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Aleks realizes, very quickly, that you don’t realize how badly you fuck someone’s life up until you see them dead and tired, a shell of what they used to be, a life Aleks was very used to, had been living for a good part of his time in Cali.
So when James pulls a shirt off, sticky with blood in the warehouse, just drops it to the cement, Aleks notices every bit of his body, sunlight seeming to purposely glint off scars that he’s accumulated over the last handful of years. Some Aleks remembers. The jagged edge on his shoulder from a serrated blade, three months ago. When his hands hit light, digging through his backpack on the ground for a shirt, Aleks can count all the tiny knicks of a butterfly knife. Those fade over time, but their newest romp in the desert has left James looking worse for wear. There’s a tell-tale bullet scar, on his right, and Aleks tries to remember exactly what happened, but his mind goes hot and dizzy. Probably better left alone, then.
After a moment, he speaks up, running a hand through his hair. It’s dried with blood, and Aleks tries to remember why it got so gross. Had he even punched a guy or shot someone? Things blur together when you do the same thing for days. Like a paper pusher in an office, but worse, or something. “... Hey, you cool?”
James makes a non-committal noise. Aleks knows that sound.
“Are you ok, James?”
“I’m fine,” And when James looks up at him, he just looks… tired. Absolutely fucking tired. Aleks wants to just write it off as today, how stressful and tense and then…you know, murder-y it became, but that’s not what this is about.
“James, I…,” Aleks starts, hesitating as he tries to find words, “do you… want to stop this? You can go clean, it’ll be fin-”
“No.”
It’s too abrupt. Aleks just laughs, covers his face with a hand. “Fuck you.”
James doesn’t say anything and Aleks listens to the shuffling motion of his backpack, of the warehouse door clicking shut a couple minutes later. Aleks is left alone with his thoughts, his heavy heart, and the weight of what he’s done to James.
If it wasn’t for Mishka, he would have stayed there all night. There’s enough weapons to have a field day with committing, anyways.
Sleep doesn’t come, and if it does, Aleks doesn’t remember it. He remembers the dream, though, and recounts it in foggy pieces in the morning, hands running through Mishka’s fur as she sleeps besides him in bed, curled up against his stomach.
Sitting in his Camaro, head in his hands, James besides him. They’re yelling, but Aleks can’t remember a single fucking thing said, just the fact that they’re yelling at each other and then… nothing. Cut to black. Aleks is almost glad he doesn’t remember, but then again, he could just fill in the blanks. All their conversations lately are fights that get bad enough that Aleks gets hoarse from yelling and James avoids him for… days, weeks, months.
He could lay a line out, all ups and downs, and Aleks still isn’t sure he could pinpoint where he fucked this up.
When he started turning tricks? When he laid the gun in James’ hand, steadied his grip, showed him how to shoot cans and bullseyes? When Aleks let James kill a guy, so he knew how it felt, and didn’t really care to ask if James was ok after the fact?
Was it when they met, when Aleks grabbed James’ hand, smiled so wide it hurt, introduced himself and then fell into this stranger’s life, something James had never asked for?
Each thought makes him feel more and more nauseous until Aleks does actually throw up, stumbling into his bathroom and emptying stomach acid into the toilet. Fuck.
When he feels like not dying anymore, Aleks showers. Dresses. Tries to act like he’s not in the middle of a possible breakdown. Looks at his phone. No texts. Not surprising. Brett’s on a business trip, if Aleks can really call what they do business, and James…
James.
Aleks covers his face with a hand, exhaling out in a somewhat shaky breath. This isn’t new to him, no matter how much it feels like a punch to the gut every fucking time.
He takes Mishka for a walk. Takes her to a biking trail. Runs with her until his lungs burn and he has to carry her back to the car. Back home, Mishka gets the luxury of a nap in air conditioner. Aleks gets to sit on his couch, stare at his phone, and break down. Whether James replies or not is up to him, but Aleks always comes crawling back first.
Hey. Where are you? We gotta talk.
Nothing comes in five minutes, so Aleks tries to sleep. Make up for last night, curls up on the couch, covers his head with his arms.
The problem with sleeping is dreaming. The problem with dreaming is, well, everything.
Aleks is acutely aware he can control this. They’re sitting in Death Valley, on the edge of a cliff. The sunset is vividly neon and his eyes hurt, even under his sunglasses. There’s no sound around them, like they’re in a perfect bubble, and when Aleks forces his head to look over at James besides him, it’s not the James he knows now. It’s the smiley, dimple cheeked chubby riot of a boy he found those years ago, stood behind a glass counter at a Game Stop.
They’re holding hands, and just sitting in their bubble void of anything, and Aleks wants to cry for some reason.
