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It's a bad idea. It's a horrible idea, Colin tells himself, all through getting to the airport and getting on the plane and making the three-hour flight from Cincinnati to New York. He's supposed to have grown out of his impulsive habits by now. He stares down the baggage carousel and fights his way to a taxi and gets to his hotel—because he has no permanent residence anymore, he'd sold his little apartment years ago when he moved "officially" to somewhere in Pennsylvania (a little bungalow he never visits, it's just a permanent residence he puts on all his forms.) He checks in and gives his bags to the porterboy and does a fantastic job not thinking about it at all until he's safely ensconced away in the privacy of his room.
Fuck, what is he doing?
The RSVP burns a hole in his pocket. It's a text that he'd impulsively replied to—not knowing if Bill would ever see it; not even knowing why he'd done it. Colin's got no idea why he's even turning up. He doesn't know how Bill even has the number to the burner that Colin keeps for emergencies (he doesn't use it other than to work and occasionally receive the occasional text from a +917 number, unsaved of course, because Colin is that petty).
Colin's been paying the phone bill for the damn thing for years now. He doesn't know why he even bothers. He can't seem to get rid of it—either he hesitates too long in trying to trash it, or he types in a response so embarrassing in response to one of the messages that he backspaces and throws the thing inside his duffel and refuses to think about it for a solid month.
He doesn't know if Bill would even honor the RSVP. Colin wouldn't. Colin should turn around and cancel his room booking and hitch a ride to the airport so he can fuck off right into the wilds of Ohio, because the alternative was worse to think about.
(Who is he kidding? Bill's not Colin. Bill doesn't hold grudges like that. He's moved on, unlike Colin, who is just that dysfunctional and hung-up on something that wasn't even really a thing. That's why he pitched a fit and disappeared out of Bill's life like he was never even really there. That's why he fucked off into the blackout silence of spec-ops without so much as a goodbye, without looking back. Bill was right.
Colin's never met a bridge he couldn't burn—if it exists, he'll find a way to fuck it up. That's the Colin Glass guarantee.)
So Colin must be crazy if he wants to show his face at a party with a bunch of richer-than-God assholes (he knows what those FBI paychecks look like, he's not stupid) and let Bill Goodman ruin his life even further than he already has. Congratulate him on his early retirement with a smile and tuck away every ounce of puckering resentment he keeps folded up inside of him like a broken lawnchair, sharp wooden splinters poking into the soft flesh of his insides every time he moves and smiles like a marionette on strings.
Fuck. Fuck.
He's just curious, is what Colin tells himself. Bill hadn't been the retire-early type back when they'd been working together—almost secretly as gung-ho as Colin had been, maybe more—but maybe the danger got to him. Colin personally doubts that. But he knows people change—god, does he know—so maybe Bill had washed his hands clean of their partnership when Colin jumped ship, had walked back into the light without thinking too hard about it.
Good for him.
The last time Colin saw him, Bill was newly-wed with a wife and a mortgage. He'd even been invited to the wedding—an event he does not remember fondly, because it mostly comprised of him being embarrassingly upset and drunk; he hadn't even made it through to the afterparty—just long enough to see the ceremony and the groom and bride's exchange of vows (Colin only remembers this part because it was before he'd started trying to set a new record for how fast a man can give himself alcohol poisoning) before he'd left, pissed and upset and upset that he was pissed. Truly, Colin contains multitudes.
Fuck, Bill's probably got kids by now. Colin's never met Katie for longer than two minutes would allow, but he bets their children would be loud and rambuctious and perfect. They were perfect, truly, because Colin has never met anyone else that could match Bill's wit and still want to take care of the man after he drives you mad first. Could still want to go home to him. Could still end up wanting Bill even when faced with every annoying, untenably honest, nagging parts of him.
Colin's being uncharitable. Bill's honest, lovable, walks around with clean hands. Colin's happy for him. He swears. And for the most part he means it: he does want it for Bill, a happiness that left sunspots in Colin's eyes when he looked too long, someone who he could come home to every night and kiss and love and have a family with. A future unburdened by the murkiness of their job. The murkiness of Colin's job.
