"Hey.
... "Luke? You there?
"Are you okay, caro?"
"We broke up," Luke whispers, and that's enough for Atlas to stop in his tracks halfway down the stairs.
"What?"
"He broke up with me," Luke continues.
Atlas is quiet for a moment. He doesn't really know what to say about this. "I'm sorry," he finally comments, because he has no idea what else he can possibly do or say. He thinks back to when he was in this situation and what Luke said to him then, but Luke was less than gentle in that situation, though it was the best thing he could have done for Atlas. But Luke is not likely to respond to that. "What happened?"
"I think I'm gonna give myself... mhm. Alcohol poisoning. Yeah."
"Please don't do that," Atlas replies, and Luke laughs at him. "Tell me what happened."
"I'm so fuckin' drunk, man," Luke chuckles. "Broke into all m... all my shit I had packed 'cause I leave," he pauses. "I gotta leave tomorrow for– for New Haven. Just find me dead on the goddamn floor, right? I don't care, I don't– I really don't even care, man. Don't even know how much I've had to drink. Too much, I don't know. I stopped counting. I don't even care. I gotta, um, I gotta go."
Luke hangs up.
Atlas doesn't know what part of that was the deciding factor in his next action, but it was most certainly alarming enough for him to do all of this without even thinking about it. It's 3:00 o'clock in the morning in Manhattan and Atlas is supposed to be going to work right now, but he shakes Ashton awake with an I need you to take me to the airport and Ashton understands. Atlas feels a bit crazy, but it's Luke. And Atlas had to talk him out of flying out to New York for him on more than one occasion, so this feels like the only right thing to do.
It's five o'clock in the morning in Los Angeles when Atlas barrels out of the airport and learns very quickly that taxis and subways are not the most used method of transportation here. "I feel a little crazy right now," Atlas mumbles as he rubs his eyes. "I need fucking coffee."
"Are you getting a rental? Are they even open this early?" Ashton asks and ends his question with a yawn. "God, I'm fucking tired."
"You could've gone back to sleep," Atlas laughs softly. "I'm waiting on an uber right now."
"Have you talked to Luke?"
"No," Atlas sniffs. "He hasn't answered any of my calls or texts. If I find him dead or some shit I might go postal."
"Might?" Ashton half-laughs. "Babe, I think you'd just curl up next to him on the floor."
Atlas deliberates, but eventually comes to the conclusion that Ashton is correct in his statement. "Well... You know."
Now, Atlas has a key to Luke's apartment. Luke mailed a copy to him as a drunken joke and Atlas just kept it. He's glad he did, because Luke is very clearly in no condition to answer the door. And, well, Luke is in no condition to do anything. He's lucky he doesn't actually have alcohol poisoning, though Atlas isn't entirely sure that won't still happen.
"Hey," Atlas starts, gentle as he kneels down next to Luke, who moved from the living room floor to the kitchen floor at some point during the night. "How you doin'?"
Luke looks up at Atlas, his brows furrowed as he stares at the man like he's just seen a ghost. "You're not... here, you're not, uhh.... uhm–" he rubs his eyes with the hand that isn't holding a bottle of malibu– "You're supposed to be in New York."
"Yeah, well, someone has to scrape you off the floor, come on." Atlas grabs the bottle from Luke and Luke is too weak to even fight it. He helps Luke up from the floor, though he does most of the work as Luke can't hold himself up right now. "You gotta get some sleep, there's no telling how long it's going to take for you to sleep this off."
"'m gonna puke," Luke mumbles, and Atlas diverts from the path to the bed to the path to the bathroom.
After an hour, Atlas gives up on getting Luke off the bathroom floor, so he drags the comforter into the bathroom and settles in. They stay here for five more hours, then Luke crawls across the floor and curls up on his mattress in a manner that is so sad and so pathetic that Atlas almost laughs. He doesn't, but he thinks about it. At one o'clock in the afternoon, Atlas is packing up the last bit of items in the kitchen when he hears Luke groaning across the apartment.
