"Do you want me to go?" WHO: Leon and Alex WHAT: Drunken angst WHEN: 4 April WHERE: Alex’s place RATING: Teenish for heavy drinking, angst, some talk of murder. PROGRESS: Complete
Not for the first time since coming back, Alex was asking himself just what in the hell he was doing. It didn’t matter much as he’d already had enough to drink to give much of a shit about the consequences of his actions.
As Alex lie on the bed with arms spread out, he stared up at the ceiling and wondered why he couldn’t just go to school and not get himself into a shitstorm. It wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t still love Leon, but he did still love him, just as much as he ever did. He didn’t know what he was doing anymore beyond screwing himself over. It wasn’t lost on him that he was doing this to himself. Leon had probably moved on. He probably had a proper girlfriend who didn’t fuck things up.
Nope, Alex wasn’t drunk enough for this yet. Alex groaned as he sat up again and pushed himself up to standing so he could walk to the fridge to get another beer. He’d already told Leon to let himself in once he was there.
Leon took a drag from his cigarette, the smoke curling into the night sky from his open car window. It was his second one since he'd pulled up in front of Alex's new place. This was a mistake, he told himself. Maybe he should have told Alex to meet him somewhere public instead. Except they probably had a lot to talk about. He hoped they had a lot to talk about, at least, and some of this information was likely sensitive. Like the fact that he knew an innocent man had been framed for shooting him, and because of that the poor guy's murder had never been properly investigated. Liv had looked into it, but Leon had called it off as soon as he realized where it was headed.
The taste of burning plastic filled his mouth, and he pulled the burning filter from between his lips, scowling at it for a second before flicking it out the window. He briefly debated lighting another, if only to cancel out the bad end to the one he'd just smoked, but at this rate he'd never actually get out of his car. Instead, he rolled up his window, threw open his glove box, unscrewed the top of his flask, and poured the warm whiskey into his mouth. He screwed it shut again, returned it to it's corner, grabbed his bottle of Jameson's from the back seat, and made his way to Alex's front door.
Alex had told him to come right in, but Leon still knocked before he opened the door. “Alex? You home?”
Shit. Shit shit shit. Alex had already been regretting this, but as soon as he heard Leon’s voice, he hit his head on the fridge and winced. “Yeah,” he said. He didn’t have to say it loud since his entire apartment was one big room, save for the small bathroom which was separate.
Rubbing at his head, he grabbed the beer and grumbled, “Yeah, I’m here.” He shut the fridge and glanced over at Leon. Looking at him was like a swift kick to the head, or maybe that was from having hit his head a few seconds ago, it was tough to tell. Seeing Damon had been much easier. Damon had hugged him first thing. They’d slept together, of course, and they were planning a trip together now. Fuuuuck, he loved Leon.
Everything was too confusing and jumbled. Alex moved to the sofa, somehow not falling. He started picking up his studies, realized he was too drunk to do anything with them, so just moved them to the coffee table in a disorganized fashion. If he was shaking, then fuck you, he was just going to shake.
Leon winced in sympathy when Alex hit his head, and then he turned around and Leon's mouth went dry. How the hell had Alex managed to become even more attractive? For a moment, he thought he could still just turn around and leave, and then almost unconsciously he was stepping forward to help Alex move his studies.
“I can't even pronounce half this shit,” he said, glancing at the cover of one of the textbooks. “School's still going okay?”
“Neither can I,” Alex assured. He nodded. He was doing pretty good with school. Not top of the class material, but he knew what he was doing enough to be on his own for minor cases. They weren’t here for that, though.
Finally, Alex flopped onto the sofa, some of his hair coming loose from its messy ball. He set his beer down on top of some of the papers and pulled the tie from his hair slowly, staring at Leon. For someone he’d been through so much with, Leon was almost a stranger to him now. A stranger he loved and was torturing himself looking at him. He tossed the hair tie to wherever it would land, somewhere he’d find it six months from now.
“Fuck, Leon,” he sighed out. Yeah, that just about summed it up.
Leon unscrewed the top and drank deeply from his bottle. He looked around briefly for a place to sit that wasn't right next to Alex on that couch, or - he swallowed - on his bed. Eventually he settled for pulling up one of the chairs at the kitchen table and sitting down, where he indulged in another pull from the bottle.
