Bruce Wainright has (onerule) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-06-28 23:05:00 |
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Entry tags: | batman, catwoman |
Who: Luke and Wren
What: Talking. (1/2)
Where: Parking lot.
When: Recently, after this call.
Warnings/Rating: Angst.
It only took Wren a few minutes to get to the precinct. She was still in the car, since she'd decided it was easier to just pick Gus up from preschool after seeing Saint (and leaving the picture for Luke), and it was only Luke's text that had stopped her from picking Gus up early to spend the afternoon at the park.
The drive was quick, and it passed in the kind of blur that came with being too upset to stop thinking. She didn't notice the lights or the stops, and she didn't notice the pedestrians, either. All she could think about was what she'd done. All she could do was worry about what it would do to Luke, and she hated herself for it. She hated herself so very much. It had been selfish. It had been so selfish to push him, just because she needed things for herself. She never, ever did that, and she had no idea why she'd done it now. But it had left her shaking-sad, and it had left her sure that she was absolutely terrible for him. She'd known that, but he talked her out of it so often that she'd almost started to believe him. But not now. She had a past that was too terrible for him to deal with, and she'd always known that. She'd always known that her life wasn't something he could be okay with, and she'd tried so hard to keep all that to herself, bottled up. But she'd messed up, and she didn't know what to do.
Despite the drive being quick, she took a few minutes in an adjacent lot. She breathed, and she wiped the tears from her face and tried to hide any signs of them with makeup. She was still dressed in the slim, faded cream dress and chocolate flats that she'd worn to meet Saint, and she felt so uncomfortable in her own skin. Each time she thought about that photo, it made her stomach drop, and she hadn't ever felt that kind of shame or embarrassment in her life. Survival, for her, had come with never really feeling the things that happened to her, and she didn't know how to take that back now, how to reclaim that coping mechanism. She knew it was silly. She knew that, after a lifetime of doing things that no decent woman would ever think of, she shouldn't be ashamed of a picture in which she was fully dressed. But she was embarrassed, and she was ashamed.
And she was guilty. She was so, so very guilty.
After doing the best job that she could with her makeup, she drove the car into the precinct parking lot, looking for the carside number that would identify Luke's patrol car. Finding it, she pulled in beside him, and she cut the engine. Her fingers were wrapped so tightly around the steering wheel that they were bone-pale white, and she had to consciously think about prying her fingers away.
It was so typical of who they were, really, that while Wren was busy blaming herself, Luke was doing the exact same thing to himself.
He couldn’t trace the thought process that had led him to be honest. Somehow he’d arrived at that decision, but he didn’t know why, and in retrospect he should have known that Wren would take it badly. Of course she would think it was her fault if he gave even the slightest indication of having been negatively affected by the photograph. Of course she would think that she was the one who’d done something wrong. If he’d just been able to deal with her past like a normal fucking person, none of this would be happening. She wouldn’t be upset, and she wouldn’t be embarrassed. No wonder she felt like she had to pretend around him; who wanted to talk to someone so deep in denial? Why would she want to share her past with him when, like she’d said, he didn’t want to talk about it, or think about it, or be reminded of it? He kept claiming that wasn’t true, kept claiming he didn’t want her to keep things from him, but meanwhile he’d shut down her attempts at every turn. But it wasn’t just her past, it was his too. It was the past in general, all those years behind him that had been good to start with, but had then become so very, very bad. He’d lived in the past for so long; that much was true. But he’d just been living a lie when he managed to convince himself that he’d finally dealt with all of that and moved on. Wren had been right; he did pretend. He did act like he wanted to make it all disappear. He’d shoved everything away in a box, locked it up, and told himself he was fine. He was better. He’d dealt with his demons.
