Hollow bones

[Alejandro Riviera]

Through the bent slats in the blinds, Alejo could see the colored lights outside. He laid on his side on the hard mattress in his motel room, head propped up by two lumpy pillows that smelled vaguely of moth balls. After leaving the downtown core, he didn't immediately return to his room. His feet led him on a wandering, meandering course through some of the narrow streets of Hazleton. He took in the sights and the sounds, the people walking past chattering with their friends or hurrying home.

Eventually Alejo came back to the motel and to his room. He left the lights off as he toed off his shoes and curled up in bed on top of the comforter and blanket, laying in silence while he listened to cars driving past. A siren went off in the distance, reminding him of home--New York, the city that rarely slept. Most nights he was carried off to sleep by the sound of sirens. Or he'd be in one of those cars zipping down the street, chasing after petty criminals and drunk kids out on a midnight joy ride.

Tonight, Alejo wasn't a cop. He was... He didn't know exactly what he was tonight. The encounter with Jack left him shaken in a bad way and as he laid there, his mind kept circling back to certain words, certain phrases. It was harder to pull himself together tonight than any other night, helped in no way by the strong liquor that Jack had plied him with back at the club. Alejo wasn't dead drunk but he still felt muzzy, a little light-headed. The usual barriers that he slammed up to avoid looking too closely at himself were weakened and crumbling down.

He cheated. He found someone who was like him in so many ways that he could hardly believe Jack was real and not a figment of imagination. He thought he found someone who could fill the emptiness inside but the further away he walked from Jack's apartment, the lonelier he felt. At the corner of the street he'd looked back at the Sunrise and something in his chest lurched unpleasantly.

Would he be happier if he'd asked to stay? if he was in bed with Jack right now, warm under his covers? If he could lay his head on Jack's chest and listen to his heartbeat and spill out all of his secrets to somebody who knew exactly what it felt like to be broken inside? Would voicing any of his inner thoughts somehow make them disappear, or would he still feel... wrong? Off?

Alejo felt a little better... then a little worse. Disappointment ended his night, like so many other nights. He blinked into the darkened corners of his room and slowly reached over onto the spare pillow laying beside him. His fingers slid over his gun. His badge. Lights from outside made the burnished gold glow softly. Alejo had been so proud when he received his badge, thinking that having a purpose--saving people--could save him but as with everything, the initial excitement faded. Left him a little emptier, a little more desperate, despondent inside.

His index slid over the trigger on the gun. It was a simple plain affair, black, standard issue. Alejo's eyes closed. His finger tightened slightly around the cold metal.

If only he could be

a little braver

[Judah Hyunh]

Everything was so fucked.

Judah wanted to tell himself that he meant well when he showed up in Hazleton to assist his best friend and ex-boyfriend in locating his missing brother. And he did want to do that. But... was it entirely altruistic of him to fly all the way out here to do it? He could have done his work from home, let Aaron get the footwork done on his own or with the help of friends local to the area. Judah didn't have to be the one.

Yet he did it. And he didn't think he expected the feelings to come back so strongly. He knew they were still there. He just didn't expect them to be this strong. Over the phone, it was bad enough--he should have known it was the wrong thing to do when he felt the need to tell Aaron his feelings were still there for him. They hadn't vanished or disappeared just because he became attracted to somebody else.

And he did love Alejandro. So much. But it was never going to be anything like the way he felt about Aaron. It didn't seem fair to Alejandro. It was like settling for second best. The thing was... Aaron and Judah weren't going to work. They were star-crossed lovers. Their love burned bright. They would always remember one another strongly and fondly and sadly. First loves were like that. But... there was no place for the two of them in this world, not when they both wanted so many different things out of life.

Alejandro seemed to be on the same page. Things were easy, they were affectionate, loving. Things were usually quite light between them, although like any couple, they had their fights and disagreements. Judah didn't imagine things would end like this.

Was this the end? Judah said they could fix this. Could they? Did they want to? Now that Al knew the truth, would he still want to? And... what about Al's cheating? Judah took in a deep breath, chest aching. It hurt, to know that he ran off on him like that. But it was hard to let it really sink its claws in when he knew full well he almost cheated on Al.

Maybe... maybe they weren't meant to be.

With a heavy heart, Judah went to knock on the hotel room but remembered what Al said about the door being open in his last text. Tucking his phone away, he edged into the room, the door whining on its hinges.

