Along the Way
A rooftop conversation somewhere in Chicago between a couple (a fennec fox named Audrey and an Angora cat named Elowan) who are still learning how to leave their past behind through their love, especially now that they're closer than ever before to accomplishing it.
The early A.M. wasn't the greatest time to step outside for a smoke, but then again, there never really was a good time for it. Medically speaking.
Elowan leaned with his arms crossed and resting over the brick ledge, looking at the sea of light stretching far beyond the suburban neighborhood they called their home. Puddles reflected a faint orange shimmer that scattered across rooftops below. The grey-furred Angora cat could see a Target sign buzzing its light way off beyond the horizon.
Even at four in the morning there was always life to the city of Chicago. Right there, he heard a train siren over its faraway chugging sound—he also heard a random siren somewhere in the distance. None of that interrupted the peace he felt over the rooftop of their apartment building. His tail flicked and curled instinctively.
The wind carried a frostier edge to it at the height he was, and that was perfect for him to keep himself awake enough.
Neither Elowan could shake away the grasp of his nightmare's claws, nor did he really have the energy to do so. He'd woken up twenty minutes before thanks to another set of scenarios that harkened back to his troublesome youth, visiting him as a pressing sensation in the middle of his chest. A sensation that therapy sessions had helped to make him understand. Never erase... but understand.
Elowan still wasn't fully convinced that he would ever master the art of living without constantly bracing for impact, despite the progress he'd make through the years.
The rooftop door creaked open behind him as he went for another drag.
"There you are."
He'd come running for that voice every single time.
Audrey.
He looked back over his shoulder to admire the female fennec fox approaching him. Messy, shoulder-length, wavy brunette hair, an oversized shirt that draped just above her knees... probably a short short underneath—she never liked to show her legs much, but she couldn't deny their comfort in the privacy of their own home. The satellites she passed through as a pair of ears hung lower in its angle as a sign of her awakening spanning between the previous 3 to 5 minutes prior to her arrival.
After all these years, the sight of her never stopped making his chest feel instantly full and warm with love.
"You disappeared on me," she muttered as she approached.
"I'm sorry... I couldn't sleep well," he spoke over his cigarette, looking down at his arms over the ledge.
"You okay?"
Elowan turned to look at her, smiling wistfully as he took the cigarette from his lips. "I am now."
Audrey immediately narrowed her eyes. "Are you sure?"
"I swear," he lied, of course, turning to look at her before turning back, holding his cigarette between two fingers and blowing out a puff of smoke.
She stopped beside him and slyly plucked the cigarette from between his fingers before taking a drag herself. The city lights reflected faintly in her eyes as she exhaled smoke into the cold air.
"You know," she murmured. "Most people just keep a dream journal. Remember mine from last year?"
"Now, how could I possibly forget about that?" he mumbled, a teasing smile illuminating his face enough to pass the bleak moment along. "You fought a priest inside an Olive Garden."
“He started it,” she said simply, casually taking in a puff.
“And the recurring frog with ‘the knowledge'? What the fuck was that all about.”
Her ears perked immediately and her head shook, disbelieving. “Oh my god, will you always remind me of that?”
“The oracle frog told you to buy batteries? Did it go like that?” he deadpanned, turning towards her slightly with relaxed eyes and a cocky smile.
"Yes," she hissed, pointing at him before playfully pressing her finger on his chest. "And we needed batteries that week, didn't we?"
"Exactly, I'm not judging," he defended himself, Audrey hummed flatly as Elowan took the cigarette from her again. “Your subconscious is unbelievable.”
Audrey crossed her arms dramatically over the ledge. “You should try journaling, though.”
The feline hummed, whiskers twitching as he puffed a couple smoke rings. "No chance in hell.”
“Why not?"
“Because I do not possess the discipline required for that.”
Audrey stared at him for a full second. “Okay, look—you literally work in a kitchen.”
“That’s a different type of discipline.”
“Scorching steaks to a perfect medium rare every single time is not discipline to you?”
"Of course not, that's just temperature control," he argued back, making Audrey scoff.
“Oh, fuck off. You alphabetize your spices.”
Elowan looked away immediately. She was the only one in his life who knew about that little nerdy fact... which still, slightly embarrassed him once acknowledged.
“Look—you own three notebooks exclusively for recipe adjustments, even for the ones that repeat themselves in all your cookbooks.”
