Rebekah MacKenzie (beckathesweet) wrote in rrinitiative, @ 2012-09-06 09:02:00 |
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Entry tags: | adam, adam and rebekah, day three, rebekah |
Ghosts from the past
Characters: Adam and Becka
Setting: His room, night
With Wu having left, Becka turned her attention back to her food, finishing it quickly since there wasn’t much left. And since Wu wasn’t there anymore, she couldn’t stop her gaze from flicking over to the bar, curious about what was going on. She’d also noticed Carmel come in, and then Dominic a little bit later, her eyebrows raising when he got a drink and then just pressed the glass to his face while he sat with Carmel. It was curious, but she’d ask him about it another time. She didn’t want to interrupt his conversation with Carmel. Her attention was drawn back to the bar, though, when she noticed Adam hurrying away. Her brows furrowed, and there a strong urge to follow and see what had upset him. Kyle was following after him, though, and so she pushed the urge away. She didn’t know how to define what had changed between her and Adam today, but she felt like it would be best to leave it alone right now, and having to clean up her dishes was a pretty good distraction to help with that whole not following after him right away thing.
That didn’t take long, though, and Becka was realizing that it was taking far more effort to avoid going after Adam than she cared to admit. It was just because she considered him a friend. Really, that had to be it, because she looked out for her friends and tried her best to be there for them. And why was she trying to convince herself of that when they’d already kissed and had both admitted to wanting that? She sighed, shaking her head at herself before leaving the kitchen, glancing up toward Adam’s bedroom just in time to see his door closing and Kyle walking away from the stairwell. She bit her lip as she walked past a row of rooms toward the stairwell, feeling ridiculous for being a little nervous about finding Adam. It was just the unknown, not knowing why he was upset or whether or not he would be happy to see her. She didn’t take her time, but nor did she rush, and when she reached his room, she lifted a hand to knock.
Adam was still leaning against the door when she knocked. He’d not made it much farther than inside his room, closing his eyes to lean back against the door, closing his eyes as he tried to sort through everything he’d just been through. It was hard, to focus on something other than the way that blush didn’t quite go away, about what Wren had said so plainly and what it being heard meant. Even if Kyle had his back, that didn’t quite fix things did it? It still left him out there exposed. Stop being the victim, Dom had said, but it wasn’t easy. Who he was was the victim. Everything about him screamed victim.
When she knocked he jumped out of his skin, pulling away to look at the door for a moment before opening it. “Hey.”
He looked... different, Becka decided when he opened the door. Upset, scattered, maybe even worried; she wasn’t really sure she could pinpoint what it was, but she didn’t like it. “Hey,” she replied softly, wishing that her small smile felt more normal. “Can I come in?” she asked, voice still soft though not quite a whisper. She wasn’t sure why she had that sudden insecurity, that worry that maybe he’d changed his mind about letting her stay with him tonight, something she wasn’t even completely sure was a good idea to begin with. It didn’t stop her from wanting to take him up on it, though.
He held the door for her, moving out of the way. “Yeah sure,” he told her not able to find a smile but trying to work on his breathing till it evened out more. “Didn’t know when you were coming by.”
When he held the door open more and moved out of the way, Becka stepped into his room and then just kind of leaned back against his desk and looked at him, one arm crossing over her torso to pick at the hem of her shirt. “Wasn’t sure when I was going to either, but...” she trailed off, pausing as she tried to figure out how to navigate things now. It had seemed much easier earlier while they were painting her room. “I saw you leave the bar, and... You didn’t seem very happy.”
Adam shut the door behind her, locking it and moving to sit on the couch. “I just didn’t want to be there anymore.” He was starting to feel the drink, not enough to be drunk, but enough to make him feel a little lighter than before. “I’m fine. Just conversation went a way I didn’t want to be a part of.”
