mk robinson wants to be a star. (hitjackpot) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-11-01 07:52:00 |
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Adam was done. The cold that Flash had given them both was making him say things the second they manifested off the top of his head, even if they barely made sense or he knew they’d hurt Maddie K. Part of him didn’t care, part of him really wanted to hurt her. He knew he wasn’t the perfect boyfriend, but she was just a mess and insisted on constantly making his life difficult and too complicated for its own good. He just wanted to work at the clinic and come home to something quiet and simple. That was never going to happen with Maddie K. In a flurry of jackets, shirts and pants, he started stuffing his suitcase full of clothes. She could live at the apartment until she found a better place, but until then he was going to leave. “Nothing to say, Flash?” Adam asked out loud, voice hoarse from coughing. Nope. Nothing. Flash normally wanted to get his two cents in, especially when it came to the doc’s love life, but after being lectured that morning for making out with Mary Jane, he had nothing to say. “Mad, because of what I said?” Adam’s fingers were shaking, all that sorrow and pain he had tried to suppress finally surfacing. “Don’t you get it? Neither of us are ever going to be Peter Parker. Mary Jane might like attention, might even fall in love with you, but you’re not going to be as good as him.” He threw in more jackets, stuffing the piles of clothes in before pushing all his weight down on the top so he could zip it up. “Learnt that the hard way. Don’t want you to end up like me.” Don’t say that, doc. Flash finally said, quietly. And, it made Adam laugh. A cold, rattling, robot laugh. His second suitcase was meant for the essential comic books to keep Flash and Gwen well read, files for his medical licenses and various DVDs he liked to watch when he was upset. He realized one of his favorite ties was missing, so he started to pull open all the bedroom drawers. In a bottom one designated for MK’s use, he found a box he wasn’t familiar with. Pulling it out, he took the top open to find a small array of VHS tapes with Maddie Kate’s name on them. The fuck is that? Flash asked, teenager curiosity stumbling forward. Adam didn’t know. Invading her privacy was a pretty moot point now, but he needed to know what else she could be possibly hiding from him. So, he went into the front room, popped a tape in and sat on the couch. What he saw next was probably one of the worst things he had ever witnessed. He had nightmares about what Alexander had done to Maddie Kate, but to actually see it. To hear her muffled screams and pleading to just end it all. Adam’s expression changed to something horrified. Doc that’s the middle of the tape. Flash was suddenly wide awake. She’s watched these. Fuck, she’s SAVED them. And, that’s when Adam got mad. He grabbed the remote and threw it across the room, knocking over a statue of Green Lantern with a crash. MK was furious beyond comprehension after her conversation with Adam. Sure, she had avoided him after learning about what really happened at the party, but that was besides the point. He wasn’t around, was he? Not when she needed him most. She had looked for him at the apartment, called up the clinic, done whatever before stumbling through the door that night, still high as a kite, to look for him. She wanted to do what Sam told her to -- to remind him of why they started all this mess in the first place. To fuck his brains out and rock his world and make him fall in love with her all over again. That was what they needed, the two of them: a reminder of everything. But, instead, Flash got a coked out Mary Jane, and all MK got was a fierce withdrawal, a deeper depression, and a fucking lecture from her so-called boyfriend. MJ got everything she was supposed to get, and MK just suffered the consequences. As usual. He didn’t realize how much she needed him around her, how sane his physical presence made her. When he was absent for whatever means, that was when she really rocked towards the edge, teetered closer and closer and closer to the brink. No, he didn’t realize it, even if he claimed to know her. No one knew her anymore, not really. (Or, really, did they ever?) That was the decision she came to as her fingers drummed rapidly against the steering wheel of her car while driving from the market to her shared (for now) apartment with Adam. This was it, she could tell already. They were done. He was blatantly flirting with some other woman right as he was fighting with her on the same forum post. Wasn’t that just the same thing that she had done? Maybe even worse? A friend. Sure, fine, whatever. No one knew her anymore, or no one cared. That much was obvious. Adam certainly didn’t want to deal with her issues any longer. Wren probably loathed her after the party, which she probably also deserved. Luke just wanted to patch things up with Wren. No one cared whether she wanted to live or die anymore, and no one knew the maelstrom of dark thoughts brewing in her head. She’d take the razor to her arms tonight again, and maybe she’d finish off that bottle of percs she had tucked away in her bag with that flask of bourbon. The anger was worse than the