Work Text:
Alan looks at the boxes scattered around the apartment and feels something lodge itself in his chest, small and hard and bitter.
Clearing out his entire life from a place that is - was supposed to be theirs makes Alan feel strangely detached, like maybe it’s not him this is happening to. It can’t be. His sister flits around the place, trying to help, unsure how much she can push and how much will make Alan’s soft walls give way, collapse into useless piles of ash.
It’s not just the house (though even that feels like a chain tying Alan down - he remembers picking it out with Wen, sitting on his old bed and meticulously choosing wall colors and feeling giddy). It’s the fact that it was Alan’s and Wen’s house and is now neither’s. It’s the fact that it’s an ending.
Alan hates endings.
Setting down the box he’s holding, he eases open his desk drawer - it’s much too old, liable to falling apart at a moment’s notice - and starts sifting through the things. Old pencils, sticky notes, abandoned clutter, a -
Polaroids.
Alan pauses, hand hovering over the pictures.
There’s…almost twenty, maybe, collected over a few months. There’s Wen laughing, Wen attempting to cook, Wen napping on the couch, Wen -
Alan had kept them here for safekeeping. He was going to put them in an album and give them to Wen for their anniversary, a surprise present.
But. Well. There is no more anniversary to be celebrated, because they’re not boyfriends anymore.
Alan’s breath catches in his throat, and he wants to laugh at himself. He doesn’t know why the thought still takes him by surprise, really. Their relationship has been slowly drifting apart for a lot longer than he wants to admit, and he knows that. He’s just - not used to being so out of control. Alan doesn’t know how to acknowledge the fact that it’s over. They’re over.
Wen doesn’t love him anymore and Alan doesn’t know what to do because he still does. He still loves Wen, even though thinking about him makes Alan’s chest want to cave in on itself. He wants to fix this, still - he wants to ask, beg, scream, do something to keep things the way they are. Were.
But the fact is, Wen’s stopped loving him. Whatever it was that he loves - loved - about Alan is gone, or maybe it’s not - it’s just Wen’s stopped loving it. Maybe it’s his fault, or maybe it’s Alan’s. Maybe it’s neither’s. But he is only miserable, now, and Alan doesn’t - he doesn’t want that.
It just doesn’t feel fair that he still loves Wen. He wishes he could stop, maybe - then it might not hurt so much.
(It’s not fair. No one told him falling out of love could happen to them, too.
No one told him love would hurt so much.)
Swallowing, he turns away from the polaroids, back to the boxes. It feels like a goodbye.
And Alan hates goodbyes, he hates endings, but -
There are so many endings for them that don’t end in tragedy and maybe that’s the worst part - that the one they’ve chosen, or maybe been given, is one that ends like this.
There are so many paths for them that don’t end in heartbreak and empty apartments and Alan here - ignoring the polaroids in his desk and pretending it will be just as easy to ignore the memories of the last seven years, pretending he will be fine.
There are so many paths, but this is one they’ve taken.
They have to be okay with it.
Alan has to be okay with it.