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Alec doesn’t know what he’s doing there, standing in front of the door of this place he has never found any comfort in. It’s the 18th of October, and on this day, every year, he feels the same compelling need to sit on those uncomfortable wooden benches, to let his head fall against his chest and to join his hand in this position he could never bring himself to find natural. He doesn’t pray to God, he hasn’t since he was 7 and he hoped for a better life, not since God decided to take away the one bright, burning light that guided and comforted him every single day. He stopped believing in a higher force when it let him down, and crushed him under its foot unapologetically.
His chest is tight, but not in a way that signifies illness. It hurts to his core, to the center of his being. 35 years, and the pain is still as great, still as debilitating. He still wonders what his life would have been like with her by his side, with her warm smile to cheer him up, with her gentle hugs to comfort his starved body. He wonders if he would have been nicer, softer, a better man in every way. But these days his muscles are tight and his words short, and he still wants to blame it on his loss.
He pushes the heavy, noisy door open and lets himself in. The smell hits him immediately and brings him back to better days. A year ago, he couldn’t bear it, after having spent so much time avoiding this place at any cost, he’d only come here for the sake of his investigation, but the memories had been crushing:
A soft hand folded around his shoulders.
An ‘I love you’ in his small ear.
A discreet shove from rougher hands.
A quick ruffle of his unruly hair.
He inhales forcefully—one day he’ll be able to enter this place again without feeling like he’s a small child, vulnerable to hard stares and unkind gestures—and his throat gets caught on a repressed sob. He swallows it as soon as it comes. The door closes behind him and he’s left in the dark of the church, illuminated only by the moon shining through the scarce windows. His whole body is blue, and it feels strangely poetic.
His feet carry him automatically to the stands where lay all the lit votive candles. He stays standing in front of them for a moment, observing the swaying of the flames, like bodies waiting for a purpose. His movements are slow as he picks up a candle gently, between his trembling fingers, brings the flame to an unlit votive, and lets the fire spread. He takes the newly lit candle in both of his hands and lets the warmth spread to his palms gradually. When it almost feels like it's burning him, he places it down again carefully, not pulling his eyes away from the flame. He wants to bury himself in it.
He finds himself a seat and lowers his body onto it, feeling his muscles tighten on the hard, uncomfortable surface. He remembers this bit. He lifts his joined hands to his face and rests his lips on his index fingers. His eyes close immediately, like a reflex. It's been 35 years, and yet it still feels familiar, but this time, his thoughts aren't directed at God.
Mum.
Those three little letters he hasn't said out loud in so long.
Why did you leave me here all on my own?
He remembers it all too well, the red and blue lights flashing through the living room windows, the knocks on the door, the look on the faces of the police officers, the tears on his father's face. The man never showed emotion again, never showed regret again.
Would you have stayed if I'd been a better son?
At the funeral, she hadn't looked like herself, with her face painted in colours Alec had never seen there before. At the funeral, he looked at his mother's dead body, and he saw the woman she would have been had he not been born.
His fingers slip from his lips to his eyes, and he presses into them, just like he's always done when the pressure builds in his throat. He gulps to catch his breath, and one single, lonely sob escapes his mouth. He doesn't know how to cry, he hasn't cried in so many years. But he recognizes the awful feeling of his chest tightening up painfully, of his throat becoming dry and irritated from the force of holding the tears inside him.
Hold them in at all costs. Hold them in at all costs.
He thinks of Daisy—she’s never far in his mind, always only a few doors away—he thinks of all the things he’s missed, of all the times he didn’t get to hug her, to show her the strength of his love. He thinks of the loneliness of being a child, clueless about life, but expected to understand. He thinks of the loss of a parent, of the pain of not knowing who to turn to when you feel like your life is being ripped apart, ripped like the skin of his abused fingers. Bloody, uncared for.
He thinks of the empty home he has to go back to, of the cold humidity that ages his bones quicker than they should, that solidifies his heart until an ice pick could shatter it.
He used to be able to find warmth. He remembers the days when he couldn’t keep the smile off his face, when he would stare at Daisy’s tiny, baby body, hold her in his arms, and feel as if the sun was burning brighter than ever. He remembers when she would laugh and smile and reach for him any moment she could. He remembers when he used to be her whole world.
Now, he gets a call once a month if he’s lucky, and the picture of her in his wallet is withering away, with fading colours and rolled-up edges. She isn’t the little girl she used to be. He isn’t the happy man he used to be.
