Archive of Our Own ^beta

If laptops weren’t so damned expensive that they might as well be made of gold and diamonds with unicorn-hoof plating, Alfons would have thrown his at Al’s head about five minutes ago.  As it is, the stupid thing is sort of pinning him to the couch, which is the worst possible place on the planet Earth to be right about now.

“I mean,” Al is saying, swilling his mug of spearmint tea, the migrating steam of which is not having the intended calming effect on Alfons; “I know it’s illegal for me to touch him, and vice versa—which is completely ridiculous, for the record; how in the world is an arbitrary tally of days of existence supposed to function as a reliable gauge of maturity?—but… what if… you know.  We didn’t… quite.”

Alfons should not say anything.  Alfons should shut his damn mouth and pretend his ears have sealed up, because Miles is going to be done with the gig and texting him in just a couple minutes, and he really shouldn’t jeopardize his own mental health in the meantime.

He’s such an idiot.

“Are you talking about coating yourself in plastic wrap and then getting your hands all over him?” he asks, trying—and failing—to find a more comfortable angle for his cast-bound arm that keeps his fingers in typing range.  “Because first off, I think you’d suffocate; and second, I think it’s still freaking illegal.”

“I saw that on Pushing Daisies and thought about it for a moment,” Al says, entirely seriously, “but you’re right; I rejected it for those reasons.  And others.  Including the cost of brand-name Saran Wrap.  You wouldn’t want to risk the store-brand stuff for something that important.”  He clears his throat and then sips his tea.  “And that’s not what I’m talking about.”

Alfons does not want to know.  He does not want to know.  He already knows far too much; he already knows enough to haunt his nightmares for the next decade or two.  The mere abstract concept of Al—to put it delicately—getting jiggy with it and getting all over his surprisingly likable and dignified thirty-year-old stalkee-turned-unofficially-official-boyfriend is enough to turn Alfons’s stomach as it is.  The last thing he wants is details.

Well—the second-to-last thing he wants is details.  The last thing he wants is to walk in on that shit one of these days.

Jesus.  That doesn’t even bear thinking about.

“I mean,” Al is saying before Alfons can flee the premises and possibly the country, “is it technically still a violation of the age of consent laws if… you know.  We’re only touching ourselves, but in the same room?”

The sudden constricting heat rising in Alfons’s chest seems to be bile.  How curious.

“How the hell am I supposed to know?” he chokes out around it.  “I’m not a freakin’ lawyer, Al.”  And, frankly, if these are the kinds of questions they have to answer, he’ll die before he ever even considers becoming one.  “Why don’t you—I dunno—freakin’ Google it.  On private browsing.  So the FBI doesn’t come down on our heads next week, ’cause I really don’t have time for an inquest.”

It’s true.  Five classes, a job, a blog, and a boyfriend doesn’t exactly leave him with a whole lot of downtime for dodging the Feds.

“Don’t worry,” Al says, apparently not noticing how flipping ridiculous that sentence is in the context of this entire conversation.  Also, in the context of Alfons’s entire life, but that’s a different problem.  “I’m very familiar with the myriad benefits of covert internet research.”

“Thanks,” Alfons says.  “Now I’m definitely not worrying.”

Al sips his tea serenely.  Either he didn’t hear that, or he doesn’t especially care about Alfons’s blood pressure.  “The thing that’s unfair is that the letter of the law is always going to bring the axe down on him no matter how much of the fault should rightfully be mine.”

“That’s not unfair,” Alfons says.  “It’s for your protection.  He’s literally twice your age—I mean, yeah, maybe the cutoff seems sort of nit-picky when the difference is a matter of thirty days—”

“Twenty-eight,” Al mutters.  “And a third.”

“—but the line has to get drawn somewhere, and it’s there for your safety.  I think Roy understands that.”

Al manages to tear his eyes away from the surface of the tea long enough to frown at Alfons.  “You’re supposed to be helping me find a loophole.”

Alfons stares back.  “…I… am?”

“You are,” Al says.  “Because obviously Ed would castrate Roy if he even knew we were having this conversation, but you’re supposed to be the cool one and help me.”

“I’m cool,” Alfons says instantly.  “I’m super-cool.”

Oh, God.  Only the loser-est of losers have to say shit like that.  He’s doomed.

Even worse, Al knows it, too, judging by the slightly pitying look he shoots Alfons’s way.  “Well—anyway.”

Alfons is not going to help his underage cousin get illicitly laid just to reestablish his cool status.  He is not. A man has to have some kind of moral foundation in this world, and he’s putting his foot down on this one.

“Anyway,” he says firmly, “why don’t you—I don’t know, make an advent calendar, or something?  I bet all the old Christmas ones are dirt-cheap on clearance right now, and if you didn’t want chocolate, you could probably make one out of cardboard in about twenty minutes and fill it with whatever you wanted.  Like—you could pick out poems, or songs, or something, that reminded you of him, and put a different one in each day, and then you and Roy could open them.  That’d help the time go faster, wouldn’t it?  Make a reward system.”

Sometimes Alfons impresses himself with his own rationality.

…except when he forgets about that horrifyingly lustful gleam that Al’s eyes get sometimes when he’s thinking about Roy, which makes it terrifying to think about what kind of “prizes” he might pick.

Sometimes Alfons impresses himself with his own rationality and his own naïveté.

“That,” Al says, slowly and so ominously that Alfons can’t help cringing hard, “is a fine idea.  See?  This is why I ask you this stuff instead of Brother.  He’d just put his hands over his ears and start singing ‘London Bridge Is Falling Down’ at the top of his lungs.”

“Glad to help,” Alfons manages.

The pure evil in Al’s beaming grin might bring a lesser man to tears.  “You’re the best, Alfons.  You want to help me pick some songs?”

Alfons’s phone buzzes loudly where he left it on the coffee table.  Thank sweet baby Jesus, hallelujah; Alfons can bring himself to believe in miracles for at least the rest of the day.

“Oh, darn,” he says as he scrambles for the phone, “that’s Miles.  Gotta go.”

“What’s the opposite of an Oscar?” Al asks as Alfons closes his laptop, stashes it atop the bookshelf where Ed won’t be able to reach it and mess with it no matter how hard he tries, and grabs up his bag.

Alfons pauses in fleeing for long enough to blink at Al.  “Huh?”

“I’ll call it the Racso,” Al says.  “The anti-Oscar.  That’s the acting award you should get.”

“You’re so adorable,” Alfons says.  Miles’s text says Hey babe gigs over and theres big news, because apparently apostrophes are passé.  “No wonder Roy likes you.  Look, I might be—”

“‘Out late’,” Al says, rolling his outstretched hand in a get-on-with-it sort of motion, which is a little bit insulting, thank you very much; “‘but not, like, late-late, because I have class tomorrow, and if you come down to the car and interrupt anything again, Ed, I swear to God I will shut off the internet in this apartment and make sure the neighbors password-lock their wifi, don’t think I won’t.’”

Alfons scowls.

Al grins.

“Have fun,” he says.

“Whatever,” Alfons says, and he thinks about slamming the door—but he doesn’t, because the neighbors already hate them, and besides, he’s not really mad.  He’s sort of incapable of anger when he’s about to get to see Miles, to be honest; he’s tried.  It’s like all of the contours of the world just sort of… soften… when you’re in the proximity of somebody you love.

Maybe that’s part of where Al’s coming from—maybe his feelings are a hell of a lot deeper and more sincere than any of them have realized; maybe it’s not just lust-addled swooning over a guy fifteen years his senior who happens to look even more legitimately fine in a white coat and scrubs.  (Alfons has seen pictures, and.  Well.  Nobody with eyes would argue.  Well.  Nobody with eyes who’s attracted to guys, anyway.)  Maybe Al always feels safe with Roy, and guts-and-bones happy, down to the core.  Maybe he’s at peace with the world when Roy’s fingertips graze his skin.  Maybe he gets it.  Maybe the scandal they’ve been skirting around has put down genuine roots while they were all complaining about the leaves.

Well—who knows.  Time will unravel that mystery, as time tends to do; meanwhile, Alfons’s obscenely hot boyfriend is going to be soaring on a successful gig high.  Alfons doesn’t know what “big news” entails, exactly, but he can’t say he’s anything less than eager to find out.

The stoplights always seem disproportionately long when you’re excited or late—Alfons can only imagine how many eternities pass in intersections on occasions when you’re both at once.  Has he ever been late to anything?  Probably not.  He did have to call in to work and bail out of his shift twenty minutes before it started that one time the car broke down, but he would have been on time.