Becka’s eyes followed him as he sat down, and she said, “Oh,” at the beginning of his explanation. She tilted her head when he continued, nodding slightly, accepting the explanation even if she got the feeling there was more to it than that. She pushed away from the desk and crossed to the couch, hesitating only briefly before sitting next to him, her legs tucked under her. She wasn’t really sure what to say, then, which was an awkward feeling for her. “I’m still gonna have to go back to my room for a couple things, probably,” she finally said.
He glanced over at her, watching her. “What do you need? You can borrow whatever you need,” he said. “Or I can go or something.” Adam was feeling useless and helping her probably wouldn’t hurt.
At his offer to borrow whatever she needed, Becka found herself smiling more naturally. “Well, considering I need my toothbrush, I don’t think that’s something that should be borrowed,” she said with a little laugh, feeling herself relaxing a bit. Whatever had upset Adam about that conversation didn’t need to make things awkward with them; she hoped it wouldn’t, anyway. “And I need something to sleep in, too.” Because jeans really weren’t comfortable to sleep in.
“I’m sure I can find you something to sleep in,” Adam pointed out, getting up after a moment to find her something. “And I bet you can skip a night brushing your teeth. I’m assuming you’ve not skipped a night in years so you shouldn’t do any real damage.” He pulled out a pair of boxers and a t-shirt, holding it out to her.
Becka crossed her arms over her chest and huffed jokingly at his comment. “Good dental hygiene isn’t a bad thing,” she said, trying not to laugh. She couldn’t say he was wrong, though. When he got her some of his clothes to sleep in, she found herself blushing faintly even as she reached out to take them. “Well, I guess you’re stuck with me for the night, then,” she teased him lightly and then motioned for him to come sit next to her again.
“No... but you’ve never slept anywhere but your own bed huh?” Adam asked moving to sit with her again even if there was still space between them. “Stuck is not the right word. If I was stuck I’d be sending you to bed and leaving to hide out in the activity room.”
Becka wrinkled her nose at him. “Sure I have. I’ve just never slept in a guy’s bed before,” she disagreed lightly. She’d slept at Lucy’s and she’d gone camping more times than she could count in which she’d slept in sleeping bags, but sleeping in a guy’s bed? Yeah, that was a first for her. While she hadn’t been fishing for a compliment, she could admit that she liked the way he responded to that. She smiled at him, biting her lip before asking, “Oh? So what is the right word, then?”
“Oh, never a guy’s bed,” Adam said with a nod. “You really didn’t do much before here, huh?” What was that like, not having memories like he did. Even the hungover ones were with friends, which made them valuable moments in his mind. Leaning back on the couch more Adam shrugged. “I don’t know...Pleased?”
Her smile dimmed at the question, and she looked at him curiously. “You mean with guys?” she specified. He already knew she was a virgin and had never slept in the same room as a guy that wasn’t family, so it kind of seemed like a redundant question to ask, but maybe he’d meant in general. “Pleased,” she repeated, smiling a little wider. She reached over to hold his hand, feeling silly for feeling a bit better for having the contact. “I like the sound of that.” Even if she was ignoring the way her cheeks were tinged pink.
“That...or with anything,” Adam said shrugging a little. When she took his hand he tried not to flinch, his mind slipping to Kyle touching his hand for that brief moment and distantly wondering what that had meant. The blush on her features brought him back, something close to a smile there. “Good.”
“I.... did a lot. I mean, just because I haven’t really done anything sexually,” God, her cheeks were never going to lose the flush with this conversation, “doesn’t mean I was like a hermit or something.” Lucy never would have let her just sit at home all the time doing nothing, and she’d enjoyed being active.
“Like what? What did you do?” he asked, watching her, head tilted slightly. The pink on her cheeks, while it might have been uncomfortable for her was putting him at ease, giving him a chance to feel better, feel less like the one suffering here and more in control. Control was rare, and it was something he needed, especially given the moment down at the bar.
