Fic: Still Love Me

[it-glitters.livejournal.com]

Greg's first day in the rest of his life. R


Megan was asleep by the time Greg got out of the shower.

Put down the phone. Don’t call him.

“Hello.” The voice on the other end of the phone was sleepy.

“Nicky,” Greg sobbed into the phone.

“What do you want, Greg?” Nick was angry.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What?”

“About the adoption.”

There was a pause and Greg could hear Nick breathing heavily. “What do you want me to say? Megan told me that she was going to tell you. I thought you had called me to the courthouse to sign the papers… Not to watch you get married to someone else.”

No. Lie to me. Say you didn’t know. Say you didn’t want to do it this way.

“Nicky, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t think you were going to be so stupid as to marry her.”

I wanted to marry you.

“I found the rings.”

More silence. “And you said nothing,” Nick’s tone was obvious – he thought Greg had said nothing because he didn’t want to be with him.

“I wanted to,” Greg cried. “I wanted to marry you. I just didn’t want to ruin your surprise.”

“And you still married her.”

I love you. I love you. I ruined you.

“I did it for Tyler.”

“Stop using him as an excuse. I told you I was willing to do everything for all of you.”

God, he’s hurting. Just make it stop. Please, just make him stop hurting. Let him hate me – let me do that one thing for him. Why can’t he hate me as much as I hate myself?

Nothing was said for a minute, they just sit on the phone, listening to Greg’s tears and Nick’s breathing.

“You can’t call me anymore, Greg. You were the one that ended this. You were the one who decided that the life I had planned for us wasn’t good enough. I won’t be your fallback anymore.”

The phone disconnected, and Greg couldn’t breathe. In his house was a life he never wanted. A son he didn’t know – a wife he hated. His lover hated him. He never thought he would have been able to find love; real die for the other kind of love. He never thought that he was capable of that. And Nick had shown it to him… It had taken Nick nearly dying, but Greg finally felt it.

Breathe in. Breathe out. There are still reasons to live.

Greg walked into what used to be his spare room – and what was now Tyler’s room… At least until they could afford the house that Megan was already eyeing.

When had he become so domesticated? And for that matter, when had he become so bad in the first place? He must have been like Tyler once, with perfect innocence… and he wondered when it had all changed. When had he gone from being little Greg – to the deviant who enjoyed the random pain that the strangers had given him?

Will Tyler grow up to be like me? Will he be genetically predisposed to it in some way – given his mom and I are both like this. Is there a way that I could have avoided this…? Nick, Nicky would have been the perfect father. Me? I’ll ruin Tyler like I ruin everything else I touch.

He touched the face of his sleeping son and sighed. He watched the little boy roll and curl into his thumb as he slept in the small toddler bed that Greg had bought just for him. The dim light from the nightlight illuminated the light just enough for Greg to see how much his son truly took after him – the freckles that were already beginning to cover his pale, soft skin, and his ears that were just a little big – the goofy smile and the deep brown eyes. That was all Greg – Megan was tan, blonde and athletic. Tyler looked like Greg.

Greg felt the tears beginning to sting his eyes and he knew that he had to leave right then. He couldn’t start making the comparisons between himself and Tyler now… Tyler was a toddler – Tyler still had his whole life in front of him. And all Greg had was him – he had no lover, he had lost most of his friends trying to keep his lover in the first place, and he would probably loose everyone at work too, if Nick had said anything about what had actually happened.

He wished he hadn’t gotten the weekend off in ‘celebration’ of his marriage. It wasn’t a celebration. It should have been a time to drink away his sorrows – but that was hard to do with a little one in the house.

He wanted to go to work, because at least there he was close to the one that he had lost. They might get put together on a case…

He looked around for the pills that he knew he hadn’t thrown away – the pills that he had just assumed that he didn’t need anymore. He wanted to know where they were, so that he could start the regime again. And he wanted to know where the tranquilizers were.

He was calm enough to know that he should try to jump back on the medication when he was worked into such a state, but a Xanax would help.

Just one. Just one. Don’t take the easy way out. There are things to live for. You have to be a good father. You have to be a good husband. If you’re passed out on the couch, you can’t do either of those things. And you really can’t do them if you dead. You married Megan so that Ty could have a mother and a father. Fuck it up now and it was all for nothing. Just take the one and go lie down on the couch.

I wonder how work will be when I go back. No one knows about me and Nick… or knew about me and Nick. Past tense. We’re not together… I have to get my head around that. There is no us, no we.

Greg laughed to himself as he lay down on the couch – a dismal, vile laugh of someone that has given up all hope for the future. A resigned tragic laugh… A laugh of a man without hope.

He waited for the Xanax to work its magic as he looked around the house. He knew he had to get up and remove the photograph from the mantle. It wasn’t as if he had pictures of Nick everywhere in his house – they had both always been paranoid about someone dropping by, but there was the one on the mantle. Greg always figured that it was alright to have one. Nick had the same one at his house.

Greg wanted nothing more than to throw the photograph out the window – it was a beacon of another one of his failures. Nick was supposed to be the one thing that he could control when his world started to slip out of control like this. And he had even accepted it when he realized that their relationship wasn’t about who controlled the power anymore. At least he had for a while.

I’m so needy, so weak. Needy. Weak. Just like you were before Sanders, when you used to let anyone at the club use you. Do you want to go back to being that weak fucker?

The Xanax started to relax his tense body. He breathed deep, and on some level prayed that it was his last breath… But there was always Tyler to think about. It was hard to go from being so selfish to having to remember there was this tiny person who depended on him now.

No one should depend on me. I let everyone down.

Greg closed his eyes and finally fell into a restless sleep. Nick was in the box again.