And he's back to grieving his long-gone mother.
Tears dare escape his tightly shut eyes. His breaths tremble and the air travels through his tense fingers. He’s trying to hold on, but maybe that’s the problem. Maybe he’s spent too many years gripping onto his chest with incredible strength, refusing to let the ghosts of his feelings escape. His arrhythmic heart creases, all shrivelled up, cowering into his ribcage as if to prevent any more significant damage. He’s forgotten how to feel, how to be human and broken at the same time.
The wetness of his face feels like the frowned brows of a loved one, like red marks on an assignment, like being forgotten in a grocery store, like a novel never completed, like a birthday cake for one.
He’s slowly dying, and he wonders who would speak at his own funeral, who would leave a rose on his grave.
The door creaks behind him, and he twists his body that doesn’t feel completely his to find the culprit of the noise. He’s not surprised when he recognises the vicar’s face, and yet shame overtakes his body. What is he doing there, invading the space of people who need it more than he does, of people who are worth the Lord’s attention? Oh, he likes to pretend to be above religion, above believing stupid stories told to constrain people, but he only ever stopped praying because he was abandoned, because the Lord didn’t deign him worth His time.
He turns his head away before the glimmer of the moon can betray the tracks of heartache on his face.
“What are you doing here?”
Paul’s voice is sharp, defensive like prey in front of a suspiciously nice predator.
Alec is a predator. He only knows how to hurt, even when he doesn’t mean to.
“Thought I’d pay your friend a visit, but He’s not so talkative tonight,” Alec replies and fights with all he has to prevent his voice from sounding watery. All he wants to do is hide, slide under the bench like he used to with his bed as a child, playing hide and seek with the alcoholic words of his father, squeeze his head between his biceps until it explodes, scream his mother’s name like it would bring her back, like he would feel her gentle hands on his back again.
Oh, how I love you, my lovely Alec. Climb into mummy’s arms, everything will be alright.
He wishes he could be a child again so he could receive comfort and deserve it.
“I don’t like being disrespected in my own church, DI Hardy. I think it would be best if you left,” Paul declares coldly, and Alec hears him walking a few steps closer.
Every thump of a shoe on the wooden floor is like one more irregular heartbeat, wearing on his frail, shrunken heart. Every thump brings him a step closer to his childhood home, to making himself small and quiet. Invisible.
Please, don’t leave me out into the streets, to beg like a stray dog in the cold of winter.
His hands grip the edge of the bench with all the strength his body possesses, his knuckles white like his sickly face. One more tear escapes his eye and he stares at the wood grain of the bench ahead, as if he might disappear, fade into darkness if he looks away.
He only closes his straining eyes and hangs his head when the vicar is close enough to notice the clear proof of his weakness. His tears are two drying rivers, disturbed by wrinkles of failed attempts, failed relationships, failed lives.
“If you’d just give me a few minutes, vicar,” he pleads, his voice weaker than he ever allows it to be.
“Has something happened?” The voice approaches him, and he knows that Paul has seen, is now aware of his pitiful state. His eyes feel like they’re burning holes in his soft, pliable body.
“You got all night?”
“I do, in fact,” the vicar replies kindly, and Alec can’t bear it. He doesn’t want a stranger’s kindness, he wants the warmth of a familiar body to hold him, words spoken from knowing him, from understanding his mind. Because even though Paul might listen now, tomorrow he’ll go back to being the vicar who looks at him with anger and a tight jaw.
“It’s not all that interesting,” Alec dismisses quietly.
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
Paul has taken a seat beside him, his posture relaxed, and Alec finally feels like he can loosen the muscles of his tight shoulders and straight back.
“I stopped believing in God when He took my mum,” Alec blurts out. Those words, he has recited them in his head so many times, has believed them for even longer, but he’d never managed to say them out loud, to let the sounds escape his trembling lips. He doesn’t talk about religion, doesn’t let thoughts of the institution who ruined his mother’s could-have-been-long life in. There are things he can never forgive, can never justify.
He draws in a sharp breath.
“She never was really happy. She married young, had me almost as young, and when her marriage turned out badly, she stayed, because she had me to take care of. My dad was an angry, tortured man who thought of himself only. He drank, and he yelled, and when that wasn’t enough for him, he hit my mum. Oh, she did everything to keep me away from him all she could. I couldn’t help her, was barely old enough to understand that when she spent days locked up in her room it wasn’t because she was catching up on lost sleep.”
