Louis was a fool. Clearly, he'd been too sleep-deprived to make important decisions, but it was too late to un-make them now, so he was stuck with the looming presence of the talk. The talk that he, in his infinite wisdom, had requested.

He almost wished that David had taken a cab last night just to put off the inevitable for a little longer. Maybe he'd forgotten about it. Maybe they could just pretend that Louis hadn't brought it up. Louis felt like his organs had turned to lead as he stood at the end of the driveway waiting for David.

When he heard the near silent purr of his car, he glanced up from his phone, but couldn't see David's expression through the glare on the windshield from the street lamp. He stepped back as David pulled the car into the drive and climbed out.

He wanted to smile and pretend that he hadn't put the nails in the coffin of their relationship himself, but his mouth wasn't cooperating so he just nodded.

"Good morning," Louis said, his voice too rough even for this early in the morning.

"G'morning," David said, giving him a small smile that wasn't all there.

David switched sides of the car to climb into the passenger's seat and Louis got behind the wheel. The silence was deafening as he backed out of the driveway, but before he could flip on the radio just to distract himself from the tension, David cleared his throat.

With an ominous clarity, Louis saw exactly how the rest of the drive would pan out.

“I thought about what you said," David started.

"About what I said?" Louis asked slowly, his stomach tying itself into knots as he thought about the letter tucked into the front of David's notebook, sticking out a good half-inch so it couldn't be missed. He almost hoped David hadn't read it, that things could just keep going on as they had been. Louis stole a glance at David, but his face was oddly expressionless as looked straight ahead out the windshield.

"Yeah. About my notebook and about what was in my notebook. And everything else, too. Everything between us. I mean, I thought a lot. I basically spent the entire night thinking about it all," David admitted.

So he had seen the letter. Louis's hands tightened on the steering wheel, heart speeding until he thought he might be having a minor panic attack. That expression didn't seem promising. Louis forced himself to take deep, even breaths.

“There’s a lot, isn’t there?” Louis said slowly.

He hadn't stopped thinking either. About Rosemarie, about David, about Night Mist and Weldstone Harbor, and about everything else.

He thought himself in circles, certain that if he just processed it a little more, he could start untangling it and finding some way forward that didn't hurt to consider.

"There's a bit," David said slowly. He was quiet for a moment and Louis wondered if he was waiting for him to make some sort of argument or statement. But he didn't know what else to say. He had nothing else to give except what he'd lain out in his letter. The rest was David's to decide.

"What—" Louis cleared his throat, and tried again. "What did you decide?"

“I'm sorry, Louis. I think I need some time,” David said, his voice soft. “You're important to me, but we don't want the same things, do we? I don't know if what I feel for you is enough to change everything else. It’s too much, too fast, or something.”

That hurt more than Louis had expected. Too much and not enough all at once. And still David sounded like he wasn't sure about it. It was selfish, but Louis wanted more. He felt a little resentful, even, that David didn't feel what he did. That David didn't love him.

It wasn't fair, but Louis didn't want to take a step back or to give David time or space. He didn't need it. Everything that Louis had was already David's.

Including this choice.

Louis swallowed, forcing down the emotion before he spoke.

“You want to break up,” Louis said.

David flinched hard enough that Louis saw it even as he refused to look over at him. Louis couldn’t find it in himself to spare him that, though. That was what he was asking for.

“You said from the beginning that this was only casual, experimenting,” David snapped.

It was Louis's turn to flinch, though he thought he hid it well. That was true. He had said something like that. At the time, he’d even believed it.

“I did,” Louis forced himself to say. “Nothing will change. I just wanted to be clear.”

“Good,” David said, though Louis knew it was obvious to both of them that that was a lie. Everything had already changed. They would try to repair this, build it up from the ground, but it was too late to go back to where they started.

David was silent for a long moment. Louis couldn’t bring himself to look at him. If he did, he thought he might park the car and do something stupid like beg for him to reconsider or tell him that they could figure it all out.

But that wouldn't be fair.

"All right," Louis said, nodding as though that was the end of it.

And it was. It was what he expected, but he still wished...