He closes his eyes, breaths, opens them, and when he looks down, his stomachs covered in red, and the curved hilt of a karambit is in James’ grasp, digging the blade even deeper.
Aleks wakes up, sweating. Mishka’s whining at him, scratching at the cushions of the couch, and he forces a smile.
“S’ok. C’mon, you wanna eat?”
He doesn’t sleep again that night.
Aleks has to make an appearance, for everyone else’s sake, at the warehouse. James isn’t there. Nobody asks where he is, though, and that’s fine by Aleks.
He’s going over a blueprint with Lindsey, trying to find faults in the system, when his phone vibrates against his leg. He fumbles to get it out, drops it, curses, and when he picks it back up and reads the text, his heart stops.
meet me @ usual spot in an hour.
Aleks doesn’t even excuse himself and he’s got a foot out the door before he calls an apology out to a bewildered Lindsey, staring at the shape he left in his chair.
Traffic is even kind to him, as if something’s parting the seas or some shit for him, and yeah, maybe he kind of skids into a parking spot, maybe runs out to the deserted part of Death Valley they’ve snuck into and claimed as their own. It makes Aleks’ head pound when he remembers they came out here, first, to get high under the starry sky, because that’s what boyfriends did.
James is sitting in the dirt and Aleks, with measured steps, approaches him. He sits down, and when he looks out towards the horizon at the sky, his eyes hurt. The sky’s not quite neon, but it’s painful enough, and he flips the hood up on his sweatshirt. So be it if he dies out here from heat stroke; better than whatever James wants him for.
It feels like eons before someone speaks. Aleks tries to start a couple of times, but he doesn’t know what to say. Sorry doesn’t sound like enough, and he knows it never will be, not for everything he’s put James through over the past years.
He’s relieved and devastated all at once when James does finally speak up.
“We can’t keep doing this.”
Aleks hesitates. Does James mean the gang? Does James mean… them?
“You can go clean. I won’t come to you anymore,” Aleks keeps urging, as if that’s the real problem here. Anything to ignore the real problem.
“That’s not what I mean,” James finally glances at him. His cheeks are a little dirty from the wind picking up sand and Aleks resists the urge to reach over and scrub them clean, dirty the white sleeve of his hoodie, “us, dude. What the fuck are we doing?”
“I don’t know,” Aleks answers, shoulders sagging as he stares down at the dirt, “I miss you like crazy. At… this point, I don’t care what you do. I just don’t… want you to hate me anymore.”
Being honest hurts. It’s not his strong suit, nowhere near it, and his chest swells with… some sort of emotion Aleks has tried to squash and tampen down over the years, pretend it doesn’t exist, pretend it’s not the feeling he gets when James laughs loud at one of his jokes, the feeling he gets when James has his hair down and is leaning out the Camaro’s window as they cruise down a empty highway, the feeling he gets when James just looks at him and smiles.
“Fucking… asshole, you really suck at this,” James scrubs a hand over his face, “I don’t hate you. What happened, dude? When did we go from… whatever we were, to this? I don’t think we even qualify as business partners; they don’t fight as much as we do.”
“Probably because we were friends. You’re not supposed to go into business with those,” Aleks’ joke is dry, “I don’t… fucking know, dude, I don’t. I don’t know what you want from me. Saying sorry isn’t going to fix anything.”
“You haven’t even tried.”
Aleks is taken aback, looking at James confused. Is he being fucking serious? A sorry, that’s all he wants?
“I… I’m sorry?”
James frowns. “Wanna have one more go at that?”
Aleks swallows around a lump forming in his throat, glad he has sunglasses on right now. “I’m sorry,” Quieter, this time, head lowering, and he lets James pull him in, face instantly going to James’ shoulder, a hand grabbing the back of his shirt as Aleks shudders, letting go of a weight or two he’s been carrying around.
James is just holding him, but when he speaks after a moment, his voice is a little thick. Aleks feels… mildly glad that he’s not the only pussy here crying.
“Can you just be honest with me? I don’t care about what we do. I care about you and I need you… I need you to be honest with me, Aleksandr.”
Aleks wants to say yes, but that would be a lie. “I’m trying. I’m… trying really hard, man,” And that’s all Aleks can offer, all Aleks has in him anymore.
But it’s enough, and maybe that’s all James needed, because James follows him home that night. Aleks can’t even remember the last time James was over for… anything, really. It’s been a good handful of months, at least.
It’s only when they tangle limbs in his bed that Aleks forgets how good it is to lay next to someone who loves you, and you love back.
He mouths the words like they’re prayers over James’ skin, into his mouth and over his jaw, and James just stretches out, lets Aleks hold onto him like he’s the only thing grounding the blond to reality.
When morning comes, he’s not gone, and neither is Aleks.
He can try, for James. He’d do anything for James.