It's just, well, once upon a time Colin'd thought Bill would choose differently.
The party's in full swing when Colin arrives. He's put on a suit—warm blue wool, because they're in October and New York falls are as chilly as he remembers; and if Colin's hunch is correct, he's probably going to want to be outside for a good chunk of it and not inside where a small miniature sun is walking around.
And when he gets to the venue, it's like he was never nervous at all; Colin is very good at what he does, and he knows it. He's even combed his hair. Presentable-looking, and not like he's aiming to get so colossally shitfaced that he starts four minor scandals and has to be dragged out by the pits.
He slips his confidence on like a coat and slips inside, nodding at the doorman as he signs in, following the sound of laughter and glasses clinking together. Music swells as he steps into the main hall.
Colin's been to a fair few of these in his time—either while working or not-working, which don't really count because when he's not working these are still work events anyway, so he might as well give up and say fuck it, he's putting on the work-face. He's right to do so—the party's really about what you could expect from a room full of individuals that all vaguely work for the government in one way or another. High-ranking officials and agents milling about and schmoozing and networking and lying through their damn teeth, using the open bar as an excuse to approach and introduce themselves. Favours exchange hands, people smile and laugh and talk, and Colin wrinkles his nose at it all.
He's never liked these. Kind of antisocial, his third-year report under his first handler had said, Prefers lone assignments. What an oxymoron—Colin Glass, a misanthrope? Perish the thought.
He winds his way through the crowd. There's no sign of the host—Colin's not sure if he wanted to see Bill literally minutes after he shows up fashionably late, anyway, and Bill's probably off schmoozing with faces that Colin doesn't know—so Colin ignores the cold dig in his gut and slinks off to find himself a snack and a drink.
Once upon a time, he would have known where Bill was within seconds of stepping into a room, would have been able to pick him out of a crowd anywhere. Colin would have been able to pick him out of a crowd of thousands by following Bill's habits and quirks like a breadcrumb trail. He would have known him blind.
People change. Colin knows this firsthand. He doesn't know if Bill still favors window-seats and still likes to stand with his back deliberately turned three-quarters to the nearest exit so he seems nonchalant but still ready to respond just in case, because they're still two halves of a paranoid nutshell, and he doesn't know if Bill still carries around his Beretta like it's a security blanket everywhere he goes.
Given he's retiring, probably not.
Colin finds himself at the bar, ordering a glass of whatever's most expensive—the FBI's footing the bill, anyway, they can afford it. It comes warm and orange and sloshing a little as the bartender slides it to him; smelling pungent and strong when Colin lifts it to his lips.
It's supposed to go down smooth. Colin tastes something bitter when he pulls away.
He wishes that he had someone to talk to. Parties like these are lonely—a sea of small talk and false faces and networking, ugh. When Colin used to work these things, he'd had Bill in his ear—almost always, either literally or figuratively; Bill was always there, either posing as another guest or a guard or something. Colin'd liked the ones where he got to have Bill as a plus-one the best. Clinking drinks, casually chatting about something or another while he kept an eye out for their mark; swapping banter even while Bill catalogued everyone that walked in and out of the joint.
This isn't work. Colin's just going to have to suck it up—he's going to have to talk to Bill eventually. He'll probably have to laugh it off and pray to god that Bill doesn't still know Colin as well as he used to either, because Colin will not be able to lie to the man's face that he's happy for him.
Hence the liquid courage. He throws back the rest of the glass and motions for another.
Colin drinks it, and then grabs one more "for the road" as he slips off the stool and makes his way into the crowd—no time like the present. The sooner he finds Bill, the sooner he can leave, tucked tail and all.
He doesn't have to search very far.
In one of the hidden alcoves, he sees Bill.
