A/N: First off, to clarify, this is BL. But I'm an LP girl. I am not a big fan of BL in general, but I do skim over fics occasionally, and a line I read in one of them sparked this idea in my head. It picks up in the late season-six timeline; I think it's fairly self-explanatory. I am way too busy to be writing right now, but apparently stress sparks Brucas in my brain, oddly enough. This was really great to write just in terms of switching perspective around and trying to appreciate the other side of the story. I know that there a lot of BL fans who adore their 'ship just as much as I love LP, so I sincerely hope I did them justice, guys. If this gains some interest, I may do another chapter, a sequel of sorts, in the future. Let me know your thoughts!
We Don't Take Angels from the Sky
It's so strange to hug him.
You contemplate this as you gently wrap your arms around his torso. It's not a theory or an idea or some sort of paranoid notion you've generated in your mind, which is a mess of grief and love, tangled together until it hurts to think, to breathe, to live. It's a fact, a statement composed solely of truth: it's strange, so strange to hug him.
On a lot of levels that makes sense. The man you're holding close, close enough to feel the unsteady cadence of his heart, flawed by genetics and marred by all that's been lost and all that he's got left and all that he stands to gain, was once a boy. He was the good kid, the talented basketball player who rose to the top, the outcast who somehow got her attention. He was all earnest eyes and meaningful smiles, startled by popularity and drinking and sex, having spent so much time lost in books and other people's stories. And he caught your eye, even though he wasn't supposed to. He wasn't yours to take, he wasn't yours to love, but all of a sudden you wanted him and you were crying over him and he meant something. He broke you into a million pieces and he fixed you with words, written and spoken, and kisses that left you breathless, and for a while you imagined that he was it for you because he made you feel more complete than you ever had before.
But then again, the course of true love never did run smooth.
You wouldn't even know Shakespeare or Midsummer or those oh-so-famous words if it was not for the boy he once was. And that one small fact, that one tiny, insignificant detail, a part of him that has become a part of you…the knowledge of it makes your heart crack and you wonder why it hasn't split right down the centre yet, ugly and bleeding and broken. Those are the reasons, the ache that rises up from your chest, that it's understandable, how odd it is to wrap him up in your arms.
However, it shouldn't be strange to hug him, because the boy you fell in love with became the man who was your friend. For a long time you didn't know how to feel about him. He was there and you were there and you spent every single second wondering if he still felt anything close to what you sometimes still feel. He was there and he was dating a nice girl and you had to bite your lip because you knew that she wasn't going to last long. You know him and what he's like and you know that he gets himself involved too quickly because on the deepest level he's like you and he doesn't want to be left alone.
It broke your heart. You watched his fiancée dye her brown hair blonde and you spent hours wondering if he really preferred blondes over brunettes. You looked at the engagement ring sitting prettily and prominently on her finger, looking utterly out of place, and you'd hold your left hand up and think about the few brief hours for which that ring was yours. You'd go home after a long, tiring day and find your best friend curled up on the couch, finishing off a bottle of wine and hiding his book under a pillow and trying not to let you see that she'd been crying, and you'd think about how that ring was hers before it was anyone else's. And you'd take a drink directly from the near-empty bottle of wine and throw that copy of his novel in the garbage and wrap the girl who'd always been as good as your sister up your arms, her limbs all skinny angles against your body, and you'd cry for her and for yourself and curse him for what he'd done to you both. You designed a dress for his bride-to-be and once, just once, late at night in the dim light of your shop you tried it on and let yourself wish it was yours.
Just once.
You found new things to love. His mother was the one who affirmed that strategy for you and you cling to it because it's the only thing that you've found that works. You find a boy with whom you have a flirtatious rapport and you can see the potential in his eyes. You wish your mother cared but you refuse to dwell on it. You work hard on your clothing line. You promise your best friend that you will help her through whatever havoc he decides to wreak upon her life next. And you want a baby.
You wanted to slap him for all that he's done, for all the people he's mislead through the years, most of all for yourself and all the heartache he caused you. But he helps you with your store and offers encouraging words when you're dealing with your mother and he's by your side, full of support, when you bring a perfect little girl into your life for a few days. He held your hand in the doctor's office and helped out with baby Angie and asked the doctor all the questions you didn't remember to bring up. He was everything your bartender boy couldn't bring himself to be. He sat with you in the waiting room and he hugged you the second you heard and all of it makes you remember the reasons that he's worth all of the shit he can put a person through. He is so very capable of making you feel whole that it doesn't matter that he can hurt you, too.
