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Chapter Text

The last thing I remember about last night with any clarity is taking Jimmy’s knife. I didn’t even know he carried it around until we got to Kent and I saw it right next to the tiny bed he was asleep in. I’d seen it before, on his bedside table or when he’d check that safe he bought whenever we got home from tour, but I guess I'd always sort of overlooked it. Rowan noticed it before we even woke Jimmy up.

"That fucking knife..." he had said under his breath.

Makes sense that Rowan knew, I guess. I wish they would tell me things like they tell each other. Rowan and Jimmy.

I hadn’t meant to keep it from him. I just needed to hold on to it for a little, until we get back to London, I told myself when I slipped it into my front pocket, until everything is normal again, when I walked into the garden, until Jimmy doesn’t want to die anymore, when the rain had started to pour.

Maybe if he hadn’t said what he’d said in the rain that afternoon, I’d have given it back and we would’ve avoided all this.

No.

Not his fault.

At this point I think I'm just about ready to steal every sharp object - and mug - within a three mile radius of Jimmy like I'm an overzealous nurse in a psych ward, or something.

And things wouldn’t have gone back to normal again, because things haven’t been normal, really. I know that now. We would've just gone back to pretending they were until one of us inevitably has another meltdown.

The details after taking the knife are hazy. I remember talking to Jimmy in the garden, but I was a bit pissed already by then. The funny thing is I don't ever really remember the getting drunk part, nor much of the being drunk part either. One minute I'm sad in the living room and the next I'm lying face down in the shower in a pool of my own sick.

Or, in this case, one minute I'm in the garden rattling off my silly woes to the person I've been in love with for three years and the next I'm lying in a hospital bed.

When I wake up in a sterile white hospital room with a full leg cast and an IV drip in my arm, I’m immediately bombarded with questions by Jimmy and Rowan. Do you remember what happened? Are you feeling alright? Should we call a nurse? Why the fuck did you wander into the woods drunk at night during a flood, you dick?

That last one was Rowan, obviously. Not surprised that the first thing he does is scold me, but I'm glad to see him, stood next to my bed pulling his annoyed-and-stressed-and-concerned-but-mostly-concerned face. Jimmy looks like he needs to sleep for a thousand years. Both look like they’ve been crying. Jimmy is still crying, I think. Hard to tell, I think they’ve got me on some sort of medication and I’m not thinking straight.

Jimmy pulls me into a hug as best he can when I've got a major abdominal wound and my leg elevated and enclosed in perhaps the biggest cast I've ever seen. (Lavender, I notice. Nicer than the bright red of the last cast I wore. Is it weird that this is the second time I've ended up in one for Jimmy's sake?). He smells of rain and expensive aftershave, comforting and vaguely musky.

When he pulls back, the apologies begin.

"I'm so sorry- if I hadn't run off you wouldn't have had to come here and you wouldn't have-" He goes on like this for several minutes, despite me telling him that it's okay every single time.

"It's true, though," he says again, sitting down in the plastic chair he's pulled up beside my bed. Rowan looks a little like he wants to agree so I shoot him a look.

I say nothing to Jimmy this time - mostly because the lights in here are too bright and my head hurts - but squeeze his hand.

We all sit in silence like this for a bit until Rowan speaks.

"Cecily's on the warpath. She was going to smooth things out with the TV station by having us perform there next week."

Jimmy shakes his head.

"We can't do that. He," he nods towards me, "needs time to get better."

"I know that." Rowan snaps.

The next silence is longer and much less comfortable than the last. And even the last wasn't comfortable.

"We should get a nurse," Jimmy says, eventually, standing up and letting go of my hand. He peers into the hallway. Luckily, it's not too early in the morning - 08:47, according to the analogue clock on the wall opposite my bed - so there's plenty of staff around. Jimmy leaves, and the double doors keep swinging for a few brief seconds after he's out the door.

Rowan has walked over to the windowsill to sit down, and is now tapping away furiously at his phone. I snort. He looks like Cecily.

He glances up for a second, eyes peering at me from behind his glasses. He must've taken his contacts out while I was in surgery.

"Sorry. I'm glad you're alright, I'm just stressed. I'll sort things out with management."

He goes back to his phone, but I feel the absence of Jimmy's hand less than before.

--

"Surely you must have a back exit we can go through?" Rowan says to the nurse who did my bloods.

Unsurprisingly, the fans found out where we are. Jimmy says someone leaked our location on Twitter, which is usually the website responsible for shit like this. There aren't too many outside - even the most maniacal fans normally have lives outside of us and can't just drop everything and drive over to Kent at a moment's notice - but there's enough. Understandably, neither Jimmy nor Rowan want to deal with them while leaving, even if they seem pretty tame (apparently they had been holding up signs reading 'Get well soon', or something, earlier. Not like I could see from the bed.) They were supposed to stay with Piero until I'm discharged.

"No, we're a private hospital. The building's too small to have any concealed back doors. You'll just have to make a dash for it," the nurse responds, apologetically. She's actually really nice. She was telling us earlier about her son who came to see us way back during our first UK tour.

Jimmy is standing at the window, nervously wringing his hands. One of his nervous tics. (I wonder when I started noticing things like that about him?). He gestures for Rowan to come to the window and points outside at something.

"It's not just the fans now. Look. There's guys with cameras."

Paparazzi. Probably the creepiest profession ever, next to snake milker and PE teacher. Unlike the fans, they, for some reason, can drop everything and drive over to Kent at a moment's notice.

"Shit," says Rowan, backing away from the window and pulling Jimmy back with him. "Don't stand too close, or you'll end up in some gossip magazine."

The nurse - I think she said her name was Carmen - looks at us all sympathetically for a second, then sighs.

"Wait a minute. I'll go speak to my Head of Department."

She returns about ten minutes later with a weary looking middle aged man in a suit. He has that round, open sort of face that makes a person look both younger and older at once.

The man clears his throat.

"Under normal circumstances we aren't really allowed to do this, but given your... situation, we're able to let you stay here for a night." Rowan looks immediately relieved and opens his mouth to thank the man, but is swiftly interrupted. "But we can only do a night. Amenities like showers are reserved for patients and you'll have to sleep in here. I'll have a member of our staff see if there's any spare pillows we can lend you."

This, I think, is about as good as the deal was ever going to get, so I smile and thank him. He just nods and leaves the room, the nurse following shortly behind.

When a porter comes in a few hours later with pillows, Rowan and Jimmy immediately set up for the night.

"Thank God," says Rowan, "I don't know if my neck could survive another nap in one of those chairs."

Jimmy snorts. He's put his pillow closer to my bed than Rowan and keeps giving me tentative glances.

"Good thing we're in a hospital. I'm sure they'll have chiropractors that can help with that."

"Absolutely not. Have you seen those videos of people getting their bones cracked?" He faux shudders. "The sound." Rowan was always the squeamish one.

Jimmy laughs and gives me another look.

"You sure you don't want us to stay up? In case you need anything," he says. I assure him for the fifth time that I'm not going to suddenly perish overnight, and that if anything is wrong I'll call for a nurse.

"Alright," he says, but I can tell he's still worried.

Nobody says anything after that. The bright overhead lights are still on because it's only 9pm, but we're all exhausted. Rowan falls asleep almost instantly on the makeshift sleeping bag he's created out of the pillow and our coats. Jimmy is pretending to be asleep, but the occasional twitch of his eye gives him away and his fist is curled a little too tightly for him to be sleeping. 

As I fall asleep, I think of the knife. I think of it in some plastic ziplock bag in a storage room somewhere, covered in mud and blood and God knows what else. I think of the name engraved on its handle and the people it has passed down through (none quite so literally as me). The last thing I think is that I need to get it back.

-

I'm awoken by a rustling sound to my right. The lights in the room are off - merciful Lord - but the glass panes of the double doors let in a sliver of light from the hallway. I look around for the source of the noise, confused, before realising where it's coming from.

It's Jimmy.

He's sat up, watching the people walking down the hallway outside. A doctor pacing back and forth with a clipboard; the porter who gave us the pillows; a young woman in a scrub.

The rustling, I come to find, is one of our coats that Jimmy has somehow managed to pull out from under Rowan, draped across his lap. I guess he was cold.

I sit up a little too fast, forgetting the literal hole in my abdomen, and wince. Jimmy immediately turns around at the strangled screeching noise I make at the back of my throat. Whoops.

