Grace stared at Pearce, her brain frozen in disbelief.

(He–)

“You don’t love me,” she said, unable to think of any other response besides the flat truth.

He might love the parts of herself that she made available, but Pearce couldn’t love the whole of her. Not the parts that hung around his neck like a weight, not the parts that had him playing nanny and nursemaid instead of enjoying his day off.

She saw the hurt in his expression when she rejected his confession, the barest flinch. He couldn’t love that, either.

“I do,” he insisted anyway, despite all evidence to the contrary. “I love you.”

A wracking pain shot up through Grace’s abdomen, and she clenched her jaw, groaning through it. Her hands tightened around the bottle of warm herbal tea, gripping it just to have an outlet for the tension building in her, but she powered through.

The pain stole her opportunity to respond, because Pearce continued once it’d passed. “I don’t know if we can work together.” It was the first true thing to come out of his mouth since his confession. “But I can’t–you’re so important to me, Grace. I feel like I can’t even do this right but I’m here anyways, I’m here for you, and I’m not going anywhere while you need me.”

Grace couldn’t tell if his eyes had taken on a wet shine, or if her vision had just blurred too much from the tears in her own eyes. “You’re here,” she said, “But–but you can’t even look at me. You can’t be around me.”

Leaning back against the tub, Pearce took a deep, ragged breath. “That’s because I’m a fucking fool. We’re–we’re like two magnets, we’re bad for each other, but I can’t walk away from you, I can’t stop thinking of how much I’ve missed you this past week–I want to move on, and I can’t.”

Grace finished the thought for him, taking shallow breaths to make it through another round of fruitless cramping. “Because you don’t love me.”

“Because I do love you, and because we hurt each other,” Pearce corrected, looking at her. “I can’t be the person you want. I can’t be Mr. Perfect, I’m too screwed up in the head, I can’t focus, I’m zero good to anyone unless you hold my ass over a fire and tell me it’s urgent. If we tried to work this out, I would fuck up again, and you’d end up hating me again.”

“I don’t hate you,” Grace whimpered, guilt striking at her heart. (How could he think that?) “I–ah–”

Her body had found something to process, and her words faded into pain as liquid shame voided into her diaper. Wincing and whimpering, Grace took shallow breaths, nostrils flaring, trying to just make it through.

“I wish I were a little dumber, a little more naive,” Pearce said slowly, thoughtfully, like he’d scripted these words out long in advance. It wasn’t an impulsive reply, it was something that’d run through his head countless times before this conversation. “Because then at least I’d be able to be selfish here, but I can’t. It doesn’t matter how I feel, it doesn’t matter what I want. I’d live with the pain, I’d do anything, but it wouldn’t be healthy, and if we tried to keep it going long enough, we’d blow up everything.”

Grace’s own words sounded distant in her ears. She was slipping away from her body, retreating inward, to get away from the pain. “I hurt you that bad?”

“Grace–fucking hell,” Pearce said, running his hands over his hair. “I overslept, and you stabbed me in the back to win the bet. What did you want me to feel?”

“I–I didn’t–I wasn’t trying to make you pay that much…” Grace started to say, but her defense felt hollow even as she said it.

“It’s not about the money.” Pearce shut his eyes and took a deep breath, preparing to speak hard truth. “It’s that you cared more about the bet than you did about me. I can’t… I want to just get over it, to suck it up, but then you went and did this, you nearly put yourself in the hospital to win, and I don’t know how else to react. If you’re willing to do this to win, to prove I can’t be responsible, to be ‘right’, I don’t know how we could ever be together.”

Grace’s throat felt hoarse and dry, but she couldn’t stop to get a drink now. Her world was collapsing, what help could a sip of tea offer her?

“I don’t care about the bet,” Grace whispered, words ragged and weak. “I didn’t do this to win.”

“Then why?” Pearce asked. “I know you weren’t just looking for some candy in my cupboard.”

“Because,” Grace shot, volume raising, “You wouldn’t even look me in the eye, and I couldn’t think of anything else to make you spend thirty seconds in the same room with me!”

Pearce fell silent, and Grace thought she saw a flash of guilt in his face, the same she felt in that moment.

“Being around you,” she continued, “Doing diapers, and food, and bathtime, and all that other shit but without having you, it made me want to just curl up into a ball and stop existing. The only thing that felt worse than being around you was being alone.”

“Then why didn’t you forfeit?” The question didn’t sound like a ‘Gotcha’, a trick to show she was lying–Pearce looked confused. He genuinely didn’t understand, but he wanted to.

“I…” Grace started. “If I quit, if I walked away, you’d think I was giving up on us. I know what it’s like to…to feel abandoned. I couldn’t drop that sort of bombshell on you, because then I’d never…”

Pearce’s eyes widened a little in half comprehension of what’d pushed her, why she’d behaved like such a complete and utter fool. “When you woke up, that morning,” Pearce said, realization dawning. “You weren’t just upset because you’d missed work.”

“No!” The word came out as half a sob. “You left me, and–I was alone, and hurt, because you–”

“I didn’t mean to,” Pearce said quickly, half in defense, half in apology.

“I know. I’m not–I don’t have any right to be mad, but…” Weakly, she admitted, “I want to be selfish, too, but you’re right. We wouldn’t work. I’m stupid and I can’t get over myself and–and I hurt you because I was mad. If we tried to be together, I’d just keep taking from you, and you’d just start to hate me.”

“Grace…” Pearce shook his head ever so slightly, almost unconsciously. “There’s nothing in the world you could ever do to make me hate you.”

