Grayson’s eyes stayed glued to the ceiling, that damn brown stain holding his gaze like it was the only thing tethering him to the room. The pills were kicking in, a slow fog creeping through his veins, dulling the edges but not enough. Not yet. Irina’s words hit him—soft, heavy, real—and he felt them settle somewhere deep, like stones in his chest. He didn’t deserve it, this he believed, and that made it hurt more. “I love you too, Irina,” he replied, voice rough, barely audible. “I see you as much as you see me,” he looked back to her, “it means everything to hear you say it, and to know, that despite everything, you still hold some love for me in your heart of hearts. I’ll always hold that for you in my heart too, you know?” He gave a dry chuckle, “we are connected, etched from the same fucked up string of life, even if it’s fuckd that we can both feel and understand this…what lives inside of us, in the corners of our minds, just gnawing us away….our connection is what makes the difference between living and existing. You help me want to live, even if right now…I am a little defeated. You still make me want to live.”
He looked back up to the ceiling, but the spot was gone now. Had it been there to begin with? Was it still there but he just couldn’t see it for some reason? His mind slows down more than he expected it would’ve and a feeling like a light haze slowly begins to creep over him like fog. “He was still good,” he repeated, as if cementing that into the universe. When questioned about the hospital a sick twisted feeling is felt in his stomach, suddenly he wants to throw up. He won’t, but fuck does he want to. “It was rough,” he confirms. “Do you remember when I reached out? When I was in the bathroom? It was because of that entire interaction.” He felt his chest tighten, but he pushed on. “He made me feel like I was nothing in that moment, didn’t even address me by my name, even though he knew it, as if he hadn’t offered me his fu-…home to lay to rest one night not long before that hospital visit, but it was as if my feelings didn’t matter in a room with just them.” It was a cruel thing to blurt, given everything, but he wasn’t going to hide stuff from her, Irina was the one person he never held back on how he felt. “And you know what? I don’t think they did. I was hurt. I was so hurt hearing him yell at Ozzy, rip him down for daring to care about someone else, while he had selfishly allowed himself that chance. So, I defended Ozzy and myself. I screamed that I wasn’t a nothing and that I wouldn’t sit there and allow him to tear Ozzy down like that.” He bitterly laughed, “But it didn’t matter. Because while Levi made me feel like I was nothing in that moment, Ozzy made me feel microscopic. And I get it, you know, emotions were high. We needed answers, Ozzy almost fucking died, like…I get it. But fuck, I have never felt more alone in my entire life. Until…the last conversation I had with Ozzy involving Levi. How can someone tell you that they are in love with you and yet….” Kiss someone else, find closure in someone else, like the love being shared amongst the two of them was second best to whatever Ozzy and Levi had, “…I wasn’t worth even a small bit of push back? Once more it was like being back in that fucking hospital room, that I fucking clawed to get to, like a god damn fucking idiot. Is it selfish to think like that? Probably. But it just left me thinking….What was even fighting for? Why was I fighting alone?” He paused, “But then…I talk to you. And it’s like the world finally shifts into a place that…I wasn’t so small. Like I was someone again. I hate that you were hurt in all this too. How fucking selfish of them to give themselves closure and say fuck us. For that…I will never fully forgive either of them, no matter what has recently occurred. Yes, Levi was still good in my eyes, and no, he did not deserve what he got. Not ever. But they both killed us and left us with shattered fucking pieces as if they weren’t the ones who promised to keep us from fall and breaking again. It kills me to know you also experienced that, but that you don’t get closure from him. No matter what. You were robbed of that and…that’s so fucking fucked.”
