A/N: Written for the latest graffitidec_fic challenge on LJ. Be warned, there’s het in this one. If it turns you off, I’m sorry. -_- Lyrics belong to AFI. Thank you for reading, and I’d really love a review on this one. Enjoy.

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Triangular

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He said, ‘Will you wrap your arms around me as I’m falling?’

-

She thought marriage would be different.

Maybe she hadn't been thinking of all marriages. Maybe this marriage should have been special, but Monica only feels aching pain when she thinks of Brad and the closed door of the master bedroom. She sits at the bottom of the stairs and listens to the noises coming from the second floor, behind the closed bedroom door.

She’s scared and she doesn’t know what’s happening to him.

He’s shut her out of the room. Monica wouldn’t mind so much if he’d smiled and kissed her and told her he loved her, but Brad never smiles or kisses anyone. Now he’s shut himself in their bedroom and he won’t come out, and Monica knows he’s snorting lines off the top of the dresser.

Maybe she’s grateful she doesn’t have to see it, but a little part of her still aches, and Monica doesn’t know what to say. She sits at the bottom of the staircase for an hour, and then another hour and then another.

Just the drugs, she decides.

When Brad finally emerges some five hours later, Monica still sits at the bottom of the stairs and jumps when he touches her shoulder, because she’s afraid of him and doesn’t want to admit it.

He doesn’t say anything; he only sits down beside her and silently slips his fingers into hers, and Monica flinches a little because his pupils are dilated and his breathing is faster, more ragged than it should be. She smiles at him and thinks of calling Rob, because Rob would know what to do.

Rob always knows.

“Are you hungry?” Monica finally asks. “I can make some soup.”

Her heart sinks, because Brad shakes his head and drops her hand, and she feels cold and lonely and depressed beyond belief. It’s a horrible feeling; she tries to fight it down, but when Brad brushes a kiss across the tip of her nose, the terror washes through her and she can’t help leaning away from this odd show of affection.

Brad doesn’t seem to notice.

He stands up and stumbles down the hallway, and Monica watches him go in silence.

-

The next time Brad shuts himself in the master bedroom with two baggies of coke, Monica calls Rob. She’s breathless and she’s nervous, and she stumbles over her words a few times before she finally gets it right.

Rob says he’ll come over.

Monica leans against the front door, resting her forehead against the cool, varnished wood, and she waits for Rob to come. Ten minutes later, he finally rings the doorbell, and Monica opens the door without hesitation and finds he’s standing on the front step with his arms crossed over his chest, unsmiling and unemotional.

“Upstairs,” Monica mutters.

Rob brushes past her and walks down the hallway, up the stairs; Monica can hear him knocking on the bedroom door, telling Brad to let him in. He raises his voice and uses threats and insults, and Monica sighs as the door finally opens and closes and she can’t hear Rob’s voice anymore.

She wanders into the kitchen, opens the refrigerator door and snatches a can of soda. Making her way to the kitchen table, she thinks that Rob knows more than he’s letting on, because Brad is practically broken, and Monica doesn’t know why. So she worries in silence.

And Monica’s frightened and she wants comfort, but there’s no one here to comfort her.

Two hours later, Rob steps into the kitchen with that hard, emotionless look on his face and Monica looks up from her flat soda and doesn’t bother to ask, because she knows Brad is messed up and she doesn’t need to hear it from Rob.

The kitchen is silent; Rob’s eyes soften the tiniest bit, almost imperceptibly, and he says, “He’s asleep.”

Monica nods and looks down at her soda again, and Rob mutters something about grocery shopping and leaves. The front door opens and it closes, and Monica’s alone again. Upstairs, Brad’s sleeping off his high and Monica shouldn’t feel so lonely, but she does. She can’t help it.

And she wishes Rob had stayed.

-

Monica sits in front of the television with a book open on her lap and a cup of hot chocolate on the coffee table in front of her. The VMAs are big and they’re important, but Monica feels just a little left out because Brad told her to stay home. He didn’t want her there. Monica didn’t want to go, but she always thought it was her duty to accompany her husband to big parties and important awards shows.

Now she knows better.

She feels stupid and unimportant, and when she catches a glimpse of Brad and Chester and Talinda before the awards show begins, she cringes at Brad’s awful pink sunglasses and fights down a bit of hysterical laughter.

Monica wonders if Brad is fucking Chester; she thinks about it, cries about it and finally decides that it can’t be Chester because Talinda is standing there and she looks incredibly happy. Then, Monica wonders if Brad was snorting lines before the show, and maybe that’s the reason for the terrible sunglasses.

She doesn’t know, anymore. She calls Rob, because she can’t bear to be alone.

When Rob knocks on the door and Monica lets him in, it’s all silence and terrible discomfort. She looks up at him and thinks that Rob would know who Brad is fucking behind her back.

She doesn’t ask him.

Instead, she ends up in the bed upstairs and Rob is fucking her, and when he kisses her she tastes Brad and feels nothing but guilt and unbearable sadness. Afterward, as he spoons her from behind and wraps long arms around her waist, she closes her eyes and imagines the God-awful sunglasses, and she tries to hold onto Brad.

But she can’t, because he’s already slipping away.

-

Two weeks later, Brad is finally home. Things are good for a little while; Brad kisses Monica and holds her hand and they go out to expensive restaurants and Brad doesn’t snort anything.