Oh, well.  He’ll get there.  As long as he doesn’t get too distracted daydreaming about the way Miles’s grin looks first thing in the morning, when it starts out hazy and literally comes into focus as Alfons puts his glasses on, and then how it widens when Miles realizes Alfons can see him…

…not getting distracted.  Right.

For all that he’s one big mess of delight and anticipation—which is almost, but not quite enough to bleach the last of the gory details of Al’s nefarious plans out of his tragically absorptive brain—time has no choice but to pass with every heartbeat, and in a matter of minutes, he’s pulling up in front of Whippersnapper.  It’s been a grand total of about fifteen minutes since Miles texted to herald the end of the gig, so even the hardcorest moshers and the most dedicated Olivier devotees have mostly straggled off: there’s a parking space wide open about twenty steps from the front doors.  Alfons tucks his car right into it and fishes out his phone.

I’m here!

His phone buzzes almost instantaneously:

<3

But there isn’t much time to melt into goo before he can see, in the right mirror, a solitary figure starting down the sidewalk towards his car—all lean lines and jet of pale hair and impossible, mouth-watering, throat-drying shoulder-to-hip ratio.  Oh, and combat boots, and ripped-up jeans, and almost-too-tight T-shirt, and God, how did Alfons fucking Heiderich ever get so lucky?  He always figured his guardian angel—not that he believes in guardian angels, but his conceptual guardian angel, at least—was the kind that the other angels sort of shunned and shook their heads at, because the bastard spent ninety percent of his designated protection time off in an angel-bar getting angel-wasted.

He glances down to make sure that the passenger-side door is unlocked—because that’s exactly the sort of awkward-ass thing he’d forget about, and then Miles would be stuck out there in the cold, pulling on the handle and pulling faces—and looks up again just as Miles steps into the glow of a streetlamp and then opens the door.

Miles slides into the passenger seat.  He shuts the door.  He grins.  He leans over the center console, threads his fingers into Alfons’s hair, murmurs “Hey, babe”, and kisses him with every bit as much gorgeous care and thrilling intent as the first time their mouths ever met.

“Hey,” Alfons says, chasing the little aftershock kisses, feeling faintly weak and overpoweringly happy as they rake their eyes over each other for a second, like they always do, like neither of them can believe this is not a dream.  “Went okay?  I’m guessing Olivier told laryngitis it could go fuck itself, and it listened.”

Miles’s grin is too bright to bear.  He loves that band so much—loves the people in it, loves the stuff they do, loves the way they matter to people, loves what the whole thing means to him.  Alfons doesn’t know if he’s ever seen somebody so fulfilled.

“Wouldn’t you?” Miles asks.  “Viral infections don’t risk pissing her off, either.  But—babe—”

They’re kissing again, and Alfons has to plant a hand on the cupholder to steady himself; there’s a tingling urgency to it, and a shiver runs through him hard, shimmying up his spine and jittering out between his well-attended lips as a shaky sort of gasp-sigh-something.

“I didn’t want to tell you,” Miles said, breath catching, fever heat between them, “in case nothing happened, but—Olivier’s been talking to some guy who’s worked with acts you wouldn’t believe—Green Day and shit, like, ‘Dookie’-era, real shit—and—he wants to get us on tour.  East Coast.  He thinks there’s enough demand; he says he’s been watching the airwaves and the online sales, and he thinks we can fill fucking venues, and—just—huge.”

Alfons’s head spins.  He thinks of children’s tops—the ones that can’t really balance unless they’re spinning, and when they stop, they go tumbling down, and the momentum makes them skitter away and ricochet off other objects, and…

“That’s amazing,” he says, and he means it, but his voice kind of trembles, which is stupid; and his right hand sort of curls itself into the front of Miles’s T-shirt, which is… also stupid.  “That’s amazing; that’s really great; that’s—I mean, obviously rock-star is a state of mind—”

Buck actually says that.  Constantly.  He should get it tattooed on his forehead to save them all some time.

“—but this is—monumental; it’s so great—”

“I know,” Miles whispers, and he’s kissing fervently at Alfons’s cheek, his jaw, his ear, his neck— “I know; I can’t believe it’s fucking real—”

Alfons figures out where the frigid draft of the reservations is coming from as he gives voice to the chill: “How long?”

“Touring, probably three months,” Miles says into his throat.  There’s an edge of laughter on his voice; he’s so happy.  Alfons’s ribcage is made of stone.  “Whole thing, recording some shit while we’re there, all the prep and stuff—five?  Maybe six?”

Alfons runs his fingertip around the curve of Miles’s ear and through the wispy white hair at his temple.  He tries so, so hard to smile.  “That’s—kind of a long time.”

“Well, yeah,” Miles says, and he’s grinning so broadly his cheeks must hurt, his jaw must ache— “That’s why I want you to come with me.”

Stones.

Everything is stones—those words, that smile, his heart, his lungs, his stomach.  Stones, falling, and they shatter where they land.

“I can’t,” he says.

Miles’s unapologetic joy evaporates.  It feels like a cold knife in the diaphragm—like a bullet through the center of the chest.  Alfons did that to him—Alfons took that away.  Alfons is a piece of shit.

“I just—” There’s nothing to say, nothing in the world.  “The quarter just started—and I finally got into that basic astronomy class I need to transfer—and I can’t—I can’t lose this job—”

Miles is staring at him like he’s started speaking in tongues.  He has to make this simple, somehow; he has to make it undeniable; how is it possible that someone who owns his heart completely doesn’t understand?

“I can’t leave,” Alfons says around the panic fluttering upwards in his throat.

“But—babe,” Miles says.  The confusion is swirling; there’s a strain of… hurt.  “I mean—Niagara Falls.  You’d love New York.  Boston, Providence—you could check out Harvard; you wanna see Harvard?  I know you’ve got shit tying you down here, but—I thought—that was what you’d always dreamed about.  Getting up and going somewhere and leaving all this boring stuff behind.”

Alfons can hear his own breathing redoubling in his ears—like it’s happening once inside his chest and then again as an external force, air moving and heat traveling and soundwaves rippling outward in the frozen space.

“You think I’m boring,” he says.

Miles’s face crumples into frustration.  “No, babe, come on—I didn’t sa—”

“You said my life is boring,” Alfons says.  “My life is boring shit.”

Miles sets his jaw; half a sigh huffs out through his clenched teeth.  “I didn’t mean it like that.  You know I didn’t; I just meant ordinary stuff.  All the ordinary stuff gets in the way.  For fuck’s sake, I know that better than anybody; I know what it feels like being trapped, and—that’s why I want to cut you free, don’t you—”

“No,” Alfons says, and his voice shakes like there’s a record-setting earthquake starting in his bones.  “You don’t get it.  Because it was always just obligations and shit to you—wasn’t it?  You don’t have any fucking idea what it’s like not having anything else.  When it’s a fucking privilege to get to drag your tired ass in to classes at a crappy community college, because you fought for that.  When it’s a fucking privilege to work stupid hours at your stupid job, and then come back to leaky faucets and mildew on the walls and pay your stupid rent—because you built that, from nothing, from dust and fucking misery; you made it.  They can’t pay the rent without me—Ed and Al.  They don’t make enough.  And they’re my family.  They’re all I’ve ever had; they’re all I’ve got left.  And if you think I’m going to fucking—what, drop everything and go swanning off to God only knows what cities on the other side of the country just so you can run around twanging your fucking guitar—”

“Stop,” Miles says.

“No,” Alfons says.  “Because you don’t know—you don’t know what ‘nothing’ means.  Did you really—you really think so little of me that I’d just abandon all of this and go off with you like some fucking groupie?  Is that it?  You want to make sure your favorite fan to fuck comes with you, right?”

“You don’t think that,” Miles says, and his voice quavers, almost fails; and Alfons is almost—but the fear’s built to fury, and he can’t breathe out anything but vitriol— “You don’t think that, because you know me so much fucking better tha—”

“I exist outside you,” Alfons says over him.  “I exist, and I care about my shitty-ass life, and if you can’t respect a fundamental part of who I am—”

“I’m not doing this,” Miles says.  He opens the door.  “I’m not doing this anymore.” He steps out.  “I’ll get a cab.”  He slams it; he strides away down the sidewalk; he disappears.

Alfons is trembling so hard that the first time he reaches for the gearshift, he misses it.  It’s a miracle that he pulls out of the parking spot without bashing one of the cars on either side; it’s a miracle that he moves out into the lane without getting sideswiped; it’s a miracle that he gets halfway home before one of the lights turns yellow on him, and he jams his foot down on the brake.  He jars his own neck; the seatbelt gets stuck and starts to constrict his chest; he bangs both hands against the steering wheel, including the one in the stupid cast, and pain blasts through his stupid wrist, and—

And that’s when he starts crying so hard he can’t fucking see, and his contacts feel like shards of glass just swimming in the saltwater, and he can’t even breathe.