His every breath hurts. He is but a little boy, aching to understand his mother’s pain, his father’s anger, but forever destined to be left in the dark. He feared the dark as a child, unable to cope with not knowing what waited for him in the shadows. Only very little has changed.
“She jumped off a cliff when I was seven, left me without a word goodbye, left me with the hope that I could have done something to change it. Dad stopped going to church, so I stopped going too, and anyway, I didn’t have anyone to pray to anymore. If God, this selfless and fair being, existed, he wouldn’t have left me alone, he wouldn’t have left her alone.”
His voice cracks, and he lets himself a few seconds to breathe. Paul doesn’t cut him off, doesn’t expect him to keep talking to exhaustion so he’ll listen. It’s a kindness he doesn’t know how to show his gratitude to.
“I think most people don’t understand grief. You think it would fade, that one day the pain wouldn’t be as great as the day you lost someone, but it just keeps piling on. The more people you lose, whether it be to death or mistakes, the heavier it is to carry, the longer it lingers.” His eyes lift to the ceiling of the church and he fights to keep the tears at bay. “Sorry. I don’t talk about this kind of nonsense. Just makes me sound pathetic,” he adds, self-deprecating.
He waits for a reply, confirmation of his worries, maybe.
“I think you sound lonely,” Paul says instead. Lonely. If one person on this planet knows about loneliness, it’s Alec. He eats loneliness, stuffs himself with it, and it rots his core, gnaws at his organs, decomposes his body slowly. He welcomed loneliness a long time ago, as long as he remembers existing, and it lives as a shadow in the form of his body, reproducing his every move, following him everywhere he goes.
But it’s not something to admit to.
“Gonna tell me I need God in my life?” He snorts coldly, bitter, tired—he’s exhausted, so exhausted of just simply existing .
Paul lets out a harsh breath, clearly fed up.
“You don’t have to act like a twat.”
“It’s the only way I know how to be,” Alec replies weakly, and he risks a glance at where the other man is sitting. He meets his eyes, ashamed, and looks away just as quickly.
“You weren’t being one a minute ago.”
Maybe, but that’s the problem. He doesn’t know how to be vulnerable without being defensive immediately after. He doesn’t know how to interact with people, how to trust, how to maintain eye contact that burns him from the inside out, how to smile and how to hold himself, how to not be rude and snappy and offend people. He doesn’t know how to take care of himself, so no, he doesn’t know how to act like a human being around other people. There’s nothing to do about it, and that’s the problem.
He doesn’t know how to be nice, and polite, and pleasant, and he never will.
The silence presses on his chest, and he can’t bear it anymore.
He forces his mind to stop wandering. He focuses on the light provided by the candles, on the air that smells of wood and incense, on the sound of wind hitting the walls of the church, on the feeling of his mother’s presence, so close to him, almost reachable. If he only she could be here, if only she could have been here all this time, seeing him grow, seeing him become the man he is, holding his hand through the worst of it. He knows she would have been on the side of the river, waiting for him as he dragged a little girl’s body out of it, had she still been alive. She would have hugged him, and it wouldn’t have fixed everything, it wouldn’t have hurt any less, but she would have been there, and she would have understood his pain.
“I feel close to her here, warm. Is this what it feels like to believe in God?”
He hopes that Paul will take his words as a peace offering.
“I believe it is.”
He hums and for a short moment, Alec wonders if he might not be the only lonely man in this building.
“I’m sorry for the way I’ve treated you, for what it’s worth,” he mutters. Paul didn’t deserve it, no matter how angry he is at this God, this God who chooses favourites and lets others suffer through life unfairly. “I don’t trust the church. I don’t trust people, generally, I’ve learned not to.”
“And I apologize for blaming you for Jack’s death, it wasn’t fair of me,” Paul replies, regret clear in the tone of his voice, probably his face too, but Alec doesn’t dare look at him in the eyes.
It had been a particularly stabbing pain, the guilt over Jack’s death. Another death, another person he hadn’t saved, another person he hadn’t stopped. When he falls asleep, he still sees the dead man’s face, the pain etched into his features.
“Thank you,” he squeezes out of his closing throat. “That means a lot,” A hand touches his carefully, and the feeling is strikingly unfamiliar, forgotten into the deep crevices of his mind. His body is begging, reaching emotionally for more, for the comfort of a hug, or a simple touch, anything to let the tension and aches evacuate somewhere. He feels twisted and wrong in his own skin, yearning for affection he’s been refused for so long. He is a mere stray animal, forgotten on the side of the road, unused to warm touches.