Grace shook her head in earnest, stopping only when a burst of pain made her lie still. “You say that, but it’s not true. It’d already started. You can say you’ll ‘always’ be here for me no matter what, but every safety net has a breaking point.” Taking a long breath, she put it as simply as she could. “It’s too late, I already asked for too much, it already broke everything. Maybe you don’t hate me, but you also know you can’t really love me, not while I’m this much of a weight dragging you down, but…”

She trailed off. Grace wanted him to interrupt her again, to stop her before she got too candid, before she sealed off their relationship for good.

“It’s like you said. I can be selfish, or I can accept the hurt, but it’s doomed either way. One way or another, I’m just going to wake up one day, needing you, and you won’t be there anymore.”

That was it. The truth, unvarnished and painful but impossible to deny, and Grace had nothing else she could say that would fix it. Shutting her eyes, Grace laid back and let the pain overwhelm her. She couldn’t even cry, she felt too dehydrated.

Warm rubber pressed against her lips, and Grace tasted bitter herbs and sweet honey running down her tongue. The tea wasn’t too hot, just warm enough to be relaxing without burning her weak throat. For all the agony she was in, emotional and physical, that bit of relief was nectar from the gods, and she drank it gratefully.

Pearce’s hand cupped the back of her head, pulling her up ever so slightly, so she wasn’t lying flat on her back while she drank. Propped up, sniffling, she drank the tea and let her feelings stream down her face.

Eventually, she drained the first bottle, but as it emptied, Pearce switched smoothly to the second. He didn’t press, he didn’t speak, but he sat there with her, propping her up, but he helped her hydrate, healing her hurt.

Her body’s revolt continued, but in that moment, with Pearce there to hold her up, it felt a little easier to bear. The second bottle ultimately ran dry too, and Pearce pulled it away, but he didn’t leave. He stayed with her, kept his hand on her, silently supporting, his thumb moving in gentle circles through her hair.

She felt his hand shift, and heard him inhale before speaking. Tensing, eyes still closed, Grace prepared her heart for the worst.

“What did we expect would happen?” Pearce asked quietly. She expected more, but he left it at that for a long pause, letting the words marinate. “Of course we’d be a flaming disaster. We’re Wasters.”

Grace opened her eyes just a crack, looking wordlessly up at him. He was smiling, in spite of everything.

“You and me,” Pearce continued. “And the rest, all of us–we’re the fuckups that will never amount to anything. More disasters than people. Of course this was where our relationship would end up, we’re both too bad at being people for any other outcome.”

Heart sinking, Grace saw the truth in his words. They’d been doomed from the start.

“But you know what?” Pearce asked. “That coin’s got two sides. Yeah, we’re fucked up, we’re generally socially incompetent, we’re so in our own heads that we couldn’t navigate society with a GPS and a park ranger to guide us, but still–we’re Wasters. When was the last time we let ‘General Social Incompetence’ stop us from doing something?”

Grace frowned, shifting up a little bit. “Pearce, what are you saying?”

“We made a life for ourselves. Five grown adults sharing a house, not because we can’t make rent, but because we just wouldn’t want a life where we’re not together? It’s weird, it’s kind of hard because it’s not something anybody else really even wants to try, but that didn’t stop us.” He glanced to the side, then back down at her, looking Grace in the eyes for the first time in a week. “So why the hell are we giving up so easily?”

Shaking her head, Grace tried to fight the sudden possibility of love, pushing it away with her best arguments. “Because I’ll hurt you again. Because we’re bad for each other, and it’ll explode, like you said.”

“Maybe,” Pearce admitted. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Grace, but I’m willing to muddle along, to keep on working until we get it right. The only relationships that are perfect are the ones that don’t last long enough to matter, everyone else has to work for their love if they want it to last. I want ours to matter, and I’m willing to do the work. As long as we both promise to do our best, it’s worth a little hurt along the way.”

“But–” Grace started, shaking her head. She sat up, a little, and before the cramps could send her right back down, Pearce got an arm behind her and caught her. “I’m not worth that much work. I don’t even get why you’re here right now, it’s not like I can’t get myself water, you could have walked away once you got off the phone with poison control.”

“You’ll heal.” Pearce shrugged. “But you’ll heal faster with a helping hand.”

“But it’s not just today,” Grace continued, looking down, counting anxieties on her fingers. “Next time I freak out, next time I overreact, it’ll be just as bad–worse.”

“Are you going to try and have a freakout overreaction?” Pearce asked.

She shook her head. “No, but–”

“Then we’ll apologize and try and do better next time.” Pearce put his hands on her shoulders, addressing her directly. “Grace, I don’t care how much work it takes. I don’t care how much effort, how much time, anything, all I care is that we’re in this together. There’s nothing not worth fixing.”

Something was wrong with Grace’s eyes–Pearce had vanished, everything was so blurry she couldn’t see straight. Fresh tears streamed, falling down and making puddles on her shirt, and she felt a choking sob build, but these were fresh tears. Not from hurt, not from heartbreak, but from bittersweet relief.

“I–I love you,” she babbled, reaching forward, searching half-blind for him. “I love–”

Pearce took her, pulled her in close, met her lips with his.

He held her there, in the perfect embrace on the floor of their shared bathroom. Her diaper was sagging, abused by the drugs she’d taken, and her shirt was damp from perspiration as her body tried to sweat it out. The cramps hadn’t gotten any better, and the wild shifting balance of fluids in her system had brought on a headache that would only get worse. Grace was as physically uncomfortable as she’d ever felt, and a mess, and a ball of nerves. Through their embrace, she could feel Pearce’s heart pounding at a thousand miles an hour and knew he was as anxious as she was, wracked by all the same emotions, if not all the physical discomfort.

None of that mattered.

They were in love.

...

As we're approaching the conclusion, I want to take a moment to thank my editor, who's helped make this story shine, and to all my supporters, who help me pay for my editor!