Something about being with Alex got under his skin. He was angry, but not the kind of angry where he wanted to yell or punch things. The kind of angry where he just wanted to sit in a room, alone with a bottle, and listen to Def Leppard or Judas Priest. It wasn't that he blamed Alex for leaving. It wasn't like Alex had left him so much as everything else. Hell, he probably didn't think twice about Leon when he left. Maybe that was it.
“I don't know why I came here,” Leon said after a moment, looking at Alex as if maybe he knew why.
And coming in with a one-two was Leon, who chose not to sit on the sofa with Alex and didn’t want to be here. What else could Alex expect? They weren’t together anymore. They weren’t even a they anymore, and if Alex was a) a smarter man and b) sober, he might have just kept his trap shut and shrugged. Then maybe Leon would go and they wouldn’t have to do this.
Instead, Alex reclined back more and placed a bare foot on the edge of the coffee table as something of a stablizer.
“I couldn’t look at you anymore,” he said and let out an annoyed huff of air. “Shit, I can’t even look at you now.” It was true. He was staring at a crack in the wall. He forced his gaze back to Leon. Well, that was most unhelpful.
“I kept seeing it,” he went on. “I stopped having dreams and you kept having them…” Alex moved uneasily, dropping his foot to the floor so he could lean forward and drink more and use the bottle to put both his hands on. “All I could do was think about it. “ It all sounded like bull shit now. Alex shook his head and took a deep swig to finish off that bottle. Why did Leon have to go and get in touch with him?
“You’re here to tell me off,” he said, looking down at the empty bottle for a few seconds before he forced himself to look at Leon and take his lumps.
“You left because I got shot?” Leon guaffawed. It was so ridiculous that he couldn't help it. Leon himself rarely thought about it. He knew it still bothered Chris, though Chris never mentioned it, but Leon rarely thought about it. That was part of the job, and Leon knew it. He'd known it before he joined the academy; it became something real and accepted the day his father had been killed.
“That's just part of the job, pal. Dreams or awake. That doesn't keep me up at night. No, what keeps me up at night is the fact that I turned my back on my badge for…” for someone who turned their back on him. That wasn't fair. He wasn't being fair. Hadn’t he worried every time Alex had dreamed? Hadn't he caught himself waking up in the middle of the night to make sure Alex hadn't drowned?
He took another swig of the bottle. “Maybe you shouldn't have dated a cop,” he finished, morosely.
Every word out of Leon’s mouth was the truth and it was a truth Alex hadn’t been able to handle. It was what Alex knew had to happen so he listened, his face going red as he fought back those stupid tears. Alex didn’t deserve to feel what he felt, so he forced it all down. He hadn’t known that Leon had to turn in his badge, but Alex had left. He’d left it all. And wasn’t it all different from worrying every day when Leon was a cop? Having him wake up with holes in him because of some fucking dream guy wasn’t the same, but Alex had no right to take up for himself here, so he took each lump.
When there was a pause, Alex looked away for a minute so he could try to steady his breathing. He’d felt like this before, when he was on the train with Tommy, after they’d all failed. Somehow, though, this felt worse. Tommy was important to Alex, but he didn’t love Tommy.
Shaking hands placed the empty bottle on the coffee table, then fumbled around for a pack of smokes. He found them and his Bic that he had to flick a few times to get to light. Another smoking doctor, what a stereotype. Alex kept quiet, knowing there was probably more, but he was grateful at least for the little pause there.
No, Alex wouldn't have known that. The only people who would know were Liv and Dan, and only because Leon had forced them to stay quiet and drop their private investigation once they had started digging into the murder of the man who was framed for Leon's shooting. He’d apologized to Liv for yelling at her, and he and Dan had made up just because Alex had left and Chris had run away for a day, and the bartender no doubt felt sorry for him, but Leon didn't tell them how he felt sick every time he thought about it. If he let himself think too hard about it, he was afraid he'd realize that, at some point between turning a blind eye at Liv's brain eating, breaking Dan out of jail for a crime he didn't commit, and being complicit in the framing and potential murder of an innocent man to keep his equally innocent boyfriend out of jail, he'd crossed that line between good cop and crooked. The thought lingered constantly in the back of his mind, and the only way he could shut it up was by drinking.