“Well, you know what they say—variety's the spice of life!”
Audrey laughed so hard she had to lean against the ledge for support while Elowan hid part of his face behind his hand, already regretting this entire side conversation.
“You are the most accidentally disciplined person I’ve ever met,” she wheezed.
“That's totally detached from the truth.”
“You’re literally Frenching recreationally on your days off just because you feel like it.”
“...yeah, that sentence should get you arrested,” he mumbled, making her laugh softly.
The shared silence moments were a constant third-wheel when it came to their dynamic, none of the two rushing to kick them out. This time, Elowan was responsible for doing so, only 10 or 12 seconds after.
"I'm actually craving paupiettes this weekend," he said, picking the line back up.
Audrey's ears perked up in an equally measured mixture of excitement and amusement. "I love how casually you say these things."
"They're amazing, okay?"
"They're heavenly, because you make them."
"That's just bias," he muttered, scratching his temple with the same pair of fingers holding his lit-up cigarette.
"I am biased, we're all partial over the things we love in this world."
A tiny smile pulled from his maw, making him stop and think for a moment. "I don't know. I've just been thinking about them all week."
"You've been thinking about wrapped meat for a week straight?" she said, a smirk defining her intentions.
Elowan huffed in half-disappointment as his mind ran the gears to give it a different meaning. "Great, thank you for phrasing it like that."
"Can I help you with it?" she spoke brightly, her puffy tail wagging behind her as she skidded closer over to him, smiling widely.
"Yeah, sure. Go fucking—chop your thumb off like two weeks ago," he smirked sarcastically, leaning closer to the point their noses were pretty much touching. Audrey pushed him away after a second.
The fox scowled, stealing the cigarette from his fingers again. "Hey! I'm still barely below home cook level," she assured him, taking a quick drag.
The feline snickered to himself, turning away. "Barely, you say," he teased her, good enough to earn a sack to his forearm.
Moments like those would probably never cease to catch him off guard, that domesticity their life had gained wasn't a fully processed event inside his brain to current day.
Once upon a time, having love and stability was nothing but a distant possiblity for someone like him.
Audrey rambled about whatever regarding one of the last times they cooked together, and Elowan looked at her sideways all throughout.
Years had passed now since their paths had crossed completely by chance, and they'd walked the whole nine yards when it came to their relationship life. Living in the same space, fighting, recovering, each of them going to therapy, pushing through burnout, sharing quiet mornings, him putting up every time she jumped on his shopping cart when they went to the supermarket, every extended weekend drive, all the talks about finances and bills, all the nights laying down on their bed while music ran in the background, every single time they laid down in bed and made love that stretched to the early AM hours and ended with pillowtalking about the most ridiculously stupid half-asleep thoughts.
A life.
A life he could say was their own.
A life he could say was his own.
They'd met at a café during the times where Audrey was a traveller who lived exclusively off of busking and playing small gigs, and Elowan was barely holding himself together. To that day and age, never could he ever fathom how he managed to befriend her, interest her, and make her fall in love with him. A personally rocky process for the both of them that paid off in the best way possible, since they both hadn't ever fallen in love before. Even against their mileages in terms of personal struggles and doubts, Audrey took the plunge to stay with him.
Most of the times, he couldn't understand why she'd chose him over what used to be her whole life. 95% of the times, at least.
"You’re spiraling again," Audrey murmured softly, breaking him out of his stupor.
Elowan sighed a bit of smoke, his ears twitching as he came down from his own head. "I'm sorry."
The fennec stepped closer to him, reaching to cup her hand over his atop the ledge. "What's wrong, El?"
He hesitated for a second before speaking. "I—I still don't totally believe that you actually stayed for me."
Audrey’s expression tendered in a split second, being a sentence he'd heard him speak hundreds of times during the past four years.
“You idiot,” she whispered fondly.
Elowan laughed weakly through his nose, looking back toward the skyline. “No, seriously. I think part of me still expects this to disappear sometimes.”
The confession lingered between them, something they were totally familiar with—maybe for the worst, but a crucial part in further building their bond's strength.
Then Audrey moved close enough for her shoulder to brush against his arm again.
“I stayed because I love you,” she said simply. “It really is that uncomplicated.”
Elowan looked down from the ledge for a moment. His therapist would've probably told him to accept the statement instead of interrogating it internally for hidden conditions.
