Chapter Eleven
Mason had spent a lot of time ‘meditating’ in the past three weeks, and a lot of time sequestered inside of Dr. Friedrich’s office trying to sort out the chaos inside of his head. A good portion of time in that office had been spent building Dr. Friedrich another desk as well, to replace the one he had destroyed after Aaron and Nicole broke the news of their engagement over breakfast that morning. For the first time in a long time he had nearly skipped a therapy appointment, sitting in his dark apartment staring at one of the many blank walls and just… breathing. It was only because Dr. Friedrich had shown up with him doing just that that he didn’t spend another week or so continuing the cycle.
Somewhere between asking Mason what he was doing and trying to talk to him the man had managed to convince him to get up and dressed to go out for coffee, which they did. Only coffee, in this instance, meant the two of them sitting at a diner until nearly three in the morning discussing things, with Mason opening up even further about events with Nicole that up until that point he had always kept to himself.
He understood, now, that if he couldn’t alter the way he viewed Nicole and shift his perspective on her to something healthier than it’d been for the past twelve years then he was going to lose out on her in his life entirely. Part of it had to do with Aaron, and that ring that she wasn’t wearing on her finger even though they were using the word engaged. Part of it had to do with himself. He’d been so close to crossing that line, so close to closing that distance between the two of them… and Aaron had walked in, spinning his whole world out like he had, secluding Nicole upstairs with him. Then, she was to be his wife… so that was only to be expected.
Wife.
The word still felt foreign in his head, like some curse that he’d only just learned the meaning of. He had been careful, making his twice weekly sessions on time and cutting all contact with Nicole off entirely in the meantime. She was his adopted sister, and for the first time in his life since meeting her, he was trying to view her as such. It started small, discussing with Dr. Friedrich how to do so, looking back on memories that he did have of her and trying to alter them so that he was only viewing her, as he ought to have been at the time anyways…
It had been three weeks since he’d so much as answered one of her texts but, like Dr. Friedrich said, he wouldn’t be able to completely alter that relationship unless he had practice doing so in the present as well. So he was calling her, like he’d promised, listening to that line ring while he walked into his apartment, shutting and locking the door behind him idly. He just needed to keep the conversation light and impersonal. Talk about her life, about Aaron.. Because in order for things to shift like they needed to he was going to have to hear about them, he was going to have to hear about Aaron and in the context of him being her fiancé.
“Hello?” Her voice was breathless, picking up the phone only just before that last ring that came before voicemail. He had half been expecting her not to answer at all, pausing for too long of a moment to hear her rummaging about in the background, objects of some sort or another making a clanging sound. “Hello? Mason? You there?” And just that fast she sounded concerned, her words coming together quicker and without pause between the questions the longer that he was silent.
“Hey Nic, sorry, I was just locking my door.” Even if he had finished that before it was she’d picked up the phone, she didn’t know that. “I just got in from work,” he offered by way of explanation, trying to dismiss his relief at hearing her voice for the first time in so many weeks. Impersonal. Brief. Familial. Those were the only three checkpoints that he needed to meet for this conversation, and he needed to work to keep it that way.
“Oh go figure! I’m just getting ready to leave for work,” the relief was palpable over the line, her laugh coming in all the louder for it, and the sound of something else dropping again in the background. Her schedule, obviously, had changed. He had thought that she worked in the library in the mornings, not in the evenings, but then it had been three weeks, so it wasn’t like he could task her for his lack of knowledge on that change.
“Does that make it easier on your classes or something?” His keys dropped unceremoniously to the countertop, body contorting to get around the dining room table he still had yet to assemble and move off towards his own room, hands already working at the buttons of his shirt to get it off. He wanted to be out of that uniform as quickly as possible, the smell of whatever meal that had been his coworkers had made to celebrate Dave’s fiftieth still clinging to every fiber in the fabric.
“What? Easier on my classes? Oh! NO! I’m sorry I forgot,” harried voice coming over the phone and what sounded to be more things being dropped almost making him smile. She had always been terrible at multitasking and were he any more kind of a person he would have been offering to let her call him back when she got off of her shift. Only he wasn’t kind and that would mean that they would be talking later at night, which didn’t fit into the schedule he was trying to work out. Brief and impersonal was easier to do when they both had things to accomplish after getting off of the phone. “I got a new job- well a second job. Kind of. I’m still doing my library shifts in the morning, but Aaron lost his job.”
