Feel It All Around || Chenrich Fic (4/?)
Chapter Title: Thank You
Pairing: Alex Chen/Steph Gingrich
Rating: M
Fic Description:
Steph falls in love. To her amazement (despite an embarrassing number of successful roll-checks of the d20 in the studio)…so does Alex.
Chapter Description:
That’s the thing no one tells you about grief—it’s like an iced over-pond. At first, it breaks easily—slivers and cracks the moment you shift feet along its surface. But as time goes on and the weather turns colder and colder—as snow falls and skin numbs—it’s a little firmer to step upon the ice. But if you look down, it’s always right there, clear as day—always there, right beneath you: water. Cold ice waiting to engulf you on a trip—a fall—a slip—and when it cracks open, it takes time to heal, again. Over and over for years and years and years.
In Steph’s experience, it will always be that way.
Chapter 1 | AO3 | Tumblr |
Chapter 2 | AO3 | Tumblr |
Chapter 3 | AO3 | Tumblr |
Chapter 4 (Current) | AO3 | Tumblr (below):
When Mom died, I didn’t feel anything. I’d felt all I had to feel a week before, fingers curled around the delicate etch of a necklace that I…barely remember the weight of, now. I barely remember what it looks like. I barely remember much of anything—
The necklace. Mom.
Dad.
Gabe.
It’s kind of funny how the mind sort of cherry-picks stuff out of a bin of memories—the things you hold onto when it gets really bad mixed with the things you keep when it is really bad—until all you’re left with are these blurry-faced ‘kinds-ofs’. These ‘must have been’ approximations of what could have been, but you’re never really sure was .
One time I confessed to Dr. Lynn that I felt like my emotions weren’t my own. I regretted it. She immediately asked me, tape recorder skipping on the edge of its monotonous hum, her voice that calm, steady note like someone who’s held down an A on a piano too long:
‘If you feel like your emotions aren’t your own, Alex…how do you feel about your memories? Are those your own, too?’
“So…want me to put something else in?”
Alex’s hesitant, balmy voice skirts along the edge of Steph’s cold shoulders like she’s dipping her toes into the icy waters around her friend’s far-away chest. A blink, turning away from the glaze of a shaking window to look over towards those searching eyes, face highlighted by the flickering lights of the credits of a movie Steph barely remembers paying to the start of quietly scrolling down the screen.
Shit. Get out of your head, Gingrich.
“I’m not really—” Tucked knees shift along the soft fabric of the couch, so well-worn beneath her that Steph could sink into it and disappear. It doesn’t sound too bad, right now, but Alex’s eyes are tethered to her like a rope outside of a canyon and the sigh wells up so fully in her chest that it lifts Steph like an air balloon and twists her around to stare at her fully, smile thin and apologetic. “Sorry, Alex. I’m not really into anything right now. Just…don’t mind me, okay?” The wind howls and howls against the glass—a constant—and she wonders if there’s ever been a storm this bad in Haven Springs, where the whole town swayed with wind.
There must have been, but where was she? In the soundproof walls of an isolated booth? Tucked in the darkness of a bathroom with the shower running, palms pushing soap out of eyes? Drunk on this very couch, too dull to hear it, at all? Does it matter? “I’m just…tired.”
It’s a blatant lie and when Steph’s eyelashes flutter open, Alex is nice enough not to call her on it, even though she hasn’t looked away from Steph for a second. Because there is Alex, searching her eyes before she…shifts forward on the couch.
“Okay, so that didn’t help.” It’s a muttered sigh.
“Huh?”
“The movie.” But Alex doesn’t explain further. Brows furrow when Alex stretches out her hand, bracelet brushing along Steph’s up-tucked knee. She felt like they were sitting much further away than they apparently were. Guess there’s only so many places to tuck inside a couch. “But I think I know something that will.”
“Uh…what are you—”
“Come on,” Is all Alex says, just her hand stretched out between them. An offering. A rare offering, like so many Steph’s gotten a glimpse of seeing, today. Like so many Steph’s gotten to see all month. The wind rattles outside and a drummer’s shaky hand hesitates in the air. “These windows are, like…the worst windows I’ve ever seen. And that’s? Coming from an intercity kid who lived in a group home for the majority of her life. Where state funding was non-existent. So…you know it’s a pretty bad review. They probably need to be re-sealed, or something.”
“Do they even seal windows?” Steph tries to joke but it doesn’t hit quite right. Alex doesn’t call her on that, either.
“I don’t know. But the point is that the wind…sounds a lot worse than it is. Let me show you.”
Alex says, like she knows exactly everything in the world Steph’s ever been afraid of, her palm stretched up towards that raining sky and Steph’s darting tongue and her short breath caught between the rock and hard place of her nose and her trembling, clenching jaw.
Hesitating for only a moment in the air, Steph reaches forward to take it.
I remember the hospital—the constraints of the walls—the heat that stuck my clothes to my skin—the pitcher of water that always tasted dusty no matter how fresh it was. I remember the clean, pressed sheets of an empty bed Gabe and I weren’t allowed to sleep on and the chair that Dad claimed as his own placeholder. A bookend to the white-lined etchings of mom’s lips with thousands of words in-between never said. Dad was always in that chair…to the point where it’s difficult for me to remember the chair ever being empty without him in it, save for the only time I’ll never forget.
I remember Mom’s keychain. I remember the way Gabe’s shoes would squeak along the freshly-mopped tiles of the hallway.
But I don’t…remember Gabe outside of those squeaking shoes and the scratch of his shirt against my arm. I don’t remember Dad outside of the darkness of his sagging eyelids. I don’t remember mom outside of the quiet way her chin would tremble even when her voice was always so steady. Like an earthquake beneath the crust of the earth.
