Notes: I whipped this up really quickly in a couple of hours after obsessing over the wedding spoilers to the point of madness. I don't love it but it wouldn't leave me alone until it got out of my brain.
Warnings: Just spoilers for upcoming episodes. Doug is in this, there is some slight relationship stuff and also a breakup. I actually like Doug so there's no bashing here. It is, first and foremost, a Stendan fic. It's also pretty long, around 5000 words, but it flows in a way that I didn't want to split it up.
Title from the song Breathe by Superchick.
seven days
He's enveloped in a thick white fog. His body aches all over, sore and throbbing like one huge bruise. His head is pounding, mouth dry, limbs heavy and stiff. There's something on his face, tickling his nose and he sniffs and wrinkles his face to try and dislodge it.
Leah.
He can't focus, can't pull himself out of the dense blankness. There's a screaming voice in his head, long, plaited gold hair and a white dress.
Fire, shouting, panic, pain. The crunch of bones. The drag of skin against concrete.
Leah!
He opens his eyes to harsh white lights, hears a broken voice cry out and it might be his own. He moves his hands, slow and lethargic like they're dragging through sludge, up to his face and there's the painful tug of something stuck in his arm.
"Steven - "
A familiar voice, familiar figure looming over him and pinning him down.
"Steven, calm down - "
He struggles against it, one word on his lips, a continuous litany of his daughter's name spilling from his sore throat.
"She's fine, she's fine, Leah's absolutely fine, the bus didn't hit her, she's okay, Douglas and everyone else, they're okay - "
The bus.
"It hit you, you're in the hospital."
He hyperventilates, chest heaving painfully, choking on hitching sobs that wrack his whole body and seize his muscles. Brendan, Brendan, oh God Brendan, stands over him, hands stroking over his bare arms, muttering soothing words until Ste can control his limbs enough to reach out and grip the front of his shirt.
"Wh – what 'appened?" he strains out, high and wet and crackling.
"A minibus crashed into the wedding venue," Brendan tells him softly and he's reaching out for something, a plastic button hanging next to his bed. "There's a few people hurt, a few dead teenagers I think, but nothin' for you to worry about."
"Wha - "
He tries to think back but it's all a blur. There's a ring on his finger that tells him he's a married man and only the vaguest memory of an aisle and Doug's smiling face to back it up. Suddenly the room's filled with activity, doctors and nurses bustling in with stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs and Ste feels Brendan start to slip away. He flings his arm out after him over the side of the bed and grabs hold of his wrist, clings to him desperately.
"Please, please don't go - "
"Hey, hey, shhh, it's okay," he soothes, comes closer and kneels down on the floor so that they're eye level. He links their fingers together and leans his elbows on the bed, bows his head close so that Ste's whole vision is taken up by him. "I won't leave you, I promise."
Ste turns his face into him while the staff check him over and squeezes Brendan's fingers as tight as his weakened muscles will allow.
nine days
"Hey, how you feeling?" Brendan asks, high and sweet. Ste shifts in the bed, blinks his eyes a few times to clear the blurry sleep away and yawns. He shuffles to sit up, wincing at the ache in his body. His right hand feels stiff from being closed into a fist while he slept.
The sight makes Ste feel dizzy. It's the first time he's seen Brendan since he woke up two days ago and he stands in the doorway to the hospital room shiftily.
"Sore," he rasps out with a wry smile. "What's up wi' you? You look like you need a wee."
"I can't stay long."
"Why not? Come in."
Brendan sighs and shakes his head sadly. "Hospital's no place for a fight and your fella doesn't like me being here."
"That's because he doesn't like you full stop," Ste jokes tiredly, half-arsed attempt to lift the mood a bit. Brendan gives him a small quirk of his lips but doesn't come any closer. "Look, Doug's not even here. I've just been hit by a bloody bus, will you do as your told for once in your life?"
"Fine, but if he comes in here on the warpath - "
"You let me deal with, Doug. He's my husband, he has to honour and obey, now," he says mock-seriously.