Whenever he leans in to hug Ellie, it’s partly because it’s the only way he knows how to comfort, and partly because his skin and bones burn with loss every passing moment.
“You surprise me, Alec. You’re not the pretentious, uncaring DI I thought you were.”
It stings, but he deserves it. He hasn’t been particularly kind. He hasn’t had space in his mind and body to be nice and polite, not for a long time.
“I’m not sure a lot of people agree with that,” Alec replies, staring at a knot in the wood of the bench in front of him as if there’s nothing else in the whole world. His voice is light, or at least as light as he can make it to be when his throat tightens. Because it’s true. Oh, it used to torture him night and day when he was a young boy who hadn’t gotten his heart stepped on yet, but he’s long stopped trying to please everyone. Only, he’s never learned how to get rid of the cruel pain of rejection, of loneliness. It’s an indescribable feeling, a pit of darkness as much as a room full of noise and colours and things bumping into you that scratch and burn and peel and bruise and tear and cut and– and– and…
It hurts. And Alec would need to graph a whole new skin onto his body to get rid of the scars of haunting abandonment. It’s all he knows, all he’s survived with for the past 42 years of his life. Once upon a time, he thought the marks would stay invisible, imprinted only in his mind, but his heart has taken a toll, has suffered from the strains of being forgotten, put to the side like a child’s old teddy they’ve grown out. He is a mere toy, dirtied and damaged, waiting for the day someone will look at him and declare him worthy of attention, worthy of love.
His heart has punished him for it, and every morning he is reminded of the fundamentally repulsive nature of his person as he swallows what feels like a mountain of pills. Sometimes, he imagines choking on them, gasping for air as his throat fills up more and more. He imagines coughing up medication on his bathroom floor, grasping at the skin of his neck with desperate, bloody fingers as his human body clings to the tiniest shreds of life. He imagines slipping on the floor and laying there, surrounded by tiny, cold pills moistened by his saliva, and letting it happen, no matter how painful, how disturbing, how terrifying. He imagines relief, an end to the burning of his chest, an end to the endless fighting. He imagines a warm, enveloping hug, and instead of a light at the end of a tunnel, he imagines a bedside lamp, casting an almost orange tone on his body, patchwork on the shade. A bed full of soft blankets that never irritate his sensitive skin, greens and blues and whites, tender to the eyes. A room with picture frames, drawings of a child, photographs of a happy family, of the most beautiful face he knows. A hand through his hair, lips stretched to the ears, a forgotten hummed tune that he can never quite remember, the smell of baked pies. Love. He can imagine love, very briefly, before it fades again.
But no, he swallows his pills, every morning, left with, at most, the feeling of them scratching his throat.
“I think you’re a good man, Alec, and I hope that counts for something.”
Alec’s eyes unglue themselves from the bench, and he turns his head to look at the vicar– the man beside him. He twists his heavy mouth into something resembling a smile and hopes that it’s enough. His lips feel glued shut by the unusualness of the sudden warm feeling in his torso. He doesn’t know what to say.
‘Of course, it counts.’ Needy, terribly lonely-sounding. It’s not like he and Paul have been getting along forever.
‘I’m not.’ Truthful, but he’s not looking for pity, out of all things.
“Thank you,” is what comes out, overcome. He lets his hand rest on the vicar's stretched forearm, the act bold like he's never been. Paul’s blue irises are hypnotising and Alec can barely think while looking into them, a flutter travelling all across his upper body.
The room grows silent, without a hint of a breath. All Alec can hear is the blood pumping in his veins, his heart beating, stretching the skin of his torso exaggeratedly, and maybe his head screaming at him not to make a mistake, not to ruin the little sympathy Paul has offered him tonight.
Only, he's never been good at listening.
His body inches closer to Paul's almost naturally, his hand still resting on the other man's arm, sucking in all the warmth. He dares to hope, to pray for reciprocity, and Paul's body moves closer to him.
And then it's all happening in a hurry. His hand is resting on the other man's cheek, their lips glued together, their breaths synchronizing like metronomes. Paul's arm wraps around his waist, and he could cry with relief.
