Mhokino

The rhythm of chopping wood, the thump-thump-crack, was the closest thing to comfort that Damien had in those woods, the closest thing to stability. Everything was routine, but nothing was safe. The twins were forever living on a knife’s edge between warmth and starvation. He took care of the former, while Celine went out with her gun whenever he returned. It was always the same. Always a cycle. Always one event after the other, swapping duties, changing of the guard, one went in and the other went out – they never spent any time together anymore.

He supposed they were both to blame for that, as much as anyone else. Celine bought into Mark as the villain, which she had the right to do, but didn’t they have a hand in it all? Didn’t they make a deal with that thing in the manor? Didn’t they choose to trade their friends and family for vengeance?

Didn’t he?

The next log split in half under the force of the axe.

Sometimes he wondered, in the gaps between the strikes and the sounds and the silence itself, where it had all started to go wrong. When. What the pivot was. On the days when he felt kind, it was just that night, after he had stepped through those doors and spoken to Mark. On the days when he felt bitter, it was the night of Mark and Celine’s wedding, when he had sworn the look of disappointment on William’s face was a trick of the light. On the days when he felt hopelessness nestle into the soft marrow of his bones, it was always meant to end like that. 

He swung. He connected. He moved on, tossing the kindling to the side and replacing it with new wood.

But he had infinite time on his hands, so his thoughts never stopped where they should have. It was as though everything that crossed his mind was a sequel to a book that was never supposed to be published. They warped and twisted, becoming the sick distortions of a creature more like what was on the outside. That Dark-thing. 

Swing. Connect. Move on.

He, it, they were a subject Damien never liked to dwell on. There was nothing to be done about that part, the part that moved in reality too far out of his reach. He made the past his playground, instead, where theoretical situations were made better or worse or just different.

Swing. Connect. Move.

The thing he changed the most was his greatest regret. In no experiment did it stay the same. With the knowledge he had now, keeping it the same meant there was no point in it at all – and that was normally where the thoughts led to.

Laid at your feet. 

He wondered if, had you the chance, you would forgive him.

Swing. Connect. Move.

But he took that chance away.

Swing. Connect. Move.

It was his fault.

Swing. Connect. Move.

And he didn’t have the power to change that anymore.

Swing. Connect.

The crack of wood echoed differently, and when Damien’s focus returned to what was in front of him, he realized why. In fact, it hadn’t echoed at all, and it hadn’t cracked but simply snapped because it wasn’t wood that he was cutting anymore.

Damien’s neck ached with the pain of straightening to look around his surroundings. He didn’t have the survival instincts of his sister, so it was shock, not suspicion, that coated his vision. Tainted, she would have said, but wherever Damien was now, she wasn’t there.

He dropped the axe that wasn’t an axe but a small knife for cutting vegetables. It clattered on the countertop, the dappled granite so similar to the snow that he had grown used to. And yet, it was more than that. The closest thing to the surface was his old kitchen, and, when he followed its outline, he found no differences. Not a single thing was off. No unfamiliar nicks or scratches – he’d always kept his furniture in perfect shape, but who didn’t?

Questions wracked him like gunfire. He wasn’t surrounded by trees, but this also wasn’t the cabin. The walls were painted, eggshell over plaster, and he was warm as though he had never felt cold in his life. Shakily, his eyes trailed down to see a dress shirt. His jacket was gone; this was an outfit for presentation, not survival, he wasn’t in danger, he was standing in a kitchen where biting winds couldn’t snap at him, sheltered by stable walls and ceiling and windows that had become so unfamiliar – but why? 

The smooth texture as he ran his finger along the edge jolted him with memory. It was so simple, so common, so unsubstantial, but his body flinched as though he’d been hit. 

Internally, he was begging for a difference, for something so glaringly obvious to be wrong, for this all to be wishful thinking. The cupboards, the table, the stove. All correct, but that didn’t mean anything. It didn’t.

Tears welled in the corners of his eyes.

It didn’t mean anything.

The only thing he was able to stomach was scanning the rest of the room. Going deeper beyond the surface risked confirming fears he didn’t want confirmed, but, even as he moved to inspect everything, he found no faults, only ghost-like feelings threading through his heart. The dining chairs were too close to the china cabinet so that nobody ever sat that side, and the drapes swept the ground at the perfect length because he had measured their cut three times.

