Who: Luke and Wren What: Moving in, 1/2. Where: Luke's apartment. When: Recently, before the DC villain madness. Warnings/Rating: None.
The first thing Wren did when she stepped into the hallway of Passages was look down at her feet, in search of Petti and the bag of things she'd brought with her from the motel. But they weren't there, and she immediately reached for her phone to see if Selina'd left a note, because she didn't think anyone would steal an old, cranky cat like Petti. As expected, there was a note waiting, but it wasn't very informative; Selina's notes never were. It said she'd stolen some papers, and that she'd left the money at Luke's apartment (along with the cat), because it was safer than leaving it in a hallway. Okay, that wasn't too bad, except for the part where it didn't make very much sense. Why go all the way across town, when- And then Wren looked at the time on her phone, which indicated that it was hours and hours later than it was supposed to be. She worried her lip, considered catching a cab over to MK's, like she'd been planning, and then decided against it. She had no idea if Selina had been in touch with Luke, if he even knew why she was late. Or maybe he was asleep, and maybe he didn't even know she hadn't shown up on time. Maybe?
She was counting on that as she left Passages behind, grateful for the twenty dollar bill in her pocket, which kept her from short-changing the driver. Something still felt wrong, and she wondered if it was the constantly pervasive feeling of worry she'd had since the memories, or if it was something new. Either way, she didn't figure it out before Luke's apartment complex came into view, and she bid the driver goodbye and smoothed down the simple white dress she wore. She slowed as she walked toward the apartment, tucking her newly-brown hair (so close to the shade of her youth) behind her ears, helpless as all the old worries came rushing back. What if he saw her and thought of the memories? What if living with her made him think of New York? What if she couldn't hold down a job? What if she ended up doing what she'd always fallen back on for money? What if Gus couldn't get used to having her around. What if, what if, what if.
By then, the door was in sight, but there was no cat carrier, and no bag, and she reached into the pocket of her dress for the key to the apartment that she'd been using whenever she hid there after Alexander. Quietly, she slid the key into the lock, and she pulled her heels off before tiptoeing into the apartment. It was late and dark, and everything was quiet, but Finch sleepily peeked out of a room in the back, ensuring she was allowed to be there before returning to where he'd been. And Petti, who she made out a second later, yawned as he lifted his head from the arm of the couch. Okay, so Luke must have brought her things inside it. That was good, right? Empowered by that thought, she locked the door behind her, and she quietly made her way down the hall, past Gus' room (which she peeked into for longer than she intended, watching the little boy sleeping there), and past the small second room (which she assumed Jack was using), and back to the master bedroom at the end of the hall.
She considered knocking but, in the end, she didn't. She quietly opened the door, stepped inside, and then quietly closed it behind herself.
Luke had been aware of Selina’s antics, thanks to Bruce, and so when he finally crossed through and returned to his apartment from Passages, he wasn’t all that surprised to find a hefty bag of cash outside his door along with Wren’s things. Fortunately, his new building was nothing like Avenue 8, and it wasn’t Fremont, where the cash would have been gone in seconds along with everything else. He scanned the note briefly--be back later--and sighed, figuring that it was so very Selina to be vague and leave such a wide open time window. ‘Later’ could be a few hours or more, half a day even, or the full twenty-four hours; he had no way of knowing. He could let Bruce back into Gotham to find out, but no, the other man had his time already, and now he needed his, even though the prospect of Wren’s arrival had his stomach turning inside out with a wild mixture of nerves that refused to settle. The cash was tucked safely away in his room beneath the floorboards, where he hid things he didn’t want anyone else to find, her other bags were placed in the closet, and Petti was freed to roam the apartment, but not without first being tackled by Gus and barked at by Finch, who remembered his feline friend quite well, and seemed to approve his presence.
The little boy was thrilled by having two pets in the house, and he babbled on about Wren, asking if she was coming too, and Luke felt that familiar twinge of ache as he looked down at his son, a sense of overwhelming love he’d only ever felt for Wren, his parents, and yes, even Thomas too, though he’d cared for them all in different ways. He told him yes, Wren was coming later, but hour after hour passed without sign of her. Gus wanted to stay up and wait, but with Jack’s help Luke convinced the boy to go to sleep, reassuring him that Wren would be there in the morning, and after some protestation he eventually agreed and allowed himself to be tucked in with a bevy of toys and stuffed animals to keep him company. Jack soon retired to his own room afterward, and Luke lingered for a while on the couch, attempting to occupy himself with television, before relenting and retreating to his own bedroom.
Sleep never came easily these days, at least not without nightmares, but he was exhausted most of the time, and when Wren arrived he’d already dozed off; otherwise, he surely would have heard the front door open. Luke was sprawled out on his stomach on the bed, clad in sweatpants and no shirt with the sheets tangled around his waist, the Wayne Tech phone clutched loosely in one hand. The windows were cracked open, letting in a bit of a breeze and muffled sounds of traffic, and the room itself was plain; a bed, a closet, a chair, a mirror, some drawers, and clothes scattered about, along with some of Gus’ toys. He twitched in his sleep, mumbling unintelligibly into the pillow, and whether he actually heard Wren close the door behind her or simply sensed it was questionable. Regardless, his eyes snapped open, and he sat up in bed with an instinctive sort of swiftness, eyes narrowed, before he processed who was in the room and relaxed with a relieved sigh.
“Hey,” he whispered, voice still thick with sleep, and after a moment’s hesitation slid off the edge of the bed and padded across the floor, barefoot, to where she stood.