I remember snapshots—her eyes and the last promise I made to her—I remember her telling me I was strong—but…everything else? I don’t remember conversations, or…the hours I must have spent there, day after day. I don’t remember school or the unimportant stuff—the stuff I kind of would have liked to hold onto.
I remember my mom used to cook, but I can’t remember what it tasted like. I remember she used to watch those cheesy rom-coms, but I can’t remember us talking about them. And that patchiness has sort of taken over all of my memories.
I remember how Dad and Gabe used to fight—I remember the record player and the clothes by the couch and my never-fail recipe for rice. But I don’t remember the silence that used to threaten to drown us whole—maybe…because I drowned it out before I could breathe it in?
No matter how hard Dr. Lynn tried to get me to remember, there’s a lot of those details that I’d rather forget.
The truth is…I don’t even remember what they looked like. Even writing it now, I feel…
I don’t know.
Guilty.
I don’t have any pictures—I didn’t have any pictures of Mom or Dad or Gabe. I don’t even have anything of Mom, since Dad took it. And now I barely have memories of Gabe because I feel like Dad took him, too.
At least when Mom died, I felt nothing.
With Isabelle, I felt—
I only felt Isabelle. And I only felt her for so long, after.
With Gabe…
I wonder if Dr. Lynn was right. Are these memories even my own?
“So…when was the last time you played the drums? For a show? Or just…” A faint shrug, “Played them?” Alex asks her so unceremoniously, like it’s such a simple question to ask someone and Steph stretches bare feet, foot skirting dangerously along the edge of the rooftop awning.
Somehow, Alex made it sound like a not horrible idea to come up to the rooftop in the rain, its gentle, consistent splash wetting the roof in tinkering patters, rain cascading all around them, wind much quieter than it’d been in the apartment below. It’s…rhythmic and it keeps Steph calm to gently tap her thumbs along with the beats on her stomach—thoughtless thumps lost in the fabric of a bunched up, dry t-shirt.
But like most things, it doesn’t seem like it’s lost on Alex’s freakishly observant perception.
“...a while, I guess.”
It’s…not so bad up here, laying on the cement patio, shoulder warm from where she’s pressed up against Alex. Both of their legs bent upwards, hanging over faded, rickety wooden chairs, and she leans up to watch Alex’s bare foot bounce beneath the rain.
Alex had told her they could go back in the moment she watched Steph’s shoulders ease, a little, at the sound of the soft wind outside, but somehow they wound up staying, anyways.
“I get that.”
“You said it’s been a while since you played guitar? Like, until recently.”
“Yeah. My last one…” Alex shifts a little on her back, chair scooting along cement as she does from her foothold against it, knees bumping against Steph’s bent, very dry pair. “Well, I lost my last guitar and I couldn’t afford a new one. This one…was a gift from Gabe, so I guess I just never got around to buying another one. I don’t know why, I just…” A second shrug, like there’s a world in Alex’s sigh before her shoulders fall back into the depth of the dark cement, the sound of the wind chime hung above gently tingling as the air sifts through both of their hair, rain pushing a little into the dry safety beneath the awning. But Alex settled them directly where the rain wouldn’t touch—like she must come up here often enough to know. More than just with Steph and Ryan and putt-putt and beers. “Didn’t. Why’d you stop?
“I just…” Teeth tuck at lips, “Didn’t feel like playing?” The sigh caught deep in her chest, beneath the putter of her thumbs along her chest, pushes out unnecessarily heavily, eyes closing as the rain consumes her voice. “Or maybe I felt guilty playing? Really…who knows, dude? I don’t. It was so weird. When I was younger, my fingers used to…they’d itch all the time. Like what they talk about with smokers? But with sticks. I used to want to play all the time. I’d play in class at my desk or in the car on my steering wheel or in the shower—just…everywhere. It was like breathing for me. But then I traveled everywhere with Izzie—my…we used to be in the band together.”
Yeah, Steph. That’s way less complicated. Fingers wave at Alex’s always-unwavering, steady look, like she has all the time in the world—
It’s funny, really. Alex does kind of make a great bartender.
“And…were more than just in the band together. Like, long-term, very serious dating. After we came here, I realized that there was something missing—there was a different kind of itch. I started to realize that...every time I played it…just wasn’t what my hands wanted, anymore. At least, not then. Not like how I was playing. Not when I was wrapped all up in that head space, you know? We used to say that we were always playing for ourselves—not the industry or for fans or any of it—but I think as we started to get a little more popular…not much, but a little, it just…changed. Everything changed. We changed.” Steph wonders if she reaches up high enough from the ground, if she can run her fingertips beneath that dangling wind chime, “I looked at Izzie and I didn’t want to play, anymore. I didn’t know what I wanted, but it wasn’t what I thought it was. We came here and played this…totally lame show for what felt like just Gabe—seriously, just Gabe—and I had more fun than I’d had in…years. It should’ve been lame, but it wasn’t. It was like I was finally doing something I wanted to do and…this got really deep, didn’t it?” A quiet, nervous laugh, but Alex is still just looking at her with those steady eyes, wet toes retreating as glasses shift and suddenly Alex is sitting up, looking down at Steph splayed haphazardly on the rooftop concrete.
“I think it’s okay to go a little deep. You should cut yourself a little slack." Alex volleys words right back at Steph with that gentle smile.
The real foosball champion.
It’s so calm—so steady—that Steph’s knees bend, as well, sitting upwards and hooking arms around the mountains of them with a sigh.
It's way easier than it should be to talk to Alex.