He doesn’t know how he makes it home; he doesn’t remember anything but a couple seconds of blurred streetlights and a sharp turn or two.  One second he’s bursting into tears; and the next he’s in his car, lined up on the curb in front of the complex, trying—and failing—to stop sobbing into his hands.  He feels like he’s falling.  He feels like he’s lost it.  He feels so fucking empty he thinks he’s imploding; he thinks he’s broken; something in him is unhinged, unmoored, shattered, splintered, gone—

That didn’t just happen.  Did it?  It couldn’t have; he couldn’t have let it; this is a shitty fucking dream.

Please let this be a shitty dream.

He knows it’s not.

He should have seen this coming from the very beginning.  Good things don’t happen to him—or they do, and they wind him up to real joy, to wondrousness, before they cut the cord and drop him, so that he plummets twice as far.

There are old napkins in the center console.  He’s distantly glad he can’t read whatever’s written on them through the prism of the unending tears; Miles probably shoved them in there after they got takeout somewhere, because Alfons had grabbed a handful of napkins without realizing there were already some in the bag, and they parked in some empty lot and ate there and tried to see stars through the streaks on the windshield, and Miles whispered “Gorgeous” and kissed him and kissed him like it was the only thing that made sense—

He has soaked all of the napkins.  The only thing left is his sleeves.

He clenches his hands around the steering wheel—sort of; the left has a little strip of cast-thing going between his thumb and the rest of his fingers, so its clenching capacity is greatly reduced—and looks out at the road.  Everything is where he left it.  Cars flit past at intervals—tunnels of light and a growl of an engine and then silence again.  The world is still moving, and it’ll keep moving without him if he lets it.  The world doesn’t give a shit if he fucked up the closest thing to happiness that he’s ever had.  And the world is going to eat him alive and spit out the fragments of his crunchy little bones if he tries to take a breather for self-pity.

He scrubs at his eyes with the forearm that isn’t hiding a cast underneath his sweater and tries to force himself to breathe evenly.  The world has never slowed down for Alfons Heiderich.  It never will.  It’s his choice whether he keeps up or gets run over.

He leans back against the headrest, drags in a shaking deep breath, swipes a mostly-dry spot on his sleeve over his face one more time, and gets out of the car.

He locks it.  He keeps his keys in his hand but holds them tightly so they won’t jingle; he doesn’t want to drown out other noises in case… in case.  He goes up to the lobby door, sorts the right key out of the cluster, and unlocks it; he pulls it shut behind him and walks down the hall to the elevator.  He presses the button.  He waits.

The doors open.  He steps inside; he presses the 6 and then Door Close.  He looks up at the deeply disturbing asbestos ceiling.  He waits.

The elevator dings.  The doors open again.  He steps out and goes to their door; he selects the appropriate key from the bundle and puts it into the lock.  He turns.

If there is anything, anything, like a God out there—if there is any greater kindness in the universe; if there is any guiding force with any sort of compassion—Ed and Al will be in one of their rooms, arguing loudly about a second cat, or they’ll be in the kitchen squabbling over ice cream, or wherever, arguing about whatever; and Alfons will be able to slip by unnoticed and crumble into misery in peace.

He opens the door.

Ed, Al, and Lan Fan look up from where they’re all sitting on the couch, Ed and Lan Fan with laptops on their laps; Al with Pumpkin on his, using one hand to pet her and the other to read some trashy novel.

They all stare like they’re frozen in place—like they don’t even have a choice; like he’s mesmerizing.

“Holy shit,” Ed says at last.  “What happened?”

“Are you okay?” Al asks, looking so crushed already that he must know the answer.

Lan Fan just says, “Dude.”

“I’ll be right back,” Alfons says, and the wetness is creeping into his voice again; it’s climbing up his throat.  “I need a f-fucking c-cigarette; I’ll—”

He dodges the end of the couch, fishing the pack out of his pocket; he pushes up the windowpane and climbs out onto the fire escape and sits down on the cold wrought-iron steps, and he buries his face in his hands.  Which is stupid, because one of them has a scratchy cast partway across it, and the other one is holding a pack of cigarettes, and neither of those feels particularly good crushed against a cheekbone.

His breath hitches, and his chest jumps, and he feels like the tears are just seeping out—it’s not even that he’s crying, anymore; it’s not active enough for that; he’s just dripping.  He’s oozing.  There’s too much unhappiness inside of him to hold in, and it’s forcing its way out.  That’s just basic fucking density dynamics; the concentration of unhappiness outside of his eyes is so much lower that he couldn’t stop the flow of it if he tried.  He won’t be able to until it’s equalized.  He’ll just have to keep letting himself cry until then—letting himself cry so hard it’s jarring his spine and shaking the fire escape, but he can barely hear the rattle of the metal over the sound of his own stupid fucking sobs.

He’s better than this.  He’s stronger than this.  Nothing he said wasn’t true; why does he feel like shit?  He was right—wasn’t he?  Fuck it.  It doesn’t matter who was right, or what was, or—anything.  He has to get through this; that’s the only part he needs to care about.  That’s the part he has to focus on.  He has to swallow this fucking monster in his throat and stop fucking weeping like a four-year-old getting sent to bed without dinner and move on.  That’s the only choice he’s ever had.  That’s the only thing he’s ever known how to do, and it’s gotten him this far, and fuck anybody who tries to hold him back, or hold him down, or control his trajectory; fuck them; he doesn’t need that—

But he needed to be loved.  He let himself need it.

He’d been fine, before.  He’d just—done his thing, just ducked his head down and pushed on from one day to the next.  He had Ed, and Al, and all their dumb shenanigans; and they had his back, and he had theirs; and he had his blog and stupid coworkers like weirdo Russell; and it was enough.  He made it enough.  He got by.

So the thing with Miles started out like a gift—like something fantastic, obviously, but something extra, something on top; something great and special and exhilarating, yeah, but an addition to a neatly-categorized little life that was already complete.

Except it’s not, anymore.

Miles wormed his way in like a fucking vine of ivy—twisted into the cracks in Alfons’s fucked-up, shaky little psyche and filled them all with warmth and greenery—turned the half-shattered stone in the core of him into a garden where things grew and flourished and bloomed; turned him into a different person; turned him into someone who relied on that.  Miles treated him so fucking well he started to believe he deserved it.  Miles made him feel so fucking special that he started to normalize it.  Miles loved him so much he started to love himself.

And now—

God.  He has to stop crying; he can’t smoke and cry at the same time.  His hands are shaking so hard he can’t get a cigarette out of the package, and his sleeves are so wet he’s trying to wipe his eyes on his shoulder, which he’s not really flexible enough to do very well—

Please let this not be happening.  Please.  Let him wake up in bed and panic for a second believing it’s real, then sit up and center himself and laugh weakly in relief, because it was just his brain tormenting him, because his brain is a douchebag, and life is still good, it’s fine, everything is fine—

Oh, God.

He draws his knees up to his chest and buries his face in them instead of in his wet fucking sleeves.  His eyes just keep leaking like a fucking hose with a fucking hole in it, and he’s so carved-out-hollow that he can’t remember what to do to try to stop them.

There’s a little bit of commotion at the window, and then Al climbs out onto the fire escape with Pumpkin in one arm.  Alfons looks up, as much as he’s capable of looking with his stupid eyes still streaming like the famous waterfall he’s never going to see with the man he’s going to love more than he thought he was capable of until the day he dies.

“Here,” Al says, depositing a very warm cat on Alfons’s lap.  Then he leans against the railing, hugging himself with his arms against the chill up here.  Alfons can sort of feel that it’s cold, in a distant, who-gives-a-shit kind of way.  “So what happened?”

“They’re g-going on t-t-tour,” Alfons says.  He tries to take a breath that doesn’t catch eight times on the way in and just as many on the way back out, and… fails.  “S-six months, p-probably, and he asked me to leave my b-boring f-fucking life and c-c-come, and I s-said if I was boring, why d-did he want me there anyway?”

“He loves you,” Al says.

Alfons’s whole body convulses so hard with the next sob that Pumpkin startles and jumps down off of his knees, coiling around Al’s ankles where it’s safe.

“He does,” Al says.  “If he thought you were boring, he wouldn’t be so devoted to you that it’s like he’s got little stars in his eyes all the time.  He wouldn’t bring cupcakes.  He wouldn’t put up with Ed.”

“I heard that!” Ed calls.

“But you agree,” Al says.

“…maybe.”

Lan Fan snickers.

“Point is,” Al says, “having a fight about the future doesn’t mean it’s over.”