Denial, that was what he’d been living in. Deep, ugly denial, and Wren had suffered for it. She’d gone to Silver, because he’d pushed her away. She bottled everything up afterward, once the other man was gone, because she couldn’t talk to him. And now, when she did, when she tried, he went and made her feel guilty for it. God, he’d never hated himself as much as he did then. She’d accepted his past, and he couldn’t even do the same for her. He wanted to, he did, but he didn’t know how. He didn’t know what to do. He never had. Maybe it was impossible to forget the past, to forget what she’d gone through, to forget what he’d done to others and to himself, but he’d learned not to think about it. If he didn’t do that, if he didn’t discuss it, if he wasn’t reminded of it, then he could pretend. He could refuse to look back, even though he knew what was there.
Even seeing Thomas, the first real acknowledgement of his past since that drunken confession about his killing all those months ago, had been temporary. He’d come back to Vegas and put it behind him. And that, he knew now, was unhealthy. It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair to Wren. He had to-- he had to fix it. To find a way to really be okay, for himself and for her. Somehow, he did. He would.
But at that moment, Luke just needed to breathe. He needed to stop gasping for air like there wasn’t enough, and he needed to stop feeling like he was going to explode, like he wanted to tear himself apart. Time just had to slow down a little so he could calm down, so he could catch up. So he could think.
He wasn’t in his patrol car when Wren pulled up beside him. It had felt too crowded in there, and he needed air. He was still in uniform, slouched on the trunk, feet resting on the back bumper. His knees were bent, elbows resting upon them, and his fingers were wound painfully tight in his hair. He looked up when she cut the engine with an expression reminiscent of the lost little boy he’d been once, back in Seattle, expectant and just a little hopeful now that she was there, that she’d come. Because, whatever she might think, in his mind Wren only ever made things better, never worse.
She had no plan. She didn't have enough forethought for that. She'd never had very much forethought at all. She had no idea what to do, and no idea what to say. She did know that bringing up the past again wasn't something she was willing to do, not when it had done this. She bit her lip, rubbing at her steering-wheel numb fingers, and she unlocked the car door and opened it.
She'd seen him on the trunk one she'd parked, too focused on the identifying numbers on the patrol cars to notice at first. She'd expected him to be inside, to be safely tucked behind the steering wheel. She hated open places when she was scared or sad. She'd always hated them, ever since she'd been a little girl, when she'd hidden in her bedroom closet and tried to ignore the sounds of her maman's clients. And later, in Seattle, where she'd hidden in her closet often enough to keep a permanent set of pillows and blankets in there. It had been no surprise, to her at least, when she'd chosen to spend weeks hiding in a tent. She liked confined places when she was frightened, and it surprised her to see him on the trunk, out in the open. Not that she thought he was frightened exactly. But she knew it was something like it. She knew, too, that he needed someone healthy and whole. Someone who didn't have as many demons as he did. Someone who hadn't pushed him into the things he'd done.
She was guilty hesitation, as she stepped out of the car, taking longer than necessary to close the door, and scuffing her shoes against the parking lot pavement as she walked toward him. She was more little girl than woman, then, any confidence she owned lost somewhere in the midst of the day.
She stopped in front of him, bit-lip red and her hair obscuring her cheeks due to the downward tilt of her head. "Hi," she said, the tiny word rough against her throat. She reached out a tentative hand to touch her fingers to one of the hands he had clutch-tight in his hair, but her hand dropped away before ever making it there, her fingers curling in against her palm to keep herself from touching him.
Her expression was sad, haunted, and even the Vegas sun couldn't do anything for it. She was supremely aware of where they were, of the fact that she needed to act as normally as she could, because she didn't want to embarrass him if someone he knew came outside. She'd done enough for one day, without doing that too.
It was hard to keep still while he waited for her to come to him, but he managed, albeit just barely. His gaze followed her every movement, oblivious to everything else around them. It didn’t matter that the parking lot wasn’t exactly private, or that, while they were alone just then, that might not last. She might think he needed someone else, but she was wrong. He needed her, plain and simple, and he didn’t think he’d manage to recover if she decided to leave him again, Gus or no Gus.