numbness, that much was sure, and she just wanted not to feel again. She walked up the stairs to their apartment to give herself as much time away from Adam as possible. She was expecting his cold exterior and icy frowns and clear-eyed disappointment. She was expecting him to rip her apart, but in his special cold-hearted way. What she wasn’t expecting while she walked up to their front door was to hear a loud crash. She fumbled with her keys as she tried to open the door as quickly as possible and practically dropped the grocery bags at the front door. “Adam!” she shouted, rushing towards where she heard the sound. “Are you okay?” And, just like that, Flash was gone. Lost behind a black, liquid curtain. Adam knew Venom as well as the next comic book nerd and had done a decent job at keeping the alien at bay, but that was only because up until right now he could keep it all in. He didn’t tell Venom his desires, didn’t give into power trips. Had no anger towards anyone behind the Marvel door. But, now. With Adam in control and both Flash and Venom watching everything fall apart, it was starting to get to him. He could feel that razor sharp smile in the back of his head. Just waiting. “Get away from me.” Adam’s voice filled with anger, disgust and a little bit of fear. He pushed himself to the farther side of the couch and looked at her, the noises of her own pain, fear and crying emitting from the television. “You never wanted to get better.” His eyes were wide and accusing. “How many times did you watch these? Huh? How long were you going to wait before you told me?” That cold robot was gone, replaced with something that almost seemed so young and naive. He wore the doctor thing so well, but under all the stuffy coldness was a kid who never really knew how to grow up. Who thought things worked out like they did in comic books, even if happiness wasn’t ever really in the cards for him. Oh, fuck. With a thud, she let the bags drop where they were and walked towards the loud sounds of crying and pleading. She recognized the recording’s sound before she even wheeled into the living room, and when she appeared before Adam, she was visibly pale, eyes wide as saucers. Maddie Kate, MJ said, not really aware of what was going on. MK had been good about keeping the younger redhead out of the loop about certain things, lest she let Flash know about it. What the hell is going on here? MK shook her head to rid herself of the teenager. Root of all of her problems she was. “I didn’t--” But the words couldn’t form in her mind, let alone past her lips, and she felt like she was choking on an apology she didn’t mean very much. No, she wasn’t sorry about keeping them. No one was really concerned, were they? All she had was the tapes and her pills and that glistening razor hidden away in their bathroom. “I want to get better,” she said quietly, still. Maybe she didn’t want to fix it one hundred percent, but that was mostly because she didn’t know how to fix it all the way. She was never really all together to begin with, and each and every single blow just emphasized the crack more and more. Everyone was more wrapped up with her own problems to try to really fix hers. He fumbled to his feet and went straight for the television, turning it off after a couple tries with his shaky hands. Whatever grace the doctor was known for having was replaced by a stumbling awkwardness that seemed so unnatural for him. Adam knelt on the floor, coughed loudly and hoarsely into his arm and then visibly tried to get a grip on the situation. Being sick really was making this whole thing a lot worse. He couldn’t keep any of it in. All his feelings were just spilling out before he could stop them. “Why didn’t you tell me!” Adam asked again, loud as ever. His normally gentle, smooth voice now raspy and broken. He looked up at her, hurt, really hurt. The kind he was good at keeping to himself ever since his parents adopted him away and then went for the VCR. Adam pounded his hand on the eject button and tore the tape out, holding it in his hand for a second while he tried to think of what he was going to do with it. Destroying it would be good for her and it’d scratch that black tar itch in the back of his brain, but if she wanted to hold onto these and not him? Then maybe he should just let her. The coughing concerned her, and she found herself inching closer as he approached the television. The television that still mercilessly played back her attack. Each second of begging and each tear slipping down her bruised cheeks playing on the screen, they were like daggers in her chest. Having Adam see what happened to her, now that was what made the panic ripple up and down her body. She could feel herself hyperventilating, throat and chest painful in fear, even as she approached him while he knelt on the floor. But his shouting stopped her cold in her tracks, and she looked at him with intermingling fear and eye watering. She was close enough to reach for the tape in his hand, but she didn’t. Instead, she wrapped her arms around herself, one hand at her throat to measure out her breaths. In and out, in and out. She didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to explain it, and all that came out of her was a weak Adam before she knelt down, too. All dizzy and weak-kneed and unable