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“Why me?” asks Rick. They’re lying in his bed, staring at the ceiling.
“Must you talk?” asks Alex. “Is it not enough to merely wallow in the sin of the act after it is over?”
Rick sighs. “Every time I forget you were an English minor, you remind me.”
Alex just laughs, hoping that Rick would leave it at that. Unfortunately, he doesn’t, because why would he ever choose the easy path.
“But seriously,” says Rick again, “why me?”
Alex looks at the ceiling. “Who else?” he asks in return. “Dozens of reasons. You didn’t kill me when I attacked you. You didn’t alienate me when you could’ve. You didn’t abandon us.” He looks at Rick. “You weren’t afraid to touch me.”
Rick nods.
“Why me, then?” asks Alex in return.
“You never left us,” Rick states matter-of-factly.
“Oh,” says Alex. They lull in silence, still staring at the iron ceiling. He knows he should be lucky he gets his own room in this hellhole, even if it’s just because he’s a danger to humanity just by existing in a physical capacity.
“You should get up,” says Alex softly, but neither of them makes a move to do so. “It isn’t safe.”
“Oh no,” said Rick sarcastically. “All of those children I was gonna have as a sixty-year-old recently divorced A. R. G. U. S. operative.”
There’s silence, for a minute. Neither of them make a move to do anything at all, to get up, to move in, even look somewhere else.
“I gotta get out of here,” says Alex. “I don’t care if they’ve given us our own wing. We have to get out of here.” Rick knows that he’s not included in that we. He’s never been truly a part of the team the way that the other five are. Were. The other four are, now.
“How’s Bride?” he asks.
Alex sighs. “The same. It hit her hardest of all. I… I be there for her when I can. We all do.”
Rick nods. “It’s moving as fast as it can. The trial. If I push it any further Waller’ll actually chop my ass off and frame it.”
“Oh no,” Alex deadpans. “I like your ass.”
“Yeah, so do I.” Alex moves in closer, resting his head on Rick’s shoulder. Rick looks at him.
“And how are you?” Rick asks after a pause. Alex looks at him (or at least, Rick thinks he does. He’s not sure).
Alex sighs. “I’m alive.”
“Are you?”
“More than I was three months ago. I never… wasted away, the way that GI did, but… before it all I was just sorta floating around in here. Now there’s people.”
Alex sighs again. “Bride screams in her sleep sometimes. She swears to hell and back she doesn’t dream, but I think she does and just doesn’t remember it in the morning. And where three months ago I would’ve been annoyed more than anything, now I just want to hug her.” He looks at Rick with shock that is half-fake. “What have you all done to me?” he asks, not expecting an answer. Rick doesn’t give him one, just tracing his fingers along a loose thread in the sheets.
“Were you like this, before?” Rick wonders if he should specify further. Before the transformation, he means. He doesn’t know how to phrase, it doesn’t want to.
A pause. “Yes,” admits Alex. He doesn’t elaborate further, and Rick doesn’t push him. If he wants Rick to know, he’ll tell him.
More silence, and Alex gently drums his fingers on Rick’s arm. “No one called me Alex, after.”
Rick doesn’t say anything.
“And now you all do. And now…” he takes a shaky breath, pausing for a moment, “where fifteen years ago I would have felt uncontrollable anger and killed everyone in a room just to feel the flesh melting beneath my hands, now all I feel is pain. Guilt. I can’t move sometimes.” Rick takes Alex’s hand, rubbing circles into his palm, offering what silent comfort he can. He knows what it’s like. Coming home to a newly empty house, wife screaming at night when she sleeps on the couch and knowing there’s nothing you can do. The overwhelming helplessness, pain, guilt, the crying when no one is looking, the countless nights spent with unread books on your lap, curled up sobbing because maybe you could’ve done something different.
“I know,” Rick says, barely a whisper, looking at him and doing what he can to make eye contact.
Alex says nothing, staring at the ceiling again, inhaling shakily. “I know,” Rick whispers again.
“Nina was the first to call me Alex in fifteen years,” says Alex, and Rick can tell he’s doing his best to keep sobs at bay.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Rick puts his other hand over Alex’s. He wonders how much control it takes not to burn him, not to burn through everything, all the time. It’s incredible.
Alex sobs, leaning into Rick. Rick wraps an arm around the other man’s shoulder. “Does it ever get better?” asks Alex, voice cracking.
“No,” replies Rick. “It just gets different.”