She hadn't moved from the doorway. She'd watched his back greedily for a few seconds, and she probably would have stayed there a lot longer than that, if he hadn't woken. She didn't move during his moment of hesitation, either. She pressed back against the door with perfect silence, and she watched him sit up on the bed, her gaze sliding along him as he moved. It felt like forever, even though it hadn't been that long at all. But maybe it had. There had only been a few, brief and tense minutes at Turnberry, and the memories made everything before it seem so far away, a different world almost. She twirled the ring on her finger without thought, even as she watched him, and she worried her lip until he was close enough for her to touch.
She didn't touch, though, and she didn't say anything at all, not at first, not even in response to his greeting. She was thinking about that hesitation, the one from a second earlier, and it made her keep her hands demurely clasped behind her back, as they'd been since the door closed. She twisted her fingers there, at the small of her back, to keep from touching, and she smiled a little, eventually, shy. "Hi," she whispered, not used to living in apartments with people, not like this, and not sure how much volume it would take to wake Jack and Gus. "I know I'm late," she added. "Selina said she needed to do something with some money?" And unlike Luke, Wren had no idea what Selina had been up to, and certainly no idea that it had been planned in advance. "She likes to give me money," she added unnecessarily, just to fill the silence, because the silence would make her take that tiny step forward, would make her wrap her arms around him, and she couldn't do that. She'd promised him space, and she was going to do everything she could to keep that promise, even if it was going to be much, much harder than she'd realized when she'd made it; the unintentional, slight sway in his direction made that fairly obvious.
"I, um, I can change, if you tell me where my bag is?" she asked, her gaze dropping to his freshly bandaged hands, a frown marring her forehead. Her own hands were unbandaged, enough time having passed that she didn't need them anymore, but he must have done something new, and she couldn't help from turning her questioning, grey gaze on him.
Luke hadn't quite known what to expect, and Wren's reaction made his heart sink a little, since her silence following his greeting was far from reassuring. It made him wonder what she was thinking, and he tried to discern it from her expression, but it didn't work very well, and he ended up simply standing where he was and looking down at her while he waited for her to say something. He too kept his hands to himself, fingers tugging absently on his sweatpants as a way to occupy himself and expend some nervous energy without going overboard. He tried to return her smile when she finally spoke, mirroring his whispered greeting, even though it felt as though they'd suddenly been transported five years into the past.
"It's okay," he said, his tone hushed as to avoid waking anyone up. "She left me a note with your stuff, and I put the money under the floorboards. Maybe she's trying to help." He knew that Selina had stolen money from Bruce's company, but he didn't know it was planned, or that it was Bruce's idea in the first place, so Wren wouldn't refuse his assistance. "You're not hurt, right?" From what he could see, she appeared fine, but the way his gaze lingered was a little more than just customary concern, and he couldn't ignore the way she swayed towards him, unintentional or not, his fingers tightening on the fabric of his pants as a result.
It took a few second for her question to sink in, and he nodded, gesturing to the closet. "Yeah, sure, your bags are in there," he told her, and his expression turned sheepish when she looked down at his bandaged hands and back up again. "I-- I guess I didn't do a very good job the first time. Jack rebandaged them for me."
She watched his fingers on the fabric of the sweatpants, and she looked up at him just as he tried to smile, and the fact that he didn't quite manage it just made her look down again. She listened as he explained the situation with Selina, and she shook her head when he asked if she was hurt. "I'm fine," she assured him, watching his fingers tighten in the fabric of his pants at her unintentional sway. It made her take a quick, if small step back, and her shoulders met with the door and made it rattle in a way that was jarring in the quiet of the room. "I'll take a look at the money tomorrow," she said, and it was only the desire to not make things worse that kept her from making the obvious offer, that she could find somewhere else to stay if Selina had stolen enough money this time.
She moved once he gestured to the closet, glad of something to keep her from reaching for him, which she so very much wanted to do when his expression turned sheepish. She had unwound her fingers from behind her back, and she had touched one finger to the edge of one of his bandaged hands, and then she had caught herself and darted. The closet was darker than the darkened room, and she could breathe for a minute, could tell herself it would be okay. And then she tugged her bag over her shoulder and quickly ducked into the bathroom, all without looking at him again. "Go back to bed," she whispered, even as the bathroom door closed. "I'll be out in a few minutes."
She ran the water, and she splashed her overly warm face with it, and she tried to talk herself into some semblance of calm, something that wasn't a building panic. She changed into cream and white striped pajama pants and an eyelet camisole and, then, she decided the camisole might not be modest enough, and she swapped it out for a snug, blue t-shirt. She turned off the water, and she brushed her brown hair, which made her nervous now too. Maybe it was too close to the shade in the memories, maybe it was too much like back then. She pulled it back in a loose braid, and she promised herself she'd get it lightened again in the morning. No one was going to arrest her now, right? After a moment longer, she turned off the water, turned off the light and stepped back into the bedroom.
The relief that came with her assurance that she was fine, for once, vanished when she stepped back. Luke couldn’t help wincing at the door’s rattle when her shoulders made impact, the sound impossibly loud in the dark, quiet room, and he almost reached for her before changing tactics and reversing instead, taking his own step back, a silent offer of space should she need it. He hadn’t even touched her, hadn’t tried, and she still reacted badly to his presence; maybe this was going to be much harder than he’d initially expected. Her mention of looking at the money later made him nod, the motion barely visible in the darkness; he didn’t trust himself to speak, not just then, when that little step had hurt more than he was expecting it to. It only stung more, that ache, when she darted away from him into the closet, and then the bathroom, all without looking at him once. “You don’t have to,” he began, but then the bathroom door was closed, and the rest of his words died on his lips, unfinished.