This time it was the sound of slamming doors coming over her end of the line, Mason working to keep both comments and questions to himself. He didn’t see why Aaron losing his job had anything to do with her work schedule, but he could hazard a guess as to why that would mean she was doing her library work and- it sounded like- a second job as well. Their apartment and its bills wouldn’t be paid on a part time research assistant salary alone.
“He really needed to focus on his studies you know, he was getting behind and Auto Zone had him working all these crazy hours…. So he overslept one day and they just kind of lost it on him- and since it makes more sense for me, since I have a lighter class load, to take a second job… I found one as a teller at the bank on campus, which is right next to the library, so that makes days the shifts are back to back easier.” He couldn’t have lost his job just for being late the once, it would have had to be a habitual problem, but again, that was something he couldn’t exactly share with her, his teeth biting down into the edge of his cheek to keep from saying anything at all. Brief. Impersonal. She was working two jobs so that he didn’t have to work?
“Sorry, I’m just stressed, oh shit-” her voice sounded garbled for a moment, another string of curses and the sound of a door opening and slamming coming through the phone before she became clear again, “I can’t stop shutting this damn badge inside of the door. I always forget I’m wearing it… ugh, my apartment is a disaster zone, I need to hire someone to come clean it or something… Mason, you still there?”
His teeth lifted slowly off of the insides of his cheek, tongue pressing the blood back against it with a grunt of acknowledgment. “Well, Aaron’s home, I’m sure he could get it.” Being that he wasn’t working a job and was still, even taking more course hours than Nicole, taking under a fifteen hour load. He highly doubted someone getting their associates in business needed that much time to study. “Just you know, make sure you ask him to.” Light, like he didn’t find the whole situation preposterous in the first place, his shoulders rolling to release them from the fabric of his shirt while he talked. She shouldn’t have to have asked for help around the house, especially with the fact that she was now fully financially carrying the two of them and all of their bills, many of which he was sure weren’t even necessary.
“Oh he’s got study group tonight, he’s not even going to be home until right before I get off work.” If study group meant gaming with his buddies he believed it- listening to another round of illegible cursing come from her end. She was rambling, and not even mentioning the fact that they hadn’t talked in three weeks, which only would have happened if she were even more stressed than she was letting on. The tense sound in her tone making each word just that much shorter over the phone. Two jobs, school, and her relationship added on top of who knew all of what else there was, was obviously taking its toll on her.
He was paused, half in a state of undress, contemplating what he wanted to offer. It would be backsliding, or rather, could potentially be backsliding. However, it could also be viewed as brotherly, which was the goal here. To be seen as and to feel emotions on that plane instead of the other. “Why don’t I come up tomorrow and help you get some stuff around the apartment done?” Slow, each word like he was considering the very syllables before saying them. He was contemplating where it fell on a scale of bad to good at least, because it had the makings to be disastrous, and not just because of his emotions or their last encounter. But with Aaron being off work that promised him around the house all day as well… this wasn’t a baby step, this was rushing headlong into what he was attempting, and the possibility of that backfiring was very high.
“What? No way! Oh, you don’t have to help me clean Mason! You can just come visit, that’ll be enough I promise!” Stumbling over her words and he could feel the way that she must have been grinning based off of how she was speaking alone. Just like he could hear her already practically plotting on how to keep him from cleaning so they could just visit, and the only way that would be feasible would be if she got home from work and cleaned instead of sleeping, which just wasn’t what he had been going for with his offer of help in the first place. “Oh shit, I’m at work. I’ll call you back when I get off tonight if you’re not sleeping okay? Really, I’m super excited about you coming down! And don’t forget to bring me some of mom’s bread, and I love you and I’ll talk to you later but I’m going to be la-” The last half of her sentence was cut off by dial tone, his own phone lowering from his ear bemusedly and shutting the call off from his end as well.
He didn’t want to be the cause of more stress for her and with as frazzled as she’d sounded he didn’t want her having to stay up all night in an attempt to clean before he showed up, she would be tired enough after her second shift of working through the day. Which left him with very few options, although clearly he’d already made a decision even if he wasn’t acknowledging himself as having done so yet. The shirt he’d just shrugged out of being pulled right back over his arms and the buttons fastened in much quicker a fashion now, that he had two hands, than he had gotten them undone at earlier.