A difficult task, it seemed to be.
One more time, she stole the cigarette from between his fingers again before taking a slow drag from it herself, the orange ember on the tip barely illuminating her face against the dark rooftop atmosphere.
“You know what’s funny?” she murmured as smoke left her mouth. “Four years ago, I genuinely thought I was gonna die of old age near some shitty motel in Arkansas.”
Elowan turned to look at her, a laugh popping out. "Oh, really?"
She leaned back against the ledge again. “Yeah! I thought I was like—gonna keep moving forever. Meeting new people, staying in new cities, getting more gigs and taking pictures of everything I saw.”
Elowan smiled faintly, scratching his chin absently. "That last part you're still doing."
"For a living, more like," she added, groaning right after. "I actually have to go to that middle school next Friday for their graduation photos."
Elowan visibly winced in sympathy. “Oh fuck, you're right.”
“Exactly," Audrey shook her head dramatically, taking a quick drag. "Last year was atrocious, those kits are literal fucking banshees.”
“Yeah, you're sounding eighty years old right now.”
“I mean it, El," she pointed accusingly at him. “They were screaming the entire time. You know the amount of dab jokes I had to endure?”
No possible force in the universe could’ve possibly stopped Elowan from laughing at that. Oh, how his partner had to suffer against the youth.
“And they kept asking if I was famous because I had a camera harness.”
“You do kinda look famous with the harness.”
"I almost evaporated on the spot," she complained, running her free hand over her hair.
“You’re literally becoming the old person complaining about the new generations," Elowan deadpanned, taking the cigarette back from her. She flipped him off right after.
"But seriously, though," she softened her tone, looking over to the roof of one of their neighbor's houses. "I didn't really know how to stop back then. You remember how I used to talk about the road?”
“What? Like religion?”
"Yup. And I still have a soft spot in my heart for the road, I probably always will. But...” she shrugged. “I think for a long time I confused running with freedom.”
Elowan shut himself up before he could say anything stupid, listening to her only.
“I thought if I kept moving fast enough, eventually all the ugly stuff would stop catching up to me.”
Audrey turned her head, and noticed his expression immediately. She scoffed at him, her ears flatenning.
“Oh, come on. Don’t do the sad eyes.”
“I’m not doing that,” he said simply.
“You are, shut up.”
She nudged him lightly with her elbow before continuing, Elowan complied with her command.
“I just mean... I didn’t realize how exhausted I actually was," she said wistfully, and for a few seconds, she simply stared at the skyline. “At some point I think I got tired of surviving myself.”
Elowan understood that better than most people around him. There had been years where survival consumed so much of him that he forgot other people actually lived meanwhile. Not endured, but merely lived.
“I didn’t picture this either,” Elowan admitted after a while.
Audrey glanced sideways at him. “No?”
He shook his head slowly. “Four years ago, I still kinda thought I was doomed as a person. I thought maybe I’d just be stable enough to function, work, pay rent, satisfy my hobbies... kind of, keep my shit together?"
He looked out toward the city again.
“But I never fully believed that complete and thorough happiness was ever gonna be a reality for me.”
"El..." Audrey murmured fondly, her other hand layering on top of his.
Elowan leaned both forearms against the ledge, the cigarette held over his fingers in the air. “And I definitely didn’t think I’d end up here. With you.”
The feline didn't need to look at his partner, he knew she was staring at him.
“Look at us,” he said after a soft exhale coming out through his nose. “You're photographing the world and playing your music. I'm working at a restaurant and still making French food on my days off, as if I was some retired old man.”
“Yeah... you're spiritually forty-seven still.”
“Thank you.”
Audrey smiled quietly to herself. The city lights reflected faintly in her eyes again as he took another drag before handing the cigarette back to her.
“We’re still figuring it out, though,” Audrey admitted quietly. Elowan looked toward her again. “All of our old ghosts.”
A small smile pulled weakly at her mouth, whiskers trembling as she deepened inside her thoughts.
“I’m definitely still in the process. I don’t think I’m gonna fully leave that shit behind.”
“Same," he muttered simply.
“I think maybe everybody is," she added, reaching to scratch behind her right ear and run a hand through her messy locks. "Healing isn't linear, and some people are just better at pretending they aren’t haunted.”