“Hi,” he echoed, looking up at her when she stopped. Her expression made his chest ache, and he slowly unwound his fingers from his hair and dropped his hands when she pulled her hand back. “You can sit, if you want. Or we can sit in the back of the car.” He swallowed heavily, and he rubbed his palms against the fabric of his knees, and then he reached for her hands, fingers light and questioning against her wrists. “I know you don’t want me to apologize,” he said, “but I am sorry. I should be someone you can talk to, someone who won’t make you feel embarrassed about your past.” He took in a deep, shuddering breath, his gaze a mixture of sadness and wordless apology. “I can’t believe I didn’t see what I was doing. I just--” He cut himself off, shaking his head, and a second later he slid his fingers down from her wrists to her palms. “I’m rambling. Sorry.”
"Wherever you want," she said agreeably, demurring. Blonde hair or not, that was easy to fall back into, especially after so many more days apart than together recently. She watched him rub his hands against his knees, and then she watched the progression of his hands toward her. She didn't tug her wrists back, and there was a tensing in the tendons beneath the thin skin there that showed how much she had to fight to keep from reaching for him, to just let him touch, all without doing anything in return. She swayed a little onto the toes of her threadbare flats, forward the tiniest bit, then back again once she realized it. "You don't make me feel embarrassed about my past," she said quickly, because that wasn't it, not really. She was embarrassed because she'd shown him the picture, because she'd been foolish enough to think he'd want to see it. But he didn't make her feel guilty about the past; he only made her feel like she shouldn't mention it, like it was too bad to talk about. And, really, it was. "It was terrible, and no one wants to talk about terrible things. I understand. I forgot," she said. She'd forgotten how he'd reacted to her memories that one time, forgotten how it had almost torn him apart, and forgotten how it had torn them apart.
She shook her head when he apologized. "Don't. Please don't say you're sorry. You're normal. You're better. Normal people can't think of those things without being sick. It's you that's okay, and it's me that isn't. I always said that," she reminded him, and it was hard to finally understand that it was true, and maybe true in a way she hadn't realized, but it wasn't his fault, and she wasn't going to stand there and let him blame himself for something that was normal. She looked down at his fingers on her palms, that old feeling of sullying him back in spades, and she realized she hadn't felt that in a while, hadn't thought about it. Instead of saying anything, though, she took a small step forward, and then another, until the faded cream of her dress brushed along his dark work trousers. She was slow to wrap her arms around him, and she was tentative to tug him into a hug, but she wanted him to be okay. First, before anything else, she needed to know he was okay.
He just shrugged when she left the decision up to him, because it didn't matter, really, and he didn't have the energy to care about being in the open. The way she was so quick to agree, to not make the choice herself, reminded him of Seattle and how difficult it had been to get her to stop trying to placate him all the time, and he hated himself even more for having a hand in that old behavior resurfacing. He remained quiet when she insisted that he didn't make her feel embarrassed about her past, not quite believing that, but he shook his head afterward. "I made you feel like you couldn't talk about them, at least not with me," he said sadly. "I made you feel that way, and I didn't even see it. I was so-- so stupid." Blind and delusional worked too. He almost apologized again, it was on the tip of his tongue, but he managed to bite them back and swallow them down in time.
It was harder, though, not to immediately disagree with everything she said about him being normal and better, that he was okay and she wasn't. None of that was true, but he didn't say anything, not right away. He waited until she stepped forward, and he waited until her arms went around him. She might have been hesitant, but he wasn't; he slid his arms around her waist, and he shifted to part his knees, so he could tug her closer, and he buried his face against her as though seeking comfort. "I don't deal with things right," he admitted, a muffled confession. "I'm not normal, and I'm not better. I lie to myself, and I pretend, but that doesn't make any of it true. It just hurts you. You always thought too much of me," he said, tipping his head back to look up at her. "I love you for it, even if you are biased." He closed his eyes, and he took a deep, deep breath before reopening them. "I can't live in the past, but I can't deny it either, and I-- I've been doing that. I have. For five years I never stopped remembering and obsessing, but now-- now I don't look at pictures or think about things, and I thought that was okay, I thought that was good, but it wasn't. It wasn't," he repeated, voice beginning to waver. "Your past, and mine. That's why it's not your fault. I'm just-- a coward, I think. You're so much braver than me, Wren, and I--" He looked down again, throat tight. "I finally see that now."