It was very likely that he would end up regretting his decision, impulsive as it was, it wasn’t as if he had taken the time to even consider all of the possible ramifications of going over there, and he wasn’t pausing to do so as he ought to have either. His cell phone pocketed and jacket shrugged back on top of his now fixed shirt, choosing to leave it untucked as he retraced his steps, grabbing his keys, and a bottle of water, from the counter and moving back through his apartment and out the door. At least he didn’t have to worry about pausing to lock it, those automatic locks clicking into place the only peace of mind he needed to continue down that stairwell and to his car.
He was getting lost in his own head again, and he knew that was a problem, however he was trying to imagine what it would be like without his interest in Nicole being what it was, without that extra that had always been there… and he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t think of her as anything other than what she had become over the succession of the last few years and, with the idea of seeing her tonight for the first time in weeks, he couldn’t pull his head out of that last time that they had been together. Alone. Which they probably wouldn’t be tonight being that Aaron was supposed to get home before her, but even still. The thought was there, lingering and persistent in the back of his mind. She was engaged...to Aaron. Then apparently, she had been when she’d been sitting with him on the couch as well. No matter how many times he had gone over that night, no matter how many ways he had looked at it, it just didn’t seem possible for her to have missed all of those obvious cues.
It didn’t seem possible for her to have been so wholly unaware as to what was going on as for it to have been all imagined within his fantasies alone. She had moved, she had been sitting directly over him like she had, there was no way she hadn’t felt it, felt him and how much he wanted to have been able to put his face over hers. There was no way that she misconstrued anything that happened in that short time frame because, while she could be ditzy, she wasn’t dumb.
They were all things that he had been actively working on not thinking about for the past few weeks, brought current only because of his intended destination… and yet he didn’t have the willpower or the strength not to consider it once more as he drove that, not quite short, distance between his apartment and hers so near NYU’s campus. He wanted to be able to attend his next meeting with Dr. Friedrich and offer up progress in what had been such a detailed plan between the two of them. He had failed in almost all other aspects of it over the years, ignored all of the suggestions given him, and yet this here and now seemed like accomplishable enough of a goal if only he could dismiss his physical preoccupation with … well, the physicality of the last time that he had been around her. There wasn’t room for him to be concerning himself with it, there wasn’t room for him to be so preoccupied with trying to ascertain what exactly had happened because he was supposed to be pretending like it hadn’t...
His breath was little more than an exasperated puff of air as he took that last turn, driving through the open security gate with an unwarrantedly irritated glance at the station there. What was the point to paying for the added security of a gated section if it was just going to remain open for anyone that wanted to drive through? While it benefitted him currently, he couldn’t imagine it was something that Paul would be too pleased to learn about either. Following that curve in the road until he came to what he was assuming was the right apartment section, checking the number against the address in his phone and then closing it entirely once he recognized the beat up Toyota Camry sitting in the space just ahead of him. Aaron.
Which meant he either hadn’t left for his ‘study group’ yet, or that someone had picked him up for it. Either way he pulled in next to Aaron’s vehicle, turning his own car off and unfolding himself from it stiffly, legs stretching in that little space between the parking spot and the door. His hand on the knob and prepared to knock just in case, but that knob turned all too easily, opening up before him to an empty, silent living room and kitchen without so much as trying to open the door. Obviously, he’d forgotten to lock the thing before he left, because he knew that Nicole had locked it upon leaving herself, he had heard it over the phone while they’d been talking. At least that meant he wasn’t home, even if it was careless behavior… a whole other line of thinking that wasn’t sane for him to be going down, especially not after taking in the mess that was their apartment. While it was nowhere near as bad as it could have been, it definitely didn’t look like Nicole lived here at all.
There were empty beer cans and bottles lining almost every surface next to an unimaginable amount of takeout bags and containers, male clothing littering both the furniture and the floor… so Aaron was a slob, somehow that wasn’t nearly as surprising as it should have been.
“Oh, god!”