Becka moved her hand in his, threading her fingers around his, smiling a bit more as the memories flipped through her mind at his question. “My best friend, Lucy, we’ve been friends since we were like twelve. Anyway, she was always more on the wild side, and I love her to death, but she always had these crazy ideas of things to do. She dragged me out to more than one party, I just... never drank at them.” There were reasons for it, but she didn’t feel quite ready to tell him those reasons just yet. “And we went camping a lot. Sometimes my parents would rent a boat while we were camping at the lake, if they could afford it. And, well, I don’t know. I played sports and did cheer and went to movies and concerts and stuff.” You didn’t have to drink or do drugs or sleep around to do those things.
He watched her hand, thinking on that for long enough to miss part of what she was saying. “How fun,” he said with a nod. And it fit her, innocent activities, but still fun. She did things he never really had an option for because he’d never had those friends, or family like that. “And no serious boyfriend you did everything with?”
“It was fun,” she agreed, though her smile turned a little sad at the thought that she had no idea when she would get to do those things again, when she would get to talk to Lucy again or see her family again. She shook her head at the question. “Nope, no serious boyfriend. Ever.” She glanced away then, chewing on her lower lip for a moment before looking back at him. “Does that bother you?” she asked, stomach twisting with nerves that it did bother him.
“Why would it bother me?” he asked surprised that she’d ask that. “Not sure I’m allowed to care that much one way or the other.” Adam didn’t quite care who she’d been with, or didn’t quite feel like he had a right to one way or another, it just didn’t make sense that she didn’t have someone in her life like that.
Becka shrugged at the question. “Sometimes it seems to bother people,” she replied simply. She didn’t like the twisting in her stomach at his next words, though, and she looked down at her lap as she tried to work out what she was feeling about it. It almost made her feel like earlier, when she’d told him that she didn’t want him to just go along with things because there wasn’t much else to do around here. “Why shouldn’t you be allowed to care about whatever you want to care about?” she finally countered, curious to see how he’d respond to that. It almost seemed like he wasn’t used to having validated thoughts and feelings.
“Why would it bother people? Who did it bother?” Adam asked, sitting up a little more to look at her. He shook his head a little. “I’m pretty sure what I care about doesn’t really matter that much. Plus it’s your life right? Your choices.”
It was kind of sweet, the way he asked that, but Becka just shrugged. “No one here. I mean, only one other person here knows, well probably two by now, but before, back home, sometimes people would give me crap about it.” The people who didn’t know her brothers, that was. “Yeah, my life, my choices, but I thought...” Cutting herself off, she glanced away. She wasn’t any good at this, and she wasn’t really sure what she was doing. “Earlier you said you wanted to try. And... it matters to me what you care about.” It was true, really. She liked him, so it did matter to her.
“About the virgin thing? That seems normal.” They’d done the same to him for a long while, and when he had first wound up with his group of friends, until they ‘fixed’ it of course. He ran his hand over his head and shrugged his shoulder a little. “I doubt there’s much that’s that interesting.”
Becka smiled, her cheeks flushing in pleasure not embarrassment this time. “Well, I’m glad I’m not the only one that thinks it’s not crazy. Though apparently it makes me like a unicorn,” she mused with a little laugh, shaking her head at the memory of Dominic’s earlier words. Becka shifted one leg out from under her, crossing it over the other so it hung off the couch and made her face him a little more directly. “Try me,” she suggested. “Let me decide if it’s interesting or not.”
He shook his head a little. “No, not that that does make you a unicorn,” Adam clarified with a small chuckle. “It’s normal that they teased you. They teased me too.” When she turned to look at him, he felt a little on the spot shrugging again. “I don’t know. There’s not much of anything.”
“Oh!” Becka said with a little embarrassed laugh when Adam explained what he’d actually meant. “Yeah, the teasing didn’t bother me so much, though.” No, it was more the guys that would automatically seem to try harder to get in her pants when they found out that bothered her. “Are... Are you, then, too?” she asked, though she really didn’t expect him to be, not considering the way he’d talked earlier. “There’s not much of anything that you care about?”
