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And now my heart feels heavy
The weight will drag me down
There is pity in Aro's eyes and Garrett doesn't want to see it. He doesn't want to look at the man that had turned his world upside down. Those eyes once held a breathtaking adoration and now they merely gazed at him as though they had never met.
It had happened so fast- he hadn't noticed that Aro was up before him and would come to bed after him. Not with his job being so physically taxing with a new contract coming in. When they were eating dinner, in silence, one night Aro dropped it on him that they should break up and that he hadn't been happy for months.
So now here they were standing in Garrett's kitchen saying their last goodbyes. He held the keys tightly in his fist and turned away from Aro walking away not wanting the spiteful words on his tongue to slip out.
Words he would surely regret later, he didn't mean what he was thinking he was hurting and he didn't want Aro to see that. Not now they didn't share anything between them, not now the bond he thought they had shared had shattered.
"I'll drop the rest of your things off at your new place later." Through gritted teeth, he didn't wait for a response but still heard Aro's quiet thank you regardless.
How did people do this?
The bed would be cold, the apartment would always feel too empty... what were you supposed to do when all your in-jokes didn't make sense to other people because your other half was not there to laugh?
Why did it have to happen so suddenly? Would it not have been easier, fairer for them to both fall out of love at the same time?
That wasn't how it worked, of course, that would have been far too easy. For it to be mutual and comfortable. An amicable break-up... technically it had been- while Garrett had been hurt immeasurably he did not argue and merely agreed that if Aro was not happy then it would be best for them to end their relationship.
Of course, he was relying on Aro to be forthcoming, not hiding his true intent behind something flashy and dramatic such as a break-up. If Aro had simply been upset with him they would have talked it out.
This was the end of them.
It fucking hurt.
“You’re taking this better than expected.” Aro’s words came out quietly, a forced airy tone paired with a small and unsure smile as he handed over the house keys. “I assumed you would be angry, maybe ready to fight for me to stay?”
There was a split second where Garrett clenched his fist around the keys, a split second where he focussed more on wanting to hurl them across the room but… he didn’t and instead, he slammed his fist onto the countertop that separated them.
“I’m not going to fight for something only one of us wants, Aro. I can’t force you to stay, what would be the point of trying to convince you to be here when you don’t want to be?” The anger flared and died quickly, it morphed into several emotions before settling on hurt again.
Because it fucking hurt.
While he could never admit it out loud, he really thought that they’d be together forever. Whatever forever was- had it been too ambitious to expect that they’d live out their lives side by side?
Evidently, but he had allowed himself to hope and to get comfortable.
“I should go, I’m sorry Garrett, I’m sorry it ended this way.” Aro waited a moment for Garrett to say something, he had seemed hopeful for a response but Garrett couldn’t bring himself to even open his mouth now. “Right, well, I suppose we've said all we needed to say. No need to drag it out.” With that he moved past Garrett, collecting his coat from the back of a dining chair, and left the apartment without another word.
Finally alone, Garrett moved on autopilot and fell face-first into bed closing his eyes to the world. The day was over as far as he was concerned and he did not give one single fuck that it was 7pm.
The time for sleep was now.
He didn’t get around to dropping Aro’s things off until the weekend and Aro hadn’t messaged him asking what the hold up was, he likely didn’t dare and Garrett was pleased that it could have been shame holding the other man back from reaching out. The last thing he needed was his ex nagging him about shit that ultimately didn’t fucking matter anymore.
It was Saturday night, 9pm by the time Garrett got away from work and it was pouring with rain. The typical cliche weather for dropping off personal items to someone who broke your heart, if the fates had a poignant moment in store for him they could literally get fucked.
The boxes were going to be left on the porch and Garrett was going to ring the doorbell and then bail. He wasn’t going to hang around hoping Aro would talk to him when he’d just be wearing that same expression of pity on his face like Garrett was some stray dog.
The address was in a nicer part of town than his place, the streets were empty save for a few parked cars. Each house had a neat front lawn with identical mailboxes lining the street- too perfect but it was probably what Aro had always wanted.
The rain was coming down hard now, and Garrett sat parked outside Aro’s new place with the engine off listening to the rain splattering hard on the roof of the car. A rumble of thunder growled above before a flash of lightning lit up the street and within a second the light died and the power failed.
Rows of street lamps sputtered out, cosy windows went dark and house alarms started blaring before people could scramble to disable them and Garrett still did not move, not until the next rumble of thunder.
A memory pushed itself to the forefront of his mind and he forced himself out of the car lugging a box through the torrential rain towards a pristine white door. Setting the box down under the porch roof Garrett banged on the door, he knew Aro would be deep inside the house away from the windows.
“Aro, it’s Garrett, come open the door!” His voice was near drowned out by the rain and thunder, but he pounded the door until it shook and just when he thought it was better to give up the door swung open and Aro threw himself into Garrett’s arms, his face buried in his shoulder.