to practically breathe. She wanted to reach out to him, or maybe to the tape, and her hand moved towards him for a moment before she aborted the whole thing completely. She still knelt, and she still looked at him, and she still could barely breathe. But, she didn’t say a word, not yet. He’d scare it out of her eventually. Adam flipped the tape on the palm of his hand, refusing to look at her as she silently knelt to the ground. He was furious in a way he could explain. All his nerves were alight, his mind moving at light speed as it tried to come up for an explanation for her. “Let me tell you what I wanted.” Adam said quietly, thumbs digging into the edges of the black tape. “I wanted us to just be happy.” Pronouns. Adam was so mad he was using pronouns. “I wanted all those fears and hurt from Seattle to leave us alone. I thought, I really thought we could make it better. That maybe we were meant to be together and I’m not just some-” He coughed again, gasping for air as he staggered to his feet. Adam couldn’t be anywhere near her. She made his head spin. Made everything hurt a lot more than it needed to. “But, I’m not the right man for you, am I? I’m never going to be him and that’s why we keep fighting. That’s why you kept it from me. That’s why I can’t stand to be home when you’re high or drunk. Why couldn’t you just stay away from me? Why did you let me fall in love when you knew it’d never work out?” MK watched him pull himself to his feet as she still knelt on the floor, neck craning up to look at the tall man above her. “I want all of that, too,” she replied just as quietly, weakly even. And in the present tense. Want. In the now. She couldn’t think of it in the past, not as she kneeled there in the apartment. She bit down hard on her quivering lip, and she had to swallow hard to quell a shaky sob threatening to slip out. This couldn’t be happening. After months and months, this couldn’t be happening. She took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut as if she was hiding away from all of this. As if all of this was just some bad nightmare that she would snap herself out of. But it wasn’t. She could still feel her heart hammering inside of her chest. Her fingers dug into her throat. She couldn’t believe this was happening. “I didn’t let you do anything,” she started shakily, eyes still closed and still on the floor. She felt weak, tired, and like nothing at all. Maybe she did let him fall for her. Maybe she could have been selfless and save him from herself. “I fell in love with you, too, you know. This isn’t all just you, Adam.” Her eyes finally snapped open, and she looked up at him with reddening green eyes, full of hurt and desperation. She stood up and made a grab for the tape. “You wanna know why I kept it? Because everyone else forgot. It was like once I got home, everything was wrapped up in some tight little bow for everyone else. Except me. Wren and Luke moved on, Simon isn’t even here anymore. You, you just practically disappeared. Everyone was fucking done. But I didn’t forget, I’ll never forget.” She ran a shaky hand through her thick red hair. “It’s like a fucking terrible nightmare waking up every day, breathing, being alive. It’s not real sometimes. And I have to fucking remind myself that this is a reality. It’s a fucking reality, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.” “You have to move on.” Adam snapped, as if he didn’t understand how hard it was to escape something like what she had been through. He thought he understood, he had been through some of the worst lows after his friend died, but it wasn’t anything compared to what she experienced. He saw the grab for the tape and he tossed it at her feet, nearly sneering that she’d be so protective of something that didn’t do anything but drag her down. “It’s Seattle. It’s these tapes. You’ll never let go of your scars. You need them to get away with how selfish you want to be.” Adam didn’t mean that last part, it hallowed in his voice to prove it, but he still tried to pretend she was the selfish one here. He ran his hand through his blonde, messy hair, sighing as he tried to calm himself down. He was still angry, but it was mostly hurt shining through now. “I spend so much time at work and I keep things so neat and clean because that’s what I need to survive. I don’t- tell anyone, but I always thought it was so obvious. I need everything to be a certain way or they fall apart. I can’t have a mess, you understand? And, being in love with you is just-” He looked at her and shrugged. “A mess.” MK pressed her foot on top of the tape when Adam tossed it over as if to protect it from any further attempts on his part. But after a moment, she kicked it to the side, sending it skidding across the room until it hit the wall with a faint crack. “You say it like I can wave a fucking wand and be better, Adam. This isn’t one of those comics where people just forget the fucked up shit that happens an issue later. This is real life. No crazy scientists, no clones, no alien symbiotes. Just fucked up people getting into fucked up situations.” She wanted someone to understand what was going on; she wanted him to understand. “I was kidnapped, and I was held captive, and I was raped and assaulted for DAYS! You don’t just get over that, and fuck you for thinking