Chapter Text
The smell of liquor mixed with cheap cigarettes filled the air as (Y/N) watched the digital ball spiral around the board before her once more. All around were people--moving, talking, leaning against walls, pacing hurriedly past her, sitting too close, slurring their words, laughing with friends...living. Of the years (Y/N) had been coming to Las Vegas as a sort of annual tradition, she never came to gamble; she came to see the people, because even it's for the smallest of moments, on October 23rd, she needed to be distracted from her own life.
For nine years on October 22nd and 23rd, (Y/N) would make the trip to Vegas on her own, sit in casinos alone, play roulette, and think about the countless possible outcomes her life could have taken if only she could have changed something that happened ten years ago. So far, this year was much like every other: people continued living around her while a part of herself died over and over each year she came to this forsaken city of sin.
Absentmindedly, she placed a small bet on red-even, and sighed as she watched the digital ball spin around yet again. How many times? she thought to herself as her eyes trailed the ball. How many times will I come here? How many times can I stand to watch this ball go round and round throughout the years? The agony over her regret wasn't something she felt she could ever let go of despite how desperately she knew she needed to. Just as the ball earned her an extra two dollars of wealth, (Y/N) noticed a woman wearing next to nothing walk up to her and place a drink beside her arm without making eye contact. The icy green liquid surrounded a bright red maraschino cherry, and she wondered why her favorite drink was sitting before her. If she ever decided to drink on one of her Vegas trips, it was normally a sad drink like wine. It's not uncommon for people to turn their sorrows into vices, but she didn't want to ever be the woman crying over a vodka cranberry or a piña colada. If she let a tear slide over a Riesling, blush, or merlot, that was a different story. In this case, she didn't want to ruin the pleasant memories she had while drinking apple martinis with the sorrow she had in her heart that seemed to grow exponentially on these two days of the years.
"Excuse me," she called out just before the woman was too far away to regain her attention. "I didn't order this," (Y/N) explained once her eyes met those of the waitress.
"From the man at the bar," was the only response (Y/N) received before the woman sauntered away to attend to another patron. That sums it up, she thought to herself, as if there's not about fifty men at the bar. It wasn't that (Y/N) was interested in seeing who had bought her a drink, or even taking in the appearances of the men gathered at the bar not far behind her, rather the curiosity as to how someone happened to pick that drink to send her. After exhaling a sharp breath, she allowed her head to swivel on her neck and she swiftly took one glance towards the bar. Unfortunately for her, that quick glance was all too much, since a pair of crystal blue eyes stared at her from beneath the scraggly bleach blonde hair that overlapped them. Even across the room his eyes were piercing, and she could feel her stomach convulse into angry knots.
Him? What is he doing here? After all these years, why now?
(Y/N) tried not to watch as the man slowly rose from the bar stool he'd been reclining in, and made his way towards her. She came here to be alone, that was always the plan, that's how it had always been, and now, after damn near ten years, he's here. As he closed the gap between himself and the woman he'd spotted, as if by fate, from across the room, he gazed hesitantly down over her. Nearly a decade had passed since he'd last seen her--at least in person--and she was still as beautiful as the last time he'd laid eyes on her.
"Can we talk?" his voice was soft and low as he tried not to draw the attention of passersby. (Y/N) bit her lip as her heart turned to lead and plummeted to her knees at how soothing she still found that voice to be. Feeling as if she had no other option but to agree, (Y/N) nodded, but she did all she could to keep her eyes from meeting those of the man she knew as Colson, but the world know as Machine Gun Kelly.
After she'd cashed out of the roulette game, she hopelessly followed him as he tried to find a private place in the middle of a casino in Las Vegas. She knew it was damn near impossible, but Colson had always been...well, Colson. If he was determined enough to do something, damn it he was going to. Today however, he decided not to be stubborn, and since he quickly noticed (Y/N) becoming impatient, he led her to a fountain outside of the casino and sat down on the edge without a word. (Y/N) placed herself beside him and stared at their shadows on the ground before them.
There had been so many times in her life that she'd stared at her and Colson's shadows as they stretched across the pavement because she'd been unable to look him in the eyes: in middle school just after he'd gotten into a fight to defend her about some stupid, inaccurate rumor and she felt ashamed, the summer before she started high school after moving to Cleveland when she learned Colson had also moved to Cleveland and was relieved to have a friend, in high school after him and his girlfriend were arguing over something stupid and (Y/N) had to hold her tongue about the feelings she had for him creeping into her chest, and the day she told him she was pregnant.
Long moments of silence passed without anything more than each of them occasionally raising their drinks to their lips and scanning the crowd around them. Neither of the pair could stand to look the other in the eye. It was too painful for either of them to see the other without thinking of the countless possibilities and outcomes that had plagued each of their minds for the past nine years.
"So, how have you been?" he asked in a voice so small compared to how big he had become.
"Fine," (Y/N) responded in just as soft of a tone as Colson's. "You seemed to have accomplished everything you used to dream about," she said as a way to try and break through the tension that surrounded them.
