Work Text:
Wrench carves Zane’s name into his workspace desk three weeks after they start dating.
It’s a spur of the moment thing. He had just had a wonderful date where Zane took him to a nice restaurant and slipped his arm around his waist and held the door open for him, like they do in the movies. It was somewhere that was so out of Wrench’s comfort zone, but Zane was by his side, and he was so drunk in love that he felt like he could do anything.
Wrench likes making Zane laugh. Zane has a tendency to laugh loud enough that it seems to echo, and he becomes physical when he laughs too hard; he slaps his knee loudly and his whole body lunges forward. Wrench, for once, doesn’t mind the stares they get from other people in the restaurant. He just watches, and his eyes flash little hearts.
Zane walked him out, arm around his waist again, and Wrench felt like he was being shown off. As if everyone in the establishment was going to be jealous of Zane because he had his arm around his waist, as if Zane was pointing at him and telling everyone they were together. It made Wrench flush a little in the cheeks, and he covered it by bringing his mask up to his face and clipping it back in.
They made out in Zane’s car for an hour after that.
Zane dropped him off and Wrench felt like his head was in a whirl. He felt like a cartoon character, swept off his feet and levitating with hearts in his eyes; only he did actually have hearts in his eyes. He’s full of so much positive emotion that he doesn’t know how to get it out of his body to make himself stop feeling like he’s buzzing. Any usually repeated motion he does doesn’t really help, flapping his wrists and cracking his knuckles and rocking back and forth on his heels.
Tinkering usually helps when these still leave him feeling like he’s vibrating. When he delves into his current project at his home workspace, he gets distracted by a little pocket knife that must have found its way into his tools. He picks it up and flicks open the blade, watching it shine in its sudden reflection of his desk lights.
There’s a big empty spot on his desk, where he’s shoved all of his shit aside so he’d have a place to throw around whatever he works on. His body is moving faster than his brain can. He carves a heart into the table, one probably just a bit bigger than his hand when it’s flat on the surface. He etches his name in slowly, taking his time with each letter, as to show appreciation to each one.
Zane.
He sends a picture of it to him, with a few heart emojis to truly drive the point home. Zane responds that he wants to fuck him over the desk.
—
They get married four weeks later.
It’s another spur of the moment thing. They’ve both drank a little too much, made out for a little too long, and their brains are foggy and their judgment is clouded. Wrench is flushed against Zane’s body when he pulls away from the kiss and mumbles, “God, I could fucking marry you right now.”
Zane laughs, words slightly slurred, “Then let’s do it.” He presses in to kiss Wrench again, hard and sloppy and spitty, “It’ll be like we’re in Vegas.”
Wrench loves the idea. He kisses him harder.
They’re married by one of Wrench’s hacker friends a few hours later, who makes their marriage legal by putting it in some system; Wrench should know how she did it, but he was a little too drunk to remember details even now. She even gives them a real, fake marriage license, courtesy of the state of California. Wrench kisses Zane harder than he ever has before, he thinks, but that may be due to the copious amounts of alcohol he consumed that night.
Wrench wakes up next morning to cuddle closer to Zane, with a mumble so quiet and tired that reflects their long, near sleepless night before, “Morning, husband.” Zane’s already out of bed and left for work. Their marriage certificate is lying on the nightstand, Wrench reaches out and touches it. His ring finger is adorned with a cheap, simple band they might have picked out together in a hurry.
Wrench thinks it’s perfect.
—
Wrench starts feeling something change about their relationship a few months later.
It’s in subtle ways that Wrench doesn’t notice until he thinks about it too hard. Zane was never one to show his love physically in ways that weren’t sex, and Wrench was fine with that. Wrench loved very physically; he loved to throw himself on and over Zane when they were alone, allowing himself to love freely and openly.
Zane’s never pushed him away until now.
Wrench wraps his arms around Zane’s torso while he’s making breakfast and presses his face into the back of his head like he does every morning. Zane jerks away like he’s trying to free himself, and Wrench backs off, not pressing further if he’s not in the mood to be touched. Wrench goes to apologize, but Zane just turns to look at him with something in his eye and walks away.
He follows Zane into the living room, and he speaks softly, “I’m sorry if I overstepped there.”
Zane makes a sound in the back of his throat, something like a scoff, and he responds, “Whatever.” Wrench wishes Zane would communicate with him more clearly instead of making him stand here like he’s got lead in his shoes and making him think he did something horribly wrong. Wrench drags himself to the couch and sits on it with him, more space between them than he’d like.
They have sex a little while later, Wrench wants to feel close to him and Zane wants to get off. Wrench lets his hands wander, lets himself be flush against his husband’s body, tries to absorb the touch that he desperately wants. Zane’s hands don’t move from Wrench’s hips, hell, he barely even makes a move to try to kiss him, Wrench has to ask. They’re hot and sweaty and Zane’s hands don’t leave Wrench’s hips until he’s finished. Wrench doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t care.