"Yeah, I can totally see that happening," Brendan deadpans and it's worked because he strides in and sits down in the chair beside his bed.
"Anyway, I've summat that belongs to you." He feels suddenly hesitant. He's been mulling over how to broach this subject since his visitors had been turfed out the night he woke up and his Doctor had bent down to pick something up off the floor. He'd put it in Ste's hand and said, casual as you like, "you must have dropped this when you woke up, it's been in your hand since the day you got here," completely unaware that he'd just rocked Ste's world.
"What?" Brendan prompts him curiously.
He swallows thickly and raises his still tightly clenched right hand, opens out his fingers to let the silver chain spill out and hang between them, weighed down by the cross and ring. He watches Brendan stare at it, tries to take in and examine every nuance of his expression. His eyes are wide and his mouth parts slightly.
"It's lucky, you looked like you could use some," he says vaguely by way of explanation and his voice is hoarse. He flicks his eyes to Ste's and the moment is charged, thick with some emotion too huge to name. The sense of regret, of missing something huge and important that never happened. It feels like loss.
"Thanks, I think it worked." Ste smiles and it feels wobbly on his face like his muscles aren't strong enough to hold it in place. He nudges the chain towards Brendan and he curls his fingers around it, drags his fingertips down to the cross and grips it between his thumb and forefinger. They both watch as he touches it reverently, swipes his thumb across the band delicately.
"When you were first brought in – they said that you might not - "
"It's okay, I'm fine now - "
"It's warm," he interrupts quickly. Swallows and exhales a shaky breath.
"I've had in my hand a while," Ste explains. Fucking understatement but it's better than telling Brendan he hasn't put the thing down for two days.
Brendan finally takes it, spreads the chain with his fingers and puts it back around his neck. He picks up the cross and brings it up to press against his lips briefly before tucking it underneath his jumper. Ste feels the absence of it like a physical thing, like he's just handed over some piece of himself that he wasn't even aware was there until it was gone.
His hand feels empty and Ste's pretty sure that if he looked there'd be a cross-shaped dint embedded permanently in his palm.
twelve days
"The DNA test results show that Andy -
A tense, agonising silence.
" - is not the biological father."
"Awww, too bad for Andy," Ste says. "It'll be that Phil's, you watch."
"I'm riveted, honestly."
Ste kicks Brendan's foot, doesn't have to move far since it's right there on the bed next to his own. Brendan's lounging in the chair beside him, legs stretched up and crossed at the ankle on his hospital bed like he owns the bloody place. He bats at Ste with the puzzle book he's holding.
"Here you go Jeremy Kyle, got a cooking one for you," he says, clearing his throat. "Nine letters, practice of cutting up meat into chunks and stewing in gravy. Begins with an F, got an S in the middle."
"Fricassee. Don't even ask me how you spell it, though."
"Got it," he says briskly, scribbles in the book with the Biro that Ste had nicked for him out of one of the doctor's pockets when he'd come in to check his blood pressure. "Looks like your brain might not be that damaged after all."
"Oi, be nice. I'm injured, me."
"You're fine, stop whingin'."
"You're sympathy for me getting' hit by a bus is really lovely, Brendan. You don't know how much I appreciate it," he deadpans.
"You should, not many people get the Brendan Brady sympathy treatment," he says all sincere and serious and Ste scoffs.
"I don't think I'm getting' it if I'm perfectly honest."
"What d'you want, a hug?"
"Yes, actually." Ste laughs and then he catches himself, realises what he just said. Brendan peers over the top of the book at him, expression soft and thoughtful and Ste actually thinks, for a mad second, that he's going to get what he asked for and his whole body flutters and tingles. Brendan's face breaks into an embarrassed little smile that he can't seem to help and he dips his head to hide behind his puzzles.
"Shut up."
fourteen days
"I hope you've been behavin' for Auntie Chez?"
Leah pulls a coy face at him, squinty-eyed little grin and nose all wrinkled up. "Yes, Daddy."
