#i started writing this back in feb obvs and Recent Anxieties gave me the Emotions i needed to finish it

[perry-flynn]

Love In Another Reality |

On the difference a French woman can make, and getting screwed on Valentines Day. 

((TW: Suicidal thoughts, it’s brief and fairly vague. Mention of a gun, but it’s not used. Also the deepest dive yet into Perry’s emotional state during his time on the run from a mad man. ))

You know what sucked?

Getting a taste of a better universe, only for it to be snatched away.

It wasn’t overwhelmingly better. There was still war and loss and confusion and all the other Big Bad things that made this world bad, but for Perry Flynn there had been one marked difference.

Meeting Hélène.

Life was better when he met her earlier, as a rookie detective. More consistent bad habits, perhaps- the smoking and drinking and swearing- but a brighter attitude, a fascination and eagerness he lacked now. It was the oddest thing, to fall asleep with her in his arms and wake up in much the same manner but with so much different. Or the same, technically, he supposed. They’d met here, when he was older and calmer, with more demons on his back.

Maybe he was a better man for her now than he had been then, but Perry also knew that he’d be even more improved had she been by his side for longer. Less lonely, less prone to lying awake through the night staring at the wall and trying not to let unnecessary panic steal the breath from his lungs.

He forgot sometimes, he didn’t need it now. He was safe. There was no mad man on his heels waiting to bring the life he’d built crashing down around him. An incident that had been so much more complicated with Hélène thrown into the mix, yes, but she’d also provided a reprieve he desperately needed. Perry could recall with perfect clarity how those few weeks had passed without her to contact, how he had spent entire days curled up in the corner of a small motel room paralyzed by fear. One day the sound of a backfiring car made him scream, and on another he’d gone for an early morning jog and hadn’t been able to stop until he nearly passed out.

And that night, the night he was found. In that better universe when he was finally caught Perry lied on the kitchen floor and called her, letting cool floor tiles and her voice be enough to assuage the terror and adrenaline trying to urge him into action. In reality he’d pulled his gun from the safe- he hadn’t even had time to go for it during the attack, it was so fast- and set it on the coffee table to sit and stare at it, trying to convince himself his mothers’ devastation was enough to stop him.

In the end he was stopped by another officer who came quietly into the room and took the weapon away.

He hadn’t been sure in any world if that itching under his skin was really there, if there was some curse settling into his bones-- now he knew there had been, obviously, but with some distance from the event he was sure the sensation of it was little more than paranoia. It fueled a heartbreak so deep and sudden that he couldn’t get to sleep that night even though he was exhausted. Unlike nights before he was still, though. Motionless in yet another bed that wasn’t actually his, staring at the ceiling and trying to figure out what his life would be like now.

Perry liked planning. Hell, he’d planned to be a police detective in highschool and he’d made it all the way through that, but it was supposed to be his entire life. So what now? If he was cursed- and really he thought there was little chance he’d made it out of that situation entirely unscathed, even if signs were yet to show on his body- that was that. His life, as he’d planned it- wanted it, worked for it- over. 

Thinking was what Perry did best, but he couldn’t now. He had no ideas. Just kept playing the last twelve hours over and over on a loop. Not even trying to find a point at which he’d gone wrong, just torturing himself with his life falling apart.

In another world he sleeps, because her steady breathing and perfume are enough to lull him into it, and the next morning he has breakfast with her and things don’t seem so bleak. She’s handling it all with her usual enviable grace. She cards her fingers through his hair while they do tests on him at the hospital, she fusses about his collar and catches him up on what he’s missed from home, she mutters French nonsense to herself. It’s familiar and comforting and almost enough to make Perry feel normal, which is far better than he thought he’d feel.

In reality his hands shake and he can barely keep his food down and he flings a chair at the wall of the interview room at the police station because he’s so full of vitriol and hurt and delirium that he doesn’t know how else to try and get it out. Perry has never been particularly good at expressing himself but it has never seemed particularly like a burden until now when this angry twitching under his muscles demands to be felt. 

He’s too young to give up the job he loves.

But it’s okay because he has her, and they’ll work something out.

It’s not okay, it’s not okay.

He’s lost everything except her.. He’s lost everything.

When Perry wakes up in reality on February 15th 2019 Hélène is there. Her breathing is steady and her perfume the same. It feels like a personal injustice, like a cruel joke, and there’s that itching twitching under his skin again. He hasn’t been angry in a long time, but now he is and he doesn’t know what to do.

It was a long time ago. The nightmares are near enough gone- he wonders if they would still be clinging to his sleep at all if she had always been around. He knows it is useless to wonder. Reality will not be altered, even if his brain feels mushy and the lines are blurred. Perry untangles himself from the sheets and walks into the kitchen, taking a mug and a pack of cigarettes from the cupboard. Hélène hates that he keeps them there, but if he wants a smoke the odds are he wants a coffee too, so it makes sense. He fills the kettle and turns it on, opens a window and lights a cigarette. It feels fake. Or maybe it just feels worse, and he wants it to be fake. 

In another world, Perry and Hélène celebrate Valentine's Day- late in the evening, because he got caught up with work stuff- with a picnic in the living room and champagne, and he is too tired to dream when he falls into bed.