“He s-said ‘I’m n-not d-d-doing this anymore’,” Alfons says.

Al’s eyes narrow a little bit.  Pumpkin meows loudly, staring up at him.  His body language has gone… different.  Threatening.  Ed would probably say ‘evil’, because Ed is a drama queen.  “The conversation, or the relationship?”

“I d-dunno,” Alfons says.  “Both?”

Al’s eyes are little slits.  They look black in the dim light from the other side of the window.  “Can I talk to him?”

Ed clambers over the sill and drops down onto the grating.  Pumpkin makes a disgruntled noise and winds herself tighter around Al’s right foot.  Alfons wonders idly how much weight this fire escape can hold, and what will happen if the supports break.  Presumably they’ll all plummet to their deaths.

“Don’t get involved, Al,” Ed says.  “If Band Dude has a pair of balls and a pair of eyes, he’s gonna be here with his boom-box on his shoulder blasting some cheesy ballad shit to apologize in T-minus half an hour, because he knows he’s never going to do better than Alfons, and saying that shit was the stupidest thing he’s ever done.”

Alfons grinds his face into his knees a little.  He has no idea how all this moisture arrived in his tear ducts; he hasn’t drunk this much water in his entire life.

“And if he doesn’t,” Ed says, “then we know he’s a worthless fuck, and his opinion doesn’t matter anyway.”

It’s always so simple, to Ed.  Life, love, people, what’s worth the time investment, what you should reject.  Happiness.  Feeling whole.

Alfons has always felt he could stand to learn something from the way Ed analyzes the world, but right now there’s no room left in him for anything but this gaping void.

“C’mon, both of you,” Ed says.  “You’re gonna get pneumonia.  The cat can stay.”

“You’re horrible,” Al says, scooping up his precious furball in both arms.

“Whatever,” Ed says.

And Alfons watches a one-armed boy—another kid who’s never caught a break he hasn’t fought for tooth and nail, with one less hand and a little brother he has volunteered to carry every staggering step of the way—vault over the windowsill and back into the warmth of the living room.  Ed never, ever quits; Ed never, ever accepts failure, or roadblocks, or defeat.  He just finds a new tactic and keeps on working.  He never gives up on what he believes in—and what he believes in is himself.  Himself, his life, his family, his brother, little stair-step hopes like a bigger apartment where Al can have another cat he’ll claim to hate, big cumulous-cloud hopes like being rich and comfortable someday.  He’ll talk about it, if you catch him in the right moment, when he’s too sleepy to have his guard up and his expectations down.  He’ll tell you about the library he wants.  He’ll tell you about the charities he’d start for single moms.  He’ll tell you about the dreams he won’t surrender, because the world took a shit-ton from him, but it can’t take that.

Alfons crams the pack of cigarettes into his pocket and climbs back over the windowsill.

The tears seem to have stopped.  He can still feel a reservoir of them behind his eyes—which, again, what the fuck; where does it all come from?—but they aren’t overflowing anymore.  His eyes are burning, though, and his skin around them must be red and puffed to shit; it’s sore, and his head is banging, and he wants to bury himself in some dark corner and sleep until this never happened.  He can’t tell if the shaking is from the aftershocks of the sobs, or a nicotine withdrawal, or from the cold out on the fire escape.  He can’t tell much of anything.

Ed sits him down at the kitchen table, and Al puts the cat in his lap again (she eyes him in a manner he would characterize as less-than-trusting) and makes him some herbal tea.  Ed disappears and then returns with the extra-fuzzy blanket his mom made for him, which almost never leaves his bed, and drapes it over Alfons’s shoulders.

It’s nice of them.  It’s really, really nice, and maybe when he doesn’t have this soul-sucking emptiness eating at him from the inside of his chest, he’ll find the words to thank them for it.

This is what he meant, though, in case some higher being has kept count—this is what he meant when he was turning down that chance, that opportunity, the offer of adventure with a person that he…

This is why he won’t leave them—not can’t; won’t, will not, would not, won’t ever.  These are the two other lost, lonely souls who have always, always had his back, and here they are, raising him—this is what family means, bloodlines all aside.  This is where he belongs.  And anyone who says this is boring—

He needs to take his contacts out; they’re probably crusted with salt by now or something.  That can’t be good for his corneas.

The tea steadies his machine-gun-rattling nerves a little bit, and Ed and Al get into a very subdued, half-volume version of the usual Pumpkin-is-lonely-and-needs-a-friend fight to distract him, and Lan Fan plunks down in the next chair at the table and starts showing him a ton of pictures from the Mars Rover that he hadn’t seen before, and by eleven, he’s so exhausted he doesn’t think even the throbbing ache in his chest will stop him from passing out.

In the end, though, he doesn’t really sleep—he drifts; he dozes; he walks the hazy line between dream and reality, arms out to either side, toes on the divider—he fades in and out, sometimes for almost an hour at a time, but it isn’t sleeping, really, and it doesn’t offer any solace or any rest.

When he went to set his alarm, his lock screen was that terrible failed selfie at the park, where Miles was trying to kiss him, and he was wriggling away, and what ended up in the photo was half of his grin and all of Miles’s bright-eyed, delighted laughter.  His shaking hands considered hurling the phone across the room, watching that taunting image shatter against the wall—but he can’t afford a new phone, and he’s not really that type, and he was so tired.  He just wanted it to be over, and the anger was a low-burning ember underneath the furnace of the other pain.  He wasn’t angry, not really.  Just—lost.  Lost, abandoned, broken up and scattered over miles of space.  Humpty Dumpty shit.  Humpty Dumpty wasn’t pissed off; he didn’t throw the shards of himself at the king’s men and curse them out just for being in the blast radius; he begged, because he was in fucking pieces, and he didn’t know where to start rebuilding.

So he changed the picture to one of Ed and Al pulling faces at the charity carnival a couple years ago, which was one of the first ones that his trembling fingertips found on the camera roll, and which was also—sort of the point.

Tomorrow he’ll have to… finish the job, right?  Fucking hell.  He’s had breakups before, obviously, but never… quite like this.  Never someone who had wriggled into every single nook and cranny of his goddamn existence and left a fingerprint that wouldn’t just wash away; never someone who was fucking indelible on the pattern of his own life; never someone he was going to have to tear out one bleeding fiber at a time.  Never someone he would never go a single day without thinking about, no matter how much time, no matter how he tried, no matter how many stupid inexhaustible tears he choked on as he flipped the pillow to the cold side and succumbed to the trademark putty-skin sensation of a failure to sleep.   Never someone he didn’t want to lose.  Never someone he’d loved more than almost anything.

Just not enough.

When the clock has progressed, in half-dreamed skips and jumps and stutters, to about the time he normally gets up, he drags his weary body from the bed and tries to square his shoulders.  The best thing to do is just… keep going.  Act normal.  Force it to be normal; force himself to function.  No wallowing.  No pint of chocolate ice cream; no sweatpants and stained shirt and flip-flops so that he doesn’t have to dress himself.  His life hasn’t stopped.  That’s the whole fucking point, is that his life is important, that he’s important—that’s what he sacrificed it for.

He tries to rouse his sluggish brain in the shower, but the hot water just seems to make it soggier—replacing the blood in his veins with coffee it is.  Wouldn’t be the first time; won’t be the last.

He puts on his favorite pair of beige jeans—they are not khakis, no matter what Ed says; they are made of denim, and it makes all the difference in the world—and one of the more subdued sweater-vests, because he probably can’t take attracting any attention today.  The gray one’s nice, anyway; it’s cozy, for one thing; it fits well, for another; and for a third, thick grayness is a good description of how he feels.

He’s not exactly delighted at the prospect of jamming contacts on—glasses days have been fewer and further between since he started having so many things (people—one person) that he wanted to see clearly from the get-go, but that’s all right.  Glasses look good.  They look intelligent.  They’re harder to cry right off of your eyes.

He takes a breath and casts around the room for the pile of clean socks he abandoned somewhere yesterday.  He’s okay.  He’s doing okay.  He’s doing okay, and then he opens his top drawer to pick out a bow-tie, because the merciless and systematic destruction of your own soul is no reason not to look sharp, and the navy-blue-and-white-striped one Miles bought him last week (“I just saw it in a window, and I thought about that blue sweater with the white buttons that you have, and I couldn’t leave it there; it would’ve been lonely—don’t look at me like that, babe.  Wait, aw, shit, don’t tell me—nobody’s ever given you something just because, have they?”) and—

And—

Deep breaths, head back, hands clenched.  He’s okay.  He’s fucking fantastic; he’s going to be fine.

He slams the drawer, winces—Ed the Nocturnal Nightmare barely even makes it to school most days; he treasures the six-to-seven-AM block as the only sacred sleeping time—and pulls himself together by force of will.