"Yeah," Colson sighed as he gave in and allowed himself to sneak a glimpse of her profile, "almost everything." Another long silence passed where the pair that had once been inseparable struggled to exist around each another. He would stare at his drink and she would look to the shadows, each subconsciously drawing themselves to their individual flavors darkness that swallowed them the moment they left the other's life; yet they each held their breath in hips that the other would speak again.
A steady stream of air escaped Colson's lips as he tried to bring about the courage to say the word's he'd been dying to relay to (Y/N) had he ever been blessed with the chance to meet her again. Unfortunately, she found courage before he did.
"What are you doing here, Col?" The words she felt as if she'd been choking on for the past ten minutes had finally escaped her mouth. She could tell her voice was hurt, and she didn't intend on hiding any of that pain. In fact, hearing the weakness in her tone sent a lump into Colson's throat, and he quickly brought his eyes to look at her. She'd always been strong; it was something he loved about her, but after the past nine years of thinking, he'd realized it was something he'd taken advantage of. Just because she was strong didn't mean she couldn't be vulnerable, but it was in her moments of vulnerability that Colson could feel his heart break. As his eyes fell over (Y/N), he couldn't help but ache. She sat beside him, slumped over, her back completely curved with no posture to her other than the obvious desire to crumble into a fetal position.
"I- uh, I was going to come next year, but I know I'm not going to be in the States then, so I came on the nine year anniversary instead of the tenth." Softly, his fingertips found her arm and he gently traced his fingers along her skin. (Y/N) swallowed her pain with a gulp of her martini and pulled back her tears.
"I didn't realize you were that sentimental." The words nearly fell from her lips in a hiss hat it not been for them getting caught in her throat.
"(Y/N), I-"
"I have been here every year, Colson," she sighed heavily as she turned her head and body to face him completely. "Where were you? LA? New York? Half-way across the world? You know, there was a time that you made it seem like you wanted me to be there, and then the second things changed, you were gone!" The tears she'd desperately tried to keep from spilling began to fall slowly from her eyes and crated agonizing streaks of sorrow for him to look at.
"I wanted it more than anything else!" Colson's restraint snapped as he took (Y/N)'s face in his hands and wiped away her tears with his thumbs. "I wanted that child, (Y/N). I wanted to have you and our baby--I wanted our family! When we lost him, I just, I didn't know what to do or how to react. I felt you pushing me further and further away every day and I didn't know what to do."
"So you drove to LA and became someone else?" (Y/N) asked with an emptiness in her voice that he hadn't heard since she repeatedly told him "I'm fine," every time he asked about her mental state after losing their son.
"I asked you to come with me! I told you we could start over, we could try again if that's what we wanted!"
"I was nineteen, Colson."
"So are you saying you wouldn't have wanted to have a child?" (Y/N) could feel Colson's walls rising as he misinterpreted her words as rejection. "You wanted him when it was an accident," he immediately tried to counter, "what would have been different?"
"Nothing!" (Y/N) snapped as she brought herself to look into his eyes for the first time since she saw him at the bar. "Don't you see that I have no idea that anything would have happened differently? I had just, suddenly, became inhospitable for our unborn son. Who was I to think that any other child we could conceive would be different?" Her words were firm and felt louder than they were as they left her body. (Y/N) shook as the fear she'd held onto for nine years escaped her lips. The truth that hung from the strands of sentences she'd blurted out were difficult for Colson to grasp, but he did his damnedest to try to hold onto each syllable that came from her mouth, each momentary glance she would give him, and every detail of her face he could gather. "I just needed you. I need you, Col, not to move or start over or become something we weren't. I just needed you to tell me it wasn't my fault, that I didn't fuck everything up, that it wasn't because of me that our son was dead, that I wasn't the reason we left one another's lives, but you were gone."
Colson tried to stretch his fingers down (Y/N)'s arm and take her hand in his, but he could feel her muscles tense beneath her skin, so he stopped and lightly laid his hand on her forearm. "(Y/N), I never wanted to make you feel like-"
"Look, it's been almost ten years since we've seen each other. You don't have to do or say anything because you saw me here today. Honestly, sometime I think that after everything we shared together--the loneliness, our friendship, our relationship, all of it--it doesn't matter, because in the end...the way it ended...it was as if nothing happened."
"(Y/N), please don't say that." Colson's voice was weak--hardly a whisper drifting through the small space that separated them--and he knew her eyes wouldn't meet his again. He wanted to stand up and wrap his arms around her, to pull her into his chest and keep her from walking away, but he didn't know what he could say, or if there was anything he could say to keep her with him.
"Thanks for the drink, Colson," (Y/N) sighed as she walked away from the man she once loved--the man she, on some level, will always love--and down the Las Vegas Strip. Colson's eyes helplessly followed as (Y/N) as she slowly disappeared from his sight until she became just another figure hidden among the sea of people before him. The moment he'd lost sight of her gait amongst the crowd, he ducked his head into his hands, and watched his tears begin to soak the pavement below him.