Taking his cue from Alex, Leon lit another cigarette.
He opened his mouth to say something, to change the subject to something else, and then closed it again when nothing other empty small talk sprang to mind. They seemed beyond small talk now, and Leon was both screaming to leave and unable to get up from this chair.
Had Alex known, the outcome would have been the same, if not worse. Alex was a lot of things he didn’t want to be. Ruining lives wasn’t an easy thing to have to live with and if he knew someone was dead because of him, he didn’t know what he’d do, but it might not have included sitting here with Leon now.
Leon was saying nothing. The silence was almost too much to take. Leon had been broken and it was because of Alex. The pill was almost impossible to swallow. Apologizing would only make it worse and it wasn’t as if Alex could go back and change anything. So, Alex settled for getting up and going to the fridge, allowing himself a few deep breaths as he took out two more beers and cracked them open. One he brought to Leon and the other he sat back down with. He shouldn’t have come back at all and he knew it. Leon was probably better off before Alex had shown up again. Their relationship had been too tainted and now it was utterly devoid of anything except possibly Leon’s much understandable anger.
“Anything else I need to know?” Alex managed to croak out.
The croak in Alex's voice brought Leon's eyes to him, and he studied him for a while. Then, he sighed heavily, and his gaze softened. “Yeah, actually.” He took a drag of his cigarette. “I didn't really know what I was going to do, or what I was going to think when I got here. But it's… it's good to see you again. I wasn't sure if I would see you again. You don't deserve half the things I've said since you got back. It might not seem like it now, but I'm glad you're back.”
No it didn’t seem like it at all and Alex didn’t believe him He knew how to handle those words less than he knew how to handle the rest. All he could do was let his eyes dart around the room as if searching for something. His cigarette was shaking between his fingers and he wasn’t even smoking it so he just crushed it out in his ashtray.
Alex had a lot of questions. Was Chris okay? Was Leon seeing someone? What was Leon doing now?
But Alex couldn’t seem to ask those questions right now, it felt too much like he wanted to try to be friends after all that, after ruining Leon’s life. Even worse, he wanted to say he was sorry. He wanted to tell Leon that he loved him and he was sorry, but even drunk,Alex knew better.
“I don’t know what to say right now,” was it. He couldn’t explain himself, that had only made things worse. He couldn’t apologize,he couldn’t ask questions, he couldn’t say anything. This meeting was for Leon to get out whatever he needed to anyway.
Again, Leon opened his mouth and then closed it again without having said anything. Maybe Alex wasn't good to see him too. Well, obviously Alex wasn't glad to see him. He couldn't even look at Leon without seeing him shot, after all, and now he was looking at Leon as if Leon had just kicked his puppy. For all he knew, maybe he was giving Alex the same look. He didn't blame Alex for anything that had happened - Alex hadn't had anything to do with any it, aside from what other people decided on his behalf. Logically, Leon knew that. Leon had made some decisions, a lot of decisions, that he regretted after Alex had been arrested, but Alex hadn't made them for him. But he still saw Alex packing his bags when he looked at him. He took another swig from his bottle.
“Do you want me to go?”
“No.”
Alex didn’t know what he wanted, but he knew he didn’t want Leon to go, even though it was best that he did.
Finally, he looked over at his ex again. Fuck. “I love you.” He didn’t know what else to say. What could he say? Even though he knew Leon wasn’t likely to believe a word of it, it was what Alex had to say. “‘I’m not asking to get back together or anything. I can barely keep up with showering every week much less a fucked up relationship with someone who resents me, but….I love you, you know? I fucking do.”
With any luck, Leon would go home and not remember any of what Alex said.
“Shit, Alex,” Leon swore. Cigarette in his mouth, he ran his free hand through his hair. “I love you too. I love you so fucking much, I just can’t…” He took a breath. “I don’t think Chris could deal with you leaving again.” It was easier to use Chris than to admit to the fact that he didn’t think he could handle Alex leaving again.