"She's been great, right little helper aren't you?" Cheryl says sweetly and he drags Leah into his arms, painfully, because she's leaning over his inured body but it doesn't matter, he just wants to have her close. She nearly died and he doesn't even remember it. The thought that he would have forgotten the last moments he ever spent with his baby girl plays on his mind constantly.
"I dusted," she muffles into his neck and he gives Cheryl a look.
"She wanted to dust." She puts her hands up innocently when he rolls his eyes. "No child slave-labour goin' on in our house, promise."
"Yeah, yeah," he laughs, lets Leah go and she perches next to him on the bed, legs swinging over the sides. He keeps one hand around her small wrist, can't stop rubbing his thumb over her pulse.
"Uncle Brendan gave me a pound for it and we went and bought chocolate," she tells him and his whole chest flutters so suddenly that he feels like he wants to giggle.
"Uncle Brendan, eh?" He peers across at Cheryl where she's sat in the chair and she has a soft little smile on her face.
"She can't get enough of him, it's all 'when is Uncle Brendan coming home from work' and 'can we go and see Uncle Brendan today'. Never mind Auntie Cheryl doing all the laundry and cooking."
"I don't really want my child eatin' Brendan's cooking anyway, if I'm honest," he jokes but his insides are still doing some kind of pleasant, flip-flopping jig that makes his fingers twitchy.
He sits and listens to his daughter list all the hilarious things Brendan does and tries to get a fucking grip on himself.
sixteen days
Doug hasn't been gone for even two minutes - Ste had begged him to get back to the deli, they still have a business to run - when Brendan appears in the doorway.
"Good news," Ste says enthusiastically before he can even get half-way into the room. "Doctor says I should be out of here day after tomorrow!"
"That's great news, Steven."
"In't it? God, I can't wait to sleep in my own bed." He claps his hands together like a seal and does a little sitting-down happy-jig. "They said I'll be on crutches for a bit, though, so I might need some advice on that one."
"I'm sure you'll get by."
Ste catches his subdued tone and gives him a proper once over. He'd been buzzing so much he hadn't noticed that Brendan looks flat all over, washed out like all the colour's been drained out of him. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah, course. Why wouldn't I be?" He gives Ste a forced smile. It's fake and ugly and it makes him feel icy cold all over.
"Summat 'appened?" he asks, all sorts of horrible scenarios going through his head. Another crash related death, something happening to Leah or Cheryl, some other psycho baying for Brendan's blood.
"I'm tired, that's all. What with all the village in shock, my clubs been pretty packed out for the last few nights," he says, casual enough to make it sound true. Ste's not so sure. "Hey, whatcha worrying about me for? You have enough on your plate."
"Alright then, keep your little secrets." He doesn't mean for the words to come out sounding so moody but he can't help it.
"Steven, can we just - " Brendan breaks off and sighs, looks down at the floor like he's frustrated. "Can we not argue? Please? Not today."
"Okay," Ste says softly, a little confused. He can't shake the feeling that Brendan's sad. It's an emotion he's rarely used to seeing on him and he hides it so well but today Ste can sense it like it's rolling off him in waves.
"Good, budge up."
"You're not supposed to put your feet up on the beds y'know."
"You wanna swap places so you can try gettin' comfortable in one of these God-awful chairs?"
seventeen days
I can't believe you've done this! Are you 'appy now? Our marriage is over before it's even begun!
Ste -
Ste!
He wakes abruptly and with a gasp that hurts his throat. It makes him cough and the pain of it tears through him, makes him tuck his legs up close until he's curled in a ball on his side gripping the pillow in front of his face tightly. There's a shadow in front of his closed eyes, the sound of dragging metal and he squints ever so slightly to see.
Brendan stares back at him, one hand stretched out above the bedside table, guiltiest expression on his face, like Ste's just caught him in the act.
"Whatreyoudoin?" he mumbles blearily, still shaking off his nightmare. He can't grasp the details of it, they trickle through his fingers like water. He dreams about fire and screaming, his baby girl in a broken heap by the road.
