AN: It feels odd to publish something like this as my first attempt, but after the sad news of Lee Thompson Young's untimely passing, I wanted to try something new. You never know what tomorrow brings, so take a risk while you can, challenge yourself, and do what you love the most. This one's for you, Lee.
(I hope there aren't too many errors in this. As a non-native speaker, I tend to trip over those darn English prepositions and other intricacies of style. Feel free to pick this to pieces. No sugarcoating.)
Darkness has fallen when you arrive at her apartment on this rainy night, mere hours after the call that changed everything. Her. You. Both of you.
You climb up the stairs, each step heavier than the one before, and when you finally reach her floor, you rest your head against her door, gathering the strength you need to go inside.
Your trembling fingers find your spare key in your pocket, and somehow the key finds its way into the lock.
As you enter her apartment, the one place that would always make you feel home and warm and secure, you habitually expect her to welcome you with her broad endearing smile, cracking a joke the way she so often does. But not tonight.
Your eyes adjust to the dimness, and you notice the pizza box on the small table next to the couch. Pepperoni, of course. And yet untouched.
"Jane?" you call for her, but you don't expect an answer.
You take off your coat and steady yourself on the wall as your tired feet carry you to her bedroom.
Somewhere deep down inside, you want to turn around and leave, and run back home through the rain, and pretend everything was still the same. But you know you can't.
Darkness embraces you as you enter her room, and the sound of pouring rain coming in through open windows silences your fears. And there, bathed in the silvery light from the full moon outside, she sits crouched on the floor, her back leaned against the bed. Fragile. Broken.
You don't see her face but you can feel her tears, and your heart breaks a little inside.
You approach with faltering steps. And as you sink down next to her, you try to find the right words, but then you say nothing at all.
For a while, the two of you just sit there, staring into the rainy darkness outside. For minutes, hours, who knows.
Then she slightly shifts, and you notice the bottle clutched in her left hand between her legs. You glance at her from the side as she takes a heavy draught. It's not her usual beer, the one that would cause a warm blush on her cheeks and sometimes make her chuckle at everything you say. Tonight, it's bourbon, or whiskey, but you can't really tell, and it doesn't really matter.
As your eyes wander, you notice the blood trickling from her right hand. And for a moment your heart stops, but then you see the shattered whiskey glass beneath the bed, and you wonder whether she simply dropped it or willfully smashed it to pieces in an attempt to lessen her pain.
You want to reach out and pull her close, but you hesitate, afraid that your own fragile self might fall apart. And so instead you wait, and you listen to the rain outside as it pours from the sky the way you want to let your own tears pour from your eyes.
She brings the bottle to her mouth again, and you see how she silently cries as the golden liquid numbs her lips but not her pain.
When she puts it back down, you find the courage to softly touch her arm. She shivers, whether from the cold in the room or from the warmth of your touch, you can't tell. You reach for the bottle, your hand begging hers to let go. She doesn't resist and willingly trades the fleeting numbness for the lasting comfort only you can provide. And so you finally pull her into your arms, let her head rest on your shoulder, and wrap her trembling body in your warm embrace.
After a while, you notice her breathing slow down in unison with the fading of the rain outside, and you gently pull her up and help her to the edge of the bed. You reach for a tissue from the nightstand to dab off the blood on her hand, making sure there's no piece of broken glass stuck in her skin.
You hold her hand a little longer to let her know that you're here, that she won't lose you, too.
Then you pull back the duvet for her to crawl under and place a soft kiss on her head. "I'll be right back," you promise as you wearily walk towards the living room.
You lock the front door and turn off the lights, and as you drift through the sea of darkness, back to her room, your mind wanders off to that moment when everything fell apart, when you knew that it would break her heart, and your own, and things would never be the same.
When you step back into the bedroom, she has crawled under the duvet and curled up into the pillows, her face towards the wall, away from you. For a moment, you pause in the door frame, before you walk over and slip out of your shoes and into her bed.
You know she won't turn around, so you place your hand on her arm and watch the steady rise and fall of her back. She has never been one to admit to her weaknesses, and even though you already know all her fears and her flaws, she sometimes still pulls away. And you let her.
When she finally takes your hand and encloses it in her own, you move closer and bury your head in her shoulder, holding her tight from behind. Your breathing finds the rhythm of hers and your heartbeats become one, and all the while you're silently weeping inside.
"I'm scared," she whispers into the darkness.
"Me too," you admit before your grief seizes your voice. A single tear runs down your cheek and finds its way to her neck. Your first instinct is to wipe it away, but then you feel her squeezing your hand. It's okay, it's okay.
And so you cling to her as much as she clings to you, and you comfort each other in that longest hour of the night. And you just lie there in the dark. Together. Waiting for dawn.