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They break up because of their differences.
And there are many.
From palate to style to taste, Aerion and Duncan are very different people. It is a surprise to everyone that they have lasted this long. It is even more surprising if those same people witnessed a fight between them because they do fight, often and publicly. Outside restaurants, and clubs, the backs of Ubers, and street corners. All places Aerion takes him, mind.
They break up because they do not fit.
They have nothing in common. They clearly bring out the worst in each other. Aerion has circled Duncan’s street more times than any of his exes and got genuinely irritated to find Duncan not cheating on him. Duncan is tired of getting complaints from his boss and his neighbors. Noise complaints are often the biggest factor. And Aerion likes slamming the headboard when they make up. To establish dominance.
Which, usually, kickstarts another argument.
The reasons keep piling up.
They break up because of Aerion’s exes. They break up because of Aerion’s family. Aerion’s temper. Duncan’s lack of fashion. Duncan’s job. Duncan’s friends and ex-girlfriend, who he considers a “very good friend.” He keeps a painting she made for him hung in the short hall of his flat. The single wall able to hold anything.
It is visible from the bedroom when Aerion lies on his side.
He stares at it until he falls asleep.
They break up because it is the right thing to do.
They are clearly not happy, though they want to be. They should stop the late-night texts, block each other on everything, and pick new gyms to frequent.
And Aerion agrees. He has more ambition than a firefighter. He has more prospects. He is rich. He is handsome. He has several degrees that take ten minutes each to explain. He has a job he likes. He has a corner office. This is for the best, fatter fish in the sea or whatever. Aerion hasn’t fished in years. Maybe he will again! They broke up, and it is for the best.
He agrees.
He agrees.
He agrees.
Until he doesn’t.
The voicemail his father leaves winds down to a single line, “You’re lucky that fuck didn’t sue!”
It cuts off from there. No anger. Just silence. Thumb tapping down. Aerion can imagine his father slamming the phone to the floor, for emphasis. He remembers when he was a kid, and his father had a flip phone, ending every business call with a succinct snap that conveyed ardor.
He still thinks his father would have whipped his phone at the ground.
He is angry with him.
Everyone is.
Which is fine. He is fine on his own. He is getting his own apartment soon, and he will only have to go back to the townhouse to gather his things and buy new things. He still has access to his credit card, or at least, it has yet to decline at the last few bars. Aerion has made a slow crawl of them, hands numb, tapping the plastic on the sticky bar top.
These are rougher bars than he is used to.
In manner and matter.
No drinks with more than two ingredients.
Which is fine.
He gets a drink, then another, and mulls over his phone.
He is excited about the new apartment. He is already planning on buying all new furniture, and a rug so thick he can sleep on it, and a bed big enough for an orgy. He will have a new guy over every night. He will christen every room, every surface, and he will have a grand time. He started shopping for things on his phone, sucking on the singular ice cube that came with his vodka, mouth numb, when someone sidles up to him.
Aerion glances at the man sitting beside him, body pivoted. Their eyes meet.
A moment passes between them, pretty eyes, nice smile. Aerion turns back to his phone.
“No.”
“Wh-what?”
“No.” Aerion crushes the ice cube in his jaw. “Thanks.”
The man puts his hands up, annoyed. “I wasn’t hitting on you.”
Aerion snorts, adds two throw pillows to his cart. “Okay.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Don’t talk to me.” Aerion takes a sip from his glass, the last.
“Fuckin’ bitch—”
Aerion spits his drink at him.
He is hauled out promptly, after that, without his card.
The bouncer seems unsympathetic to his plight, or does not understand, no matter how loud he screams. Outside the bar, the music is a dull echo, smudged out by the wet heat that closes around him. The air outside is thick, heavy with the weight of the blue-gray clouds, and pressing down, closer still. It feels like a second skin. Peeling at his throat. Gathering at his nape.
His stomach churns.
Aerion, frustrated for the first time all night, smashes his phone into the pavement. Mimicking the self-made memory.
He stares at the slivers of glass and plastic and computer bits.
