Delectable (Sinclair Bryant)

An Era of Crisis

Author note. This is quite an upsetting, and at times, difficult chapter. I found it really difficult to write and hope I've done it well enough.
Trigger warnings - parental abuse, homophobia (in context,) death.

Sinclair, even though physically and emotionally exhausted, could not sleep. His tired eyes stung around the rims as he opened them to the darkness of his bedroom.

As he lay still, the thin duvet sheltered him - but didn't offer the same security as Sian had earlier in the park. Or when they spent those blissful weeks body to body. Protecting each other and their unknown secrets.

Sinclair's chest hurt, the strings of his heart ripped apart by his own folly. The pressure of his arms wrapped around it didn't help.

Deep down, he had never truly wanted to let Sian go, but the damage he had shackled to him by Natalie, had beaten him. The knowledge that there was something beautiful that lay unaccomplished between him and the woman in his living room ate away at him. If things had been different, if he hadn't run away at the first sign of mistook danger, then they could have been perfect together. She would have been his last love. He knew it.

The thoughts festered at the front of his mind in that lonely, black room until he could take it no more.

There was still one very obvious topic that had not be discussed, which Sinclair could only blame himself for. She'd spent all evening taking care of him, and what started the spiral of events, had been pushed to the back. He felt a selfish prick for letting his needs come before hers.

The sheets crinkled as he pushed them off his semi dressed state. He picked up his discarded shirt off the floor, pulling it over his head as he quietly made his way out of the bedroom.

The living room was silent when he approached it. She was probably asleep, he thought, but as he edged around the door to check, the silhouette of her body propped up.

"Sinclair?" Sian spoke softly, velvet like with a hint of sleep.

Oh God, he'd missed that. Yearned for it at night, when she'd say his name so sweetly and run her silky hands over him.

"Did I wake you?" He asked guiltily, his hand keeping him steadfast at the door.

Sleep had completely evaded Sian, as she'd listened to the unknown sounds of Sinclair's flat and the light rain that hit the windows.

"No. Hard to sleep in new places, you know?" she replied with a small chuckle which Sinclair emulated until they died down into quietness again.

"Sian." Sinclair's deep voice broke, her name hanging in the empty space of his living room.

His next words were a low whisper, questions that he didn't expect answered. She owed him nothing, after all.

"Why are you here? Why after everything I thought, are you not washing your hands of me?" He paused, to give her time to tell him to shut up, if she needed. She didn't.

"You should scream," he told her, "...wish you'd never met me...something...something other than this."

Sian slowly began to sit up, letting Sinclair's questions sink in.

His continued speech seemed to rile himself up on behalf of Sian. He wanted her to be mad at him, beat his chest and tell him that he was nothing.

"I accused you of something deplorable and you've not said a word about it."

"We are all sick," she volleyed, as if it were the most common of knowledge, "deranged by our anxieties...who am I to judge someone's irrationality? What you thought you saw and what happened were different, but you weren't to know...and I can admit that that was partly my fault."