(no subject)
Title:Your Cover's Blown ( I need to see you alone)
CS!Cultverse
Summary: Alex wonders when he became able to describe his life's work as being of "dubious morality".
Warnings: R;; cults and creepiness and all that jazz
Slight Alex/Ryland if you squint.
Disclaimer: This is not real. Not by a long shot.
Alex wonders when he became able to describe his life's work as being "of dubious morality"; it certainly wasn't out of college, and it wasn't when he moved to Brooklyn. It didn't even start when he fell back in with Ryland or when he met Gabe. If anything, it started when he took the Cobra.
Alex keeps the official version scrawled in tiny lefty handwriting in journals, because if he doesn't, the truth and the lies will blend back together and no one will be able to tell them apart.
This all started because of the great seven year difference, but that isn't entirely the truth. It started because of high school, college, seven years, and bizarre coincidences. Alex admits the general air of Brooklyn, the place he once saw described as "a magical land where pretty people are spit up from the gutters" might have played a part as well. To cut down to the bare bones of the situation, it started with Ryland.
Post offices are oddly perfect places to meet people you've left behind; it's like getting a package from home when you're not expecting one and finding it's filled with all the things you've missed. It doesn't strike Alex as odd or out-of-place that this is where they met again, seven years and god knows how many miles be damned.
There are three things Alex remembers from that first time they met back up; he remembers the bar tab, the name Gabe, and the feeling that something was off. Being wasted is not conducive to a detail laden memory.
Gabe. Gabe. Gabe. Every now and then Alex stops and wonders what he would have done if he knew what Gabe would do, would induct him into doing. He has a sickening feeling he would have done the same thing he's doing now.
Eventually, the feeling that something's off turns into a pervasive and deep knowing. He brings it up to Ryland one day with a joking "Dude, what are you on?" and gets shrugged off with an eye roll. It just cements that knowledge that something is wrong.
Then, he meets Gabe and understands, with a pit in his stomach, that this is what is off. It's not that Gabe isn't personable or intelligent, because, quite frankly, he's both. He laughs and jokes and smokes and works a room of strangers like he owns it. There's something about Gabe that sets off Alex's internal sensor about using caution. That only gets thrown into higher gear the first time they all get wasted and Gabe rambles on for hours about power and the beauty of it.
The only thing Alex wants to do is get Ryland alone and talk to him and find out what the hell is going on, and to do that, he's going to have to get close to Gabe. Alex pinpoints this moment, and this decision, as the single point in time that his life changed.
In the next six weeks, Alex spends more time wasted, smashed, or stoned than he has in his entire life. It makes him sick; even in high school, getting drunk or wasted was something that happened rarely. Though he's legal now, Alex usually only drinks one or two beers, max.
Alex is reminded exactly why he has a two beer rule when, one night, he doesn't wake up on a couch, or the floor, or with his head on someone's shoulder, but tied up in a basement.
Gabe's basement.
For the first time in his life, Alex wishes he didn't speak Spanish, didn't understand a word, so that when Gabe came down and started talking, about nonsense, crazy things, and power, all in Spanish, he wouldn't understand. Logically, he knows Gabe would use English, but the blow would be softened by having heard the rhetoric a thousand times before.
The first time Gabe goes back upstairs, Alex is sore, with wrists that feel like they've been cut off, but he's coherent and he's still very much himself. The second time, he's embraced death as a possibility and the third he's praying for it. When he comes down with a small hunting knife in hand, Alex bites his lip and prays it doesn't hurt.
"Are you going to take the Cobra?"
Alex looks at the knife, and at Gabe, and at the stairs out, and decides that he'll take anything as long as it means life. He really should have asked what taking the Cobra meant, because when Gabe finally lets him out, Alex is certain he prefers death.
He collapses on the couch, disheveled, legs shaking from the strain of walking up the stairs, and closes his eyes. He feels someone toss a blanket over him and sit down.
"You alright?"
"Do I get to know what's going on now? Like how many people is Gabe going to do that to?"
Ryland shrugs, and brushes a hand over Alex's. "Go to sleep. I'l catch you up when you aren't a zombie."
