A/N: So basically I wrote this while everyone on the East Coast was watching and I was watching reactions unfold. It's basically post the first part of the finale.
No sexy tiems obviously.
Oh I had a lot to say was thinking on my time away
I missed you and things weren't the same
Cause everything inside it never comes out right
And when I see you cry it makes me want to die
Every single day I think about how we came all this way
The sleepless nights and the tears you cried it's never too late to make it right
(Sorry – Buckcherry)
He knows what dying feels like. When a bullet rips through your flesh and you can feel the warm drip of your blood into a puddle below you.
It's euphoric compared to this.
Slamming his eyes shut, he clenches his fists, nails digging so hard into his palms that there will be crescent marks for days after. The saltiness of the tears burns the backs of his eyelids but he refuses to let them fall down his cheeks because he doesn't deserve to cry, he doesn't deserve to have the guts ripped out and his insides strewn around the floor.
Because he failed her and it's the thing he will forever hate most about himself.
OoO
"You still want him"
The sleeping pill is chased by a long gulp of wine. She's halfway through the bottle but feels nothing. She decides the numbness is worse than the anxiety, because it chills her bones and everything that once forced her out of bed is gone.
Cassidy calls; comes and knocks on her door, banging his fist against the oak, and she's thankful she never gave him a key. The truth is; she's not the same person that she was before that day. She knows she never will be, Brian's nice, their time together was effortless, simple, but he can never be what she needs. She can no longer deny that truth.
Because the one person who can heal the hurt is the one who ripped her apart with his bare hands, without a single touch.
OoO
He slams his fists into the stucco on the side of the garage, scraps of paint splintering into his broken skin, blood pouring from his knuckles. The blood is rushing thick and hot in his veins and he knows if he doesn't find a way to release it, he's going to end up losing it on someone who doesn't deserve his rage.
Everywhere he turns he sees that bastard's face…the flashes of her are the worst because they haunt him until late in the night, where he pictures the worst of it, and the mix between hot white anger and self-loathing are lost in a bottom of a bottle.
Passing out is the only way he sleeps anymore, and even then, it's in fits, haunted by nightmares, the sounds of her screams waking him up.
Tonight he couldn't take it, and he spills out everything on the side of his house, praying that someday she can forgive him because he will never forgive himself.
OoO
Click, click, click
The apartment is dark, and the sound of the clock ticking fills all the empty spaces. All the frames are turned over, the ones of them together; because his face haunts her in her sleep and she'll be damned if she lets him do it while she's awake too.
"Have you tried to reach out to him?"
She had almost let a bitter laugh escape her lips at the shrink's question and then she cried in her car for ten minutes after the session because, yes she still wants him, she still fucking wants him and it makes her want to drive her car headfirst into a brick wall.
After all this time, it shouldn't still be him….yet a part of her knows, it will always be him.
OoO
His stomach churns, the rank coffee from this morning tossing with the acid in his stomach. He sits in his car for twenty minutes before he gets the nerve to even get out, and it takes him another ten of sweating palms and a half gnawed lip to get up the nerve to knock.
"Go away Brian"
He licks his lips at her words and he rests his head against the heavy door, "It's not Brian" he manages to whisper, strangled from his throat.
OoO
Her heart limps to beat in her chest and she swallows hard, staring at the door, her jaw tight, her stomach twisted in knots. She shakes her head; sure this is just her imagination fucking with her. Her mouth flails softly but no words come out and her hand trembles at her side.
"Liv, open up, please, I...just please"
There are the same deep timbers in his voice, the vibrato in his throat but there's something mixed in between the syllables…a broken melody that is intricately woven through both of them. Her feet move underneath her and her hand hits the handle and she rips at the three locks before yanking it open.
Their eyes meet for the first time in years and she fights back the rush of emotion that starts in her toes and makes every hair on her head tingle, "What are you doing here?" she asks, the ice in her tone hitting him like shards of glass.
OoO
He's been lost in her eyes since the moment he met her but they're different now…colder, no longer sparkling with the vibrancy of when they thought they could save the world. The sound of her voice strangled in her throat and spilled from her lips stabs at him.
It's not the exquisite pain of a sharp knife through taut muscle; it's like a billion little piercing stabs that will cause the tiniest of scars to remind him of his inadequacies for the rest of his life.
"I had to…I had to make sure" he manages to get out and then he's reaching out, without even thinking, because that's the only time they touch, when the emotions are too much to bear and they need that anchor, the strength that they find in each other.
It's just a hand on a cheek and she squeezes her eyes shut and trembles but she doesn't move, allowing his calloused palm on the satin of her cheek, "I had to make sure you were okay" falls from his lips and snaps them both in two.
OoO
His hand rests softly against her cheek, like he's scared of breaking her and she is torn between slapping his hand away and getting lost in the feel of his fingertips resting against her. Ultimately, it's the second one she chooses, because she's too fucking exhausted to act like this isn't exactly what she's been aching for.
Her arm rests at her side, slack, the will to fight him at the present moment is gone because the last time anyone besides a doctor touched her she was strapped to a chair, sure this was the end and all she could think about in that moment was how she would never see him again.
"I'm fine" she finally grinds out, pulling away from his touch that sears her skin, burns his fingerprints on her bones.
Their eyes meet again, his filled with puddles of unshed tears and his Adam's apple bobs with emotion and he shakes his head, "I should have been there to protect you" he whispers, and the lone tear falls down his cheek and she's pretty sure they're both splintering into millions of pieces on her hardwood floor.
OoO
The words fall from his lips without thinking them out and they strike her, and he watches as the tears in her eyes are replaced with fury and she spits back acid on him, "Is that what you're here for, that Catholic guilt" she asks, forcing a chuckle even as errant tears sting the corners of her eyes, "Because you're forgiven, now go"
Nerve endings crackle and the twitch in his jaw ticks and he swallows the sob and looks her dead in her eyes, "There's no forgiveness for me" he tells her, "Because I'll never forgive myself. I should have been there, I should have fucking had your back. He shouldn't have gotten to you, I should have protected you" he exclaims, each word accentuated and louder, the inward rage making his skin crawl and ache.
He can hear her intake of breath and he watches her tug her lip between her teeth and then it happens, the dam breaks, and the ice beings to thaw as the sob tears from her body and her arms hug around her and she's gasping for breath, curling inward, her sweater wet with salty tears and he does the only thing he can and grabs her, pulls him to her chest, her body rigid against him, racking with strangled cries until she finally relents.
OoO
Tension eases from her body and her arms wind around him because for right now, this is what she needs…he is what she needs.
He always has been…and inside, she knows he always will be.