Alex shook his head. He couldn’t promise he wouldn’t leave again either. As it was, he wanted to leave now, just forget all this med school bull shit and go away again, where Leon wouldn’t even have to look at him anymore. It wasn’t his intention to try to get back with Leon, but that didn’t mean he didn’t love him; it just meant he didn’t want to dive back into a relationship, most especially not when there was too much there that would make it a bad one.
“I know the bed I made,” he assured. He knew he’d lost that life and that he’d never get it back. It hurt his stomach to think about never waking up next to Leon again, never having Leon roll over on him in the middle of the night, never being the one to make Chris happy again.
“You seeing anyone?” he asked curiously.
Leon couldn't help but laugh. Before Slex, the longest relationship he'd ever had was two months, and that had been in high school, for the two months that his best friend, Harry, had been dating her best friend. The idea of him finding a relationship after Alex, especially so soon after, was ridiculous.
“Don't be stupid,” he scoffed, and took another swig from his bottle. He realized suddenly that it was already half empty, and wondered how it managed to get there. “Went on a couple dates after you left,” Liv had set them up and he’d learned that it was just easier to go along with the whims of whatever brain she was on than to fight them, “but nothing really came of it.”
“Yeah,” Alex passed an embarrassed hand through his hair. It wasn’t as if Alex had moved on either. He just had sex and plenty of it. Absurd that he wanted Leon just then and very badly, but he’d half expected that Leon would move on from him. Leon deserved happiness.
“So what next?” he asked nervously. “Do we try to be friends? Do we have a goodbye fuck and never talk again? Do we just move on and pretend we don’t see each other in public when we do? Are we those exes who just never talk, then later I see you with your wife and new baby somewhere and hide in the frozen foods aisle?”
Leon flushed at the idea of a goodbye fuck. That had been one of the reasons he'd been so hesitant to come to Alex's place, the main reason, really. Because if anything seemed like a bad idea, that did, and Leon hadn't been sure if he could stop himself if it came down to it.
“If you're gonna wait until I have a wife and kids to see me again, it's going to be a long fucking road,” Leon muttered. Did he want that? Not especially. Seeing Alex sucked, but did it suck more or less than never seeing Alex again?
“We could try to be friends,” he added. “If you wanted. What do you want, Alex?”
That one was easy.
Alex looked at his ex, whom he loved and missed a life with, but there were other things he missed, too. He said: “I want to be twenty-one.”
It was simple. He didn’t want to be tied down anymore. He didn’t want to worry and have his ife consumed with fear. He didn’t want to be in prison where he had to be on guard for what inmates did to him and would continue to do to him. He didn’t want to drown in the ocean. He didn’t want to ruin lives. He wanted to be a twenty-one year old student who drank too much on the weekends, went out to parties, all that normal shit and Alex thought it was pretty fair for him to want that.
“I don't know what that means,” Leon admitted. Maybe he was drunk, but at 21, he'd been studying for his detective’s exam. Sure, there'd been drunken nights, but if he was honest the guys on the force had taken him out for drinks long before his 21st birthday. He didn't have any serious exes to ignore, or to be friends with, or to have goodbye sex with. “Does that mean grocery store baby? Cause, I mean, I don't really know when I'm gonna find Mrs. Leon Orcot, but I guess I could do some detectiveing.”
“I don’t fucking know, Leon!” Alex snapped, annoyed. “I don’t know what you want me to say or do or anything! Do you like that I feel like shit? Do you like that I feel guilty every fucking day of my life? Is it fun for you? Does it make you feel better? Jesus, Leon.”
As he talked, he stood up and crossed to the small kitchen, his hands on the edge of the sink basin as he rode a wave of sick in his stomach. “Do you think I don’t know what I’ve done?” he asked. “Do you think I like myself or even know who I am anymore?” He paused, realizing the tears were there now and they were white hot and angry, mixed with guilt. “What do you want from me?” he asked again.
“What? No, Christ no!” Leon exclaimed, and moved to stand up. Immediately, the alcohol rushed to his head, and he was forced to sit back down again, cradling his head in his hands until the room stopped spinning. He’d been attempting to make a joke, which obviously had fallen flat.