All that evidence came to the same dreaded conclusion. This was the same house that he had lived in before everything happened, but, although his heart leapt to decide that this was his house, his mind held back. It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. It might have been the same house, but it could not have been his. 

Damien didn’t know if it was delusion or hope that led him to the hallway, where he stared at the pictures along the wall and willed for them to show another life. One that wasn’t his and didn’t mean he was back where he had started and all of what had happened was – what – a dream? Something induced by a fever that meant nothing despite what he had gone through?

His stomach made attempts to swallow itself as he flitted from frame to frame, each showing a memory. It started with a family, a mother and a father, hands placed on the shoulders of their sitting children. This house held a flood of emotions, but he was almost able to convince himself that this photograph wasn’t of himself, if only for the disconnect it stirred that told him it wasn’t his family. That had always been par for the course, however, and would have meant nothing either way.

No, it was the next frame that stirred those stereotypical familial bonds within him. Damien remembered his graduation fondly, and so too did he remember the captured moment. Everyone who mattered to him had been there, but that pride mutated into despair as he looked at their faces. They were all in a row, Mark, with his arm around Celine, and William on the opposite end, then Damien and…

And you.

Both in the middle, squished into the center of the photo because neither of you had wanted the spotlight, but your friends had been so insistent on preserving your happiness. The two of you sported shared bashful smiles, faces glowing like sunburns against the rain that was barely starting to spit down. He remembered the next few minutes, when it had started to pour and forced you all inside, but the grins never left.

Despite the self-consciousness, your expression was loose, all the stress of exams and classes lifted from your shoulders and replaced by the nebulous ‘moment’. You would stay like that until you joined your law office, and the weight of the world crushed down on you again. By that fateful night, pressure had worked its way into the lines of your face and festered in the bags under your eyes. That day was the last time either of you was recklessly free.

He was mourning you as though you were dead, and, to his knowledge, you were.

But Damien never knew everything, and in this moment, when he stood in front of his own timeline, what he did know was dissolving.

“Damn, could it be any colder?”

No.

No, this wasn’t fair.

He had done wrong by a lot of people, by you, but did he deserve this? Being returned to his life before that fateful night, fine, he could handle that – not happily, but he could handle it – but not this, not you, not when he knew this wasn’t real, just a tease that held you like a speck of light in an ocean’s trench. 

Damien could do little more than stare at you as you walked closer, letting the door fall shut behind you while you pulled yourself out of your coat.

If he reached for you, you would disappear, pulled back into the darkness and the maw of some great beast that would swallow you both.

When you were close enough, you stabilized yourself on his shoulder to lean in. The pressure of a kiss on his cheek sent sparks through his skin and veins, relighting the flurry of his heart that seemed so foreign to him now. The last time either of you had been idle enough for that was a time that he couldn’t remember. It had all been so busy, but he felt the want to just relax into this sudden, frightening freedom filled him.

But this wasn’t real.

“Sorry I’m late, Dames, Miss Jones is out of town for the week, so I had to schedule all my meetings before I could leave,” you said offhandedly, moving through to the kitchen. 

His heart longed to follow you, but his body refused and stayed rooted to the ground as though taking a single step would cause the floor to crumble beneath him. Instead, he was overtaken by a thought; Miss Jones had been a secretary at your firm. Both aspects of that caused him to furrow his brow because you had stopped working at that firm upon your promotion to District Attorney, and, even more shockingly, Miss Jones hadn’t worked with you in two years.

In fact, she had never returned after taking a week off for a family-related emergency, which, as he thought about it, sounded an awful lot like your explanation.

Damien was quite proud that he was keeping a steady breathing pattern, but he wasn’t able to make it further than turning back towards the kitchen.

You poked your head around the corner, and, although you smiled, it was the kind you held that mixed with concern.

“Are you alright there? I know the welfare vote is due soon, but maybe you should take it easy before then?”

The welfare vote. Hospital grants. Two years ago.

“Are you feeling okay? You really do look…”

He only realized you had gotten closer when you pressed a hand to his forehead. He didn’t have it in him to flinch or to do much of anything, really, besides keep his eyes on you.

“Are you hot? Nauseous at all?”