"You didn't," she insisted, though not as forcefully as she'd come to insist things in recent months. "I could have said things. You wouldn't have told me no," she said, because that was true. He might have ignored, swept under the rug, lingered on the things she said only a second or two, but he wouldn't have told her no, not outright. When he said he was so stupid, she just shook her head. She shook her head hard enough that it made her temples hurt, but she didn't want to hear him say things like that about himself. And there were a lot of things she didn't think she should tell him, so this didn't stand out as anything special, not really. They'd never been very good at communicating. They'd gotten better, but she knew it had gotten worse in recent months. All the conversations about the house and her work, they weren't very good. It wasn't even that she was good at telling when things were off, or that she was good at looking for signs. But she knew when things felt like New York. She knew when she felt like New York, and the past two months had been more and more of that.
When he slid his arms around her waist and parted his knees, she moved against the vee of his thighs without even a little bit of hesitation. Her arms shifted to rest against his shoulders, and her fingers tangled in the ends of his hair for a second, before beginning a soothing drag through thick, brown tresses. "You are normal, and you are better. Good people can't deal with bad things very well. You've never been good with things that are cruel and wrong. They bother you. That's normal," she insisted. "It's not normal for me to be okay with everything," she said, and she carefully cut herself off, not clarifying what everything was. "I'm not braver. I just learned how to live in a different way since I was little. That's all. It's not really good. Not really," she explained, because that much was true. Little girls didn't learn not to care what men did to them; that wasn't normal. She almost told him that she was pretty sure she was a sociopath, but she didn't think that would make him feel better at all, and telling him wouldn't actually change anything. She'd already realized how bad she was for him; she didn't need to tell him that, not on top of it. Her fingers moved to cup his cheeks, and she kept his face tipped up, so that he couldn't look away. "You're not a coward. You've never, ever been a coward," she said, tear-swollen eyes serious. "You're a good, decent man. Before that, you were a good, decent boy. You're beautiful, Luke," she reminded him, fingers trembling against his cheeks.
Not telling her no, he knew now, wasn't the same as actually listening to what she had to say. It wasn't enough. "Maybe not," he admitted, "but I still wouldn't have wanted to hear it, and you'd know, and that would make you not want to tell me things anymore. I did that-- I do that, and I need to stop." In a lot of ways, New York had been different for him. He'd known things hadn't been good, but never in a million years had he thought they were bad enough that she'd rather leave than tell him the truth. He'd been blindsided by her abandonment then, and it made him even more afraid now that the same thing would happen, that he wouldn't see it coming, and he wouldn't be able to make her stay. Maybe he just clung harder to the belief that they could make it through anything, but he knew that, if it ever happened, she would be the one to leave him, and that single thought was absolutely terrifying. There had been a lot of bad, with Gotham and Thierry, but there was good too, and he never lost sight of that. Their relationship, and how much he loved her, were two things he didn't think he'd ever lose faith in.
"I'm not good," he whispered, the feel of her fingers in his hair doing wonders to soothe him. "I've done cruel, wrong things, Wren. It's just different when it's you. I love you too much to be okay with bad things happening to you, then and now. I've tried, but I can't. But I don't have to be okay with it to listen to you, or to talk about it." Maybe she was right, maybe it wasn't normal for her to be okay with her past, but he wasn't going to admit that. He shook his head, stubborn, because he thought she was brave despite her protests, even if she did have a point about how she'd been raised. "I just don't-- I don't want to make you feel like-- bad things happening to you doesn't make you bad," he explained. "I don't want you to think that, or to feel it." Because he remembered that she had, back in Seattle, and maybe some things never really went away. Her fingers on his cheeks kept him from looking down, and it kept him from shaking his head, even though he wanted to do both. Looking at her made it hard to keep his composure, and he tried to keep his breaths even, but he was fighting a losing battle. "You're always going to think I'm good and beautiful, and I'm always going to think the same about you, and we're never really going to believe each other," he said with a shaky smile. His fingers curved, finding purchase in the fabric of her dress and clinging.