He’s okay.  He’s going to be okay.  He’s going to get through this if it fucking kills him.

Which it might, if he tries to drive like he did last night ever again.

Getting his ass to class is—good.  Helpful.  Distracting.  He’s given up a lot to be here, damn it, and he’s sure as hell going to get his money’s worth by paying attention even as the lack of sleep starts to creep up behind him with a baseball bat.

The long-awaited, deeply-coveted, frequently-cursed-over-during-enrollment astronomy class in particular is so promising that the battered pile of pulp in his chest swells a little bit.  There’s only thirty of them in the room with the professor, and it’s got enough prerequisites and an exclusive enough waitlist that everyone who’s sitting here wants to be—none of the usual drifters, and dropouts, and requirement-mongers, and have-to-take-ten-units-so-mommy-and-daddy-won’t-cut-off-my-allowance kids.  Just… people.  Minds.  Intellects with eyes upraised to try to comprehend the stars.

A guy with a mop of brown hair and a big grin flashes it at him—the grin, not the hair, although the hair sort of necessarily swishes with the motion of his jaw—and gestures to the empty seat at Alfons’s left in the front row.  “Anybody sitting here?”

Alfons shakes his head.

“Mind if I do?”

At least he asked, but the social contract doesn’t exactly permit Alfons to come out with I do mind, actually; in case you haven’t noticed, I’m doing my damnedest not to sulk here, and as a general principle I despise humanity.

He shrugs—it’s a pretty good compromise.  Not as rude as a no, but not exactly a Golly gee, sure thing, pal, let’s be bestest friends! either.

Smile-Too-Big-for-Face flops down in the chair and stretches his legs out in front of him.  There’s a little hole starting in the knee of his jeans, which is probably not his fault, and which reminds Alfons of Miles’s favorite torn-to-shit gray pair with its last three intact threads so fiercely and so suddenly that it’s like getting a fucking fire poker through the middle of the chest.

Is it always going to be like this?

Just thinking it feels like flipping a fucking switch and plunging himself into absolute darkness after hours of stumbling along by emergency lights.  Maybe he’ll be able to slog through this for a couple days; maybe even a couple weeks—it’s just shitty-ass emotions, after all; it’s nothing permanent; it’s nothing damaged in the parts of him that operate his life—but he can’t do this forever.  He’s not strong enough.  Who could be?  If this doesn’t ease off, if it doesn’t get better—well, less-worse—then this colossal weight is going to become physical, isn’t it?  The tide of his own stupid fucking feelings is going to drown him, and fighting that with Oh, cheer up is like trying to bail himself out of the ocean with a fucking Dixie cup.

He closes his eyes.  He takes a breath.  He lets it out.  He has to be here right now—in this classroom, coping, living, carrying on.  He can do that much for today.  He owes it to himself, and to Ed and Al, and to everyone who’s ever been wrong about him all his life.

He looks up at the board, tucks his casted arm against his chest, and leans over his notebook.  He can do this.

“Are you okay?” mop-head asks in a whisper as the professor fiddles with the laptop connection.

“Yeah,” Alfons says.  It’s getting fractionally truer every time he forces himself to say it—isn’t it?  “Thanks.”

His mind’s alive with stars and theories and numbers—all of them ricocheting off each other like one of those air tanks they circulate the lottery balls in; like a snowstorm; like a concentrated bomb, with the best kind of shrapnel, and all he has room for in his head is hope.  It feels good.  He’s not letting himself think about it, though; he’s not letting himself think about anything except the fact that the center of mass in a binary system is calculated from the distance between the two stars’ centers and their respective masses, and if you had to, how would you explain relativity to somebody who purportedly hates math?  (Because no one hates math; you can’t hate the structure of your own damn universe; people hate the way it’s taught, and the way they understand it; mathematics never did anybody any harm.)

“Hey,” mop-head kid says as Alfons is jamming things into his bag, one-handed and with half of his normal attention to the way the notebooks fit.  “You really seem like you get this stuff.”

“Guess so,” Alfons says.  Fuck this fucking spiral binding to a thousand separate hells.  “It’s sort of a hobby.”

“Aw, jeez,” the guy says.  “Math for fun.  I knew there was a catch.”

What?

“Well, it’s not math-math,” Alfons says, shouldering his bag and trying to sound like anything other than a fucking idiot, which is not going well so far.  “Just… science with a lot of formulas.”

The guy grins.  “So basically… math.”

“Neil deGrasse Tyson is going to appear out of the ether and hit you with a telescope for that,” Alfons says, starting for the door.  “Any second now.”

The guy darts ahead of him to hold the door.  “How big is the telescope?”

“Thank you,” Alfons says of the door.  “Big enough,” he says of the theoretical bludgeon.

“Uh oh,” the guy says.  “I better start looking over my shoulder for scientists in dark alleys.”

Alfons is tired, tired, tired; he needs to pour some more coffee down his throat before his next class starts in fifty minutes.  There might be time to get a jump on their newly-assigned problem set before that, which would be extremely helpful given that he’s working every night this week.

He tries to muster a smile anyway.  It seems like the polite thing to do.

“Hey,” the guy says.  “You wanna study for this stuff together?  I mean, I probably won’t be much help, but…”

Alfons does not.  He does not want to share notes; he does not want distractions while he’s poring over his; he does not want someone rearranging his flashcards and jumbling up the order in his brain.  He does not play well with others when it comes to things like this, and even the abstract prospect of inviting someone in to trash his headspace gives him a sinking-stomach kind of feeling like he’s already failed the exam.

He just doesn’t have the heart to be cold today.  All that’s left in him is a dull sort of dysphoria—nothing seems to fit; he’s a stranger in his own shape, and the angles of the world are all too sharp, too narrow, tilted and uneven like an Escher sketch gone wrong.

“Sure, maybe,” he says.  That’s noncommittal enough, right?  Make no pledges; tell no lies.

“Awesome,” the guy says.  Shutting him down would feel like punting a puppy, wouldn’t it?  “You want to give me your number, maybe, or…?”

“My phone’s jacked up,” Alfons says.  It is Ed’s phrase to the T that it does not, in fact, contain—Alfons has heard him say it half a dozen times, blithely with a touch of mild regret, in evasion of the question.  When Al frowns at him after, Ed just shrugs and says I didn’t say it was broken; ‘jacked up’ could mean anything you want it to.  “Facebook’s better.  Alfons Heiderich—H-E-I-D-E-R-I-C-H.”

The diversion has an ulterior motive, too: on the off-chance that this guy is trying to get into his pants instead of onto the honor roll, there are just enough public pictures of Miles with his arm around Alfons’s waist to send him scurrying back into the woodwork without anyone having to broach the whole Are you hitting on me? thing in so many words.

…oh, God.  Is he supposed to delete all evidence of Miles from Facebook, too?  How long are you supposed to wait before you obliterate the digital traces in a fit of bitterness?  Is it considered more mature to leave them for a while, and then discreetly make things private one by one; or is the accepted etiquette to tear them all down at once in a rapid-clicking rage?  Or it is nobler in the mind to let them all just stay there—cruel, silent pixel witnesses to the interpersonal failures of your pathetic little life?

Fuck this.  Fuck all of this.  The longer he contemplates, the more convoluted it gets—the path isn’t just windy and uphill anymore; it’s a fucking labyrinth on six levels, except the minotaur’s in him.  Where the hell does he go from here?

Does it ever get better?  Does it ever hurt less?  They talk about time healing all wounds, blah blah blah—Alfons lives with an amputee; time doesn’t do shit about those wounds, unless you count twisting the helpless anger into a sick sense of humor, in Ed’s case.

The guy—Alfons should probably ask what his name is, but the exhaustion is curling shadow-fingers around his skull—smiles like he has no idea there’s a war going on, and all of Alfons’s internal organs are on the losing side.  Apparently Alfons is better at smothering the outward signs of this shit than he thought.

“Will do,” the guy says.  He motions towards a corridor branching off from this one, in a This is where we part ways sort of gesture, and Alfons feels a dull sweep of relief.  “Hey, take it easy,” the guy says.  “You look like you had a rough night.”

The smile twisting Alfons’s face is probably unsettling as all hell.  “Yeah,” he says.  “See you around.”

And then he’s free—free to go stand endlessly in line at the nearest campus cafe, the better to fork over three dollars for a cup of hot liquid that bears a passing resemblance to coffee; and then to sit down on the edge of a flower-box outside, because all the tables are taken, and it’s illegal to smoke within twenty feet of a building entrance anyway.  His hands are getting shaky again.  He should probably eat something instead of just funneling caffeine into himself, but food doesn’t sound especially appealing, and waiting in another line sounds like outright torment.  He’ll comp something when he gets to work.  Naan is probably the best thing you can throw at a mutinous stomach—warm and plain and delicious but mild.  Innocuous starch.  Damn, that sounds good.  How many hours are left in this fucking day?