Wrench wraps his arms around Zane’s torso, tries to bury his head into Zane’s chest to keep himself under the firm pressure of his husband’s touch. Zane riggles away from him and flips onto his other side. “You’re really needy, you know?” Zane comments, pulls the blanket up over himself, “It gets really annoying.”
Wrench feels like he’s been kicked in the chest. He flips over without a word, their backs to each other. He doesn’t try to cuddle like that again after that.
—
Zane never really said anything negative about Wrench’s mask before, so Wrench always assumed that he liked it. Hell, Zane did say he liked it. One of the first times they hooked up, Zane told him his mask was sexy, that it made him seem mysterious, and they had sex while Wrench wore it. Wrench thanked whatever God or whatever Haum worker was listening that night, because he did not want to take it off yet.
“I don’t know why you wear that stupid mask,” Zane comments when they’re getting ready to go out shopping, while Wrench is securing his mask under his hood, “it makes you stand out.”
“It makes me calm, Z, you know that,” Wrench tries to explain to him again as the mask blinks to life, displaying two question marks, “it makes things easier for me.” Zane never really got it, but he never pushed on it, not like he’s doing right now at least.
Zane laughs and Wrench can’t tell if it’s at him or not, but he makes it clear that he is when he responds, “Well, you look fucking ridiculous. Just take it off. Deal with it.”
Wrench hates the idea of upsetting him, or God forbid making him embarrassed to be seen with him. He looks at Zane, blinks under his mask a few times, and mumbles a quiet, “Oh, sorry.” He reaches under his hood and unclasps it, letting it drop into his hands, and he puts it on the coffee table. He feels exposed in his own house, shrinking into his sweatshirt.
Zane looks at him, smiles a smile that makes Wrench shiver and not in a good way, and tells him, “There. Much better.” He thinks this might be Zane’s attempt at a compliment, or at least as words of encouragement to try to go without his mask, so he tries to take it as such. It’s not right though.
Going out without his mask is hell on Earth, and Wrench swears by it. The bright lights feel even brighter without anything to even obscure the light even a little bit. His mask doesn’t quiet anything down but the constant pressure of having something on his face makes noisy crowds and loud lighting fixtures feel like they’re bearable. With nothing there to distract him, Wrench resorts to pulling his arms in as close as he can to his body, trying to make his long and lanky stature shrink into nothingness.
Zane notices. He elbows him in the arm, not hard enough to hurt but hard enough to frighten. “Toughen up, Reg,” he tells him, “it’s not that big of a deal.” Wrench feels like he’s somehow embarrassing him more by acting like this. He tucks himself deeper into his sweatshirt, to try his best to disappear. He wants to hit himself in the head with his fists to make the noise stop, to make himself stop.
He feels too much. He feels like every single set of eyes are on him. Every single person here knows who he is, can see him, can commit him to memory. He wants to walk around with his hand in front of his face and his hood pulled up and tight. His chest feels tight, and he repeatedly cracks his fingers while hugging his arms to himself. He feels like he's breathing manually, like if he focused on anything else he would drop dead.
Wrench wants his mask and he wants to sit in the dark and in the quiet, he wants to recharge. Doing this feels impossible when he doesn’t have his mask. He tells Zane he needs to leave, that he feels sick and anxious and like he could have a meltdown. Zane rolls his eyes and tells him to get over it.
The DriverSF ride home alone feels impossibly long, and Wrench sits in the backseat and picks at the skin on his fingers the whole time.
He’s sitting on the couch in the dark with his mask on when Zane gets home, two Xs being the only light in the room when Zane opens the apartment door. “Christ, what are you doing?” Zane mumbles.
Wrench doesn’t respond.
“You gotta stop acting like such a fucking baby, Reggie.”
The two Xs flatly turn into nothing.
Wrench goes to lay in bed with him later that night, but it feels so cold and lonely. He wants Zane to want to hold him like he used to. Wrench tosses and turns for a while, while Zane sleeps soundly next to him.
Wrench takes his pillow and heads to the living room, sets himself up on the couch, and tries to sleep there. It doesn’t work.
—
Zane cheats on him a month later. Wrench hates to admit it but he was kind of expecting it at this point, he just wasn’t sure when.
He’s home earlier than he expected, and the lights are all off, his first sign that this is the day where his expectations become reality. Part of him wants to turn back, to ignore it and come back, to hold onto some part of himself that still wants this, wants them to work out. He can’t bring himself to shut the door again though.
He slips into the apartment quietly, shuts the door without a sound, and slowly sneaks his way through the house towards their bedroom. And, to no surprise, he hears the sound of the bed creaking, sounds of two people together. He thinks he should leave then, write a note in Sharpie on the wall, trash the rooms, and leave the place in the same state that Zane has left Wrench.
He can’t help himself though. He opens the door, and the world seems to slow down.
When Wrench finds his husband in bed with another man, he knows that if he reacted with anger he would be justified. He would be justified if he screamed and shouted and threw the other man out and he would be justified if he grabbed his things and threw his ring on the floor and called him names and left. He’s sure he would even be justified if he went out and smashed up Zane’s car, or if he smashed the television in, or any other seemingly drastic measure he decided to take.
