Who: Will and Evie What: A quiet night together Where: Their place When: Um... forever ago? Pre-plot, pre-Red getting injured. Warnings/Rating: Mental issues. Talk of self-esteem and such things. Tame but angsty.
When it seemed like Will needed space, Evie had to fight her instincts to smother him and did her best to do what made him comfortable. She knew what he wanted but she wasn’t entirely sure that smothering him would be helpful. So she tread carefully, it was something she hadn’t had to do very often in their relationship, but despite all evidence to the contrary she was good at reading social cues. She knew he was going through some shit, she respected that, and truthfully she had no idea how to make that better for him. She tried, and sometimes she thought it even worked. But for the most part she did what she could to keep everyone, including Red, as happy as possible.
It wasn’t all terrible all the time, but sometimes it was harder than Evie thought it needed to be. The nights she spent alone were those occasions. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand, she did, she really did. She just thought it was complete shit. She didn’t like sleeping alone and there was nothing really worse than sleeping alone when you felt alone. And when you felt alone when there was the person you loved most in the world being miserable in the other room it didn’t make anything better. But she had to sleep, and she couldn’t fight him (or Red) every single minute of every single day. There were other things to do and she cared about all of them almost as much as she cared about Will, but fighting never fixed anything. They just needed something to click, and this particular night, as uncomfortable and as cold as it was, she needed to sleep. It was a half sleep, but it counted, the lamp on her nightstand was still on and her book was on the floor, but sleep had eventually showed up well before Will would - she had been pretty sure it was another night alone but she had tried to wait.
The last thing Will wanted to need was space. He wanted to need no space at all, to be able to lay skin to skin with his Evie, to hold her so close that he lost track of where he ended. Red had made that nearly impossible since he’d arrived in Vegas, and anything more than that was well off the table as well. Every time he’d tried to get close, the comments and shouting began in his mind again, and it was hard to get his body to do much of anything under the onslaught of mental abuse. But since Red’s last time through the door, the girl had been awfully quiet. He knew that someone had pulled up old memories, trauma that the girl rarely allowed herself to think about, and the reminder had sent her almost silent. There had been one instance earlier in the evening, a passing comment causing her usual sort of abuse, and he’d fled to what had become “his” room. But that had been it. Now she was still there, a presence in his mind, but it felt detached, like maybe she was giving them both space.
It was a reprieve, and he wasn’t going to question it.
Feet bare and silent, he walked the reverse path back to the master bedroom, where he knew Evie was doing her best to get some sleep, the tired shadows under her eyes rivaling his own. He knew he should let her to her rest, but if Red was being quiet... it wasn’t something he could pass up. The door was well-made, didn’t squeak at all when he pushed it open, and the thick rug on the floor muffled his steps. There was just enough light for him to see how exhausted she looked, but he slipped the covers back with a careful hand just enough that he could settle in next to her. He paused, waiting for the usual barrage of words and anger from Red, but nothing came. He tried to cover the grateful little sound that escaped as a sob, and suddenly not caring if he woke Evie or not, put arms almost too desperately tight around her waist, somehow managing to end up with his face pressed below her chin, breathing unsteadily against her chest.
Evie’s eyes opened when she felt Will get into bed with her and she moved her arms around him breathing a sigh of relief when he actually touched her. She didn’t mind that he was holding on tightly, she was just glad he was here. She ran her hand through his hair for a moment while he caught his breath. “Hi,” she said softly. “Okay?”
“She’s quiet,” was the only thing he said, murmured against Evie’s shoulder, lips moving against the soft skin there. He inhaled deeply, having missed the scent of being so close to her, and held his breath for a long moment before pushing out another shaky exhale. He tipped his head down, pushing his head into her fingers like an attention-hungry pet, his eyes shut with the pleasure of feeling her gentle fingers. Another desperate, almost broken, sound escaped his throat. After so long of Evie being his one point of physical contact, to not touch her in the past weeks had been torture, and the return of it was so sweet that he barely knew how to deal with it.
Evie smiled softly and scooted down from where she was propped up in bed so she could look at him more closely and she leaned her forehead against his. “We’ll figure her out, and she’ll figure you out. It’s not always going to be like this,” she said trying to sound as hopeful as possible. She did believe it, but she didn’t know how to fix it either and that was driving her crazy. What good was she if she wasn’t fixing everything?
Will breathed in the breath she exhaled, just glad that he was able to stay close without feeling the need to run away for her own protection. “She’s still angry,” he couldn’t help whispering, even though he wanted to forget Red in that moment. “But she... ‘s been dealing with her memories lately. It’s made her quieter.” Quiet for a minute, he turned to press a kiss to her cheek. “Don’t want to talk about that right now. She’s quiet. There’s time for us...”
Of course she was still angry, anger was the least easy thing to let go of. It was easy to forget how to be happy, but it was never easy how to forget being angry or hurt. Evie wasn’t surprised, but if they were going to figure this out they all had to take that into consideration. Her brain was still going a mile a minute, wanting the quiet time to be a good chance to talk and work things out. And make him listen to her about everything she’d been wanting to tell him. But she knew when to keep her loud brain on the inside. And if he just wanted to be able to find comfort in the fact that they could lie here and be together then she wouldn’t take that away from him. She smiled at him, a genuine one, one to hopefully cheer him up, “I like time for us,” she said softly. “I’ve missed you.”