Time seems to blur at the corners of his eyes when he tries to focus on something specific; that’s probably the sleep deprivation talking.  The cigarette’s gone, and he hardly remembers any of it.  He stabs it out against the cement wall of the box and then tosses the butt into the ashtray on top of the nearest trashcan.

He pushes his glasses up on top of his head and rubs his eyes, trying to bask in the coffee steam, trying to feel invigorated, trying to imagine himself in a spa or something—which is difficult, because he’s never been to one, and he has no idea what they’re really like.  He’s seen them on TV before.  Palm fronds.  Beige walls.  Roaming massage artists, or therapists, or whatever they’re called.  That kind of stuff.  Soothing music, probably.  Maybe a harp.  Maybe some ambient incense.  Is there food?  There should be food.  Chocolate.  Cream.  Coffee that doesn’t taste like shit, like this stuff.

If only—

No.  That phrase is a gateway—a little lattice-work number in white, with a bell and a fucking trellis decked with roses; gorgeous and contrived—and the cutesy cobblestone path beyond it leads to nothing but self-pity and regret.  He’s not walking through that, not today.

But—all the same—just—

If only life had ever, would ever, cut him a flipping break.  If only he’d ever been lucky.  If only the universe had ever played fair.  If only trying his absolute damnedest every minute of every day to be good, and decent, and kind had ever paid off—

If only he’d ever even brushed his fingertips against the edges of luxury.  If only he’d ever felt safe—like his life was in order; like the tough things were taken care of; like the pillars of his existence were firm, and the only thing to fear was the details.  If only he’d ever had a net underneath him.  If only this tightrope wasn’t fraying with every single fucking step; if only he hadn’t just been cast aside by the person who was walking right beside him, talking him through it, coaxing him along, making it all seem worth it for just another gleam of that smile—

If only, if only, if only.

He chugs the dregs of the crappy coffee and pitches the cup into the trashcan.  He gets up, stretches his back, pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and takes a breath.

One breath at a time; one step at a time; one second, one minute, one day—tomorrow can wait.  It’s not going anywhere.  He can do this; he can, and he will.

Somehow he’ll be all right.  He’s always been all right.

By the time he gets to work, puts his phone in his bag and his bag in the back room, tapes some clean saran wrap over the crossbar on his cast, plasters on a smile, and takes up his post behind the register, he has accepted the fact that he has been lying to himself—tenaciously.  All day long.

He’s not all right.  He doesn’t even have access to the transport to go take a short vacation to a grungy, distant suburb of all right.

But customers don’t come here for his sob-story; they come for curry, and he gets paid to take their money for it.  He’s done this before—forced his way through the shrinking walls, faked it and faked it and gritted his teeth and held up his chin until even he almost believed it.  You keep up, or you get run over.

A woman comes in leading two kids, and good for her for starting them on global cuisine really young.  She comes up to the register, and he stills his shaking hands and smiles.

“What can I get for you?” he asks.

It’s no use.  The woman’s credit card comes out of a wallet pocket and goes right back into the same one; her dollar bills are lined up in order of value, all facing the same way, and she pulls out a couple of singles for a tip—it could be Alfons’s own freakin’ wallet, except for the amount of money in it, obviously, and Miles used to rib him for it every damn time—

Miles nibbles on fork tines when he’s thinking and doesn’t seem to notice.  Miles always fills his cup up exactly halfway with ice and starts to frown very seriously if he overdoes it; he pours cubes out one at a time until the level is right.  Miles mixes Dr. Pepper and root beer.  The first time Miles walked in here, he asked for the spiciest thing they had, then pled for mercy when the first bite of souped-up vindaloo brought tears to his eyes.  Alfons felt like he’d been struck across the face, watching that, but once Miles could breathe again, he laughed it off, and—

And Alfons really needs today to be over now.

It’s almost eleven when he finally drags his sorry ass home.  Someone kindly vomited in the restaurant bathroom and chose not to mention it to anyone, which was a delightful surprise to find at the end of his shift; and then they closed off one of the lanes of the main street downtown, so it took him twice as long to drive, and… And.  And.  And.  He can’t remember if there’s other homework for tomorrow; it may just have to wait.

He gets mobbed the second he walks through the door—Al hugs him with both arms, and Ed slings the one with nerve endings around his neck and bonks his forehead against Alfons’s temple (which requires standing on his toes) in a way that seems to be intended as affectionate.

“Hi,” Ed says, and Al says “Let me get you some hot chocolate,” and Ed says, “How was your day?”, and then there is a cat being deposited in his arms, and then he blinks and finds himself sitting on the couch with a warm mug in his hands.  Al makes better cocoa because he doesn’t have Ed’s across-the-board milk vendetta, but Ed always puts twice as many marshmallows in it.  This cup they seem to have collaborated on.

They chatter at him about little things while he drinks it, and he hopes they know how overpoweringly he loves them—for this, and for everything.  For who they are; for the boundless generosity of two lost brothers who started out with nothing and still don’t have a lot but never let it stop them from giving.

When he finishes the cocoa, he gets more hugs, and then one of them pries the mug out of his hands so that he can’t go wash it, and then they’re ushering him off towards his room to go to bed.  They’re probably right to do all of it; he’s a wreck.  He needs the sleep.  He needs the quiet, too; he needs the seclusion, and the opportunity to unwrite all the mantras circling in his brain.

He remembers that his phone’s in his bag and fishes it out so that he can set his alarm, and…

One missed call from Dreamboat, and a voicemail.

He sits down on the floor, because his knees aren’t going to make it all the way to the bed.  He might still be breathing.  Is his heart beating?  Does it still have the structural integrity for that?

He taps his thumb to listen to the message on the third try, and he raises the phone to his ear, and he acknowledges—in some non-exploding part of his psyche—that he’s going to remember staring dumbly at the drawer handles on his nightstand, with his throat stuck and his pulse racing, for a long, long time.

“Hey,” Miles’s voice says—quiet, and a little hoarse.  “I know you’re at work right now.  I’m too chickenshit to let this be a conversation.  I just—I need to get it all out in one go, and… I know that’s not fair.  And what I said yesterday wasn’t fair, at all; that was shitty, and—but that’s the thing, babe, I just… I want so fucking much for you.  I want you to be—happy.  That’s all I ever wanted.  I think maybe it’s all I’m ever gonna want.  And I know that all the stuff you do, all the hours and all the time and energy and everything—I see that wearing on you.  I see you tired from it.  I just… I never… thought… about what it meant, underneath, I guess.  I’ve never had roots down like you do.  I mean, not until you, obviously, not…”

He sighs, he tries to laugh; it comes out jagged, stilted, and then it dies.

“Today has been so—fucked up.  I feel like a zombie.  I miss you so bad, you know that?  You didn’t just tear my heart out of my fucking chest; you took everything, you… I gave you everything.  I didn’t even notice; how fucking funny is that?  I guess this is what love is.  I always—wondered, y’know, before… you.  What all the fucking fuss was about.  Why all the songs were so damn popular.  ’Cause who cared?  Except I care, now.  Joke’s on me, huh?”

He swallows.  He clears his throat.  Alfons would probably be crying again, but he’s empty, so all he does is shake—tremble in place, like a breath of wind would break him.

“Listen,” Miles says.  “Alfons Heiderich, listen to me, I—no matter what else you think, no matter what else you feel, just… I love you.  I love you so fucking much it just kills me, and that’s part of why I said and did all that… shit yesterday—’cause you not being happy when I was made my fucking stomach drop out, and then the idea of being all the way out there without you was… I just got fucking scared, and I reacted, and it was stupid, and the only thing… believe that I’m sorry.  I am.  I fucking mean it.  Believe that I fucking love you exactly the way you fucking are, and I should’ve remembered that—because you fought to be here, you had to fight through a lot of shit to become who you are, and that’s… what I want.  You.  You’re what I want.”

He draws in a deep breath and lets it out slow.

“Olivier was… well, she said—she said ‘If you really love him, three-thousand miles isn’t going to change that.’  And then she said ‘Stop being a piece of shit.’  And she’s right.  And here I am, and I’m trying, and I know… Well.  I’ll… get it.  If this isn’t enough.  If—” His voice starts to fail, and Alfons can’t—Alfons’s heart skitters, and there’s a layer of magma underneath his skin— “If… I’m… not enough.  I can—accept that.  I mean, it’s your—choice.  Just… I’m begging.  This is me, begging.  I don’t fucking care about anything else anymore; I just want you back, babe; I can’t even get through a fucking minute without needing you just to—”

There’s a really long silence.  Alfons brings his knee up to his chest and hides his face in it and tries to hug it hard enough that the quiet on the line stops feeling like a physical blow.