He stared at the closed door for a long, long moment before falling back onto the bed with a groan. Perfect. His girlfriend was afraid to touch him. She wasn’t even going to give him a chance, was she? It was impossibly frustrating, and he was angry at himself for not being strong enough to overcome the memories, for telling her what he’d seen, for not beingenough. If he had been, after all, she wouldn’t be like this. Luke covered his face with his hands, muffling a frustrated growl, and tried to regain his calm, to reassure himself that he just had to show her, somehow, that the world wasn’t going to end if she touched him. He listened to the sound of running water through the door, listened to the silence that followed when it was shut off, and even after the door was opened and he heard her footsteps against the floor, he didn’t immediately look over.
A long stretch of silence engulfed the room before he spoke. “Come here.” His voice was quiet, and it was more question than demand as he held out one hand in the dark, watching her, hoping beyond hope that she didn’t pull away.
She didn't know what to do with the bag over her shoulder, with the shoes in her hand, and it might have seemed like the most inconsequential thing ever, but there it was. In that gaping silence, she just stood there holding onto them, looking at him through lowered lashes as she worried her lip raw. She thought, maybe, that he wouldn't say anything at all, that she'd need to find a way to cross the quiet room on her own, but the quiet come here broke the silence, and she stared down at the shoes in her hand for a second, before crossing to the closet and setting them down, the bag following suit and sliding off her shoulder to rest beside the shoes on the floor. In her mind's eye, she could see his outstretched hand, and she licked a few droplets of blood off her lower lip as she quietly closed the closet door behind her.
It was part question, but it was the part that wasn't a question that actually got her across the room. She stopped just shy of where he was on the bed, just far enough that she would need to intentionally stretch to take the hand he held out. She looked down at it, at the spread of his fingers beyond the stark white of the bandages, and then she looked at his face quickly, as if his expression might make everything okay again. "I'm not sure I can not, if I start," she said, looking down at his hand and realizing the words made very little sense, even as she said them. "And I won't know if you don't want me to, because I won't notice," she explained.
The edge of her braid slid over her shoulder as she stood there, and she had to refrain from tucking the end into her mouth and sucking on it, an old habit from when they were both much, much younger. Instead, she inched one hand forward, stretching her arm slowly until she just brushed the edges of his fingers with her fingertips. The contact was almost nothing, really, barely anything at all, but it did precisely what she'd known it would do; it made her want more, and it was everything she could do not to back up, not to move forward, to just stay. "I want..." she began, but her voice trailed off into the quiet.
There was so much wrapped up in that simple gesture, an outstretched hand in the dark, and it took a great deal of willpower to keep his fingers from trembling while he waited. Despite the lack of light, Luke felt exposed and vulnerable, facing possible rejection, and he couldn’t help wondering if the motions of putting her shoes and bag in the closet were simply a convenient way to stall for time. Part of him wanted to pull his hand back, to rescind the offer before she could refuse it herself, but he didn’t, and even in the midst of his apprehension there was stark hope written in his expression, hope that they could get past this, that it might be okay, so long as he didn’t mess things up. All he had to do was remember what Jack had said, and not remember the things he’d seen.
It seemed like an eternity passed before she crossed the room, but even then his relief was short-lived; she didn’t take his hand, and that was almost enough to make him panic. Almost, but not quite, and his crestfallen expression became one of tentative hope once more when she spoke. Admittedly, what she said didn't make much sense, but he thought it might have something to do with touching him, which she still wasn't doing. "I don't want you to not," he whispered, as though fearful of speaking too loudly, and he held his breath as he watched the progress of her hand, a childish thing to do, really, but everything felt like it had when they were teenagers just then.
The contact was nothing, and yet it was everything. His exhale caught in his throat, and he took the initiative she lacked, scooting forward on the bed to slide his fingers against hers, to turn the light press of fingertips into a proper hold, skin against crisp bandages. "What do you want? Tell me," he said, and it was very much a plea.
What did she want? It seemed like such an easy question, and she'd started it by saying she wanted something in the first place, hadn't she? But for a second, it was too hard to think, because there wasn't anything at all in the world but the feel of that white bandage against the skin of her palm. Her gaze had lifted when he scooted forward on the bed, arrested by the movement in the dark room, and she wished there was light, that she could see more of him. She must have wanted something in particular when she said the words, but there was so many things, so many answers, and she just tightened her grip tentatively on his hand, mindful of whatever was beneath the bandages, and she tried to find a single answer that summed it all up.
She failed, of course, and she rocked forward the tiniest bit on bare toes, and she reached out her other hand, her fingertips skimming beyond where their hands were joined, dragging innocently along the underside of his wrist, where the skin was thin and delicate. Maybe it was that impossibly fragile skin that got her talking, the veins beneath her fingertips, but something managed it. "I want," she began, her whisper breaking the silence of the room. "I want you to be more than just okay, and I want you not to pretend, not with me, and I want to take everything back that I've done to make you not okay, and I want you to understand that it's okay, you know, if you can't forget what you saw, but I don't want you to pretend. You do too much of that, and one of the things about us is that we don't pretend with each other. Just with everyone else, right? I don't want that to change now, because of this."
She took in a deep breath once the words were out, all of which had been delivered to their joined hands, all without looking up at him once in the darkness. "I'm sorry," she added, quieter than the rest. "For what you saw, for what I did, for making it something you can't stop thinking about when you look at me now." She looked up then, grey eyes damp. Her grip had gone slack in his moments earlier, and her fingertips danced at the edge of that white bandage, a nervous melody where white met skin.
