Chapter Text
In many ways, Brooklyn feels like he never left London.
He wouldn’t necessarily classify this as a bad thing. He’d already known Brooklyn relatively well from the times he’d been here to record, or play gigs, and the added similarity helped him acclimate all the faster. Even in the first awkward days of transition, when their stuff was still in the process of arriving and their house felt more like a temporary encampment, he still felt an ease when he stepped outside, as if he were already acquainted with these streets and now he was ready to explore all their intimate little secrets. The buildings of red brick felt achingly familiar, stretching out to endless, even blocks, intercut only by patches of green parks, a vibrant note of nature amid the bustle of metropolis. Spring was blooming all around New York, and the city that could feel so harsh and unforgiving in the winter, brimming with smoke and wind, now felt like a little pocket of serenity, sun cascading off the brownstone and making it shine nearly golden, dancing over the nascent leaves. He would walk under the canopies of cherry blossoms, inhaling the mix of pollution and pollen, and it was like he is right back in Hyde Park, looking at the skyline peaking through the trees.
There was even a bridge, too. He sat looking at it for hours with a cigarette dangling from his lips, watching the people passing through, tiny and rushed like ants surging in line. He thought the sparkling water underneath would be calming, but it just gave him a strange sense of unease like it was lying there stagnant, some hidden darkness lurking underneath.
The people were the most drastic difference by far. For two seemingly identical environments, London and Brooklyn had bred entirely different types of people. New Yorkers ran hotter, brighter even, than the more stiff characters of southern England. He found that candor and openness refreshing, and the first time a cab driver started showering him with expletives for walking into the road and making him brake abruptly, Alex couldn't help but suppress a grin at how he was transported right back into drunken rows with red-faced Sheffielders, when he was barely old enough to drink. In other ways they were all terribly American, but Alex found it easy to adapt, to lean into the differences rather than shy away from them. He didn't plan on losing himself, but he knew he’d hate to feel like he was on the outside looking in.
The best thing about New Yorkers by far, though, was that much fewer of them had any concept of who the Arctic Monkeys were, or what their lead singer looked like, and he was much freer to walk around with minimal fear of paparazzi, or fans gawking at him as he walked past drinking his coffee, or getting lost in thought. Especially since, as the days pass, he finds himself doing more and more of the latter.
The familiarity of the city is wonderful in many ways, but it has one major, debilitating flaw. It doesn’t help him forget.
The pavements look the same as ones he walked with Miles to get to gigs, giddy with excitement. The parks look the same as the ones they sprawled in on the rare bright days, soaking up much needed sun. The alleyways look the same as the ones they hugged in, clutching each other over their tears as they were getting ready to separate, and they look like the one that Alex got his heart wrenched out in, sobbing alone in the dark. Every time he thinks he’s found the strength to move on mentally as he did physically, to place everything in a neat little box and tuck it away behind him, another tether to his previous life emerges and it yanks him right back, tearing up his wounds all over again before they’ve even managed to scab over. The weeks pass, and the sensation the connective threads give him starts oscillating madly, one moment feeling like a safety net and the next like a spider’s web, trapping him in like a helpless fly.
At the core of it, the pain has nothing to do with the city, Alex knows. It would be the same if he'd stayed at his London house, or if he were hunkered in an igloo in the North Pole, with nothing to remind him of his previous life. What hurts the most is the absence. The jagged, bleeding hole that Miles hacked into his life when he walked out that Alex knows there’s no way to fil, not even with the grandest pleasures America had to offer. Him and Miles have had their fair share of rough patches before, not talking for stretches of time while the beast that were Alex’s burgeoning feelings bashed its way through their friendship, but none of it was ever like this. Things always ended on an awkward note, on a frosty conversation, on situations going a step too far and them frantically scrambling backwards. Every time he’d felt apprehensive, fearful, awkward, and every other bad adjective in the dictionary, but deep down he always knew that it wasn’t truly over. Miles would be there on the other side, if he’d just had the bravery to call, or text, or even just appear one day with a breezy greeting, ready to shove everything under the rug. The bad periods in between were just that, periods in between, because time would heal all, and they’d find their way across and back to each other again, maybe a bit more careful, maybe a bit more hurt, but together regardless. This time, it's all different. He tries and tries, but he sees no light in the horizon, just an cold merciless void.
I’m sick of you.
That’s what you did to a sickness didn’t you? You medicated, you cut it out, you killed it and moved on to better, healthier days. You made antibodies, resilience. You left it behind and tried to forget the pain it caused you. You didn’t allow it to return, to worm its way back into your life and wreak havoc all over again. Miles had cut off all communication since that night, and Alex can't find it in himself to attempt to rectify that, as much as the need to grows and swells inside him, choking him with an iron fist.
