Chapter Text
John knew they’d end it sooner or later.
He and Olivia had spent the past year dancing around it, because both of them wanted to believe that they could make it work. It’s not like either of them had done anything wrong, or that they’d stopped loving each other, and that had made it so much harder. They still call each other, some nights, when they can manage them. Conversations still flow as easily as they always have. Olivia still laughs at his terrible jokes and tells him about her classes at GSU, and John still tells her stories about West Point and training and the increasingly ridiculous things his classmates get up to when left unsupervised for five minutes.
They are still them.
But love is not the same thing as logistics.
The conversation happens on a Saturday night, nearly a month into his third year. He’s laying on his bed, phone pressed to his ear, staring at the ceiling of his dorm room while Olivia’s voice comes softly through the speaker. They talk for nearly two hours. Properly talk: about the future, about her degree, about the army, about tours that will eventually send him across the world for months at a time. Mostly, they talk about how difficult distance has been with him in New York and her in Georgia, and how much harder it is only going to become when she graduates and he’s deployed.
By the end, it’s all out in the open, nothing left unsaid.
“We’re okay, right?” Olivia asks quietly.
John closes his eyes. “Yeah.”
“Still friends?”
“Of course,” he tells her.
The call ends, and that is that.
It’s entirely calm and amicable and devastating.
There is no spectacular implosion that would let him point to a single moment and say: there, that’s where everything went wrong. They’re just two people who love each other enough to acknowledge that love itself is not always enough to sustain a long-term relationship. Not when thousands of miles, conflicting schedules, and different outlooks on what the future should look like stand between them.
It hurts precisely because neither of them is at fault.
If one of them had stopped caring, or if bitterness had somehow managed to worm its way between them, then maybe this would be easier. Maybe John could have been angry instead of heartbroken. Maybe he could have convinced himself that the relationship had run its course, that ending it was a relief rather than a loss. Anger would have given him something to fight. Resentment would have given him someone to blame.
Instead, he sits alone on his bed long after the call has ended, staring at the phone resting beside him. The room is silent now. No familiar voice coming through the speaker. No easy conversation stretching late into the night. Just the lingering memory of Olivia speaking with the same gentle honesty that made him fall for her years ago, and the tragic thought that she’s right. They had made the mature choice. The sensible choice. The choice that gave them the best chance of remaining in each other’s lives.
High school relationships often don’t last.
Not everyone is built for long distance relationships.
John understands that. He agrees with it, even.
It still sucks.
It really, really sucks.
The next few weeks pass in a blur of exhaustion.
Training helps. Training always helps. He finds comfort in that structure, in schedules, in pushing himself until his muscles burn and his thoughts quiet down. During the day, he barely has time to think about anything beyond the next task, the next drill, the next class. The problem comes afterward. Evenings stretch. Weekends feel longer. As a third-year Cadet, he’s got more free time, which leaves more room for his mind to wander somewhere he does not want it to go.
He misses having someone to call.
He misses having someone waiting for him at the end of the day.
Mostly, John misses the certainty.
He misses knowing what the next years of his life are supposed to look like outside of military milestones. He also misses Olivia specifically, alongside the comfortable predictability that comes with building a future alongside another person. So when a weekend pass finally arrives, he decides that spending another two days sitting around his room feeling sorry for himself sounds like a terrible use of his freedom.
A few classmates talk him into heading into the city.
John doesn’t particularly care where they end up. He just knows he needs something louder than his own thoughts for a few hours. He’s twenty-one now, legally old enough to drink, and if there was ever a time to make use of that fact, it’s probably after getting dumped. Or mutually breaking up, which still somehow feels worse.
The bar is packed by the time they arrive.
Music pounds through the walls and floorboards hard enough that John can feel the bass in his chest. Every table is crowded. Every conversation is conducted at a volume just shy of shouting. People laugh too loudly, flirt too obviously, spill drinks, and make questionable decisions with an enthusiasm that suggests they have absolutely no intention of thinking about tomorrow until tomorrow arrives.
It’s chaotic and crowded and terribly obnoxious.
Tonight, it’s exactly what he needs.
John claims a spot at the bar and orders a gin-and-tonic, mostly because it seemed like the sort of thing an adult-with-their-life-together would drink. He takes a sip, finds it tastes vaguely like somebody squeezed a lime into rubbing alcohol, and decides to watch the crowd instead. It drifts around him in shifting clusters of strangers and acquaintances. His attention wanders without much purpose until it catches on a man standing across the room, and then it stops entirely.
Dark hair. Sharp cheekbones. Expensive suit.
The kind of expensive that probably costs more than everything currently hanging in John’s closet combined. He’s speaking to someone near one of the high-top tables, a glass balanced easily in one hand while the other moves through casual gestures that somehow draw attention rather than disperse it. It makes him look classy, despite the surrounding chaos in the crowded bar. Confidence radiates from him with almost offensive intensity, sliding into arrogance. He’s probably the kind of guy that’s never doubted himself for a single second of his life, John thinks bitterly. That thought would be more of a turn-off if the stranger wasn’t one of the most attractive men John has ever seen.
The realization arrives uninvited and refuses to leave.
As if sensing the attention, the man glances in his direction.
Their eyes meet across the room.
One dark eyebrow arches ever so slightly.
John immediately jerks his gaze away and takes a long drink from his glass, as though that somehow disguises being caught staring. Two seconds later, mortification catches up with him, as he realizes that snapping his head around like a startled deer probably made the situation more obvious, not less. Heat creeps up his neck into his cheeks, as he desperately tries to pretend that it’s the alcohol warming him.
“Damn it,” John mutters into his drink.
This night was not helping him feel any better.