Damien forced his voice into action, “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

You sounded so worried, and he barely restrained the urge to spill everything to you. You deserved to know what was going to happen, no matter how far into the future it was, but the words strangled themselves in his throat.

“Yes, I’m quite—” He removed your hand and brought it down between you, though he kept it as tight as he could risk, “—I’m quite fine, dear.”

A hum showed you weren’t convinced, but you didn’t say anything more as you guided Damien back to the kitchen. He let himself be moved, not trusting his own legs to do their job and not willing to be alone again, especially when you were right there in front of him. It was difficult to remind himself that this was some dream when the warmth of your hand caressed his own. 

It was also difficult to stay focused on what you were saying. From the few words he managed to tune into, you were just talking about your work, but it felt unnatural. You weren’t supposed to be talking about the cases you were handling, you were supposed to be going over theories with the detective or interrogating Benjamin over the split wine in the cellar – and Damien wasn’t supposed to be continuing with cutting carrots, he was supposed to be yelling at William for his petty attitude. 

And yet there you two were, going about your lives, as if nothing had happened.

Maybe this was the real part, and nothing did happen, and that was all a fantasy. Ghosts and zombies and magic had to be fake.

Life wasn’t that kind. His memories, the pain and panic of the night’s events, told him it had all been real. Resolving that with what felt like reality as he laid out two plates of food was no easy task. Letting himself get swept away in all of it, however, was playing with fire, dancing with fate, giving over what little control over the situation he had left. No matter how strange it felt to wish for that night to have happened, he didn’t know if he could stand it if it weren’t.

Damien put a hand on the back of a chair. It was solid. Pulling it out brought the weight closer to him at the exact speed. His movements were mechanical as he pulled the one next to it out as well. It was just the same, completely normal. His logic argued that, of course, it was normal, there was no reason for it to change – but it fought against his memories that said it was supposed to change.

The parts of him were still fighting, tearing at each other, as he slipped into one of the chairs. For a brief moment, he wondered if this was what that Dark-thing went through, but then you joined him at the table, and the whispers went silent.

“So, how was your day off?” you asked, picking up a fork.

Damien fell at the first hurdle. He didn’t remember what he was supposed to have done this day, and though he could have lied, it wouldn’t have worked. He tried to imagine the most likely situation, but his thoughts swarmed to the events of that night again.

Oh, yes, darling, your mutual friend was murdered in his own home, you were, too, by the way, but that didn’t come until later.

“I, um, well—”  

First, he had to argue with Will because he didn’t care that Mark was dead, then he found out the body disappeared, and everybody thought he was a zombie – it really was quite funny!

“—I, I think…”

It all took a turn for the worse when his sister – oh, and another detail he forgot to mention was that Mark and Celine were divorced because she and Will had an affair, but don’t worry about that – arrived and took you off for a séance, after which they both died.

Now, why did you look so concerned?

Damien recognized he was not handling this well.

You must have caught his disorientation, the pallor of his face, because you put the utensil back down and turned to him in your seat.

“You did take a break today, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did. You told me to.”

That was one of the few things he remembered distinctly; after a certain point in his mayoral term, you had started to enforce his breaks, like a warden for a considerably disruptive prisoner. Both you and Damien were too stubborn for your own goods, which led to the arguments that pockmarked your latest years together. They were never violent, never greatly upsetting, never vicious, but they were common, far too common for his liking.

“And it’s for your own good,” you continued. Your focus flickered around his face, wandering from his cheeks to his lips to his eyes. “You need to take care of yourself, Damien.”

“I know, I just- I don’t know,” he sighed, trailing off. What else was there to say? To him, there was a very fine line between being good and bad at his job, and that was a line his feet didn’t fit very well. He always found himself cutting pieces of himself off just to keep within the boundaries, and that was without the inevitable instability that had him struggling to stay balanced.

Your hand pressed against his arm, but he barely registered anything beyond what added to his thoughts in that moment. He felt like he was going insane, or that he had already gone insane, as his mind tried to bend reality around what he knew. The circle didn’t close, though, and it sprang back into its rigidness, cracks closing in at the edges. It left him with two conclusions sewn together into a too-fictional, too-real abomination.

