Chapter Text
She has been getting migraines more and more often, and she has no idea where the twisting vision comes from, but afterwards she gets these images that seem too real to be only ideas. She has a desire to cheat at chess with obscure technicalities, though she doesn’t even know the normal rules. She suddenly has a new spirit, all of these different voices that are not hers and the stories that must be told lest they be forgot again (why did she think again? she has never cared about a linebacker or his endzone dance.) Her book ends up being a mix of nightmarish whimsy and flimsy sentence structure, almost as if two people have been working on the manuscript.
And then she gets the worst one she’s ever experienced. This headache makes her feel physically ill. She gets herself two ibuprofens at once because it’s bad enough to deserve it (that’s not going to make it go away, will it?). She panics for no good reason, but it’s possible that she’d forgotten a very good reason through a haze of pulsing colors. She closes her eyes as if she will feel better but nothing can make this better. In the darkness behind her eyelids, she holds onto the blue clanking of the radiator, the only thing that makes sense. But she has never felt so guilty as she does for trying to catch hold of those bouncing jewels. Somehow she has ended up on the floor. She stays there, cheek pressed against the hardwood, trying to pay attention to the flow of the lines.
He finds her there, minutes or hours later, crouched in the corner of the living room. “Alice?” he says, and he gently pries her hands away from her tearstained face. He holds them in his own, because her fingers are like ice cubes.
She looks up at him doubtfully. “Jack?” she asks like she can’t believe he’s there. “Jack, it hurts,” she whispers.
“Don’t worry,” he tells her and he wraps himself around her, stroking her back “It’s going to be okay, I promise. These headaches pass, they always do. I’ll sit right here until it’s gone. Okay?”
She twists around to see him because there’s something important that she only just remembered. “Oh god,” she says desperately and she grabs him by the shoulders and pins him down, as she tries to kiss every part of him so she can own him and become a part of his skin, but the long scratches do not make a doorway for her, and this isn’t the way she wanted it to be, this need, this hunger for something that ought to be trustingly asked and freely given. She can’t stop herself because this is something she had no idea she has wanted for so long.
She is grateful to feel his hands pushing her away from him, because it means something is ending. He gets himself disentangled from her and without his touch to drive her on, she calms down enough to be horrified at herself. She scrabbles backwards until they are staring at each other from opposite walls. He wipes away blood. Hers or his, she can’t see. He is shaken, clearly, but he is trying not to show it, which she hates. She’d rather he rage at her, like she deserves.
“Alice.” he says carefully to keep from flying apart. “What just happened?”
She breaks inwards, thinking about it. “I…Jack honey, I don’t know. It was…” But what it was, she couldn’t say. She doesn’t really feel well enough to get up and run out of the apartment, but she can’t stay in the same room as his disappointment.