Swallow

His lover left him. He hadn't been surprised. He'd been cold lately. He couldn't find the energy smile at her. He had loved her, yes, but he couldn't...

{Swallow} He couldn't do anything, really. He tried to get up and greet the sun in the morning, but he couldn't do that. He tried to smile at her over the paper in the mornings as he flipped through the obituaries, but he couldn't do that. He tried to whistle a little on his way to work, but he couldn't do that. He tried to make love to her when he got home, but he usually wound up leaving the house and crying in the cemetery. He knew he needed to change, that he was slowly killing not only his lover, but himself as well. The constant pushing away, the icy glares. She cried in the shower, he knew. She thought he couldn't hear her, but he couldn't NOT hear those wrenching sobs. He didn't want to hurt her, and knowing he was doing just that made him even more distant. He didn't want to cause her pain. He tried talking to her and changing, but he couldn't do that.

He could do one thing only. He could swallow.

He'd become great at swallowing the pain. It was a fairly common occurrence, really. He would just blink a little, so the tears collecting in his brown eyes wouldn't pool over like he knew they wanted to. Then he'd take a deep, diaphragm-stretching breath, pulling more air into his lungs than he'd ever thought possible. Then he'd expel the breath, pursing his lips as the air was slowly pushed out until there was no air left in his lungs. One normal breath in, and then the swallow. Truth was, most of the time he felt truly nauseated, but when he swallowed, he could get rid of the feeling for a few moments. The pain he felt...pure, raw, knifing pain...it caused nausea. He wanted to vomit so much...but it wouldn't come. So he swallowed.

More than the saliva, he swallowed the pain, the uncertainty, the hurt, the guilt, all of it. He swallowed it all, deep into his nauseated belly, where his digestive juices surely would eat away at it. Eat away at the pain, and it would magically disappear. But it wasn't working. Strange. But he kept trying it.

{Swallow}

What else could he do? If he didn't swallow, he couldn't speak. If he didn't swallow before trying to speak, the sound would come out garbled and cloaked in pain. Creaking and crackling, his sounds would betray the pain inside, which he was trying to swallow. The sound of that voice would nauseate him further, until he couldn't breathe, couldn't move, just stood there, frozen until the deep, earth-shattering despair started to change from a burning rage to a pained throbbing and eventually to a dulled, numbed ache. Then he could swallow.

{Swallow}

So his lover left him. She couldn't take the painful silence anymore. But he couldn't talk. She just didn't know how to swallow. If she knew how to swallow, she could have stayed with him, even though he was hurting her. Because she could have swallowed the hurt. And then he wouldn't be alone.

But maybe it was better. He didn't have to pretend anymore. He could just swallow and swallow and swallow. She wouldn't push him to let his feelings out, and she wouldn't beg him to just CRY dammit! He could just swallow.

What had she expected? That losing his best friend, watching her fall to her horrible, bone-crushing death wouldn't affect him? That he could just have a few days of grief and then be happy-go-lucky Xander again?

{Swallow}

That it didn't matter that she was gone, and wasn't coming back?

{Swallow}

That he couldn't help her?

{Swallow}