The way her hand tightened around his was encouraging, because she could have pulled away, but she didn’t, and her still being there was progress. It didn’t escape his notice that, while Luke had been the one who’d seen terrible things, things that made him wonder if he was ever going to be able to touch her the way she wanted again, she was the one who was fearful of contact, and he felt like one wrong move would send her scampering back into the bathroom or out onto the couch in the living room. He didn’t push for more, their joined hands enough for now, and his gaze only left her face once, when her fingers skimmed along the underside of his wrist, before returning back upward.
Instinct normally would have made him interrupt, but this time Luke made a conscious effort to stay silent until she was finished. He needed to listen to her, needed to give her a chance to speak, and maybe she would give him the same in return. There was a flash of something like guilt in his eyes, combined with a sheepish duck of his head when she mentioned pretending, because that was exactly what he’d intended on doing. Pretending he was okay, pretending he’d forgotten about the memories, pretending nothing would change between them, that he could still touch her like he had before, leaving marks and bruises that claimed her as his without ever crossing the line. “I’m not,” he began, but then he stopped, frowning, and shook his head. No. No lies, he thought. He had to be honest. “Alright. Alright, no pretending,” he said, almost to himself, and took a deep breath. “Neither of us are okay, Wren. We both know that. Pretending, it’s what gets me through the day. I have to go to work, and there’s Gus, and I just can’t let them see the truth. I have to pretend. But you’re right,” he added. “We shouldn’t pretend with each other. Being okay, or even more than that, it won’t happen overnight, and I’m trying. I really am. What I saw, it doesn’t have to change things if we don’t let it.”
Her apology made him stop, and that familiar ache returned as she looked up at him. He shook his head, throat tight, and tugged on her hand, a wordless request for her to come closer. “No. Don’t. Please don’t,” he whispered. “You have no reason to be sorry. None of this is your fault, and I don’t want you blaming yourself. You’re not responsible for what I saw, and you didn’t do anything.” He hesitated for a moment. “I won’t lie to you. Forgetting what I saw, it’s not going to be easy, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to think about it whenever I look at you. I-- remember when you told me you needed me to push, or you’d be scared otherwise? That’s what I need you to do. Don’t pull away because you think it’s what I want,” he said, and somehow it was easier to say all of this in the dark, even with her watching him.
She didn't interrupt while he spoke. She stayed quiet, despite the fact that every new word he said was like a twist of the knife. She tried not to let it show on her face, how he was putting her every nightmare into words, and she bit her lip harder and harder the more he talked. It was what she wanted, the not pretending, but that didn't make it hurt any less, and there wasn't anything she could do to change any of it at all. She didn't interrupt later, even, when he tugged on her hand and told her none of it was her fault. And she did want to pull away. It was the only thing she wanted to do just then; turn and run and just keep running. When they were kids, she'd always worried about what would happen when he realized what she really was, what she'd really done all her life, but that had never mattered, and she'd come to think it might not ever matter. In those days, the last ones in Seattle where she'd spend her nights working and come home to him, in those days she'd thought he would cast her aside for sure, but he didn't, and it blindsided her a little now. Three years, almost, of good behavior, and it was still going to be the thing that did them in. Because that did show in her eyes, the fact that she didn't know if they - if he - could come back from this.
But she'd done this forever, right? Go when she was tugged? And so she did, her feet moving of their own volition. She knew he wouldn't want that, that unthinking movement, and she'd never resorted to it with him, but she couldn't take the step back, the ashamed and embarrassed one she wanted to take, not when he was actually being honest and earnest with her. "It's not my fault," she finally said, agreeing with him, "but it doesn't change anything, the fact that it's not my fault. You still feel the way you do," she whispered honestly. She could see the uncertainty in his expressive eyes, the fact that he just didn't know if he could see her the same way again, and she took a deep breath as the world swayed around her; she willed it to steady.
His comment about pushing, about not pulling away, that just made her grey eyes shutter closed for a moment. Pushing, when she knew how he felt? That wasn't anything she would normally do. Maybe she understood, maybe she'd asked the same thing once, but it was different. She'd never been afraid of him, never not wanted him. But she didn't say that either, because she was pretty sure he couldn't handle that truth. Maybe the memories had taught her something after all, despite everything. "Okay," she said, and in the darkness it might have even seemed like it was okay, like truth. She almost asked how much she should push, but she didn't. In the end, she just sat on the edge of the bed, her smile shaky and uncertain in the dark, and she pressed a soft kiss to his lips. Just that, and then she let go of his hand. "Do you want to go back to sleep?" she finally added, needing to find words to fill the silence, to know what more he wanted from her just then. And she knew, just then, that she'd always taken for granted how easy it was with him, how unlike clients or even other men she'd slept with for warmth or comfort it had been with him. She'd never wondered what to do with him, not like this, and she took a deep shuddering sigh. "Just-" She pushed at the blankets, as if she intended to climb beneath them.
There was a time, not that long ago, when Luke would have been able to lie to himself enough to pretend that everything was fine. Her silence could be written off as normal, nothing to worry about, and he could ignore the way she looked at him, ignore how loudly her body language spoke despite her obvious attempts to hide it. He’d done just that in New York, after all, but it had ended so badly then, and he wasn’t as blind now. In the end, he just couldn’t do it, couldn’t pretend enough to get through the night, and he almost yanked his hand back when she allowed herself to be tugged forward. How could she ever think he would want that sort of submission from her? What sort of man did she think he was? Oh, of course he knew; he’d seen too much over the years, and he knew her too well, and he almost wished he’d told her to stay away if this was what it was going to be like between them. Her agreement was a surprise, and it distracted him for a moment, because she’d always seemed so determined to blame herself, but whatever hope came with the admission didn’t last long. “I know,” he managed. “I know it doesn’t change anything.” I know, he thought again, but he didn’t say it, didn’t repeat himself.