"Shit. Are you alright?" He moves towards my bedside, but stays kneeling on the floor.

"Yeah- yeah I'm- I just got up too fast."

"Did I wake you up?"

"Yeah. It's alright though."

We say nothing for a minute. Rowan is snoring at the other side of the room, which makes the silence a little less awkward.

Jimmy rests his head on the side of the mattress.

"I'm sorry," he says, quietly.

"It's alright, the drugs make it easier to fall asleep."

"No, I mean- about all of this."

That catches me a little off guard.

"It's okay," I say, but I know he won't believe me.

"It's not though."

Case in point.

He lifts up his head to look at me properly. I don't know if it's because I'm tired, or because of the pain killers, but for a second I think about kissing him again, before I remember that the last time I did that ended with him crawling out of a window and having a nervous breakdown in Kent. I mean, Rowan said it wasn’t all my fault, but still. Can’t have helped.

"I think Rowan was right," he continues, "about me- about me being fragile. I don't know why I ran away. We've dealt with crazy shit before, I don't know why I couldn't just- I don't know."

"It's not your fault. It's been- there's been so much shit going on, lately. There was the photo, and that interviewer, and the concert, and- and me."

Jimmy breaks our eye contact and looks down at his hands instead.

And me. We both know what I'm referring to. And we both know that neither of us is up for talking about it more than that, more than we have, right now.

I clear my throat.

"Anyway- point is, I don't blame you. I meant what I said, about how things are going to change."

He looks like he wants to argue for a second, but instead just nods.

"Okay."

More silence. The doctor in the hallway has stopped pacing and is now frowning at his clipboard.

"I'm sorry too."

Jimmy looks up again.

"What for?"

"For taking your knife."

"Oh," he says. "That's okay. I just- I wish you hadn't done it."

Ouch.

"I know but I was just worried and- you said you wanted to-" I stammer, but he interrupts me before I can finish.

"No, I meant- sorry, I worded that wrong. I don't give a damn about the knife right now. I mean that I wish you hadn't done it, because then you wouldn't have gotten hurt. I wish you hadn't- I wish you weren't here." He pauses. "Oh God, that sounds even worse, I meant-"

Oh.

"I know what you meant." I smile at him. He smiles back, and everything is alright.

"And a doctor came in to give it to me earlier, when you were asleep,' he reaches into his coat pocket and withdraws the knife. 'I only just realised I put it here. Didn't want Rowan to get impaled on it too."

I laugh.

"Oh God, yeah. I mean, that would be pretty funny though. The gift that keeps on giving."

"The knife that keeps on stabbing, you mean."

I snort.

"Yeah, something like that."

Jimmy is still holding the knife.

"You know, my Grandad says his Dad never stabbed anyone with this. Not during the war, not after," he twirls it around in his hand, observing all its cracks and worn down edges. "He said he mostly used it to cut clothes off of wounded soldiers so they could be treated. But he couldn't kill a person at a close range. That's why the tip is still pretty sharp, but the edge isn't."

Sometimes I get jealous of Jimmy. My family were never close. By the time I gave a shit about knowing them, my Grandparents were either dead or senile.

"It's cool that we can know these things. Just from an heirloom."

Jimmy nods.

I sit up a little bit more and grin.

"And now it's been inside me."

Jimmy rolls his eyes, but I can tell by his voice that he's smiling.

"Shut up, you dick."

"Love you too."

"Go back to sleep."

He goes to lay back down, tucking the knife back into his coat pocket. I lay down too, but don't stop looking at him.

"Allister, I'm serious," he says, and then sighs exaggeratedly, grinning. "Goodnight."

I don't say it back, because I'm already half asleep.

Chapter Text

Rowan and I are back at our apartment in London after nine days of staying with Grandad. Lister is due to be discharged tomorrow afternoon, so we came back this morning to tidy up and make sure his room is ready for him. It seemed a bit contrived, to drive all the way to London only to go back to Kent the next day, but there's also some mobility aids we need to put in the bathroom and by Lister's bed to make his time in recovery easier, so there's not much else we can do.

It's 4pm and so far we've just about assembled all of one railing.

"This is worse than IKEA furniture, I swear," says Rowan, clutching a screwdriver in his right hand. I resist the urge to laugh. I don't think I've ever seen him hold a screwdriver before in my life. "Except in this case, if it isn't done right, it'll end in someone who's just gotten out of the hospital having to go right the fuck back and not just a bruised sense of masculinity."

We've sort of been putting off tidying Lister's room because neither of us have been up for properly discussing the alcohol thing. Also, his room is consistently the grossest out of all of ours and Rowan is scared of the possibility of spiders.

"Yeah, you'd think this stuff would be a bit easier to assemble since it's only meant to be temporary."

I'm sat opposite Rowan on the main bathroom floor holding an instruction manual. It might as well be written in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, because I don't understand a word of it.

After a few more minutes battling with the toilet frames - which are currently, to put it charitably, just ten plastic poles screwed together into one that we've started referring to as The Mega Pole - Rowan lets out an exaggerated sigh.

"Fuck it. Let's tackle the hellhole," he says, standing up and putting the screwdriver down on the sink.

It turns out that Lister's bedroom isn't actually as messy as we'd expected it to be when we get there, save for an empty plastic water bottle discarded on the floor and some wrappers. But when Rowan accidentally hits the drawers built in to the bottom of Lister's bed with his foot and we hear the soft clink of glass bottles, we know we can't put it off any longer.

Rowan grimaces.

"Do you think-"

"Yeah," I say, kneeling down to open them.

"I don't know if we should be going through these," he says, but he kneels down beside me and starts looking all the same.

"He can't drink too much while he's recovering or he'll hurt himself."

"True."

The contents of the first drawer - the one closest to the foot of the bed - are mildly horrifying. Four bottles of Bacardi, all in varying states of consumption; three of Smirnoff, one empty and two half full; three of other expensive sounding brands of vodka whose names I definitely can't pronounce; eight of several different brands of wine; and a tin containing what I can only guess must be weed.

Neither I or Rowan are particularly surprised about the weed. It's not like Lister tries to hide it and it's frankly astounding that there isn't anything worse in here. The thing that gets us is the sheer quantity of it all. We've got a drinks bar in the kitchen that basically only Lister uses. I don't recognise any of this stuff from there. All of this was kept deliberately hidden here. In his room. Under his bed.

"Shit," says Rowan.

I say nothing.

"Do we get rid of it?"

I don't know. I thought - I hoped - there'd only be a few bottles. Then we could've put them in the drinks bar and played it off like we were just trying to keep things organised.

If we take all of this, it'll look like an intervention.

Which it is. But we don't want Lister to know that, yet.

"I- I don't know. Some of it. I don't think confiscating it all is a good idea. He'll need to recover from-' I gesture to the drawer, 'from this at some point, but not on top of the physical recovery. And it has to be something he wants to do- if we force him into it, he'll feel like he doesn't have any agency over his own recovery."

Rowan nods. "Yeah, good shout." He looks just past my head at something with a weary look on his face. "We still haven't checked the other one."

God. I'd forgotten about that.

We shuffle to the other end of the bed and give each other a look. Nothing for it.

Thankfully, at a first glance, there doesn't seem to be anything bad in there. Just the normal sort of stuff you'd find under a teenager's bed. Chargers, a few books, some sweets, etc. Still, we decide to make sure there isn't anything alcohol or drug related hidden in here at all, so we dig around a bit.

What catches my eye is a journal. 'Journal' is probably a bit of an exaggeration, really it just looks like the sort of notepad a waiter or waitress would use to take down your order. But it looks personal. There's stickers on the front - a few I recognise include the Star Wars logo and Garfield - and a pen tucked into the plastic rings of the book. It looks used too. I don't open it, but the pages aren't perfectly flat and undisturbed the way that pages are when they haven't been written on.

I place the notebook back into the drawer and pretend I don't care to know what's inside.

To my right, I hear Rowan laugh, hard. I turn my head towards him and see that he's holding what looks to be a magazine. When he notices that I'm watching him, he holds it closer to me so that I can see better.

It's an old looking copy of Vogue Italia. Specifically, the edition I sat for the cover of when I was seventeen. 

This comes to me as a bit of a shock. I didn't even keep my own edition. I see plenty of photos of myself every day, thanks.

"Didn't realise he'd kept it this long," Rowan chuckles, flicking through the pages with polite disinterest.

"Why- why does he have that," I ask.

"Why do you think?"