"Al?"

[Alejandro Riviera]

Alejo made himself get out of bed and turn on the lights, because he didn't want Judah walking into a darkened room. Then he went back to the bed to sit on it, pulling the topmost layer of blanket over his shoulders. He wasn't cold; he just wanted the feeling of being surrounded by something warm, of being cocooned. It was a far cry from a pair of arms but it had to do.

He held his gun and his badge in his lap, stroking the latter. He wasn't brave enough to go through with it. But his thoughts kept swirling around it. Pull the trigger. End it. Stop the emptiness corroding his soul, stop the spread of the disease. It was a sickness, wasn't it? That hateful feeling of knowing that he was nothing. The way it consumed him.

Nobody knew. He never said what was on his mind; he went through every day lying to everyone, lying to himself. To Judah. Judah didn't deserve this—he didn't deserve to be saddled with all of Alejo's baggage. That was why Alejo didn't say anything, why he let his insecurities and fears mount until something in him finally snapped. Tonight, he snapped.

His fingers curled around the hard edge of his badge. The door creaked open but Alejo didn't lift his head. He kept staring at the badge, at the gun. There was a knot in his throat and his eyes burned just from the sound of Judah's voice. He wanted so badly for Judah to be the one—the one to save him from himself. The one to make him whole. But Judah came to him broken too, just not as badly as Alejo. Judah needed him too, and like he said over the phone, he couldn't do it. Couldn't be whole enough to help Judah repair the tears in his own heart.

"...hey," he said quietly, swallowing. His fingers tightened a little more around the badge. Eyes on the gun.

[Judah Hyunh]

His gaze followed Alejandro's and immediately saw the gun. Heart in his throat, he strode across the room and immediately grabbed it out of reach. The way Alejandro typed over the phone was worrying enough. Now this. He looked like... no way that Judah ever remembered ever seeing him. Not even when they got into their biggest fights, he couldn't recall ever seeing Alejandro looking this dejected.

Setting the gun down on a dresser well out of Al's reach, Judah took a seat on the bed. He gently squeezed Alejandro's calf, like a parent coming into the bedroom when their kid had a nightmare.

"What's really going on, Al? I know all that shit I said to you was uncalled for but you know I didn't mean it. I was just..." He shook his head. Just because he was struggling with his feelings didn't mean he had to keep pushing Al away. He was the one good thing that came into his life when he moved to the east coast! The job was great and all but it was so stressful. He and Al used to fit together so well. What happened to that?

"I shouldn't have come back here. I just... I thought I could help."

[Alejandro Riviera]

Alejo tracked Judah across the room—or at least, his feet. He watched Judah striding quickly to the bed and let him remove the gun from his lap, a wry smile working its way across his lips. It faded once Judah turned around and he drew the blanket tighter around his shoulders, enclosing him in stifling warmth.

Judah took the gun... but left the badge. And the badge was the real danger, the real source of Alejo's conflict. He still had a hand around it and squeezed it tighter when the mattress depressed as Judah sat down near him. For a while he mulled over the question. It wasn't hard to answer... and it was. He didn't know how he could make Judah understand him, his feelings, his emptiness and his nothingness.

His worthlessness.

Alejo shifted closer but didn't reach out to touch him. "What's he like?"

[Judah Hyunh]

No answer. Alejandro didn't want to answer that question. What was really going on? Judah felt like this person in front of him was somebody he didn't know. In the back of his mind, he wondered how much he really knew about Alejandro, whether it was something he had unwittingly done to protect himself after having left his hometown and his first love. Maybe he never let Alejandro in completely and that was on him.

Judah winced at the question as if it physically pained him. Of course Alejandro would ask that. Who wouldn't be curious? Did Alejandro have somebody like that in his past, too? What was the guy he slept with like? Was he some replacement for Judah for the night? Did he do it out of spite or pain? Or both? Judah dropped his gaze and took in a deep breath, letting it out on a sigh.

What good was knowing what Aaron was like? Would it even help Alejandro to know? Or was he just going to sit there and compare himself with every descriptor Judah used for Aaron? Did he want to know if they were similar in some way? If there was a way to compete, to be better, to win out? It would just twist the knife in Al's gut, no matter what he said about Aaron. But to not answer would twist the knife, too.