He was immensely grateful for the darkness in that moment, because he didn’t believe her okay for one minute, not even a little, and he didn’t even bother attempting to return her smile. For all her talk of not pretending, that was exactly what she was doing now. Honesty only ever destroyed things, because she would always misunderstand, always assume the worst, and he should have learned that lesson by now. If only he’d been stronger, he could have lied about what he’d seen, and she never would have had to know, and they wouldn’t be here right now. The kiss, however, made him falter, unable to resist responding for a few long moments, but he knew--or, at least, he thought he knew--that this wasn’t what she wanted, and she was only doing it for him. He didn’t answer her question when she pulled away, and he made no move to pull the blankets back; he simply sat, silent and motionless, trying to fight the rising lump in his throat and the burn at the back of his eyes. He knew this feeling too well; god, did he know. It felt like New York, after she’d left, after Thomas; it felt like losing everything and not being unable to understand how or why, like the worst kind of helplessness.
“We can just sleep.” Finally he managed words, and he swallowed heavily afterward, averting his gaze. “I think that’s what you want. I--I can take the couch.” Because the one thing he would never, ever do was force her into anything, and irrational or not, Luke couldn’t have felt more like she didn’t want to be near him just then. He moved to slide off the bed, but stopped, and the words came suddenly, unchecked and unbidden. “I thought you understood,” he said, and there was a hint of hurt, mingled with honest confusion. “I thought you knew why this was-- why it was hard for me. But you don’t, do you?” He shook his head. She might think he was disgusted with her, but the truth was, he was disgusted with himself. He’d never felt like he deserved her, and the memories certainly hadn’t improved that belief.
His assertion that, no, it didn't change anything, felt like the toll of a bell, like a death knell, and she shuddered and wrapped her arms tightly around herself, as if there was any way at all to chase off this chill. She felt the kind of hopeless desperation she associated with New York, with wanting so very badly to fix something that there was no way to fix. It was something that had changed since she'd run into him in the hotel, something that was different, and she'd thought it was something they'd gotten better at over the years. But this taught her that, no, it was just as easy to fall back into that helplessness as it had been then, and she wasn't doing any better at climbing out of it than she'd done then either.
She waited for his okay that she could climb into the bed, her hand on the blankets, fingers twisting and twisting the fabric as the seconds stretched on, as he didn't say anything. She looked down when he didn't return her tremulous attempt at a smile, one arm still wrapped around her middle and her other hand close to ripping at the sheets on the bed. She didn't associate the feeling with anything after New York, not like he did. To her, life after New York felt very different than this. It felt hopeless in a way that she just couldn't feel while he was in the room, while he was still there, and while she could still hear him breathe, even if she couldn't see him very well in the darkness at all. No, this felt exactly like New York to her. Like drifting and loss and being in the same space with him, but all without being able to reach across a gap that felt infinite.
She didn't expect his voice when he spoke, the silence spanning for so long that she had just taken for granted that it would stay, and she heard the heavy swallow, understanding it without needing to see his face. It was enough to make her give up her grip on the sheet, to lean forward just a little, to try to see his eyes in the darkness. Sleep, yes, she'd asked that, hadn't she? But she shook her head anyway, no words coming just then, the beginning of an offer to be the one who slept on the couch on her lips. If he didn't want her there, in his bed, then it was only right that she'd stay out there, like she'd offered to before. But he was already sliding to the other side of the bed, which seemed impossibly far away all of a sudden. "I-" she began when he spoke again, when he said she didn't understand why it was hard for him. "No, I understand," she said truthfully, because she believed she did. "You don't see me like you did before. It- It changed things, seeing it, instead of just knowing. It's okay. I know what I am. I do. You just never wanted to listen when I told you," she said, a small shrug of her shoulders accompanying the words. "After I cleaned up, when I- when I stopped, Alexander used to remind me that I was still that same girl, regardless of what I wore, or what I did, and he was right about that one thing. You were just always too good to see it," she said candidly, the words beginning to threaten to break by the end. "It's not your fault, Luke. You can't change how you feel- How you don't feel anymore." And she barely managed to finish the sentence. "I just wish- I wish you hadn't seen it. I wish it was different." Another helpless shrug followed, and she tried to keep talking, but she just looked away instead, voice too unsteady for it.
Luke always been too good at pushing people away, at creating distance where there had previously been none, and it was the reason he’d spent the last five years virtually alone. There was safety in numbness, and that was what he was trying to find by leaving the room, because it was easier, less painful, but the way she shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself made him want to do nothing more than take her in his arms and reassure her that everything would be okay. The desire was visible in his expression, almost painfully so, but he managed to keep from reaching for her, threatening to reopen his still-healing wounds all over again with the effort of keeping his hands to himself.
The space he’d put between them wasn’t much at all, really, but it felt like so much more, and he might have been able to keep moving if she hadn’t said anything in response. He knew what she was going to say, because he knew how her mind worked, but it still stung, her assumptions, and he drew his shoulders up in a wince as he listened. So that was what she thought of him, then. After all this time, after everything they’d been through, she still didn’t know better. “No,” he objected, lifting his gaze to seek out her form in the dark. “You don’t understand, and you have no idea how I feel, because if you did, you wouldn’t be-- you wouldn’t think--” He broke off, turning away in order to compose himself, because he had to keep his volume down and he wasn’t sure he could manage it just then. Not when she brought up Alexander, like what that monster thought meant a damn thing. He flexed his fingers, feeling the sting and ache beneath the bandages, and it soothed him in a strange sort of way, the familiarity of the sensation. “Alexander was wrong,” he said quietly. “He didn’t know you, and what he said was to hurt you. Why is it so easy for you to believe someone like him, Wren, when you can’t ever seem to believe me?”
