Author's Note: This is in dedication to my gorgeous friend Mandy (Ameriboo) Becs she's a pure beam of sunshine and warmth and i adore her to bits, and she was the first person I showed this to and who encouraged me to publish33 ILy boo!
I seriously and truly hope you guys can enjoy this bit, i've been thinking of this FIC for so long and I can't wait to share33
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The Unspoken at The Edge Of The Spoken..
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"What matters is precisely this; the unspoken at the edge of the spoken"
-Virginia Wolf
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Prologue
February, 2024: Second year of Prime Minister Norman Arnaz's First Term
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She can feel his gaze on her as she sets off the oven top, pours them each a cup of the chamomile tea Misty had brought for May from her last business trip to Galar, with an extra helping of sugar for him. Some residual part of her still finds it endearing how this man of all kinetic energy and otherworldly intellect, still has the tastebuds of a tot. But then the endearment burns when it mixes with the raw fury that still remains, a harsh dichotomy of emotions towards him that May is seriously starting to believe will never leave her.
With a deep inhale, she admonishes all the feelings that claw against her still gaping chest, and pastes on her smallest of smiles. Trying to wear a mask of indifference even though it's killing her that he's sitting here, in the kitchen she's finally made her own, without his specter haunting every nook and crevasse— all the memories of what there was, and the what there never will bes.
She turns around to find him gazing at her with too much fondness, like how he use to do right before he'd profess his love in some elaborate, spectacular string of words, or right before he'd kiss her, deep and thorough, like he was trying to convince himself that she was truly there with him. God how she misses those quiet moments between them.
"You remembered… About my sweet tooth I mean," he falters between thoughts, as if he assumed that she could still read his mind as simply as the bak of her hand. As if she knew what he was thinking before he even thought it.
The worst part, May realizes with a jolt, is that he's absolutely right. She still knows him more intimately than even herself. She was always able to read the deepest recesses of him, including those devoid of any of his glimmer or wit. Those dark parts that hated himself over all and what made him strive to become so much more than what he ever was. Those parts that scared and invigorated May in equal measures. The ones that she cherished as much as any other fraction of him because this is Drew, and she wouldn't be May, his Ace, if she didn't love every piece of him with all she had— even the parts of herself she knew mirrored his own, the pieces she never analyzed or cared to understand. The bits she reckons he's always seen.
"We were together for half a decade, I don't have that bad of a memory Hayden."
He blanches, all the color from his handsome face draining out of him. There's another stilted, awkward silence. But May doesn't care, he came here— to her home— in the middle of the night to speak some sort of truth that couldn't wait for day break. So he'll be the one to infiltrate all the silences between. Instead she'll sip on her tea and examine the snowflakes that have cascaded onto his messy, windswept hair.
May didn't realize it was snowing.
She pretends she doesn't think of the fact that they first met in the snow, that they fell in love in the snow. That the first time they had sex and the night of their wedding years after, it snowed.
She pretends but it's never enough. Besides, All her denial is fruitless., May would've fallen in love with Drew even if all the angels of above outlawed it, if providence, and kismet and all in-between had set it for them to have never known each other. May would have fallen in love with Drew if they had never cross paths, if it had merely always been a sensation in the back of her mind, a sensation of da ja vu that she could never get rid of, she would have known that she loved Andrew Hayden . And it would have been something so brilliant and awing, that none would ever be able to even remotely come close to the way he makes her feel.
Just like now…
May thinks she hates that truth more than any other.
"May…. Will you tell me why"
She hikes her brows in silent command for him to elaborate, even if she knows precisely what he's alluding to.
Drew's expression drops. He folds his hands in front of him and leans forward, all the seriousness in the world etched into his all too familiar countenance, all dark shadows and flat planes. God he's beautiful, and God does it hurt being here with him, so close but so resoundingly far away. She hates how easy it is for her to become intoxicated by him, even now, even after all of it.
"Just why do you want to do this, to run. You hate public life," he accuses undoubtedly. "The strains that a government employee has to go through."
"Untrue," she sniffs, only a bit indignant. "I only ever hated what it did to you— how you let it consume you. I am not that weak Drew, I know how to separate my political obligations from my personal life."
He flinches back like she had just struck him, and May knows that the words she spewed were worse than any physical beating she could've bestowed. She knows him too well, like he knows her. She knows what places to poke and prod at until they're raw, and he's left comatose. She knows, but she once thought she was never so cruel as to act upon them.
"I'm sorry," she steps closer to him, close enough that she can count all the shades of jade that sparkle in his ever piercing eyes. "That was uncalled for."
He tries for a smile, but it comes across pained if anything.
"You weren't wrong."