No. It was too late for that. It seemed like whatever was between them was too much and not enough. At this point, Louis just hoped that they could retain their friendship.

David hadn't brought up anything in the letter, positive or negative, so, with luck, time would allow them both to sweep it under the rug.

Right now, though, Louis just needed a moment to feel dead inside.

Rosemarie would have scolded him for being dramatic, but it felt true enough. He didn't feel very alive just then. Or maybe he felt too alive. It was like the little bits of him that had been fracturing since the beginning of the year had finally shattered, short circuiting everything into a steady numbness.

*****

David mostly avoided Louis for the rest of the day and ignored him when he couldn't avoid him.

You want to break up.

No, actually, David did not want that.

But apparently David's worries had been right.

Louis wanted to break things off, write their relationship off as failed experiment. For his part, David had hoped that they could talk about it for more than five minutes, at least. Discuss their plans for the future and what might come, but five minutes had really been all it took for Louis. Maybe he was just more rational. He'd probably already gone through all the pros and cons and decided that this was the only way forward.

Not that David had come up with any alternatives himself.

Still, it felt like it should have been worth more than a single sentence.

That was the part that really stung. David had probably overestimated Louis's attachment, maybe even their relationship in general, but he'd expected Louis to feel something. He was pretty sure his hurt was written clearly across his own face.

Hence the avoidance.

But he also needed to talk about it with someone, even if it wasn't with Louis. He didn't think he could get over the strangling knot in his stomach or the inkling of resentment without it. He needed to talk to Jennifer. Maybe he could drag her out for a drink after work. She could listen to his pros and cons—which were pretty simple. Pros: I love him. Cons: The universe is conspiring against us.—then tell him to give it up.

He should remember his time with a movie star as a beautiful dream to look back on fondly and a story to tell his grandchildren.

Except, David was having a hard time imagining a future—much less grandchildren—that wasn't Louis's as much as it was his, which was absurd. They had never even talked about moving in together let alone kids. David's what-ifs were spiraling into delusion. Besides, it was too late to wonder about any of that now.

At least they were still friends. Louis had promised that nothing would change. David was less sure, but even if they had to start over from square one, David wasn't ready to let go of him entirely.

In the name of everything being most assuredly Fine, David sent Louis a quick text sharing a silly dog picture, then told him that they should practice their lines over lunch tomorrow. He congratulated himself on constructing a message that was both friendly and professional and didn’t leave any room to be misconstrued as David trying to pull Louis back into a relationship he didn’t want to be in. It was friendly. Safe. A good place to start.

Pressing send was physically painful.

"David," whispered an ominous voice from right behind his shoulder. David nearly jumped out of his skin as he whipped around, stuffing his phone in his pocket.

"Jennifer, you scared the crap out of me," he said, putting a hand over his thundering heart.

“I know this is not our MO," she said without preamble, "but right now, I need a stiff drink, and you’re the only person here who can drink me under the table.”

“Sorry, what?” David asked, staring wide-eyed at the alien who had clearly possessed Jennifer’s body. They hadn’t been out drinking since college. Mostly because they both turned into total freak shows when they got drunk and Jennifer had an image to maintain.

“I said, we are going to drink and I am going to spend the evening complaining to you, so whatever drama has you spacing out is going to have to wait for tomorrow,” she said with an icy glare.

David nodded—there was really nothing else to do—and followed her to her car without a word.

Their drinking didn’t end up being nearly as prolific as it had been in college since one or the other of them was going to have to drive them back. David played the DD this time and abstained, sipping a grapefruit soda as Jennifer made her way through what must have been half a bottle of vodka.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” David asked after a while.

Jennifer glowered at him, her cheeks flushed with the alcohol, though she had yet to start dancing on the bar, which David took as a good sign.

“You were right,” Jennifer said, her tone deceptively even. David might not have known she was drunk if she hadn’t started by almost complimenting him.

“I was right about what?”

“Nabila,” she said, pointing an accusing finger at him.

David held up his hands in surrender, though he wasn’t sure why he was surrendering yet.

“Sorry, still not following. Is something happening at work?”

“No!” Jennifer practically shouted. “No, it’s not at work. It’s outside of work that there’s a problem.”