His hand itches to reach out, every time he sees something funny and he can just hear Miles roaring laugh at it, every time he sees a beautiful sight he wants to take a picture of in his shabby phone camera and send, every time his fingers tickle out a nice melody on the guitar that he wants to play for Miles, and hear his expert opinion, and maybe even get an accompanying piece sent back, better than anything Alex could ever write. The impulse seizes him every day, multiple times a day, nearly at everything he experiences, and everytime it crashes into the towering wall of reality. He can’t talk to Miles anymore. It has been made clear in every way that he is unwanted, and Alex hates to be the one to ever press past his welcome.
His mistakes have cost him Miles forever. It’s the incontrovertible truth, but no matter how hard he tries to come to grips with it, part of him refuses to let go, sinking in its claws like a feral cat, drawing blood.
There's a futility to all of it that's driving him insane. He can't see what he could do, even should he decide to make a move towards reconciliation, but that doesn't stop him from running through the options every day, like some twisted, senseless prayer. For better or for worse he's put an ocean between them, so a face to face conversation is out of the realm of the possible. A phone call seems woefully superficial, stiff and impersonal and wrong in every sense, a clumsy effort that would make him look even worse. Even if he were to establish contact, if Miles somehow agreed to hear him out, he has no clue what he should say for himself. He wants to explain everything, but the cataclysm inside him feels too vast and devastating to be described in words, and the English language feels nothing more than inadequate to convey it. He wants to ask for forgiveness, but the crimes he's inflicted on their friendship are too severe for a mere apology.
He could invoke the madness of love, blinding him and making him fuck up every step of the way, but the look of barely contained loathing in Miles’ eyes is engraved in his retinas, and he can’t bare to face it another time.
It’s pointless. He’s reached the end of the road, and yet he can't seem to let go, as many times as he tries to convince himself that it’s the only way. The prospect of an existence without Miles sounds like the deepest circle of hell, and everything in him is revolting, begging to at least try and crawl out of it, before he sinks in and it's too late.
He finds himself going out on walks more and more as the weather gets steadily warmer, getting lost in the crowded streets as if his body is trying to make up for the inertia of his actions. He gets a few stray looks, but mostly he’s left alone, blissfully anonymous. His hair has been getting longer and longer, soft curls edging past his jaw, and it adds to his camouflage so he makes no move to cut it. He finds it a comforting change, like he’s being transformed into someone else, something else. The man looking back in the mirror is new, softer and delicate, a kinder person who doesn't hurt the people he loves the most. He embraces him with a desperate need, and hopes that he, at least, might know how to carry him through.
To his utter embarrassment, the need for some form of contact drives him to the tabloids. There’s no one he can ask for news, since no one that’s close to him is also close enough to Liverpool or the Rascals to let him know at least if Miles is okay, so he ends up trawling through the gossip magazines and lifestyle columns, hoping for a glimpse of him out, an indication that he’s alright, living it up in the UK after dropping the dead weight from his life, or that he’s out there getting drunk and miserable, feeling the loss just as keenly as Alex is. He hates himself for not knowing which one he hopes for the most.
At first there’s nothing, and he ends up learning more about the love life of reality TV stars than he ever cared to know. He gets fed up with himself after a week or so and vows to stop it altogether, but his resolve barely lasts two days. He huddles over his laptop when looking through the Daily Mail as if he’s looking at the filthiest porn imaginable, and one day when Alexa walks past the door he slams the screen down hard enough he half expects to see cracks when he carefully pulls it open again. He gives up and restarts half a dozen times, but still he never finds anything related to what he wants. Just as June crawls in, ushering tendrils of heat through the entire city, and Alex convinces himself that Miles has settled into a quiet existence back home with his mum, the headline blares in the middle of the screen, blotting everything else out.
Agyness Deyn after Rascal Miles Kane.
It shouldn’t surprise him. It doesn’t, but he feels the haphazard sutures ripping all the same, and the cuts start bleeding anew. He remembers Agyness, a statuesque woman with spiky hair and piercing blue eyes. She was a friend of Alexa's through the modelling world, and that's how him and Miles had been introduced to her, back in the days of the tour. She was dating some rockstar or other then from what Alex can remember, but it seems now that she is single once more, and the introduction has come to fruition. He quickly skims the rest of article, his eye catching "anonymous source" and "hook up", and then he shuts off his laptop completely.
So, Miles opted for the good time after all. He doesn’t want to give too much weight to it. Publications like that always have a penchant for bottom-of-the-barrel gossip, and half of the stuff they report on is either completely made up or blown out of proportion. He also knows, however, that these anonymous sources are usually friends or people from publicity teams, so it’s also very likely that the article is exactly what it appears. He’s alright with it. He wants Miles to be happy, and he wants him to be in love, even if Alex is not even remotely involved in any of those things. If he tells himself that enough, he might even start to believe it.
He makes a valiant effort not to dwell, distracting himself with everything he possibly can around the house, but that same afternoon, just as he thinks he found the antidote in an episode of Breaking Bad, Alexa trots in the living room, grinning from ear to ear.
