A/N: Damn… So, this is the third update in two days… I'm on a ROLL, people! And I hope you enjoy my rolling chapters and this little angsty piece…
6: A Suit In A Month
Adam isn't sure how it happens.
It's a slow transition, it happens without his permission and almost completely without his attention. And it should annoy him, since it interrupts with his usual loneliness, but the truth is that the small part that he sees of this transition, he doesn't do a single attempt to stop.
But all the sudden, Jake is there all the time. Always.
When he has nightmares. When he comes home after buying cigarettes. When everything gets too much, when the walls in the apartment close down around him, when his furniture turns into Lawrence that walks towards him with lust for vengeance in his foggy eyes.
Then, Jake is there. Then and always.
And Adam doesn't argue. Because the second he fell asleep in Jake's arms for the first time, he realized that he was wrong when he thought that the bathroom would make his pride even bigger. That he'd actually learn that people always hurt, always abandon, never stay even though they promise to.
But along with the thick armor he'd built around himself, and along with the fact that Lawrence's death has done nothing but strengthen it, the love for him has turned into something destructive, acid that eats away at this armor, displays him so that all Adam's longing, all his thirst for closure is visible. Vulnerable.
Because now, when he's tasted love, tasted that warm, terrible thing, seen how it was hidden in Lawrence's cold, dead hands when he laid in that corridor…
He just wants more.
He can't let it go now.
So despite the fact that he knows better, he can't ask Jake to go.
Of course, it's really Lawrence that he can't let go of, so he clutches to someone that he sees Lawrence's face on. And the need to keep doing that is stronger than his fear of commitment. And it annoys him, in the same time as he loves it, loves Jake, more than anything else in the world.
Because he does.
No matter how much he hates himself for it. No matter how much it feels like he's betraying that Lawrence that still comes into his bedroom sometimes, betrays that cold, wonderful hand on his own until he has to go again.
Because how could he not?
Despite the fact that this transition happens without his permission, how could he ever say no when Jake gently puts his arms around him when he wakes up from one of his nightmares, breaths heavily, sobs and trembles, shivers uncontrollably until those arms give him the warmth he'd never have alone, the warmth that defrosts his cold and dries his tears until he falls asleep with wet cheeks.
How could he say no when Jake's comforting words ghost down his nick, like liquid that dribbles down his earlobe?
He couldn't. He couldn't when Jake kissed him for the first time, and he can't the second or third or fourth time, either.
And in the meantime…
How could he agree with Jake when he hears his whispers?
When he hears Jake's soothing: It's okay… It'll be okay, Adam…
Adam will never be okay. He sticks to that. Lawrence lied when he said it, he'll never be okay again, no matter how often Jake is with him. But when he says that, Adam can't talk back at him, can't burst the bubble of heat that he gets to hide in for a few seconds.
Maybe because he almost believes it for those seconds.
Anyway, one of those nights when Jake comes over uninvited, although not unwanted, and they sit on the couch together, Adam with his head on Jake's chest, Jake with his arm around Adam's waist, the phone rings.
Adam startles, he's not used to people calling him now days. Now, when the hysteria about Jigsaw has calmed down and not even cops, journalists or his mother have any interest in him anymore, the only one who's called him recently is Jake. And he's already here.
"Hang on," Adam says in a displeased grunt, since he doesn't feel any wish at all to climb out of that synthetic happiness that Jake actually can lull him into, and stumbles up from the couch, up to the phone and picks it up. "Hello?"
"Hello… Hi. Adam Faulkner?"
A female voice. Light and small. Hesitatingly polite.
Adam furrows his brows, lifts the phone from the table and sits down on the armrest of the couch. Jake tears his gaze away from the TV and looks at Adam with the same surprise in his expression as… That night.
"Yeah," Adam says and answers to Jake astonished look with a shrug. "I… Do I know you?"
"Yeah," the voice says. "Or no, not really, but I… I'm Allison. Gordon. Larry's wife."
For a second, Adam feels like he's falling.
Down. Down.
No. Not like that. More like he's back. Like he's there again.
Like Allison's careful little voice is dirty tiles. Like her crackling breathing in the phone is Adam's own screams: No, Lawrence! I'm begging you!
For a brief second, Allison's voice is the bathroom.
Then, he gets angry. He hates her, he's not even jealous, he just hates her, with an unconditional, cold, evil hatred that makes Adam want to yell at her.
It's Allison's fault. Technically.
It's her fault that Lawrence wound up there. Hers and…
"Are you still there?" Allison interrupts his thoughts.