After a few moments, he took a breath and climbed to his feet again, going to stand next to Alex by the sink. “Alex, you didn’t do anything,” he said, moving to place a hand on Alex’s back. “All you did was leave, and shit, if I’d been in your position I might have to.” Possibly. It was a lot easier to start somewhere new where everyone didn’t think of you as an attempted murderer, at least. “Yeah, I’m pissed that you left, but that’s on me, not on you. All you did was what was best for you at the time.”
The joke had obviously been lost on Alex. This wasn’t a time for jokes for him, he was too on edge.
Alex looked over at Leon. Close. So, so close. He could smell the alcohol everywhere, clogging his senses and logic. When he was touched, he flinched, surprised by it and almost frightened of it coming from Leon.
Embarrassed from his little tantrum, Alex looked away, back at the sink and swiped a hand over his own face. “I never wanted any of this to happen,” he said, his voice shaking worse than he thought it would. “We were fine. We were happy.”
Leon dropped his hand when Alex flinched away from him, and for lack of anything better to do with it he shoved it into his pocket, and stared at the floor.
“Yeah, well,” Leon shrugged. Had Leon been happy since Alex had been sprung from prison? When he was with him, at least, he had been. “I guess that kind of thing doesn't last. Not easily anyway.” His parents had been happy until the last at least, but they'd both died young, one right after the other. “Maybe not at all.”
“I’m happy right now.”
The words left him before he had time to reel them back in. It was better for Leon to hate him and realize he wasn’t missing out on anything, but the truth was, Alex felt better with Leon around than any other time, even when it was tense.
Leon pulled his head up quickly to look at Alex, and the world spun again. He grabbed onto the counter to hold himself steady. “Are you?” he asked, frowning. “You don't look it.”
“Well, I won’t be if you all on your ass!” Alex exclaimed, more loud than he’d intended. It wasn’t a great idea, to have a drunk lead a drunk back to sitting, but now that Alex had his little tantrum, he felt better and he made an attempt to move to his ex, tentative hands taking hold of Leon’s strong arms. He missed those arms. He met those eyes. “I’m happier arguing and fighting with you than anything else right now,” he said.
Leon's heart leapt to his throat at the first touch of Alex's hand, but he forced himself to swallow it and leaned against Alex. “Me too,” Leon admitted after a moment. “I haven't really been in a good place these days. But I really am glad that you're home.”
“Yeah, we’ll see if you say the same thing in the morning,” Alex gave a squeeze to Leon’s arms, then let go, immediately feeling dizzy when he did. “I don’t want you driving,” he said, trying to sound stern as his head swam and he went to sit back down. “You don’t have to stay, but I’ll sleep on the couch if you do or I’ll call you an Uber, but you have you decide soon because I’m going to pass out in about fifteen minutes.” And he probably wouldn’t remember half of what had happened tonight. At least it seemed better than when Leon had arrived. Maybe...maybe they could actually be friends in time. Maybe.
“You’re not sleeping on your own damn couch,” Leon muttered, sitting down next to Alex. “I can sleep in my car if I gotta.” Not that he particularly wanted to. It always got stiflingly hot in the mornings, which was generally only made Leon’s hangover worse. “Or I could take the couch,” he added.
“Don’t be fucking daft,” Alex said between a hiccup. The dumb language he’d picked up in his dreams no longer bothered him, instead falling naturally from his tongue. He let off a soft burp and made an nonsensical gesture of agreement. “It’s all yours,” he said as he stood and stripped his shirt off. It was tossed aside and Alex practically ragdolled onto his belly on his mattress, his face turned toward Leon, a smirk on his lips. “If you leave before I wake up, be careful, okay?”
Leon swallowed, not quite able to tear his eyes off of Alex and not quite caring enough to try very hard. He managed to resist the urge to reach out and touch him, and that was good enough as far as Leon was concerned. “Yeah,” Leon said. “I always am.”
It was even harder not to offer Leon a spot in the bed next to him, but then what? All the fear and guilt would return ten fold in the morning and it was all something Alex could do without. It had been easy to fall back into bed with Damon, but not with Leon. There was so much more with Leon. They’d had a life together. A life Alex couldn’t honestly say he wanted to go back to, but he couldn’t say he didn’t either. So Alex just mumbled “Good night” and let himself close his eyes, hoping he was too drunk to have any dreams. Moreover, hoping Leon wouldn’t have any that might kill him.