"I don't want you having to listen to things you don't want to hear, Luke. That's not fair. That's putting what I need before what you need," she said. Even if she learned to become the most selfish woman in the world, she wouldn't do that. She couldn't; not with him. He'd been through so much, and doing this to him now felt even crueler because of it. If she could rewind the day, she would. But she couldn't. There was no going back and changing things, and she knew that better than anyone. She'd spent years wishing she could turn back time, and it hadn't gotten either of them anywhere. And maybe she needed to stop just wishing. Maybe she needed to be the strong one for once and save him, even if it hurt. She always let him talk her out of those thoughts, because she loved him so much that it was hard to breathe around him. She let him talk her out of going, of letting him find a life, because she wanted him to talk her out of it. Simply, she loved him, entirely and dependently and she was sure that her heart would stop without him. But she'd do it, if it was best for him. She would. She'd forgotten that recently. Forgotten that promise she'd made to herself all those years ago. Now, she remembered.
"You are good," she said, her words overlapping his denial. "I don't think I'm bad because of the things that happened to me," she said, and she believed it a little. She believed it more than she had when they were young, certainly. She worked with too many street girls now not to let a little of that belief carry over to herself. But she didn't talk to him about those things, either, and she bit her lip, not wanting to start doing it now. "I know," she said, dragging in a broken deep breath when his fingers lost themselves in the fabric of the thin dress that had seen better days, "that you love me, and I know that I love you, and I know that doesn't mean I'm the best thing for you." Her fingers strayed to his lips, pressure and pressing and silencing. They'd started this conversation so many times, and she wanted to actually make her way through to the end of it, this time, without him stopping her before she got where she needed to be. "I think you're a good, normal person. I think there's so much good in you, Luke, and I think me and Thomas, we messed you up so much because we didn't realize it like we should have. He shouldn't have made you do the things he did, because he should have realized you weren't like him, that you couldn't do it without shattering. And I should have realized that my life is too dark for you to be able to live with it. At the beginning, I knew that. I was so worried about corrupting you. But it's not just that. I know that now. I won't break you. I won't. Not more than I already have," she insisted, voice drowning in tears. And that was a hard realization, that she'd probably done as much damage to him as Thomas had done.
“But you’d do the same for me,” he protested. “You always put my needs before yours, Wren. Always. Even if I told you not to, you still would. I know you think my needs are more important, but I think yours are, and I want to put you first. I’d never put myself before you, not intentionally.” Because maybe he did, sometimes, without realizing it, but he’d never meant to. Maybe, like with the picture, he hadn’t tried hard enough. But he always went back and fixed his mistake once he was aware of it, even though he wasn’t so sure he could do that now. The damage was already done. Still, it was just a photograph. After everything they’d been through, the ups and the downs, surely something so small couldn’t be the one thing that changed everything, not when they’d survived so much worse.