“irina volkova as a mother. or a wife. or someone anyone builds a life with. can you imagine?” The conversation shifted to that of family, Irina’s hopes of having one, and it’s like his mind briefly cleared for a moment. For a brief second…Grayson had clarity. He looked over at Irina, probably the most sober he’s ever looked at her, fighting the drugs hazing his mind, and he had never been more serious in his entire life than with the words that followed. “I love you, Irina Volkova. I do. And I mean you, the one you hide behind your mask. I have split myself open, bled myself to let you in, and I love that it was you who got me to do that. We see each other, that’s not something light to me, you know? And while I can’t make you a wife, cause I don’t know if being married is in the cards for me, a mother? I could see no one more perfect than you to be the mother of my child, if ever that were in the cards for me. I would love you both endlessly. We could be the best co-parents because we understand each other in ways no one else ever truly will, right? Soccer games, theatre, helping with homework, walks around the park, holidays, changing diapers at 2am, all of it. I would be there every step of the way and you know, I hope you fucking do, that I would never leave you alone in it.” He sighed, “I’d clean up my act, we’d focus on bettering ourselves, and we would be…the best fucking broken parents that kid would ever have. Plus, our support system? Shit. Most protected kid in all of NYC, right next to Damian’s little one.” He let out another sigh, nodding a bit, “I promise you I would love nothing more than to be the father of your child, even if that sounds extremely crazy to say right now. And while I know that I cannot make you a wife…I sure as hell can make you the happiest mother out there. And neither you, nor our child, would ever be second best to anyone or anything.” It was like he was making her a promise, without forcing her to commit, and just like that, after it’s all said and done, Grayson falls onto his back again. “The offer is there for as long as there. Forever. Never forget that.”
His mind drifted again, clouding him in a drug haze, numbing everything once more. Nobody else would be able to keep up with their conversations, given how many topics they jumped into and he liked that about the two of them. “I came out to Damian about being bisexual not too long ago, though it only recently hit me that I might be fully fucking gay. But yeah…I came out to him because I was very excited to like a boy, the possibility that Ozzy liked liked me back, and the chance that I could have my first ever boyfriend. What a stupid thing to be excited over now that I look back on it.” His chest tightens, “what a fucking foolish thing to think that…my first boyfriend, my first lover, the first guy I give my heart and body to….would think me just as special. But nah…I guess that’s the universe punishing me for being a shit friend to a person who did put me first.” Now he was on to Kenjie, as if poor fucking Irina didn’t have her own issues, here he was just pouring everything out. “Cause you know, that same night, the night after that hospital visit with Levi ended and after our phone call…I reached out to my best friend. And you know what he said to me? After all this? He said we should maybe not hang out anymore, if I didn’t want him to drink.” He shook his head, “and most recently we had a huge blow out and now….we aren’t friends anymore. God.” He looks back to the box, that second locked away section called to him, but again he forces himself to look at the ceiling. Sometimes he thinks everyone would’ve been better off had it been himself and not Levi.
Silence stretched out for a moment as the drugs take over and help ease the ache had felt earlier. Grayson’s head lolled to the side, the pills and the joint weaving a thick haze through his skull, making everything feel distant, like he was underwater. Irina’s voice cut through, though, sharp and raw, even as it softened at the edges. Her words about being dead, about this life being wrong, hit him like a slow-motion punch, sinking deep into the fog. He stared at her, eyes heavy-lidded but locked on her face, trying to anchor himself to something real. Her. She was real. “That’s… yeah. I get that.” He shifted, resting on his side a bit more so he was just looking at her. “It’s like being stuck in some fucked-up rerun, this thing we call life.” One of his hands weakly reached out, maybe to you h her, maybe just to feel that he could move. “You’re not a mistake, though.” Now he pushed himself up, moved himself over closer to, and he leaned in real close. “You hear me? This life might be fucked, but you’re not.” He searched her gaze for something, though he isn’t sure what that something is, “you’re… you’re one of the only things that still makes sense to me.” The pills were pulling him under now, the world blurring at the edges, but he reached out, his hand brushing hers, clumsy but deliberate. “We’re still here, yeah? Both of us. That’s gotta mean something, even if it’s just… surviving.” His voice was barely a whisper now, heavy with the weight of the drugs and the moment. “Even if it’s hell.”