His memories and the current reality were both correct. That horrible night had happened, but he was also reliving what had happened two years ago. After all, if he could technically die and also be alive, who was to say he had to be alive in the present?

A voice whispered that he had seen what that looked like, bringing with it the image of William’s breakdown, but then your voice promptly shut it up, for which he was grateful.

“Hey, hey, hey,” you muttered, getting up from the chair and pushing it away. Your action centered Damien’s attention on you, like a deer startled in the brush, and he kept his eyes on you as you knelt down in front of him.

Just as he started to miss your hand on his arm, you wound your fingers around his own. He might have laughed at your old grounding technique you’d manufactured for him, but then he noticed your knitted brows and stern frown.

“You’re fine, huh?” You sounded unconvinced, which was fair, given Damien wasn’t convinced himself. Not when he was staring straight at you, at least, forced to face just who he had lost.

When had he last seen you? His memories were woven with one another so close that he lost the order, and all that null time in the forest didn’t do him any favors. Chaos was the only constant in what he remembered, but the séance had been the separation point. He had last seen you as the detective escorted you away while he stayed with Celine.

Celine. Where was she? If this really was two years ago – and that thought made him want to laugh – was she still with Mark? Or had she and William been together even before he had known?

How little did he really know?

“Come on, we’re going to get you to bed,” you said as you stood from your kneel, “see if we can’t deal with this somewhere more comfortable, okay?”

Damien eagerly rose with you but broke off just as he was steadied on his feet. That balance disappeared within the second, sending him stumbling towards the phone on the wall. He practically fell against it, draped an arm over the box, and tried his best to focus on the chill of the metal instead of your concern. It radiated from you like the warmth from the sun as you made your way, more graceful than he, towards the reason for that concern.

“Damien?” you asked hesitantly.

“Just a moment,” he mumbled in a response that barely reached your ears.

Dialing Celine’s phone number was no easy task, what with the combined struggle to remember it and the emotional toll he was expecting. He didn’t know at what point she left, if she made it a habit to leave the manor during the day, he didn’t even know who would pick up, considering it wasn’t only her number that he was calling.

As Damien’s thoughts ran wild, you watched on. Your gut stirred with unasked questions, but you were wary of overloading the man in front of you, who had a sheen of sweat gathering on his face, who was breathing faster and faster every second that passed, who you trusted to tell you if anything was important but suspected had a different definition of ‘important’.

In the end, you settled on standing next to him. There wasn’t much else you could do.

The line picking up sent Damien’s heart through a loop. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or scared.

“Hello, Iplier residence, this is Celine speaking.”

Relieved. Although that whole twintuition thing was beyond stupid, he and his sister had a knack for telling when the other was hiding something.

Or, at least, Damien used to think so.

That spurred him into talking. “Celine, it’s me. Are you- are you okay?”

“Damien? What…” She cleared her throat, “Of course, I’m okay, what are you talking about?”

No, she wasn’t lying. He had faith she wouldn’t cover up anything as small as her current state, after all, but then another concern struck him.

“Is Mark there?”

There was a moment of silence, and then Celine’s voice sounded slightly more distant as she called for Mark. It hadn’t been his intention, but getting to talk to his current brother-in-law was a nice litmus test for how they were acting towards each other. He didn’t remember anything being particularly wrong at this point, but knowing what was going to happen shed a new light on the past.

Damien figured that was going to be happening a lot, and it was as though the energy it would take to think about every implication was starting to sap out of him then and there.

He’d need to be more vigilant in the future, though, because his thoughts were overshadowing the hushed exchange of words on the other end of the line. The crackle of the phone drowned out what he might have been able to hear at a superficial level, and he was left in the dark by the time that Mark began to speak.

“I’m surprised you’re the one calling us,” came his voice through the phone. Even in his daily life, he seemed to be projecting for the sake of the audience at the back of a theatre. “Normally, it’s hell to get a hold of you. Something must really be wrong.”

Damien wasted no time addressing either comment. He wasn’t in the mood for the teasing, he was barely in the mood to talk to anyone.

“Good,” he forced out. “Good. You’re both there.”

That was one box ticked off; Celine and Mark were still married, still living together, still alive. Alongside that, though, they were still confused, and you were, too. Damien watched you hover in the corner of his eye, as if you were just managing to restrain yourself.