And Colin knew what he was in for when he'd said yes to the RSVP. Of course he knew. He'd always known that Bill Goodman was unnecessarily handsome—he has eyes—but Colin feels a little bit like he's been punched in the gut when he lays eyes on Bill for the first time in eight goddamn years. In person.
Time has been kind to him. Older, sure, but Bill's still—handsome, because of course he is, effortless in the way that he's not even trying, and it aggravates Colin to no end. Still as handsome as the day that Colin'd practically ran away from him.
Bill's done something to his hair—letting his curls free, flopping loose and messy over his forehead while the back is shaven short; a sight that makes Colin freeze, a deer in Bill's oversized headlights. He's greying now around his temples, and he's definitely not as clean-shaven as he'd been eight years ago; he's growing out that five-o-clock shadow a la Colin's own, which Colin'd feel more strongly about if he hadn't been so taken with the whole of him.
The Bill that sits, alone in front of him, is not his Bill. He hasn't looked up and seen Colin yet. For those blissful moments, Colin's just a hidden voyeur in a crowd of thousands, and he's staring.
Eight years washes down the drain. Suddenly it's like he'd never left at all—the world rearranges itself to fit: cranes raising the white moon, the light shining itself directly on Bill's face, like a stage, and Colin swears he'd woken up this morning knowing he was over it. And he's realizing that as he looks his fill, the untenable swelling feeling inside him growing and growing until Colin can hardly breathe, is that he is very much not, and—
—This was a mistake. He needs to leave, right now. Fuck being polite.
But Colin never gets a chance to. Colin feels his pulse begin to race as soon as Bill locks eyes with him, thinking slow and muted, dull and sluggish in the face of it all.
Bill raises an arm to wave, an eyebrow raising slightly in that way he does when he's surprised but doesn't want to show it.
Colin schools his face, takes a sip for strength (and luck), and walks over.
"I didn't think you'd come," Bill speaks. His voice's unchanged—still that raspy register Colin would know blind and half-deaf, would know underwater and through a radio and through a storm and in his bed. Would know even dead.
Colin shakes his head. "I didn't think so either," he says. Good: his own voice doesn't betray him. He sounds casual, like he's not teetering on the verge of hysteria. "But I heard you were hanging it up."
"I thought it was time," says Bill. "Hey, Colin."
Colin's probably having an aneurysm somewhere in the back of his mind. Internally, he could feel the wooden shards of his heart splintering all over again and digging into his lungs, making it real fucking difficult to breathe—and Colin'd convinced himself, all the way on the flight over, checking in to his hotel, even driving here in his rental that he'd been fine. That he would be fine. He's been slowly innoculating himself over the years, reading Bill's texts and writing small not-responses that never get sent and letting the hurt wash over him like a tide he's coasting. The small stack of postcards that he's written—kept at the bottom of his duffel, unsent—says it all. One for each op he's ever been on since he left.
But Colin's forgotten what the real thing felt like.
"Hey yourself, mate," Colin half-chuckles, because what else is he going to say? I almost didn't show? Go fuck yourself? "How's the party?"
"Eh, can't complain," Bill says, in that clipped midwestern drawl. "You look… well, by the way."
Ah, fuck. Colin opens his mouth to say something along the lines of Oh thanks and instead, because he has apparently decided to shove his foot in his mouth today—
—he blurts out, "You look good too."
Silence falls.
That was not… what'd he'd meant to say. That was so off-course as to what Colin was even trying to say that it borders on overly truthful.
Where did seventeen years of fieldwork go? He's got a rap sheet longer than his arm and this is what he does as soon as he opens his mouth?
(Man, what was in that drink he had? He should file a complaint, you know, if he survives this.)
Bill breaks the awkwardness with a laugh. "I would sure hope so," he chuckles. It's lighthearted and airy, and Colin feels his entire chest squeeze down like a vise. "I'm only getting up there in years, you know?"