“I came here and…I don’t know. I wound up staying. I found out that I really liked DJing—that I was really good at it. That there were people here that mattered. I used to—I had this friend that I lost touch with that traveled all the time and I always thought that was what I wanted—and it was. It is. But it’s…I don’t know, there’s so much more to just…traveling and music than what it looks like on the surface.”
“Understatement of the year. Real life is…kind of always more complicated than what we think we want.” Alex agrees, their knees brushing a second time as she scoots on the cement to look fully at Steph, knees tented down and open while Steph happily holds her own to her chest. Muscles ease, just a tad.
“...yeah.” A quiet laugh, “Yeah, I guess life can get pretty complicated.” Arms finally fold outwards, leaning back against the patio as she looks around at the rain quietly falling down around them, breath…calm and easy. Maybe it’s not the rain that’s the problem. “And unpredictable.”
“Totally.”
“That’s kind of what makes it good, too.” Her chin bounces, looking back towards Alex, “I guess…” A dry tongue rolls on a drier lower lip, “I guess I started to realize that what I was doing—even if I loved doing it—it didn’t feel right, when it felt like I wasn’t sharing it with people that mattered. I wasn’t…connecting with people with my music, anymore—or connecting with who I was playing with. I just haven’t really picked up the drums, since. It’s not that I didn’t want to, I just…don’t think about it, as much, anymore.”
It’s a heavy statement for Steph—the kind of thing that had been so thick it’d taken up all of the air in her chest—and now that it floats between them, her shoulders feel…lighter, somehow. And instead of feeling nervous or awkward or like she’s totally over-shared, Alex just looks at her…and smiles, and Steph feels nothing but relief.
“So…does that mean I’m not going to get to hear it?”
Somehow, it’s the last thing Steph expects.
“What?” It’s said on the tail-end of a laugh, bent knees stretching back outwards over Alex’s rain-dampened leggings.
“Come on, it’s only fair—you’ve heard me play. You don’t have to, I did actually hear what you just said,” That smile spreads and Alex shifts but doesn’t drop Steph’s knees—she moves so that Steph can settle them comfortably, instead. The rain surrounds them like a curtain, outside, lightning so far away Steph can barely feel it crack beneath her fingertips as she stares at her, “But I’d be totally lying if I claimed I didn’t want to hear the infamous Steph Gingrich wail on the drums.”
“You want me to just do a really sweet drum solo with no accompaniment?”
“Karen Carpenter could do it.”
“Not the reference I expected, but I guess the one I deserved.” A second laugh—this time brighter, “You know…that last show with Gabe?"
“Let me guess, Gabe told you it was going to be packed, didn’t he?” It’s an expert, on-the nose guess. Steph nods with a quiet, bobbing laugh. “That’s Gabe.”
“Bingo. He rocked the whole time, though. And he bought a t-shirt. And a hat. I mean, I didn’t even know we had hats. Beanies, sure, but he bought a trucker hat.”
Alex laughs—quiet and gentle—glasses sliding a little down the bridge of her nose, rain framing that spreading smile in a background haze. “Nothing could be more awkward than that, so what do you have to lose? I don’t know if I’ll be as good of an audience, but I’m definitely here for it.”
“True…” Steph searches her eyes before standing back up, offering Alex her hand, this time. “But I loved it, playing like that. I…” It’s a pause, tilting down to look at Alex as she helps her up, “Did actually play at the Spring Festival last year. I totally forgot—it didn’t feel like a show. It’s not that I feel nervous about playing,” Her chin tips a little, looking up towards that dancing wind chime, fingertips warm.
Warm, she realizes after a moment, because she’s still holding Alex’s hand, and Alex doesn’t ask her to let go.
“I just haven’t really thought about playing. Until…right now, I guess. Tell you what, I will give you one entirely exclusive show in the store tomorrow,” Steph holds up their joined hands, finger ticking off to wave in the air, “If you give me one. Right here on this balcony.”
A long pause.
“Right…now?” Alex blinks.
“Doesn’t have to be. But those are my terms, Chen. Today, tomorrow, sometime? I want an exclusive show of my own.”
Alex laughs, just a little—a dancing noise underneath that serene windchime—nose ducking before she nods…and looks back up at Steph with a kind of freaky level of determination.
And then lets go of her hand just to reach up to offer to shake it, again.
It’s the kind of thing Ryan would do that would make Alex, herself, call him a dork, and somehow that makes it even better.
“Okay, you’re on.”
Steph falls asleep downstairs on the couch a few hours later to the sound of rattling wind and Taxi Driver on in the background—what? So they’re on a DeNiro kick, sue—and blinks an owlish look towards Alex when she prods her shoulder and nods towards the bed.
“Come on,” Alex says again, that same gentle smile, voice an up-turned hand in the dim, flickering light of the credits behind them. “The rain hasn’t let up and…it’s not like it’s the first time you’ve crashed here. And it’s definitely not like it’ll be the last.”
“I’m only here for the pop-tarts.”
“Whatever you tell yourself, Steph. We both know you’re here for the sweet, eclectic jams.”
“Okay, maybe that too.”
And it’s the third time that Steph follows her, anyways, sleepily kicking off one of her damp shoes by the bed before she flops on top of it to Alex’s quiet laughter behind her, sure enough…other girl slipping beneath a flopping, shoe-clung foot to sneak fingers beneath the rim, helping to take it off.
“Alex, seriously?” Steph’s muffled laughter sinks into the pillow that smells like—
Steph smiles, realization donning that she knows exactly what it smells like, now.
“Hey, you’re the one that doesn’t have the excuse of being drunk, this time.”
Steph pulls away and toes off the other shoe before offering a smile down the bed at Alex, the darkness of the apartment lit up by a flash outside. Wind rattling the thin glass as she watches Alex slip off her glasses and slide into the bed next to her, this time under the covers.