David tried to think of anything over the past couple months that might have gone wrong with Nabila, but couldn’t come up with anything. He realized, rather guiltily, that he had actually not seen much of Jennifer since he and Louis got together. David was a terrible friend.

“I’m in love with her,” Jennifer mumbled.

David’s eyes went wide and he choked on his mouthful of soda. “Well, isn’t that a good thing?”

“She turned me down.”

“Oh... shit,” David said, because what else was there to say, really?

“Yeah. Shit,” Jennifer agreed, resting her chin on a hand.

David bumped her knee with his under the table. “I guess a well-deserved night of drinking is in order, then,” he said, flagging down a waiter for another round.

"Here's to drowning your heartache in poor choices," David said, raising his bottle towards her with false cheer.

Jennifer snorted, clinking her drink against his bottle and downing it in one go.

*****

It was far too late to be up on a work night by the time David managed to cart a half-asleep Jennifer back to her car. She was wearing his sweater so that, if she threw up, it was mostly on his things and not hers. He was a gentleman like that.

A soft chime had David pulling out his phone even as he tried to squish his legs into a seat adjusted for someone with much, much shorter legs. By the time he found the lever to adjust his seat, he'd deciphered that the text was from Rosemarie.

David frowned, taking a moment to read it as Jennifer slouched in her seat, bunching up the neck of David's sweater to act as a pillow.

I assume Louis is with you. Will you tell him to turn on his phone?

David read it again, but the words didn't change. His heart kicked up. It wasn’t like Louis not to answer his phone. It was even less like Louis not to answer his phone when Rosemarie was trying to get in touch with him. Had something happened?

“Sorry, I need to answer this before we go,” David said to Jennifer who just grumbled something half-heartedly and twisted her feet up onto the seat to curl against the seatbelt like a child.

David stepped out of the car, putting the keys in his pocket and dialed Rosemarie's number. She picked up on the first ring.

“David,” she said, her tone irritated, “can I talk to Louis?”

“That’s why I called,” David admitted. “I haven’t seen Louis since we got off work. Did something happen? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said, though her tone had turned from irritated to worried.

David was a little worried, too. "You can't get ahold of him?”

"No," she said. "His phone is going straight to voicemail. I'm not sure if he's ignoring me or if his phone is off. He didn't mention any plans to you, did he?"

"He didn't," David said, trying to recall every word they'd said to one another that day.

"I'm sure it's nothing," she said, though David could hear the mirror of David's own worry in her tone. It was late. What on earth could Louis be doing at this hour? Especially with his phone off.

David bit his lip. “I can try giving him a call,” he said hesitantly.

If he wasn't answering Rosemarie's calls, David doubted Louis would answer his, but he wasn't about to explain all of that to Rosemarie right now. For his own part, he needed to make sure that Louis was all right.

“I’d appreciate that. If you get ahold of him, can you tell him to call me back?”

“Yeah, of course,” David said.

David hung up then immediately pulled up Louis's contact.

The phone rang, then went to voicemail. David called again, just to make sure, but with the same result.

A voice in the back of his head starting running through scenarios, wondering if Louis had died in a traffic accident or been kidnapped by a psychotic Starfly fan. He forced himself to calm down. That was unlikely. Someone would have called Rosemarie if he'd been in an accident. And he probably hadn't been kidnapped.

David tried the phone again.

Heaving a frustrated sigh, David forced his thoughts from what ifs and pulled up their text log instead, shooting off a quick Where are you? Rosemarie is looking for you, then sending a follow-up text to Rosemarie before returning his phone to his pocket.

He needed to get Jennifer home. If Louis hadn't shown up by the time he was done, he would... well, he wasn't going to think about that. Louis would turn up. He was probably just running errands. Or had a meeting he forgot to tell Rosemarie about.

*****

Louis had no destination in mind, but as soon as he'd climbed into his car after work, he'd known he wasn't ready to go home. The car still smelled faintly of David's aftershave, and he had the consuming need to get away from here. From his thoughts and from all the memories, good and bad.

He needed to find somewhere neutral.