One moment, his mind focuses on the feeling of moving chapped lips on his, of a light beard scratching his face, of the soft but manly skin under his fingers, of a hand squeezing the fabric of his shirt taut, and then it wanders. He thinks of Tess, of years spent trying to make her happy, bending himself into a completely different person to be the man she needed, of tripping into his own feet, scratching his knees, opening wounds in his arms, bruising his face trying to maintain the pretence. He thinks of drowning, under the expectations and cold, still water. He thinks of trying to save a long-gone little girl, and a long-gone marriage, of nights riddled with nightmares and the worry that he would never be the same man again, that he would never be the perfect husband Tess hoped for. He thinks of the snide laugh she had let out when he dared let his mouth run free and the first word that came out was “love”. She laughed like he was the one who stopped loving her, like he was ridiculous, like he should have moved on already from the woman who he thought for the best part of his life would never leave him.
Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe being here, sitting on this bench, kissing Paul, kissing a man , is what he needed. To stop thinking about expectations, to stop thinking about his crushing loneliness, the possibility of rejection, the stares of his judgmental colleagues, the snark of his ex-wife, the silence of his daughter, the unstable march of his heart. The fading memory of his mother’s laugh.
He thinks of pain, and for the first time in his life, he observes it from the outside, without feeling like it might engulf him and never let him go. It’s exhilarating. He feels as if he is wiping the dust away from his forgotten feelings, pushing the fog away, letting it disperse, and brightening the colours of the world in his vision.
He’s never felt like this before.
So peaceful.
So rid of worry.
So hopeful.
But then there is cold. His wet lips get hit by the dusty air like a train at full speed. The hand grounding him pulls away and he feels small, tiny, ashamed.
“Alec–”
He can’t swallow the saliva in his mouth, it builds up, fills his entire mouth like high tide, and he’s drowning again, unable to think about anything else but the panic filling his core. He flinches away. From what? His own stupidity maybe, the hope that controlled him.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me,” he blurts out, strangled, or stranded. Stranded on this tiny island he has built, where no one ever visits, where no one ever comes to look for him.
He pushes himself up on his feet, and a tidal wave buries him when the vicar refuses him a mere glance, any sign he might have enjoyed this short little thing they had. All he sees is regret, shame, guilt, disgust, maybe. He must have forgotten who he was talking to, and then remembered as their lips collided. Also driven by loneliness, he must have only realised afterwards that the man he was kissing was the failed detective inspector, the scruffy man who never smiled, who never let a kind word escape his mouth, the asocial, undesirable man, traumatised by his own doing. No one worth Paul’s concern.
His feet lead him outside. Away from the church. He thinks he hears his name being called, but he can’t think to turn around. He walks what feels like kilometres and kilometres without a halt in his step. And then he stops, in the middle of a street he couldn’t name. He bends over, his hands on his knees, Paul’s name on his lips, and he pants, unable to catch his breath, unable to grab onto the feelings that pour out of him to pull them back in.
He pants, and he weeps, and he cries for his mother.
***
He doesn’t feel human. The days pass, the torturous hours go by, and he isn’t living. He’s floating through time, a ghost or a mere conscience, going unnoticed or unwanted. His stomach is a hole, a big, wide, spacious hole where nothing remains, a hole that swallows him whole, that kills his the remaining life in him, that makes him choke on his breath. He’s in pain, his heart kills him even as he swallows those pills that never suffocate him, and he hopes, without doing anything for it, every day, that something might take him, thunder, or the crash of a car, or his incessant hunger.
Ellie scowls at him, at the heavy corners of his mouth, at the emptiness of his eyes. He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for, what he keeps working, getting up in the morning for. He wakes up, his body a heavy weight pining him down to his bed, his mind making the world fuzzy and somber, and he wonders why he should move, who would be waiting for him if he just stayed there, forever stuck in the cocoon of his blankets, in the wet patch of sweat under him that resurfaces every night. He’s exhausted, and no amount of sleep ever fixes it.
He is a star in the sky, far away, visible to other people, but already long gone, extinguished.
Will you remember me, once I’m gone?
Daisy lives her life, and Tess has stopped updating him about it. He goes home at night, after killing himself over paperwork, and he sinks into his couch, missing all he used to have, all that used to make him happy. He’s a bitter old man at 42 years old, living life like a grieving widower, travelling through places like a shadow, a half-person, attracting sorrow like a magnet.