That earned a soft laugh from his end. “Yeah... that's fair. What's life if not a means to push through until our cuts close completely?"
Audrey looked back toward him then, and Elowan suddenly found himself admiring the sight of her her again too. In that beautifully beautifully overwhelming way he still never fully got used to.
The older she became, the more beautiful she somehow looked to him.
The little scar near her shoulder from falling off a bike as a teenager was a work of art in his eyes, as was the way her ears twitched when she was embarrassed, and the expressions she made while concentrating on editing photos or practicing for her next gig, or the softness beneath her stubborn nature, or the scars and exhaustion she carried beneath all that brightness and lively energy.
He indiscriminately loved all of it.
Audrey caught him staring and narrowed her eyes half a second later. “You look like I descended from heaven personally for you.”
Elowan laughed softly under his breath, staring into her eyes as if she was the only thing in the world keeping him anchored to land. “Did you not?”
The fennec's ears flicked upward slightly, then she stepped closer again. Her warmth met him to cut through the cold rooftop air. The Angora cat snuffed the cigarette over the ledge, crushing it slightly and letting its flame die out. A couple seconds later, both of them were nose-to-nose, looking deep into each other's eyes.
Then they kissed tenderly, meeting her warm lips as the taste and smell of nicotine smoke lingered with freedom between them. Elowan pulled from the ledge without breaking the kiss, his arms reaching to wrap themselves around Audrey's waist—her arms flew over his shoulders as they lost themselves in the moment.
The dream dissolved there.
Elowan woke slowly beneath dim gray morning light filtering through the curtains, slowly realizing that none of that had been reality.
What reality did he wake up to? Audrey breathing softly beside him. With a turn of his head, he found her curled against his side beneath the blankets, one hand loosely resting over his chest. Naked under the covers, one of her soft breasts brushing against his arm. Her hair messy against her pillow, her other ear faintly moving as she slept.
That brief moment left Elowan with a singular emotion... peace.
Albeit, not the cleanest type of peace someone could have. He wasn't sure people like him ever managed to find that kind of peace.
How many nights smothered him with memories of those he'd lost along the way and dragged him awake violently? How many still mornings did he push through where his self-hatred clouded his mind before the day even began? How many moments where he caught himself wondering if he'd somehow fooled Audrey into loving him had tortured him mercilessly?
Healing surely wasn't linear for him, but she was making it all the more bearable by simply existing... that and through conversations at two in the morning. Along with those therapy sessions that left him exhausted for the rest of the day, and learning how to apologize without spiraling, and also realizing that being loved wasn't a debt he constantly had to repay because of his past sins.
Life still scared him sometimes. The future still scared him sometimes. The future still scared him a lot, and the years passed faster now too—one blending into the next before he fully noticed it happening.
Twenty-something and counting.
Every now and then he'd wake in the middle of the night with that same knot in his chest, a shadow of the loneliness he'd once felt during his early and late teenage years, only to appreciate the fact that Audrey was sleeping there beside him.
Every single time, the feeling let up. As if his brain had remembered there was someone who loved him unconditionally beside him now, so that it could finally stop bitching for a moment.
Elowan laid there listening to her breathing, feeling the warmth of her against his side while the remnants of his dream finally dissolved. Reaching down, he leaned to press a careful kiss over the top of her head. Audrey stirred faintly beside him, the softest and most adorable little purr coming out of the bottom of her chest.
Another way to prove why he was completely infatuated with everything she was.
Her arm lazily tightened around his waist, a sleepy grumble following. She wasn't asleep, Elowan knew her perfectly enough to know that.
“...you’re obsessed with me," she mumbled, her eyes not opening yet.
Elowan huffed a quiet laugh through his nose, resting his cheek lightly against the top of her head afterward.
"Guilty as charged."
One of her legs tangled loosely over his, a half-sleepy hum and half-laugh being her response as she practically curled into his chest.
“I love you,” she murmured, the words slightly muffled against the bare fur of his chest mixed with her sleepiness.
Elowan’s hand moved slowly along her back in absentminded circles, claws slightly grazing and careful as to not cause her any pain. “I love you too.”
Audrey's breathing gradually slowed again as she found herself falling asleep again, her body relaxing further against his own. El kept on stroking her back as he sunk for the umpteenth time into his own reality.
"This is my place," he thought, not ever straying his eyes from the fox curled beside him. "Everything else can wait."