[Captain] Jas. Hughes (jashughes) wrote in fableless, @ 2016-09-27 17:43:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! log/thread, jason hughes, jess aldrick |
WHO: Jason Hughes & Jess Aldrick
WHEN: Spring 2006; Summer 2010; Fall 2012; Winter 2014.
WHERE: A classroom in England; an office at Woodsbridge Academy; a home after dinner; a home after goodbye.
SUMMARY: I Could Never Rescue You/Goodbye Until Tomorrow Four key moments in the history of a failed marriage.
WARNINGS: Brief discussions of Shakespeare’s self-harming characters; many mentions of alcohol; harrowing sadness. Also it's long.
Summer 2010. The road to a professorship is a grueling one; though in this, Jess is luckier than most. She only applied to one school, after all, rather than a dozen, given that Woodsbridge is the only choice. Her husband is here, her life is here, and she doesn’t really have a back-up plan. And so she’s been nervous, just really incredibly nervous, not only through the writings and the interviews and the meetings and the additional interviews, but even more so in the silence of waiting afterward. Because if she doesn’t get this… Well. She can probably still get a job at the on-campus bookstore, right? Except she doesn’t have to. She doesn’t have to because she got it, and she bursts through the door into Jason’s office without bothering to knock for once in her life, not caring if there’s a student in there or not. “Jas! Jas, I did it!” she calls, laughing and ecstatic. He has been troubled of late; one of his students is causing more distress than any in his career, and it’s been taking its toll on him. In another class, one of his Talemates has surfaced--yet desperate as he is to find his famous rival, he cannot bring himself to admit his origins to the bright-eyed child in his afternoon lecture. Through all this, he worries for Jess--she deserves this job, he knows, but will his own position in Woodsbridge present too large a conflict of interest for the higher-ups to accept? Will they have to leave, if he is standing in the way of her success here? He is startled from his thoughts by the arrival of the very subject of his worries: Jess, bursting suddenly through the door, interrupting his only quiet moment of the day. Were it anyone else, he might be annoyed; for her, however, he is prepared to make an exception. He tucks the Scotch back into his drawer and grins, in the stupid sort of dazed way he always feels when she laughs. “Are you going to tell me what you ‘did’, or would you like me to guess?” If Jess notices the Scotch, she is willing to ignore it for the moment; normally, she might scold him for drinking in the middle of the day, in his office, at work, but now...well. Now, she’s too happy to fight. “Guess!” she invites, beaming. “Now you have to guess.” Not that it will be hard; it’s no secret what she’s been fixated on for weeks now, for months. No secret that the one thing that might make her this happy is the job. If he could learn how to bottle the way it feels to see her shining so brightly, he would never need anything else in this world. Maybe that promise is what makes liquor distilleries so rich. He laces his fingers and leans back in his chair, swiveling side to side in playful contemplation. "You've won the lottery and you're taking me to Jamaica?" he suggests hopefully. “Noooo,” Jess replies, drawing the word out playfully and moving to perch on the edge of Jason’s desk, swinging her feet over- careful not to hit anything- to rest on her husband’s chair between his legs where they’re sprawled out. “Maybe next summer. Maybe we could afford it! Guess again.” “Hmmmmm…” He ponders aloud, wrapping his hands around the backs of her legs and tugging his chair a little closer to her. “Someone in Hollywood’s finally worked out how gorgeous my wife is and they’ve offered her the next Bond film, and you're taking me to Jamaica next summer when filming wraps?” “You want me to be a Bond girl?” There’s more than a hint of incredulity in the question, but after a moment’s consideration Jess shrugs it off. Far be it from her to judge her husband’s tastes in femme fatales. “I had no idea you were so obsessed with Jamaica. One more try!” "The world's best rum is in Jamaica, darling,” he teases with a wink. But he smiles, knowing he probably already has the answer, but enjoying prolonging her excitement. “Goodness...let's see… I just can't possibly think of what it might be….” He kisses at her knees, appearing deep in thought. “I’ve got it: you've found a way to go back in time and save the lost Library of Alexandria, preventing the worst disaster in the history of the known world.” “Jason!” Jess cries, kicking very gently at his ribs, just enough to goad him. “No! I got the job, Jason, I'm a professor!” She swings her legs around, back over the desk, and hops lightly down so that she can dance around the room, her glee unlessened by her husband's insistence on being difficult. The grin hovering at the corners of his mouth overtakes his face. “Jess, that’s fantastic!” He’s known for ages this was coming--his wife is too smart for them to ever have turned down--but his joy on her behalf still overwhelms him, pushing him from his chair and toward her with an ecstatic hug. “Here, yes? With me?” He grins even bigger. “My amazing wife is going to be my colleague?!” “Of course here with you!” Jess