Sanctuary

I don't understand.

Why he stays with her, why he watches her torment him with the promise of another night of regret and anguish.

I don't get it.

Why he smiles that sweet smile even though he knows, with such a horribly heavy heart, that she doesn't love him half as much as he loves her.

I don't know.

Why he chooses to spoil her, to treat her like a queen, when she's done nothing but cause him pain and a lacking of support.

She's made my job so much more difficult for years now. I guess that night I just finally kind of...

Cracked.

Lingering in the darkened light of his apartment, a heavy head lay limp on an obviously oversize lazy-boy. The smooth fabric burnt searing holes in the delicate skin of its occupant, whose last breaths had been dealt with a weighted heart and dying eyes. Is this it?

The thought rang out perilously, as if to reverberate from the surrounding walls in a fit of brief sorrow only fit for a girl of my caliber. There was something about that place that acted as a sickening wealth of knowledge; one that brought bile to the back of my throat, an itch to my already restless stomach. I know once I do this, once I say what I came to say, he's not going to care how I feel. He's fucking blind as a bat. But...

I have to try.

I waited patiently in my spot, curled up like a faithful lap cat in the darkness. A blank expression pursed my worried lips, eyes falling closed at the sound of his key sliding into the front door. He knew that I was over, so it's not like my presence was really much of a surprise, even if it was a pretty last-minute thing. Yet even when he walked through the door and wordlessly turned the lock behind him, I felt an ominous sense of unwelcome.

And then I saw his eyes.

"I..." he barely murmured above a breath's pitch, "I'm.... Finally done... With her."

All at once my ears perked, body quaking with the weight of his glorious words. But the glory did not shimmer in his burdened eyes, but a great murky vacancy of emotion that was completely uncharacteristic to the normally valiant brunette. He was so used to carrying a team on his shoulders that maybe, I thought, to finally lose the responsibility of babysitting that worthless girl left him without knowledge of what to do with himself. "I know you hated her," he murmured once more, "but she needed me."

"Sidney," I slid off the end of my warm spot and staggered toward him. There was something about the cold air that pierced through my senses, waking me more with every step. I stopped short of him, eyes rising to meet his. "You didn't need her."

"I know I didn't need her, but that doesn't take away from the fact that for once I was told what to do."

"You make being someone's bitch sound good."

He cracked the slightest, pathetic smile and immediately connected with the back of his door with a dull thud. The boy then slid to the floor, exhaling as he zoned out across the room. "You wouldn't get it."

"Try me, Captain. I get that everyone relies on you for everything, but you were getting your fix of dependency from all of the wrong places." It was true that yes, in his position the thought of finally having someone to dictate what he or they did had to be refreshing, but it couldn't be worth the hurt he was constantly experiencing. Finally, or so it seemed, he was understanding that.

"Why'd you show up here, anyway?" he paused, "And I want the truth."

I frowned. "I was going to friend-dump your ass if you didn't stop this bullshit," I breathed, sitting beside him the best I could.

He coughed.

"You do realize this was coming, right?" he whispered with an almost lifeless stare, reluctant to speak the words he was saying. "I don't get why.. I did that to myself. I mean," he paused, "I do, but I don't."

"I understand," I whispered in reply, squeezing his t-shirt-clad arm.

"You would. She wouldn't."

"So what happened?"

Sidney chewed on his bottom lip. "She's been cheating on me for so long and I finally just had t with this denial I was having. I mean usually I just forgot about it, did my best to forget about her while traveling and maintaining my own business, but this was just too much. I went in to kiss her cheek and could see the hickey on the like back of her neck.

"Are you fucking joking?" he inhaled, making a fist, but quickly gripping his jeans to simmer down. "I know so many guys have open relationships in this league, just because they all know they're gone so often the girl usually isn't willing to wait around. And I tried just handing her mental hall passes every time I left. I tried turning the blind eye. But I just can't do that."

I immediately watched his facial expressions shift from vacuous to frustrated and narrowed my brow. "You've never been that kind of guy, Sid, what makes you think you can just start that."

"Yeah, well, I was trying to just let it go. Didn't work. We see how well it ended."

"What..."

He half growled, "She told me she didn't love me anyway and just left. All I could do was yell that we're over after her and watch her laugh at me, prolly out of spite, as she walked to her car."

"Well, I knew she was a cunt," I spat, "but I guess it could have been worse."

A set of solid brown yes shimmered up at me in the darkness. I tried my best to keep from shouting praises and firing off confetti. "You do realize I've been pissily waiting for this day to come for the last year, right?"

For a second he looked rather disgruntled, but with the lift of his eyebrow and a good second of staring at my face, he lost a little bit of that bitter edge of his and shifted slightly. "Look, dumbass, while you've been flitting around that imbecilic moron of cretinous girl-thing, I've been watching you slowly fall apart. You've swallowed your pride way too much."

He blankly watched me, eyes slightly wide. "I had no idea you knew words that big."

Shooting him a slighted glare, I continued seamlessly, "Time to get your manhood back, Sid." With that, I shot up to my feet and motioned for him to follow into the pitch black living room. "Maybe after you hit puberty all over again, I won't have to use small words for that underdeveloped brain of yours."

He let out a sarcastic laugh and rose to his feet, teetering slightly. I thought I was out of his reach, but when a light footfall sounded at my back and a gentle hand slid into mine, I was proven wrong. I turned a few inches enough to look back at the tired boy at my back before smiling a subtle smile. He looked down at me wit thankful eyes, but refused to allow me to walk any farther. Instead, Sidney tugged me back by the arm until I turned to face him and wrapped me in a warm hug.

I stood silenced against his large frame, his arms tightly wound around my back, squeezing with an abnormal amount of comfortable force. My eyes lay wide, fixated on the door just over his shoulder, as I wrapped my arms around him in a pitifully weak attempt at returning his embrace. But before I could manage to give him a squeeze, he pulled back and pressed his soft lips to my cheek.

"You can start reforming me by staying tonight. And the night after that. And probably the night after that." he whispered, pressing his mouth to the top of my head and promptly staring down at me. "Stay with me, okay?"

"I've always been here, Sidney," I replied with a light laugh. "Probably always will be."