Author's Note: Written for lurkingwhump - and here be angst! I promise to give them a happy ending, but for now things are very, very unhappy.
I should probably note that inwhatlifetime on Tumblr has written a fic that's very similar, but I have been planning to write a temporary Jeller breakup based on the Clem incident for a while, so I forged ahead. You should go read theirs as well, because it's great. :) I would post a link to it, but we all know what this website thinks about links...
Kurt stared into his glass of Scotch, knowing he should just go to bed. But all that awaited him there was a long, lonely night with his thoughts, and he couldn't stand to move just yet.
The last couple of nights had been pure hell. Kurt had spent them lying in bed, inhaling Jane's scent, still on the bed linen, and torturing himself with thoughts of her with Clem Hahn. How many times had she slept with him? How serious had she felt about him? They'd worked over a dozen jobs together during a six-month period—hadn't she thought to mention to the guy that she was married? Or maybe she had, and Hahn hadn't cared. But he seemed like a decent guy, as much as it pissed Kurt off to admit it.
Since she'd first come into his life, every time he had a quiet moment to think, his thoughts always gravitated towards Jane. During the bad times, that was more of a curse than a blessing. God knew he'd spent hours obsessing over her while she'd been in the black site, wondering why she'd lied to him about being Taylor Shaw. When she'd gone on the run, he'd spent unhealthy amounts of time worrying about her—whether she was safe, whether he'd ever see her again. But this? It was so much worse.
His mind was filled with images of Jane kissing Hahn. Of her stripping down for him, sucking his cock, letting him go down on her. The idea of her orgasming with another man's cock in her made Kurt want to tear his brain out of his skull.
He didn't know if he was more angry or hurt. While they'd been working together to save Avery, he'd mostly just been numb, maybe a little in denial, but when it was all over—Avery safe, everyone back in New York—he'd come home and stood in the kitchen, staring at Jane's wedding ring, still lying on the counter where she'd left it. He'd wanted to yell, trash the room, express the anger that seethed inside him—but as always, the memories of his father drunkenly smashing up their family home reined him in. Instead, he'd gone into the living room, lowered himself onto the couch, gazed at the floor where he and Jane had consummated their reunion, and begun to cry.
Last night, he'd watched their wedding DVD again, turning it off well before Roman made his improvised cameo. He'd rewound the part where they'd said their vows time after time, looking for any trace of insincerity in Jane's face as she promised to forsake all others until death parted them. There wasn't a trace of doubt or duplicity in her face on that video, nothing he'd been too blinded by love to see on their wedding day.
Where had everything gone so wrong? The way he felt about Jane was powerful, his protective instinct strong and his love even stronger. Was it too much for her to cope with? Was that why she'd run at the first sign of trouble, rejecting his help to go it alone for eighteen months? Had she found Hahn easier to be with, more laid back, more compatible with her? Better in bed?
One of the first things she'd said to him when she'd come back was, "You're still wearing your ring." She'd sounded surprised. Had she honestly thought that leaving hers behind meant it was over? Hadn't she realised that he'd never let her go without a fight?
The Jane he'd brought back from Nepal had been the same, yet in some ways, almost a stranger. And she'd told him parts of herself had 'woken up again' on her travels, like that wasn't an idea that would cut him to the bone, that she needed to be away from him before she could feel fully alive.
Sure, he'd made a stupid mistake not telling her immediately about what had happened in Berlin. But it hadn't been just to protect himself from her ire and recriminations. It had been to protect her from being hurt more by her past. No matter how wrong he'd been, his intentions had been good.
If he'd known she'd been fucking around on him in Europe, maybe he would have told her sooner.
How could they fix this? Was their relationship shattered beyond all repair?
Someone knocked on the door, and Kurt frowned, wondering if he could get away with ignoring it. But at the familiar sound of the key in the lock that came right after, he knew it was Jane. Kurt tensed, his pulse leaping right before his heart sank. He didn't know what to do about their relationship yet. He wanted to see his wife, but at the same time, he wished she'd stayed away a while longer.
Maybe she'd just come to pick up some more clothes, and then she'd head out again.
He stood up as Jane dropped her bag on the floor and turned to face him. Leaned against the door jamb between the study and the living room, unsure what to say. "Hey."
"I'm not letting Roman win," she said, her face determined.
He remained where he was, unsure what she meant. "What happened? Everything all right?" Had Roman made some new move they needed to counteract? He needed details.
Jane approached him a little hesitantly. "No. And it might not be for a while." She sighed. "Look, I know you have a history of being let down by the people you love. Your father. Your old partner. Me."
At least she's admitting she let me down. That was a good start. But where was she going with this?
"But knowing why you lied about Avery doesn't make me feel any less betrayed. And that hurt may never go away."