“I’m sorry,” he sighed to everyone involved. “I just had a bad feeling is all. I thought—” The words strangled themselves in his throat, clogging the space and pushing him into a silence, “—well, never mind what I thought.”

He did this a lot, or he used to. It was as though all of his decisiveness was directed towards his job over his daily life – the majority of that being his job notwithstanding – so that left a lot of backtracking, apologizing, and ‘never mind’s in the place of choice. It was all he could hope that you all would think of it as another of his hesitations, and not the cover for what was really going on.

He still had one more base to cover, and he tended to that as he asked, “Have you heard from Will?”

Damien was unaware of it, but the pause that followed contained a confused look shared between Mark and Celine. He was aware of the deepening of your brows, though, as you watched on, and of the silence accompanying these movements. He didn’t like any of them.

Mark was the one to answer, saying uncertainly, “Not in the seven hours since we went to lunch.”

Dammit. He hadn’t remembered that. Internally, he scrambled for an explanation but came up short every time. His behavior up to this point meant a momentary lapse was off the table, but so was giving in. He had things to do now, choices to make, he couldn’t let himself be swayed into slowing down.

“Right, of course,” was all he said. If he didn’t offer any time for questions, he wouldn’t have to answer them, so he followed it up by apologizing for bothering them and dropping the phone back on the hook.

You were almost aghast at the lack of manners – in anyone else, you would have dismissed it as a bad day or them just being a jerk naturally, but this was Damien you were talking about. The same Damien who once spent midnight to sunrise talking to some head of a bank who fell asleep six separate times, without complaint to the man! And that was a stranger, instead of his childhood best friend and his own sister.

Steeling your resolve, you took a step toward the man. “I think you should take another day off, Damien.”

“No, no, I can’t.”

He caught that look in your eye, the one that meant he was in for a challenge. Convincing you against what you believed in was an exercise in futility, but he didn’t need you to be completely against getting him a break. He just needed to delay you.

The prospect was becoming more and more unreachable with every step closer you took.

“Don’t worry about me, dear, I just had a moment of—”

Absolute dread that buried itself in his stomach like a corpse?

“—forgetfulness.”

Uh-huh, sure.

He wasn’t even convincing himself.

“I don’t want you passing out at your desk.”

“I won’t, I know my limits.”

“It doesn’t matter if you know your limits when you keep ignoring them anyway.” It was one of those comments that appeared in multiple situations, only you said it bluntly and without a telltale smile that came with the playful moments. “The city will survive without you for another day.”

“It will survive, but it won’t be better off.”

He felt like he’d had this argument before, and it wasn’t only because he was reliving part of his life. No, this was a topic, rehearsed to perfection, that had come up time and time again in your conversations. He wished it wasn’t as prevalent as it was, but it was, and it was never fixed. At this point, he didn’t think there was a solution, no compromise that made both of you happy enough. Pride in your work was common ground for the two of you, but he couldn’t deny that it got in the way of that exact thing, the two of you.

Damien felt as helpless as he always had when you stayed quiet. No solution meant no conclusion, which meant an awkward silence, which meant you were going to be hesitant with each other for the rest of the night.

“Alright. I won’t push it,” you said after a moment. Shoulders dropping and eyes averting themselves, you retreated, metaphorically and physically. You stepped back away from Damien, and it was as though winter had come early. A chill lay itself over the room, his skin prickled, and you rubbed your arms absentmindedly.

It felt a lot like the forest.

“But I think you should go to bed early tonight,” you continued, your voice a similar shade of bleak. “Make sure you have enough energy if you’re so insistent about going in.”

You took a step in the direction of the doorway, and an impulse shot through Damien’s veins, bypassed his heart, and darted to his muscles. His hand grasped yours before he was aware of it, and he had the opportunity to drop it, apologize, let you go to wherever you were headed without question, but he refused. Instead, he gripped tighter. It was something he had considered many times, but he always reminded himself that you were a person with your own will and resolve, and who was he to challenge that? He would let it be and talk to you when you came back.

Not this time.

If this weren’t a trick, if this weren’t a dream, if this weren’t all a fantasy that he had put together for himself to cope, then he had another chance to do it all again. To do it better. Make it right. Hell, he had the responsibility to fix everything. Just repeating the same things over and over again was a waste when he had spent however long hoping for this very chance amongst the trees.

