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His hand hesitates over the door handle. Scott shouldn’t have come here, he knows. All of it would be so much easier if he pushed him away. But somehow, he finds himself turning the handle anyway, opening the door to where he knows the very source of his heartache lies. Scott had always thought of himself as smart, but he might have to readjust that assessment, he thinks, as he looks at the golden-haired man in front of him.
Scott had a response planned already when he made this ill-advised trip, so he let himself soak in the moment when Jimmy’s beautiful brown eyes looked at him and crinkled at the corners when he smiled at him. He noticed the dimples on the left side of Jimmy’s cheek, like he always did, before Scott opened his mouth.
“Hey Jimmy, I’ve got that write-up done, wanted your thoughts on the rough draft,” he says with a carefully-crafted smile. Not too much, he tells himself, even if just the sight of Jimmy’s face makes him want to burst with joy—though other, more complicated emotions still linger in the depths.
“Ah, of course,” Jimmy replies easily, reaching up from where he sat at his desk to grab it.
Scott didn’t remember when he’d gotten so close, but of course he must have walked there subconsciously, drawn in by the inviting warm presence of this wonderful man. Jimmy’s hand stayed on Scott’s a moment longer than it likely needed to, and Scott let it.
“I’ll get it back to you as quickly as I can,” he assured with a grin.
Somehow the cold bit harder when he inevitably drew his hand away again. Scott still couldn’t help the way he lingered anyway. He would’ve done the same thing every time, even knowing that it would still hurt him.
“Right, I’ll leave you to it then,” Scott replies in a mimic of that easy tone he didn’t feel. “Thank you for this, though, I really appreciate you helping me out,” he adds to keep the conversation going a little longer, against his better judgement. He still steps away, though.
He did it just to hear that voice again, and he was right that it was still worth it, “No problem," Jimmy assures him with a wave of his hands, “I’m always happy to help y- help out,” Scott smiles at that little stutter—he tries to not pay too much attention to the way Jimmy’s face turns a little pink, no matter how much he wants to pretend it's for him. Then, with a deliberate motion, he walks out of the room and closes the door.
It had been easier before, he knows. He glances back to that same door, so, so very tempted to go back in, make some reasonable excuse he needed to go see Jimmy for longer. But instead, he does the smart thing, putting his hands in his pockets and turning to go down the stairs back to his own desk.
He shouldn’t have made this trip in the first place. His body had somehow found its way there anyway.
Though it felt like so long ago now, Scott knew things had been so much easier only a week ago—before that strange nightmare pulled him in for a second time. He had been still pining hopelessly after Jimmy, with no memories of a life of doing anything different, and he had been more than okay with that. It was a familiar heartbreak before, when he knew the man didn’t feel the same and Scott could simply resign himself to just enjoying being around him.
Familiarity with heartbreak didn’t make it hurt less, but it was more of a dull, thudding, constant ache that pounded below the surface of his everyday life. He got used to it.
But now. . . the ache felt new again. It wasn’t a dull fading bruise, it was a knife being pressed back into his flesh, a sharp, cutting pain that laced through him, the pain ever present, every time he saw Jimmy. Still, he pressed the knife in anyways—he knew the high it gave before the brutal pain cut through. He couldn’t help it.
Because now, he could remember times where the pain never came, a different life of love and warmth, and he sought it out like a starving man—he knew that the love and warmth wasn’t there anymore, not forever. Every time he left, he felt that pain come back again, but he kept coming back anyways. He had remembered a lot of things after he won that sick, twisted game. He was still . . . processing a lot of it.
At least if by processing it he meant reliving those vivid deaths and bloodshed in his dreams, waking up screaming and falling asleep sobbing. But “processing” was a nice, clean word to say, so that’s what Scott used, even if only in his own mind.
But he didn’t know what to do with that spot of love and warmth in those memories, he didn’t know how to process it.
It was beautiful and terrible all at once. It had been everything he ever wanted, and he still couldn’t have it.
For a day or so, he had tried to write everything off as something his brain made up, mixing trauma from his childhood, his hopeless pining after Jimmy, and horrible nightmarish scenes of murder into a horrible concoction that was those Life Games— as he now knew them to be. But he couldn’t quite manage to shake that feeling off, that it was something more.
Scott had learned a lot of lessons in his life.
If he had learned anything in either the years of reporting and journalism, or in those sadistic games—it was to trust his gut.
And his gut told him that those strange, knowing glances Grian gave him, the way he avoided the blue-haired man like the plague, and the hooded figures of his childhood he could see out of the corner of his eye—the ones his therapists had tried to dismiss—none of it was right. Those memories were real.
Scott wasn’t sure how else to deal with those new memories other than what he’d always done: wall off, fake that same smiling facade he always had. It was working alright with Pearl and Cleo. They were still his friends in this world at least. But he couldn’t do that with Jimmy now.
Because those horrible memories had a lot of pain, and blood, and anger, and violence, and grief, and still, still—there was that stupid, ridiculously persistent bit of hope. A little sprinkle of happiness that sometimes seemed to keep him up more than all the rest—sometimes.
Jimmy . . . loved him.
In another world, at least, he reminded himself stiffly, sitting down at his desk he had absentmindedly walked to from Jimmy’s office. “Husbands,” he recalled, sealed with a bright red poppy flower, as official as anything could be in a death-match.
That flower had come back with him. He kept it on his nightstand, though he knew he should throw it away.
He had known for a long time that he was in love with the golden-haired man on the third floor: but to hear it reciprocated in those games was too much for his heart to bear.
Because it wasn’t real.
It couldn’t be.
Jimmy had loved him in a time of heartache and blood and loss, they had only come together in mutual misery. They had fallen in love only because of the desperate situation they had found themselves in, the need for someone to hold close at night, to trust in when everything else was hopeless.
Well. Scott had fallen a long time ago, but that was what Jimmy needed then, and Scott allowed his selfish side to give in.
He hadn’t loved him here. They’d had years of quiet office work together, and nothing had come from it. Scott had been waiting and watching for any signs far more fervently that he’d ever admit out loud.
There was nothing there.
Jimmy looked at him with a grin that lit up the room in a golden glow because that's just who he was. Even in the games, he was always there with a little soft, hesitant smile. Just to lift Scott's spirits.
But here, it was different. There was nothing there for him anymore, no matter how desperately he hoped the man he knew would be waiting for him behind the door.
There were no furtive, sly glances. No smiles he thought seemed a little bigger than normal. No deep trust, no tenderly held secrets. Nothing.
Scott could tell when he wasn’t wanted.
He’d dealt with it before. With a polite smile, and a welcome door, and with being willing to help him however he could. He could bear with the pain, because at least he got to be near Jimmy. He was lucky to even have gotten to know him, and he hadn’t entertained any hopes of reciprocation. Any imaginings of what might have been—holding hands and sharing drinks, cuddling up on a cold day and reading books together—could remain in his head forever, a secret show for him to hold tenderly in his mind.
Now it wasn’t all in his head.
It was in his heart, in his soul, memories woven into the very fabric of who he was. It was red petals he clutched tightly to his chest when the nightmares kept him up for too long. That flower of hope that just couldn’t seem to die.
He exhaled deeply, trying to ground himself in where he was now.
In another world, Scott and Jimmy were in love. That should be enough. It’s more than Scott deserved.
But, vaguely, Scott wonders what it would have been like to be in love without anything else. Just them. He would have enjoyed doing laundry and taxes with Jimmy.
But he couldn’t have it. So Scott allowed himself to sit in those memories for a moment longer, before forcing them down and turning again to his work.