She worries on her bottom lip, scanning the way his shoulders are slumped, almost defeatus, and how he clutches to the mug for some sort of tethering. His hair's overgrown and unruly, and there are severe, harsh looking circles that drag under his eyes, made more prominent by the sunken appearance of his cheeks. He looks strung out and so so exhausted, and it pains May. She wants to grab the afghan from the living room, wrap him into it and chide at him until he goes to bed. Scolding him for keeping these sorts of hours before pressing a loving peck to his cheek and promises of his favorite sort of wakeup call from her for the next day if he just listens and goes to sleep.
He'd smile roguishly at her, folding against her and crooning all the ways that he's found himself the naughtiest, most beautiful angel.
But no.
Those times are long past, the times when the simple act of Being near him, needed by him, was enough, How it quilled all the longing of having him completely. Now May just laughs at herself thinking that someone like Andrew Hayden could ever belong so entirely to someone so much less extraordinary. And how she could ever be satisfied with only claiming portions of him for herself.
As if May could handle not having all of him, always.
"May, he says her name in a way that she knows he's been calling it for a while and she just hasn't heard until now. She smiles sheepishly before snatching away the hand he was gingerly squeezing, hoping that he didn't know how much it burnt when he did so.
His frown deepens, looking wounded, and she doesn't comment on it.
"Is that all you needed Drew."
He levels her with a look, nose crinkling in the way it does whenever he wants to speak a point that's been lingering in his thoughts for quite a while, one that he's not quite sure how to poise correctly.
"I just need to hear it from you… Not your father or friends or whomever else," a dark expression passes across his face right then and she knows he's thinking of Steven, unwilling to speak his name out loud even now. "Why are you doing this?"
"Why wouldn't I," she retorts just to be difficult.
"May, please just let me into your mind for just a moment."
She feels something crack within her chest at his plea, and all she wants is to cackle with hurt. She thinks of how ridiculously the tables have turned between them— how she had always been the one to beg for him to let her into his world, into his genius. She remembers how much it broke her every time he failed to do so. And at least May knows she's not that cruel to continue on pushing him away while he so desperately wants to understand, not like he had… Not like him.
"I want to help those kids Drew," she says with all the bravado shielding her from him finally stripped away, her voice wavering in the immense truth of her intentions. "They deserve someone who actually cares, and I do. I really and truly do. Look at how far the orphanage has grown… Imagine if I could do that for the entire region."
His eyes are boring into hers now— green melting into blue— a tautness seizing the air between them and it's the first time in a long time she can admit to herself that she yearns to know what thoughts are running through his mind.
"Drew?"
"I'm in."
"Excuse me?"
"You've found yourself a new campaign team, The gladiators are at your service." He raises up a finger once she parts her lips. "You're father was the one to contact us to start with, and I would've excepted on the spot but I wanted to talk to you face to face, to know if this is truly what you wanted-"
"It is," she says with more steel than she even expected from herself.
He nods, a single finger tapping mindlessly on her white marble countertop.
"Then it shall be done ms May H… Ms may Arnaz."
She gives him the grace of not pointing out the fraudulent slip of the tongue, just returns the smile with one of her own— one that isn't forced for the first time in a while.
"Thank you Drew."
"Anything for you May… Always… Always anything for you."
Her cheeks dust red and for a sparing moment May feels like she's back to being a young graduate, stumbling into her shared houses kitchen in the middle of the night after a stupid, inconsequential argument with her first ever boyfriend that she was settled to marry one day, only to have her world altered so entirely— locking eyes with the beautiful, brilliant boy Dawn had been raving to her about for so long. Charmed and floundered by every word that poured from his lips, May tried her best to appear aloof, collected and noncommittal to his presence, but the truth of it is that she fell for him in the space between one breath and the next. For his boyish good looks, and charismatic affability. For the way his smile went crooked looking at her, and for how he always seemed electric— like every thought he had in his complicated mind sparked a symphony of others that all interconnected into one, lasting crescendo of brilliance.
She feels helpless under his gaze all over again, but refuses to let it show, even if there's a part of her that wants to scream against the chasms of expectations that now parts them. To tell him that she loved him, and she loved him, and she loved him, and he could've had all of her if he only wanted it, if he ever let her all the way in…
But no.
The time for those words to have been spoken has long died, and nor will it ever revive. There's no more Drew and May, and she can't let there be.
"Goodnight Hayden."
"Until tomorrow May," he says with an earnest smile while showing his self out, an excited hop to his steps.
May's heart contracts with the idea of having him so intimately intwined with her life once again, and all that entails.
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Author's Note: Truly, thank you so so much for reading, and if you left me a comment down below letting me know what you thought I would adore you for eons!
All My Love
~Len