He knew what this was, as soon as she started off with the I know you love me and I know I love you. The words were familiar, the start of a conversation he’d always managed to head off in the past because it brought with it a possible reality that he couldn’t actually comprehend. He might not have liked to be reminded of things, but he remembered the five years he’d spent without her very, very well, and he knew he couldn’t do it again. God help him, he couldn’t even do it for Gus. Maybe that made him weak, and maybe it made him a horrible father, but it was true. His immediate reaction was to stop her from going any further, to shove her fingers away from his lips and interrupt so he wouldn’t have to hear words he couldn’t accept. But he thought that, maybe, interrupting would be worse. Maybe he should just let her say what she wanted to say, so she could get it out, and they wouldn’t have to go through this again. So, despite how difficult it was to do so, he remained quiet, but he didn’t remain calm. No, the more she said, the less calm he became; panic constricted his lungs, tightened his throat, made it hard to breathe. Fear, too, an old thing that still lingered from her earlier abandonment, dug in its claws, and his fingers wound themselves so tightly in her dress that he couldn’t feel them anymore, all so they wouldn’t start shaking. He shook his head, because he couldn’t help it, even before she finished speaking. “You’re not like Thomas,” he insisted, his voice a shaky, wavering thing, and his eyes had already gone damp. “Don’t ever compare yourself to him. Don’t. You never pushed me to give more than I could. You never made me feel like I wasn’t good enough. You were one of the only people who accepted me for who I was, who never wanted me to be anything else. You still are.” He tried to take a deep breath, but he couldn’t; his chest was too tight.
“I know where this is going. I do. I know. And-- no, Wren. No. I can’t lose you. I won’t, not again. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. The very best, whether you believe it or not,” he told her, and there was firmness there, even in the unsteadiness. “I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone else. More than I ever will. I can’t-- the years I spent without you were the worst years of my life, and I can’t do that again. I won’t. I need you. I can’t live without you. I don’t want to.” He stood, then, sliding off the car’s trunk and cupping her face in his hands. “Your life isn’t too dark for me to live with. Don’t-- don’t say that. You’re not bad for me. You’re the one thing that makes me better.” He didn’t want to fall apart, he didn’t, and he was trying so hard not to, but blinking away the tears wasn’t working very well. One thing he wasn’t going to do, though, was give up. He wouldn’t just step back and let her leave out of some misguided, very wrong belief that he was better off without her. “You don’t want to break me? Then don’t leave me. Not again. Please.”
She knew he would never intentionally put himself first. He wasn't that person, and he would never, ever do that. And she didn't want him to. She wasn't comfortable being first. It was something as foreign as school and classrooms and being tucked into bed at night. She wouldn't know what to do with it; it had never been her life. And if he put himself first without realizing it, it had never bothered her. She knew he loved her, and she knew there were things that didn't surface, and she thought she'd realized all the implications of that years ago. If was why she'd left, wasn't it? Because she'd known it would be too much for him. She'd known that her baby, which she hadn't thought was his at the time, would be a perpetual reminder of something he couldn't, wouldn't want to remember. It might not have felt that stark and simple at the time, but that was it. She'd always known that was it. She hadn't wanted to break him. She'd thought he would be fine without her, better than he would be with the constant reminder of a past that involved her sleeping with other men. And, standing there, she remembered so many tiny instances of this intentional blindness, things she hadn't consciously noticed. But she'd known. She'd always known.
She was surprised he let her get the words out, that he let her finish. She felt the fingers tightening in the fabric of her dress, and she felt the almost-shaking along the length of his arms. Once she was done, she made soothing sounds and pressed her lips to his cheek. Breathe, she wanted to whisper. Just breathe through it, because that was the only way she was still standing. There was an unsteady sway against his inner thighs, reality and the magnitude of this conversation making it hard to remain upright. In her mind, the world was buckling knees and pain, but she wasn't going to crumble in front of him. He'd just feel worse, if she did. And she'd already made him feel bad enough. She'd already done enough damage to him. She tugged back a little when he said she wasn't like Thomas, and she began to shake her head almost immediately, denial. "I did. I asked for more than anyone could give, even if I didn't ask aloud," she told him, her voice sounding sad and distant. And she was afraid. She was so afraid. She'd been so selfish when it had come to him, and she was only just really realizing how much harm she'd done. "When we were little, I just wanted you to notice me so much," she said, voice shake and shudder. "I'd never wanted anyone to notice me before. I hated when they did, and you were the first person that I wanted to like me. It was selfish. It was. You didn't like me at first, and I could have left you alone and let you have a normal life. I could have let you have a good life," she said mournfully, not bothering with the tears streaming down her cheeks. Instead, she ran her thumb beneath one of his eyes, catching the dampness there. "I don't want you to be anything else," she added sadly. "I just want you to be happy, and I think maybe I took that away from you."