It’s familiar.
“Sleeping in bed with your shoes on isn’t comfortable, Steph. Barefoot is the way to go.” It’s murmured. Already sleepy—exhausted—like some weight of the day has taken its toll out of Alex’s bones.
Steph wonders what it is—wonders what's exhausted her.
"You okay?" Steph asks before she can think anything against it, watching her shift and ease and turn towards her. A hint of surprise basked in shadows beneath clear eyes, no glass between them.
"Yeah. Are you?"
Alex is warm—she’s always so warm—and Steph listens to the wind and the sound of Alex’s laughter and knows…
"...right now? Yeah. I actually am."
It’s a little easier facing storms with people you know just as good as the bad.
Enter Haven Springs.
I felt a lot that first day. From him—from everyone —but it was the most I felt like myself, too, in…a really long time.
When I saw Gabe for the first time, I suddenly remembered what he looked like. The way his lips curled up in a smile was like an old, wrinkled piece of sheet music. I just needed to read it to remember how it went, again. It never really went away—the music was always out there in the world, and maybe part of me knew it; hummed it in the morning or the afternoon or at night—but I really needed to see it to make sense and find the tune, again.
I remembered teasing him about trying to grow a beard when he was thirteen (but missed all the nicks and scrapes and burns in-between the actual growing).
I remembered him talking about making it out of Seattle—busking his way with his little sister all the way down to Reno so that we could make something of ourselves. (Thinking back on it, who knows why Reno? Maybe Gabe didn’t know why, either).
I remembered the way he always hugged so tightly, without a hint of hesitation. Hesitation was just never in Gabe’s dictionary.
I remembered him and filled in all those gaps of what he used to be with who he was, the moment I met him again, in an instant.
He smiled and…I didn’t feel as guilty, because I knew he remembered, too. Which means he’d forgotten. He looked at me and didn’t recognize me but did at the same time—and…I don’t know.
Suddenly, I wasn’t really alone, anymore. Suddenly a decade of guilt washed away like sand in the rain.
Suddenly, I wasn’t the only person out there who filled their mind up with snapshots of things they could barely remember and who held onto too much of what they didn’t want to hold onto, at all—
I didn’t do what Mom asked. Gabe was the one that chased Dad halfway across the country. Gabe was the one that held onto her more than I ever did—that reached out and tried to patch me together. But I decided to do something a little selfish, in that moment.
I remembered Gabe for me.
I remember Gabe.
And when Gabe died, all I felt was him.
All I still feel is him.
All I’ll ever feel is him.
What if all I ever feel is him?
What if none of the memories I have of him are even mine to have, in the first place?
Dreams rarely make sense, especially for someone that avoids them. It’s the feeling that remains.
It’s a blur, the way the phone cracks in her palm—the way the wind creaks and splinters and shatters, like tinsel-dried bones. Crumbling to dust beneath torrential rain and winds, the noise of it rattling—quaking—thunderous—
I’ve got to go , Steph—
A familiar hand reaching out—a beam of wood; blood; screaming; eyes widening—
Eyes rolling, her hand reaching out, and then nothing—nothing—nothing, just thunder and—
Thunder cracks like a roaring boom in the sky.
Mom. Fine. Dead. Gabe and Rachel and Mom—
And all Steph feels is the horror. The bone-deep horror that chills like ice from fingertips to creaking bones to—
Her gasping lungs, bolting upright like a stiffened board, sheets bundled around hips, chest gasping for air. Panic creeps up her neck at the sound of the rumbling outside, hand snapping up to her chest to—
To—
Someone's jolted up right with her. Sudden. Sharp. Panicked, and it takes Steph a moment to shake the fear. To shake the dream.
But she doesn’t quite shake the memory of her mother’s eyes.
Eyes flick to the side, seeing Alex sitting up next to her, blinking through the flash of lightning nearby to see sweat dotting that normally-calm brow, blink owlish as Alex’s heavy breath pants in sync with hers beneath the flickering streetlight outside, obscured by pelting rain, thunder rumbling the windows. Shaking the trembling earth of Steph's bones. Loud. So loud.
And Steph tries—fuck, she desperately tries to get her breathing under control—
Tries to push the panic down and—
And--
Lightning lights up the room and a sharp, hissing breath sucks through teeth, trying not to count the thunder that follows.
Steph sounds fine. Calm and measured and a little oddly urgent, but fine. Practiced and totally cool--
“I—” Fingers are clawing—clawing—clawing at her chest like she’s trying to pull her heart out of its cage, but her voice is even. “I should go—” She manages to stumble but quivers as she tries to get out of the bed. The last thing Alex needs is Steph’s own graveyard baggage. And Steph can’t—can’t—
Hot, clammy fingers snap up to catch along Steph’s retreating wrist, gentle and careful, pausing Steph before she can stumble off of the bed, completely. Fingers that immediately snap backwards when flexing muscles tense beneath the knowing touch, raising up like Alex is trying to calm a bull, or something.
“Steph, wait. It’s okay.” Her voice is…quiet. Gentle. Even as Steph can see her ragged breath, and something about it unravels the tight knots of Steph’s spine. Another flash lights up the apartment and she can see so clearly how Alex's brows knit in concern, no glasses in sight. “It’s okay. I’m not going to make you talk about anything you don’t want to. But…I’m going to take a wild shot in the dark and guess nightmare, right?”
After a long moment, Steph quietly nods, looking away. Swallowing. But reaches out anyways to falsely assure her friend, fingers curving, because the last thing she wants after all of this progress is for Alex to stop feeling comfortable touching her just because of a stupid fucking nightmare. But when her hand trembles beneath Alex’s at the sound of the sky quivering in deep, close rumbles, she regrets not keeping her stoicism.