You looked at him with slight surprise, as if you knew Damien hadn’t intended to catch you.

“We should do something tomorrow night,” he said.

Your surprise grew, and then you squinted in thought.

“It’s not our anniversary, is it? It’s not your birthday. It’s not my birthday.”

“There’s no occasion. I just…” he trailed off, trying to think of an acceptable reason. 

It was true that neither of you was the spontaneous sort, especially at this point in your lives; all the impulsiveness had been sequestered to your days at university, and he had been careful not to let it leak out. Late at night, however, in the haze of twilight, you hadn’t been able to help reminiscing over the parties and the drunken cram sessions when you remembered a test in the morning halfway through those parties. Other classmates would sometimes join in, other times you’d be cheered on by students of other departments. Both of you missed it, but there was the silent agreement that they would never return.

But as you both knew, enforcing verbal contracts was an uphill battle. Moments of spontaneity were going to be toned down, of course, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be there.

“I just want to spend some time with you,” Damien finished.

For a second, he thought you might refuse, but that possibility was wiped in a flash of your grin.

“Okay, I won’t say no to that,” you replied, giddiness escaping through your voice. “We’ll get dinner, or something. Oh, maybe we can try that restaurant that reopened last week. They used to have amazing sponge cake.”

You caught yourself as you almost tipped into a rant. In a strange show of shyness that Damien hadn’t seen in years, you chuckled quietly and fiddled with your sleeves, pulling them up and down before you realized yourself and switched to pulling around your cuffs.

“Unless you had something in mind?”

He shook his head, redness spreading to his face. “No, no. That sounds great.”

Another laugh, slightly louder than before, shook your chest. This moment, seemingly disconnected from the rest of your bustling lives, felt so much like the first time Damien had asked you out romantically. 

Little outings between you were normal by then, but they were usually contained to the university campus. A library, an empty class, the law department’s break room – nothing that wasn’t secluded and geared towards study. But then, one day, Damien had invited you out for coffee, in such a roundabout way that you hadn’t been sure what he was asking at first. You wondered if he had a fever from how red he had gone, asked if he was alright, leaned closer to inspect his face. His fluster had been adorable, and after he had explained what that invite meant, you had accepted and made it your mission to get him to that point again.

Needless to say, you had succeeded.

The memory of that night sparked a whole host of nostalgic feelings in your chest, and you couldn’t pull down the corners of your lips.

 “It’s a date,” you said, finishing off your little reenactment with a kiss on Damien’s cheek. You could practically feel the warmth against your lips, and it remained even as you moved to do something about the cold food on the table.

Moving forward, Damien would have to strike a balance; going around, telling everyone what was going to happen, wasn’t an option. Best case scenario, their entire worldview would collapse, and, worst case scenario, he’d be throwing himself into the madhouse. However, it was also a bad idea to let everything go ahead as normal. He knew exactly how that was going to play out.

So, the answer had to be somewhere in between. He would have to be subtle about it, but he planned to talk to everyone involved about what he knew was going on. There was a long time until the poker night, but he had no idea how long the affair between Celine and Will had been going on for – getting a grasp of the current situation was vital, and he knew exactly where to start first.

Sitting in Will’s living room, Damien felt strange. Not uncomfortable as such, but he was acutely aware of everything. The texture of the couch, the smell of smoke, the sound of his friend in the adjoined kitchen. Will’s back was turned to him at the counter, where he was filling up two cups of coffee, but that didn’t give him the right to stare. He did stare, obviously, but what else was he supposed to do?

Looking around the room was no better. It brought back the mental image of what happened to it when Celine and Will ran off together. They weren’t gone long enough for it to be considered legally abandoned, though the emotional strain of its emptiness took a toll on Damien.

As Damien currently saw it, it was alive with color and the sensations of humanity, and yet he was still uneasy.

“Now, not that it’s not good to see you,” Will said as he entered the room with the cups in hand. The dark liquid spat over the edge of one of them, landing on the wood just before he smoothed it over with his shoe. “But twice in one week? You might make a man nervous.”

Damien hoped that he was joking, and he seemed to be, going off the grin he shot him when he placed a cup on the table, but one could never be certain with Will. Even before his breakdown, he wasn’t the most stable after his time in the war.