"Yeah," Adam says, restrains his hatred by looking at Jake, imagine Lawrence's face. "Right. How are you?"
Why the hell does he care?
Allison chuckles. And she does no attempts at all to hide the bitterness in it.
"You don't want to know."
Adam nods. When he remembers that she can't see it, he asks:
"And Diana?"
He doesn't know why, but when he doesn't get an answer right away, Adam gets the feeling that she shakes her head. He also gets the feeling that the bitterness runs off her, that she turns from a woman that tries to hide her sorrow with anger into a miserable widow that only has herself to rely on.
He gets the feeling that Lawrence has the same effect on her as he had on Adam.
"She… Has bad dreams," Allison finally says.
Her voice is thick, but it still sounds like she tries to keep some of her dignity intact. Adam sighs.
A poem he read in high school pops up in his head:
How little space a human takes on Earth.
Not more than a tree in the forest.
How big the void he leaves is.
Not a world can fill it in.
How true. How horribly true.
Lawrence didn't take more space than a tree in the forest. Allison didn't love him, Diana spent way too little time with him, Adam only knew him for six hours.
But they still have more in common than either one of them would ever admit.
Because all three of them are completely alone without Lawrence.
"Me, too," Adam says.
Allison makes a half-hearted attempt to swallow a sob.
"And me," she says. "So you don't feel too good, either?"
"Never been worse," Adam says bluntly, and Jake looks at him again. "But that wasn't why you called, was it?"
"Partly," Allison says. "But it was mainly… You should know that there's a funeral for Larry in about a month. February twenty-fourth."
She pauses. Adam doesn't know if he's expected to say something.
"Larry would've wanted you there," Allison then says hesitatingly.
"But you wouldn't?" Adam says, only half-joking, and Allison laughs.
"Yeah, of course you should be there. It's probably good if we meet without… Me just having found out that my husband just died."
Adam has to smile. Even though that sentence tears his heart into pieces even more.
Yes. He and Allison actually have met once. At the hospital.
Adam still remembers it. It was right before the cops had started questioning him, before the journalists had found out who he was, and Allison had stormed into his hospital room, her hair had been messy and her face shiny with sweat, she'd looked around in the room in the vain hope to find Lawrence there, before she saw Adam, saw his red-edged, glistening eyes, saw the hateful glances he sent her, and she broke down, leaned her back against the wall, slid down with her hand over her mouth but without being able to hold back her irregular, jagged sobs, and Adam, who'd still hated her, hadn't been able to bring himself to comfort her, or even feel bad for her, just to looking at her, hating her for putting Lawrence in the bathroom, hating himself for hating her.
But now, she's turned from the only guilty one to one of the guilty ones.
And then, not even Adam can hate her anymore.
"So… You're coming?" Allison asks uncertainly.
Adam sighs again.
"Sure. Absolutely. Just call me sometime with a place and a time, and I'll be there."
"Okay," Allison says, and seems to exhale. "See you then."
Click. Adam hangs up, ignores Jake's questioning face temporarily, puts the phone back on the table and sits down on the couch with a sigh. Jake furrows his brows, Adam still doesn't look at him, just closes his eyes and lets his head fall back.
"Who was it?" Jake asks.
Adam pretends not to hear him.
"Would you help me with something?"
"What?"
"Get a job," Adam says, like the very thought tortures him, still without opening his eyes.
"Sure," Jake says. "I can drag you around on job interviews all day tomorrow if you want."
"Great," Adam says unhappily.
"Why do you want a job all the sudden?" Jake asks and switches off the TV.
"I've never wanted something less in my life," Adam says sincerely. "But it'd be nice to pay my rent for once. Plus, in a month, I have to have enough money to get a suit."
Jake chuckles.
"Okay, now I'm really curious. Who was on the phone?"
Adam opens his eyes and looks at him from the corner of his eye.
"Lawrence's wife."
Before Jake manages to deliver a reaction to this, he continues:
"There's a funeral for him in a month."
Jake puts a shy hand on Adam's.
"And you're going?"
"You think I'd get a job voluntarily?"
"You want me to come with you?"
Adam just considers the question for a second before he shakes his head.
"No. I'll go myself."
Yes. He will.
Adam will go alone to Lawrence's funeral. He'll go there in his suit, and he'll look at Lawrence in his casket. And he'll say the words.
He'll say the words that ring in his head. Every day and every night.
And then, he might be free.
Another chapter down! Please review!