Rowan is still grinning. I've always said he looks younger when he laughs, but right now I'm reminded more of the Cheshire cat than anything else. I'm struck by a sudden desire to rip the magazine out of his hands, to shove it back into the drawer and never think about it again. I don't want to think about all this. I don't want to confront all these unsaid feelings.

I don't do that though. I just go back to checking Lister's drawers in the hopes that Rowan will drop it.

He does not. Instead, he carefully places the magazine back where it was in the drawer, and leans against Lister's dresser, still smiling.

"So."

"So."

"Are you gonna talk to me about it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Jimmy," he drawls.

"Rowan," I echo. I can play this game.

"Come on. I've had to sit with this knowledge for years. Give me something new to work with." For a brief moment I'm not sure I heard him right. Years ? That can't be right. I didn't even notice until the bathroom incident. How could Rowan have picked up on it before me?

"I don't know," I tell him. "Honestly, I think you know more than me." And this is the truth, because I really don't know how I feel. The past week, the past month, God, the past year, I don't know if I've felt anything other than fear. How do I sift through all of that to find out how I feel? How do I know to distinguish platonic from romantic when the only instances I've had before of the latter have been detached, one off, or worse? When confronted in a bathroom, in a garden, in a bedroom, what am I supposed to say?

I think Rowan can tell I'm spiralling, because his gaze drops to the drawer before closing it with his foot, and he sighs in a way that makes me think he isn't going to push anymore.

"That's okay. But the way I see it, he thinks you've said no."

--

"Thank God to be out of there. Christ, any longer and I'd have gone insane."

It's roughly 5pm and we've just got back from the hospital and are helping - trying to help, at least - Lister get to his room, a task that seems much more difficult now than it did in the car given that he seems determined to hit approximately every single piece of furniture in the living room with his crutches.

"Shit- since when was there a coffee table there, Ro?" he asks, after hitting yet another.

"Since we bought the flat, you dick."

"Well, I think you're gaslighting me."

Rowan rolls his eyes and mouths 'kill me' at no one in particular.

When we finally get to the room, Lister doesn't seem to notice that we've been in here other than to assemble his mobility aids - which, in here, is just a bed rail on the right side of his bed and a grab bar on the wall that leads to his ensuite. We realised that we only needed to install the aids in the ensuite right after we'd already fixed The Mega Pole - now a functioning toilet rail - to the floor in the main bathroom, which meant that it took us an extra three hours to dismantle and reassemble everything. I don't think we got to bed until 1am.

Lister manages to get into bed just fine, bar hitting his bedside table with his crutch ("Now, I swear that wasn't that close before.")

All seems well, until I glance back at Rowan to find him anxiously staring at his phone screen.

"Sorry, I have to take this. It's Cecily," he says, and swiftly walks out of the room, leaving me and Lister alone.

For a second, he opens his mouth to speak, but then he closes it.

Me and Lister haven't spoken properly to one another since that first night in the hospital. I think the only way to describe it would be that we've said words to one another. I've asked how he's feeling, he's joked in response, I've told him about something Grandad said, he's listened. That's about it, and both of us know it.

'Um. I'm glad you're back," I manage to get out after a good few seconds of uncomfortable eye contact. 'It felt weird, yesterday, being here without you."

He grins but it doesn't feel right. "Well, that's just because I'm such an irreplaceable presence in this household. I can't blame you."

I snort and start wringing my hands because I don't know what to do.

Right now I’m sort of awkwardly lingering in the doorway, because even though I'm scared to talk, to properly talk, I’m equally scared to leave him alone and I’d feel guilty doing so anyway and what am I even supposed to say right now? 'Management are losing their shit and we’ve confiscated most of your drinks and I’m not ready to talk about it, good night and get well soon.' Yeah, that'd go down like a lead balloon.

Instead, I say, "Do you want me to get you a glass of water?" and, mercifully, Lister nods.

"Er, yeah. If you don't mind."

I hear Rowan on the phone as I walk down the hallway. He's not shouting, but he talks in an irritated half whisper that somehow feels worse. I can't tell what he's saying and frankly I don't want to know.

I stare out of the window while filling up Lister's glass of water. It's not raining anymore, but it might as well be. The world outside looks just as drenched and miserable as it did before. When I was very little, I thought rain was the sky crying. When I was less little, I thought that it was literally the clouds falling from the sky. I thought that was why the sky was always clearer after the rain. But they're still hanging overhead. I don't know. I didn't take GCSE geography past Year 9.

I suddenly feel water seeping through the bandages on my hand, overflowing from the glass. Shit. I wasn't paying attention. I pour a little bit of the water out, and turn off the tap. I hope the dampness of the bandage isn't bad for my cut. Don't know. Didn't take biology either. The kitchen clock says it's 5:30pm. Has it been half an hour already?

I get back to Lister's room and put the water on his bedside table.

"Thanks," he says, but he doesn't reach for it. He just keeps looking at me, expectantly. Oh God, here it comes. I'm not ready for this. Don't bring it up, leave it alone-

"Do you want to watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine ?" he asks.

Oh. Alright. Not what I was expecting.

"I- sure."

I sit down beside him on the bed and he puts on a random episode. It must be from one of the later seasons because I don't know it as well as I know most of them and I'm honestly having a hard time understanding what's going on.

"Are you mad at me?" Lister asks suddenly, and I realise this is the second time he's asked that question while we're watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Something about it just brings out our deep conversations, I guess.

"No. Why would you think that?"

"Dunno. You're being distant. Like, you're here physically, but it feels like mentally you're somewhere else," he waggles his fingers above his head. 'Up there. Did I say something wrong?" While he's saying this he tries to full-body turn to face me, which proves impossible given his injuries, so instead he just props his head on his arm.

I don't respond for a few seconds, not because I don't have anything to say but because I don't know how to say it.

"No, it's not that."

"Then what?"

"I don't know." I put my head in my hands and laugh. "I don't know anything at all."

That casts us into another awkward silence. Well, I say silence. Jake and Amy are shouting at each other.

"How's the stomach?" I ask, eventually.

"Itchy. It feels like there's ants inside of me and they're trying to get out."

"Ew."

"Yeah."

"When did you last get the dressing changed?"

There's a pause.

"About a week ago." He notices the slightly horrified expression I'm pulling. 'It's fine though, it's an occlusive dressing. Doesn't need changing for about that much time."

"But surely it needs to be changed more than that at the beginning?"

Lister shrugs. "Probably. They just told me not to leave it for more than a week, and they didn't change it again while I was in the hospital, so I just assumed it was fine. It's probably fine."

"Not if it's itching it's not! Where are the clean dressings they gave you?"

He pauses, thinking. "I think Rowan put them in the kitchen. Seriously, Jimmy, it's fine. I'll do them later," he says, but I'm already up and out of the door.

He was right. They were in the kitchen, in a little container that sort of looks like a first aid kit. I quickly head back to Lister's room and shut the door behind me.

"Come on. Let's change it now."

Lister looks mildly annoyed but doesn't put up a fight.

The instructions for the dressing seem fairly simple (take notes, Mega Pole). The bandages and medical adhesive tape have already been cut to the correct size so all we need to do is disinfect the area around the wound and stick on the new dressing.

It's easy enough, when Lister isn't complaining how cold my hands apparently are ("Jesus fuck, Jim, do you even have blood?").

I don't realise until I've finished smoothing down the tape that Lister is looking at me very intently.

"What?"

"You know, I can honestly do it myself by now. The nurses showed me how the first time."

I pick up the instruction pamphlet and read aloud. "'The quality of the provided seal often depends on factors such as the skill of the person dressing the wound.'" I discard the old antibiotic wipes and close the kit. "It's safer if I do it."

I notice now that he's gone very red and can't meet my eye.

"Okay?" I press.

"Okay."

The rest of the evening passes without incident. Weirdly, things got less awkward since changing the dressing. That's probably just a me thing, though. I felt less guilty about this whole situation after doing that. When Lister falls asleep with Brooklyn Nine-Nine still playing on the TV, I turn it off and leave for bed.

And for a minute, everything feels alright again.

Chapter Text

I have died and gone to Heaven.

Well, sort of. Let me explain.

It's been four days since we got back to our London apartment from hospital. Overall, I guess I'd say I'm feeling better physically. The wound in my stomach is less inflamed and my leg doesn't feel like it's about to fall off anymore, so there's that.

