It Starts Here / 𝗯𝘅𝗯 (✓)

21: Leave and come back

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Twenty-eight years old

Ares knows where things start to go wrong, but he doesn't know how to stop it from happening.

Seven months have never felt so short, have never felt so insignificant but haunting. Ares knows he has not been treating Felix well after Cass passed away and it was only time, he knew this, before Felix snapped and returned to Ares with less and less patience. It took seven months, it seems.

Now, when Ares is all bite and nothing more, Felix doesn't wait. Instead he narrows his eyes at Ares and does that thing where he starts becoming restless, his hands clenching, unclenching, his body moving back and forth like it's readying itself, his eyes closed in on Ares as if trying to read his next move before making his own. Then Ares watches Felix leave and he is always too much anything—too angry, too hesitant, too irritated, too hurt, too tired—to figure out what it is he needs to do to make him stay.

Ares never knows how to continue when Felix leaves like that. He spends the time envisioning himself reaching for the door and then beats himself up for not doing it, for texting Felix that he'll be waiting for him instead of demanding that he come home so they can just talk.

Sometimes, he imagines telling Felix that those times, when he leaves him, are the times he misses Cass the most, but when Felix returns he has lost the desire to hurt him and he will never know.

"Well, obviously—didn't you notice the way he kept—" Ares grabs Felix's arm and pats it exaggeratedly like he is laughing at something. In response, Felix rolls his eyes. "He was flirting with you right in front of me—and you introduced me as your boyfriend!"

Felix unlocks the door and steps inside first, but Ares still notices how tense his shoulders are, the way he exhales through his nose and Ares knows that Felix doesn't want to have this argument right now. "Derek tries to fuck everything he gets his eyes on. He's an asshole—did you just make a face at me?"

"At Derek."

"Are you mad at me or something?" Felix stops unwrapping his scarf, fingers wrapped around the ends of it as he faces Ares fully. "Is this actually something that pisses you off?"

Ares can already tell the entrance is too small of a space for a fight and he almost asks Felix if they can take it into the living room like he isn't the one who wouldn't let go of it. Instead, he hears himself ask, "Why are you making it seem like it's stupid that I'm pissed off about it?" like he's defending himself even though he feels ridiculous for needing to.

"It's not—" Felix cuts himself off. "Actually," he says, "I do think it's stupid. It shouldn't be any problem unless you think I'd cheat on you."

"Right," Ares says, his voice heavy with sarcasm, "so I'm only allowed to be annoyed that some guy is asking for your number so you can—" Ares lifts his hands to make citation marks, "—try out some new recipes together some time, if I think you would cheat on me?"

Felix sighs and as he hangs his scarf on the wall, he says, "Listen, I just told you so that we could have a laugh about it, I didn't think it would make you upset—"

"Well, it did." 

Ares wants to take it all back when Felix turns to him. "And that's my fault?"

Ares puts his hands to his face for a moment as he exclaims, "This isn't about being anybody's fault, I'm just telling you how I feel, that he pissed me off—does that make me a bad person?"

Felix looks at Ares with eyebrows pulled together. "Did I ever call you a bad person?"

"That's what it feels like."