Adam shook his head and laughed again. “No. Not even close. Someone decided to ‘fix’ me a while ago. Actually I think it wound up being kind of a game in the end.” Which had been emasculating, but the end result had been the same and she at least thought he was sweet afterward. “Not really. My Grams I guess.”
Becka frowned, her brows furrowing at the answer. ‘Fix’ him? Seriously? It wasn’t something that needed fixed, and the thought alone made her very uncomfortable. “A game?” she repeated, nose wrinkled as the concept struck a little too close to home. “Well, tell me about your Grams, then. What’s she like?” she asked, genuinely curious.
“A game. Over who got to deflower the virgin. It was a little stupid, but hey, got over that hump didn’t I?” he said shrugging. “It wasn’t all bad.” His smile went sad when he thought of his grandmother, shrugging a little as he ducked his eyes away from hers. “She raised me. Spry old woman, brave too, taking on a kid like that without a second thought. I guess there wasn’t anywhere else I could go, but still. Never complained.”
That definitely struck way too close to home, and Becka shifted again, leaning back against the back of the couch and bringing her legs up to wrap her free arm around her knees. “That’s terrible,” she whispered even though he’d said it wasn’t all bad. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. She smiled softly at the way he talked about his grandmother. “She sounds pretty great. How old were you when you went to live with her, or... was it just always?” Almost as soon as she’d asked it, she wondered if she shouldn’t have. She didn’t want to upset him, but she wanted to learn more about him.
“Terrible?” he asked, not thinking it was. He wasn’t too worried about it really. “I was five,” he said. He didn’t remember his parents, not like he should. When he talked about it though, Adam didn’t look too distraught. His dead family was a much smaller demon than those that had come along later.
Becka shrugged, glancing at him with a small smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Perspective. You don’t have to see it that way, but I can’t not see it that way,” she kind of explained, though even she knew that it didn’t really explain why she thought it was. “Wow, that’s young. What about your parents?” she asked curiously.
“Perspective? I’m missing something,” Adam said making a face. Something wasn’t quite right there and she wasn’t really giving him any real information. “What about them? They died.”
“I know,” she whispered, not quite looking at him as she bent her head to rest her cheek on her knee. He hadn’t asked specifically, and she wasn’t sure it was something she was ready to talk to him about even if he did ask. “Oh! I’m so sorry,” she said with a frown. She couldn’t imagine losing her parents, couldn’t imagine having been raised most of her life without them. “But at least you had your Grams, right?” She knew that her grandparents would have taken care of them if her parents had died, but she felt incredibly blessed to not have had that proven.
“You going to tell me what I’m missing?” Adam asked, curious if she’d fill him in or not. She didn’t have to since he’d done the same thing to her, telling her no he didn’t want to tell her everything. “You don’t have to apologize. Not your fault,” he told her. “And yeah. I did. Better than most people had.”
Becka shook her head, not really trusting herself to not just spill it all if she did say anything. She had a tendency to do that, and so she knew that staying quiet was her best option at that moment. “I know it’s not, but it’s not really an expression of guilt, it’s more expressing sympathy for the loss. I can’t imagine what that would be like, and I’m sorry that you do know what it’s like,” she explained, rubbing her thumb over his unconsciously.
He understood her silence, that she didn’t mean to tell him, which left him curious, but not pushing the issue. “I barely remember it,” he pointed out. “I remember the funeral, the rest though is kind of vague.” Especially his parents specifically. Her hand moving in his had him looking at that again, fighting off the bad feeling that everyone just felt sorry for him.
Becka didn’t think that would have made the loss any less palpable, but she wasn’t going to push it. If it wasn’t a difficult thing for him, why make a big deal about it? But with that thought, she wasn’t entirely sure what to say next, and so she latched onto the first change of topic that came to mind. “So, where do you think you’ll go when you get out of here?” she asked, realizing that she was genuinely curious about it. They may have only been here a few days, but she kind of thought it was something everyone would have at least thought about some.