On the slightly less positive side of things, I’ve only just noticed that Rowan and Jimmy have gotten rid of most of the drinks under my bed. I appreciate that they didn’t take all of them, and I get why they did it. Drinking probably isn’t good for my recovery. Still, I really want to be drunk right now.

I really want to be drunk right now because being drunk helps me stop thinking about Jimmy, who, as it happens, is asleep right next to me, right now. In my room. In my bed.

Oh God.

Jimmy has been coming into my room a lot the past few days to check on me, or change my wound dressing, or just to sit with me for an hour and watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine (why is it always Brooklyn Nine-Nine? I don't even like the show that much). I think he's been cooking for me too. I don't know. He's sometimes brought me food unannounced, most of which is probably just UberEats, but last night he brought me curry in one of the few porcelain bowls we own, and I don't see why he'd have bothered to empty the old one if it was delivery. He sat in bed with me while I ate and we talked and laughed until I fell asleep, and he left to go to bed.

Except, evidently, he didn't leave.

All of this is besides the point, because oh God.

He's laying on his side in the clothes he wore yesterday, body facing away from where I am, but with his head tilted ever so slightly towards me. His expression is, for once, something that could be described as peaceful; his lips are the tiniest bit parted and his eyes are shut, with none of the usual scrunched up tightness of a nightmare or panic attack. His breathing is so steady, and God, wouldn't it be nice? It would be nice, to see him so calm, it would be nice, to see him rest, were it not for the hollow ache in my chest, for the caving in of the defences I'd built up against this very feeling under the sheer weight of it all.

In another universe, I'd happily admire the way the morning light that streams in through my bedroom window hits his hair with a reddish hue, like the coat of a black cat turned orange-brown in the golden hour sun. Hell, I admire it in this one too, but with shame and secrecy and all the other shit that comes along with falling in love with your best friend.

It means nothing. I know it means nothing. He clearly just fell asleep on accident before he could go back to his room. I should wake him up, and we'll joke about this all day. It'll mean nothing. We'll laugh.

I check the time - 9:07am - and begin to sit up, forgetting my injuries again, somehow, and immediately fall back into my pillow, swearing under my breath. I try again, slower this time, but then Jimmy stirs and for a horrible moment I panic, thinking I've woken him up. I'm dead silent. I know I said I should wake him up, but no, I can't, not yet. Let me indulge in the conflict of fantasy and misery for a minute, please. Let me have this, at least.

Jimmy exhales and rolls over so that he's fully facing towards me, inches away from where I'm half-sat up in bed. He's still asleep, thank God, and I'm about to reach for my crutches, to get up and out of here and hide in the bathroom forever, when I feel his hand gently grip the fabric of my hoodie and his forehead press against the side of my arm.

Well, fuck.

What am I supposed to do now?

I'm absolutely still. Can't think. What to do. Don't think, don't breathe, don't stare at him, don't even look. The ceiling is so interesting all of a sudden. When did that spider get there?

I think I'm losing my mind, a bit. Jimmy isn't moving away. I wish he would. No, I don't. Don't be weird. Fuck.

After five minutes like this I finally manage to gather my thoughts, somewhat. Not like it's any help. Being able to think coherently about all this is actually making me feel significantly worse.

Because the truth is, I don't know how long it's going to take for me to get over Jimmy. I've tried for years. I thought I'd finally made a start, when I went back to that girl's hotel room after the BRITs party. I thought it was going away. But now, lying here, I'm realising that is hasn't, that it isn't, that it won't. Even with the answer - Don't- don't do that - will it ever let me be? One day, will I lie beside my friend - because this is what he is, a friend, always, so long as I can help it - and not be hurt?

Jimmy doesn't move for another twenty three minutes. I know this because I've been staring steadfast at the clock on my bedside table for all twenty three of them. At this point, if I turn my neck too fast I think it might snap.

When the clock reads 9:30am, I feel Jimmy shift beside me. The weight of his head pressed against my arm is lifted, his hand is withdrawn, and he looks up at me, groggy, confused, and still not quite awake. It's adorable and awful all at once.

Then, all of a sudden, he seems very awake, as his eyes widen and flash with what I think is surprise, or maybe embarrassment.

"Shit... sorry, I..." he rubs his eyes as he sits up. "I didn't mean to fall asleep, didn't mean to...."

"Er, it's alright. Morning."

Jimmy looks at me for a second, then smiles very briefly. God, I hope I don't look as flushed as I feel. "Yeah, morning."

He starts to get out of bed, and I’m struck with the worst feeling of loss. Why is it that I miss him already?

“I should, uh...” Jimmy says, gesturing towards the door.

“Yeah, sorry,” I answer. I am sorry.

He hovers in the doorway for a moment’s more, and I think he’s going to say something, ask something, something important.

But when he speaks, all he asks me is, “Do you want toast?”

I want you to stay here, I don’t say.

“Yeah, sorry,” I repeat. I’m sorrier still.

Something I don't recognise flashes across Jimmy’s face for the briefest second, so quick I can’t quite catch it.

“Don’t be,” he says, finally, and leaves the room.

The clock reads 9:33am.

I fall back into my pillow and don’t care about the way it sends shocks of pain down my spine.

--

It’s the early afternoon, and the morning sun has come and gone, giving way to rain again. I listen to the sound as I sit motionless in bed.

I haven’t moved since this morning. Not like I’ve gotten up much the past few days anyway, but still. It’s now as if there’s a weight pulling me down that wasn’t there before.

The clock reads 2:40pm. I want to go back to sleep.

But then I hear a knock on my door, followed quickly by another. Two knocks. Rowan. Jimmy never knocks anymore.

"Yeah?" I say. The house is quiet, so there’s no need to yell.

The door opens slowly and my suspicions are confirmed. "Hi," says Rowan. He's in his I-haven't-done-any-laundry-in-ages-so-this-is-just-going-to-have-to-do pyjamas, yellow patterned shorts and a white T-shirt. For all the time I've spent living with Rowan, that has never stopped being funny to me. Rowan Omondi, one of Vogue's 'Top Five Most Fashionable Men in Britain', wearing the ugliest pyjama shorts I've ever seen in my life and an unironed T-shirt.

"Hey."

"D'you wanna play Undertale?" he asks.

"Sure."

Rowan has been trying to teach me how to play Undertale while I've been recovering. I say 'teach', honestly the gameplay has seemed pretty simple to me so far, but Rowan has always been very insistent on my choosing all the right story options so I can have 'the optimal Undertale experience' (his words, not mine). Doesn't make much sense to me, I've never really gotten that into story-heavy games, but it's fun anyway.

Rowan sits down beside me on my bed as I load up the game.

"You been feeling alright? Better, I mean." His eyes are still focused on the screen.

"Uh, not too bad. Cast is getting annoying but overall, yeah. Not as close to death as I was before."

He snorts. "Well, that's always a positive."

I'm about to make a joke about how no, not really, not always, but I decide against it. We've all had too much climbing out of windows and falling down slopes and wishing we were dead already.

So, instead, I ask, "How's the management situation been going?"

Rowan groans and rolls his eyes exaggeratedly. "Don't even get me started on it. I mean, the good news is that Cecily's pretty much fully on our side about it now. The label have been kind of awful to her, though. I think they threatened to terminate her contract at one point. The bad news is that the rest of management have got their heads stuck so far up their own arseholes that they can't understand why you getting better has to take priority over doing some fucking live TV appearance." He gets progressively more impassioned as he speaks and gestures a little wildly with his hands.

I feel a pang of guilt. I don't want Cecily getting fired over my stupid mistakes. I don't want Cecily getting fired, full stop. Since we were fourteen, she's been pretty much the only person working with us who hasn't just treated us like a quick cash grab, save for maybe Tash and Alex. They're not management though, so I guess they don't really count. And, of course, Rowan is the one dealing with all this. He's always the one taking on these sorts of responsibilities. He's always the sensible one, the one who actually properly reads any contract thrown at us, the one keeping track of our lives because Lord knows we couldn't do so without him.

Sometimes I wish he would let us deal with these things as a group. Then we could all suck at being sensible together.

"I'm sorry," I say, because there’s nothing else to say.

Rowan gives me a funny look. "No. None of that. It's not your fault. This- this was bound to happen at some point. It was just a matter of when," he exhales, and then laughs. "It's all been a bit much, hasn't it?"

"Yeah." My voice is hoarse and small.