"Driven. Smart. Stubborn. He used to be my best friend." Judah reached out to take Alejandro's hand. "But he's content staying here. And I wanted... want... so much more than this small town bullshit."

He shifted on the bed to fully face Alejandro. Love was complicated. He loved Al but it wasn't enough, if his heart was still imparted to somebody else. There was no way to change that, though. How could he possibly change the past when it already happened? All he could do was keep forging the path forward.

"Why don't you ask me what I see in you?"

[Alejandro Riviera]

Alejo waited, not with bated breath but with genuine curiosity. What was the other man like? The man Judah gave himself to? The man that had the most important piece of Judah? What... what did it take to have someone the way that other man had Judah? If he could somehow learn from him, if he knew what it was that he had and what Alejo lacked...

Driven. Smart. Stubborn. Alejo smiled humorlessly, disappointed in the answer. That could have been anyone. It could have been Alejo, or the facade he put face-forward. Those weren't traits to keep a man; they sounded more like things one would find listed on a resume. He looked down at the hand Judah captured, his fingers curling slightly and then uncurling.

"And he's stuck here," he murmured, restating Judah's original thought. They wanted different things in life and that put a wedge between them, but it couldn't extinguish the light of their love. Surely something like that wasn't enough to completely cancel all of that history, all of their past life together. That man had been in Judah's life for far longer than Alejo, he could tell just by the way Judah spoke of him.

As for what Judah saw in him... Alejo looked up with a pained smile, shaking his head. "Whatever you see in me, it's not--it will never be what I see in myself." And that was why they couldn't work, either. Because they could never meet in the middle, just as Judah and the other man couldn't find a middle ground. Alejo withdrew his hand slowly.

"I think. You need to go back to him. Something like where you live... it shouldn't be that much of a barrier if you really love each other."

[Judah Hyunh]

"Why?" Why couldn't Alejandro see in himself what Judah saw in him? He was such a bright presence. His smile could light up the whole room if he wanted it to. Was that all just some show he put on? Judah wished he knew. It felt like the Alejandro he met and fell in love with wasn't the real one, as if he had shown a certain face to him all this time and now it was just finally coming down.

Alejandro... he seemed to have such a simple way of looking at what love was supposed to be. He didn't understand what it meant, the idea of Judah staying here. It was so stifling. Just the thought of staying choked him, made him feel trapped and claustrophobic. Loving somebody just wasn't enough. In the same way that Aaron was stubborn about staying, Judah was stubborn about leaving.

"It's not that easy," he said finally. But he could feel that the two of them were slipping apart. Things would never be the same between them. Alejandro would always have this in the back of his mind, that there was somebody else. Hell, he even said he sensed it before it ever came up, that Judah's heart was somewhere else. At least, part of it.

"Don't give up on us."

[Alejandro Riviera]

"Because." He looked down at himself, swathed in blankets that formed a cocoon, a barrier between him and the world that he no longer felt he had a right to live in. He shook his head again, not because he disagreed with Judah but because he couldn't come to terms with himself. With what he had become, what he had always been.

Stubborn. Stubbornness was the death of their relationship. From an outsider's perspective it seemed so tragic that something so small could end something as beautiful as a genuine and true love. A man like Judah, good and kind and trustworthy, he was wasting all of that on Alejo, who was deceptive and dark inside. His darkness would blight Judah eventually, he could tell. The cracks that were beginning to form would expose him sooner or later for the liar he was.

Alejo leaned forward to slide his arms around Judah, embracing him one last time. "I have to, Judah. I'm not... right. For you. I'm not what you think I am and I can't go on knowing that you... You belong with someone else, baby." He pulled back to cup Judah's face in his hands, the blanket falling away in the motion. Alejo leaned his forehead against Judah's and closed his eyes.

"I'm never giving up on you. But I have to give up on us. I'm sorry."

[Judah Hyunh]

"But I..." I don't. He wanted to say. He didn't belong with Aaron. As much as he wanted to, as much as he wished it could be, it just... couldn't. It wasn't as simple as Alejandro made it sound. To him, it probably sounded absurd to throw away love because they couldn't decide on a place to live. But he didn't know what it was like, growing up in Hazleton. Judah couldn't keep doing it.

Maybe things would change, if they could find Aaron's little brother. If they could find him safely. Because he didn't want to think about what would happen to Aaron if he was found... not safe.