It was quite the change in topic and Adam was left trying to think about it and not coming up with something which was probably the wrong answer. “I have no idea. I hadn’t...thought about it.” Thinking about getting out seemed like getting ahead of himself. “Do you know?”
She was a little surprised that he hadn’t thought about it, but she merely smiled at him. “Yeah, I’d go home. Maybe it’s corny, but I can’t imagine living anywhere else,” she answered honestly. Her family was there, her friends, everyone she loved. She didn’t know how she would start over somewhere else.
“Home? Can we go home?” he asked. He hadn’t really thought about home, not much at least. Prison had loomed ahead of him for a long time the idea of anything else just seemed more depressing. “I hadn’t thought about home.”
“I... don’t know?” she answered hesitantly, questioningly. Becka hadn’t considered that she would go anywhere else, though. She supposed that she didn’t really know what to expect as a result of this program. “I think about home all the time,” she admitted.
“Starting over doesn’t seem like going home...” Adam ventured since that was what he’d gotten out of the welcome message, but he could have just been thinking of it the wrong way. “You do? Isn’t that hard?”
Becka shifted awkwardly, shrugging a bit. “Yeah, I know it wouldn’t be.” But was it so bad that she didn’t necessarily want to start over? She’d loved her life, even if she knew that she wouldn’t ever really be able to get her life back to what it was before. Everything had changed with that one decision, and she knew that she needed to accept that. Knowing and doing were two very different things, though. “Sometimes,” she admitted. “But I think it would be harder if I never thought about home.” If she didn’t have so many amazing memories of home; they kept her grounded, knowing that there were people there that thought and cared about her, that loved her no matter what.
“I can’t imagine how much longer the past twenty-two months would have been if I had been thinking of home more that I did. Not that focusing on prison was that much better.” He watched her get sad and leaned forward, studying her closer. “What are you thinking?”
It wouldn’t do any good to point out that home had been something very different for each of them. “I guess I just wasn’t there long enough for thinking about home to get too hard.” That, and having her family and friends visit so much gave her that lifeline to home, that reminder that there was something out there for her after. Now? Now, she had no idea what would come after. The question surprised her a little, and she gave him a small, sad smile. “That we need a happier topic of conversation?” she answered, though it clearly wasn’t what she’d actually been thinking.
“I like the idea of a happier topic of conversation,” Adam said with a nod, letting her get away with not telling him why she looked so sad. He wasn’t really equipped for cheering her up anyway. Changing the topic actually worked better for him.
Becka grinned a bit more at his response, though it didn’t go by her that he didn’t actually offer a new topic. She sighed softly as she tried to think of one, before finally deciding to give them both a moment, some distance from the heavy topics. “Have you looked through the movies and stuff they have on the computers? Maybe you could pick something to watch and I’ll go change?” she suggested. She wasn’t tired, and she couldn’t deny that she liked the idea of curling up with him and watching something, no matter how strange a thought that was considering it wasn’t something she’d ever really done with a guy.
“I haven’t looked too hard, but I can try and find something,” Adam said, sitting up more and heading towards the computer. “Do you want to rule anything out outright before I start into this?”
Well, at least her idea had been embraced positively. She really thought that they could use a break from the heavier topics, so she was glad. “Oh, no. I’m sure that whatever you pick will be fine,” she answered with a smile. She grabbed the clothes he’d said she could borrow and headed to the bathroom, using it first and then washing her hands before changing. While she normally didn’t wear one to bed, modesty had her keeping her sports bra on, and she folded her shirt and jeans neatly before heading back out. She was studiously pretending that her cheeks weren’t flushed at the fact that she was wearing his clothes or that his shirt was long enough that it almost fell below the bottom of the boxers he’d lent her. “So, what did you pick?” she asked as she headed back to the couch.
He had already set something up then went back to the couch settling in a little and waiting for her to come back to start things. “Um Indiana Jones,” he said with a shrug. “I figure ‘what not to like?’” Adam bit back a laugh at her in his shirt that didn’t fit at all. “How tiny are you?” he asked, hiding his smile behind his hand.