A flash of silver catches his eye and he looks at Brendan's frozen hand. His cross is spilling from between his fingers, half pooled on the table. The digital clock next to it tells him it's late, far too late for visiting hours. Brendan looks torn, completely and utterly, like he's fighting some kind of massive, internal battle. One side must win because he sighs heavily and perches on Ste's bed and Ste rolls half onto his back to peer up at him.
"I didn't wanna wake you," he says softly, fiddling with the chain between his hands. "I'm no good at goodbyes, you know that."
"Goodbyes?" Ste asks, suddenly wide awake and cold all over.
"Yeah, I'm getting out of here for a while. Gonna go back home, back to Dublin."
"For how long?"
"I don't know - "
"What d'you mean you don't know? Are you even comin' back?"
Brendan's silence tells him everything he needs to know and he can't breathe, doesn't even know what to think or say or do. He shouldn't care, he can't care - he isn't allowed.
"Why?" Ste asks hoarsely, voice high and soft and childlike.
Brendan smiles at him sadly. "I need to move on. Being around here – around you – it's not good for either of us. I have to let you live your life and I need to go out and live mine."
Ste thinks there might be tears in his eyes and he's too afraid to blink. His breath is hitching, chest rising and falling quickly, his body reacting completely against his will, its response to Brendan's words physically out of his control before his mind has even processed the emotions he's feeling.
"But – but what will I do without you?" he asks in a small voice and it's the most fucking humiliating thing he has ever said in his entire life, the words just tumbling out of him without any input from his brain whatsoever. He's in complete shock. Can't imagine his world without Brendan in it, it's unthinkable.
"Hey, you'll be fine," Brendan says wetly, eyes shining and he puts a hand on Ste's shoulder. "You've got everything you ever wanted now, successful business, man who loves you enough to put a ring on your finger."
He nods numbly against the pillows, can't trust himself to speak and doesn't know what he'd say if he could. Beg Brendan to stay? For what?
"Here." Brendan presses something into his hand and closes his fingers around Ste's fist tightly. "Want you to have this."
The feeling of it is so familiar against his palm that he knows instantly what it is without looking.
"No, I can't - " he stutters, pushes their joint hands away from him and towards Brendan. " - I can't take it, it means too much to you."
Brendan shakes his head and pushes back against him firmly, presses both their hands against Ste's hammering heart. "You mean more."
The words break him in two, cleave him straight down the middle and hollow out his insides until he's opened up and raw, never felt more vulnerable in his entire life.
"Brendan - "
"Don't, don't ask me to stay, please," he pleads, leans over Ste's body and presses their foreheads together. Ste raises his free hand to grip the back of Brendan's neck with shaking fingers, turns his head up so that his nose bumps against Brendan's gently. They breathe in tandem into the inch of space between them and then Brendan closes the gap. He kisses Ste softly, lips clinging, once, twice, then again. When he pulls back Ste feels like he's been completely wrung out. There is literally nothing left that he can do.
"I'll miss you," he mumbles and it's pointless but he needs to get it out anyway.
"Well, don't." Brendan says simply and smiles at him, sweet and sad. He stands up and heads for the door and Ste struggles to sit up so he can see every retreating step. "Take care of yourself, Steven."
"Only if you promise you will, too."
Brendan doesn't say anything else, no more parting words. He doesn't even pause or turn around. Ste watches his back as he swings open the hospital room doors and disappears.
He sits totally still letting the aftershock crash over him like a wave, grief like he's never known growing through him until he's filled to bursting with it and it hurts so damn much, pressing against his skin, trying to claw its way out and manifest itself into some awful outburst. He squeezes his fingers around the cross in his hand until it digs painfully into his palm. His wedding ring glints up at him, pretty and perfect and safe, everything you ever wanted.
Except the one thing he's always wanted but that thing just walked out of his life forever.
twenty-three days
For the past four nights he's woken up in a cold sweat, Doug stirring next to him, never waking, and filled with so much adrenaline he's had to get up and hobble around the flat to shake it off.