Dubiously moral, alright.
CS!Cultverse
Summary: Alex wonders when he became able to describe his life's work as being of "dubious morality".
Warnings: R;; cults and creepiness and all that jazz
Slight Alex/Ryland if you squint.
Disclaimer: This is not real. Not by a long shot.
Alex wonders when he became able to describe his life's work as being "of dubious morality"; it certainly wasn't out of college, and it wasn't when he moved to Brooklyn. It didn't even start when he fell back in with Ryland or when he met Gabe. If anything, it started when he took the Cobra.
Alex keeps the official version scrawled in tiny lefty handwriting in journals, because if he doesn't, the truth and the lies will blend back together and no one will be able to tell them apart.
This all started because of the great seven year difference, but that isn't entirely the truth. It started because of high school, college, seven years, and bizarre coincidences. Alex admits the general air of Brooklyn, the place he once saw described as "a magical land where pretty people are spit up from the gutters" might have played a part as well. To cut down to the bare bones of the situation, it started with Ryland.
Post offices are oddly perfect places to meet people you've left behind; it's like getting a package from home when you're not expecting one and finding it's filled with all the things you've missed. It doesn't strike Alex as odd or out-of-place that this is where they met again, seven years and god knows how many miles be damned.
There are three things Alex remembers from that first time they met back up; he remembers the bar tab, the name Gabe, and the feeling that something was off. Being wasted is not conducive to a detail laden memory.
Gabe. Gabe. Gabe. Every now and then Alex stops and wonders what he would have done if he knew what Gabe would do, would induct him into doing. He has a sickening feeling he would have done the same thing he's doing now.
Eventually, the feeling that something's off turns into a pervasive and deep knowing. He brings it up to Ryland one day with a joking "Dude, what are you on?" and gets shrugged off with an eye roll. It just cements that knowledge that something is wrong.
Then, he meets Gabe and understands, with a pit in his stomach, that this is what is off. It's not that Gabe isn't personable or intelligent, because, quite frankly, he's both. He laughs and jokes and smokes and works a room of strangers like he owns it. There's something about Gabe that sets off Alex's internal sensor about using caution. That only gets thrown into higher gear the first time they all get wasted and Gabe rambles on for hours about power and the beauty of it.
The only thing Alex wants to do is get Ryland alone and talk to him and find out what the hell is going on, and to do that, he's going to have to get close to Gabe. Alex pinpoints this moment, and this decision, as the single point in time that his life changed.
In the next six weeks, Alex spends more time wasted, smashed, or stoned than he has in his entire life. It makes him sick; even in high school, getting drunk or wasted was something that happened rarely. Though he's legal now, Alex usually only drinks one or two beers, max.
Alex is reminded exactly why he has a two beer rule when, one night, he doesn't wake up on a couch, or the floor, or with his head on someone's shoulder, but tied up in a basement.
Gabe's basement.
For the first time in his life, Alex wishes he didn't speak Spanish, didn't understand a word, so that when Gabe came down and started talking, about nonsense, crazy things, and power, all in Spanish, he wouldn't understand. Logically, he knows Gabe would use English, but the blow would be softened by having heard the rhetoric a thousand times before.
The first time Gabe goes back upstairs, Alex is sore, with wrists that feel like they've been cut off, but he's coherent and he's still very much himself. The second time, he's embraced death as a possibility and the third he's praying for it. When he comes down with a small hunting knife in hand, Alex bites his lip and prays it doesn't hurt.
"Are you going to take the Cobra?"
Alex looks at the knife, and at Gabe, and at the stairs out, and decides that he'll take anything as long as it means life. He really should have asked what taking the Cobra meant, because when Gabe finally lets him out, Alex is certain he prefers death.
He collapses on the couch, disheveled, legs shaking from the strain of walking up the stairs, and closes his eyes. He feels someone toss a blanket over him and sit down.
"You alright?"
"Do I get to know what's going on now? Like how many people is Gabe going to do that to?"
Ryland shrugs, and brushes a hand over Alex's. "Go to sleep. I'l catch you up when you aren't a zombie."
Dubiously moral, alright.