The cry broke into his thought process, his entire form stilling in the middle of that living room as if he’d been caught doing something he oughtn’t have been, fingers balling into his palms at the feminine moan echoing through the apartment. For a split second, he felt afraid it was Nicole’s voice he was hearing, interrupting something she’d been trying to cover from him before getting off of the phone. But it only took a moment to completely dismiss the idea, as the voice currently moaning and panting in the other room was a good decibel higher than Nicole’s voice.
Which led to the question of why it was a girl, not Nicole, would be moaning and panting in her apartment… “Oh, god! Aaron! Oh god, you feel so good baby.”
Eyebrows climbing further on his forehead and his feet finally unfreezing from the carpet enough to lift, one slow step in the direction of that isolated sound- stilled again at the guttural, male moan that followed. “Yeah, you like that baby girl? You like the way I feel inside you? Yeah? Tell me how much you like the way I feel inside of you baby girl.” It was only another half step closer to that hallway before the sound of slapping flesh became audible as well, panting, and groaning from both of them overtaking whatever her next words might have been.
Morbid curiosity maybe, or maybe just Mason proving to himself that he was hearing what he thought he was. Irrefutable evidence so it couldn’t be called into question at a later time…he didn’t know which one was more accurate, stepping around that corner of wall and into the hallway only to be greeted with a full frontal assault of the two bodies in the other room.
They hadn’t so much as had the decency to close the door, clothing lining the hallway all the way through the bedroom where some red headed female was spread eagled across the bed, what was obviously rope binding her arms to the bedposts at her head, and her feet to those at the opposite end of the bed. There wasn’t much to see of her face at first, the way Aaron was bent over her, lifting her hips at a high enough angle off of the bed to stretch all four of her limbs out as far as they would obviously go, revealing the rope tied in sections around the rest of her body, only just tight enough to redden the skin around it. Something by the way that her head was thrown back and the noises were leaving her body, didn’t detract even minimally from her enjoyment.
“Oh baby, I love- Oh-” cut off, Aaron’s back rounding finally to reveal the face of the girl he was working his hips into who was most definitely not Nicole. “Oh, I love you, Aaron,” moaned her body held prone like it was as Aaron’s fingers dug even more forcefully into her flesh than the rope that he had tied about the rest of her. “A…” Her voice faded entirely as she lifted her head, presumably to look at Aaron to finish her thought process, but in doing so she was greeted with a full view of Mason standing in the doorway, curious expression tinged with faint traces of both disgust and boredom both.
So, this was his study group then, the thing that made it impossible for him to get another job, the thing that made it impossible for him to help Nicole around their shared apartment. It made a sick sort of sense, Aaron’s contriving for her to get those two jobs, for her to be out of the house more often and on a regular enough schedule, so he would be able work to bring this other girl here.
It took only another half moment of the girl’s open mouthed staring for Aaron to turn, that expression of concentration tinged with just enough frustration to be noticeable shifting instantaneously upon seeing Mason standing there. His hips shifted quickly, pulling fully out of the redhead that he had there and allowing her to fall roughly to the bed beneath them. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Instantly on the defensive, and Mason spared him only another half-second glance before turning on his heel and heading in the other direction.
Not that it stopped anything, not that it made those noises of Aaron jumping off of the bed to follow him any less real.
He was cheating on Nicole, that curious, numbing sensation at the knowledge slowly spreading through Mason as he headed back the way that he had come, only just tuning into what Aaron was yelling as he opened the front door. “If you say anything you’re a dead man! Dead! Do you hear me? You fucking owe me you goddamn prick, for not pressing those charges on you like I could have. You owe me! What the fuck are you doing here anyways? Hey! YOU! You fucking garbage I’m fucking talking to you don’t fucking ignore me!” Each word getting more and more aggressive the longer Mason went without answering him, stepping out of the apartment entirely and heading towards his car, not bothering to close that door behind him because he correctly assumed that Aaron was going to follow.
“GODDAMNIT MASON! You fucking robotic freak- if you say anything to Nicole I swear to God I will kill you I’ll- “ whatever inventive threat was going to follow was cut off by Mason shutting the driver’s door behind him, his car and the music that had been playing when he arrived cranking up all at the same time.
He could see Aaron’s mouth moving still, see those veins near popping out of his forehead with the frustration still clearly seizing him.
Only Mason couldn’t find it within him to care, reversing back out of that space without so much as turning his blinker on.
He was cheating on Nicole….