Chapter Text
"Hey."
He rolls his head over to face me, disheveled hair strewn across his pillow. He always gets like this after a successful showing. Tonight is no different.
"Night, William." I try to ignore him, but I can feel his eyes burrowing holes into the side of my head as I scratch at my beard. So I roll over to meet his gaze before my brain's scooped out, sighing when I see his face.
He's nervous, deliberating on his words with an uncharacteristic quiet, working through what I know he's about to ask me. It's almost worse to be left in the air like this when I know what's coming. The last time he was this slow with it was on his wedding day.
"Do you ever think about leaving Utah? Seeing the rest of the country, looking for opportunities outside the shallow lake we're forced to swim circles around in this small state?"
I remind his that the state is actually quite large, and he reminds me I'm being pedantic, that I know what he's talking about. Of course I do, it would be kind of hard to forget how often he'd whine about this during our time sharing a dorm room. His words are always so pretty when they're slurred.
I sigh again, "Right, continue."
He looks at me, confused for a moment, before he does so, "This space is stifling. Constantly working for meager grants and scrap, I want to get out there and land something grand! Something we can live off of." He thinks a second, "Er, live comfortably off of... together. We could start right now..."
There's a slight pause before I speak, it never gets easier to tell him no.
"William, you're drunk. We just closed an amazing deal and you're celebrating with a drink."
He looks gobsmacked and disheartened but I have to continue, as much as it aches.
"I know you love your wife and children, Will. She'll need your help with a third on the way, I want you to be there for her this time. ...And you know how much I love my partner and our little girl... I couldn't leave them behind for our business."
William looks to me with a mixture of longing and grief with a hint of surprise, as if he doesn't know I've heard this before.
"...Right... Of course. You're right... I'm sorry."
I hear the empty bottle clink against his bedside table as his eyes fall to the floor. There's a restless silence the mechanical whirring of an old hotel fan can't attempt to mask. The old thing does nothing to disperse the distance between us.
But still, it is a silence. So I roll over, look up to the ceiling, close my eyes, before a drip can fall into them, and try to sleep off this pit in my throat. But sleep doesn't come with the light to my right.
As if in response to my sudden shifting toward the lamp, his voice threatens to tear me apart again, "Henry, do you remember what you used to say to me on nights like these?"
"...We said a lot of things during university, Will."
"When we were just starting out... Could you tell me again, Henry? Remind me?"
The lump grows in my throat, nearly suffocating me, "I don't remember, Will."
He swallows hard, "Well... After a big success, you'd pat my shoulder and say 'We're gonna be okay, Will!' and I'd say, 'If you say so'... Could you say that again? Say it'll be okay, that we'll be okay?"
"..."
I pull down on the string and turn out my light.
"G'night, Will."
He hesitates to roll onto his back and turn away so the room can go dark. I hear him stumble with a pause to the restroom, the occasional hic! through the thin wall.
It's a wonder we're still partners with all the agony he puts me through. ...Business partners.
How the hell do you get drunk off a bottle of pop anyways?