An apology came to his lips, but he bit it back. He'd apologised a million times already, and it hadn't made any difference.
Jane watched him sadly. "But all of this has just made me feel so lonely. Afraid to trust the people I should believe in the most. You, and Avery. And that is exactly what Roman wants."
Kurt was afraid to breathe, afraid to hope, even as he slowly crossed the remainder of the space between them. Was she coming back to him? Was that what she meant by not letting Roman win?
"I'm not gonna give it to him. Because I want to trust Avery. I want to work things out with you. I want love back in my life."
Kurt stared at her, his soul torn in two. Half of him wanted to pull her into his arms, welcome her home, promise he'd never, ever screw up again if she'd just stay with him, forgive him.
The other half was frozen with disbelief. She hadn't apologised to him for cheating on him. She hadn't begged for his forgiveness for telling him he should have died with Avery. She wasn't making any admission of wrongdoing at all, and making it sound like it was a foregone conclusion that he'd take her back.
"Kurt?" Jane was frowning at him, as though she'd expected him to have popped open the champagne by now.
This is too broken to fix. Too one-sided.
It's over.
Kurt wasn't saying anything. She'd expected him to be relieved, after all the times he'd begged for her forgiveness, but now he was almost unnaturally still, just staring at her. Then his shoulders dropped a little, and he rubbed a weary hand across his face.
Jane's stomach flipped over. What was going on with him?
"I don't think I can do this, Jane."
She realised she'd forgotten to breathe and made herself take a deep breath. "I don't understand."
He drained the glass of Scotch he was holding in one go, then moved past her to rinse out the glass. "That's the problem. You really don't, do you?"
A distant, but steadily approaching sense of panic registered on the edges of her senses. "Kurt, please, talk to me. You're saying I can't come home?"
He leaned against the kitchen worktop, his arms crossed in front of him. "Yeah. That's what I'm saying. This relationship…it isn't gonna work. Maybe it was never meant to."
"But I love you," she almost whispered, too stunned to cry. If she'd thought it had hurt to hear he'd killed Avery—or thought he had—it was nothing compared to this. "And you love me, I know you do."
He was silent, his posture somehow both defensive and defeated. The tears in his eyes gave her hope that she could change his mind, but the way his jaw was clenched worried her.
"Is this because of Clem?" she asked, desperately trying to get him to open up about what was going on in his head. She hadn't seen him this closed off to her since right after the black site, around the time when he'd told Zapata he couldn't even stand to be in the same room as her.
"That's a big part of it, yeah."
"After what you did, you're holding that against me?" It felt safer to argue with him than to collapse in a heap on the floor. She harnessed her anger about his deception and used it as fuel to keep her standing upright. "You hardly have the moral high ground right now, so I—"
"This isn't about what I did, Jane. It's about what you did. I've apologised more times than I can count for keeping what happened with Avery from you. You left because of it. If you still feel so strongly about it, why are you trying to come back? Because you don't want to let Roman win?"
Jane flinched at the edge to his tone as he quoted her words back at her. "Because I love you. Because I don't want this to tear us apart."
"You worked with Clem Hahn for six months doing K and R jobs, right? How many times did you sleep with him? Was it serious?" He radiated tension and hurt, but his words were quiet and even.
"Just one night! And I felt so bad about it that I left for Nepal the next day. That was the last time I saw him before he came to New York this week, I swear."
"You felt bad about it? I haven't seen any evidence of that." His voice shook as he said, "Do you have any idea what it's like for me to know that you fucked someone else? Every time I think about it, I just…"
She realised his hands were balled into fists. She'd known she'd hurt him, maybe as badly as he'd hurt her, but she hadn't realised how angry he was until now. "Kurt—"
"Just stop, Jane. I'm not done."
Jane fell silent, her heart pounding. Was she about to lose the man she loved over one stupid decision, one that she'd made out of loneliness while she'd been on the run?
"You left me in the middle of the night without saying goodbye or giving me the choice to come with you, and I forgave you. You realised I'd spent all of our savings trying to find you, and you said nothing about the giant stack of cash you had hidden in the air vent, and I forgave you. You told me parts of you only started to wake up again after you left Colorado, and hearing that tore me apart. But I forgave you, Jane, because I love you so damn much."
Jane closed her eyes, wishing she could go back and change things. The situation with the bounty hunters hadn't been her fault, but the way she'd handled it hadn't been great, in retrospect. She'd screwed up, and he'd gone through hell. That he'd forgiven her at all was a miracle.
"The way I kept what happened with Avery from you was stupid, I admit that. And I will feel guilty about it for the rest of my life. But I was played, Jane. By Roman, and by Dedrik, and by Avery. I was set up, and my only mistake was to try to spare us both more hurt, when I thought she was already dead. I did what I did to protect you, and our relationship, after you told me that you were done with your past, because all you ever found was pain."