Does Colin know. He's staring at the silvering hairs at Bill's temples and trying to decide whether crying and chugging his weight in drinks is a viable option, or whether he should try and tough it out because he is Colin Glass and he can pretend for one night in front of the man that smashed his heart into tiny, tiny pieces. So instead he fake-laughs and takes a sip in lieu of anything better to do.
He tries to find something to say, anything. But for the first time in ten-odd years, Colin searches for words and finds none in his endless repertoire. It's incredible. Eight years and Bill Goodman still reduces him to a gaping goldfish.
Thankfully, Bill picks up the slack for him. "How was your flight over? You're not in New York anymore, right?"
"Cincinnati, actually," Colin says. "I was there for a week before I'm moving on to Cleveland."
Bill hums, swirls his glass around in his hand like a sommelier. "I hear it's good this time of year. I wish I could visit more, but you know how it's been."
Jesus, what the fuck were they doing? Small talk at six pm at what is arguably supposed to be one of the happiest events in Bill's life, when Colin used to fucking hate small talk?
"We sure do," Colin says. "How's the wife? Still sticking around?"
"Ah," Bill utters. He hesitates. What the fuck is he hesitating for? "We're uh, separated. Trying to take a break—we had very different opinions on the future."
"Oh," Colin says. Oh was real inadequate—what do you say when your ex-partner and the man you have tried so desperately to cut out of your life tells you about his impending divorce? "I'm…sorry."
"Don't be," Bill tells him, devoid of emotion. Honest as ever. Eight years and he talks to Colin like he hadn't fucked off when Bill needed him most—in the middle of the biggest event of his life, no less. "You were right, you know."
"About—"
"God, Colin, are you going to make me say it?"
Colin blinks. Blinks, and blinks, and blinks. Bill's nose and forehead curve down into a frown, disapproving, new lines appearing where there hadn't been before. If Colin'd thought Bill at thirty-something had been devastatingly handsome, he hadn't been prepared for this older, jaded version. It was a fact that bore repeating. He couldn't tear his eyes away, forced to bear witness as Bill set about trying to brighten the room forty degrees with the force of his emotion. Intent or whatever. Colin's sure one of these days he'll succeed eventually.
It's like pulling teeth: he wants nothing less than to be here for this conversation, to hear about Bill's apparently-going-to-shit love life.
Still, because Colin's a masochist like that, he asks: "What?"
Bill sighs. Runs a hand through his hair and ruins some of the carefully mussed curls that he'd apparently styled just for this. Colin's still not used to looking at him—in public—with the curly hair. It's doing terrible things to his health. "You were right," he repeats, quieter. "Katie wanted kids. A real family. I would never have been able to give that to her."
Oh. "Still not fond of settling down, hey?"
"I'm retiring early," Bill points out. "That's about as settled as you can get, Colin."
"And she still won't take you back," Colin laughs, a harsh bark of a sound that makes his teeth rattle. "How long have you been sleeping on the couch?"
Bill's eyes flash. Ah, there's the agent he knows all too well. "None of your business."
"You brought it up first."
"I don't know why I did," Bill says. "You never know when to stop pushing, do you?"
"If you wanted empathetic," says Colin, because he's digging himself a deeper grave, "hire a therapist. Don't talk to me. Have you even told Katie about—"
"No, and I won't." Bill knows what he's saying without saying. He always has. That's why they worked so well together—Bill can read him like a damn textbook, knows Colin well enough that he doesn't even need to say anything out loud. "You think I'm going to make her life worse after this?"
"I can't believe it," Colin says. "Eight years and you still won't tell your wife you slept with—"
"Don't," Bill says, terse. "I didn't invite you here so we could talk about—that."
That. Yeah. Of course.