“Anyway—” Miles takes another breath, and then another, and then releases the second as an uneven laugh.  “I know this is—a cheap shot.  I just… playing fair kinda doesn’t seem to matter right now.  Not when it might be the difference between… well.  Babe, I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.  Just—if we can fix this, or get past this, or—whatever you need, tell me, and it’s done; I’ll—anything.  I’m yours.  Okay?  I am.  So… so.  Here we are, I guess.”

He strums a guitar, and Alfons thinks of his hands—he has perfect hands, perfect fingers, perfect…

On the acoustic guitar, without the synthesizers, Alfons doesn’t recognize the melody until it’s far too late.

“Won’t you,” Miles sings softly, “come see about me?  I’ll be alone, dancin’, you know it, baby—”

Oh, God.

“Tell me your troubles and doubts; giving me everything, inside and out, and—love’s strange, so real in the dark; think of the tender things that we were working on—”

Alfons tips over onto the floor and tries to bury his face in the carpet, which probably isn’t sanitary, but… fuck that.  The phone lies screen-up next to him.  He is not going to cry again—he’s not.  He’s cried enough; he’s cried himself out; this swell of quivering feeling in him is not going to crest and break and foam out of him like its thousand predecessors; he’s done with crying—

“Slow change may pull us apart, when the light gets into your heart, baby—”

God damn him—

“Don’t you—forget about me… Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t—don’t you… forget about me—”

Alfons fumbles to make his hand work, scrabbling for the button to save this or delete it or just quit out of his answering machine—to make it stop—

“Will you stand above me?  Look my way, never love me?  Rain keeps fallin’, rain keeps fallin’ down… down… down… d—”

Somehow he’s looking at the home screen, and the sound has been silenced.  All he can hear is his own ragged breathing, the thud of his heartbeat in the delicate skin stretched over his skull, the scrape of his clothes against the carpet fibers, footsteps in the hall…

Somebody knocks.

“Alfons?” Al’s voice calls, slightly high with worry.  “Are you okay?”

Alfons is lying on the floor with his hand clenched in a frozen vise-grip around his stupid phone, doggedly refusing to cry, so strung-out on sleep deprivation that the pent-up tears are not the only reason his eyes are burning and blurring at intervals.

“I think…” he manages.  “Maybe… yeah.”

There’s a pause.

“What?” Al asks.

“He—” Alfons’s voice catches; he irons it back out.  “—apologized.”

There is a significantly more substantive pause.

“Did he do a good job?” Al asks.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Ed’s voice asks from about two feet to the right of Al’s.

“I dunno,” Al says.  “If he just called up and was like, ‘Yo, my bad,’ that wouldn’t even count.”

“He did a good job,” Alfons says.

This pause is shorter.

“Are you on the floor?” Al asks.

“Maybe,” Alfons says.

“But you’re okay?”

“Yeah.  I think I am.”

Longer pause.  They’re probably having an entire conversation with their eyebrows.

“Well…” Ed says.  “Just… take it easy, okay?  We got your back.”

“I know,” Alfons says.  “I love you guys.”

“We love you more,” Ed says.

“Shut up, Brother,” Al says.  “We love you exactly as much, down to the last iota of measurable adoration, but not more, because that makes it a competition, and that’s stupid.”

“But there’s two of us,” Ed says.  “So if we each love him back as much, you necessarily have to double the love coefficient a—”

There’s a muffled sound that is most likely Al punching him in the arm, presumably accompanied by a glare.

“Goodnight, Alfons,” Al says.  “I’m going to go skin Brother now.”

“Goodnight,” Alfons says.  “Put some plastic down for the blood.”

“’Kay,” Al says.

“You both suck,” Ed says.  “G’night.”

When the footsteps retreat again, Alfons pries his own fingers loose from around his phone so that he can start a text.

This is… not the hardest thing he’s ever done, actually.  Not really.  It feels like it, right this second, but he knows logically that it’s really, truly not, and there’s some comfort in that.

Hey.  I got your message.  I said some things I shouldn’t have too.  And I’m sorry.  Can we talk tomorrow?

He rereads it twice, hesitates, and then sends it.  Naturally, the split-second after he’s tapped the button, he thinks of something else to add.  Might as well just keep going at this rate.

I miss you more than there are words for and this is a stupid thing to fight over and if it sounds good to you let’s just not be mad anymore?  I’m so fucking tired.  I don’t think I can hold onto any of what I felt yesterday any longer now.  It’s too hard, and I don’t care.  You know you’re the only thing I ever wanted and just… got?  You’re the only time it was ever easy and the only thing that ever felt that right that fast and being without you fucking sucks and I’m tired of it.  I don’t want to be angry and self-righteous or whatever shit.  I just want you.

Fifty-four seconds later, his phone buzzes with a reply.

You have me.  you always will.  as much of me as you want for as long as you want

Alfons wonders if he’s tired enough to crash once this spike of adrenaline wears off.  It’s hard to tell.

You have time tomorrow afternoon?  I have a couple hours between class & work.

Yes

Okay.  Meeting at whippersnapper work for you?

Yes

Okay.

Trying to sound neutral is almost worse than trying not to feel.

He waits for another minute before he chokes down the awkwardness and the inhibitions and types out another text:

I can be there by 2:30 I think.  I’ll see you then.  Goodnight for now.

After just about fifty seconds, Miles sends back, Sleep well

Alfons feels so nauseous he doesn’t figure that he will.

The sick feeling doesn’t go away.  His stomach roils like a storm at sea; his head is a blacksmith’s anvil, and his eyes are stinging with the sparks.  His skin feels flat and thick and colorless, like dough, like clay—mashed down on his weary bones, and clamminess seeps from the cracks.

He drags himself to one o’clock with the convenient distraction of his lineup of classes, and then he tries to scrounge up some food at the café just off-campus that doesn’t turn his stomach on sight.  He settles on bread, by itself—not exactly the powerhouse of balanced nutrition his body needs right now, but at least he probably won’t puke it back up.

He gets an iced coffee, too, which is a terrible idea, and sits there sipping at it and watching the clock.

At two, he stands up and walks back to his car, and he tosses his bag into the passenger seat and then gets in to drive.

It’s not that far to Whippersnapper, but it seems like a long way when his heart is tap-dancing arrhythmically all over his freaking chest.  He grips the wheel with his uninhibited hand until his fingertips start to tingle, and then—too slow, too soon—he’s pulling up in front of the stupid fucking club where this all started.  Where the whole thing started, and where it started to go wrong.

He refuses to park in the same spot as—then.  He’ll probably never put his car in that fucking space ever again; he’ll walk from a mile away before he encourages himself to relive…

Well.

He pulls up to the curb, backs up a little to straighten the car out, pulls forward again, bangs his fist down on the wheel in frustration at his stupid nerves, takes a deep breath and holds it, and then kills the engine.  He’s okay.  He’s going to be okay.  He’s always been okay.

He gets out of the car and locks the door; his homework can stay there.  If anyone wants to steal it and do it for him, he’ll unlock the door for them and give them a stamped, self-addressed envelope to send it back in.

His car’s about fifty feet down the sidewalk from the main doors of the club.  He walks over and leans against the wall to wait.  He’s early.  He’s always early.  He’s always early, and it’s always too late.

At 2:25, the door opens, and Miles slips out and shuts it behind him.  He looks up.  He doesn’t seem surprised—or relieved, or excited, or… much of anything, really.  He seems tired.

Alfons probably looks just about as numb and exhausted as he does, but it still kind of—hurts.  Normally they’d be grinning at each other like loons by now, and there’d be this warmth burgeoning in between his ribs, and…

Normally is gone.

He pushes himself up off the wall, but he’s not sure if he should approach or not, so he just… stands there.

“Hey,” Miles says, softly.

“Hey,” he says.

Miles swallows.

Alfons scuffs his foot.

“How—have you been?” Miles asks.

Alfons feels like he’s been punched in the gut by an oversized fist wearing chain-mail.  He doesn’t have the breath to blurt out How the fuck do you think I’ve been?, which—all told—is probably a blessing.

“Oh,” Miles says, looking from the sidewalk to Alfons’s face and back to the sidewalk.  The guilt pours out; there’s a cringe, then a wince, and then he turns away and tugs at his shirt and reaches a shaky hand upward to pull at his hair.