She'd forgotten she'd said that. Shame began to creep over her at some of the things she'd said to him. She'd been unfair to tell him he should have died with Avery.
"But you can't compare not telling you about Avery to what you did. What happened in Berlin was an accident. But you? You stood in front of another man, and you made the decision to break your marriage vows. Sure, you took off your ring when you left, but you know me, Jane. You knew I could never accept that it was over without talking to you first. We were happy before those bounty hunters crashed in on us that night. Or was I wrong about that?"
"No!" she said, taking a step forward. She wanted to cup his face in her hands and tell him how happy she'd been with him, but the hard expression on his face made it clear he wouldn't welcome any contact. "Those first few months of our marriage were so wonderful, Kurt. I didn't want to leave you."
"But you did want to cheat."
"I'd been on the run for over a year. It didn't look like I'd ever get the bounty off my head. I didn't think I could ever come back to you, and when he kissed me, I was just so lonely, I—"
"Don't." Kurt's voice was low and dangerous. "I don't want to hear about how lonely you were. I offered to come with you. I know you were trying to make sure I didn't miss Bethany's first few years to go on the run with you, but that wasn't your choice to make. You didn't have to be lonely, Jane."
"But I—"
He shook his head fiercely. "Do you have any idea how many women hit on me while you were away? I travelled the world searching for you, and more than once, while I was sitting at a hotel bar feeling sorry for myself, women came to try and keep me company. Some of them were very beautiful. Funny. Charismatic."
Jane fought a wave of territorial jealousy at the thought of other women hitting on her man in her absence. It was completely illogical, after her own indiscretion.
Kurt ran a hand through his hair, clearly stressed. "Was I ever tempted? Yeah, I was. I hadn't seen my wife in months, or a year, or more. I was lonely. I wanted to forget everything for a while. But from the moment you first told me you loved me back, out there in that hallway, there was never any chance that there'd be anyone else for me."
"Then why, Kurt? Why don't you want to try to make this work?" Jane's heart ached at how broken he looked. All she wanted was his arms around her, but he clearly needed space.
"Because you haven't apologised for cheating on me. Not even once."
With sickening horror, Jane realised he was right. "Kurt… I'm so—"
He cut her off with a bitter smile. "Oh, you're gonna say it now? It's too late for that."
Jane wrapped her arms around herself, a futile attempt to hold herself together, while the one person she'd always been able to count on turned his back on her. "I made a stupid mistake. I've been so angry at you and so worried about Avery that I just didn't let myself think about apologising, but I was wrong. I should have apologised on the plane, when you first found out. I just had a lot on my mind, but I'll apologise every day for the rest of our lives if you'll just forgive me."
He shook his head and moved back into the living room, as though he needed to be farther away from her. She stayed where she was, hurting too much to move.
"Kurt. Please don't shut me out, here. I want to know what you're thinking."
"You take me for granted, Jane. You walked in here tonight thinking it was a foregone conclusion that I'd let you move back in here. You didn't ask how I felt about it. You didn't apologise for cheating. You assumed that I love you so blindly that I can't live without you, that I'll forgive any transgression you make and that you don't even have to ask how I feel about it."
"I…" She couldn't formulate a proper response, words failing her. Had she really been so thoughtless?
"I know that you love me. I believe that. I have to. And you were my world. Every time something got in the way of our happiness, I put my own feelings aside, because I told myself you were more important. But I can't do that anymore, not when you don't do the same for me."
The anger seemed to have drained out of him now. As he approached her again, a tear fell down his cheek, and her own eyes began to fill up at the misery he exuded.
Why couldn't she move? Why couldn't she speak? He was her world, too. She should tell him that he was wrong, that she'd always fought for him… But she couldn't. Part of her knew he was right.
As she blinked to clear her vision, Kurt stopped in front of her. Without another word, he pulled off the wedding ring he'd worn every day since she'd first slid it onto his finger. Then he laid it gently on the breakfast bar beside them. It made a soft clink on contact with the clean surface.
"I'll see you at work on Monday. But I need you to leave now."
"No," she whispered, searching his face for any trace of doubt. "Please, Kurt. I'll do anything. Please, let's work this out."
He gave her a sad smile, then leaned forward and pressed his lips to her forehead. "It's over, Jane. I'm sorry."
Before she could protest any further, he turned and headed into their bedroom, and softly shut the door behind him.
Shocked and heartbroken, Jane picked up Kurt's wedding ring with a shaking hand. Remembering how he'd carried hers with him for the whole time she'd been on the run, she fought back tears and slid the masculine wedding band into her pocket.
It's not over. It can't be. I won't let it.
Then, her limbs feeling almost as heavy as her heart, she picked up her bag again and left the apartment she could no longer call home.