Judah held onto Alejandro, in shock and disbelief. Numb. He couldn't believe this was really happening. They were breaking up. Alejandro was breaking up with him. His gaze locked onto Alejandro and despite himself, he could feel the heat pricking the back of his eyes. How did it come to this? When they met, Alejandro was the light of his life. He turned the grey stone streets of New York City into a magical wonderland. He knew exactly where to take Judah out when he needed something new, when he was stuck in a rut with work.

They used to laugh about stupid little things. They had their own little inside jokes, the way couples did. They lived together how long? Waking up to him, kissing him, rolling over onto him and seeing that slow smile. What changed? It all came down to this--the visit back to Hazleton. Somehow... it ruined... everything.

"I still love you," he whispered. "You have to believe me."

[Alejandro Riviera]

It hurt them both. Of course it did. They had been together long enough for Judah to become a part of Alejo, to have little inside jokes, a language of their own as lovers, things that they only knew about one another. For a while, everything was so good. So right. Alejo thought maybe Judah was the one. He thought Judah could love him enough to fill that void inside, to make a something out of a nothing.

But the entire time, there was this other side of Alejo waiting in the wings, lurking. This side of him that was dark and bleak and—ashamed. He was ashamed of the person he was inside and couldn't seem to find a way out of his own tortured thoughts. It wasn't that Judah didn't love him enough, really. It was that Alejo didn't love himself enough.

So he couldn't love Judah any longer and he couldn't keep up the deception. He couldn't bear to be that Alejo while this Alejo festered away deep down inside. Maybe the other man was the catalyst. Maybe Judah coming here and Alejo finding out that he was with his old flame broke everything open. Whatever started the ball rolling, there was no way to stop it now and Alejo was forced to confront all of the ugliness that he had always known was inside of him.

He was a monster. He cheated on Judah. And while he didn't do it to be spiteful or to hurt Judah on purpose, that was the end result anyway. Judah shouldn't be the one trying to save him and the fact that he did... It broke Alejo's heart all over again. He clung to Judah tightly and nodded, unable to speak for a long moment. "I know baby. I know you do." But for Alejo, it had to be all or nothing. He couldn't just be a love—he had to be the love. And if he wasn't, he couldn't be whole.

Maybe he would never be whole, then.

"I love you too, Judah. And I always will." He pulled back, tears in his eyes, tears in Judah's eyes. Alejo's hands shook as he stroked Judah's cheeks, along his jaw, down his throat and over his shoulders. Briefly his fingers curled against Judah's upper arm and then he dropped his hands.

[Judah Hyunh]

So... this was it. This... was the end of them? Judah swallowed hard, not even sure where to look or what to say. His throat felt tight and constricted, his stomach twisted in knots, and his heart ached. How foolish was he? He thought he and Alejandro had a loving relationship. That they were going the distance together. They lived together. They shared everything... until they didn't.

Or maybe they just never did. Judah kept Aaron from him and Alejandro kept his real job a secret from Judah. But even then, they weren't standing on even ground. Who really talked at length about their exes? It would have been a slap in the face to Alejandro and besides... Judah didn't think about him nearly as much after he got settled into NYC. His new job, new home, new boyfriend. It was a whole new life with all new experiences.

Judah wanted to hold onto Alejandro longer but eventually... Alejandro pulled back. Judah's heart twisted in his chest and he had to suppress the urge to grasp his hands, to pull them back to him. He took him in, really took him in... for the last time. Still tight in the throat, he turned away and blinked back the sting in his eyes.

"I... I should... I should go." His voice was rough, catching on his emotions. He blindly reached out to pat Alejandro's arm. Then he stood, the hotel bed squeaking as he did. What else could he do for Alejandro? Everything felt... so final and he wasn't going to push and force and coerce somebody he genuinely cared for into something. He already felt shitty enough about the kiss between himself and Aaron. I never should have said anything to him. I never should have come here. And some part of him also said I never should have left.

There was no telling if their relationship together was what left Alejandro feeling this way.

But even as he stood at the door, he was hesitant, hand on the doorknob. He looked up, turning back toward Alejandro. "I hope... I really hope you find what you're looking for, Alejandro." And then he turned the knob. Turned away. "Goodbye."

And just like that... it was over. A whole relationship, thrown away in the blink of an eye. Judah squeezed his eyes shut and let the feeling wash over him as he entered the hotel elevator. Fuck.