replies, batting at his arm in retaliation even as she lets him hug her, and she’s laughing. “Here with you was the only option! Now you’re supposed to tell me you knew it all along, you never doubted for a second, all of that. Go on, tell me.” Not that she actually thinks Jason doubted. Still, it will be nice to hear it. “Of course I knew,” he insists, squeezing her shoulders. “My wife is the smartest person I know--they’d all have to be to be morons NOT to’ve given you the job.” He kisses at her forehead, heart brimming with pride. “I think this calls for a celebration.” Swiftly, he moves to the desk, opens the locked side cabinet, and pulls out a bottle of fancy-looking wine. “I’ve been saving this for a special occasion--I do believe this qualifies, don’t you?” The fact that Jason has booze in his office- more booze in his office, another bottle of something alcoholic in a drawer, damn- it scares Jess a little. It does, but the joy is bigger than the fear, the joy is hard to eclipse, and anyway, it’s just wine. It’s not like it’s a second bottle of Scotch, or vodka, or anything worse than wine, the type of thing you celebrate with. The type of thing you save for a special occasion. And this is a special occasion. She beams at her husband, uncertainty flitting away like a leaf on the breeze under the onslaught of her happiness, her pride, his happiness and his pride in her. “It certainly does,” she agrees, lifting her chin like it’s defiance, though she’s grinning and bouncing a little on the balls of her feet, so excited. “That’s a brilliant idea. And then we’ll see if we can think of any other ways to celebrate.” Fall 2012 Kylie’s visits always put her brother in a better mood. It kills him that she lives so far away--though he certainly understands her reasons for wanting to go back to England for school--and though he tries his best not to be needy about it, it always sets his mind at ease to see her in person and know that she is doing alright. He’s been down a fair bit lately--his job, perhaps, is at the root of it, though he knows somewhere in his heart that it’s not the only thing wrong--but Kylie always succeeds at cheering him up. She has other friends to see this evening, so he does his best not to give her too much trouble as she leaves after dinner, but the familiar pang of hurt echoes through his chest as he clears away the dishes so Jess won’t have to. “Is this what it is to have children of your own?” he asks, scrubbing at a stubborn baking pan. “Is it always constantly worrying when you can’t see them and then being sad when you do see them and then they have to leave again?” Jess comes up behind Jason to put her arms around his waist as he scrubs, trying to cheer him up the best way she can under the circumstances. Well. Maybe not the best way, or not what he might think is best, but on this subject she won’t budge. She knows what he’s hinting at. “She’s happy,” she points out, smiling at the thought of the younger woman’s cheerful chatter. “And we’ll see her again come the holidays. Anyway, this is why they invented Skype, Jas.” She stretches up to ruffle his hair with one hand and place a kiss on his cheek, and then moves away to pick up a dish towel. “Skype’s not the same,” he protests, finally knocking the offending bit of grease loose. He doesn’t trust technology and he never has; he prefers to think of it as a charming quirk, rather than a sign that he was rapidly being made obsolete by the world around him. “Always feels a bit lonelier when she leaves. Emptier.” His tone is delicate, conversational. “Don’t you agree?” “The house is quieter, yes,” Jess agrees, wary of the minefield she can sense coming. “But quiet can be nice, and neither of us would get half as much work done without it. Besides, it makes when she is here more of a treat.” She takes the pan from him and dries it deliberately, not looking at him, willing the confrontation away. Even he--a man some have often accused of being shamefully oblivious to the feelings of people around him--can feel how thick the air has become with tension. He doesn't wish to make her uncomfortable. But he feels compelled, still, to ask. “Things are--more settled now, aren't they?” he begins. “With work--for both of us. Our positions are both secure. It’s all going very well--very stable. I thought… I know before, there were some...concerns… But perhaps now that things are--you know, a bit more sure, maybe we...could talk about--just the possibility, perhaps, of...a family?” The answer is no. The answer has been no before, and it is again, and Jess doesn't want to have to say it. It's not that she hasn't wanted a family. Children. She's daydreamed about it, sure, in a far-off, hazy sort of way. In a ‘someday’ sort of way. But today isn't someday, and she's not sure it ever will. She does not want to explore why, no even inside her own mind and in silence. Still not looking up, she shrugs, vague. “I don't think the time is right, Jason,” she says, voice gentle. It's such a shit answer, and she knows it, too, but what else can she say when she's not going to say ‘yes?’ He already knows where this conversation ends. It always ends in the same place. It always feels like carefully pulling out the stitches on an old wound, one at a time, and always leaves his heart bleeding. But still, in spite of himself, he pushes onward. “Okay,” he says carefully. “But you said that before the job, before we moved back--and I understand, the time has to be right for you, but...what will make the time right? What needs to happen?” “I don’t know,” Jess says, too sharply. She’s frustrated, because it’s true; she’s frustrated, because it’s a lie. Deep down, she knows. But it’s not a thing she can just say, because when she does… “You don’t even like children,” she points out instead, turning to arch a brow at her husband. “In fact, you used to spend quite a lot of time talking about how anyone under the age of twenty-five is the bane of your existence.” “Not our children,” he says quietly, a little stung. “Spoiled rich children who don't pay attention in school. Ours wouldn't be that.” Yes, his hatred of a select few students has been widely publicized...but the idea that she would think he hated all children… Well. That suggests something he has been wondering for months--a question to which he has slowly become sure he knows the answer, but which hearing confirmed might destroy him. He has avoided asking, for that reason...but he can't hold himself back any longer. “Is...it me?” Well, there it is. Jess winces, visibly, and that is confirmation in itself, she knows. She hasn’t been lying to Jason, per se; all of her other reasons (excuses) have been valid. It’s just that they’ve all been silly compared to the truth. “Jason,” she says delicately, turning toward him now that she can’t avoid it, “you’re wonderful. You know I adore you. I just…” A pause, a delicately bitten lower lip. “I have a hard time imagining you as a father,” she finishes, gently. There. In all his years of asking about children, her answers have always prompted the tiny prickle in the back of his brain--the one that warns him he is not being told the full story, even if it isn't technically a lie. But not this one. His cursed sixth sense sits still in his brain. It is his heart, instead, that he feels, and the awful sensation of it rending itself in two. Some of his students have called him ‘heartless.’ He wonders what they would think if they knew how slowly and neatly it was breaking. “Because...of who I am? Or...because of who I was?” He turns back to her; the sight of her only makes it worse. “Because if that’s it--those are two different people, Jess. There's the man in the book, and then there's me, and we’re not the same. You know that. Right?” It’s meant to be an assertion. It comes out more like a plea. She can see that she hurt him, see it in his face and in his eyes and in the way he holds himself, like he’s holding himself up, and it’s not what she wanted. She didn’t want to hurt him. She didn’t want to have this conversation. Anger flares in her chest, because he forced it. “It’s the drinking, Jason,” she says flatly, lifting her chin, defiant with that anger. “Maybe it’s him, maybe that’s part of it, but mostly it’s you. It’s the drinking.” Bottles in his office, weekday evenings at the bar, drinks with dinner and nightcaps, and it’s all right if it’s just him and just her. But she’s not bringing a child into the home of an alcoholic. An alcoholic who doesn’t like children. Whose past self spent his life hunting them, in a way that echoes in all of his complaints about the students he’s never been able to stand. The dagger in his chest twists a little harder, the pain of years of carefully-ignored secrets spilling out and flooding his entire self with despair. This was what she really thought of him? Whatever promises they’d made to each other, when they were younger and the world didn't weigh so much, this was what it has become. A million venomous answers spring to mind--his drinking is none of her business, he doesn't even need it, he DOES need it but it's not that bad, it dulls his powers, it dulls his senses, it makes it easier not to care so much, it's easier to have a drink than admit he is a fundamentally broken human being, it's cheaper than therapy, it keeps the howling wolves of depression at bay without ever having to admit they're there, it puts his bullying mind at ease and makes it easier to sleep at night, it makes everything just a little easier to bear--but the sight of her angry destroys his resolve, and the myriad of barbed excuses dies in his throat. On this one thing, he cannot bring himself to fight her. He looks away. “I can change,” he mutters, voice feeble. “If...if that were all, I… Could learn...to be better, for you. For them.” And even in his desperation to believe it, the tiring little sensor blinks in the darkness of his mind: Lie. Lie. Lie. Jess can see it in his profile- maybe because of his profile, the way he won’t look at her as he says it- that he’s lying. It doesn’t take any special powers to see that, though damn, does she wish her own would work on herself, because it only makes her angrier to see. How dare he? How dare he lie about this, of all things? How dare he try to trick her into changing her mind? “Prove it,” she says, stepping closer, eyes cold as she moves to get into his line of vision. “Do it. Change. Do better, be better, make it last, Jason, can you do that? Can you?” The last time he remembers feeling this trapped, it was just before a wicked child kicked him off his own ship and fed him to a crocodile. Then, as now, he knew he’d already lost before the end truly came; and then, as now, the only