Something like anger bubbled beneath the surface, and his voice became a low hiss, making up in tone what he lacked in volume. “What I saw didn’t change the way I see you. Nothing can, and nothing will. I know exactly what you are, and it’s not what you think. It never has been. You just can’t see it, and it’s not because I’m too fucking good,” he snapped. “I see the truth. You don’t. I just thought you knew me too well to think I’d ever look at you like Alexander did, or any of those other men, but I guess I was wrong.” He took a deep, deep breath before continuing. “How I feel about you hasn’t changed. Why do you assume so much all the time, Wren? Why?” Maybe it wasn’t a fair question, but none of this felt fair, and he hated the constant feeling of having done something wrong without realizing it.
She watched his hands, and not his face. She watched his fingers press into the white of the bandages in the room's near darkness, and her head tipped just a little as she frowned. She began to open her mouth to tell him to stop, but his no in the darkness, something about the tone of it, made her stay quiet until he began to falter with his words. "I wouldn't be-? I wouldn't think-?" she urged, honestly unsure of where those sentences were meant to end. She watched his fingers flex as he looked away, that same expression from before crossing her face, concern and hurt and confusion. His question about believing Alexander, though, that she did have a ready answer for. "Because it's what I believe about myself," she explained quietly, though she could sense that old frustration behind his words, and it made her own words not reach above a whisper, one that barely crossed the mattress to bridge the space between them. "I don't see me like you do, just like you don't see yourself like I do."
The anger and hiss made her sit back, sit up, reclaim any distance she'd lost during the whispering. She shook her head as she spoke, and she looked down when he snapped, and this was New York, and oh, god, she just wanted to run out of this room. She started to do just that. She stood, and the movement was too quick to be anything other than fleeing, anything other than finding her feet to run away from the things he was saying, to the way the room felt, to the feeling of never, ever being able to make him understand in a way that was okay. She even took a step, maybe two, toward the door. But then she stopped herself, forced her bare toes to sink into the carpet as she listened for sounds from beyond the door, for Jack or Gus, but all she heard was a low whine from Finch, and she breathed deeply and forced herself to turn.
She rounded the bed, walked around to his side, where she could stand in front of him without raising her voice. Her hands were shaking, and the trembling climbed up her arms to her shoulders, which had gone from bowed to something taut and fragile and bound to shatter at any moment. "It changed something," she managed, and maybe it wasn't a very good start, but it was a start. "What you saw, it changed something, because I'm the same person I was last month, Luke, but what you see when you look at me isn't." She looked toward the slight light the open window provided, trying to keep the sobs that threatened at bay. "I never said you thought I was a whore, or that you thought I was a slut, or that you looked at me like those men did. You're putting those words in my mouth. I said that when you looked at me you thought of what you'd seen, and that it changed things for you, and it has. Maybe I don't understand how, but I'm not in your head, Luke. You see the truth? No, you don't. Because I don't care about what happened with any of those men. None of it bothers me, and that's probably worse than whatever horrible things you're imagining I felt then." She shrugged her shoulders, a touch of hysteria in the movement. "Don't you see? I've been doing that since I was thirteen, since before even, since my maman's clients came and sat in the living room to wait for their appointments when I was a little girl. Leaving New York didn't make me do anything I wasn't already doing before leaving Seattle, and that I hadn't already done. You can't blame yourself for that part of me, and I can't make it go away. Other girls learned to play with dolls, and I learned to play with men, and it's something broken in me that I just can't fix." She shook her head, the tears flowing freely now, but a touch of angry heat there as well. "I'm not assuming that something's different. Something is," she repeated, and she reached down and tugged at his fingers, the ones digging into the bandages. "Don't." Quieter, pleading.
Her questions just made him shake his head harder, the movement becoming more frantic, as though he could just shut everything out if he tried hard enough. The flex of his fingers, tighten and release, became deliberate, slower, and Luke ground his teeth together to keep from hissing in pain. “Doesn’t matter,” he muttered, the whisper making it difficult to discern whether he was talking to himself or to her, and he let out a choked sort of laugh when she said it was what she believed, the things Alexander said, the sound entirely without humor. Of course. She’d never seen herself like he saw her, not back in Seattle, not now, and he was an idiot to think that could ever change. “No, you don’t. Neither do I. We both see different things when we look in the mirror, and when we look at each other. Too bad we can’t trade, huh? Make it all the same.” But that just wasn’t possible. No matter how much time passed, or how much progress he made, he would never be the boy he’d once been, the boy who didn’t know how to hate himself, never mind turn a knife against his own body because of that hatred.
He saw her movements for what they were, the instinctual speed that heralded her escape, and his expression changed as she took a step towards the door. There, in the dark, he became the boy from New York again, angry and bitter, when loneliness and despair and heartache hardened into something feral. Go on, he wanted to scream at her. Leave. You’ve done it before, do it again. Prove that everything you’ve ever said is a lie. It was a defense mechanism, a way to cope, pushing people away before they had the chance to hurt him, and this... this hurt. He curled his hands into fists, and his eyes burned something fierce as he waited for her to run away, to leave, for what remained between them to shatter completely.