You're a piece of lying shit, same as I am, Colin thinks at him. Screams it loud enough that he hopes Bill can hear. Because you were willing to play along, once. Because you ruined my life. Because you slept with a man and you liked it so much you hated it. Because you married a woman you don't even like. Because you're afraid. Because you're so full of shit and you lie even better than I do because you made me genuinely believe that—you might just—
Eight years. Eight years, and it's like time stopped still, and Colin's just reliving that night all over again. Bill's even wearing his wedding band, a shiny golden glint that flashed when he gesticulated a little too much in the way he did when he got tipsy, same as the night Colin'd asked him if he wanted to try—just once—what it was like with anyone other than his fiancee. Once turned into twice, and then thrice, and then, well. You know the rest.
Sometimes Colin can still hear the devil sitting on his shoulder telling him to jump, headfirst, into the deep, cold waters below.
In the end, he'd had no one to blame except himself. And Bill, for playing along into the charade a little too well until Colin'd started believing it too. It's ironic. It's the best joke the universe has ever played on him.
"Okay," Colin says, after a moment. He sculls the rest of his drink—half-melted ice mixing with the liquor—and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. And if Colin notices that Bill's eyes stray down, once, before flicking back up, that's no one's business but his own. He's going to get so drunk after this. "Okay, so why did you invite me then?"
Bill's face does a thing—Colin would, if you had asked him a long time ago, classified it somewhere under Bill Goodman's Kicked Puppy Expressions part seven hundred—but it's different. Colin's never seen this one before. "Why, should I not have?"
"You know what I mean."
"It was time," Bill repeats, "And besides, you got my invitation. You responded."
"I always do."
Does Colin ever. The little read notification haunts him at night—when he can't sleep, he reads the texts, he replays the little voicemails Bill has left him before. It's the worst kind of pathetic. Doubly so when you account for the veritable stack of letters Colin has written before. (He'd been attempting to start journalling, but he can only do so much when everything wrong with him kind of goes back to Bill. Everything he puts on paper sooner or later turns into an essay on Bill Goodman.
Again, pathetic.)
Bill casts a glance up at him through his eyelashes, steps a little closer. "I missed you, you know."
Colin's sure he's had torture less painful than this. He was too busy fishing for whatever bloody smear remained inside his chest that he'd forgotten Bill also had a tendency to do that, earnestness sharper than anything Colin has ever had stuck inside of him, because Colin had arguably decided to be the world's Biggest Fucking Idiot and jumped in headfirst to the shallow end of a pool.
He's been gone for too long. His tongue feels like a useless, swollen thing inside of his mouth."What, so you invited me for one last hurrah? Is that it?"
"You're my partner," Bill says, level. "I didn't really want to keep doing the job after you left. And I think—well, I mean. I really didn't like how we ended things last time."
Oh, that's rich. Colin barks out a laugh. "Bill, you invited me to your wedding."
Bill flinches—a small, minute thing, one Colin would have missed if he wasn't looking so close. "It was wrong of me to do that," he admits, quiet. "I thought that if I had you there it would make things easier with—with Katie."
Colin stares at him. Catalogues the sweep of his eyelashes across his cheekbones, the smattering of freckles across his nose. "Are you joking?"
"No?" To his credit, Bill looks genuinely confused, like he doesn't know what he's done to Colin. "It was my way of—trying to—" He makes a frustrated noise, like doesn't know how to articulate whatever he's trying to say. It should not be cute. Colin wants to tear his hair out.
"Bill," he says, almost kindly. "I told you how I felt. And you told me you were getting married. What was I supposed to think?"
"You said it was casual." Bill's breath hitches as he speaks, words getting lost somewhere in his chest as they bubbled their way out of his throat, tangled up and thick with the frustration there. "You were always telling me just casual—and you—"
"And you believed me," Colin snaps. "You don't believe me when I say I didn't steal your coffee or break into a private security firm or hotwire your car but you believe me when I say it was casual?"
A pregnant pause swells between them, strung thick like taffy on a stick. Casual was—up to a point—a word that Colin would've used to to describe himself with, once upon a time, before he'd met Bill. Before he'd decided to go against his own advice and fucked where he ate and worked—broken his own golden rule after Toni, because Colin'd played a little too close to the sun and came crashing down somewhere into the deep, dark ocean.