He returned her smile and kissed her again, right at the corner of her mouth. “Missed you too,” he whispered, intense enough to betray everything he’d been feeling. He went quiet again for a moment, just looking at her, soaking up being close to her again, but he finally sighed and pushed a piece of her hair back behind her ear. “You’re thinking. Loudly.” A touch to the curve of her ear, a careful press of his thumb to the corner of her eye, fingers laid across the side of her neck. All brief and light, like he couldn’t stop touching her, remapping her in his mind. While the comfort of being near her could easily slide into something more heated, that look behind Evie’s smile meant something more. And he was willing to accept simply being close to her, even if his body might be wanting more. With the arm that was still locked tightly around her, he rolled just enough to pull her to lay on top of him. Both his hand moved to rest heavily on her lower back, and he sighed, her weight grounding him into the mattress. “I can listen when she’s being quiet. ...Talk?”
Evie shifted a bit and shifted with him, her smiled turning a bit sheepish when he called her out on thinking loudly. It was a bad habit of hers. She could talk. She didn’t want to argue so she put her finger gently on his lips and nodded. “Then you listen,” she said softly. “I miss you when you’re gone, when you’re on the other side of the door, but I deal with it because I have to leave too. And I respect her need to be on the other side. But when you’re here and you’re still not actually here? That has to stop. You have to be stronger than her when you’re here. I don’t want to ask for the impossible, Will. But I’d give you the impossible so I need you to at least try,” she said seriously. She didn’t want to sound too harsh, but it was serious to her, and it scared her. She didn’t want to be scared of the one thing in her life that consistently made sense. “You have to listen to me when she’s quiet, but especially when she’s not. You need to be stronger than her. You have to do that for me. You listen to me, there’s not room in this bed for all three of us. We can find an agreement - I know we can - but you can’t let her wear you down anymore. From here on out, you don’t believe a word she says. I don’t care if she tells you you’re a tall lanky brunette with lots of scruff. You tell her you’re a clean cut blondie with skin like a baby’s ass. You don’t believe her anymore. You don’t let some other person come into our lives and knock down everything I picked up when I first brought you home. That’s not fair to me, and it’s not fair to you. We don’t go backwards around here.”
Will pressed a kiss to the fingers that laid over his lips, but he remained silent at her request (command) and listened to her. His eyes went sad and worried at her honesty, but he let her continue, even though the words were not easy to handle. He let her finish, and then he reached up to take her hand, kiss her fingers again, kiss the inside of her wrist, and then he sighed against the soft skin there. His eyes were troubled enough when he spoke, full of guilt and worry but also with so much much love for her. He knew Red was tearing them apart - it was hard not to notice when there were days he could barely be in the same room without worrying about hurting Evie, when he could only sleep in the same bed once or twice a week. “It’s not fair,” he finally replied. “I know. It’s...” He paused, closing his eyes and searching for something that wouldn’t sound like an excuse, but nothing came. So he offered the excuses. “It’s hard to remember when she’s always there though. Saying things that I’ve always thought, only now there’s someone else saying it. All the time.” Opening his eyes again, he looked at Evie. Despite everything else he’d done, she was there. She was his and he was hers and she was right; he couldn’t let everything they were crumble because of this. “I’ll try harder. I think... I think she’s calming down? Things are happening to her that are... making her think. Hopefully it’ll help.” He went quiet, arms firmly around her again, and his voice slipped into a whisper. “I miss you too, you know.”
Evie smiled softly and leaned in to kiss his forehead, “Try to remember, you can’t think those things because when someone else starts saying them you’ll think they’re true. And you can’t think they’re true, you’re better than what you think you are. Neither of us are perfect, we’ve known that since day one. But you’re not wrong, Will. There’s nothing wrong with you. We’re all guilty of making bad decisions and doing the wrong thing sometimes, but you are not wrong. She’s wrong, she’s taking your thoughts and beliefs and making them worse. You have to change your thoughts in order for this to work. Her calming down is only part of the equation, baby. The other part is that it’s time for you to start believing good things about yourself.”
She grinned and her hands moved gently over his arms and squeezed his shoulders, she didn’t want every moment they had to be foggy with badness, and full of apologies and worries. They’d been there, done that, bought the tee shirt, and things had been different. She wanted her life back, but more important she wanted Will to have his life back. Everyone deserved to be able to let go of the bad and have some good. She’d have to work on Red later, but she’d spent six years working on Will and to see him backsliding worried her. “I love you and I’m never going to be afraid of you. But that doesn’t stop me from being afraid for you. We need each other, maybe we’re not supposed to because we’re supposed to be these great independent beings that live our lives, but my life doesn’t fit right in the world without you.”
He stayed quiet through her words, trying to believe them, trying to push his own doubt away. It wasn’t easy. It never had been and recently it was just worse. But she was there for him, and had been through the worst he could imagine. He tried to weigh Red’s anger and influence against the different times he’d spent in rehab, how hard it had been to work through his own demons then. It was different now, in ways he couldn’t deny, but the fight was just as difficult. He tried to relax his shoulders into Evie’s touch, closing his eyes again. His words dipped to a whisper, but aching and sincere.
“I do need you. ...I don’t fit right without you either.” His arms wrapped tightly around her, he ducked his face against her shoulder. In that moment, he wanted to figure out a way to crawl his way inside of her and hide and never leave. He knew it was a cowardly thought, but he couldn’t help the desire. “I’ll try. Everything. Maybe she’ll calm down too and we can actually... deal with it.” Maybe he didn’t quite believe it yet, but he was going to do his best to get there.