011 (Putting the Band Back Together) [SVW]

"You should have let me die," the words came out in a harsh rasp before Gowan even opened his eyes. Despite the cold washcloth that covered them, he knew he wasn't alone. One hand lifted from the bathtub full of ice water, sending a few of the cubes rattling against the porcelain in a way that made him ache intensely for a drink. Those trembling digits wrapped around the edge of the tub, squeezing hard as if he needed to brace himself for another onslaught. "Matt Stone would have broken my neck, my face... something I'm sure— you could have just stayed away and gotten your wish. No more Knights. No more ties to bind you here." The room was utterly silent by reply but he resisted the urge to remove the cloth and the ice pack that was sandwiched between the damp layers. He figured he really didn't want to see the expression on Chauncy's face anyhow. It was easy enough to hear the recrimination in every soft intake of breath.

"Since you're here," he started talking again, babbling because the silence was far worse and not just because he could hear the distorted thrumming of his pulse in his ears. His imagination could fill in the gaps pretty easily after the way the last few months had gone. "Give me the papers; I'll sign them before you go." He swallowed hard, Adam's apple bobbing and if the water hadn't been opaque with Epsom salts, he might have considered covering himself for the sake of modesty. He suddenly felt very small and very exposed. A sigh escaped his lips, "I don't have it in me to drag this out any longer—"

"I shredded them before I got on the plane..."

The silence stretched out until Gowan couldn't handle it any longer. Then and only then did he make the tiniest of sounds, barely above a mousy squeak. "Ah." He twiddled his fingers in the water, making tiny ripples on either side of himself. He was already in so much pain that whatever blows were about to come couldn't do much worse.

Distance was easier— had been easier, at least at first— but came at a cost to Chauncy. He'd put on a good show of wanting the relationship over, but been in constant argument in his head over it. The truth was difficult to admit, although not difficult at all to word.

"I've spent the past however-long telling myself that if I just stayed away, I'd return to normal. As though you had never been here. But at the risk of sounding melodramatic—" A risk he'd generally rather avoid, to say the least, "—wishing I could hate you is not the same as actually hating you." He'd dragged a chair into the bathroom, was sitting forward with a formal tightness to his posture, hands pressed together as if in prayer and pressed again between his knees, eyes ceilingward.   

Gowan lifted the washcloth away from his face, setting it down on the edge of the tub. Still, he couldn't bring himself to look at the boy— the man now— that he'd loved for more than a decade. "I don't hate you either," he said softly, his voice more strained over the attempt to keep his emotions a bit closer to his vest than he usually did.

"Of course you don't." Chauncy's jaw clenched, eyes seeming to tighten before he finally looked at Larry. "Things can't stay like this, can they? I can't see you getting torn to shreds week to week, and we can't work together as things stand."

He turned his head, finally making eye contact for the briefest of seconds before reaching for the cloth. "Right, of course. Things can't stay like this because I've run out of ways to apologize. And if we can't work together... clearly we can't, since we've only managed to eke out a single win in the last six months..." he let out a sigh, settling the cloth back over his eyes. "We can't work together. So why are you here right now?"

"Lawrence." He reached out and snatched the washcloth off his eyes, dropped it into the water and leaned as far forward as possible without risk of ruining his clothes. "An apology is the furthest from what I need. Perhaps you hadn't considered that. Bad enough that I have to watch you getting hurt by Stone and the like, worse to see you hurting yourself. Perhaps that's egocentric of me, but then again, you've always cared for me more than you have yourself, so..." He pushed to his feet, moved to the doorway. "I can't talk to you without it hurting. Right in the middle." He slapped at his breastbone. "If you can't fix it for you..."

"I don't want to hurt you." There were already tears in his eyes that he was trying in vain to ignore, "do you think I meant to do that? No! I wasn't thinking, Skippy... you know me well enough to know there wasn't any malice in my actions. I took on that role in Full Throttle because you wanted to put the team on hiatus but it was never about you, okay? Do you understand what I'm telling you? I'm a stupid, selfish..." he almost choked on the word, "asshole. That's what I am and I know it so you don't have to keep driving that point home." He couldn't help but drop back into that defensive role he'd been playing since everything had fallen apart. "What do you want me to fix? What's it really about at this point? Can you even answer that?"

