finding alyosha
***unedited and very unfinished*** (rebel kings mc, cam/saint/alexei, rated e - posted here because it's unlikely to ever be completed, but this fic means the world to me)
“No.”
It was a stupid thing to say – a waste of their time and mine that I despised on principle – but some long-forgotten part of me needed to fight even if I could not wield more than a single syllable, and I spent several seconds staring back and forth between the two men I loved more than I knew how to love myself. They wore very similar expressions, their concern probably indistinguishable to most, but the questions in their eyes differed, and it was unfortunate that I did not have it in me to answer anything they might have wanted to ask.
I had questions too, but my chest tightened around the words, and I chose to leave them there.
The subsequent silence was not uncomfortable, though it gave me the opportunity to realize they had spoken about this when I was not around, and if nothing else, that knowledge made me want to kill a man who was long dead. There were heavy things I should continue to carry alone, and it didn’t matter that I would refuse to believe the same about what I held on to for Cam and Saint – neither one of them deserved my worst nightmares, or even a few of my best dreams.
Admitting that I had those good dreams at all would only serve to weaken my stance, and I was already halfway to my knees. I shook my head until I had to look away.
“I know it feels like this came out of nowhere,” Cam sighed. “But can we at least talk about it?”
“We are talking right now, no?”
“I don’t know. Kind of seems like Saint and I are talking, and you’re mad at us.”
Surprise pulled my face into a quick frown. “Mad? At you?”
“He’s not mad,” Saint murmured.
He was sitting on the floor just in front of where Cam and I rested on the couch, Jonah purring away with his head tucked against Saint’s leg, a kind of contentment I understood well. I had Saint’s fingers intertwined with mine, and I squeezed his hand now, though perhaps it was Cam who needed the reassurance of my touch more. I was not convinced it mattered when I was already sure I would give myself to him sooner rather than later, and until then, I could do little but continue some part of a conversation I did not want to have.
“Mad is too simple for what I feel, and I do not think I would be mad at you anyway. Frustrated is maybe a better word for it. I am disconcerted. Agitated.”
Saint studied me for a moment. “Like when there’s a mess.”
“That is precisely what this is—a mess,” I shrugged. “You have suggested that we travel to Russia together, to a home that is no longer mine and has not been since years before you knew me. I do not know why you want to go, and I cannot parse the reasons why I do not.”