comfort would come in knowing his defeat would require dragging his opponent to his level first. “I don't know, Jess. Can I?” His tone turns cold, his glare wounded but suddenly full of one final fight. “Do you believe that I can? Do you WANT to believe that I can? How long would be enough for you? A day, a week--a lifetime? Will you believe then? Will that be enough for you? ...will I? Why do you stay, if that's really what you think if me?” “Because I love you,” Jess snaps drawing herself up to her full height. It isn’t a romantic declaration by any means, but it is passionate; there can be no doubting that she means it. “You asshole, I love you, in spite of all of it, so of course I stay!” She takes a deep breath, steadying herself, the flame of anger banking into embers; they could flare into life again at a breath, but in the interim she can spare a hint of compassion. “I love you,” she says again, softer. “But I’m not bringing a child into it. I’m not going to be that selfish.” The tiny flame fueling his own will to battle dies, as if a sharp winter wind has whipped through the broken shell of his heart and blown it out, leaving his sorrows to drain through the cracks with no anger left to keep them warm. If only he could take it back--if he could, he would go back and stop himself from ever having this conversation. Let them be content in this, let him just accept that this is their life and there’s nothing wrong with it only ever being the two of them. That would be okay, wouldn’t it? But the damage has been done. However much she may love him, or however much he may love her, how can he ever unknow these things? He shakes his head, looks away, reaches for the dish towel to dry his hands. “Perhaps it was selfish of me to bring you into it from the start.” He sets the towel down and rubs at his eyes. “I love you. And… I’m sorry. I… I think I should go to bed. Early day tomorrow, department meeting and all…” Part of Jess wants to protest, wants to fan the flames and whip up the tempest again. Letting it consume them, letting it transform them into something else, that would be better than...than this. This quiet resignation, this lack of resolution, this knowledge that something has gone rotten at its core. Wouldn’t it? But that has never been her way, and a bigger part of her wants to hold on and pretend that it will be all right, that none of this ever happened. So she nods. “That’s a good idea,” she agrees, looking away. “I’ll finish here.” As if she hasn’t already finished something here. Winter 2014 Jess stands outside the door, and holds her hand up, and doesn’t knock. No one could blame her for that, she thinks, which is all right, because there are plenty of other things to blame her for. Her lifetime’s quota of blame directed at her is probably about used up, and none of it has to do with her inability to knock on a stupid door. The thing is, she’s never had to knock, before. But now she does, she reminds herself firmly, and that is her fault. Hers, and hers alone, because you don’t cheat on a man and expect to get the apartment in the divorce. She can do this. She has to do this. She has to make herself do this. Anyway, Jason is expecting her. She’s not so dumb that she’s doing this without warning him first. He’s expecting her, and if she doesn’t hurry the fuck up he’s going to think she’s stood him up, and who knows what he’ll think then. That, or he’ll open the door without her knocking first, and then she will die of mortification, to be found unable to knock on the door of a place where, until very recently, she lived. Taking a deep, deep, deep, deep breath, Jess steels herself, and knocks. It echoes through the hallway like a thunderclap in an empty field. Jason winces; he’s been hoping all morning that maybe she forgot--or, better, chickened out--but no such luck. If she’d just done the decent thing and not shown up, he could go back to his hazy pretense that she was still here--her things were boxed because they’d just moved in, and she was just at another job interview and would come home later this evening and chatter warmly at him as she put them away, back on the shelves where they belonged. Their shelves. In their house. But she’s never knocked on the door of their house before. And she never will. Their house doesn’t exist anymore. He drags himself from the couch, his only real safe haven in this time of crisis, and unlocks the door. It requires one very deep, steadying breath to open it; when he does, he is immediately sorry for having done anything other than ignore her until she was forced to accept he wasn’t home and go away. “Jess.” He nods, curtly. With relief, he notices she’s come alone; her one final mercy, he supposes. “Good to see you.” It isn’t, of course, but isn’t that what people are supposed to say? What a polite lie; in the face of it, Jess can only nod, though she can’t echo the sentiment. Not when Jason will know it for the fiction it is. She can’t quite make herself do that. She’s behaved poorly enough, without lying through her teeth to him today. “Thank you for letting me come,” she says, as polite as he. The gratitude is genuine enough. “I’ll just...I’ll make this as quick as I can.” She doesn’t try to brush past him and into the house; that would assume an ownership of it that she can’t claim any longer. Jason shrugs. Perhaps if he pretends