Waking, he was alone.
This was not unusual, as things went lately, so for a few blessed moments Colin lay tangled in warm sheets, face pressed to a pillow that smelled of Björn, the blond could feel happy.
As the weight of words, the sharp edge of reality, and the knowledge that it was well and truly over between them crashed back into him with all the gentleness of a battering ram, he found it difficult to draw a breath. True to his offer, Björn had given him months in hours - a beautiful gift of losing himself in a familiar embrace, the comfort of one needed like shelter - but then he’d left the blond to go about whatever destiny he’d decided was best sought without Colin.
Throat tight, eyes burning, and lungs unable or unwilling to fill with air properly, the danseur experienced not only the pain of loss, but a full-blown panic attack like he hadn’t had for years as he lay in the too-large, too-empty bed. The sheets, once soft to his skin, felt like coarse steel scouring pads, and the mattress that had given them nights filled with good dreams was both too soft and too hard. The attack lasted long enough to narrow his field of vision, to leave him panting with slow, hot tears tracking down his face to wet a large portion of the pillow under his head. And once it was over, he felt gutted and unable to deal.
Once he was able to get his wits somewhat about him, Colin called off work the next day - texted them, as he hadn’t trusted his voice to behave - and put music on before crawling back in his bed like a wounded child.
Hours later, he woke again, never having been aware of falling asleep. There were things he should do, needed to do, but could not quite make himself act beyond contemplation. He should shower. He should change the sheets. He should eat.
The blond did none of those things that day.
The next day he made himself eat, but returned to his bed with his laptop to look at photos and video. To look up at the ceiling, red eyed and miserable, while he tried to figure out what and when and where things had gone south. He could come up with a thousand tiny reasons, all his fault, but nothing that rang true, so he’d simply drift again, replaying their life together as he could.
Colin crawled out of his stupor at some point on the third day to take a shower, to eat though he wasn’t hungry. His body needed nourishment, it was a well-oiled machine and had to be for him to continue performing. But he wasn’t hungry at all - food was like sawdust in his mouth, grainy texture and tasteless or vaguely unpleasant.
Yet the world continued to turn around him, not leaving him to his misery as was his wont.
It made no sense. How could things keep going when he felt as though his world had shattered? How would he ever find the strength to get back to work? How would he manage to behave like things were fine? There were moments during which the curly-haired wreck tried to shame himself into not behaving like an emo teenager…but there was another voice in his head going ‘But I would have spent my life with him.’ as though that meant falling apart were acceptable.
They had been together for a long time. That was his excuse. But he still didn’t understand why it had to happen at all.
Björn had said it was to protect him. From whatever trouble it was that his lover had gotten himself into. Trouble that he didn’t feel he could bring to Colin, could count on the danseur to help him get out of. To protect Colin that gentle, giving man had been treating him badly, had broken his heart…and was now facing everything alone.
But Björn knew he was Aegir, that he could protect himself, could protect Björn - or at least have a good shot at it. They had trained some together…and while it had been some time since that point, he knew.
It made no sense why the strongman wouldn’t allow him to help.
Flickers of treacherous thought came and went as Colin curled in their shared bed, in their shared apartment, in the ruins of their shared life - what if Castor and Thraen were right? He’d dismissed such things before…and he did so again, guided away from the idea that his lover had become part of the Negaverse by some odd and unknowable force.
It made no sense.
Nothing made sense.
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