somethingwithturquoise | MHA #8; Monday Evening [07/08].

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MHA #8; Monday Evening [07/08].

It was honestly for the best that this was getting down now rather than later, where it would either brew into something so much more than the original issue or Summer could somehow manage to weasel her way out of things and never bring it up and just keep avoiding Stark for as long as either of them were capable. And with it being a small island and themselves pretty inextricably tied to each other in various ways and what not, wasn't probably going to be that long anyway.

So, after work, and wielding a bottle of whiskey and a 2 liter of Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper to mix it with, she went upstairs and knocked on Stark's door, and kept stealing glances at the whiskey and sort of wishing she'd thought to open it and take a few good swigs on the way.

[[ for he that lives there of course! ]]

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Stark, meanwhile, had a bottle of raslak and 2 glasses sitting on the table by his couch. It had seemed wise. He was wondering, in fact, if he ought to have more but then there was a knock and all he could do was take a deep breath and open the door.

"Hi?" He hadn't meant for it to be a question but there it was.

"Come in. I'm...thank you. For coming."

"Hi," Summer responded, and there was no question there, just a soft, sympathetic, apologetic, awkward sort of smile as she stepped, lifted the bottles in each of her hand as if the proof of her reinforcements was a requirement to entering. "And, I mean...we...probably should talk, right? About...about what happened?"

"I thought we should," Stark agreed, stepping back so she could enter.

"Come sit?" he gestured towards the couch and the waiting bottle and glasses there. "We may have both had the same idea."

"Yeah, well," Summer said, as she dropped onto the couch eith a sigh, whiskey still in hand bit she set the soda down on the coffee table and replaced it with one of those glasses, "I didn't really have the time to make sangria."

"And yours is much better than from the store," Stark said, taking the opposite end of the couch, sitting on the very edge of the cushion.

"But this is good too, I think? Or...good enough? I don't know. I just...I didn't want to not talk to you. It doesn't feel right doing that."

"Yeaaaah," Summer said, most of her attention going into opening the bottle of whiskey and then pouring a good deal of it into the glass, and then setting it aside and topping it off with just a touch of the soda (she mostly brought it for Stark, really, because he liked sweeter things), "I was still trying to work out the best way to go about the whole 'hey, now, there's a possible future for us! What a fun awkward time that was!' but honestly, like, maybe straight-head on like a 10-ton Mac Truck with a lot of booze is just the answer."

Stark frowned a little as he tried to parse that, then nodded as he started filling his own glass. There was more soda, to be sure, but still a decent amount of the whiskey.

"She seemed horrified to find me there," he said after taking a sip. "In your bed. I...I don't want that. Ever. For you to feel like that."

Another frown. Another sip.

"I can't tell you how to feel and I wouldn't but...I never want that to happen."

Summer was quiet for a moment, conveniently filling it by taking a good solid gulp of her drink and then sighing as she lowered her glass into her lap. She angled herself a little more toward Stark, but her eyes lingered there on her drink.

"But you do realize," she said, lifting worried eyes toward him now, "that that is a possibility, right? I mean, probably not to that extreme, but, to be fair to my potential former self, she clearly wasn't expecting to wake up with you, you know? And unexpectedly cheating on your spouse is kind of a big deal to most people."

"I hope," he said very softly, "that you won't ever hate me. Or...cut me out of your life, completely. It seemed like she had. And you..."

You were too important, Summer, but he couldn't quite form those words right now.

"And I hope you know that I wouldn't...I wouldn't want to do that. Risk your happiness like that." If the other Summer had been happy. He wasn't sure and he certainly hadn't gone looking for her to ask at any point during the weekend.

"And I hope I don't ever hate you, too," Summer implored. "Or that you won't ever hate me. But, I mean, it's possible. Anything is possible, and there's no way to possibly even predict that shit. I hope the island sure as hell can't predict that shit, either, because I'm pretty sure I would rather die that be stuck in that cookie-cutter white picket fence suburban soul crushing hellscape that that Summer got herself into, but it is possible."

She took a breath, and another gulp, and waved her hand a couple times vaguely in the air.

"Infinite dimensions. Infinite possibilities. Any way this could all possibly turn out is happening< probably, as we speak, in a gazillion different universes right now."

"Unrealized realities," Stark said before just straight up draining his glass.

"That's what Crichton calls them. The other universes, the other possibilities. I...I hope that one stays unrealized. For both our sakes. But you know...I don't think you could do anything that would make me truly hate you."

She could hurt him. He knew that. But the idea that she would do something that could make him completely hate her was too much to think about.

Another evening he might have grinned and told her that wasn't a challenge. Not tonight.

"Famous last words," Summer murmured into her glass, maybe not quite as quietly as she thought it was, or maybe she knew it wasn't all that quiet, she wasn't even sure any more, but she was going to go ahead and follow after Stark in downing the rest of what she had in her glass. She reached for the whiskey again, seemed to notice the raslak and her hand changed course for that instead this time.

"But, yeah," she said, "exactly. Unrealized realities. Or, well, kind of. I mean, they're pretty fucking realized to the people who are living them, but they're not our realities, and, honestly, it's not worth thinking about to hard, it just hurts your head, but ultimately, it's like, fuck. It's all just a crapshoot. So it doesn't really matter. Maybe we'll be fine. Maybe by next month, I really do hate your guts...or vice versa...and it'll suck, but in the end, it's alright. That's just life. Sometimes it sucks, sometimes it doesn't, and that's all okay."

"I ought to be used to things like this by now."

Stark poured himself another glass of the whiskey and soda.

"But sometimes they're still a shock. None of the other futures, the other possible realities, none of them have hurt before. They've just been impossible children or unlikely ones."

The one with Ignis was still just confusing.

"But even if it hurt...it wasn't real. For us. It was for her. But she's not you. Not my Summer."

If it sounded a bit like he was trying to convince himself, well, he was.

"I mean," said Summer, sighing as she finished pouring that next drink and set thr bottle aside again, because she felt it was important to belabor this particular point, "it could be. It probably won't be, but it might! We don't know. We have no way of knowing. But, much as it sucks, it still could be, Stark."

Stark took a long sip from his glass, set it down, and turned to look at Summer.

He waited, holding her gaze for a moment.

"I know that, Summer." His voice was very soft now.

He hated that it could be true but he knew it.

"I promise you I know. But what could be, what might be, isn't what is. Could be and could have been aren't the same as are. And...someone very wise I know told me when I was...not doing well...it's better to to remember what I have now."

He reached his hand out, hesitantly, laying it on the cushion between them.

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MHA #8; Monday Evening [07/08].

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