It’s one of the only times in his life when he has been wronged where he is not instantly filled with a blinding rage, at least not outwardly.
The male stranger scrambles out of his soon-to-be-ex husband’s lap and gathers up the blankets to cover himself. Zane is getting out of bed as quickly as he can, throwing on whatever clothes he finds on the ground, and Wrench wants to make him feel as small and undeserving as he has made him feel before, but he can’t seem to find the words.
Call it shock, call it relief, call it that he expected it, but Wrench just slumps against the wall for a moment. His mask has gone blank again, and he pulls the ring off of his finger wordlessly, placing it on top of the dresser by their bed. He walks out.
Zane is not far behind.
He tries to follow, tries to reach out to touch him, to get him to come back with promises of, “C’mon, Reggie, baby, let’s talk about this.”
Wrench jerks away from his touch with a quiet, “Don’t fucking call me that.”
Zane stops following him, and instead tries to berate him. Hateful words that feel like knives thrown his way but Wrench can’t absorb any of them, can’t focus enough on his words to make any sense of what he could possibly be saying right now. He tries to think about it though, probably something about how Wrench was too needy and too much to deal with, and it makes him want to scream.
He absorbs one sentence, “I’m fucking bored of you anyway.”
“Fuck you,” Wrench spits at him, anger setting in, “I gave you fucking everything. I tried to make myself your perfect little fucking husband, tried to change myself of all my little fucking things, for you. I fucking loved you.” He feels like he’s just saying words at this point, things that Zane already knows, and he wants to scream at him. He can’t though, he just growls out another stern, “Fuck you.”
“This is over,” Zane says, as if Wrench is the one who has done something wrong.
Wrench turns when he reaches the doorway, “You wanted this to be over long before tonight. Go have fun with your little fucking boy toy. Dick.” He slams the door shut.
He does scream when he gets to his car. He screams and he wrestles off his mask, throwing it into his passenger’s seat. He grabs his steering wheel and screams, punching it repeatedly. He wants to drive really fast, he wants to drive until everything around him is moving so fast it makes him feel like he’s going through time.
Wrench loved him, fuck, Wrench thinks he still loves him. After all of that, after those few months where Zane was fucking bored of him, where Wrench had to beg for affection, to be treated like a husband and not like a toy or a trophy to show off, Wrench still fucking loved him? He wants to fucking wreck something, he wants to throw punches and he wants to blow something up.
He didn’t react with blinding rage, but the anger sets in now.
—
Wrench is scratching Zane’s name off of his desk in a flood of rage and tears in his eyes ten months after they got married.
It’s so cathartic, to feel like he’s removing someone like this from his life, from his work, from his passions. The name is still legible when Wrench is done with it, but the dozens of slash marks through it feel good, making him feel like he’s himself again. Wrench wears his mask while he’s hard at work, two angry slashes adorning his face the entire time he’s been home.
He pushes up his mask and takes a swing from his beer. He makes a mental note to call Sitara and thank her for putting up the money to hold his place for him, to give him a place to work peacefully, and now, a place to sleep and live. She was happy to throw him the rent money along with the stolen money she used to pay for the hackerspaces. She’s a fucking saint.
Wrench wipes the beer that settles around his lips under his mask. “Fuck you!” He yells, and with a final swing, he stabs the knife into the desk, right through the center of the heart. He stumbles backwards, catching himself off guard at his own power.
He starts to laugh a little. Fuck, he feels fucking stupid. He let his guard down so much for someone like this? He let this man try to take away who he was, tried to change himself so much that he could barely even recognize himself in the mirror for him? Just for him to go and fuck some other blond pretty boy? Wrench laughs harder at that, doubling over in laughter, but God, he wants to cry.
If he doesn’t laugh, he’ll cry. And he does not want to shed a single tear for this motherfucker. He’ll be damned if he ever says his name out loud again.
Wrench finishes his drink and, in a moment of impulse, smashes the bottle on the ground just to hear it shatter, just to feel like he’s got control. He wants to gain back his control, of his mind, of his body, of himself. He wants to feel like that wasn’t a waste of his time, he wants to get something out of it.
Wrench will heal. He will find himself again. He will be himself again.
He looks around his apartment, suddenly feeling more at home than he has in months. A warm rush fills him, and he knows it’s some mix of anger and sadness and sudden adrenaline; it’s mostly rage, but he feels it through his entire body, and he doesn’t want to lose it. He wants to destroy something that he loves.
He will heal. It will take time, it won’t be tomorrow and it won’t be the next day, but he will be okay. He will cry and scream and hate the world but he will heal.
He picks up the sledgehammer that rests by the front door. God, it fucking feels good to pick up. He assesses the weight in his hands, grasps the handle and spins it in his hands, watching the head of the hammer twirl in the dim lights of his apartment. He laughs, and he swings the hammer over his shoulder.
He will heal, and it will feel fucking good to do so.