quick Knalice college/post-grad AU thing.
They’re the kind of best friends who have a physical shorthand for communication, and an understanding of the scarred, darker parts of each other’s lives, it’s something nobody else can touch. Ana hated it, and Cyrus understood in his own way, never really bringing it up, because it interested him to see Will’s Alice, the part of Alice she only was when Will was around.Â
If Will is drowning himself at a dive bar, Alice is slipping under with him. If Alice is at an out of the way music venue, Will is there screaming along next to her. They don’t like to talk about how it is that they became so close, but he owes her so much more than his life, and what makes Alice herself, what was given back to her when she left her home behind was because of Will.Â
Will can be a sneak, a liar, and a coward, Alice can be impulsive, capricious, and belligerent. They drive everyone around them absolutely mad (as Will’s roommate will attest, despite being a former tutor of Alice’s), but to love Alice is to love Will, and to love Will is to love Alice. Why it took them so long to realize that they became extensions of each other, nobody knows; but it started when Alice needed to remember how to stand, Will showed her how. Will needed to find a place to heal, Alice provided.
She hated being in treatment, she hated being watched, she hated being under her father’s thumb. He hated who he was becoming, he hated being lost, and he hated how quickly Ana was becoming someone he couldn’t recognize. Cyrus was good to and for her, Will liked to call him her miracle. He wasn’t like them, the wilds in his heart weren’t full of savage beasts. He showed them both a better way to be, and he loved Alice fiercely. She could live fully alone, but if he found his way back to her, if her life became one she could see him in, they would be together. He went away to get his Masters, she returned to school part time, and worked where she could. Will watched, happy Alice had for awhile what he and Ana couldn’t, her life was too full of things he couldn’t help her fight, and she was more than strong enough to beat them back herself. He loved Ana, but they couldn’t ever really have a future together, their demons didn’t quite meet eye to eye.Â
It wasn’t with words that they decided that they were a couple, but they were rarely apart. Will coming back from work to find Alice dead asleep on the couch he abandoned, Alice rousting Will in the morning because they both had to be out the door and the world doesn’t stop when they feel the need to run. It happened, and they found out that happy wasn’t what either of them expected, and it didn’t frighten them in the least.Â