"Well, you could stop using your self-loathing as an excuse for a bloody start!" Two steps out of the tiny, echoing room, and he wheeled around, straight back in before anybody had even rung a bell on the round. "Stop making excuses in general! Stop putting yourself in harm's way because it's easier than doing anything concrete to top yourself! Stop..." An explosive, inarticulate sound escaped him, before he battened down all hatches, putting himself back together with his usual precision. "I apologise..."

"Don't..." he didn't even make it past that word before the dams burst, the hot tears making their way down his face. Gowan bit his lip, shaking his head as he tried to find some shred of composure in the mess he'd allowed himself to become. "Please don't apologise... for something you haven't done wrong. Yell at me... curse me... whatever you need to do... but don't do that."

"Well, clearly I've missed doing something right, if we're right back at the beginning." He reached back and rubbed at his neck tensely. "In all of this, I haven't asked what you want. I mean... realistically, if there were a best case scenario, what would you choose?"

"If there were a best case scenario in all this..." Gowan sat up straighter, "then I'd wish for time travel to exist. I'd go back and undo it all." He reached for the towel that rested on top of the closed toilet seat, using it to blot the wetness from his face. "I'd have kept our lives private and..." his words were muffled by the cotton before he lowered it again, "it doesn't matter. If a perfect world existed, I'd still want it to include you."

"If a perfect world existed, it would hardly be perfect without us as an entity, Lawrence." He sat back down without the slightest indication of settling. "That's not realistic, though, is it? Time machines and do-agains. I'm tired of fighting you, and fighting for you, and feeling jealous of every shred of time you spend with somebody else. When you fought Justine Rose without me, it was like watching everything about you that I loved, except I wasn't on your team, was I?"

"I was barely on that team," Gowan replied, shaking his head. "I felt like a fifth wheel, at best. Sure, I was hoping you were watching and I tried to do everything in my power to dazzle out there. I wanted you to see that... and I botched almost every single moment because of that spiteful idiocy." Snapping his wrists, he shook out the towel before his eyes lifted to Chauncy's. "It's freezing in here. I think maybe... could you give me a little privacy for a moment?"

"You did dazzle out there. You just did it without me," he answered, walking stiffly into the next room and leaning against the wall, hands tightly entwined, voice a little raised to carry into the bathroom. "You worked better as a team with those..." His voice dropped into a disdainful tone. "Those two, than we had in months. You'd found a common ground, I suppose."

"I suppose so," Gowan appeared in the doorway with the towel tightly knotted around his waist. "That Rose girl was terrible and needed to be taught a lesson in both humility and tolerance. You know how my fur gets ruffled when the gay slurs start flying around."

"As does mine, which makes it several times worse that I wasn't there. I just wish you'd put that much fight into self-defense against yourself."

"I've been trying really hard," he countered, "and other than the night of Aurora's wedding... I've been accountable. Between Lex and Nova Wonder, I've got more than enough nagging to keep me from falling back into the bottle."

"Or the roof, I hope." Chauncy's voice was mild, face surface-calm, but there was an undercurrent of tension about him, most noticeable in those twisting fingers.

He visibly flinched, feeling a stabbing ache in his chest as he looked away, "I shouldn't have been up there in the first place. It..." his voice was small, "was a night filled with poor choices all around." 

"No, but do you understand that I'm terrified it will happen again?" Chauncy stepped closer, stopped, hands balled into tense fists. "I can't live without you. I tried. It was awful. I don't want to do this again." He sighed, exasperated. "And now that I've admitted that..."

"It won't happen again, Skip—" he caught himself in time, shaking his head, "I promise you. Look," he walked over to the bed and pulled open the drawer in the table, fishing out the Bible inside. "I swear," he placed his palm against the book's cover, "on this... by all that's holy... I'm not suicidal and I won't go on any more rooves. Okay?"

The book was snatched away, tossed on the floor, Chauncy pressing Larry's hand to Larry's chest. "Swear on something I actually care about."

He was acutely aware of the pressure of each of Chauncy's fingers pushing his hand over his heart. It took effort to find the words as they tried to scatter, forcing them out in a voice that was trembling, "I... swear."