“Yeah, I know. Come on, let go and I'll come inside.” The ache came, and with it, the cold that seeped into the space Aro had occupied not moments earlier. “I brought your stuff.” Aro was already in the house, his back to Garrett no words exchanged and so Garrett grabbed the box and brought it in.
There were no instructions on where to put it, so the box stayed in the hallway and Garrett closed the door behind him, shutting out the cold and muffling the next roar of thunder as it rolled over the top of the house.
“Where are you?” No response, instead Garrett had to rely on his phone torch to guide him down the hallway, the front room was empty, literally, no sofa, no TV, no bookcases, nothing but empty space.
The next room was a bedroom, a double bed covered in rumpled sheets with a figure curled up beneath them. There was no denying it was Aro, he had always been the same with thunderstorms, he would cower where Garrett would stand on their porch and watch the bruise dark sky above with breathless anticipation waiting for thunder and lightning revelling in the taste of the stormy air on his tongue.
“Can I sit here?” Garrett pats the space on the bed beside Aro’s hidden form and he hears a muffled “yes, please.” in response before taking a seat. “It caught you by surprise didn’t it?” The bed shifts and Aro is sitting up beside Garrett wrapped in the bedsheets looking at him squinting in the bright light of Garrett’s phone torch.
“I thought I would be ok this time-” A crack of lightning lit up the room and Aro grabbed Garret by the arm, his grip like a vice as he turned to the window, his eyes wide with fear and surprise. “Obviously not.” He mumbled and shifted closer to Garrett, his hand still gripped tightly around his forearm with no hint of relinquishing his hold.
“I’ll be honest, I thought you already had someone else here with you.” Sure it might have upset Aro for him to admit such a thing but it would, at least, take his mind off the storm. “I always knew you were one hundred per cent honest with me so I don’t know why I figured you were leaving me for someone else. You’d have told me if you were, I know that.”
To say Aro looked affronted would have been a slight understatement, he looked outright offended by Garrett’s admission and he managed a scowl before the thunder rolled over the house again.
“I love you, Garrett. I can’t switch that off, I made the decision to leave because I was unhappy with how things were and there seemed to be no end in sight to the monotony. I missed being with you, I missed us being together.” It was only fair Aro had his say and gave his honest reasons why things had gone south between them.
Truthfully, Garrett wasn’t upset, they hadn’t spent any time together for a long time, and while he loved his job it was physically taxing and his pride got in the way of Aro helping out in any way with his half of the bills. Aro had never worked a day in his life, he grew up rich and would be rich for the rest of his life and it had never bothered Garrett until there was any insinuation that he needed help paying for anything.
It was ridiculous because he always needed help, the pay at his job sucked and even if he worked all the hours he could it wasn’t enough. It would never have been enough and when he tried to pick up hours he ended up losing the reason he was even working so hard.
The fates really could go fuck themselves for such a sappy epiphany. If someone wrote a movie of his life this would be when teenagers would get uncomfortable watching with their parents because, without thinking, Garrett leaned down and kissed Aro softly.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry I made you miserable. I’m sorry that it’s too late to realise it and fix it. I’ll stay until the storm is over and I promise you won’t hear from me again.” They had to move on and it was only fair that Garrett did it with as much grace as Aro had tried on the night of the break-up.
For his efforts, he received a hard smack on the arm and he was forced backwards until his head met with the soft cushioned headboard of Aro’s bed. Luxurious to say the least with it being velvet, or at least felt like it.
“Gods, you’re such an idiot. You can’t apologise so sincerely and kiss me and think that I can just let you leave me. Gods damn it, Garrett, you make my life so hard!” Whatever was going through Aro’s mind was a mystery to him so he just smiled innocently and Aro looked as though he wanted to smack the smile off his face.
“I don’t know why you’re so mad at me, I thought you wanted me to leave you alone forever?” Ok, so he might have sounded like he was 10 years old, it’s just Aro was complicated and he was simple. Their conversations ended up like that a lot and he was going to need Aro to spell it out before he was going to understand even one iota of what the hell was going on.
“Gods, you’re so stupid. I love you so much.” He was assaulted with kisses pressed all over his cheeks and forehead until Garrett had dissolved into laughter and Aro was just lying against him with his head in the crook of Garrett’s shoulder.
While everything seemed to be genuinely perfect at that moment, Garrett still needed to know what was going on because it felt the same way as it had when they first got together. It would be too good to be true if everything was fixed with the help of a damn thunderstorm.
Unfortunately, his question went unasked as the storm, which had seemed to calm for a moment, picked up with renewed energy and the rain battered the windows, the glass rattling from the force and Aro tensed in his arms.
“Stay, stay with me until the storm blows over.”
“Then what?”
“Stay until the next one.”
“What if the next one never comes?”
“Then you can never leave.”
“Okay.”