His nightmare's aren't filled with fire and dead bodies anymore, they're more abstract, more frightening; the feeling of betrayal, the grief of loosing someone so loved, a recurring moment where Ste screams at Doug for all he's worth until they're both red-faced and tearful, the building up of pressure until he explodes like a volcano.
He's starting to recognise that they're memories, the ones he lost in the crash. He wants to know why he was having a slanging match with his newly-wed husband on their wedding day, wants to know where this sense of betrayal came from. Most of all he wants to know why he feels so dead inside, why he can't muster any emotion except numb emptiness.
He grabs a crutch from beside the bed, doesn't really need it much anymore except for when he's just woken up and his body's still stiff, grabs his phone and heads into the kitchen. For the past four nights he's done this, too. Stood in the dark, leaning against his kitchen counter and staring at the softly glowing light of Brendan's name in his phone. He could text, but he doesn't know what he'd say.
The other day he'd been sat in his doctor's office and she'd had a saucy calender pinned to her cork board, badly hidden underneath timetables and leaflets. Mr November had had a very fetching moustache and he'd stared at it for about half a minute with the weirdest urge to take a photo on his phone and send it to Brendan while the doctor had repeatedly asked him about six times if where she was pressing her hand still hurt.
He feels, helplessly, like he's losing his mind.
There's the scrape of a door across carpet and the shuffle of someone in the hallway. The kitchen light flashes on and he has to squint against the pain.
"Hey, what're you doing?"
"Just needed a drink of water."
"You okay?"
"I'm fine, go back to bed. I'll be in in a sec," He leans over to kiss Doug's cheek but he moves away. "What?"
"You're not fine, you haven't been since you got out of the hospital," Doug says firmly, straight to the point.
"I did get hit by a bus, Doug."
"No, you were fine in the hospital," he sighs, looks at Ste like he can see right through him. "It's Brendan isn't it?"
His first instinct is to say no, to deny like he always does when Doug brings up Brendan because most of the time it isn't, Brendan isn't the problem, they are and Brendan's always been a scapegoat for their unresolvable issues, but he can't – not this time. It's time for some honesty because he's not sure they can go on like this and he's too tired to keep trying.
Ste loves Doug, he does, and he wants some kind of relationship to salvage at the end of all this, just not the kind of one with romance and heartbreak, not the kind of one where they become bitter and resentful as silence grows between them like an out of control weed that they eventually stop even trying to cut through.
"Yeah, it is Brendan, a bit," Ste mutters softly and it's one of the hardest things he's ever had to admit to. Doug looks visibly angry for a moment before he seems to smother it down. "It's more than that, though. I mean - what are we doin', Doug?
"What?" he asks, confused suddenly, clearly wasn't expecting that.
"You and me? What are we doing? Can you remember the last time we were happy?"
"Wha – are you serious?" He throws out his arms desperately. "If you remember, two weeks ago it was our wedding day!"
"Well that's just it, Doug. I don't remember, do I?" Doug's face drops, dawning comprehension appearing. "What happened? What was I doin' outside when that bus came down the road?"
Doug sags, completely, like all the wind has vanished from his sails. He looks utterly defeated and it breaks Ste's heart that they've come to this.
The next few hours are some of the most difficult of his entire life and when they're finished he clings to Doug one last time, fingers buried in his t-shirt to hold them both up because they're completely dried out from crying, wrung out from talking, shouting, carving out their emotions and putting them on display until Ste feels as transparent as clingfilm.
It's all over and the weight on his shoulders feels just that little bit lighter.
thirty-five days
Adjusting to life without Doug is hard.
His flat feels too empty, the deli too full with forced, overcompensating politeness. They hedge around each other with jokes that fall flat and conversation that runs dry. It's Doug that puts forward the idea of taking some time off, giving them some space so they can both get some much needed closure, and he books a flight to New York. Ste sees him off at the airport, feels like it's the least he can do after everything. They should have been boarding a plane together right now, jetting off somewhere on their honeymoon. It smarts, but so does a lot of things.