Becka grinned at the answer, nodding in agreement. “Which one?” It might surprise him that she’d seen them all, but her dad had been a big fan. She stopped at the question, huffing and putting her hands on her hips as she wrinkled her nose at him. “Really? Already with the tiny comments?” she asked, but she laughed and glanced down at how long his shirt was on her. “Hmm, maybe you are too tall for me,” she teased, remembering that rather weak argument he’d given yesterday in the activity room of why she shouldn’t flirt with him. She didn’t really believe it, though, and she continued on to the couch, sitting next to him.
“First one,” Adam said about the movie and really had a hard time not laughing this time. “That shirt does fit me. I can prove it if you want to hand it over. We’ll prove just how tiny you are. Then it’s not a comment it’s just pointing out the obvious.”
Becka was thrilled to see him so close to laughing, and she hoped that she would be able to get him to actually laugh tonight. Still, his following words had her flushing, fingers playing with the hem of the shirt. “It would still be a comment,” she countered weakly, still far too distracted by his suggestion that she take the shirt off so he could prove that it did fit him. “I don’t think my taking the shirt off so you could prove it fits would be a very good idea,” she said, tilting her head to glance up at him, her words coming out softer, less teasing than she’d meant for them to.
Adam watched her. “You worried I’ll get distracted?” he ventured, knowing he probably would, but for the moment he felt like he could actually make a joke like that, not just be accused of it. It was different from the other girls before, because they had mostly been in control and he’d just followed along. With Becka...well he had the upper hand on occasion didn’t he?
The question caused the flush on her cheeks to darken, and she looked back down at her lap. “Are you saying you wouldn’t?” she asked softly, not looking back at him quite yet.
Adam shrugged, smirking a little. “Probably. But I can lie with the best of them if you want me to pretend like I won’t.”
Becka’s stomach was doing flips, and she definitely didn’t think looking at Adam just then would help anything. “No, that’s okay, I’d rather you be honest. So, no distracting you right now,” she said decisively.
“You can still distract me if you want,” he suggested, tilting his head a little to see if he could catch her eye. “Or we can watch the movie.” Since the second option seemed safer and probably something he was more equipped to handle rather than the first choice.
Becka caught the way he seemed to be trying to catch her eye, and despite that little voice somewhere in the back of her mind that was saying that option number one wouldn’t really be the safest option, she found herself turning her head to look at him. “And how should I distract you?” she asked, her voice coming out soft, almost a whisper. Her eyes darted down to his lips then back to his eyes, her mind bringing up the memory of the way he’d kissed her back that first time, and yes, she could admit that she liked the thought of that kind of distraction very much.
Adam felt himself start to flounder for a moment, not sure how exactly to answer that question. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to have an answer for it. “I think that’s up to you,” he told her after a moment, trying for a smile though it didn’t quite do more than quirk at the sides of his mouth.
Earlier he’d said how he wasn’t the making the move kind of guy, but even though Becka remembered that, she still couldn’t help but wish that he would, at least so she could know whether or not he was actually interested in her and not just going along with whatever she wanted because there was nothing else to do around here. Even so, she couldn’t deny that she wanted to kiss him again, to see if it would make her feel the same way it had earlier. “Whatever I want, right?” she echoed the words he’d said several times over the past couple of days with a faint grin.
That had Adam letting out a breath he didn’t even realize he was holding as he nodded. “Yup. Exactly.” He settled back more on the couch trying to seem relaxed even if this hand that kept playing with his hair was giving him away.
Becka reached over, taking his hand that wasn’t running over his hair in both of hers as she turned to face him. She remembered how he’d traced lines over her palm last night, and she started doing the same to his almost absently now. “But what do you want?” she asked softly, glancing up at him.
He looked a little surprised when she took his hand, watching her fingers move over his palm, which stopped his twitching for a moment. It wasn’t long enough to quell it completely and her question didn’t help matters. “I dunno,” he said without following through on the thought, color rising into his cheeks even if it was just faint.
