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It's a regular Sunday afternoon when Stephen's eye catches the date in the corner of his laptop. He turns to look over his shoulder at Charlie, who is sitting upside down in the armchair with their head hanging over the edge and a book standing up on the carpet in front of them.
"Hey," he asks, "are we doing anything tonight?"
Charlie squints into the distance before shaking their head. "I don't think so?"
"Shit."
"What?" Charlie sits up and flips over to look at their boyfriend. "What's tonight?"
Stephen shakes his head. "Valentine's Day."
"Oh." Both are silent for a second before Charlie continues, "We're bad at the whole romance thing."
"That's for sure," Stephen says.
He walks over to the living room and stands in front of Charlie, who goes back to reading their book. Stephen can't see the title from this angle but he recognizes the particular shade of blue of the cover and knows it's Order of the Phoenix, which is... concerning. Charlie only turns to that brand of Harry Potter angst when they're upset about something. Stephen wants to ask, but he knows they'll just blow it off, so he turns a blind eye.
Both are silent for a moment before Stephen asks, "Wanna go see a movie?"
Charlie shakes their head, still reading. It's the first time they've acknowledged they even noticed Stephen standing in front of them and even then it is barely anything more another notch in Stephen's mental tally of worrisome ways Charlie has been acting over the past, well, week.
"Dinner? We could go to that art show thing Neil was talking about, if you want to go fancy."
"No." Charlie's slightly cagey attitude is suddenly overtly so and they hide behind their book minutely as they turn another page.
"Okay." Stephen draws out the word. "We could stay home and watch something. Did we ever get through that stack of DVDs you got at that yard sale last month?"'
"No."
"Alright..." Moving over the small pile of notebooks on the corner of the sofa closest to the armchair, Stephen sits down and starts his reading for class. He has to finish this chapter on performance art for Monday and he got sidetracked earlier when he tried to look everything up on YouTube and fell down the rabbit hole.
Charlie throws their book to the side and stands up as though someone had made some unbelievably outrageous suggestion, despite the fact that there had been quiet in the living room for awhile.
"I don't want to anything. I just want to go to bed," they say to the opposite wall as they walk over to the kitchen and put their cup in the sink. They turn around again, but instead of heading for their room like they announced, Charlie just stares blankly at the corner where the hall meets the living room.
"Okay." There's something off about the way Charlie won't meet his eyes, so Stephen asks, "Are you okay?"
"Yes, God, just leave me alone!" Charlie isn't exactly shouting , per say, but their words are harsh and discordant compared to the rest of the conversation, and Stephen almost physically takes a step back.
Charlie moves to leave but Stephen stops them by saying, "What's going on with you?" They turn back around, hands in fists in the pocket of their hoodie.
"We need to break up." Stephen almost doesn't hear them, but the words are quiet and deliberate. "For your sake, we— We need to break up."
"Seriously? You're gonna pull some shit like you're trying to save me from you? You're going there, right now?"
"I am!" Charlie shouts, for real this time. They cross their arms and take a step back so there's almost an entire room separating them. "It's only a matter of time before I ruin everything and we can't be friends the way we need to be, the way I need us to be."
Stephen blinks incredulously down at the ground. "I can't believe this..."
"It was never supposed to end this way," Charlie says like it's some sort of explanation. When Stephen shakes his head, they continue, "Nothing was supposed to break."
"Nothing is broken," Stephen counters. "Nothing has gone wrong yet and you're acting like it's a done thing, like this is something that's alright settled and agreed on. It's not . I don't agree with any of this, and I won't let you do this because it's just going to hurt both of us."
Shoving one hand back in their pocket, Charlie scrubs at their face and pushes back their hair. "But it won't hurt as much ."
Stephen doesn't have the words for what he wants to say, stuck somewhere between disbelief and a gut-wrenching feeling of wrongness. He feels like he's stepped into a Twilight Zone where everything is the same, just missing a few pieces here and there. Either Stephen's suddenly developed a predilection for blacking out during important conversations or Charlie is doing that thing again where they assume things are true with few facts to prove it.
By the time Stephen realizes he still hasn't said anything, Charlie has decided the silence was long enough to take as agreement, and Stephen doesn't know if he has the energy to fight it.
"So I guess that's it then." Stephen says.
Charlie doesn't say anything.