But she didn’t leave. She turned instead, which he wasn’t expecting, no more than he was expecting her to come around the bed and stand in front of him. Luke looked up at her, the bitterness dissolving into something young and surprised, just for a moment, before her voice chased it away. “You might as well have,” he protested, not waiting for her to finish. “You’re pretty much implying it, Wren, because you keep saying I don’t see what I used to when I look at you. And yeah, you don’t understand how, and I don’t think you’re even trying to, because you won’t listen, and you won’t believe anything I say.” He stopped short when she said she didn’t care about what had happened with those men, that didn’t bother her, and no, he didn’t see. How could he? “I care,” he said, voice quiet. “I care, Wren. I’m never going to be okay with what happened to you, and it’s not because it changed my opinion of you, or how I feel, but because that’s how it works when you love someone. What hurts them hurts you. Look at me and tell me what I did to myself, with the knives and the scars, doesn’t bother you,” he challenged. “Tell me you don’t think about it. Does it matter, me saying that I don’t care, that sliding a knife into my skin meant nothing? Tell me you don’t think about me killing people, about what I’ve done. But it doesn’t mean you don’t want me anymore, does it?” He took a deep, deep breath, matching her angry heat with a fair dose of his own. “I need to move on. That’s my problem. I’ve spent five years in the past, Wren, dwelling on it, and seeing what I saw, it made it harder. It was like... like all that progress I made in putting the past behind me was gone, and now I have to start all over. That’s what’s different. Not the way I feel about you, because that hasn’t changed, and don’t you dare tell me I don’t want you anymore, because I do,” he told her fiercely. “That hasn’t changed either.” He barely felt the tug to his fingers, and it was only her quiet plea that made his fists loosen, just a little, at least enough to keep him from causing more damage to himself.
That choked laughter, the jaded tone of his voice, it was completely foreign to her. He'd never sounded like that when they were kids, and she'd only heard hints of it before this conversation, something that said he could sound like that maybe, if she pushed instead of retreating. Maybe it had been there in New York too, the beginnings of it, a shadow in the corner of a dingy apartment that had never been warm enough. "Trading would just make us worse," she said, as if his statement had been entirely earnest, and not sarcastic at all. "It's important, that we don't believe that about each other, because sometimes we do get through to one another," she admitted. "Maybe not always, maybe not even a lot, but when I'm with you I feel like maybe I'm more," she admitted, but it was all quiet and muttered, and then he was protesting, and she went quiet and tried to listen, tried not to interrupt. "You agreed it was different now!" she insisted halfway through, unable to hold her tongue and keep quiet. She shook her head when he asked about the knives, about hurting himself, and she crowded forward until her legs pressed against his knees. She could see the line of scars then, close like she was, the ones she'd missed. The moonlight through the window seemed to highlight them, make them taunting things she'd caused, and she couldn't look away from them for a second. "It's different," she whispered. "It's different. I caused that. I left. Me." She looked up then, an intentional drag of damp eyes. "And, yes, it worries me. You worry me. I'm worried about you," she admitted, because she was. Never, not in any of her wildest nightmares and terrors, had she thought she could lose him to himself.
When he mentioned killing people, she closed the tiny bit of space that was left between them, her fingers coming up to cover his mouth, as if Gus and Jack and the world would hear. "I don't think about that," she hissed, more anger in that sentence than in anything she'd said about herself. "I worry you'll get caught, but I don't think about it when I look at you," she countered, thinking that made it perfectly clear why it was different, why the two situations were nothing at all the same. "And nothing could make me not want you anymore," she added, angry and loud and not really caring if her voice carried. "I can't breathe without you, and sometimes I can't breathe around you, and nothing else matters more than you, this, Gus." And it was true. She knew perfectly well that he could cross the street and kill someone, and she'd still be there when he got back. She'd argued morality with him a thousand times when they were teenagers, and her argument there still stood. She would know it was wrong, and she would be terrified he would get caught, but it wouldn't be enough to run her off. She was still there, wasn't she? After everything?
She went quiet when he said he needed to move on, those magic words taking her from angry to shock and still. She knew she was standing too close, her knees between his now and her hand somewhere near his shoulder, but she couldn't move for a second. It was like having the wind knocked out of you, but without the bending over and the gasping for air. "I was talking to Jack," she said, not explaining the segue right away, and not explaining the near-nothing quiet of her voice. "I was telling him that I was worried you'd- That I worried I was bad for you." She shook her head before he could argue, before he could insist he wasn't. "Listen," she said, fingers on his lips. "I don't want- I don't want to be something that makes you worse." Her voice rose, knowing he would argue. "And don't say I don't. Don't you even say that, because this isn't good outweighing bad, Luke. This is bad outweighing good, and I know it drives you crazy, but I care more about you being okay, than I care about me being able to breathe. Don't you see?" She paused, and she moved her hand from his shoulder. "That past you need to move on from? That's me."
Luke looked at her when she said trading wouldn’t work, trying to discern whether she’d completely missed his sarcasm or simply chose to ignore it. “I know,” he said simply. “I’d never look at you like I look at myself, Wren. Nothing in this world is capable of making me feel like that about you. I wasn’t-- I didn’t actually mean we should trade,” he added, for clarification. “You’re the only one who makes me want to be better. Really makes me want it, I mean.” He scowled when she interrupted, even though he’d done the same to her, and shook his head again. “Not like you think, damn it. You don’t understand!” He was repeating that a lot, he realized, and he caught himself too late, lowering his voice, after casting a quick glance towards the door to make sure they wouldn’t be interrupted. Nothing. Gus was a fairly sound sleeper these days, and even if Jack was awake, he doubted the other man would try to interfere. His breath caught in his throat when she crowded forward, and the closeness almost made him whimper, but he bit his tongue before the sound could escape his lips. She was all he wanted, and why, why, couldn’t she just see that? He shook his head when she said it was different, over and over, wordless protest before he spoke. “That’s not fair,” he whispered. “That’s not fucking fair, Wren. You can’t tell me not to blame myself, and then go and do the exact opposite. I made my own choices, and trust me, Thomas fucked me up more than you ever could have.” That was, really, the sad truth. He’d allowed himself to become so dependant on the other man that his betrayal was the end of everything, and he’d reacted terribly; if Thomas had just accepted him, just showed him he cared, Wren’s abandonment might not have destroyed him on its own. “I worry about you too,” he countered. “It goes both ways, remember?”