Laid out like a crime scene.
He stares at the bouncer.
The bouncer stares at him.
Like he is an idiot.
Like he did something totally illogical.
He is too big to fight. He keeps mentioning cops.
Aerion turns away.
Screams as he walks.
The sidewalks are empty.
He thinks that is a good thing.
He likes being alone. No one to judge him.
Not home where all his siblings will peak out of their rooms and mutter, texting each other in the group chat Aerion knows they have without him. His father is angry at him. For something. Something about Sue?
No. He will not go home.
He will walk to his new place. Clean, and warm, and full of light.
He has the key.
The painters should be done by now.
He pivots in the direction. The right direction. Corrects when he glimpses a road sign, and slides lateral several blocks.
He wants to call a car, but every time he reaches for his pocket, he cannot find his phone. Then, after yanking at his pocket lining, he remembers and laughs.
He is tired of walking.
His legs are like lead weights.
The first raindrop hits him in the eye, blood-warm. Aerion tips his face to it, sweat gathering on his brow, and the dripping clouds pour onto him. Pins, then needles, then handfuls.
He laughs harder.
The rain creates an odd curtain. Dark shapes rushing around him, jackets lifted, umbrellas blown. Aerion does not have a jacket or an umbrella. The rain soaks straight through him, sinking into his jeans and socks. His feet feel waterlogged. He remembers a great-uncle of his who got trench foot in the war. He wonders if this is similar.
His steps weighed, he keeps walking.
Lights flash in the distance – brights, flashing once, twice before speeding past him. Aerion looks around. He has left the downtown area behind, trading sidewalk for walkway, road for highway. The cars are fewer between out here, but they move just as fast and lay on the horn when they see him.
He can see train tracks on this side of the elevated highway.
He wonders if buses and trains run this late.
He has never taken the bus. He has only been on the train once, with Duncan. He had scanned his card and waved Aerion through, only to then curse in irritation when it declined for him. He looked left, then right, then jumped the turnstile with an ease Aerion has only seen in movies. And certainly not with someone of Duncan’s size.
He was always full of those little surprises.
Long arms, long legs. A world in his eyes that Aerion has never seen. The rougher edges that kept Aerion from passing him off.
Blinking through the rain, his stomach turns sick and sicker.
His mouth tastes like acid.
There are a pair of orange-gold eyes peering at him through the slate of rain. Idling to a slow. Then, jerking, flashing.
Brake lights.
He is struck dumb as the car lurches forward, breezing by – before curling into a U-turn. Aerion jumps back, considers running across the traffic lane, running, calling the police – but remembers then that he broke his phone – and the tires send up a spray of water from the gutter to splash over the curb.
He would be scared – should be scared – but the rust on the body, the emblem on the license plate, and a glimpse through the window is all too telling. He is sure that if he reaches out right now, the door will stick.
Just like it always did.
He stands there, rain dripping down his ears, as the window rolls on the passenger side. He leans down, though he knows who it is.
Duncan peers back at him.
Hair plastered to his forehead like it does after a shower.
Teeth set in a grimace.
“Get in the car.”
It is the first words he has spoken to him in weeks.
It is the first time he has seen him in months.
He looks the same from his memories.
Aerion has watched this scene before, disinterested, as his sisters snuggled in for a rom-com. This is not that.
Duncan looks just as angry as last time, asking Aerion to stop coming by his apartment, the firehouse, and his friend’s houses. He looks annoyed, of all things, to find Aerion walking in the rain.
It teases at his baser impulses.
The parts of him that are not supposed to come out. The parts of him that wants to unleash on Duncan with everything – every slight, both dealt and perceived; every unanswered call; every lonely night since January. All of his incomprehensible grief that left his psychiatrist mused and Daeron laughing. All of it whittles down to a singular word, but he cannot get himself to speak.
He shakes his head.
Duncan makes a face, brows pulling together, lips parted.
A lump of emotion sticks in his throat like wet food.
He forces it back down.
“No?” Duncan shouts the word, confused.
Aerion nods. “No.”
