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Maybe it was something in the air.
Maybe it was something to do with the way the cheap, shitty apartment air conditioner hummed at this hour of dead in the night that made Alex Kralie’s thoughts inevitably, unstoppably fly into his head at twice the speed they normally would and crowd it more with useless garbage he didn’t need to think about.
Or perhaps he would. He should.
He probably should work on processing everything that happened. That was the useless junk his therapist would tell him, anyway. Like he listened. Like he ever listened.
And once again, he should.
But more often than not, anybody who knew him knew that he was no use at helping himself with these kinds of things. More often than not it, was the retreat, isolate, repeat. Retreat, isolate, repeat. The Alex Kralie special.
A pattern that everyone in his life got all too tired of when they all went looking and calling and they always found Alex squared away in his apartment, the same four shitty grey walls like this one, half-starved and alone and looking like absolute dog shit. He would always have to talk his way out of them taking action, he’d have to convince everyone that he was fine, that he was just working, something, anything besides admitting he had a problem just to get them off his tail.
Let him mourn himself in peace.
Let him wallow and fester and cry all-too-little about things he should cry all-too-much about and maybe the next week he would show up to class and he would be fine. Fine as he could ever really get, anyway. That was nobody else’s fault but his own.
And now it was really nobody else's fault but his own. It couldn’t be. Because everyone else was dead.
Or lost, or stranded, or… something, but he could never assume it was anything good. Nothing good had ever come of all of this, he was certain. It just wasn’t written that way.
All the gunshots and fighting and driving and lurking and watching and watching and watching and for what?
So he could sit in his dumb, stupid, shitty apartment years after it all happened and stare at the ceiling and think himself in circles?
Yeah. Apparently. Apparently it was all exactly for that.
Some saviour he was.
Alex hadn’t seen Tim in 5 years.
Even though the space in his chest ached, ( The space Tim had carved out of his chest and out of his life when he laid those pretty brown eyes on him for the first time in the audition room ), and every morning when he woke up, he saw the evidence of Tim’s existence sitting on the space between his jaw and his collarbone, it still wasn’t the same. The scars looked angry, like he did, rippling and jarring and all too serious the moment they were looked upon, but it still wasn’t the same.
He couldn’t touch them and imagine holding his little-known-friend’s hand anymore. He couldn’t imagine the gentle laughs and halfhearted glances over the plumes of cigarette smoke in a gaze that was dark and serious, complimenting beautifully, exactly like his own.
He couldn’t remember the way his chest ached instead of his neck, every time Tim would throw in a careful comment to him when he picked him up about him looking nice or encouraging him to keep building his film when Alex knew he’d get in the car with Brian and laugh about his script after they all left the set.
Through all of those memories… When he looked in the mirror, it all fizzled out. All he could remember was his face when he had finally gathered the guts, and stabbed him.
Tears and scowling, angry and strong, weak and agonizing. Tim was a man built on contradictions. Completely and utterly agonizing.
Betrayed.
Betrayed by the man he loved, and voyeured in his undoing by the man who loved him.
Yet, he wasn’t even sure he could feel the pain when his skin split beneath the driving force of a dead Jay’s flimsy, impudent, blue-handled pocket knife.
( Alex had brought a gun to a knife fight and goddamnit, he had still lost. )
When Tim finally had him pinned beneath his weight, and there was nothing to do besides be subjected to the torture of having to look at him when he stabbed him.
Stabbed him.
Over and over and over and over and-
Something choked him. Alex drew in a sharp breath in and stopped himself, hands flying up to hold his neck. Collapsible veins, paper skin. He blinked up at the blurry images of the walls, taking a slow breath in, and out. It was fine. It wasn’t there.
He turned over on his side in his sheets, he glanced at the clock.
Red letters shouted back at his eyes. 5 AM. Yeah. Sounded about right.
He let gravity roll him back over onto his aching spine. The sheets did it no justice in comforting the creak. They never did.
But here he was again… Staring up at his ceiling… The awful sound of that damned droning air conditioner… And the world beyond his dingy, curtained windows stopping in time for just a moment.
As he sat there, with his hands over his neck, he could’ve sworn something about his quiet breathing felt a little off.
Maybe it was something in the air.