"Yeah. It's...fine. I'm just not big on storms. I think I'll just…" Calm. Calm. Calm. "Go home and watch a movie, or something."
“It’s pouring outside.”
“I’ll be alright, my apartment is right down the street.”
Alex searches her features, eyes looking around the room like she’s placing something—placing everything—and Steph wipes a free arm beneath her brow, sweat still slick and tracking beneath skin.
“Hang on.” Alex squeezes before she lets go of her hand a second time, “Sit on the bed for a second, okay?"
“I—” Steph’s heart is still hammering and, stupidly, she doesn’t want to be alone right now, even though every single cell of her body is screaming to get out—
"Trust me, Steph." It’s an almost loving plea, lightning casting Alex's whole body in a soft blue glow as she stands sturdy and calm in front of her, the world rumbling like it's threatening to swallow them whole. But Alex is looking at her like she doesn't need glasses to see right through her--
Alex is looking at her without an ounce of that...that thing that everyone else does--that thing that curls nails into skin and turns veins to quivering rattlesnakes--
Alex is looking at her like she'd let her go, if she asked.
Steph's jaw barely trembles as she nods. Breathes through her nose, sinking back onto the bed like an anchor whose string was cut.
A crack of thunder stiffens her spine right before the familiar sound of a scratching needle cuts beneath it and Alex, in all of her infinite wisdom, puts a record on. It’s loud enough to drown out the booms, but she can still feel the windowpanes rattle and shake nearby. Can still feel—
Can still imagine—
“Mom? Mom—”
Steph blinks open when she feels something warm slide onto her ears, a swimming, hazy vision of Alex’s face coming into view, all of the lights in the apartment suddenly on and blinds drawn, and she can see her clearly, now.
Headphones are now settled on Steph's ear, Dido of all things playing calmly, covering up the music skipping from the record player. The rain and the thunder and the lightning melts away to a calm, lilting voice and Alex's familiar eyes. Sweat plasters hair to Alex’s craning neck—her forehead—a thin shirt clings to her frame, wet through like she'd ran through the rain, herself, and it’s in this moment that more than just panic laces beneath Steph’s thunderous heart, because it looks a hell of a lot like Alex had a nightmare, too—
“I’m okay.” It’s mouthed through a smile the moment she sees Steph notice her and Steph thinks now is the literal worst time to think that Alex is literally the most beautiful woman she's ever met, every inch of her the least put together Steph’s ever seen. Hair disheveled and wet—glasses who the hell knows where—not an ounce of self-preservation or care as Alex drops everything in the world to stoop in front of her with that soft, worried smile that somehow doesn’t drive Steph up the wall.
Just fucking…beautiful and for a second Steph is overwhelmed by it. Clings to it.
Maybe it's just an easier distraction, fingers stiffening at the sound of thunder underlying the two conflicting melodies in the apartment the moment she starts to pull up one of the headphones to hear her.
The song starts over in one ear while the record keeps going in the other.
Alex reaches over to the nightstand to slide glasses up the bridge of her nose, turning back towards Steph with such open eyes. Such earnest sincerity. “I’m going to get behind you. Breathe with me, okay?”
“W-what?” Steph is holding one of the headphones askew on her head, the cacophony of songs only adding a bit to the chaos.
The sentence does not make sense—not right now.
"I...okay? I guess?"
Alex without another word slides behind Steph on the bed and guides her backwards, lifting up one of the headphones for just a breath to murmur in her ear. “Is this okay? You can kick me off. I’m not trying to—”
Steph's whole body tenses, a faint tremble in her chest at the feeling of Alex's breath along her neck.
A dusty swallow.
“I…yeah, yeah it’s—”
Her heart is still hammering. Her chest is still raging. She can feel the storm in her fingertips. If she could just—just calm down enough to stop freaking out, Alex wouldn’t even have to know she’s a total—
“Breathe with me.”
“Are you trying to zen me into compliance?” Steph tries to joke but it comes out strained—thin—and against every single logical thought in her mind, she finds herself leaning back into Alex’s arms, anyways.
This is why she avoids people. There’s something in her that makes it so, so difficult to say no, when they’re close—something so difficult to pull away, when someone’s already there. And then what self-restraint does she have? It’s better to just shove the problem out the door and never have to test her will, than to—
Alex’s chin is on her shoulder and her chest is against Steph’s back and she can…she can feel her breathe. Can feel her chest inflate and collapse—can feel the air, so warm, sink into her neck. Thoughtlessly, she breathes with her. In—slowly, slowly, slowly—out—slowly…slowly…slowly. Repeated, over and over and over again until the shaking windows become the quiver of Alex’s breath and the lightning becomes muted with the soft apartment lights above. The thunder melts into music and after moments or lifetimes or maybe the fiftieth repeat of Thank You angelically humming in her ear, Steph slides off the headphones to listen to Alex, instead.
And then laughs, a little--this small little chuff of an exhausted puff--when she finally recognizes the album playing.
Sliding Doors.
Her heart has calmed, the panic gripping her before melted into something strained but…livable.
Alex is quietly humming along to Thank You the moment it plays on the actual record player, headphones unknowingly settled on Steph's knees.
“You…have a really good voice.” It's murmured and exhausted, but fuck it--Alex does.
Alex pauses and the way she shifts—Steph doesn’t know—it feels like…maybe she smiles.
“I was going to plug in my phone and play the actual album at the same time,” She sounds a little nervous—a little embarrassed—and when Steph turns her head, they’re so close she can taste her breath. It’s even warmer on her lips than it was on her neck. “But I...couldn't find my glasses. I always have this up for emergencies, so..."