They stare at each other.
Rain pelting down.
His ears are filling with it.
So is Duncan’s car.
He is like a turkey, standing out in the rain, drowning in the water. He heard that was true. He also heard it was a myth. Why does he care about stupid fucking birds?
Duncan is staring at him with his stupid fucking face.
“Why not?” He shouts, and the sky rumbles overhead. Aerion rolls his neck in irritation. “Aerion. Aerion, get in the car. It’s pouring.”
He spreads his arms wide. “I can fuckin’ see that!”
And then he turns on his heel, wobbling still, and marches in the direction he had been going. He thinks, double-checks for street signs, but it is so dark out here that he really cannot see. Duncan is following him, though; he can see that. Screaming his name out the window.
“Aerion! Are you drunk?”
He says something. He cannot remember.
Duncan cannot hear.
“Have – you – been – drinking?”
He breaks down every word.
A sip and a bite.
Last word, spat.
“You’re not supposed to!”
Aerion makes a gesture at him.
“What are you – what are you doing out here?”
“None of your fuckin’—” He pauses at an empty intersection. He can see the shape of the street signs, but the white letters are dancing out of order. Mocking him. He digs into his pocket. Scratches at the wet denim. Looks to Duncan. “Where’s my phone?”
Duncan squints at him. “Do you have your phone?”
“No!” Aerion shouts, and then it clicks, “I dropped it.”
“Dropped it? Dropped it where?”
“On the sidewalk. Outside the – fuck off!” He takes off in a dead sprint. A car whizzed past him, laying on the horn. He can see white lights in the purblind and nearly trips over the next island of curb. He stumbles along, finding his footing as his shoes slip on the wet pavement.
The sky cracks, lightning and the sound of thunder pounding the pavement behind him. A three-minute mile. A firehouse standard. Hands grab at his waist. Clenching, then lifting.
Aerion swings around on one leg, and his fist collides with something solid.
A face.
Duncan’s face. “Fuckin’ hell, Aerion!”
“What the—” But Duncan has scooped him off the sidewalk, disrupting his center of gravity midrun, like a Saturday morning cartoon, like all those times before, and neatly throws Aerion over his broad shoulder. The iron bar of his forearm folding over the back of his knees.
He kicks anyway.
His stomach heaves.
“I’m going to scream.”
“You’re drunk and disorderly.”
Aerion throws an elbow. Weak. “I’m gonna throw up.”
“No, you aren’t.” Duncan yanks on his passenger door for several seconds, one-handed, and Aerion struggles. “Christ, Aerion, let me help you—”
“How are you helping me?” He grabs a handful of Duncan’s wet hair. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re doing!”
Duncan sighs.
He drops Aerion into the seat. The fall disorients him again for several seconds, stomach rolling, and Duncan uses his body to block the door as he reaches in to fasten Aerion’s seatbelt like he is a child.
“I've been looking for you. I am taking you to mine until you sober up.”
It is perfunctory. Casual.
As if that isn’t the place Duncan forbade him from.
Aerion’s vision swims with splinters.
Duncan studies his face.
“Alright.” He says, finding something in his eyes and then shuts the door.
It locks automatically.
Aerion’s upper lip vaults in disgust.
He watches through the windshield as Duncan’s shadow circles the car, flashing hazards catching on the swell of his arms, before he slides into the driver’s seat. His shirt is stuck to his stomach. His hair pushed off his face. He says nothing to him as he fastens his seatbelt, puts the car in drive, and is off.
Aerion wants to lunge at him.
Should have ripped out the keys.
“Why are you taking me to your place?”
Duncan does not look at him.
He likes to keep his eyes on the road. Like a model citizen.
Like a fuckin’ boy scout.
“Because – you’ve got nowhere to live right now.”
It takes a moment to settle in his ears, waterlogged as they are. Everything has taken a suffocating, underwater quality since he got shut up in here. Like the rain outside had begun to gather and rise, isolating them in this new water world. Duncan’s car the last tin-canned slip of pure oxygen. He feels like he cannot breathe properly. He is sucking in air through his nose, out through his mouth, but it is stuck on the back of his tongue – everything, everything dark and terrible. His temples sink. He wants to stick fingers in his mouth and press down, make the words come out, but they are delicate and will all be burnt up by the acid of his stomach lining.