The homescreen has loaded now, but I don't do anything, just hold the controller in my hands.

Eventually, I cough up the courage to broach this topic further. I tried it once, when Jimmy first went missing, that night when Rowan and I were alone in our apartment. It didn't really work, but I'm not giving up. I meant what I said, about how things are going to change.

"You know, you don't have to deal with all that alone. Jimmy and I, we- we're both here. It should be our responsibility too."

Rowan is silent for a second, then shakes his head. "No, it's alright."

"Ro-"

He holds up a hand to stop me. "Let me finish. I know, okay? I'm just- this is how it's always been. I've just been trying to make sure things don't fall apart. But I get it. I shouldn't do it on my own. It's not healthy and it just means that when we do have problems I'm already too worn down to be properly equipped to deal with them. But right now, just this once, I think it's better if I sort this out. You need to focus on recovering, and Jimmy’s just come out of a breakdown precisely because of all the band shit." He gives me a sideways glance. "Besides, he’s been looking after you."

More silence. I don't think it's worth arguing with Rowan any more about this right now. I'm just glad he's at least starting to understand why it's not healthy. Baby steps, I guess.

Rowan shifts a little so that he's sitting cross-legged now.

"And has Jimmy been alright? Like- he's not been too..." he trails off, looking for the word. 'Smothering?' he says, eventually, though the tone of his voice makes me think he isn't satisfied with this word.

I'd like to pretend I have no idea where this question has come from, but... yeah. Jimmy has been 'checking in' on me - meaning, hovering in my doorway asking if I need anything, spontaneously bringing me hot chocolate, or lingering in my room for an hour before eventually changing my wound dressing - at least seven times a day. I know this because I've counted. Yesterday, it was eleven, including when he came and never left. (God, I hope I didn't make him uncomfortable. He's only been in four times today so far.)

I've had pretty mixed feelings about this, to be honest. Mostly I'm just stupid and lovestruck about it because it's Jimmy, but it does feel a little suffocating sometimes. Or worse, artificial. Like he's a nurse who doesn't actually care but has to look after me anyway.

I sigh. "It's not his fault. He's been good, really, it's just a lot."

Rowan chuckles. "He's like that, sometimes. He means well. I think he's just used to being the one who needs help, so he's kind of weird about supporting other people. Like, it's not that he doesn't care, I just don't think he knows how to half the time. But other times, like this, he goes completely in the opposite direction. Did I tell you about the time he knocked my tooth out in Year 2?"

I shake my head.

"God, it was so funny. It wasn't even really his fault. It was already really loose, probably would have come out that same day, but we were sitting in the shade of the playground at lunch and he stretched his arms before getting up and accidentally smacked me square in the mouth." Rowan laughs. "I nearly swallowed the thing. There was blood everywhere. Jimmy was mortified. I guess he thought it was all his fault, because he brought me a packet of Haribo, like, every day for two weeks straight afterwards and tried to give me his entire collection of Queen CDs. But he was also weirdly distant, like he was scared I was annoyed with him or something and didn't want to fuck up again." Rowan sighs. "I dunno, I just- I've been getting the vibe that he's been doing a similar sort of thing to you."

I'm quiet for a moment, thinking. For a second, I wonder if I should tell Rowan about this morning, but I decide against it. I'm really not in the mood to talk about... that, right now.

"Yeah, sort of. I think he thinks it's his fault. It's not, but still. It's nice to be cared about, and it's been nice to-" I pause, unsure how I should phrase this, "- to spend more time with Jimmy." I feel my face getting warm. Great job, Allister. Not obvious at all. Dickhead.

Rowan grins and opens his mouth to speak, but I'm faster than him.

"Shut up. I mean, it's been nice. But it also kind of makes me feel like he's just doing it out of obligation, or guilt. And he's still been pretty distant. Like, emotionally. I feel like an old person in a care home being looked after by some sympathetic but deeply exasperated twenty-something who regrets going into hospitality."

"Ah," says Rowan, grinning once more. "Doesn't exactly fit the 'getting taken care of by your loving boyfriend' fantasy, then."

I am going to kill Rowan, one day. For now, I just settle for chucking one of the spare pillows my Mum brought me yesterday at him.

"Okay- okay." He laughs. "But seriously, you should talk to him about it."

I don't want to talk about this. I don't even want to think about it. Whatever Rowan is trying to get out of me, I'm going to shut this conversation down before he can.

"I have. He knows. I already told you about the kiss."

"No, not that. I mean the distance thing. You should talk to him about it. I don't think he seriously believes you're mad at him, but still. Saying it out loud could go a long way."

I say nothing.

Rowan smirks, but it fades and gives way to something more genuine. "And I think you should talk to him about that too. Properly. I know you said you have, but I get the feeling you haven't actually had a real conversation about it."

I still want to say nothing, because this would be easier than speaking it aloud. Saying it out loud feels like confirming it. It makes it real.

"Don't have to. I know he doesn't like me back."

Rowan tuts. "How do you know that if you haven't talked?"

He's actually kind of pissing me off now.

"I just know, okay?" I snap, not quite shouting but definitely speaking louder than normal, louder than I should.

Rowan is staring at me very silently and suddenly I feel awful.

"I'm sorry," I say. "You're right, probably. I just- I don't think either of us is ready to talk about it. I still don't think he likes me back, but... we will, eventually. Talk, I mean. When we're all better."

Rowan's gaze drops to his lap, and then to the screen again.

"And when will that be?" he asks. The question is spoken with complete neutrality, none of the usual sarcasm I'd expect from Rowan. There's only the faintest traces of a sympathetic lilt to his voice, underneath the guise of polite disinterest. I hate it.

When I open my mouth to speak, I find I can give him no answer. I hate this too.

We sit like this for what feels like hours, but really can be no longer than a few seconds, until I can't take it anymore, and select the 'continue' option on the screen with the controller, clearing my throat.

"Uh, right. So, I pick 'Fight' here, right?"

Rowan smiles, and, seemingly, all is forgotten.

"No- you have to select 'Act' because if you 'Fight' and kill them then you won't get the Pacifist route..."

Chapter Text

“Uh, Jimmy?”

I blink. I’m standing in Lister’s doorway, holding a glass of water in my hands, which have been shaking so badly that I’ve spilled some of the water onto the carpet.

Fuck.

What was I doing again?

“Uh, hi... sorry, here.” I walk quickly over to Lister’s bedside and hand him the glass, though he doesn’t make any move to drink or even look at it. It’s only about two thirds of the way full. Did I spill that much?

After a few seconds of uncomfortable eye contact I mumble something about not being able to find the right size glass and pray that I managed to string together a cohesive sentence.

I blink again. I’m sat upright next to Lister in bed, staring at the wall. When did that happen? He’s saying something but it’s like I’m underwater all of a sudden; lightweight and trapped and away from my body. The walls are dark, or my eyes are shut. I really can’t tell.

“Jimmy,” Lister repeats, this time patting me firmly on the shoulder. My eyes were shut, it turns out, though the walls are also dark. The way Lister had them done when we moved in.

“Hm- yeah? Hi?” I manage to get out. I think.

“I said are you alright? You’ve been... hovering for, like, a whole ten minutes now.” Lister is looking at me weirdly in such a way that I can’t tell whether he’s annoyed with me or just confused. His hair is slightly frazzled and he doesn't look like he's been getting much rest either. God. He’s probably annoyed with me. I should leave. I should dig a hole and bury myself alive, actually.

“Oh,” I say. “Yeah. Sorry. I haven’t been...” I trail off.

Sleeping well. I haven’t been sleeping well.

Well. It would probably be more accurate to say that I haven’t slept.

I haven't slept. It’s been three weeks since Kent, and nearly two since Lister came home. He’s as well as he can be, given the whole situation. In fact, he’s been doing a lot better than his doctor and physiotherapist said he would be.

Which is good. I should feel good. We should all be back to normal by now.

But it isn’t, and I don’t, and we aren’t.

I know I’ve been weird to Lister for the past couple weeks, stopping by in his room every forty-five minutes to ‘check in’ on him. Which is selfish, really. Bothering him while he tries to recover to ease my own anxiety. I can see it on Rowan’s face every time he catches me making my way to see him again. I can see it in the bags under my eyes and the way my head swims when I stand up too fast from running myself ragged.