“What, you can just find long lost relics for NPCS, not for yourself?”
“I don’t know where to go without a glowing quest marker?” Alex jokes, still a little new at the whole genre experience, and Steph is proud of the fact that it totally lands, quietly laughing. Just a little. Feeling a little more of the tension melt from her spine.
It’s still there, in the back of her mind—a thousand different images and a thousand different ways—a thousand different versions of her mother, lost to some angry vehement God—but it’s always there, underneath the surface. It never goes away.
That’s the thing no one tells you about grief—it’s like an iced over-pond. At first, it breaks easily—slivers and cracks the moment you shift feet along its surface. But as time goes on and the weather turns colder and colder—as snow falls and skin numbs—it’s a little firmer to step upon the ice. But if you look down, it’s always right there, clear as day—always there, right beneath you: water. Cold ice waiting to engulf you on a trip—a fall—a slip—and when it cracks open, it takes time to heal, again. Over and over for years and years and years.
In Steph’s experience, it will always be that way.
"It was...really sweet." Steph finally murmurs and she can see that smile, now. "So...Dido is your comfort music, huh?"
"Guilty."
The thunder rumbles beneath them and Steph closes her eyes, tucking her head on Alex's shoulder.
Waiting for the world to be easy, again.
“I liked you singing—you should totally keep doing that.”
Alex’s knees are tented around her hips on this tangled mess of sheets on the bed and Steph is nestled fully in the warmth of her arms, against her chest, so that every single breath of air from Alex’s lips might be another gust of snow brushing along the open fissures, promising that it will pass—it will pass—if she just keeps herself from falling in. Alex, gently singing in her ear until the storm turns to background noise beneath the music and the lights and their shared breaths. Her skin is cold and clammy, now, sweat sticking to it beneath the fan, and when she shifts, she feels Alex’s shirt do much of the same to herself.
They must get through the entire album before Steph's self preservation instinct turns into absolute embarrassment.
“This is not my proudest moment in history.” Steph laughs, a little, strained, “It doesn't even happen that often, anymore. It's just...so random. Normally my friends never find out about this, if I can help it. I’m more of the…shut myself up in my apartment and ignore everyone for weeks trauma response type.”
“I’ve been there.” Alex offers but it doesn’t sound weak—it doesn’t sound so thin and full of pity like it does on most people’s tongues. “I…” Instead, when Steph turns around, Alex just shrugs. “Okay.” She sits a little taller behind Steph’s curved spine, offering in a swell of confession: “Hyperventilate in hospitals? If that helps. Now we’re even. You know something about me that…well, no one does.”
“It does help a little bit.” Steph’s smile is slim, the anxiety curling in her stomach like a wounded animal, still snarling and whimpering, but resigning itself to its fate as it fights, quieting down. Resting. “I…used to lock myself in the bathroom during storms and turned on the water. Especially… When they were bad. Just in case. I mean, freaking out is rare, but Izzie never knew. How could she have? I never told her. Totally healthy, right?" Alex is still holding her, the record softly skips to repeat Side A, both of their bodies settled on the bed. “I haven't had a nightmare in years, I guess it just...surprised me. I’m sorry I freaked on you. I know you were just trying to help. I just…"
“It’s okay.”
“Thanks." Steph's hands thoughtlessly and boldly have raised up to Alex's knuckles, tracing along the ridges of a bandage. Tellingly, Alex lets her. "You’ve…always been there for me when I needed it, Alex. So…maybe it’s hypocritical of me to ask, but…” Steph shifts in her arms, fingertips itching to cup her cheeks—to push through that wet, sweat-soaked hair curving around Alex’s cheek even though that’s probably the worst idea she’s ever had. Instead, she just hesitantly cups her shoulder—safe territory—and meets her eyes, “Why'd you wake up like this? And don't tell me it's because you were hot.”
Alex visibly hesitates and looks like she might say something else entirely before admitting, “I…had a nightmare, too. But I was more worried about you.”
“You always are.” Steph’s lips tug a little downwards, but she doesn’t pull away, instead just sucking in a deep breath. “Did…doing all this help, at least?”
“Yeah.” Alex is smiling at her and Steph takes a deep breath, feeling a little of the panic she’d felt chip away and away and away with each faithful breath rising Alex’s chest. She can feel it. Can feel her heartbeat if she focuses enough— “It feels like it’s calming down a bit, now.”
“Good.” Steph turns back around, teeth tucking lips, “I…really should probably go. I think I’ve embarrassed myself enough for a night, and now I feel like I definitely need a shower. I'm not freaking out, anymore. It was just...”
Steph doesn't want to remember the nightmare, so she doesn't. She doesn't say anything else, at all, and Alex doesn't ask.
“...you could stay.” Alex’s voice is barely a murmur in her ear—gentle and…hopeful? No, Steph’s reading too much into it. Still…she turns a little, once more, and feels Alex’s hands tense above her stomach, but only for a second. Those steady, calm eyes right there—always right there, it seems like. “It’s definitely not walk-friendly out there. And…you staying here would help me feel calm.”
“Why do I feel like you’re just saying that to make me feel better?”
“There is maybe a slim chance that I also think staying here will help you, too. You don’t have to, Steph. Seriously. But by tomorrow morning, tonight’s going to be over, and I know you want the poptarts in the cabinet.”
Alex makes it sound so easy. Alex makes it feel so easy.