And here is Duncan, pitying him when he is not pitiful.
He is terrifying. He has very sharp teeth.
He is not a fuckin’ charity case.
“Who told you that?”
His voice is cold, the absence of sound.
“Doesn’t matter.”
It does.
It does it does it does it does it does
“No.”
He is surprised by how calm his voice is. A direct juxtaposition to the tearing through his arms, a shivering like his skin might split to something scaled.
“Who told you?”
Duncan makes a noise, noncommittal, and Aerion pins on it, trying to pull the name from his temple, but Duncan’s skull is either too thick, or Aerion’s mind is too fraught.
“I’ll tell you once we get to mine, okay?”
Aerion’s hand falls on the door handle.
Duncan’s eyes flicker.
Just a second.
At the corner.
Aerion cants his head, thumb falling on the button of his seatbelt.
Duncan’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. Speed climbing.
He lets the threat hang. Lifts his brows.
He clicks the button.
The seatbelt retracts.
A noose of vinyl against his throat.
He keeps his eyes on Duncan as his lips part, “Explain to the cops my road rash then—”
“It was Daella, alright?” Duncan is louder than he needs to be, and he looks at him while turning right, out of the knot of empty highway, to the residential area. “Now, could you please? Just – sit there. You’re safer in here than you are out there.”
Aerion’s mind is spinning. He feels like a fish laid out on the grass to die.
He reaches for his phone, again, only to remember, again, that he smashed it to bits.
He wants to bash his head into the dash.
He folds himself in half on the seat, face in his hands, fingers to his knees. The wet clothes pull at his skin. The wet seat under him squelches with every shift of the car.
He hates Duncan’s car.
Older than God. Rickety.
Dirty in a way that cannot be detailed out. Carpets stained from too many muddy shoes. Old fries. Napkins. Clothes. Brochures.
He can faintly smell the nachos Duncan’s friend dropped in the backseat. Rubbery.
He feels nauseated.
He is shaking.
Aerion lifts his face to share all this, only to find Duncan leaning towards him in increment.
It startles him enough to jump against the door, heart hammering. Only to realize Duncan is fishing something out of the backseat. He catches an annoyed side-eye, but before he can snipe something, Duncan finds what he is looking for.
“Here. You can towel off.”
Aerion takes them wordlessly.
Mismatched and thin. Tattered at the edges. Towels taken from Duncan’s hall closet, where he stores his bathroom things.
They smell like his laundry detergent.
“And this.”
Duncan pulls out a plastic bucket, too. Small.
He puts that at Aerion’s feet before his hand returns to the wheel. Eyes forward.
Aerion wonders what he is supposed to do. With the bucket. With the towels.
Strip?
Does Duncan want that?
He supposes he would be better without the clothes; his white shirt is thin, and the warm rain has sucked the space between the fabric and his skin. He stares on, unblinking, as Duncan reaches for the dashboard. Raindrops hang on his arm hair. “Is it too cold in here? Too hot?”
“’s fine.” He mutters, fisting the towels.
Rough, too.
He was always reminding Duncan to pat dry after a shower, lest his skin tear.
They smell like him, though, under the detergent. Like his scent is permanently woven in, no matter how many washes, how many years, they will always smell of—
He hears the heater rattle as his face is pressed to the towel. Louder than the engine. Louder than music if he played any. Irritation makes him bristle.
“I told you it was fine.”
He runs hot.
“I’m cold,” Duncan says.
And that is – fine.
Just fine.
Fuck him, then.
He puts the towel over his head like a veil and wades into the darkness, the scent. He presses his hands to his face, gentle pats, and moves his hands back to rub his hair. Then, his neck. His shirt is soaked, but he wants it on. He is so hot. It will cool him.
But he wraps the first towel around himself like a scarf.