“That’s not really helpful,” she pointed out with an expression that was not quite frown, not quite grin but an odd combination of the two. Her fingertips continued moving over his palm as she went quiet. She didn’t really know what she was doing here with him, and she felt more than a little out of her element, so it really didn’t help matters that he didn’t seem to know what to do either. “So there’s nothing that you want right now?” She found that kind of hard to believe.
Adam was surprised at all that he wasn’t being helpful, he wasn’t particularly great on that front. Of course there were things he wanted, a list of them ran through his head, half of them involving her, half not related to the moment at all, but he shook his head against the thoughts. “I...well yeah. But I’m not much for thinking I get what I want.”
“Well,” she began softly, dragging the word out a bit and looking up at him through her lashes. “Tell me one thing that you want; maybe you could get it,” Becka suggested, her smile turning just a little coy.
His first thought should have been her. It should have been something that matched the look she was giving him, but it wasn’t. It was tied into what had been said at the bar, about him feeling that he was so broken it couldn’t be fixed. It was there, on the tip of his tongue to tell her it was something she couldn’t give him but he kept his mouth shut to keep from telling her that. That wouldn’t do anything to help that face, the shyness she was fighting to look at him like that. Instead of speaking he turned his hand to pull at her, coaxing her more towards him. He wasn’t used to the cuddling aspect of things, but he could make it work and for the moment it was all he could think of wanting.
Becka waited, wondering what he would answer, if he would answer. Adam was confusing and complicated, but it just made her want to pull back the layers and learn more and more about him until she understood him. She shifted at his urging, both surprised and a little disappointed that he hadn’t said anything, but she was an affectionate person, and she really enjoyed the idea of curling up against him. And so she did; she tucked herself against his side and rested her head against his shoulder.
Adam fought back the memories that welled up in him with the contact, not wanting to relive them. Not all were good, not all were bad. Some were miserable, physically painful, others just surfaced an emotional ache. He’d spent so much of his childhood trying not to be needy, not wanting to be more trouble than he knew he was, which had left him isolated. Even when there were others it wasn’t like this. Still, his arm found its way around her, holding on to her even if he stayed quiet.
This was so completely different from anything Becka had experienced before. She was with a guy she liked, alone in his room, wearing his clothes, cuddling with him in the quiet, and even as nice as it was, something still felt off with him. She didn’t understand him, and she was sure that she couldn’t even begin to really understand him until he opened up to her, which she really wasn’t sure she believed would happen any time soon. But she would take what she could get, even if it was just quietly cuddling and pretending there wasn’t a whole list of things they weren’t talking about and even though it made her feeling a little selfish.
If he knew what she was thinking Adam wouldn’t blame her for thinking it. There was so much that he didn’t understand about himself, so many issues he’d buried under other issues, none of which were really dealt with and those that were? They hadn’t left much of a foundation to build much of anything on. He reached for her hand, not really holding it, but more just playing with her fingers, giving himself something to do. “You want me to start the movie?”
Becka smiled softly when he started playing with her fingers, twitching them a little to play right back. She turned her head to look up at him at the question. “Sure,” she answered, even though she didn’t really want him to move at all. It was necessary, though, and if they weren’t going to talk or anything, they might as well watch the movie, right?
He didn’t want to move, but her looking up at him triggered something else, and while he managed to keep most of it off his features, it passed across his eyes, clouded with a memory of a girl he didn’t want to remember. Remembering Ella always came with the crime scene photos they’d shown him, the ones that had made him sick and even now left his stomach churning. If only just to hide it he untangled himself from her, moving to the desk, leaning on it hard for a moment while he tried to get past the wave of nausea. Again he wanted to leave, more than anything he wanted to just go, but where could he go?
The worst of it lapped away like a wave and Adam was able to breathe without gagging which had him pushing the play button and drifting back towards her without sitting down just yet.