But I can’t stop. I need to be certain. I need to know that he’s alright. I need to make absolutely sure. Not just about the leg and stomach but the alcohol too. Not that we've had that talk with him yet, although Rowan and I have been looking into therapists who specialise in alcoholism and addiction. Neither of us think rehab is really the right option, or even an option at all, so this is the way it has to be.

And it’s my fault, anyway. I know that. The responsibility should be mine, given how all of this could have been avoided if I had just shut up and learned to cope with living the life millions of people go to sleep every night dreaming of.

Even if it would have killed me.

Even if it isn’t the life I want.

I think I was doing alright at looking after him, at first, save for that one deeply embarrassing morning that is sure to go down in history as one of my worst blunders of all time. Rowan was finally seeming a little more composed while talking on the phone to Cecily, and Lister and I actually seemed to be getting along, for once. We didn’t talk properly, really, not about anything that mattered. But we were alright. We were doing alright.

That is, until last week, when I had another nightmare.

This isn't anything new. I've had pretty bad nightmares ever since I was a child, and especially when I got into my teens. When we lost her.

But this one was so many orders of magnitude worse that calling it a nightmare doesn't feel accurate at all. I’ve always hated that, anyway, even when I was little – ‘nightmare’. The word conjures up cartoonish monsters hiding in cupboards and under children’s beds. It never felt right to tell the therapist that my childhood ‘nightmares’ were made of disappointed reverends who tutted and shook their heads, of dresses with frills and far too many sequins that cut my skin, of mothers and fathers whose faces I could never quite picture. In that very same way, ‘nightmare’ does not capture the grim image of a bloody ravine, or the grimmer one of a loved one’s room with no loved one in sight.

But English doesn’t have a better word for it, and my Italian and Gujarati aren’t good enough to think of an alternative. So, I’ll call it a nightmare.

It was dark and I was running – trying to run, at least – but I found myself stumbling again and again, into walls and into trees (both at once, somehow.) I couldn’t run fast enough, couldn’t see far enough through the fog, and before I could stop myself I had fallen into the ravine.

I felt no pain but couldn’t move as the rain poured down on my face so densely it could've drowned me. I stared at the sky through the canopies above and began to close my eyes, until I heard it.

Breathing, right besides where I lay.

And I knew exactly which ravine this was.

And I knew I wasn’t alone.

And I knew who was injured beside me.

And I knew I could do nothing, as the rain drowned us both.

I remember the day after that nightmare. I remember I went to see Lister more than usual, and I remember trying to go to sleep in my own room that evening. I remember not being able to. I remember giving up on rest and suggesting Lister and I eat dinner together in his room. And I remember finally falling asleep next to him, because for some reason I couldn't without him there. The way I haven't, really, without him since.

I know I’m definitely being weird and overbearing. Clingy. Lister probably hates me and wishes he was in rehab instead of being stuck with whatever the hell it is I’m doing, and what was it I was saying before about burying myself alive?-

“Jimmy!” I’m brought back to the present moment by a very annoyed Allister Bird, who has now completely shifted from where he was before and is now sitting up in front of me in bed.

Oh. Right. That’s where I was.

"Sorry?"

"Jimmy. You need to go take a nap or something or you're genuinely gonna end up dropping dead on my bedroom floor." For a second, Lister looks concerned. Was it only for a second?

"Oh," I say.

I'm a little hurt that he's asked me to leave in order to take my nap, but I do get it. He needs space, I need sleep, and it's not like I care about not sleeping in his room. In his bed.

No.

I'm not thinking right.

I rub my eyes. "Yeah, I... I'll do that. Sorry."

"Don't-" he starts, though doesn't finish his sentence, and part of me wonders whether he was going to ask me to stay, or if he was just going to tell me not to apologise. Again.

Which, in fairness, I probably do need to start doing less.

I get up and walk to the door, very aware I'm being watched the whole time. For a moment I pause, wondering if I should look back. Wondering if Lister is actually angry with me, or if it's just because I was zoning out that I felt he was.

I decide I don't want to know, and leave to go collapse onto my bed.

--

I'm awoken very abruptly by the sound of my alarm.

Shit. I can't have slept until morning. What time even is it? I needed to change Lister's dressing. Has he even eaten anything - today? Yesterday?

I grasp around my sheets for my phone for a few seconds until I find it and switch off the alarm. 5:30pm, it reads.

Oh. Right. I was gonna make curry again tonight.

Once I'm dressed, I make my way into the kitchen where I already laid out my utensils earlier.

I've actually come to quite like cooking, now that I have the chance to do it again. I used to help Grandma with dinner every Saturday. She would teach me the recipe for everything we made, and we always made something new on Saturdays. Always.

I love cooking with Grandad too, of course, but he was never as good of a teacher as her.

I retrieve the pan from the kitchen cupboard and begin to dig through the fridge for the ingredients I'd prepared earlier. I don't know how long it's been since I've seen it so full. We barely eat at home. We barely sleep at home, anymore.

Not that this place ever felt much like home, really.

I begin organising my ingredients on the countertop, then open up my phone to find the recipe I used last time.

It's not until I've started heating the pan that I notice him.

It's Rowan.

He's sat on the carpet beside the coffee table with his head in his hands. Amongst a vast collection of papers lie his laptop and phone, both on but asleep, on the table.

"Rowan?" I turn off the hob and walk slowly towards him. He doesn't move.

"Hi," he says, I think. It's hard to hear him, even though the apartment is completely silent.

"You alright?"

He still isn't moving. Something is going on.

"I've fucked it all up," he says, quietly, after a few seconds.

I feel a pang of worry. I heard Rowan on the phone earlier, talking to Cecily. I don't know what he said, but he sounded angry.

Or scared.

Maybe both.

"Is it to do with management?" I ask.

Finally, he looks up and nods slowly. I realise then that he isn't just sad, or panicked like I thought. More than anything he looks angry. It isn't a loud anger, nor an aggressive one, like when the Bliss thing got leaked. This is quiet.

And I think that scares me even more.

Rowan sighs, and his expression seems to soften a little.

"It's a disaster. Remember my Dad's old Fulani bowl?" He lets out a single laugh, but there's barely any humour in it at all and he sounds like he's about to cry. "It's like that."

I grimace, remembering that afternoon in Year 4. Rowan and his parents had been baking cupcakes together for the Harvest celebration at our church, and had apparently shown him a 'really cool recipe' (which I later found out was just red velvet). Rowan, of course, being Rowan, had wanted to prove he could do it without their help, and so one fateful afternoon after school when his parents had gone out we decided to try make them again. The trouble was that there were no clean bowls for us to use, except for the wooden Fulani bowl Rowan's Dad had brought with him from Nigeria. And clearly, being too stupid to think to just wash one of the glass mixing bowls designed to handle the force of an electric mixer, we decided to use it.

Funnily enough, when we accidentally turned the KitchenAid on at max, causing everything to go flying across the room, the centuries old wooden bowl did not survive the impact, and when we tried to glue the thing back together with only our runny PVA and faith in God, the still-potentially-salvageable pieces had absorbed the glue and gone brittle. I think that might have been the only time I have ever seen his dad angry. Not that I blame him.

It sounds a bit funny whenever I tell it, but I can tell by the way Rowan behaves in the kitchen nowadays that he still feels shame about the whole thing.

I kneel down beside him by the table and put my hand on his arm.

"I thought things were going better with Fort?"

He sighs again and pinches the bridge of his nose, but won't meet my eye.

"They were. Cecily managed to keep them at bay about the TV appearance, but..." He pulls a face. "They wanted us to be completely back to normal by next week. And it's not just that, they wanted us to be even more productive to compensate for what we've missed. Cecily tried to suggest easing us back into things while Lister gets help, but they weren't having any of it- and..." his voice breaks a little and he trails off. I move my hand from his arm and attempt to rub soothing circles into his back.

"And what?" I say. I'm trying to use my best calm voice, but, to be honest, I'm not calm about any of this whatsoever.

Not that that needed clarification, of course.

There's a horrible moment of silence between us until Rowan finally looks at me properly. His eyes are tired and slightly bloodshot.

"Cecily said she's leaving Thunder Management." At this point he fully leans into me, burying his face in my shoulder. His voice sounds smaller than I've ever heard it before when he speaks again.

"She's leaving Fort, Jimmy. She's leaving us."

I say nothing.

I genuinely feel a bit sick. We can't lose Cecily. She's been here since we were fourteen, she's basically the surrogate Mum of the band. We need her.

We can't lose Cecily.

I continue rubbing circles into Rowan's back because I don't know what to say.

