(no subject)
He's had a fucking year. A year to think. To brood. To try to reach out, again and again, and each time Neil's felt a little further away from him, until finally--somewhere in between the fifth letter (barely answered) and the seventh (not answered at all)--he had let it go. Let the silence descend.
Into a long year.
It had really started to go bad, he had initially thought, with the news about Berlin, with passing that news on to Neil, with Neil's flat response. Lately--alone in his bunk and staring up at fractured pattern in the plaster ceiling--he's been thinking that it had started to go bad a long time before that. With that awful abortion of a goodbye.
Maybe it's been bad from the beginning.
But all the letting go, that's been a lie. The two people he's fucked since--one boy, one woman, fast and detached and not remembering their names after--were part of that lie. The tiny collection of letters and postcards in his locker is part of that lie. The highlight reel of memories that plays in his head when he closes his eyes might be the most painful part of that lie.
And in the end, he runs away until the stupidest possible moment, at which point he turns around and runs straight back.
Which is why, an hour and a half into a twenty-seven hour layover--that he may or may not have planned--he's standing at Neil's apartment door, cold anger burning in his chest, raising his fist to pound the old, cracked wood.
Somehow he's not even surprised that he's here. It was probably just a matter of time.
Into a long year.
It had really started to go bad, he had initially thought, with the news about Berlin, with passing that news on to Neil, with Neil's flat response. Lately--alone in his bunk and staring up at fractured pattern in the plaster ceiling--he's been thinking that it had started to go bad a long time before that. With that awful abortion of a goodbye.
Maybe it's been bad from the beginning.
But all the letting go, that's been a lie. The two people he's fucked since--one boy, one woman, fast and detached and not remembering their names after--were part of that lie. The tiny collection of letters and postcards in his locker is part of that lie. The highlight reel of memories that plays in his head when he closes his eyes might be the most painful part of that lie.
And in the end, he runs away until the stupidest possible moment, at which point he turns around and runs straight back.
Which is why, an hour and a half into a twenty-seven hour layover--that he may or may not have planned--he's standing at Neil's apartment door, cold anger burning in his chest, raising his fist to pound the old, cracked wood.
Somehow he's not even surprised that he's here. It was probably just a matter of time.