Something was wrong; Becka could see it in his eyes in the way he looked at her, and when he moved away from her, she just sat there looking at his back for a moment. What had she done? Why was he upset now? Even though he’d pressed play, she didn’t look at the computer screen, she just looked at him, watching as he came back toward her without coming fully over. “Hey,” she said softly, pushing up from the couch and moving to him. She wanted to reach out, but he still looked off, and she wasn’t sure how he would respond to that right now. “What happened?” she asked, hoping that he would tell her. How could she help him if she didn’t know what was wrong?
Her moving closer brought all the wrong reactions, and he knew it, but he couldn’t stop the fact that he moved back, bumping into the bed and falling to a sitting position like his legs had given out. Shaking his head a little he tried to duck it to get the sick feeling to pass even as it welled up again. It took a moment before he could speak, sure he was going to throw up if he opened his mouth otherwise. “You look like her. Not...completely but enough of what I remember. I...I did awful things to her.” He wasn’t distanced from it now, unsure if he was to blame. No, right now it was his fault, his imagination and nightmares supplying memories he didn’t have to fill in the gaps, him choking her, him torturing her, causing ever bruise in the photos they’d shown him. It wouldn’t go away either, no matter how hard he pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.
Becka couldn’t stop the fierce wave of hurt at the way he reacted, and she pressed a hand to her stomach, looking away from him as she fought back the emotions it churned up in her. This was wrong, all wrong, and she didn’t know how to handle it. She didn’t go to him, didn’t look at him again until he spoke. And when he did speak, it was like someone had sucked all the air out of the room. He’d said that earlier, that she looked like ‘her’ and she’d assumed it was the girl he’d... But now, there was no need for assumptions, because he’d made it clear. He looked at her and saw the woman he had apparently killed. She paled, taking a couple steps back until the backs of her legs hit the couch, and she sat numbly. What was she supposed to say? How was she supposed to react to that? This was so beyond anything she’d ever thought she would face in her life, and she found herself struck mute for the moment.
As she sat there, though, something finally sank in. She looked like her, and that was clearly hurting him, which was the last thing she wanted to do. “I should go,” she whispered, standing up on legs that weren’t quite steady. She would have to pass him to get to the bathroom where she’d left her clothes, but she didn’t want to upset him more, and so she just stood there awkwardly.
He was fighting back everything, all of it threatening to drown him and the room went from his room with the nice bed to the dark hole of isolation they’d locked him in more than once for his freak outs. The last thing he wanted was to be left alone in there so when she said she should go he was on his feet shaking his head. “No. You...stay. I need some air.” The words were choked, mangled at best and he knew what was showing, the side the Wren had not so delicately pointed out to everyone. With one hand on the door he forced some sense of will over his emotions even as they threatened to take over. “You needed somewhere to sleep. I offered. Stay. I’ll be...back later. Make yourself at home.”
Was there anything she could do? Somehow Becka was thinking that anything she would think to do just then would only make things worse, and so she did nothing, even as he walked by her to get to the door. She wanted to ask him to stay, to let her help him, but she pressed her lips together in a hard line to keep herself from doing just that. He needed air, it was the one thing he’d actually said he needed for himself, and so she would give him that. She swallowed down the words, licked her lips, and then finally forced herself to say, “Okay.”
Part of him hated leaving, but he needed to get out of the small room, needed to be somewhere he could breathe, that much was winning out over the guilt of abandoning her like he was. Adam managed a nod then pulled at the door. “I’ll be fine,” he told her with one last glance before leaving.
Becka didn’t believe that, but she let him go. What else could she do? She reminded him of a dead person, of someone he believed that he’d hurt and killed, and it was clearly hurting him, so to do anything but let him leave would only hurt him more. She could deal with the aching in her own chest, the churning in her stomach, the heavy weight of rejection that she knew logically wasn’t actually about her at all. She could deal with it even if that just meant curling up in one corner of his couch and hugging her knees to her chest and crying. And later, once he was able to look at her, talk to her again, she would offer whatever help she could give him, even if it meant staying away, as difficult as it was to even think of doing.