He doesn’t think about the kiss. It doesn’t haunt him at night when he closes his eyes, and he doesn’t see the regret in Paul’s eyes flashing against his closed eyelids. He doesn’t feel the deep embarrassment of being completely wrong, of humiliating himself like a little kid who thought he had friends but didn’t. He doesn’t cry sometimes, because it was the closest he came to feeling wanted again, to feel loved. He lives in a big giant world, filled with all these people who love, who want to be loved, who look for it everywhere and with everyone, and yet, he still sleeps in an unbearably wide, empty bed.
He doesn’t wonder if he could have done something different, if he could have shaped himself into someone different, better, less obviously desperate. He doesn’t hate himself, and how wrong he was, and how gullible he was to think Paul , the vicar, would kiss him, after ruining his life in so many ways, never mind accidentally or not.
He sits at the dinner table, hunched over his notes, his glasses slipping down his nose, his body heavy from sleep and despair. He can’t focus on what he’s writing, on all these insignificant words that mean nothing and will change nothing of anything. His words have never mattered, his actions have never mattered, he has never done anything significant in his life, and he won’t start now. He’s useless and so tired of it.
He slips the packet of pills out of his pocket and throws them on the table sighing. He stares at them, almost unseeing, numb. Oh, he doesn’t want to do this, but what’s the point of anything else? What’s the point of waiting for nothing? What’s the point of living for days to pass? What’s the point of existing, if only for yourself? Isn’t the human experience one of sharing? What’s the point of living a life without love?
His fingers shake as they reach for the packet, as his thumb runs over the bumps in the metal. He closes his eyes tightly to keep the tears in. Not this time. This time should feel peaceful, like relief instead of pointless pain.
He pops one pill out, and then two, for now. They lay in his clammy palm, a fragile weight, almost as fragile as he feels. He lifts his hand, and it trembles, sways uncontrollably. He hasn’t left anything, hasn’t written anything to anyone. Because there is no one to apologise to for the pain he will cause. He will not be missed, he will not be remembered, no one will let flowers fall on his grave.
A knock on the front door reverberates through the whole, small house. His heart jumps in his throat, and he shoves the two pills back into the package, terrified of being found out.
“Alec?”
It’s Paul. Of course, it is. It could be no one else, and yet, there is no reason he should be here at this hour or any hour.
“I’m busy!” He yells, tense. Busy trying to end his life as quietly as possible, yes, that seems like a reasonable reason not to talk to anyone.
There is a long silence in which he waits for the sound of steps drawing away. It never comes, and so he stays still in his chair as if any movement would betray his non-hidden presence.
“Will you let me in? Please,” Paul pleads, and Alec knows from his voice that he has no choice, that he will stay there all night if he needs to. He lifts his unused body from the chair with minimal help from his sore muscles. He steps closer to the door, and his chest tightens. “I just want to talk,” Paul adds.
Alec doesn’t want to talk. He doesn’t want to know what Paul has to say. Because he knows that nothing he will say will make anything better. Paul turned him down, pushed him away, and whoever’s fault it might be, it will not change the fact that he will leave Alec after this conversation, unwanted.
He unlocks the door and pulls it open tiredly.
“What’s there to talk about?” He sighs.
Paul has dark circles under his eyes.
“I wanted to apologise… for the other night,” he says, and Alec is confused because there’s no reason he should apologise. He hasn’t done anything wrong. Maybe he’s led him on by kissing him back, but it would have been easy enough to pretend he was someone else, and Alec can’t blame him for not pulling away immediately. He should have never even tried to kiss Paul, he should have never even considered it a possibility.
“There’s no need. Look, let’s not– let’s just forget it ever happened.”
He can’t look at Paul’s sad, disappointed eyes anymore. He just wants to go back to sitting in the kitchen and debating whether or not his life is worth living, not to debate with Paul who’s at fault for the mistake that the kiss they shared was.
But apparently, Paul won’t forget about it.
“No. No, I won’t let you do this, Alec. Because the way you– the way you kissed me, you wouldn’t have if you weren’t the slightest bit interested in me.”
“Well, what the point of that if you’re not?”
And he’s not. He can’t be.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Alec chuckles, but it’s not a nice laugh that clears the emptiness of his chest. It hurts, stabs him repeatedly. It’s not a nice thought, that someone being interested in him would be unbelievable enough for Paul to make a joke out of it.
“You pushed me away,” Alec reminds him.