that I can.” Everything hurt, but nothing hurt more than him saying it was a mess loving her. She bit down hard on her cheek, but the tears were already welling up. She let out a choked out sob before she rubbed against her eyes. “Sorry, then, that I made you fall in love with me, and that I’m such a disaster.” Her voice was thick and full of betrayal. Of all people, she never wanted to hear that from him, not when she already lost Wren this week. “Sorry you think I’m the selfish one here. No, you’re not selfish at all, are you? You’re the fucking patron saint of the downtrodden, hiding away in your clinic and doing god knows what with that Olive woman. You’re the wronged one, and I’m just the fucking stupid whore who can’t get over her issues. That’s what you really want to say right? Go ahead, say everything that you really want. You might as well.” And, like that. Flash was back. Somehow the teenager managed to break through Venom, just to tell Adam to get the fuck out of there. He didn’t know a whole lot about adult relationships or worlds that didn’t have robots and laser fights (that all seemed pretty normal to him), but he did know when shit wasn’t going to get better. He knew when there really wasn’t anything left to salvage. Doc, get the fuck out of there now. Flash said suddenly, firmly, like he was pulling Adam out of a fist fight. Helping Adam was just one part of it, he really just didn’t want to know what happened when the doc lost control. If it was anything like MK, they’d all be fucked. Adam could barely hear the teenager, head pounding with shock that she’d talk to him like that. He deserved it after everything he said to her, but in the heat of the moment that was lost. He grinded his teeth back and forth before shrugging, angrily. “I don’t have anything to say to you except get out of my way.” They were done. They were beyond over. He went around the couch, standing a couple feet away from her, which was all he could really take at this point. “I don’t ever want to see you again. Understand?” He was trying to get back that coldness, but it just came off as hurt and tired. She couldn’t suspect that Flash was the one that stopped Adam. MJ, in her mind, was just a ball of raging fury, causing anger to pulse through her entire body. The teenager couldn’t believe how heartless the robotic doctor was being to a woman he apparently loved. MK, however, couldn’t focus on whatever feelings the younger redhead had about it all. No, all she could feel was the betrayal and the physical hurt of Adam’s words. She stood stock-still in the middle of the living room when he walked away from her, glaring daggers as her eyes followed his movements. This couldn’t be happening. She couldn’t believe it. She wanted to pinch herself, but instead, she set her mouth into a tight line. “Is that what you really want?” she asked, voice cracking in betrayal of how fucking hurt she felt. She could feel her heart racing and the breath catch in her chest, and oh god, was this really happening. “Fine.” She stormed over to where her purse was and wrestled out her keys. Fumbling for a moment, she took off the keys for the front door of the building and the door to Adam’s apartment. “You’ll never see me again,” she murmured as she looked at the keys in her hands for a moment. There was a moment’s hesitation, and she looked up at the man she loved so much it frightened her, and she threw the keys across the room so hard they cracked one of the pots of the small plants she brought in. She didn’t think of grabbing any of her belongings, or throwing more things at him (which she really wanted to do). She just grabbed her bag up and turned out of the room. Adam winced when she threw the keys and the second she stomped out of the room he teetered back into a coughing fit. What did he just do? How could have possibly let this all go just because he wasn’t strong enough for the both of them? When she was there he just wanted her gone, but the second she left it felt like his entire house was flipped upside down. Crouching to the floor slowly so he could sit and lean against the back of the couch, he gave another bout of wheezing coughs before closing his eyes and waiting for her to come back. Just to yell at him some more or say she was sorry. That’s all it took before to make things right, so why wasn’t going to work this time? He rubbed his face, now wet with tears he didn’t even know were there until he could feel them between his fingertips and sighed. “Don’t want to see your stuff, either.” Adam whispered to himself after he was sure she was gone. He’d have to pack it up for her and send it to Luke and that process alone could possibly kill him. What other people did he have in his life that understood? He couldn’t have a breakdown in front of any of them but MK. But, then it occurred to him. She left behind her things, sure, but that also included a pretty substantial collection of painkillers, antidepressants and just about anything else he could dream up. Don’t do it doc. Flash warned, but Adam didn’t listen to high school bullies for advice. He got to his feet, searching the couch cousins until he found a bottle of something or other. He didn’t even read the label. Just twisted the cap off and dumped three pills into the palm of his hand. “Trick or Treat.” |