Nothing says complicated than having an affair with an engaged man, especially your partner.
"Colin," Bill says. "You know I love Katie."
Ah, because his life is a fucking joke and something out of a bad telenovela where he is the Jezebel-harlot figure sent to steal away the main love interest from the arms of the swoon-worthy protagonist, Bill has seen fit to remind him about his priorities. "Thank you for that," Colin says, dryly. "Really needed that fun fact. Thanks."
"It's just that," Bill says–sighs, really, with how quiet his voice has gone, words barely a whisper as they leave his mouth. "If it weren't for Katie, I would have thought it through."
I might have said yes.
Credit where credit's due, Colin doesn't fucking freak out—not in the middle of Bill's retirement party where any wandering guest could hear him start wailing like a banshee, all undignified and shit, ten years' worth of misery escaping him like a water leaking from a faucet. He shoves the words—the traitorous greedy hope rising in the barrel of his belly like a dog that refuses to stop following behind the owner that's left it to die in the woods, waiting and watching for any scrap of affection—back into the box of sayings he'd tried to imagine coming out of Bill's mouth. Here's a future where you had everything you want. Now throw it out and start over.
Colin's good, a real good liar, but he's not delusional.
He needs a smoke. "Fuck you," he tells Bill, sincerely.
Bill reels. Good. Colin hopes it hurts. Hopes it stings. "Colin—"
"You'll never be happy with this," Colin says. The truth of it slices his mouth on the way out, all jagged edges, callous and cruel. "Settling down. Starting a family. The apple-pie life. Face it: you're dying for something other than this, Bill, you'd kill for it."
The shattered look is back. "Colin," Bill's saying, setting down his untouched wine and reaching out to him with a hand—
His eyes are dry. Eight years and Colin still isn't fucking over it. Something in him snaps—the last thread of his dignity, maybe, or whatever fucks he still had left, caring about Bill's reputation and whatnot. He grips Bill's wrist and pulls him in—years can pass but Colin will always be the taller one of the two of them—and Bill goes willingly, probably because he's too stunned to wrench himself free.
Colin reels him in and pulls him flush against his chest. His skin buzzes where he's touching Bill—like touching a livewire—but he ignores it, because he has a point to prove. This close, he can see every fleck in Bill's brown eyes, one step away from being pitch black.
"You're just as bad as I am," Colin says, breathing the words out like they hurt to say. He can feel the warmth of Bill's skin underneath his hand, the livewire sparking and arcing where his thumb is pressed up against the radial artery. It beats, beats, beats. Bill's pupils blow—swallowing what's left of the brown, a sea of pitch. His breath stutters where it huffs against Colin's lips. He's so warm. Or maybe that's the alcohol talking. "You want this. You still do. You just don't want to fuck up your life by asking first."
"I always tried to reach out," Bill says. He's not pulling away. "Colin, we—"
Oh, fuck it all.
Colin puts his glass down next to Bill's, slides his other hand around the back of Bill's neck and yanks him in for a bruising kiss.
It's painful. Messy. Biting, too much spit, every single emotion Colin's tried to ignore about Bill Fucking Goodman resurfacing and making itself known front and center in his mind. Bill tastes like chapstick, the dryness of whatever abominable wine he was drinking before this, regret and rage and wasted time twisting themselves up in Colin's heart because his body remembers how to do this even if his mind can't. Even if Colin tries to forget, muscle memory never lies. It's as easy as the first time.
(He hopes to God that when Bill wakes up tomorrow on his own fucking couch he puts a hand to his mouth and realizes who he's been kissing, who he wants, who he actually needs. Colin's been right here all along.)
And Bill's still not pulling away. Sinks deeper into it, lets Colin in so he can fist a hand in those curls and keep trying to kiss the breath out of him. Turning them into one joint creature—breathing the same air, so close that if Colin opened his eyes he'd be gazing right into Bill's pupils. So close that they could be sharing the same lungs.