For the first time in his life, Louis thought he understand the appeal of the oblivion of drink. Not that he would do that to Rosemarie. She had enough to worry about as it was, but he felt the urge just so that things would stop for a while. And that thought was terrifying.

So, instead, he drove.

He drove all the way to the city, then farther.

David texted him a couple times after work. The first was an image of a dog and something inane about lines. Louis couldn't bring himself to look at the rest of them, so he turned his phone off.

He needed to think. Or not to think.

The sky gradually darkened, but he kept driving, letting the passing lights and hum of the road numb out the loops playing in his mind.

The gas light blinked on and Louis pulled off at a truck stop to fill the tank.

He inhaled the scent of mountain air and gasoline, the scent grounding him enough to recognize that he needed to turn back now. If he didn't, he wasn't sure he ever would.

The impulse was there again, to do something destructive, just to force the turmoil inside of him outside instead. But he'd already missed dinner with Rosemarie. And he had work tomorrow.

She'd probably be asleep by now. He wondered briefly why she hadn't called, but decided she must have turned in early. Another part of him whispered with what-ifs, but he forced them down.

That cemented his resolve, though, and, when he pulled back onto the road, it was to head back to Midtown.

The drive back seemed far too short. It was like all of the air was being sucked out of Louis lungs as he neared the house. Everything about this place felt claustrophobic and oppressive. And, now, even the thought of David weighted him with dread.

This life was a double edged sword. When he left, he could continue with his life and goals in a place that didn't feel like a dead end, but when he did, it would the definitive loss of everyone he loved.

Louis pulled the car into the garage and shut it off, sitting there for a long while trying to collect himself. He wasn’t hungry, but he went upstairs anyway, just in case Rosemarie left anything out that needed to be put away.

“Lou!” Rosemarie practically shouted when he finally wandered into the house. She was sitting on the couch, curled up beneath a blanket. When she saw him, her hand flew to her heart and she let out a harsh breath.

"What?" Louis asked, alarmed as he rushed over to her side. "Are you all right?"

“Am I all right?" her tone had turned practically irate in that way that made Louis feel like he was a ten-year-old again. "Jesus, Louis, you scared me. Where have you been? I’ve been calling you for three hours! Three hours! I called David and he said he hadn’t seen you since you got off work.”

Louis's stomach clenched at the name. His drive was not nearly long enough.

“Sorry,” Louis said, raising his hands. “I lost track of time. I just went... nowhere really. I was just driving.”

“Don’t do that to me, Louis,” she said, pinching her forehead. “You didn’t even text me to say you wouldn’t be home for dinner.”

Louis pulled his phone out of his pocket and cursed at himself. He never left his phone off. What was wrong with him? What if something had happened and she couldn't get ahold of him? “I forgot my phone was off. Sorry.”

She let out a long breath as he sat down beside her. "It's not like you to be out so late on a work night."

It was telling that she didn’t even get up off the couch. Louis guiltily turned his phone back on only to receive about fifty notifications, both texts and calls, spanning the last several hours.

“Sorry,” he said again, leaning in to wrap an arm around her shoulders. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“Just don’t do it again,” she said, reaching up to squeeze his hand. “You haven’t done that to me since you were sixteen. I thought you were dead.”

Part of him wanted to say, ‘Well, you’d have seen me on the other side, in that case,’ but he couldn’t quite joke about it with her looking like she did. Her skin was waxy and pale, dripping off her bones like a candle in too much sunlight.

“And let David know you’re all right,” she said. “I think I worried him.”

Louis looked at his phone and saw several messages from David, each one growing increasingly more panicked and his guilt increased, even as he was a little pleased that David cared that much.

A new one popped up with, Jesus Christ, Louis, I swear to God, if you don’t answer this, I’m filing a missing person's report and then stealing Jennifer’s car to come look for you.

Louis shot back a, Sorry, phone died. I’m fine, before shutting it off again.

Yes, he was a coward. And Rosemarie noticed it, giving him an odd look.

“What was that? Did you two have a fight?”

Louis considered the question. Was it a fight? There were no raised voices, no pointing fingers, no fault on either side, really. A little coldness, perhaps, and he thought they'd both been avoiding each other over the course of the day, but nothing so... pronounced as a fight. Maybe it would have been better if they had. It might have felt more like a resolution that way.

