How the hell did we lose sight of us again?
Luke sits impossibly close to Calum, almost in his lap as they sit in silence on the couch. Neither of them want to say it, the thing they know they have to say, the thing they know is inevitable and useless to keep running from. They know that when they do, this bubble that they're in, this haze, goes away; all that they'll be left with is all of the things they've spent all night avoiding. All of the things that they're terrified to acknowledge because to acknowledge them is to say goodbye, and neither of them are prepared to do that again.
It's Luke that finally does it, finally says the first thing he knows will begin knocking things down like dominoes. "I have to go back to New York."
"Yeah."
"I don't know what to do," Luke admits, his head on Calum's shoulder.
"You have to go," Calum tells him, "I have to stay here."
"I think we could do long distance," Luke suggests, and he knows Calum doesn't believe him, because he doesn't even believe himself. The feeling he had the night before is back, and it feels like a brick on his chest.
So this isn't what you want? We're just done? And I'm the one that doesn't care?
No. This isn't what I want.
"You know we can't."
Luke wants to argue. Everything within him is screaming for him to argue, to fight this, to fight for this, but he doesn't think he has the strength anymore. Maybe Calum was supposed to be it, maybe they were supposed to have a house and a kid and a dog, but it doesn't seem like any of that is in the cards for them anymore. Maybe they were it, maybe they were supposed to be it, but now Calum will just exist as Luke's favorite part of the long (poorly written) book of his life. He's a song playing in the car a year from now that will make Luke tear up before he skips the song. Luke will walk down the street two years from now and will smell a cologne on a man that isn't Calum, but he'll know to the depths of his soul that it was Calum; that's where he recognizes that from. Calum is a sunrise, he's Luke's favorite song, his favorite time of day.
When the silence came, we were shaking, blind and hazy
"We could get married," Luke mentions on the drive to the airport. "Leave the country. Live in a little cottage outside of London."
"No," Calum responds without missing a beat. "You don't get to ask me that," he adds on, and Luke wonders how Calum is able to react that quick, how he can manage to keep a straight face and not show any kind of emotion at something like that.
"Sorry," Luke mumbles. And he's not, he's not. He couldn't be less sorry. He's just sorry he's asking it now, like this, in traffic on I-5. In a perfect world he would do it right, with a ring and dinner and candles. But this isn't a perfect world and Luke just can't manage to ever get what he truly wants no matter how much he claws, kicks and yells about it. This hand is shit, Luke wants to re-deal but he knows he can't; so he shuts up and listens to the music Calum turned on for the twenty minute drive so neither of them would have the chance to say anything too stupid.
(It worked out great, obviously.)
"Did you, um–"
"Huh?"
"Did you actually expect me to say yes?" Calum asks at a red light, and Luke doesn't know what to say, because he doesn't know if he actually thought Calum would say yes or if he was just throwing shit out there in an attempt to fix all of this.