"You just think I am," she said of being the best thing that had happened to him. She didn't even bother trying not to cry, not anymore, and she forgot they were out in the open, in a parking lot where anyone could come by. "The years without me were bad because of Thomas, not because of me," she said, and though the words were hard to understand, they were still there, still made sense. She wanted to tell him that she didn't want to live without him either, that she didn't think she could. She knew herself well enough to know it wouldn't be any kind of life, but she wouldn't end it, not if she could watch from a distance. She'd done that with Gus, and she'd do it with him, if it was better for him. If there was a chance. "We could try," she managed, and it was so hard to say the words. "We could try, and we could see. Maybe if I'm here, maybe if I'm close, you'll be okay. I won't- There won't be anyone else. Maybe you could be happy."
The soothing sounds she made and the feel of her lips against his cheek weren’t enough to calm him down, not when they were talking about the one thing that could, potentially, break him for good. Had it been a different conversation, he would have been able to breathe and think, but now, now he couldn’t. He thought he might actually suffocate from fear and panic. He thought his body might just shut down without her. Maybe none of that was healthy, but it was true. He felt like if he held on tightly enough, if he didn’t let her go, then maybe she wouldn’t leave. Maybe she wouldn’t disappear, and he wouldn’t lose her again, and he wouldn’t let himself fall over the edge to a place he couldn’t come back from. “You didn’t,” he protested, desperate, pleading. “You never asked for anything. Never. Everything I gave to you, Wren, I gave because I wanted to. You never used that, not like Thomas did.” He’d taken advantage of his willingness to sacrifice, to do whatever the older man asked, but Wren never had. She was, maybe, the only person who even considered his needs over her own. “Wanting me to like you wasn’t selfish. It wasn’t. Don’t-- please, don’t. I always liked you, Wren. You were my best friend, and then you become more, and I was happy when that happened. I didn’t want you to leave me alone,” he said. “I loved you then, and I love you now. You didn’t keep me from having a good, normal life. You didn’t make things worse, dammit, you just made them better. When things were bad, I had you, and I--” He took a deep, shuddering breath, but his exhale was a shaky thing, that ended with a sob. “You do make me happy. You do. How could you ever think you don’t? How?” Her and Gus, they were the only things that made him smile these days, that made him laugh, that made him want to get up in the morning. And, as horrible as it might have sounded, he wasn’t sure that Gus could do that on his own. Not if she left. He’d loved her for too long to be able to move on from that.
He shook his head when she said he only thought she was, hard enough to bring on an aching headache. “No. No, no, no. You’re wrong. I know you are,” he whimpered. “I know you are, and no, you’re wrong, they weren’t bad because of Thomas. They were bad because I didn’t have you. Thomas wasn’t the one I dreamed about every night, Wren, and he wasn’t the one I missed so much I wanted to die. I could live without Thomas. I didn’t need him. But you, you I couldn’t live without.” It no longer mattered that they were in a parking lot, or that anyone could stumble upon the two of them falling to pieces. All that mattered was keeping her. He refused to let her leave, not when he could stop it this time. “We can’t. We can’t try, and we can’t see,” he insisted, not caring that the dampness in his eyes had spilled over onto his cheeks. “I won’t be okay without you, Wren. Having you so close, and not being with you-- it would kill me. Not being with you, no matter where you are, I can’t-- I won’t. No, I won’t do it. I can’t be happy without you, don’t you see?” His thumbs dragged against her cheeks, and he tipped her chin up to get her to look at him. “I love you, and you love me. You don’t want to leave me, I know you don’t, and I don’t want you to leave me either. Neither of us would be happy if you did. I might as well be dead without you,” he said simply, the words thick with tears. He looked down, and he found her fingers with his, lifting both hands up where she could see. “When I married you,” he said, so slowly, “I meant forever. You can’t ever get rid of me. I won’t let you.”