Work Text:
Here’s the issue: the date went well.
The guy-of-the-week Katherine had set him up with this time was perfectly sweet. He was funny without dominating the conversation, he had a completely normal job, and he seemed genuinely interested in whatever Scott was talking about at any given moment – and he’d started ranting about specific Pantone colours at one point, so that was quite the achievement. He’d even paid for both of them, without ever pushing Scott into going home with him. It had been a perfectly pleasant night of good food and better company and returning to the safety of his own apartment afterwards.
So here’s the issue: there’s a text staring at him from his lock screen. One labelled with an emoji-less name that reads “Hey! I had a great time last night. There’s a really nice Italian place I know, wanna go sometime? My treat!” in harsh blue lighting. And the thing is that part of Scott does. There’s at least ten texts like it, haunting him from where they sit unanswered in his phone, and for a solid second he considers answering this one.
He doesn’t open it.
He doesn’t open it because the guy – and Scott refuses to call him something else in his head, that would only form a connection – was sweet and funny and pretty and just a bit of an idiot and he feels like betrayal. Katherine had picked him out well.
So he shuts off his phone, goes to work, attends his meetings, gets lunch with Pearl on their shared break, stops by Tescos on the way home, and cooks his dinner without ever willingly thinking of the newest headstone in the graveyard of his phone. He eats his dinner with the tv blaring so he can ignore the empty space on the couch beside him. He refuses to put anything there. The pillow is crushed in the exact same way it had been left by the last person who’d sat there, and the seat has gathered a layer of dust absent from Scott's side of the sofa.
In the evening, he does the dishes – while blasting music – and ignores the two height markings on the doorframe to his left. They’re at almost the exact same height, labelled with the correct names, just as a way for Scott to finally prove he is – was – taller. And after the dishes, he turns on his phone. The text is still there, as is the traitorous part of his mind that’s clawing at his skull trying to get him to reply.
He shuts his phone back off.
In the weekend, he visits Lizzie. Really, he’s there to visit the graveyard she lives next to. It’s quite a ways out for Scott, but that graveyard had been explicitly requested, and he’d carried that want out with pain in his heart. He’s there to visit the graveyard and look at baby pictures and to eventually have a good cry together.
Joel’s here this time. Usually, he’s working on the weekends, but he’s here this time. There’s a plate of homemade cookies on the coffee table, and the kettle boils right as Scott’s let in. They drink tea and eat the cookies and look through pictures they’ve all seen a million times before and avoid talking about their personal lives too much. Joel’s not working today, Scott had a date this week. All parties know this and nobody brings it up and they stand over the grave in the cold.
He leaves a bouquet of poppies and tulips and pointedly ignores that the storm carries them away that night.
In the morning, he has breakfast with Joel and Lizzie. They’re all quiet and all thinking and none of them are doing anything. Scott gets in his car and waves them goodbye and gets stuck in traffic and is suddenly hit with a feeling like he’s rotting. This is the same routine he’s been doing for almost a year, and he’s become less lively than an algae-filled puddle in a pothole.
He feels like stagnant water.
He misses being in the pool.
That used to be the routine. On Saturdays, they would drive out to Lizzie and Joel’s, and the four of them would go to the pool, and Joel and Scott would sit on the edge laughing as their respective partners showed off. Eventually, they’d come over and wrestle the two of them into the water, and Scott would let himself get dragged in with a laugh. He’d get a blinding smile back.
They’d stay in the water until they started pruning or Joel started asking about food or Lizzie had been dunked under a time too many, and then they’d climb out and dry off. They’d brave the outdoors to get back in time for tea, and would play boardgames or watch a movie until it was time for all of them to split off again. Scott would end the evening curled up on his side of the couch, listening to the love of his life make them both a hot chocolate.
He's alone on the couch. His tea has steeped too long and gone bitter. The air around him is cold – he must’ve forgotten to turn on the heating before he sat down. Sighing, he pulls a blanket around himself. The tv is blaring, he has no plans for dinner yet, his phone is off, and all of this feels like stagnation.
So, he walks to Tescos, makes his dinner, eats it, and finally turns on his phone. His messages show the same carnage he’d left and the near-identical texts, all neatly marked with names and dates, feel like standing in the cold. There’s a new text from Katherine at the top. Just like always, she’s asked him how his date went. For a moment, he considers lying.
Instead, his thumb hovers over the guy’s text. His tv is blaring, his curtains are drawn, his Tescos bag is on the floor still. There’s an empty space on the couch between himself and the cold and his tea is bitter and for eleven months and five days, Scott hasn’t been going anywhere and he sure hopes that that small part of his brain feels vindicated as his thumb presses down on the guy’s name.
He texts back.