And then, then, you exchanged I-love-yous in the most platonic sense possible and you hoped that the lazy smile he gave you when he said the words would be the very last blow he ever dealt to your heart.
It's a long, long list. All of the reasons that embracing him right now shouldn't be weird. It should be easy, just like the way you said those three words to each other for the last time. It should be natural and comfortable and friendly and simple.
But. But.
Even when you were convinced you were over him, that he was ancient history in your love life, you laid on your bed and cried with bruises on your skin because you wanted him to save you but he was in Las Vegas healing someone else's heart. You fell into your best friend's hugs when she came back, eyes bright and skin glowing, and you saw all of her things in her house and it didn't feel right because you used to kiss him on that bed. You saw him at a funeral and he had the saddest expression and his hand clasped in another girl's and it almost felt like you were mourning the loss of him, not an innocent kid with a promising future who hadn't deserved his death. You didn't deserve the death you were feeling the shock of, either. Your godson slipped his hand into yours as you cried and you a sob escaped your lips as you thought of the family you never had with the man that you'll never get to have.
Everything happened in a whirlwind and for a while you hardly saw him. You have a foster child living in your house and she's annoying as hell but you love her to death and it's not an unfamiliar feeling. You spent as much time with Jamie as possible and tried to build a life that didn't involve everything you'd been working toward since high school. You made another wedding dress for a girl who's not you, but you love her a little more and you love him too so you tried not to let it hurt as much.
And all of a sudden there was a boy, and your best friend was babbling about the guy she once loved and the guy you once loved is panicking about a movie and you promised everyone that things would work out and then this boy, this man, looked at you for the very first time and everything seemed to shift as you sat there backstage in your pretty purple shirt, hope blossoming within you.
He came to town for the movie, but it was really for your best friend and everyone knows that. But he doesn't chase after her for long. Instead, he's distracted, and he distracted by you. He chooses you. Part of you wonders if this is karma's way of apologizing. You wanted to turn him down because you didn't want to accept what's second-best, but then he was bonding with your foster child and kissing you on your couch and all of a sudden there was a girl you've known for so many years standing in your kitchen promising you that you're going to have a huge role in her child's life, the child she's having with him, and it sealed off your old love story and opens the door to a new one.
Or at least, that's what it sound have done.
He said that he loved you and you didn't have the words to give back to him. He awarded you that perfect, adorable grin. He'd said all the right things and been perfect to Sam and supported you through everything, but then he said that he loved you and he gave you plane tickets and you couldn't help but wish with all your heart that he hadn't, and that you could have had him for a little bit longer.
You had a million excuses not to leave, but they all covered up the truth. The reality was, the reality is, that the boy you loved grew into a man that you still love and he pledged that he had always been and would always be in love with a girl you care about deeply, and it's a cycle the three of you just can't escape.
Not even the promise of love in Los Angeles grants you a way out. She's been there, she's tried that. You've all tried running and it's not the solution.
And then your world flipped around when there was a phone call from the hospital and the man you can't leave behind was standing there in the hallway trying to keep his voice steady as he told you that he might, and you might, lose her, the other participant in this vicious roundabout life you're all trapped in.
You had to stand outside her room for ten minutes before you could go inside, blinking repeatedly. It wasn't just her life on the line, but also an unborn baby's, his and hers, and because you love him and you love her, you love that baby. When you finally walked into her ugly hospital room and saw her there, the woman who was once the girl who you played with in the park and cried with after her mother's death, lying there, fragile and almost broken, you lost it.
You had always wanted this to end, and you'd tried not to be selfish, but you'd wanted to win. One of you was going to have him and one of you wasn't, and you wished for him to be yours because there couldn't be anyone else. But this wasn't how it was supposed to go. She wasn't supposed to die. She was supposed to find someone else, or hell, you were supposed to find someone else. She's not supposed to die. You cried to her and rested your hand on her tummy and felt her palm land atop your fingers, and something about her smile and her eyes conveyed a promise that everything was okay, everything was going to be okay.
And for a while everyone pretended it was. She took bed rest in stride even when she was cranky, they pumped themselves full of optimism, planned a ceremony, brought her daily gifts, and worried over her, but they calmed down and they found some sort of tranquility and they believed in things ending well. You believed that things would end well, that you'd be maid of honour and godmother and she'd be fine, and she seemed grateful that they were all finally off her case, leaving her to sleep the afternoons away. She grinned when they visited and it was all alright. For a while, it was all alright.