Cheryl wrangles him round to her flat nearly every night when he's finished work, comes and fetches him herself just as he locking up and trying to slink off quietly. It's overbearing and exhausting but he appreciates it all the same. It's somewhere he feels safe and more often than not he crashes out on her sofa, nose buried in the cushions that smell so comforting and familiar.
His spine hates him, viciously, but the rest of him slowly recovers.
fourty days
One day she spots it.
"Is that - "
She doesn't finish the sentence and he frowns at her. They're in the kitchen, Ste perched up on the counter top, kicking his legs into the cupboards to irritate her until she smacks him. She's beside him making coffee, or she was. Now she's pointing a spoon at him accusingly and gawping like a fish.
"What? Is what, what?" Ste asks.
She pokes the spoon into his open collar and hooks it around the chain, drags it out slowly as his heart sinks slowly in realisation. He'd completely forgotten he was wearing it, it fits him so much like a second skin now, like part of his own body. It feels lucky.
"It is, it's Brendan's – but he never takes it off - "
She's wide-eyed and gob-smacked and it would be funny if he wasn't so embarrassed at being caught out being so bloody sad and soppy.
"He gave it to me in the hospital, just before he left," he mutters softly, head bowed because he can't look at her. Cheryl stays silent for a worrying amount of time, cross sitting in the dip of the spoon like she's about to try and feed it to him.
"Okay, putting aside the fact that I'm very offended that he didn't give it to me," she says eventually, half-serious he's sure, "what does it mean?"
"Goodbye, I think."
"You absolutely sure about that?" she asks, looking at him like he's crazy.
"He said he wanted to move on, Chez, and that I should too. He deserves a chance at a new life."
"Okay, I get that," she says softly, eyes twinkling. "But, Ste – he never takes it off. Not for anyone."
The words sit there between them for a whole minute before they sink in and Cheryl lets the cross fall back against him. It sits against his chest comfortably, this small thing that effortlessly fills a hollow space in him. That night in the hospital, Ste had thought that Brendan was giving up some huge part of his old life, freeing himself up to find a new identity. He was wrong. Brendan had carved out a bit of his heart and handed Ste a piece to keep and it had taken up residence inside him, buried roots and flourished. He'll never be able to move on while it's in there. Brendan can never move on while Ste still owns so much of him.
Maybe that's the whole point?
One of Ste's hands curls protectively around the cross and he looks at Cheryl, feels his eyes go wide. She's smiling at him expectantly and he feels all the gears click into place. He hops down off the counter, filled with jittering adrenaline and reckless giddiness. "I need you to write me down the address of Brendan's Dublin flat - "
"Yeah, I'm on it. You go and pack, hurry up, I'll drive you - "
fourty and a half days
Cheryl kisses him good bye at check-in, makes him promise he'll phone and tell her how things went as soon as he knows himself. He gets a ticket with no fuss, next flight two hours away. His buzz from the kitchen hasn't faded in the slightest, anticipation making him breathless and excited. He doesn't rehearse what he's going to say, doesn't need to. He's confident that it'll come to him as soon as he sees Brendan's face. For the first time in his life he doesn't feel one trace of doubt.
"Calling all passengers for flight FR552, Manchester to Dublin International Airport, to Gate 12 - "
He gets up, pulls his bag up onto his shoulder and heads for the gate. The attendant takes his passport and boarding pass to study them closely.
With his momentarily free hands Ste pulls the chain out from underneath his jumper, grips the cross tightly between his fingers and brings it to his lips.
fourty and three quarter days
He raps on the door hard with his knuckles and holds his breath. It swings open and he's finally here, they're both here. Brendan, cosy and casual, hair messy, eyes bright-blue and dark-rimmed, mouth parted in surprise - he's never looked more beautiful.
"What - "
"I 'ave something that belongs to you - you left it behind."
There's a lingering silence and Ste watches Brendan's expression turn to soft understanding.
"Well - I won't make that mistake again."