Nevertheless, Will flopped down on the opposite armchair, sending a few more specks of coffee flying.

“I’ve come to realize that I haven’t been,” Damien paused as he searched for the words, “maintaining my relationships as well as I should be.”

Will’s eyebrows shot up in amusement and curiosity, which were one and the same when it came to him. “Oh? And what prompted this? You’re not having troubles, of the, eh, romance type, old boy?”

And there it was. The matter at hand.

Damien pulled at his collar before starting to speak, “No. No, I’m not.”

A deep breath didn’t make him any more prepared, but he couldn’t back out now. If he did, he’d never look Will in the eye, let alone get to this point again.

“But it’s funny that you brought it up.”

The two men shared a moment of silent eye contact.

A beat passed.

And then Will muttered a small, “Ah.”

“Yes.”

“Right.”

The seconds of returned quiet that followed were tense, like a bow string pulled taught that threatened to snap at any change. Even breathing seemed a risk, but – despite Damien’s mind screaming at him to just drop it, leave, and never look back because this was all stupid and he didn’t have to go through with this and couldn’t he just go back to how it used to be – he forced his words out of his throat.

The words came out rough and battered. “I don’t know what you’re going to do about it, but I can tell you what you’re not.”

“Please.”

Damien had never seen Will so desperate, but he didn’t have time to ask before he was stuttering out an explanation. It began like the sputtering of an old car engine, but then he got a hold of himself and rushed into saying, “I-I don’t know how Celine feels, and I would never do anything to intentionally hurt Mark, but I can’t go on like this.”

He placed the coffee on the table, shaking.

“I thought that, after I got back, everything would go back to how it used to be. But it didn’t. The moment I saw Celine, I just…” He dropped his head into his hand, elbow on the arm of the chair so that Damien barely saw his face. “You know her, probably better than me or Mark. Any advice you have, I’ll take.”

“Will, this isn’t just advice. It’s a demand.”

He didn’t have the ability to waste time. Appeasing every party wasn’t an option. He was no longer on the sidelines, watching everything go down, he was in the mess now, and he had to help fix it without losing anyone.

He reached over to place a hand on Will’s arm. It was both a sympathetic gesture and a vehicle for getting his attention solely on him. 

“You can’t pursue Celine while she’s married to Mark.”

“Adultery? Damien, who do you take me for—?”

“You know damn well who I take you for!”

Both men froze. All signs of life dropped out of the house in an instant, as though Damien’s shout had fractured reality itself. It felt like it had to Will, who stared at his friend with unfamiliarity. Never had he raised his voice like that, not in front of him, not in front of anyone. He was willing to bet not alone, either.

Damien recognized the blank space in the conversation where he was supposed to scribble in the backtracking and move on, but he wasn’t doing that anymore, so he continued ahead. First, he said a quick, “I’m sorry,” before he pressed on, “but it’s so important that you do this right. You can’t run off together.”

He couldn’t leave him to pick up the pieces.

In a weaker voice than he had ever heard, Will muttered, “I wasn’t planning to.”

Damien believed him. Damn, did he believe him, but that wasn’t enough. The planning wasn’t the problem, it was the act itself.

“I know, but I couldn’t let that thought tempt you.”

“It won’t.”

And there was the doubt. In the first go around of everything, he had, and his promise would have been a lie. But maybe this time, if he were naïve enough to put his faith in Will once more, maybe it would be okay. Maybe his intervention meant something, and this moment marked the start of something new, without all the mess and the vengeance, and that night would be the fantasy he was still a little sure it was.

Slowly, Damien nodded. “Right. Good. Everything’s fine, then.”

Then, he reached for the coffee that he had yet to touch on the table. The first sip was bitter, a lack of sugar that Will probably hadn’t noticed.

The proceeding moments were tense – not as tense as it had been before, but neither man was relaxed. They averted their eyes, stayed silent, didn’t know how to move forward, until a thought crossed Will’s eyes.

“Is everything fine with you, Dames?”

Both men raised an eyebrow for different reasons; Damien was obviously confused, while his friend had shifted back into that sly expression of invasive curiosity that always made him slightly worried.

“With your relationship?”

“And to what relationship are you referring, Will?”

“With our attorney, of course.”