“Did you see the NME thing? About Miles and Agyness?”
Alex keeps his eyes carefully trained on the Jesse Pinkman cursing on screen. “Yeah, didn’t pay much attention.”
“Well, Agyness just called me, and she’s very excited,” Alexa says as she hops on the sofa and tucks herself in Alex’s side. “I think they’re headed somewhere.”
Alex’s hand reflexively starts toying with a strand of her hair, but he can barely register the motion. His voice sounds calm, at least. “That's good for them.”
He can feel Alexa raise her head to look up at him. “Miles hasn’t told you anything?”
“No, not really. We haven’t really spoken since I left.” He tries hard to focus on the screen, but the images have begun to feel like a blur of colours, mashing into each other. The last thing he needs is to hear more about how absolutely delightful Miles is with his new girlfriend, or be pressed on why he doesn’t seem to be anywhere near any of it.
“Everything alright?”
“Yeah.” He hopes the smile looks genuine. “Both of us were busy I suppose, it’s been a hectic few weeks, innit?”
Alexa blessedly doesn’t ask more, humming an affirmation as they settle into the sofa, but Alex gives up any hope on following the plot anymore. So, it is serious. Miles has got a new girl that is excited about him, and he’s excited about her, and they’re gonna kiss and fuck and hold hands in the street, and they’re gonna be happy together, and he should be happy for them. Miles deserves this, more than this, he deserves the whole wide world laid on his feet, but Alex has trouble reconciling the two forces in his chest. That dark part inside him rears its head, the one that hates her viscerally, that is roaring mine, mine, mine in the depths, like a caged animal prowling, ready to rip off any unsuspecting arm that dares touch the bars. He curls his hand around Alexa’s shoulder, and then her voice cuts through the turmoil like it's pulling him from a dream.
“I thought I’d invite them over.”
He turns his head so sharply his neck pops. “What?”
“It’d be a great opportunity wouldn’t it? They get to have a little romantic getaway and see how things work out, you get to see Miles, I get to see Agy. It feels like it’s been forever.“
“You don’t think it’s a little early to have them take a vacation to the other side of the planet?” He manages to sound casual enough, but he can feel panic bubbling up his throat. This can’t happen. This is the absolute worst scenario he can fathom.
Alexa cocks an eyebrow. “Coming from someone that never makes big moves early in the relationship, right?”
He feels himself blush, even around the terror. “That’s not the same thing. We’re not all the same. I just...don’t think it’s gonna help in this case.”
“Relax, babe,” she reassures in that voice that indicates her mind is already made up, and any resistance is futile. “You’re just overthinking it. We’re gonna have fun.”
She pecks him on the cheek before getting up to go to the kitchen, but Alex barely feels her lips connect over the numbness taking over his body.
He can’t do it. He can’t. He’s been agonizing over the subtlest ways of approach for weeks, so having Miles dropped in his lap, living in his house seems absurd, incomprehensible, especially when he’s gonna be arriving here with his shiny new girlfriend, like some twisted version of a honeymoon. The panic overwhelms him for a while, but then a sudden clarity breaks through.
There’s no way he’ll accept.
Their last meeting has been replaying in Alex’s head to the point of insanity, and however much it hurts to remember it, it now serves to give him a sense of security. The Miles that basically told him to fuck off when he said he was moving away, the Miles that looked at him with such derision, the Miles that is sick would never agree to step into his orbit again, to bring his new romance and happiness near Alex’s miasma. It won’t even feel suspicious for him to say no. The distance is too much. The trip is too long, too costly, he has other engagements with the Rascals, he shares Alex's concern on taking a trip abroad with her so soon, he wants to stay in Liverpool and fuck his girl in peace. It will be the easiest thing in the world. When he goes to sleep that night, curling a gentle arm over Alexa, he almost feels silly for ever worrying about it in the first place.
The next morning he wakes up early, along with the sun. The rays are barely glimmering through the windows as he makes breakfast and coffee, pouring it into two cups as Alexa emerges from the shower in her cosy oversized shirt, stretching like a cat.
“I texted them about the plan,” she says, arms falling to the side.
Alex pours in a generous amount of milk and takes a careful sip, barely lifting his eyes. “Oh?”
Alexa’s grin is positively devilish. “They can’t wait! We should expect them in a week or so!”
It takes every inch of his mental and physical strength to keep his cup from crashing onto the floor. No. It must be a mistake. There’s no way Miles enthusiastically accepted.
“That’s great,” he hears himself say, but it sounds distorted and far away, like he’s submerged in water. Alexa pecks him on the cheek as she takes her own coffee cup and saunters to the living room, but he stays there, staring off into the sun rays piercing into the kitchen. A cold kind of morning sun, just like London.
How naive of him to think he could outrun anything.