"You gonna make it?" he calls out, and Luke grunts in response. "I got you coffee."
"I think I'm dying," Luke breathes out, like it hurts him to even speak. That, and he's probably going to puke again.
"I'd know if you were dying," Atlas replies in a nonchalant tone as he shuffles over to the mattress and extends a hand. "Come on, you gotta get up."
"Can't I just lay here 'til I die?" Luke half asks and half groans out as he rolls over and shoves his face into his pillows.
"No, caro mio." Atlas crouches down. "I know it feels like the end of the world right now–"
"Don't tell me I'm going to be okay," Luke croaks, "This isn't okay."
"I was going to say that the sun is still going to come up," Atlas says softly. "Your new job is going to start, the earth is still going to spin. Life has no choice but to keep going, whether you want it to or not. So I know it feels like everything froze in that spot– the moment you realized there was nothing you could do– but you still have to put gas in your car. Life doesn't give a shit, and we have no choice but to keep going with it. And I get that you feel like you can't move from this spot and you're never going to be able to do anything again, but right now you've got me to help you figure some of it out. I need you to get out of bed though."
... "No."
"You have to be in New Haven by Monday," Atlas states.
"I don't care."
Atlas is all for rotting. He gets it, he let himself rot for a week when he broke up with Ashton, but he is definitely not for Luke throwing away all of these things he's worked for because he refuses to get out of bed. So, in a split second decision, Atlas grabs Luke's arms and pulls him up to a sitting position. "I am not letting you lie here and throw away everything you've worked towards for years," he says as he loops his arms under Luke's and pulls him out of bed and to his feet (Luke did fight back). "You can rot when you get to New Haven. You can rot in my guest bedroom for all I care, but you and your fucking ridiculous collection of beanie babies are getting in the car and we are leaving California today."
Luke is quiet for a moment, like he's thinking. And when he averts his gaze from the window and back to Atlas, Atlas is convinced Luke is going to tell him to go fuck himself or something. "They're not ridiculous," Luke whispers, little tears forming in his eyes. "Do you know how much they'd go for on EBay?" he squeaks and Atlas can't stop the laughter that escapes him, because Luke is dead serious.
Atlas nods. "I know. I'm sorry."
"I asked him if this is what he wanted," Luke says in a small voice as he and Atlas sit on the living room floor. "He said no, that– that this isn't what he wants," Luke's voice lowers to a whisper as tears well up in his eyes again. "He kept telling me to go to New Haven."
"It sounds like he was trying to give you a reason to be the one to leave," Atlas states. "He couldn't do it himself, so he got you to do it."
"I would've stayed," Luke mutters. "If he'd asked me to, I– I would've stayed. He did– he did so many times. I said no. I don't know why I said no."
"I know." Atlas grabs Luke's hand. "And you said no because you both know this is the right thing for you."
"None of this feels right." Luke drops his head onto Atlas's shoulder. "We were supposed to do it together. I didn't want any of this without him. How am I supposed to leave without saying goodbye to him?"
Luke can ask as many times as he wants. He can say he won't go, he can say he's going to stay in this spot forever because he feels frozen in time, but at the end of the day, Atlas is right. The world just won't stop moving, not for a second. It keeps going, and Luke has to leave his apartment key on the kitchen counter. He has to go. He doesn't have a choice but to keep going, he knows that. But right now it feels like attempting to keep going is literally going to kill him. And maybe it's his own fault. Maybe he fell too hard and too fast. Maybe they were never going to actually work.
Except, they would've. They were supposed to work. This was the forever kind of thing and Luke knew that with everything in him. They were supposed to have a house and a kid and a dog and they were not supposed to be on opposite ends of the country, living in their own misery as they wonder if the other is okay or not.
(Spoiler alert: neither of them are okay.
Luke leaves California at three o'clock in the afternoon.)