His pants are another thing.
Jeans, tight. Damp so he cannot easily peel them off, but irritating as the air from the heat breathes against them. Warming his knees. Sticking to them. He settles for sitting on the other towel. At least to give him some relief.
“Can you put your seatbelt on for me?” Duncan asks after watching him maneuver.
Aerion narrows his eyes at him.
“Why?”
“Just in case I have to stop,” Duncan says, eyes forward. “I don’t want you to get hurt by accident.”
Aerion ruffles, but concedes that it makes sense and pulls the seatbelt over him, struggling with the buckle for several seconds before it clicks. Duncan’s shoulders lower. “Thank you.”
“Oaf.”
“I just want you safe.”
It ticks something inside him. Scratching at the door.
Outside, the city has begun to blur.
Blue-black.
White headlights. Orange streetlights. The yellowish glow of a traffic cone.
Black cut-outs of buildings.
The rain pelts down hard.
Aerion can imagine the rain turning from liquid to solid, not ice, but metal-matter – tap, tap, tapping, then cracking; breaking through the glass. Flooding the car.
His windpipe presses in.
His throat bobs.
“You don’t have to take me to your place.” He can feel the words. He cannot hear them. He might not leave. “Seriously.” He feels like he is slurring. Gasping. “You don’t have to.”
“You have nowhere else to go.”
He keeps saying that.
Aerion cannot find his wallet in his pants either.
No hotel.
No money. No phone.
He needs to report it stolen.
He would do that on his phone.
How does he report his phone broken?
“Why?”
“Hm?”
“You just decided to - what? Drive around? See if you can find me? All because you heard I had nowhere to go?”
Duncan is silent. The shadow on his jaw climbing up his temple.
Then clears under a passing streetlight.
For a moment, he is in bronze. Golden. The light catching in his eyes, against the gold in his hair.
“You don't deserve that," Duncan says, in shadow again.
Aerion’s throat is in a vice. The noose of the seatbelt cutting in.
He still has cuts on his fingers from the doorframe. His toe still aches from where he kicked it.
Aerion presses his lips together.
“Yeah?”
It sounds gargled.
Swimming in swill.
“I’m gonna throw up.”
“Bucket.”
Aerion puts his head between his knees and breathes into the bucket. Inhales the plastic scent. He breathes, and breathes, and breathes, and nothing comes out.
“You don’t have to take me there. I have a place.”
The admission sits in his chest like heartburn.
He did not want to tell him that. Of all the things alcohol could loose from his tongue, the apartment is the last thing he wants Duncan to know about.
He might be tempted to come over.
And if he is tempted to come over, then Aerion might let him stay over. A true give a mouse a cookie situation. He will unblock his number and his barely used Instagram, and stalk him like a prey animal. And regress. They will be terrorizing one another for years. Like diseases. Like plagues. And what if this is just Duncan’s way of getting back at him? Not back with him, but at him? For the door, and the—
Fuck.
He presses his hands to his mouth.
He forgot about that.
The lap of his seatbelt digs into his stomach.
“You got an apartment? That’s nice.”
Duncan sounds encouraging. Like a youth leader.
Aerion stares at him, pulse kicking in his throat, and puts his face over the bucket again.
He will expel the vile. He will breathe. He will stop talking.
Duncan cannot seem to stop.
“Do you want me to take you there?”
“I don’t want you there.” His voice echoes back at him.
“You can pick – come to mine or, we can go to yours, but I want to make sure you’re okay before I leave you alone again.”
The wet clothes are pulling at his skin.
Sucking against him.
“Why?”
He whines.
Breaking the word in two.
“Because it’s not safe for you to drink like that,” especially with your medication, hangs unspoken.
Aerion is not dumb.
Despite his suspicions of conspiracy and the nasty text he is drafting to Daella in his mind, he knows he cannot be alone right now. Not that he would hurt himself. He is fine. He is fine alone. But he is liable to woolgathering, as his grandma called it. Not dreamy, like Daeron, but prone to concoction. A habit from his childhood, carried on like an ill-fitted second skin. The world in his head so much more variegated than the world outside. He builds to it constantly, weaves a tapestry of rules and colors and bits of Duncan's hair. He prefers falling through it, loose-limbed, than sitting in the real one that leaves his mouth dry and libido low.
