Whittle

Whittle: Adam is heartbroken, so he wants to break everything else.

Part one of the Much Ado About Everything Series. The one-shot that inspired the story, Synonym for Soulmate.

If you've seen the show Girls, obvious WARNINGS: Sexual content, lots of swearing, possible trigger warning: physical abuse (not a huge part of the story), self-destruction.

But also...growth, character development, healing, catharsis. All the good things! 

Adam Sackler liked to think he was good at a lot of things. Great, in fact! He was an excellent actor, by his own right. He had even written and directed his own 47-minute movie, which hadn't won any awards but that's just because of stupid fucking semantics. He figured he was just too advanced, too in touch with his own emotions for other people but that was neither here nor there. His brand of human wasn't for the meek, he knew that.

He could also whittle almost anything out of wood, including a boat that he had every intention of sailing down the Hudson once. Sure, the boat may be long gone now, destroyed in a fit of rage over fucking Hannah...but the dream lived on and he would start again. He would. He had the time now, even if he didn't have the right headspace at the moment.

He was also good at fitness, fucking, acting, caring about shit, being himself, and sports. Or at least he would be good at sports if he played them, but people who played most sports were self-absorbed and angry most of the time. Thinking about it now, though, Adam supposed he was angry a lot of the time too so maybe sports could be his thing if he actually gave a shit about them.

Case in point, Adam was good. Really good. At a lot.

Except for love.

Or maybe it was being in love that he was really shitty at, because he could definitely love. He loved a lot of things, or he was passionate about things at the very least. Sometimes that kind of overbearing passion and love for life really bit him in the ass, like when he let himself fall in love. That always ended in bullshit heartbreak and another hole in the wall of a destroyed apartment.

Like now, as he fought to catch his breath in the middle of all the broken furniture and piles of books, trash, and glass. Adam heaved forward, swiping his long hair off his sweaty forehead, and ripped off the shirt that had started to cling to his skin. He hadn't done it all in one day, destroyed virtually everything that he owned, but today had been really bad and he had finished what he had started over a week ago when she first left.

He had seen her. She had seen him too, and he had the startling revelation that she was never going to come back by the way she looked at him. Like, really looked at him and there were no tears, no pain left. No love. She had looked at him with resolve, and finality, her teeth clenched and her striking grey eyes set in stone.

His beautiful Nina...

It had fucking devastated him.

When Hannah had left him the first time, he thought he had known what shattering pain was. It had driven him mad. Madder he guessed than he already was, but still, he had become a fucking psycho like an idiot. Then he'd been passionate enough about their love to rescue her, and they'd lived blissfully unaware of their incompatibility for over a year. She was his first love, and for a while, he thought she'd be his only love. Then he realized how wrong that was when he was left feeling empty instead of fulfilled.

He'd left then, taking the blame when he moved out but it hadn't been him. Yeah, he'd left her physically, but she'd been gone long before he had made any decisions. See, Hannah was too analytical. She lived inside her own head and was detached about most things. She couldn't see anything further than a 3-foot radius and Adam lived a lot farther away than that. He lived in his body, a primal being that just lived in the moment and Hannah couldn't stop reaching for the future. When she had moved on to Grad school, he had been happy for her, but almost happier for himself. Their love was historic, but sometimes history needs to stay in the past.