“Because I’m looking for something more than a quick kiss in the church after you cried and revealed to me the saddest parts of your childhood. I want to get to know you, and you would have known that if you hadn’t run away.” Paul pauses, before continuing, and Alec isn’t ready for the words he is about to hear. “The other night, you showed me a side of yourself I didn’t even know existed, a-and you were beautiful. You were crying, and saying things about your mum, and grief, and I thought you were sweet, and gorgeous, and I don’t want to pretend it never happened.”
He’s never been called beautiful. His hand tightens on the doorway of his house, trying to deal with the feeling in his chest he can’t understand. He’s never been allowed to be sweet, no, he’s had to be strong, handsome, courageous, almost emotionless. Gorgeous? Him? Out of all the words in the English language, he would have never thought this one would describe him. Either Paul is completely mistaken or he sees something in him that no one has ever seen before. The latter feels entirely impossible.
“I don’t have anything to give you,” he splutters, embarrassed. Maybe they’re all pretty from the outside, his thoughts, but they aren’t truly. They’re ugly and broken, and not worth sharing.
Paul looks heartbroken, maybe from the implied rejection, maybe from the awfully insecure words Alec has dared to let out.
“Have coffee with me. Just once if you’d like,” he insists.
“We’re too different, it could never work out,” Alec crosses his arms over his chest, maybe trying to protect the last remains of his heart. It’s better to do this, to remove any possibility of further pain.
“You’re a terrible liar, Alec. I think you’re scared. I think you’re scared I’d abandon you too, like your mum, or your dad, o-or your ex-wife.”
Paul’s voice is sharp, and confident, and he’s not even wrong. Alec has to look away, the words hitting him exactly where they were meant to. But is it so wrong of him to be scared? It’s all he’s known, loss. How can he trust that anything will ever change? How can he trust that his heart won’t be crushed all over again?
“It’s a risk because you don’t know me and I could promise you that I never would leave you, but there’s no way for you to know. If you don’t try it, then you’ll stay scared and alone for the rest of your life, and how is that better than the possibility of getting hurt?”
Or dying, but that’s not the ideal solution. There’s no ideal solution.
“You don’t know me, how can you know you won’t run to the hills when you learn more about me? You can’t predict it, you can’t know that I’m not awful or– or broken,” Alec says, surprising himself. It seems that he can’t stop the words from coming out of his mouth with Paul, even the most painful, the most sensitive and close to his core. No one else has ever heard those fears from him, no one else has ever been allowed to see this vulnerability out of him.
“I can’t know that. But maybe you’re a great man who cares, who’s loving and sensitive, who cries for his long-gone mother, who grieves people he didn’t even know, who tries his best to be the best man he can be. Then how stupid would I be to not give a good man a chance?”
Alec swallows the bile in his throat before clearing it.
“It’s terrifying,” he croaks out, his voice breaking unflatteringly. He uncrosses his arms and reveals the fragile organ that keeps him living but also stops him from living.
Paul smiles at him, warmly, and Alec’s chest feels slightly sunnier than before.
“It’s just a cup of coffee,” the vicar shrugs, but he looks at him like he knows, like he understands the pain, the fear, and everything else in between.
It’s just a cup of coffee, not a lifetime. But with Alec, with the speed at which he gets attached to people, it’s an immense risk, a blade held over his heart constantly.
But can he keep going like this? Suffering over the pitiful state of his existence?
“I can’t drink coffee, not with my heart,” he blurts out. It’s stupid, worrying about this kind of thing, almost childish, but really it isn’t. His heart is damaged, and the admission of it is painful, makes him feel entirely undesirable. His wife stopped loving him when his heart stopped working properly, and he never could bring himself to blame her for it.
“Oh, I’m sorry, but that’s a deal-breaker,” Paul takes a step back, eyes wide, but then they crinkle at the edges playfully, and Alec doesn’t think he’s ever seen something so beautiful before.
“You bloody bastard.” Alec cracks a smile, and Paul’s face brightens.
“I can’t drink alcohol, not with my past,” Paul adds after a moment, and Alec is grateful. It’s nice to know he’s not the only one with skeletons in his closet, with an already fully lived life behind him with mistakes and pains and failures. It’s easy to forget.
“Tea, then?” Alec proposes, breathless, and his heart presses against his skin in terror. He doesn’t like this, being bold, letting himself become defenceless.
But Paul sways slightly closer to him and stares into his eyes kindly.
“Tea,” he agrees.
And for the first time in a while, Alec feels a tiny sliver of the happiness he used to feel as a child, of the warmth only his mother had brought him before.
Maybe there is something for him, in this enormous, lonely universe.