But then it wasn't.
She died in a wedding dress with only an engagement ring on her finger. The white fabric you made that dress out of was soft and airy, telling of fairytales and dreams coming true, of happy endings. You sat on the floor of the hospital, your back pressed against the wall, and cried, mascara trailing down your cheeks, as you thought of the softness of her smile and the tears of joy in her eyes and the strangled cry that escaped his lips when she collapsed in front of them all, the way it merged with your small shriek to create the most heart-wrenching sound.
The man who offered you everything you should've wanted found you that day, sobbing with your head in your hands, and slid down against the wall to sit next to you. He handed you a handkerchief and stayed quiet while you tried to clean yourself up. He had tears in his eyes when he cleared his throat and said, Guess we were both wrong. He looked at you for a long moment before adding, You're not a footnote.
Then he got to his feet and sighed shakily and told you that Haley had asked him to remind you that you could go say goodbye and you never got a chance to ask what he meant by that.
Together, they were the last ones sitting in that sombre hospital room on either side of the bed, the age-old love triangle with all its members present for the very last time. You hung your head because you couldn't look at his face. Instead, you stared at the pale blue blanket covering your best friend's listless body and wondered if they'd cleaned the blood off her long legs. You thought of those long legs in those blue and white skirts you both used to wear, and the smiles he used to shoot you both across the court, and the way she loved you and the way you loved her, the way you broke her heart inadvertently when you fell for him and the way she betrayed you when she couldn't stay away from him, and the fact that she cared enough to want to try to mend your friendship, and you thought about how she helped you when you wanted to be a mom and how you were going to help her.
She looked peaceful, curls splayed out on the stark white pillow behind her head, skin pale and eyes closed, lips parted oh-so-slightly.
She looks like an angel, he had murmured, and you looked at him and he looked at you, and for the first time in a long time, you knew for sure that you were feeling the exact same things. Tears swam in his eyes and they dripped down your cheeks and both of you let your fingertips graze hers.
You both leaned down to say your last farewell at the same moment, pressing your lips to her faintly-chilled cheek on either side. His brow brushed against yours as you both closed your eyes for a second, thinking about the reassuring promises you used to see in her vibrant green orbs. You knew that he was thinking about all the times she promised that everything was going to work out.
It was I'm sorry and I love you and it went three ways.
She wanted her child, boy or girl, to be called Sawyer Scott, and so that's what his daughter's name is. You held that warm little bundle of life close, cradling her against your body, as he fell apart in his mother's arms not far away. She was so, so perfect, six pounds of the kind of perfection that tugged on your heartstrings. When he came in nearly an hour later, exhausted and emotionally spent, he extended shaky arms to hold his child for the first time and you quietly asked what the baby girl's middle name was.
He mumbled that he and his fiancée talked about Anna and Haley and Karen, but that she really wanted Brooke. Your throat closed over and you shook your head. It just didn't feel right, not after it all. You suggest Elizabeth, because that was her middle name as well as her birth mother's, and it's like carrying on a legacy. He nodded and his mouth curved into half and smile and he said he'd probably call her Ella. He leaned in close to that tiny little person and whispered, Welcome to the world, my beautiful baby girl and you started crying again because it reminded you of what he used to call you and the way he used to say it.
You never hugged. You held one of his hands at the funeral, pressed close against his side, but you never got any closer than that. He smelled like her, like her shampoo and her perfume and the sugary-spiciness of vanilla and cinnamon with some sort of tropical flower thrown in. He smelled of cheap alcohol and cigarette smoke and grief. So you didn't hug him.
He went through everything you could have expected. It all happened almost as you would have expected it, phase where he went through all of her things and cried, the phase where he lashed out and threw things out and gave them away and broke picture frames in his rush of mourning. He broke a dish in the kitchen and you found him with bleeding hands and tears on his cheeks, but you didn't ask, because he almost married her and it's his memory, not yours.
You coped like you always do. You found something, someone, new to love.
Everyone calls Peyton and Lucas' baby girl Sawyer, cooing the name out, but when it's just him or just you or the two of you alone, she's always Ella. He bought his little girl more books than she could ever need in the first five years, never mind five months, of her life, and you make your way through them slowly while he drifts through the denial (waking up in the morning thinking she'll be there and trying to play it off when she's not), the anger (the broken picture frames and dishes, the way he yells at you for no reason one strangely sunny afternoon), the bargaining (he sets in the cemetery for a day and you never question what he thought or what he said), the depression (he sleeps for two days, refusing to get out of bed, crying into his pillow, while you and Haley and his mother fussed over his daughter), and finally, the acceptance (he wakes in the middle of the night to see you holding his daughter, looks at you with those sad, earnest eyes, and you just hand Ella to him, touch his wrist, and leave father and daughter alone).