Damien choked.

Will continued to talk as if his friend weren’t coughing and spluttering on his coffee right in front of him. “Who else would I be referring to?” 

“What kind of relationship would we have?” His words came out all too fast for a genuine question. “Other than platonic. Which we all have. With them.”

He levelled him with a blank look, and Damien felt his heart rate pick up for reasons other than the near-death experience.

Okay, yes, that was hyperbole, but come on! What was he supposed to do? Just nod, confirm that they had been carrying on a romantic relationship behind his friends’ backs without telling them, right after accusing him of pining after his own sister, who was in a relationship with another of their friends? No. The fallout from that would have destroyed them all, made his opinion completely uncredible, it would have harmed both of you.

“You know,” Will said, “the war made me deaf, not blind. I’ve seen how you look at each other.”

Damien wasn’t paying attention to his words, too caught up in the sudden overflow of thoughts. It would have harmed both of you. It would have. Wouldn’t it? Or was Will right, was it obvious and everyone else had figured it out already? No, no, no. You were both good at hiding things. As much as he hated to say it, you were both good at lying. It was in the job description of a lawyer, and what was a mayor but someone hired to make bitter truths sweet for the public? It had hurt every time you had to pretend you weren’t together at events. When someone from the press stopped either one of you to ask about your love lives, sometimes right in front of the other, and you had to say that you were far too busy for that.

Was it all for nothing?

Had he been overcomplicating this?

For the first time in a while in pleasant company, Damien mumbled under his breath a small, “Fuck.” Then, he followed it up with a much more audible, “Yes, we’re dating.”

“I mean, I’ve seen how you look when you’re not together, too, and you’d think the other had died while you weren’t looking.”

“We have been for a year.”

“There’s no point in denying it.”

“I’m not denying it.”

“We’re all just wondering when you’ll spill.”

It felt like they were having two different conversations, so Damien remedied that by standing up, placing his hands securely on Will’s shoulders, and staring him straight in the eyes.

“Will, I am telling you explicitly that we’re in a relationship.”

And he had the gall to look shocked, so much so that Damien wondered if he hadn’t actually been speaking for the last minute.

“No. No, you’re…”

He blinked and then sprang to his feet, sending Damien stumbling back. He would have tripped over the coffee table had Will not grabbed his upper arms, but he could still practically feel him vibrating with excitement.

“Oh, you sly dog!”

He let go in order to move around the couch, ridding himself of his excess energy as he paced. Damien watched on in concern, partly out for his reaction and partly for him rubbing holes into his floorboards.

Will came to a stop a few steps away from him, gasping, “Well, I’ll be—” He snapped his fingers, “—Mark owes me a dollar.”

And just like that, he was moving again, skipping towards the front door in a happy-go-lucky fashion that had Damien furrowing his brows. He only managed to stop him before left the house by calling out, “Is that all?”

“You’re a very private man, Dames, and any more than a dollar would have been—”

“No, I mean… is that all you have to say?”

Will huffed.

“What did you expect?”

This time, Damien didn’t stop him. He let him go outside, presumably heading towards the payphone on the street to call up Mark, which was a problem in and of itself that he was going to have to figure out later, because his current thoughts centered on one thing.

What did he expect? Not this, that was for certain, but what? Perhaps he had suspected that his friends would turn their backs on him, on you, on both of you, but he couldn’t reconcile what he had just seen with that idea. There was the chance that his friends would push and push and push for information that he didn’t want to give and then your relationship would collapse under the weight of it – but that prospect fit more with the stress of your jobs than your friends.

Standing in the middle of Will’s living room, no more hurt or pressured than he had been before, he couldn’t explain exactly what he had expected. In a way, this was worse than he had expected because it meant that the years you had spent covering up your love for one another were utterly and completely unnecessary. It shattered his heart to think that he had put both himself and you through all of that for nothing.

But the idea that it could change was the glue that he used to reconnect the pieces. He had spoken to Will, that was another box checked off his list, and it was early enough that he figured sealing up the initial cracks would be easy. Nothing had broken apart yet that couldn’t be fixed, and he was equipped with the time and resolve to fix them.

This time around, he couldn’t let it end up like it had before, no matter how loud the voice in the back of his mind was.

He just couldn’t.