“No,” he said slowly.

Rosemarie’s brow creased in the middle. “Why your drive, then? What was so important you were missing for nearly five hours with your phone off?”

“I just needed to think,” Louis said.

“About?” Rosemarie’s hand came to rest on Louis's back, rubbing slow circles.

“About...” Louis tried to think of an appropriate answer, or at least one that he could put into words, before settling on an honest but vague, “everything.”

Rosemarie made a soft humming noise and her hand paused.

“I’m dying, Lou,” she said. Louis tensed, but her hand started moving again, soothing him into compliance, even though he wished with everything that he was that she would stop bringing that up. “I’ve come to terms with it, you know? There are things that I wish I had done. Or things that I wish I'd done differently. But as it gets closer, Louis, the only thing I regret is leaving you."

Louis's jaw clenched and he swallowed, steadying himself. “You could always burn me with you like the Vikings did with their most precious possessions,” Louis said, only half joking.

“Louis,” she scolded. Her hand moved up his back to play with his hair as she watched him.

“Sorry, you were saying?” Louis said when her attention became too much.

“I'm just saying that I love you more than anything,” Rosemarie said, her voice cracking. “I wish I could have seen you grow up. That’s one of the worst things, Louis. I wish that I could have seen you get married and have a family. I wanted to be a part of that, too.”

Louis opened his mouth to tell her that marriage and kids weren’t in the cards, at least not how she imagined it, but she shushed him before he could speak.

“Then I realized that what I really wanted was for you not to be alone. For you to be happy,” she said. “Maybe things didn’t happen quite how I had wanted them to, but that’s my fault, not yours.”

“If you’re implying that you raised me gay—”

“Louis, stop being difficult and listen,” Rosemarie said, giving his hair a sharp tug. Louis glowered at her half-heartedly. “I’m saying that I’m sorry.”

“I don't understand,” Louis said.

“I’m sorry for not accepting who you are,” she said. Her tone had gone soft, and there was an edge to it that was almost close to tears. "I'm sorry for not giving you what you needed from me."

Louis looked over at her, feeling the world sliding out from under him.

“It’s taken me this long to realize that you were happy,” she said, a tear actually trickling from the corner of her eye. “It’s taken me this long to realize that I’ve stood in the way of that happiness since you were a little boy and..." her voice broke and it was a moment before she could speak again. "And, for that, I am so incredibly sorry. I know that it's too late to make up for it now, but I want you to be happy, Louis.”

“Don’t,” Louis rasped, feeling the tears trying to break free from his eyes, too. “Don’t say that now.”

“Louis, I am so proud of you. I love you more than anything in the world, and I love whoever loves you,” she said. “I love whoever is good to you and makes you happy. That’s all I want for you, Lou. I want you to be happy. It shouldn't have taken me so long to recognize that everything that I wanted for you was already right there. I am glad that you found him, Lou.”

Louis squeezed his eyes shut, elbows coming to rest on his knees. What he would have given to hear this all his life, to hear that she loved him anyway, that she wanted him to be happy, and she didn’t mind if that happiness came from another man. But now it was like rubbing salt in a wound.

“I’m sorry, Lou,” she said. “I hope, someday, you can forgive me.”

“Thank you for saying that," Louis said, fighting to keep his tone even. "And I don’t think there’s anything I can’t forgive you. It’s fine. It'll be fine."

"Louis..."

Louis shook his head, swallowing until he found his voice again. "It means a lot to me to hear you say that. But... about David. It doesn't matter anymore. We broke up this morning."

Rosemarie was quiet for a long moment and Louis chanced a glance over at her. Her expression was one of something almost like the grief Louis felt and it made his own throat constrict.

“Oh,” Rosemarie said, a hand stroking his hair. “Oh, Lou.”

Louis squeezed his eyes shut, but the tears escaped anyway. Rosemarie pulled him against her and he tucked his face into her neck like he used to when he was a child and cried. She continued stroking his back and hair, murmuring soothing words about how it was going to be okay.

“It’s not, though,” Louis said. “You know it’s not.”

“Shhh,” was all she said.