Still, Monica knows it will never last, and five days after Brad came home, he’s locked himself in the upstairs bedroom, and no amount of pleading from Monica or Rob will bring him out of hiding. They stand in front of the door, their shoulders pushed together so intimately that Monica doesn’t protest when Rob kisses her. They end up in the guest bedroom downstairs and she lets Rob fuck her again.

Brad’s upstairs, right above their heads the entire time.

This time, when it’s over and done with, Rob kisses her and gets up to find his clothes and Monica watches him in aching silence. She thinks of Brad and she thinks of Rob, and she wishes Brad would stop playing his mind games and save her from this indecision, because Rob pulls his T-shirt over his head and Monica wants him all over again…

Rob goes back upstairs and Monica stuffs her face into a pillow and finds that she doesn’t have the strength to cry.

When Rob finally makes his way down the stairs an hour later, Monica is making coffee in the kitchen. She turns as he steps through the doorway; her hands are shakier than they should be. She lifts a coffee mug in salute and Rob nods and sits down at one end of the kitchen table, and Monica pours him a cup despite the trembling in her fingers.

There’s silence. Monica slumps heavily into a chair across the table and stares into the black depths of her coffee. Rob only sips his coffee and fixes a thoughtful gaze on Monica, and then he says, “I’m sorry.”

Monica’s confused.

“For what?” she asks. The coffee’s tepid; she grimaces as she takes a sip and the drink slides down her throat and leaves a heavy bitterness in its wake.

“For Brad,” Rob says in response. “I’m sorry.”

Monica contemplates those words with another sip of lukewarm coffee and an imperceptible grimace of frustration. She swallows and quietly studies the wedding band on her left hand, and Rob is silent. Monica wonders if Brad will wake up any time soon; she knows it isn’t likely, but she still hopes.

But it seems that even hope is failing her.

-

Monica comes home one day to find Rob’s car parked in the driveway, and she parks in the street and drags her grocery bags up the front walkway with a burst of superhuman strength. By the time she unlocks the door and pushes her way inside, her senses are on overload and her hands are shaking and she forgets to breathe.

She smells something. Something that shouldn’t be hanging in the air of the empty house, but she can smell it nonetheless and she can feel the last threads of her sanity slipping away.

Shuffling into the kitchen, she drops the bags onto the kitchen table and walks quietly down the hallway and stops at the foot of the staircase. The silence pushes at her left temple; she feels the inevitable headache creeping up the back of her neck and she rubs gingerly at her forehead as she begins to climb the stairs.

The bedroom door is ajar. It’s open and laughing at her and Monica pushes it with the tips of her fingers and presses one shoulder against the wall, and when she peers around the corner, her stomach drops and her blood seems to freeze because Brad is pressed up against the wall and Rob is fucking him from behind.

Brad is gasping and panting and Rob is kissing the back of his neck, and Monica bites her lip as Brad stiffens and then he’s coming; Rob’s coming too and he’s sobbing out Brad’s name, and now…

Now she knows.

Monica closes her eyes and backs away, and she turns and silently descends the staircase. She’s blank and she’s numb, and she wonders whether it should hurt more or less than it does now.

Ten minutes later, Rob is standing in the kitchen doorway and his face is so white and so pale that Monica thinks he might suddenly pass out. He doesn’t. He merely walks to the table and sits down in one of the chairs, and Monica stares at him for a long moment before she murmurs, “Coffee?”

After a tense moment, he says, “Please.”

And she gets up to make some.

-

Two weeks later, Rob comes over in the middle of the day and says he needs to speak to Brad.

Monica doesn’t protest. She tells him Brad is upstairs and he hasn’t come down all morning. He won’t speak and he won’t eat and she’s beginning to wonder if Brad will ever be alright again. She doesn’t know if he’ll ever be alright; she isn’t sure that she wants to know because she’s afraid and she’s lonely.

Rob nods, crosses the kitchen and disappears down the hallway.

The house is silent. Monica wanders down the hallway and climbs the stairs, half expecting the bedroom door to be closed and the sounds of voices to be drifting down the hallway, but there’s nothing.

There’s only silence.

She steps into the room and finds Rob standing in the doorway of the master bathroom, and if she wasn’t afraid before, she’s certainly frightened now. He doesn’t turn and he doesn’t speak. Monica’s eyes burn with tears because suddenly she knows. She knows what he’s found.

“No,” she says loudly.

Rob doesn’t speak. He doesn’t blink.

“No,” Monica repeats, and her voice is high pitched and scratchy, and Rob still doesn’t say anything. Monica doesn’t want to look. She can’t look, but she does and finds that Brad is lying in the bathtub and there’s blood all over the bathroom sink and the tiles on the floor and the shower curtain. It’s everywhere.

And Monica feels sick.

She cries. Big gulping, gasping sobs tear at her throat and she claws wildly at Rob’s arm when he reaches out and wraps his fingers around her wrist. She feels trapped and she feels betrayed because Brad’s left her alone. She tries to twist away from Rob, but he pulls her away from the bathroom and pushes her into the wall.

“Don’t touch me,” she sobs. “Don’t you fucking touch me!”

But he touches her face and he kisses her, and Monica cries and when the darkness pulls at the corners of her vision, she succumbs to the blackness without a fight. She’s numb and she’s broken, and Rob is crying and he’s kissing her…

And her last conscious thought is that Rob tastes like Brad.

-

Remember when we were all so beautiful?

Never again, never again…

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Fin