"I'm sorry," I manage, eventually.

"No, I- it's my fault, Jimmy. This is my responsibility, it's just..." he pauses and takes a deep breath. At least he isn't crying. I think I'd cry too if he did.

"I keep trying to fix things on my own, but I think I just keep making everything worse."

"You're not making things worse."

Rowan doesn't reply. I know he's thinking about that stupid bowl.

We just sit there on the floor together, two pathetically flawed human beings, until Rowan lifts his head from my shoulder and stands up from the table. His expression is like stone as he gathers his belongings, and when he reaches the door to the hallway he turns his head ever so slightly towards me.

I don't say anything, but I know he knows I want him to stay.

He doesn't stay, just breaks our eye contact muttering a quiet 'sorry' as he disappears from view.

I stare at the empty space in the doorway he once occupied and try very hard to pretend I'm not hurt by his leaving.

--

It's currently 6:13pm and I have completely given up on making curry in favour of staring out of the window. It's fine. I'll order UberEats later.

I watch the people on the street below us from the kitchen. I've been doing this quite a lot, recently. Whenever I'm cooking or getting a glass of water for Lister.

Right now, there's a group of teenagers leaning against the fence to the park outside our apartment block. One of the girls has dyed pink hair, and another girl hangs off her arm, laughing. One - a boy, I think - has an old camcorder and is filming the others. I realise then that they're probably students. Chelsea college, maybe? I think one of the accommodation blocks isn't far from here, and they look like art students.

All of them are carrying some kind of instrument case, and for one horrible moment I'm overcome with so much jealousy it makes me feel nauseous.

They're probably in a band together, for fun. Maybe they aren't any good, but they perform in bars on weekends and play whatever they like in rehearsal rooms, because they're just friends in a band.

I remember when we were just friends in a band.

I'm about to retreat to my bedroom when the pink-haired girl looks up at the window. At me. The look of recognition that flashes across her face is unmistakable and I back away as fast as I can. Which is stupid, obviously, because plenty of people know where we live, and the girl didn't look intimidating at all, and we have security anyway.

But, somehow, we're more of a mess than ever, and the idea of anyone seeing me, seeing us, at all right now horrifies me. I could barely sit down to film that YouTube hiatus announcement last week. I can barely even stomach seeing my reflection on my phone screen every morning.

I hurry out of the kitchen and into the corridor. Don't know where I'm going. I make my way up the stairs and try not to think.

I think anyway.

When I reach our bedroom hallway, I stop. Lister's door is slightly ajar, and light spills out from the open crack.

It doesn't take me any more thought to immediately walk towards it and push it gently open. Fuck, probably should have knocked. When did I last knock? It's too late now, anyway.

Lister is sat up in bed, as I expected, watching Anne With An E.

"Oh, hey," he says, and smiles. He has a nice smile.

"Hi." I sit down next to him. "Do you need anything to eat? I'm ordering UberEats."

Listers smile falters for a second, though he nods.

"Oh, uh, yeah. Sounds good."

--

Our food arrives relatively fast. One of the only benefits of living in London. I remember we ordered pizza when we were fifteen having a sleepover at my house and it took three hours for the guy to figure out where it was.

"No, because Diana isn't even a good friend to begin with. Like, she barely stands up for Anne at all because she doesn't want to lose her popularity."

Lister and I are currently watching Netflix while we eat. Well, I'm eating. Lister seems much more concerned with winning the debate we've been having over Diana's character for the past ten minutes.

I laugh and take a sip from my cup of tea.

"You're being unfair. She's like, fourteen, and from the 1800s. It's not like there's much she can do to defend her. And she still tries to get the others to be nicer."

"I mean, yeah, but even I did more than that for you guys when we were fourteen."

"What, like let us copy your wrong history answers?"

Lister laughs.

"What about when I-" he starts to make a comeback, but quickly stops himself. He looks very contemplative, all of a sudden, then shrugs his shoulders dismissively.

"Uh, whatever. I stand by my opinion."

I grin, trying to ignore the burning curiosity in me to know whatever it is that Lister stopped himself from telling me.

"Your opinion is wrong."

He chucks one of the empty takeaway boxes at me, and everything seems fine again.

We sit and watch the show in silence for half an hour after finishing our food before Lister clears his throat.

"So..." he begins. He's turned his torso slightly towards me and suddenly looks very serious.

I blink at him.

"Is there something you need?" I ask.

An odd expression flashes across Lister's face, but it's gone before I can figure out what it is.

"Er, no. I just was wondering how things have been? Like, with management and Ro and - with you." There's a slight hint of accusation in the way he says that. You. But I might just be imagining it.

I run my finger along the rim of my mug.

"It's alright, we're sorting things out." I smile. It makes my cheeks hurt. When did I last smile for real?

This clearly doesn't satisfy Lister, though, who casts me a slightly irritated glance.

"Okay, I get that, but, like, what's actually happening though? Rowan told me a bit last week about management getting all antsy but he hasn't said anything else."

I'm quiet for a second, contemplating what I should and shouldn't tell him. He deserves to know, of course, he's just as much a part of this band as me and Rowan. He's just... not well, right now. He's got enough to deal with without everything going on with Cecily to worry about too.

"Lister, you need to focus on getting better. We're handling everything fine, management have dropped the whole TV appearance thing." I chew the inside of my mouth. I really hope he drops this.

He doesn't.

"Really? 'Cause Rowan seemed pretty fucking agitated this afternoon," he says with probably more antagonism than intended.

This afternoon. I look out of the window. Everything is darker than I remember it being a minute ago.

"You talked?" I say, after a few seconds of awkward silence.

"Yeah. He came in earlier to let me speak with Cecily on the phone." Lister reaches onto his bedside table and grabs a cigarette, which he lights and takes a drag of immediately.

I watch him do so. I'm not mad about it or anything, it's not like he can just get up and go over to the window. I guess I had just hoped he wasn't doing this while recovering.

He withdraws the cigarette from his lips, and exhales a faint cloud of smoke.

"She just wanted to ask when my doctor said I'd be able to walk again."

"Oh."

"Yeah." There's a pause before he continues. "I mean, Rowan just seemed pretty irritated the whole time. Kept asking Cecily 'how much longer they'll give her'. Like, I know Fort were threatening to fire her last week, but I thought all of that was over. Seriously, Jimmy, is everything alright? He wouldn't tell me much about what's been going on. I'm worried."

I put my mug on the bedside table closest to me and fidget with my hands.

"Look, it's- it's fine. I'm sure he was talking about the contract. You don't need to worry about it, okay?" I say. Not technically a lie. Rowan probably was referring to how much longer Fort are giving Cecily till we have to sign.

Probably.

God, I hope.

Lister says nothing, and I breathe a sigh of relief in my mind. Maybe he won't pry any more.

I force a half smile. My cheeks hurt again.

What feels like an eternity passes before anything else is said.

Lister looks at me for a second, wordlessly, then scowls.

“God, why are you being such a dick?”

Chapter Text

“God, why are you being such a dick?”

Okay, so, I definitely didn’t mean for it to come out like that.

But, if I'm being honest with myself, it is sort of true.

Over the past week, Jimmy’s behaviour has gotten increasingly... concerning. Increasingly frustrating. Which feels ungrateful of me to say, honestly. I’ve barely had to do anything at all since I got home. Hell, I’ve barely had to move outside of my physiotherapy sessions with how much Jimmy has been doing for me. Within half an hour of me waking up each morning, he’s always appeared like magic with a plate of toast and a glass of water. Every three days at 7:00pm, without fail, he comes to change my dressing, despite the fact that I’m easily mobile enough now to do it myself. And every single night before he leaves for bed (as I’ve never been brave enough to ask him to stay overnight again), he tells me to wake him up if I need anything, anything at all.

Not that I’ve been keeping a mental record, or anything.

But as much as I appreciate this, as much as I love him and have wished for years that he would pay even a fraction of this much attention to me, it’s still somehow too much and not enough all at once.

Too much, because I can barely sit alone with my thoughts for more than twenty minutes at a time.

And too little, because in every four, five, God, six hours we spend together each day, not a single second goes by where I truly feel like I’m hanging out with my friend. My best friend of nearly six years, and it’s like he’s a stranger, somehow.

I wish, sometimes, that he would stop by just to talk. Not to ask if I need anything or to bring me water.

Just to see me, because he wanted to see me.

