All the King's horses and all the King's men

[Alva Ren]

Beer bottles littered the low-slung coffee table in front of Alva, all lined up in a neat row with the shiny half-bent caps beside them. Alva counted them absently as he sat on the couch with a throw over his shoulders, feeling small and alone and broken. He sat listed to one side, leaned against the backrest of the couch; his head lolled against his shoulder and something wet and slippery fell out of the corner of one eye, sliding down the side of his nose. He reached up and wiped it away and then let his hand drop heavily into his lap.

One bottle...

Two bottles...

Five bottles...

Seven bottles...

His phone laid beside him on the couch, its face black and empty. The television was off but Alva still stared mindlessly at it. It was hardest to be alone. Harder still to be physically bound this way, unable to run, unable to hide from the demons that now haunted him. Alva still wished that he didn't have to be here--not only here in his own house but here in his own skin. He didn't want to be here at all.

Rae and Josh.

Every time he thought about it he felt the need for a drink. All the beer in the house was laid out before him, though. Seven empty bottles. One half-full. He grabbed it and drank long and deep without pausing for breath. The fizz of the beer choked him. Sputtering, he coughed most of it out and hurriedly grabbed on to the edge of the throw to cover his mouth as he convulsed violently. Alva doubled over, squeezing his eyes tightly shut.

Rae and Josh.

And he lied. He cheated and he lied. He lied. Point-blank to Alva's face. Lied and cheated. Cheated and lied.

So then why was Alva the one who felt bad? Why was he the one with the leaden weight of guilt sitting on his chest? It was heavier before he talked to Susumu, though. So heavy that he couldn't breathe. He physically couldn't breathe. It wasn't just the betrayal. It was the loss that hit Alva the hardest, the realization that he had lost Rae. And he didn't know how to get him back. That was the worst part of it all: he didn't know what he or even Rae could do to fix this.

He found it ironic that Rae, who helped shape so much of who he was today, was contributing again to the changes in Alva. Now Alva felt bitter. Angry. Guilty yet resentful. He felt horrible from the inside-out and there was nothing he or anyone could do to ease the pain. Break-ups happened every day and they happened to people from all walks of life, Alva knew this. He wasn't unique in what he experienced or felt.

Look at Susumu--he was cheated on multiple times, and he found a way to get past all of that. And Ry? How must he have felt, every time he found out about Aldon with someone else? It was just...

Hard.

It was difficult to think about all the other people who had gone through the same type of pain he was experiencing when it blinded him so badly. He was literally blindsided tonight, smacked upside the head out of nowhere with the revelation. If there had been signs beforehand... If Rae had started to lose interest in him, or if he had become noticeably closer to Josh... It wouldn't be any less painful but it might have been easier to swallow. Maybe they weren't having the easiest time in their relationship but from lovers to this in the space of a single day just seemed nonsensical.

Then again, when did he and Rae ever make sense in the first place? Everyone saw through them, right to their problems. Everyone saw how wrong they were for each other. It was only the two of them, blinded by love, who insisted to all their critics that they were right. They wanted to be right more than they wanted to see the flaws and the cracks that had begun to form in their relationship and this was where their pride had led them.

Alva lifted himself up slowly, brows creasing into a frown at the stained throw. He removed it and folded it over and tossed it onto the floor, over the broken remnants of what used to be a small glass vial, as his phone went off again.