forthedog | (no subject)

It's easier to stay out of everyone's way than you'd think. You just call in sick as far as the building crew goes, you hunt a lot, you keep to your hut and yell at anyone who comes too close. He's barely even seen Eostre, though at some point he guesses he'll at least have to explain himself to her, if to no one else.

If Hobbes hasn't already told her.

It's early evening, and he has a fire going in the little circle of stones close to the hut, and he's sharpening his knife because it's helping him to not think. Not thinking is pretty much the other thing he does these days. He'd told himself that it wasn't a breakup, that it was a step back to get some distance, to allow himself to think more clearly about the problem, but thinking about the problem is exactly what he's not doing, because part of him is sure--so sure--that if he does think about it he'll have to face the fact that it's a problem without a solution.

He and Eostre work because there's no real demands, and not even that many expectations. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe he really can't handle anything more than that. Maybe he was an idiot to ever think that he could, and Hobbes is the collateral damage.

He'd always liked to think he had better aim than that.

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"Nothin' else to do here but get all up in everybody else's shit," I snort, shaking my head. I've talked about my fuckin' feelings more in the last two years than in my whole fucking life. More people that've wormed their way in. Less need to keep everything hidden.

But there's still plenty I keep to myself.

"That's how this whole thing started," he says quietly. "Mostly, anyway. There's things I don't tell him, and he... he expects that to be different by now. And who knows, maybe he has a right to." He's still not sure about that. There's things he doesn't tell Hobbes, sure. There's things he doesn't tell anyone. Things he has buried so deep that he's not even sure how to start talking about them anymore. Things he's never spoken of aloud.

Is it fair to expect him to reverse that pattern in a year? What the hell, maybe it is.

"He said he feels like sometimes he doesn't even know me."

It'd be damn near impossible to ignore that not five minutes ago we were attached at the mouth. There's something... a low hum of tension settled down in my limbs, hands in my lap, shoulders hunched, but I make a brave go of being the friend. Lending an ear. Whatever the fuck. That was the whole point of all this anyway, right?

All of it sounds too damn familiar. Fights that Logan and I had, over and over. We don't talk anymore. Bullshit. Or maybe not.

I watch him, letting him talk, and I got no fucking idea whether Hobbes knows him at all. I've never even really seen them together. I wouldn't know. But what I can guess, about Mike, about all of this, explains a whole fucking lot. "What are you afraid of?"

"I dunno," he says, still quiet, sort of half looking at Neil and half not. It's a little hard to look directly at him anymore. There's things he doesn't need to be feeling right now. "Maybe nothing. Maybe it's not even about being afraid." He smiles, sad and a little absent, and for a flash of a second he thinks about how different from Hobbes Neil had felt in his arms, and how that difference hadn't been pleasurable like he would expect it to be.

"Maybe I just don't know how anymore." Because sex has always been easier than talking.

"'s what happens. You start lettin' people in, getting close, you gotta... relearn how to do all this shit," I say quietly. Or maybe learn for the first time. I say it in this simple, abstract sorta way, but it's coming from experience. It still feels like years of my life are missing. All this time, and I missed out on all the rules.

"I pushed Logan too hard, you know? Wanted things to be perfect, wanted him to tell me everything... this perfect fuckin' picket-fence life that I think I dreamed up when I was eight and then forgot that I even wanted. It doesn't work like that, you know? Hobbes... he'll figure out you can't give him everything, all at once. But you gotta give him somethin', you know?"

He shrugs. "Thought I was. Maybe his something and my something are just different." Maybe too different. And they've always been different, as people, mismatched in ways that worked in the Realm but which maybe don't work so well in this context. Mike is nothing like Sophie, and for so long Sophie was all Hobbes wanted.

So maybe this was set up to fail.

"It's not that I don't want to," he breathes, suddenly weary. "Wish I could give him everything." So many people he's been with who asked nothing of him, because then there was no chance of disappointing them.

Except he still wonders if he's disappointed Neil.

"Then you gotta fight for it," I say quietly, "Don't just... Don't just let him go, Mike. If it's worth it..."

I can't finish, the lump in my throat suddenly too thick, the ache in my chest twisting sharp. I think maybe I set Logan up to fail, but it wasn't on purpose. I expected him to fight, but he just turned and walked away. How could I have been so fucking stupid?

Edited 2008-06-03 04:00 (UTC)

I'm not good enough for him, he thinks, and it's pathetic, but it's been true for so long. Hobbes is... too sweet and too good, too honest, even without the Island's influence. He'd walked through the Realm untouched by it, and Mike had seen that place twist and destroy so many people. He'd watched it twist himself.

The Simple Man. And the Samurai was no good in the end except to die for him.

But he nods, like he has any idea what fighting even means in this context, like he has any idea how to start. "I think it's worth it to me." And what about you, Neil? Was it worth it to you? Is it worth it to Tom?

I manage a smile, pained and fleeting, nodding my head and then looking away. My face burns and it's got nothin' to do with the fire. The only reason I haven't gotten up by now and made a run for it is I'm trying to collect my energy. There's not much left.

And because he asked me to stay.