They stay like that for what could have been minutes, hours, days. Colin's not counting and he doesn't think Bill is, either. When he separates from Bill—a few decades later—Bill's staring at him, eyes flicking down to his lips and back again, frantic and dazed.
"See," Colin rasps, throwing tinder onto the fire. He lets go of Bill's wrist—leaving white-tipped fingerprints in his wake—and steps back, out of Bill's personal space. "You're as pathetic as I am. Maybe more."
Bill massages the circulation back into his wrist, eyes never leaving Colin's. His wedding band glints with every movement, throwing refractions—ever a practicalist, Bill had opted for a plain gold band years and years ago. Colin even distinctly remembers helping him buy that damn thing. It's a miracle he still wears it—clutches onto it like it could save him, a raft in a sea for a drowning man.
A second passes before he drops the whole facade, cool and collected going out the window right after Colin's sanity because Colin must have rubbed off on him somewhere, for him to look so tired and sad and lonely. "So what," he finally says. "It doesn't change anything, Colin. I can't fuck up my life. You won't stay."
The crazy thing is that Colin thinks he would, if Bill asked. The problem is that Bill just won't ask.
"Guess we'll never find out, then," Colin says. He steps back into himself like a well-worn, ill-fitting suit he only half-remembers to dredge up in time to cover up the naked, raw mess of him. "Thanks for letting me stop by, Bill. It was a pleasure seeing you again."
"You're leaving? Now?"
"Why wouldn't I?" Colin's lips quirk into a practiced smile. "You said that yourself."
"Colin—"
"Goodbye, Bill," Colin says. He tracks the curve of Bill's swollen lip, the flush high in his cheeks and stark against the freckles there. Once upon a time it'd been his favorite thing.
He needs to leave before he makes an embarrassment of himself. He mentally lines up the plane ticket back to Cincinnati for the following weekend and the Uber ride home—he can't drive like this—and checking out of the hotel, quietly and politely extricating himself from the tangled mess of Bill's life. It was easier than he found it being.
Bill watches him. He watches Bill back, trying to memorize all the details he hadn't before—his furrowed eyebrows, his sharp jaw, the strong slant of his nose. Colin remembers having to reset Bill's nose for him once—a messy, bloody affair with far too many fucking elbows and Bill's pained grunts underneath his hands. He'd looked—real. Less like a cardboard cutout of a person and more a living, breathing man, fleshy and warm and vulnerable between Colin's hands, and Colin'd realized that casual really didn't encompass whatever was growing in the soft spaces between his lungs.
Too late for that.
Bill lets him go. Colin walks out of the hall and into the night air, and doesn't look back.
A month later, a stack of postcards makes their way onto Bill's front stoop.
He doesn't share the house with Katie anymore. She'd moved back to Michigan to look after her mom in her old age, and Bill doesn't think he could face Katie after—after the party, anyway. They weren't together anymore but legally, they were still married.
He'd watched as Colin set fire to the future he'd built for himself with his own good two hands and let it happen. It was his fault—something about trying to have his cake and eating it too. Logically, Bill'd known. Emotionally, or practically or whatever, he hadn't.
He picks up the postcards. They're wrapped together in brown string and stamped with a whole host of colourful stamps, hailing from just about every country he can name from every corner of the globe. Estonia. Netherlands. France.
His heart stutters when he realizes they're covered in Colin's spiky scrawl.
There's no note. Nothing that could indicate what the hell Colin wanted him to have these for. Bill sits down on the porch and starts reading.
It's three PM when he starts. It's nine PM when he finishes. He's crying. No one is around to see one redheaded man in threadbare pajamas cry over a stack of unmarked mail—it's just him, and words from someone he'd once known very, very well, and the dusk setting in. He fumbles for his phone—intending to text Colin—but stops when he realizes that none of his messages from yesterday have been delivered.
This number has been disconnected, his phone tells him, cheerfully. Please contact your local service provider if you think this is a mistake.
Bill sits there for a long, long time.