It’s…a choice. It’s a choice, to let herself be here—to open up and…actually let someone in. She already has, hasn’t she? Whether she meant to, or not, hasn’t the worst already passed? She thinks of Mikey and Gabe and Chloe, somewhere, and her tongue runs over her lower lip, nervously searching Alex’s eyes. The worst has already passed—Alex is already here—what would running do? Keep Alex from seeing it, again?
Keep Steph from having to talk about it?
She remembers the way Alex had quietly tucked into her shoulder during Raging Bull and thinks, for just a moment, like she’s thought so much with Alex—
Would it be so bad?
There’s none of the pitying looks—no questions—nothing but music and gentle hands and someone who Steph thinks…might know what all of it feels like. Might really, genuinely, know what it all feels like.
All Alex asks is for Steph to stay.
Is that something she's even built for?
“You’re really not going to ask to talk about it? No…probing questions? No friend-break-up texts at me if I do leave or—”
“Steph,” Alex shakes her head, serious and gentle. “We don’t ever have to bring up any of what just happened for the rest of time, if you want. It’s totally cool.”
“Wow. Okay.” A breath. A nod. Shifting just a little, starting to untangle herself from Alex’s warm limbs. As much as she wants to be held—as much as she feels safe and secure and warm—she does not want to put Alex in the place of having to—
Beyond bad idea. The line is already starting to get so thin.
No, she’s not going to ask Alex to hold her through the night. Waking up like that is one thing. Actively seeking it out? That would just make her feel like she’s taking advantage of Alex’s—
“I don’t want this to sound weird.” Alex sounds hesitant—looks like she’s trying to work out a word problem in the back of her mind—like she’s trying to figure out how to say— “But do you think we could…”
“What?”
“I’m trying to think of a better way to say ‘cuddle’ without it sounding like I’m...crossing a line. And not using the word ‘cuddle’, which retrospectively is a horrible word.” Alex sighs, eyes flicking down to where Steph is pulling away, “It's kind of not a good look when your best friend is freaking out."
The instant relief is dwarfed, for a moment.
Steph's gaze immediately softens. "Did you just call me your best friend?" There's no hint or tease--it's the first time she's heard Alex return the sentiment, at all.
"Yeah, Steph." Alex smiles, soft and sincere as lightning curves up her chin to her eyes, bathed in the warmth of the apartment and the cold of outside. Steph, for a moment, feels like the storm is hundreds of miles away as she smiles back, slim and...fuck, she's not going to be emotional or conflicted about it. “Of course I did.”
"I guess in that case I can allow your totally weak, thinly-veiled excuse to hold me for the night." Steph tries to joke, but her throat is dry and her stomach is clenching even as Alex smiles and tugs her back onto the bed. Brave and never backing down.
"Thinly-veiled excuses are under-rated, more people should try them.” A little more serious, “I don’t think I’ve ever…really had a chance to do this with someone, before, anyways. Not without them expecting something else." Is all Alex says, arm wrapping around her shoulder so naturally that Steph doesn't even care that she feels like she woke up in a swamp--she probably smells like one, which is a totally not good look--dried sweat still sticking to her neck and her hips and her knees. It's like this doesn't matter, at all, as Alex shifts her closer in a loose, rare hug on the bed.
The fear slowly eases into her breathing and the room feels bright and clearer, the same side of that Dido album softly humming in the background.
Maybe Steph will ask her, sometime--ask her how Alex always know what Steph needs. Ask her how Alex always...is what Steph needs.
Maybe Steph will get the chance to ask her if she’s the same for Alex, sometime—maybe—maybe—
Steph grows a little bolder, shifting in the bed to wrap Alex’s arms around her, settling back against her front.
Little spoon is a new look on her and she…really doesn’t mind it. Like…at all. Not with Alex holding her.
“Well…being the first sounds cool with me. Cuddle away, Chen.”
This time she does feel Alex’s smile, having pulled her close enough that she can feel lips curve in the air above her neck.
It should be awkward. It should be tense or weird or a thousand other cliches that it totally isn't. Instead...Steph just lets herself exist in it for a moment.
They fall asleep with the lights on and Sliding Doors blaring and a pair of headphones sandwiched between them repeating the same song over and over and Alex’s arms wrapped so warmly around Steph that she forgets what ice ever felt like on the tips of her fingertips.
She dreams nothing, at all, and when she wakes it's in the crook of Alex's neck, having turned around in her sleep, their limbs still tangled and sweaty from where they'd touched—it’s to an obnoxiously bright apartment and Dido and Alex's phone at 2%, sandwiched between them, headphones digging into her side.
Steph shifts along the sheets and swallows at the sight of Alex uncomfortably shifted in the bed to accommodate Steph, her neck curved a little backwards at the world’s weirdest angle. Her glasses are still on her face, askew, and Steph carefully--carefully--reaches forward to slide them off. Small, painful crescents pit skin where frames dug in throughout the night and Steph quietly folds them up and reaches over her to nestle them safely back where they'd been tugged from the night before, so careful not to dislodge Alex as she does.
The rain is barely a trickle outside, now, fully covered by Dido's voice.
(Hopefully the rain will stay away from the Larp, next week).
It would be easy to untangle and slip out--to disappear into the morning and claim she wanted to be at the station. It would be easy to steal a pop tart from the cabinet and start one up for Alex, maybe, and never talk about this, again. She knows Alex won't mention it.
But then who will tell Alex where her glasses are when she wakes up? That's what Steph tells herself--repeats like a hopeless idiot as she sags back into the pillow and gently traces the divot her best friend's care had left upon her skin before her hand retreats back to rest around the curve of Alex's hip.
Is staying such a bad thing?
Maybe not. Maybe…
Just maybe not. Maybe staying is the opposite of a bad thing.
Maybe staying is something Steph really, really wants to do, right now.