Her views on the people he’d killed, on the fact that he was capable of murder, was something he thought he might never understand. For a long moment he said nothing, his lips still and closed beneath her fingers, trying to find something to say in response to the fact that she didn’t think about what he’d done. “You still think about it,” he said finally. “I don’t think about what I saw every time I look at you, damn it, I’m just saying-- there are some things you can’t forget, but that doesn’t have to mean what you think it does!” His voice rose again, not as loud as hers, but close, and he cursed under his breath as he realized they were going to wake someone up at this rate. “Don’t get mad at me,” he hissed. “You have no right, not when you don’t believe me when I tell you the same thing, that nothing could make me not want you anymore. You and Gus mean everything to me, and you should know that by now. You should know that,” he repeated, a hint of hurt there. Yes, she was still here, even though anyone else would have been long gone, but that didn’t mean she was more entitled to feel things than he was.
His first thought when she went quiet and still was that talking about needing to move on was the wrong thing to say. She misunderstood everything else, after all, and she’d probably misunderstood this too, and he closed his eyes in a brief, fleeting show of dismay. Luke began to speak, to explain himself, but she beat him to it, and he forced himself to keep quiet while she spoke. It wasn’t easy, though, and he tried to protest despite her fingers pressing against his lips, because everything she was saying was wrong. It was so, so wrong, and he couldn’t believe she was actually suggesting what he thought she was suggesting. “No,” he managed, once she was done. “No. No. You’re not bad for me, and you don’t make me worse. I’m not going to sit here and agree with you when you’re wrong, Wren. Just.. stop. Stop, okay? And this time, you listen,” he said, forgetting about the bandages and the sting in favor of taking hold of her shoulders with sudden intensity. “The past I need to move on from, it isn’t you. It’s Thomas, and it’s the years I gave him, that chunk of my life, and it’s my anger. It’s everything I did, the person I became, and using knives on myself to deal with the pain. You leaving me, you not telling me about Gus, and what happened to you because I wasn’t there; I need to move on from that too. But not you. I need you, and you and Gus are the only things that make me want to keep fighting, and if you-- if you want to break up, if you don’t want to be with me anymore, you might as well just kill me now, because I can’t-- I can’t--” He broke off with a sharp, ragged breath, forgetting all about her reluctance to touch him and burying his face against her shoulder.
She should lock the door, she knew. She should move away from him, and she should lock the door, and she should drag him into the bathroom where the extra set of walls would do something to silence the sounds coming from the room. But moving away wasn't something she was strong enough to do, not when he was yelling and angry, and not when it had taken nearly everything she had to close the space between them in the first place. Moving meant running and, for once, she wasn't going to run. But all thought of that disappeared the moment he mentioned Thomas' name. Wren had enough anger, enough hatred, enough blame toward Thomas to fill five lifetimes, and Luke's confession didn't lessen any of it. Her expression hardened a moment, grey eyes darkening in the lightless room. "Thomas was wrong," she said with perfectly clear conviction. "I saw what happened, and he was wrong," she said, and there wasn't a hint of doubt in her voice. Luke's reaction, the path he took after, that hadn't been right, but Thomas had been wrong to begin with, and he'd set Luke down that path with his wrong choice. "I was wrong too," she admitted a second later, quieter, but no less angry. She had been. Going, leaving had been the wrong choice. She'd ended up doing more harm than good, in the end, to everyone. "I'm allowed to blame myself for that. You didn't leave, you didn't go, you didn't make me go, you didn't throw me out or break-up with me. You don't have anything to blame yourself for, Luke. Nothing. We weren't talking much, and we weren't doing well, but that was both of us, not just you."
She had a chance to take a breath before he interrupted again, and she knew there was no way these thin walls were keeping this all in, but she didn't really care just then. "Then what does it mean, Luke?! I don't know," she admitted. She didn't. "Do you want to be together and not have sex? I said we could do that. I offered to do that," she said, frustrated. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew this was better than the silence they tiptoed over when they didn't understand each other, but that didn't make it any easier just then, standing in that darkened room. She shook her head when he mentioned her and Gus being everything to him, the movement speeding up with the repetition. "I know you love me- us. I know that. I never said you didn't. I would have run out that door by now if I didn't know that," she said mournfully, and that would have been so much easier in so many way, so familiar.
But everything had changed since New York, and running and being alone wasn't something she thought she could do again. Back then, she'd thought she could brave it. She'd been alone most of her life, and she could make the sacrifice and do it again. She'd been so stupid then, so very, very stupid. She was half listening, half cursing her own idiocy when he grabbed her shoulders, and her gaze snapped right back to his face. There wasn't any fear there, not even a hint of a wince. She'd never been afraid of him, not that he would hurt her, and she was even less afraid now, if that was possible. She began to interrupt him, to tell him that whatever it was would be okay, because just the expression on his face made her feel like the world was shattering around her. "No," she began, but it wasn't even sound, not really, and before she knew it his head was on her shoulder and his breathing was sharp edges and ragged pain. "Luke," she managed after a second, after she found her voice around all the cracking it tried to do. "Luke?" One of her arms went around his back, and the other twined in his hair, cradled his head. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm not. I don't want to break up with you. I wouldn't- couldn't. Hey," she whispered, pressing her lips to his temple. "Look at me?" It was a request, but there was a certain amount of force behind it, even though it never raised above a whisper.