Disclaimer: I own nothing
A/N: This one is inspired by a break-up three years ago, the anniversary of which just came and passed. It's my first 'based on a real-life experience' story, but it's obviously changed to apply to the world of Trory. Here you go.
Tristan sighed as he stuffed his hands deeper in his jacket pockets. His exhaled breath left a trail of steam in the air. Breathing in deeply, the cold air cut through his lungs like needles. He needed to feel something again, needed to know that his senses were still active. The cold November rain had stopped but the fallen leaves were still soaked through and pressed flat against the pavement. The bright yellow spots contrasted deeply with the dark, wet cement.
It was moments like this that Tristan needed a smoke. He shook the thought from his mind. He had stopped smoking in high school because he had started dating Rory. She had argued that it was either her or the slow painful death of cancer, and he had gladly chosen her. God, he would have done anything for her. Now he was praying for the pain of cancer. Anything would be better than the numbness he was currently experiencing. With the thought lingering in the back of his mind, he did something he hadn't done in over five years. He stopped at a kiosk on the corner and bought a pack of cigarettes. He lit one up, just to spite her. Inhaling deeply once again, he tried desperately to fill himself with anything, even if it was only with the warm smoke that tickled its way down his throat.
Flicking the ashes onto the sidewalk, he continued walking back to his hotel room. He knew that their relationship wasn't what it used to be, and he had been analyzing every second of it since he had left for this business trip. He had no idea when it had happened. When they had crossed the line from love to bitterness. He couldn't remember a time when he didn't want her. Hell, he still wanted her.
In a twisted way, it was their love, knowing each other inside and out, that was their downfall. He knew every word that would drive her crazy, and she knew every button to push to annoy him. It was as if all the energy and passion from their love had turned into making each other miserable, wanting the other person to feel just as bitter and resentful as they did, so that they didn't seem as guilty in feeling the way that they did.
Maybe they had burned too brightly, like a meteor burning in the sky, slowly picking up the pace until they had no where to go but one hundred miles an hour into the ground. Maybe a love that great, that powerful, wasn't meant to last, for fear that it would consume every piece of you until there wasn't anything left. That's how he was feeling, like he didn't know where he started and she ended. There wasn't any piece of him that wasn't her, as if she had conquered his soul and the real him was simply floating somewhere in the abyss.
It was the loneliness that really numbed him, that feeling like he wasn't whole unless he was with her. He hadn't been expecting it and it shook him to the core. He had felt trapped for so long that when he finally was released, the space around him seemed to be too much, too expansive for his own good. All he wanted was breathing room and now that he had it, he couldn't breathe.
Taking one last drag of his cigarette, he tossed it onto the ground beside him. After watching it smolder for a minute, he cursed under his breath and walked over to extinguish it, digging the toe of his shoe bitterly into the cement. He stuffed his hands back into his pockets and took a look around him before finally making his way into the hotel building.