Aerion clicks his tongue. “I said bad things.”
“To who?”
“My dad,” Aerion says, eyes filling. “He’s mad at me about Sue.”
“Your dad loves you, Aerion. You can apologize.”
Aerion swallows hard, tries to dislodge the lump.
“I – I did other things.”
He stutters this admission. Watches Duncan’s hands on the wheel. Watches his face pass into shadow again.
“I know.”
The lump sinks like a stone.
Too big, too heavy, pushing down his esophagus with a final hard swallow.
He is cold.
He looks up, Duncan’s profile passing in and out of the streetlights, gathering speed.
“You know?”
Duncan's lower jaw juts forward a little, lips kneading. Not angry, per se, just feeling out the words. Weighing them.
“I – yes, I knew it was you.”
He doesn’t say anything else.
Aerion shakes his head.
“You didn’t file anything.”
Duncan makes a noise, a huff. An almost laugh.
“Your father would bury me in litigation. Besides, he paid for the door; it’s done.”
Done.
Like a door shut.
Done.
Like they were.
And he didn’t even have to do anything.
He gets frustrated sometimes when that happens. His father’s love is industrial strength, withstanding all the howling and grieving, just to make well on his behalf. Duncan had pointed that out to him, mid-argument, and Aerion had seen red.
He wants—
Something.
He cannot find the name for it.
“It’s okay.”
Duncan says, answering his quick breaths.
“It’s going to be okay.”
He does not reach for him. Aerion almost wants him to. He wants to clutch onto that arm so hard they swerve into traffic. He wants to sink his teeth in and keep Duncan forever. He wants—
A clear head.
A clear conscience.
Duncan is talking. He knows him so well, he is laying out his plan step-by-step for him. They will go back to his place. He can take a warm shower and put on new clothes. Duncan will make him a late dinner. They can watch a movie if he wants. Or play cards, and Aerion can win. Duncan will sleep on the couch and in the morning—
“I have it,” he says, quietly, nasal beyond the whisper.
Duncan makes a noise.
Another.
“What did you say?”
His voice is gentle. Prodding.
Aerion closes his eyes.
Repeats himself, “I have it.”
He can see what is going on in Duncan’s head. Beyond the puzzling and brow-furrowing, He can see the moment it clicks for him. The it. The gift. The painting. Tanselle’s painting. An elm tree that grew in the back of the group home Duncan grew up in, where he would hide from the older boys. The tree rendered in eternal spring, in full bloom, with the flush of sun rising behind it in primaries – rose red, daisy pink, violet like his eyes.
A falling star winks above the tree.
Me, he had thought, seeing it through his mind’s eye. Nights of staring at it from the crack in the door, painting a clear recreation in his mind. The star is me.
Crashing into the ground.
“Where is it?”
Duncan asks.
If there is an edge to his voice, Aerion cannot hear it. He can only see the star falling to the ground, out of the picture, so to speak, so of him. He wants to sob. He had tried turning it upside down, but that had not made much sense. He didn’t have the skill to paint or draw over it, so that made no sense either.
He resorted to taking it.
Breaking.
Entering.
Thieving.
That way, at least, Duncan would not think of him.
“My place,” he says, voice wobbling. “I put it in my bathroom when the painters came by. It’s there.”
“Did you do anything to it?”
Pitched different. Not angry, but probing. No longer coddling him either.
Aerion shakes his head.
He feels like his face is burning.
“No.”
Duncan exhales. Through his teeth.
“Okay.”
Aerion cannot see, but he can feel the car slowing down. Can feel the subtle shift as the car slows into park. Can hear Duncan’s hands peel off the steering wheel. When he lifts his face from his hands, Duncan is rolling his forehead against his knuckles.
The heater rattles on.
