ALAN - An Alan Rickman fanfic

Chapter 25 - When it rains, it pours

Happy New Year to all my wonderful readers! <3  I hope 2022 will be much better for us all. I'm certainly hoping for a better one myself. I wish you all good health, happiness and inspiration in the months to come and opportunities to make happy memories. 

I'm happy to be bringing you another chapter so soon, but the next one may be delayed as I've mentioned in my previous notes, I have a lot to sort and deal with at the moment. Please bare with me. 

Enjoy! Brace yourself. Eeeeeeek.

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Alan's sweater. At times I wanted to tear it to pieces, other times to hold it close until it absorbed every tear I shed, and so in my indecisive battle, its fate lay at very bottom of the laundry pile.

That night at my apartment, I'd wanted to hold on to it so much initially that I forgotten all about the money I owed him, or that Amelia owed him rather. There were moments I wanted to text him using it as a conversation starter, or perhaps save it for Wednesday when we came face to face and that way I could return the damn sweater too. Questions upon questions sent my brain into orbit as I lay awake every hour the night he left my apartment, and the following night.

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My sleepless eyes in the bathroom mirror, sorrowful and puffy, are a reminder of last night's overthinking, over-exaggerating, and over dramatising. I grimace, looking away, squeezing a dollop of toothpaste on my brush, one hand on the sink, in attempt to stabilise my self esteem as well as my body.

It's then that I catch sight of Alan's sweater at the bottom of the laundry pile, it's arm poking out as if taunting me or perhaps it was reaching out to me? No, definitely a taunt. Not today. Childishly I push it with my foot but the whole pile topples over the bathroom tiles until the portentous item is revealed in its entirety, grey and crumpled.

There it lay, the one item like a stepping stone between us, an object through which if returned could be a means of communication. It's only when I feel a wet gloop of toothpaste on my bare foot that I realise I've been staring gormlessly at it. I wanted to wipe the toothpaste all over his sweater, but I simply got it with my finger instead. I continue my brushing looking back at the ominous laundry pile, manoeuvring items with my feet to cover it, but then I realise it's just going to smell like damp old laundry if I return it. It should smell of me - a reminder of what he's lost. Yes!

I spit out my toothpaste, this time in the sink, grab the damn sweater from the floor and reach for my perfume but before I spritz it with a fragrant reminder, I pause.

This is pathetic.

I drop the offending sweater to the floor in a crumpled heap and for my own sanity shut the bathroom door and block it from my mind. If I don't leave in ten minutes I'll be late for work.

Today I decided, I was angry at Alan, no...furious. Lizzy hit the nail on the head when it came to him, she was absolutely right. He lured me. Yes. That's exactly what he did - lured me, wooed me, charmed me into his web, played with me, toyed with my feelings and now I was left chewed up and spat out. If Alan was so wise, so sure of himself like he is with everything else, then why did he not stop this from the beginning?

I found every little thing I could to be angry at him as I took the subway that morning. I thought I had it all together, compartmentalised, and I did, at least I thought so until I reached work and Lizzy saw straight through me. Apparently wearing ones heart on ones sleeve makes for obvious transparency, even Lucas, although keeping his distance, seemed to notice something was up.