to be indifferent, he’ll start to actually feel that way. “Sure.” He steps to one side, staring at the floor. “Everything’s all...I was as careful as I could, with the fragile things and all. Should all be in there. You’re--you’re welcome to look and see if I missed anything. Some of this is…” He gestures around vaguely a the haggard remains of his home, where giant chunks are missing where her things used to be. “...hard to tell after so much time, yeah? So...if I’ve forgotten anything, there’s...a couple extra boxes, just there, you can use those.” Carefully, Jess steps past him and into the apartment, holding her own limbs tight against herself lest she accidentally brush him on her way by. It feels strange to do, strange and awkward and a little like pain: not to touch him, when touching him has been such a part of her life for so long. And strange, too, not to yell, when recently everything between them has been yelling. Yelling or cold silence, and the silence is worse. “Thank you,” she says, just as carefully, like she’s choosing her words from the dictionary of a language in which she’s not quite fluent. “That’s all...it’s very kind of you, Jason. I won’t be in your hair long.” She pauses, unsure, waiting for him to go back to his couch or retreat into another room, anywhere where she isn’t. Doing this, gathering her things to take them out of the home where she used to live, it feels too intimate to let him watch. He shuffles, torn by both the desire to run screaming from this place and leave her to finish the business of tearing away all that remains of nearly a decade of marriage and the all-consuming urge to reach out and pull her to him and convince her that this has all been a mistake and they should just forgive each other and move on with repairing the life they had built. Neither feels appropriate. Instead, he coughs a little and closes the door. “Can I...help at all, or...get you….anything? I...how are you, anyway?” It feels stupid even to ask...but pleasant conversation with the woman who’s leaving you isn't exactly his strong suit. What is she supposed to say to that? ‘I’m fine, very happy to be with someone who doesn’t start drinking at noon and get maudlin by three, how are you?’ No. Jess isn’t that cruel, at least not when she’s not pushed to her angriest point. And right now, she just feels sad. Sad and sort of heavy and displaced and maybe a little wistful, and God, she wishes she had asked him to leave the key under the matte and come over when he was out to do this. “Jason,” she says, gently as she can manage, which is very gently, “it’s fine. You don’t need to help me. You’ve done enough. I’m here because I’ve got to take the stuff, and sending someone else to get it seemed...seemed insulting, I suppose. You don’t have to endure me while I do it.” If only she had it in her to be cruel--he would have prefered that. He could fight back against cruel. But no. She is kind and polite and still trying to spare his feelings, even as she prepares to break the final piece of his heart. “Funny,” he mutters ruefully, “that you should ever think I would think of you as something to ‘endure.’” With a shake of his head, he squares his shoulders and looks up at last. “Right then. I’ll just--be in my office. Prep work for next week, you know. Give us a shout if you need anything, eh?” He marches past her, almost wishing to catch a brush of her shoulder as he goes by, aching to be near her one final time before she goes away forever. It doesn't come...perhaps for the best. He must get used to walking past her and not being allowed to touch her. Memories of orchestrating afternoons to bump into each other on a sunny college campus flood his senses, almost staggering him as quietly closes the door to the room that could have been a nursery if he’d been better. He stares at his mountain of paperwork, determined to push those thoughts from his mind. Never again, he reminds himself. After this, they will only ever see each other by accident. Jess watches the door for a long time after it shuts. Maybe too long; she can’t force herself to move. She did this. She did it, knowingly and with her eyes open, and she had he reasons but she still did it. Funny, she’s always been aware, in the back of her mind, that Jason’s Tale is a villain, all the while forgetting that hers was far from a hero, in the end. After too much time has passed to really be healthy, she takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders, and goes to get the first box full of the things that have left gaps on the shelves of this house as empty as wounds. Jason sits in silence, looking hopelessly at his classwork as if that might have an answer for him. He longs for a drink--but today of all days, out of respect or perhaps defiance, he has chosen to wait, at least until she leaves. So instead, he puts his face in his hands, breathing to himself, as wave after wave of grief washes over him and threatens to carry him out to some foreign shore from which he might never return. He listens helplessly to the sound of his beautiful wife quietly and permanently disentangling her life from his. He remembers, suddenly, a seemingly ordinary day, so many years ago, where she sat in his classroom and set his heart aflame with her cleverness and flair in the late April sun. He wonders if she remembers. He has no power to ask. |