Alex cracks open an eye and slowly, slowly smiles at her like she's been awake the entire time, and Steph tries not to let her heart (skipping across this thin, wrinkled river of sheets between them like a stone) sink into it. She lets herself lean into it, instead--just for a moment--tugging Alex against her and making a show of going back to sleep.
"Does yesterday count as my private show?" Alex thoughtfully murmurs into her shoulder and Steph laughs into her hair, eyes fluttering closed as they relax into the bed.
She'll worry about how totally ambiguous and definitely not friendly this is later. Right now?
She agrees with Alex. It does feel calm.
The rain gently patters on the windowpane outside and Steph closes her eyes and recognizes that scent on the sheets, now, with ease and comfort and certainty:
It’s Alex. It doesn’t smell like anything else. It just smells like her.
"You wish."
Alex sighs—long-winded and totally suffering—before her nose tucks into Steph’s neck, the tension in her back melting away beneath Steph’s fingers. She feels it. She feels all of that heat in Alex’s body simmer lava and turn to steam beneath the cool ice of her hands.
And she knows they both fall asleep with a smile.
With Isabelle…I couldn’t leave for a month.
With Gabe…
How am I supposed to ever leave when I’m surrounded by him? At the wake, I heard everyone talking about it—about how he died.
‘Maybe it was quick—he wouldn’t have felt a thing—’
People keep saying this to Charlotte like it somehow makes it better. Like it somehow makes any of it better.
What am I going to do, tell them that it wasn’t? That I crawled to the edge of that crumbling mountain and that all Gabe felt the whole way down was fear? Terror? For so long. It wasn’t quick. It wasn’t painless, it was injustice. It was fury. It was this hell of reality so strong that even when Ryan pulled me away, I felt it. I felt Ethan and I felt Ryan and I felt that monster in the bottom of an endless black hole…and I felt Gabe.
My big brother, whose face I barely remembered, lost down in the depths of the monster I thought I’d helped quell.
Would it help if I could tell Charlotte that all he thought about, the whole way down, was them? Charlotte and Ethan. That he didn’t want to go? That he still had so much more to give them?
At the wake, yesterday…Steph told me that it’s not my job to keep it together but I
The writing stops abruptly, resumed down the page.
Maybe I’m not the only empath in town.
Maybe it doesn’t matter, now that Ryan knows.
Ryan and Steph actually showed up with beers and a surprisingly sincere invite to go watch a movie on their phones in the park. Ryan says it’s because they can’t afford a projector and Steph is claiming that it’s because it’s just for the aesthetic (with that kind of half-smile she does). They held open the door and they both…felt so sad and hopeful that I went, anyways. It’s kind of hard to turn them both down—not when I knew how much they wanted it to work.
Don’t get me wrong—I hated every single second of it. All I wanted to do was crawl in bed and stop having to smile, or pretend, or do anything at all. But I also kind of loved it, too. It…didn’t really feel like they wanted anything from me. It felt like I didn’t really have to do anything but follow them outside. They let me into their world and I…
I don’t know.
When mom died, I was forced to leave.
With Isabelle, I couldn’t leave, at all.
With Gabe…I could have drowned in it. But I didn’t.
I don’t know what it means. Maybe I’m not supposed to know what it means.
Maybe all I know is that now I’m not feeling it alone.
Steph saluted when she left and Ryan walked me up to my door like a total gentleman and even now that I’m sitting here, surrounded by pictures and memories of Gabe that I wasn’t in…I don’t feel alone, anymore.
I feel like these memories belong to me. Like they mean something. Like they can’t be taken away.
The rain has settled on the pavement outside, turning into soft moisture in the air—so light it can barely sink into the lungs of the sparse tourists traipsing down Main Street.
It’s barely a mist, now, drizzling against the pavement, rising steam up into the warm afternoon air.
The ‘be back whenever’ sign is flipped on the rain-dotted glass of Traders’ closed door, a faint percussion beating beneath the gentle breeze and the rain outside behind chipped wood. Barely there—only found if looking in the right places.
Inside the closed-off store isn’t the world’s most intimate display, but it feels like it to a performer—a black box theatre show for two.
Steph’s hands curve around sticks and Alex’s back against the wall with a guitar she’s been talked into grabbing, both of them jamming out like there’s no tomorrow. Like the music was just there, waiting for hands on strings and feet on snares to show up. Like the music was always there—like a song that Steph got stuck in Alex’s head, waiting to break out into the soft store sun.
They rock out underneath a Girl Power poster, voices settling on top of each other in harmony, no audience.
She can’t help but wonder if Gabe’s the only one watching this performance, too, rocking out somewhere up in that big old sky…
But when Alex smiles at her, initial nerves bled out into ease and confidence and something that’s just…so beautifully, wonderfully Alex…
Steph realizes it doesn’t matter, anyways.
This show’s just for them, and that’s okay, too.
Maybe that’s what was missing, all along.
Maybe it’s not that bad.
Maybe being here with Alex…it’s not that bad, at all.
I hope…I can help Steph and Ryan like they’ve helped me.
I just need to work through my own shit while doing it, right?
And part of that is turning that fear of Gabe’s into something else, isn’t it?
Part of that is turning that fear…into finding who did this to him.
Part of that is…learning how to let go.
Maybe Steph was right. Maybe my job isn’t to keep it all together.
Maybe my job is finally learning how to let it all fall apart regardless of who’s picking up the pieces.
I remember Dr. Lynn telling me that it’s not my fault that things are broken…and maybe that includes me. But maybe everyone’s a little broken—just as broken as me—so maybe Gabe wasn’t omniscient and was wrong, just about this.
And maybe that’s okay, too.