Chance - H2OVanoss

Chapter 05

"Sounds like a pretty dry guy."

Evan was nervously pacing the front of the bar, hands gripped tightly behind his back, and shoulders tense in straight posture. He worried his bottom lip, tasting iron and metal on his tongue that he conveniently ignored. Listening to the background murmur, a stark contrast to the usual loud clamour, made Evan's insides twist a little more nauseating.

"Vanoss," he heard Felix call, voice a sigh and more concerned than the last time he tried to get Evan's attention.

Evan swallowed a lump in his throat, pausing only a second to run a shaky hand through his hair before starting up another harsh pace of repeated pacing.

"Vanoss."

Evan's lungs hitched, hearing now a low buzz of noise that started to drown out the background hum of the establishment.

The sound of heavy rain.

"Vanoss," Felix tried and Evan finally snapped around to face him.

"What?" He hissed, "What? I- I'm trying to think."

Felix was not impressed, face carefully wiped clean as he sighed, "You're making everyone tense, Vanoss. Sit down, have a drink or something."

Evan felt like yelling, screaming, pulling his hair out, but Felix was helping him forget the sound of the rain - rain that wasn't actually there. He reluctantly thumped himself down onto a stool, eyes wide and blinking as they hazily took in Felix's smooth movements around the back of the bar.

"I told you that he wasn't what you thought."

"I had to try," Evan bit out. "I had to. I have a duty, an- an obligation to him, always."

Felix took him in with muddled blue orbs, so different, but so close to what his Delirious' eyes were. What Delirious' eyes were supposed to be. The thought had his fingers spasming as they reached for the glass of whatever Felix slid to him. "I don't understand how."

"I failed him. I failed him once, I have to make up for it, but- but that's..." Evan sucked in a deep breath before swallowing down his drink. " That can't be him."

Felix no longer looked worried; now he looked sympathetic. Pitying.

Fuck that.

"Stop. Stop looking at me like that." Evan muttered, "I don't need you feeling sorry for me. I knew that what I wanted may not really be true, but Del-Delirious is just so different than what I'm use to. It-" It scares me.

He swallowed, opting to not finish, but Felix looked to understand, watching him with reckoning eyes.

"He didn't recognize you?"

Evan wanted to laugh at that, a hollow empty laugh that bubbled and died in his throat at the question. Even if he was so lucky, if there was some miraculous chance that Delirious was here like how Evan was here, that was definitely crushed into dust.

That was not his Delirious, and no - Delirious did not recognize him, because they've never met in this timeline.

This Evan that Evan is now inhabiting and that Delirious would know nothing of the other, and even if Evan knew everyone else, they knew nothing of him.

The thought was alienating.

A suffocating loneliness and heartache that made his skin tingle with a coldness so painful it burned.

"No," Evan felt his energy drain, as he slumped over the bar and his generously refilled drink, "He didn't recognize me, but I shouldn't have expected anything less from him, ey?" He gave a bitter smile.