The rain has not let up yet, so Aerion cannot see outside, but he feels that he has overstayed, overshared, and wants to leave now. His hand touches the door. “I – I can find my way from here. I’ll call an Uber.”
“You don’t have your phone.” It is muffled by his hands.
“Yeah.”
Duncan is quiet for several more seconds. Aerion wants to cut and run. He also wants to stay.
When Duncan lifts his head, he looks at the dash, his emptying gas tank, his precarious tire pressure. “I’m glad you have it.” He says quietly. “I knew you had it. I want it back.”
“Of course.”
He scoffs it.
Means it.
“Aerion,” Duncan looks at him, “It was a gift.”
“Yeah.”
"Aerion, please, let’s just – get through tonight. We’ll get it in the morning?”
He is still proposing it like a question. Like it is something Aerion needs to agree to. Not something Duncan is demanding. And he nods. Nods because he does not know what to do with the painting. He doesn’t want it at Duncan’s, but also doesn’t want it in his apartment. He had been meaning to find something to do with it – gift it, toss it, trash it – but couldn’t summon the energy.
Just tossed it in his empty apartment. In the guest bathroom that he would never use.
Out of sight. Out of mind.
He dreamed of that tree for days.
Could almost smell it.
Aerion yanks on the door handle.
Duncan presses the lock just as quickly.
“You can throw me out here.”
“No. No, you’re coming back to mine.”
Duncan keeps his finger on the lock and puts the car in drive again, bleeding back onto the dark road. Aerion can barely see with his faint headlights, but he knows where they are. He can feel it in the familiar shift his body takes when Duncan makes the turn. He recognizes a sign.
Duncan is taking him back to his apartment.
For some reason, he had thought he was lying.
But here they are, in the familiar neighborhood, with the shitty neighbors and too thin walls, and too flimsy doors.
Aerion locks his palms together as Duncan backs into his spot. The white numbers stark on the blacktop. Duncan kills the engine.
The rattling stops.
His clothes feel lukewarm.
His throat feels rusted.
Duncan is staring at him with that unerring gentleness, and Aerion cannot stand it.
“Why?”
The word comes out strained, webby with saliva, terrible in his throat.
“Because I care about you. And I want to see you doing well.”
But not love.
Not anymore.
He is not blubbering, but he can feel the heat of shame and tears burning hotter. Battering against his impulse judgments with knowing better and doing better, all the things he promised, and promised, and screamed that he knew, ad nauseam.
He knew better than to break into his ex’s apartment.
Did it anyway.
It has all been building to this.
Four months since January, and he can feel his walls crumbling down. He wants Duncan. He wants him to answer the phone every time he calls, texts, sends a video. He wants to wrap himself around him tight and never let go. He wants Duncan to want those things too.
It has all been building to this.
“I’m not doing well.”
He wants to cut his tongue out.
It shreds the last of the words inside him, hollows out the backs of his eyes, and pulls his teeth. He wants to cry so hard it is embarrassing. He can feel nothing else but that weak-skinned rejection, and wants to collapse in on himself. Everything violent. He can feel his nails digging against his skin, blunted, and whines - miserable. Of all the good things he had, all the things he worked so hard for, he really just wanted someone who could look at him, hear him, and not shrivel away. For a time, he thought every turn he made had led him to Duncan. Every step from learning to tie his shoes to the firehouse fundraiser had led him to this.
And he fucked that up too.
Duncan had been perfect.
Even when he was an idiot.
Duncan had been perfect.
He can feel weight on his shoulder, gently applied, warm palm. The slide and grip of Duncan's touch catches a sob in his throat like a snag against fabric. Aerion looks at him.
And looks.
Duncan's flushed face, glassy eyes, small smile. The bruise forming, just at the corner of his mouth.
His stomach plummets.
“Neither am I,” Duncan says, lips bitten.
It is a comfort, not a come-on.
Like they are two mourners at a funeral, grieving together.
It is not enough.
It is good enough. For now.
He pressed his mouth against his palm, the deep inhale through his muffled palm, stinging his throat. “Thank you.”
“Always.”