maxim didn’t glance around first; something allayed at least part of his fears. “He was nice about it.”
“Lots of people are,” Kevin says, doesn’t add what he’s thinking, I wish the first people you told had been, too.
“I thought… I thought he wouldn’t be.”
“Why? I mean- we’re positive he is too, so…”
“But he’s hiding it,” Maxim says quietly.
“I really think they’re both hiding it only because they don’t think they can have who they want, and telling everyone wouldn’t be worth it otherwise.” Maxim nods at this, quiet. “What’d he say?”
“He said it must have been hard. I don’t know if he meant keeping it a secret, or-” Maxim sighs, “no, he meant telling you.”
“That’s funny.”
“Yeah, Kev, it’s hilarious.”
“No, I mean, that’s what Kes said too, kind of. He asked how I told you, and I told him how I just, you know, did it.” It hadn’t been one of his more graceful moments- he’d been sharing a room with Maxim for a few months, and one night he’d just blurted it out. The way it felt when Maxim finally fell into his arms, though, that made every moment of worry and fear worth it.
“Maybe now it’ll work,” Maxim says. Kevin nods.
“Hey,” he says a few minutes later, Maxim half-asleep on his shoulder. “I know that was a big thing for you,” he says quietly, squeezing Maxim’s hand, “and I’m really proud of you.”
Maxim smiles up at him, that smile that changes the world into a better place, and says, “I want them to have what I have.”
O0o0o0o0o