Alfons wants to say No, it’s fine, just stop, let’s just—let’s skip the reconciling crap and just be beyond it, but his throat won’t open wide enough to let the words come out.

“Are you cold?” Miles asks.  He’s—starting to take off his jacket— “You look cold.”

“I’m fine,” Alfons says.

He is a little bit cold, because the wind out here is unrelenting, and he had the heat on in his car, but that’s not the point.

“Really,” Miles says, slinging black denim off one arm and then offering it up in one hand—like he’s baiting an animal that’s bitten him before.  “Take it.”

“I don’t need it,” Alfons says, and he hears the words tumbling out flat and hard and pinging on the pavement like shards of metal, and he can’t seem to bring himself to stop it.  “I’m fine.”

Miles looks at him for a long moment—wide, helpless eyes.  He’s never looked like this.  He’s never let anything rock his boat, and he looks now like it’s sinking, and he doesn’t know how to swim.

“Okay,” he says.

He draws the jacket back, folds it over his arm, and hugs it to his chest.  He toys with a button.

Alfons pushes his hands into his pockets and slowly curls his fingers in against his palms.

“I wrote a song yesterday,” Miles says.  He runs a fingertip slowly down a seam.  “I thought… it might help.  As an outlet.”

Alfons doesn’t want to know.  He doesn’t even want to think about it.  “Did it work?”

Miles smiles thinly.  “No.”

Alfons kicks his toes against the cement again and looks out at the street.  An SUV goes by.

“I just—feel so—empty,” he says.

“I know,” Miles says.

“Carved out,” Alfons says.

“I know,” Miles says.

Just fucking hold me, Alfons thinks at him—so hard, so fervently, that he has to hear it; it has to break through.  Just touch me, please, and we’ll forget all of this, I swear, I’ll find a way; just don’t leave this fucking chasm in between us like everything has changed, or everything will—

The Whippersnapper door slams open, and Olivier storms out wearing boots that could crush a man’s head.

“You fucking morons,” she says, “are going to kiss and make up right now, or I’m firing you both.”

It would most likely be hazardous to Alfons’s health and well-being if he pointed out that he doesn’t work for her, so he keeps his mouth shut.

“I’m fucking serious,” she says.  “Make out, and make up.  Now.”

Miles blinks at her.  Then he blinks at Alfons, who is doing his best impression of a terrified statue.  Then he shuffles over, threads his fingers into Alfons’s hair, and…

Oh.

Oh, God, Miles always kisses like every second of it is salvation, like the press of lips and the touch of tongues is keeping him alive, like there’s nothing else in the universe to want and never will be—but this—

He’s so gentle, and so sweet, and Alfons is so fucking sick of crying, and there’s only one more way to let all the emotion out—which is to grab his collar and bite his lip and kiss him back as hard as humanly possible.

Maybe Alfons can kiss him hard enough to make him stop trying to apologize—hard enough to get him to fight back, stake his claim, reestablish the ownership he’s had since the first fucking time his fingertips brushed the back of Alfons’s hand—hard enough to shatter all this stupid awkwardness rearing up like safety glass between them, where it’s never been, where it’s not welcome—hard enough that they’ll both forget this ever happened, hard enough to ripple back along the EKG flatline timeline they’ve been walking over the last two days and erase everything that intervened—

They separate to gasp for air, Miles drawing back and staring at him like he’s something entirely new—new and good, new and wonderful.  Miles lifts a hand and brushes his hair back, then carefully shifts his glasses from where they got sort of shoved up on his nose.

The adrenaline is bottoming out again, and Alfons collapses into him, and Miles wraps both arms around him and holds on so tightly that there must be a way to make this right.

“Oh, good,” a voice—vaguely familiar—Karli’s?—says from a ways off to the right.  Alfons lifts his head just enough to peek over Miles’s shoulder.  Buck is staring openly, and Karli is raising an eyebrow and releasing a sigh.  “Nobody’s dead.”

“You thought they were going to kill each other?” Buck asks.

“Of course not,” Karli says.  “I thought…” He starts to gesture towards Olivier, sees that her laser-eyes are on him, and wilts instantly.  “…n… othing.  I thought nothing.  Because I’m here to play music, not to think, and I don’t wanna die.”

“That’s right,” Olivier says calmly.  She fixes the incinerating eyeballs on Miles and Alfons, and Alfons counts it to his own credit that he bests the urge to cower away.  “Are we all hunky-dory here again?”

Miles looks at Alfons.  And—well, hell.  It does feel like some part of the world—the foundation of his world—had been dragged out of its place and beaten out of shape, but now it’s slotted right back in where it belongs.

So he smiles.  Maybe it’s still a little weak, but he means it.

“Yeah,” Miles says to Olivier.  “We’re fine and dandy and awful swell.”

“Golly gee willikers,” Olivier says, so deadpan Alfons chokes on a slightly hysterical laugh.  “Ain’t that grand.”

“It really is,” Miles says, gazing adoringly at Alfons, and it’s magnetic; he can’t not gaze adoringly back, and it just—his whole heart keeps expanding like it’s going to fill his whole body and then explode into confetti and soft spring rain—

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Olivier says.  “Now get your ass back inside and practice; you two can make googly eyes at each other later.”

“Can I have that in writing?” Miles asks.

“Git,” Olivier says.

Miles ghosts his mouth over Alfons’s and grins at Alfons’s automatic reaction to pout.  “I’ll text you later, okay?”

“Okay,” Alfons says, and he even manages to convince his hands to release Miles’s shirt.

Miles hooks his jacket over his shoulder with one hand and grazes the knuckles of the other against Alfons’s cheek just one more time, and then he disappears back into the club, closely trailed by Buck and Karli.  Olivier glances back at Alfons standing there dumbly on the sidewalk and, if he’s not mistaken, nods just slightly and almost—almost—smiles.

This is without a doubt the strangest day of his life, and yet somehow he can’t find a cause to complain.

Miles was texting him unrelentingly during his shift at work.

i know youre not there babe but we can skype and i can call you every day and i mean that, i would, and ill send you pictures & ill sing you all the shit were working on although you might be contractually obligated to make sure your place is secure first bcuz if its bugged and a song gets out Liv is going to kill everyone

we can have skype sex

oh shit i shouldnt have put that on your phone my bad

uh hi mr fbi agent we are two consenting adults and this is ok so you can stop monitoring this connection now

no but really i bet we could make it good and i know it wouldnt be the same but

i love you

and if youre game id really really like to keep showing you that even if im all the way across the fucking continent

i bet i could make you a scrapbook

buck is really good at that shit.  as well as cupcakes.  he is seriously like martha fucking stewart reincarnated except for the fact that shes not dead and also he hasnt done jail time.

so.  not actually that much like martha stewart.  and i dont know if she scrapbooks but he does and i bet hed help me learn how.

i love you

im sorry i guess this is really stupid but im just so fucking scared of losing you

i love you babe

okay im going to sit on my phone now so i cant leave you more stupid texts

although maybe that means im gonna ass-text you so if i do i apologize in advance but like theyre probably going to be less stupid than all the ones i just typed on purpose hahaha

It’s turns out to be good thing that Alfons doesn’t pause in his rush home for long enough to read this entire novella, because it means that he’s in the elevator up to the apartment by the time he scrolls through it, at which point he actually stops breathing for about a quarter of a minute and has to lean against the wall.

None of that was stupid, he sends back.  I love you too.  So flipping much, just.  God I’m so tired or I’d say more, sorry.  All of that sounds great.  Although Ed will probably cry at the airport because he won’t get any cupcakes while you guys are gone.

The reply he receives, on his way down the hall, is a stream of pixel hearts, so he sends one back.  He’s clearly not the only one who hasn’t slept properly in two days.

When he lets himself in, Al’s gaze swivels immediately, and his eyes go huge.

“You look… significantly less completely wrecked and miserable than you have in the last fifty hours,” he says.  His eyes narrow.  “But that could be a clever façade.”

Alfons can’t stop himself from grinning, however wearily.

“I’m not clever,” he says as he collapses onto the couch.

Al frowns.  “That’s preposte—”

“Let’s not talk about it,” Alfons says, laying the non-cast-covered arm over his eyes and trying to tamp down the smile.  “There’s nothing to talk about, because everything’s okay, and that is so… freaking great.  That is so freakin’ great, Al.  So let’s talk about something else.  Anything else.”

At the silence, he realizes—with a slow, cold, dawning horror—that he has made a terrible mistake.

“Brother’s at Lan Fan’s for a tournament thing,” Al says, voice going ever-so-slightly silky—oh, God, it’s too late to run— “Let me tell you about my advent calendar plans.”

The worst part is, he can’t even scream, because the neighbors would probably sue.