Slowly, everyone rebuilds their lives. Her grave is always covered in white lilies, and you like that you can pick out both her grave and Keith's from a distance by looking for the delicate, pale flowers against the headstones. Ella gurgles and coos and grows and is the smartest, most beautiful baby you've ever seen. You're constantly with her, sometimes with Jamie, sometimes with Sam, sometimes with Haley, sometimes with Luke, but you also treasure the moments when it's just you and that little girl.
One day as you're driving to the cemetery with your goddaughter to visit your best friend and the baby's mother, you run into Mia. You stop the car and chat with her for a while, casual conversation made a little more difficult by the weight of her death hovering between the two of you. She holds Ella for a moment and by the time she hands her back you're both crying quiet tears. You're both laughing embarrassedly when a familiar sound floats out of your car radio – Mia's latest single. Her face seems to crumple and she mutters, She loved that; she said it was her favourite.
You listen to the lyrics and you cry harder, your tears falling onto Ella's soft, wispy blonde baby hair as you hold her close to you. You think about what he said, his voice cracked with the agony of grief, as the two of you sat there on either side of her. She knew. She knew all along, but she didn't want anyone else to. There is something sweet and something accepting and something reassuring and something cynical and snarky all wrapped together in Mia's lyrics that makes you laugh through your tears, because those are the things you loved her for, and she's trying to tell you and Lucas and her baby girl and everyone else that it's okay. There's a message in the last song she ever produced, her last artistic mark on the world, and you feel so stupid for not having noticed it before, because it takes a weight off your chest.
You tell her all of those things as you sit crossed-legged in front of her gravestone. You thank her and you apologize and you realize you're a mess. You place lilies in the grass and Ella whines and you touch her little hand to her mother's headstone before you bundle her securely into your arms and leave the cemetery. The sun is shining and there are fluffy white clouds in the sky; Ella reaches out as if she wants to touch them, cooing at the sky as you buckle her into her car seat. She's got her mother's face but her father's eyes, and something about that combination makes you melt.
On the way home you buy a copy of Mia's single. And you realize that when you think of home, you're actually thinking of his home, of the home that was once hers, of the home that feels like yours.
Lucas isn't there, but that's okay. You make yourself tea and heat up a bottle for Ella and put Mia's CD on. You listen to the words over and over, soft music on repeat, as you feed the baby and then settle into the rocking chair in her nursery. You glance at the picture of Peyton that he's strategically placed close to his little girl's crib before you crack open Cinderella and begin to read softly to Ella.
When you hear him arrive home, you gather up the baby in your arms and walk into his room, where he's tugging off his tie after a meeting with his publishing house. He nods by way of greeting and mentions that the music's pretty.
You smile and shrug one shoulder. It's P. Sawyer.
He freezes and listens for the duration of the song. You rest your cheek gently against Ella's head, preparing yourself for his reaction. When it ends, he sighs deeply, swallows hard, and murmurs, Yeah, it is.
Gently, you hand his daughter over to him, and as you do, a photograph captures your eye. It's the one other picture of her he's currently got on display in the house other than the one by Ella's crib, and it's the one that's been sitting above his bed since she moved in with him. It's him and her…and you, in between them, and they've both their arms wrapped up around you standing in front of the car you all fixed for her dad. It's the moment that really marks the beginning of the three of you, and now here you are, at the end. You wonder why it's the one he picked, out of all the options. And you start to wonder if he feels anything close to what you still sometimes feel, and the quiet song playing in the background doesn't make it feel quite so much like betrayal.
On impulse, you reach out and you wrap your arms around his torso, and it's so strange to be hugging him. You've got a million feelings and you shouldn't have a million feelings, and there's a little girl sandwiched between the two of you, a tangible reminder of someone you both loved and lost, and you wonder if this strange feeling means that it's wrong.
But then he hugs you back, tightly and securely, careful not to squish Ella, sighing into your neck, and you think that maybe you aren't a footnote after all and this is something like what epic might feel like, to be able to pinpoint the beginning, and to find yourself with that same person in the end, starting another story and continuing an old one, all at once.