He isn’t sleeping, either. I’m sure he thinks I haven’t noticed, but it’s pretty fucking obvious, especially since this morning when he dissociated in my room for a quarter of an hour. But even before then, I saw it. I could see it in the way he’d occasionally strain to supress a yawn, or struggle to stand up without leaning on something. I see it in the visible dark circles beneath his eyes, in the careworn way he keeps smiling at me.

Always smiling.

Always cautious.

Always tired.

And it’s my fault. I know that. It’s my fault, because he’s spending every waking moment looking after me instead of himself, which he should be doing, and which is the entire God damn reason I took his knife in the first place.

God. I just want him to be happy.

It isn’t just Jimmy I’m worried about, either. Rowan has never quite managed to cover up the way having to take on all the responsibility fucks with him, although I’m sure he thinks he does. Ever since we met when we were thirteen, there have always been things that give him away. The way he taps his pen, or pencil, or really anything he has close to hand, against his palm when trying to convince us he’s not struggling to come up with a solution to one of our many, many problems. The way he’ll refuse to engage in conversation before things are resolved. The way he stood wordlessly over me this afternoon while I spoke on the phone to Cecily, then sat beside me in silence for ten dread minutes.

That honestly made me miss the teasing about Jimmy. I’d take that over this any day.

I’ve never been good at managing my worries, though. And no example could be clearer than now, sitting in my bedroom with one of the people, if not the person I care most about in the world, spitting out my worries as such:

God, why are you being such a dick?

There’s a suffocating silence that follows after I say it. I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me the whole of London was quiet, right then. Maybe even the whole world.

Jimmy sits perfectly still, staring at me unwaveringly as the longest and most painful three seconds of my life so far pass.

And then, in quick succession, that record is broken as I watch his face fall the same way it did that day in the bathroom, before I kissed him and monumentally screwed up our relationship for life.

“What?” is all he says. I can’t tell if he’s speaking quietly because he’s hurt or if he’s just that tired.

Doesn’t matter. It makes me feel like shit either way.

I’m about to retreat, to apologise immediately and try pretend I never said anything, when he speaks again. Louder, firmer, resolved, though not angry. Not yet.

“What the fuck do you mean?”

I’m immediately pissed off. And then I feel bad about being pissed off, which pisses me off even more. Brilliant.

“Come on, it’s been like this for fucking weeks. You know what I mean, Jimmy.”

“I... don’t,” he says. I can’t read his expression right now, fickle and fragile and lost somewhere between irritation and confusion.

“Just- the way you’re all being right now! I don’t know why the hell you and Rowan are even bothering to come in here when you clearly hate talking to me.”

Jimmy’s eyes go wide when I say this, and he sits up further in bed.

“I don’t hate talking to you- we don’t hate talking to you. Where the hell did you get that from?” There’s a sense of desperation in Jimmy’s voice then.

Or maybe it’s exasperation.

I don’t know.

I’m in too deep to care.

“Oh, I don't know, maybe the fact that neither of you will tell me what’s really going on with the label, and with Cecily, and with yourselves- I don’t know if you guys think you’re helping by treating me like a fucking child, but you’re not.”

And then I laugh at him. I actually laugh. It sounds bitter and cruel and I hate myself for being able to make such a noise. I don’t mean anything I’m saying. Why am I saying it, then? Why can’t I stop?

“And if you’re gonna keep doing this-“ I continue.

“Doing what?” Jimmy raises his voice, almost making me flinch. Almost. “What am I doing?”

“Fucking- coming into my room every day and pretending like you give a shit-“

“Pretending?-“ Jimmy half speaks, half laughs. It doesn’t really sound like a laugh though. It sounds like he’s going to cry. I’m going to cry. I should stop, I’m sorry, I-

But I don’t. I can’t.

“Neither of you are telling me anything. I’m honestly pretty fucking worried about Rowan and what’s been happening with management earlier today but I can’t help because you won’t even talk to me anymore! You keep deflecting, I don’t know what’s going on with you-“

“What do you mean I won’t talk to you? Talking to you is all I’ve been fucking doing the past couple weeks!”

“You fucking haven’t been though, have you?” My face feels wet. Oh God, am I crying?

“I don’t get how you’re- how you’re always here but you’re still a million miles away. It makes me feel like shit,” I laugh again. “God, you have no idea how shit you make me feel. Sometimes I wish you’d just- just go, instead of doing this to me-“

“Doing what?!” Jimmy repeats. “You’re not making any fucking sense.” He’s actually shouting now. Makes me want to shout louder.

“It’s like- like you’re stringing me along, sometimes,” I pause, immediately regretting what I’ve just said.

Stringing me along, sometimes.

That is not what I meant.

In a world where the human brain had the language to describe itself perfectly and in the current, convenient moment, as if it were laying every neuron, every pulsing groove, on an operating table, I’d have said the right thing. I’d have said how I feel.

Because how I feel is so much more complicated than being strung along.

How I feel is walking through a rural Kent lane to school and finding a cat perched on a wall, giving it your hand and letting it trust you, remember you. It’s returning to that wall and always, always crouching down for the cat to come and be pet for so long you have to run the rest of the way to get to form in time.

It’s seeing the cat climb back into its garden and drink from its stainless steel bowl, because it isn’t yours, will never be yours, but knowing it will still wait for you in the morning. It’s the way it never fully leans into the palm of your hand, never chooses you over the little girl who brings its bowl.

It’s dreading turning that corner to see the cat sat waiting, to see it recognise you. It’s the way that even when it licks the scrape on your calf you got from playing football, it isn’t yours. It’s the way you love it, even so.

It’s hating it for making you love it, until you hate and love it so much you decide to walk a different route.

It’s knowing it wont miss you as much as you miss it.

But I’m tired, and crying, and my head hurts so badly I think it might explode. So, instead, here I am, whining about being strung along like a red-pilled Reddit incel.

“Fuck, no, that- that’s not right, I-“ I try to correct myself, but Jimmy has already gotten up and walked a metre away. He stops and turns to me once again, interrupting me.

“Is this about what you told me in the garden?” he says, resting his hands at the foot of my bed.

“No! That’s not- that’s not all of it, it’s not- I just-“

Jimmy puts his face in his hands and lets out a single, hollow laugh, before pulling them down a little over his nose, so that only his eyes are exposed, looking sideways out of my window.

Looking at him now, through my own anger, through my headache and heartache and exhaustion, I pick up on only one thing.

He isn’t angry.

He isn’t even crying.

He just looks scared.

I shut up, and listen to the sounds of our breathing; mine too heavy, his too quick.

Fuck.

“Jimmy, I-“

“Stop.”

I stop. Jimmy won’t look at me. Fuck. Jimmy won’t look at me.

We’re silent again. The sky is still light grey, but it’s bluer now, and the shadows in my room loom larger, darker. I wish that they would swallow me whole.

“I can’t deal with this right now, I...“ Jimmy says, suddenly, then turns and walks out of my room fast, forgetting to shut the door behind him, or maybe just not caring enough to. I hear another pair of footsteps echo down the corridor alongside his, and the faint sound of Rowan’s voice, hushed and quick. It occurs to me only now that he’s probably been standing just outside my door this whole time. Listening. Waiting.

“Jimmy, what’s going-“ is all I hear him say before a door slams, the mechanical click of a lock reverberating down the hall. Another horrible silence follows.

I put my head in my hands because all of a sudden it feels too heavy to hold up, and don’t realise just how much I’ve been crying until I feel the moisture on my palms. It strikes me then that this is the first time I’ve cried since I lay in that muddy Kent ravine. In many ways I feel the same now, cold and tired, with an ache somewhere in my torso that might just be the cut of a knife, or worse, the cut of a phrase, a voice, a person.

‘I hate myself so much. God, I don’t deserve to be alive.’

Except, this time Jimmy isn’t here to stroke my hair or slap me awake, to prop my head on his arm and tell me I’m okay, I’m going to be okay.

Fuck. I really thought we’d be all better by now.

I try to calm my breathing –  what is it Rowan does when Jimmy is having a panic attack? – but I’m interrupted by another sound; footsteps from the corridor, growing louder and louder.

Rowan.

I practically leap out of bed in an attempt to shut the door, but I’m too late, too tired, too sick. The shock of pain that goes up my leg sends me falling right back to where I was sat.

Rowan places a hand on my doorframe and looks right at me, intent, expectant.

“Right. Mind telling me what the fuck that was all about?”