Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was late 1990, and November had kept the East Village overcast and busy. Brick buildings pressed in on narrow streets. Steam rose from the gutters, and the windows were fogged at the edges. Along East Tenth Street, taxis idled and jerked forward, their exhaust settled into the air with the smell of garbage and the roasted nuts being sold by vendors down the block. Storefronts like Life Café and the corner laundromat displayed neon awnings that dimmed in the gray light. The neighbourhood moved at its usual pace, indifferent to the calendar. Though signs of winter had begun to appear: strings of lights and the occasional electric menorahs gleamed from inside the shops, and a few hand-lettered Black Friday banners boasting large savings were taped clumsily to the glass of the corner stores below.

Robin wiped a small spot on the fogged window with her sleeve and leaned closer, watching the street below. The green and red glow of the Christmas lights she had strung inside lit up her face. Robin heard the kitchen faucet drip as Vickie spoke on the other end of the line. She sat on the arm of the couch, refusing the seat cushions that were somehow still damp from where Steve had spilled his coffee that morning before he left for work. The phone cord strained as she shifted, bringing one knee up to her chest.

Robin could feel her mind drifting. The walls of the apartment were painted mint green and worn down with furniture scuffs from past tenants, interrupted by odd, discoloured patches where their landlord, Loretta, had fixed them. Steve had hung up a Back to the Future poster that Dustin bought him as a joke earlier that year when he visited from Boston. When was that again, Robin wondered.

Vickie’s voice cut through the daydream of Dustin and Steve sleeping in their shared living room, faces planted into a pile of blankets. “Robin?”

It must have been in June. No, April. She remembered it was around the time of the assaults in Central Park. Steve hadn’t let Dustin go out on his own at night that entire trip.

“Robin, are you still there?” Vickie asked again.

Robin fumbled with the receiver, “Yeah, I’m here,” she replied, distracted by Loretta’s voice drifting through the thin walls.

Vickie had sounded serious when she called. Vickie’s face flickered in her mind. Robin tried to picture her clearly, the way her eyes looked smaller before morning makeup, but the image wouldn’t stay.

“Robin, are you okay?”

“Sorry. I was just thinking about something…” Robin finally said.

There was a sigh on the other end. “Robin, I wanted to talk to you about something important.” Vickie said, “But it sounds like maybe this isn’t a good time?”

“No, no, I’m fine! Actually, hey, guess what? I got my bus tickets to see you during the break. I thought maybe we could go to The Depot again? You said you like it there, right?”

There was silence for a moment and then: “Can you return them?”

“What? Why would I do that? Wait, are you coming here? Because there’s this insane show at MoMA right now that mixes like Warhol, Picasso, and Lichtenstein with ads, and all this crazy pop stuff. It’s like high art meets everyday life, and it’s totally mind-blowing!”

She heard Vickie exhale softly. “I’m not coming to New York. Robin… oh gosh. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, but I don’t think this is working anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’m tired, Robin. The scheduling, the trips, waiting around by the phone. It’s been a year and a half, okay? And most of that hasn’t really felt like being together. And I can’t afford to take time off from school and work. I need to be here. Really be here. I need to be focused, and I need to take advantage of every opportunity I have here, and I don’t feel like I can do that when half the time I am worrying about us.” Robin thought she could hear a quiver in Vickie’s voice.

Robin bristled, her fingers tightening around the receiver. She was starting to feel the chill from the window’s draft. “You’re saying this… because of my schedule? Because I can call more and–” she broke off.

“No, and I’m not saying this to hurt you. It’s just… I want that research assistant position with Dr. Bartlett, and I just… can’t afford to be loosey-goosey about my time anymore.”

Robin’s fingers tightened around the receiver. “What does that have to do with us?”

Robin heard Vickie take a shaky breath. “I mean, I love you, I really do, but I can’t wait around, waiting for your calls. We barely share the same day-to-day anymore. You’re in New York, I’m here in Baltimore. We’re living in different worlds, and it’s… exhausting.”

Robin’s mouth opened and closed like a guppy, the phone cord draped across her lap like a lifeline.  “We see each other. I visit. I’ve been there over breaks, last summer, I didn’t even go back to Hawkins. I came to see you. I want to be here for you.”

“I know. And you’re amazing,” Vickie said quickly. “That’s what makes this so hard.”

“So… this is it?” Her voice came out small. “You’re breaking up with me?” She could feel tears slipping down her cheeks. “I just wanted to see you over break. I thought we could…”

“Oh, Robin...” Vickie’s voice broke.  “I know. I wish it could be different. I really do. I think you should start living your life in New York. Really living it.”

Tears blurred Robin’s vision. “Vickie, please,” she whispered.

There was silence. Then, finally, “Goodbye, Robin. Take care of yourself.”

Robin held the phone to her ear, waiting for anything else. When the line clicked dead, it sounded like a door shutting. The apartment felt suddenly too dark and too empty; Loretta’s voice on the other side of the wall went on, unchanged.

❊❀❊❀❊

Hours later, Robin was on the futon in her bedroom, curled up under her checkered quilt, crying while her turntable in the corner spun the last track of The Smiths’ Strangeways, Here We Come. When the last song finished, the player continued to whir with that little irritating put-put sound as it coasted. A sound she had never noticed until it felt like the only thing in the room. She thought about getting up to flip the record, but she didn’t get up.

She stared at her bedroom wall. There was a photocopy of the Voyager Golden Record diagram, which was taped next to a photo of Vickie that she had sent to Robin in a letter in the spring. She replayed the conversation over and over, searching for the words that might undo it. Robin pressed her hand to her eyes, letting it all sink in.

Outside in the hall, she heard the thud of a bag hitting the floor, and the front door shutting, then the scuff of shoes being kicked off. Steve’s voice floated down the hall, too lighthearted for how she was feeling. “Rob? You home?” A plastic bag crinkled, groceries maybe, and then his footsteps again before he opens her bedroom door, poking his head in. “Rob?”

Steve’s hair was shorter, trimmed neatly around the sides, and the soft wave on top was pushed back. He was still wearing the WNEW polo from the promotional event he went to for work. He looked put-together in a way that Robin very much hadn’t right then. She must look like shit, Robin thought. She hadn’t even gotten dressed before Vickie called. She’d been working on her screenwriting homework, due tomorrow, but she hadn’t really done anything. She was still in her pyjamas, and her breath probably stank of the Funyuns she’d eaten after Vickie’s call.

The door opened wider, and Steve stepped inside, stopping short when he saw her. “Rob? You okay?”

Robin sniffled, burying her face deeper into the pillow, her answer dissolving into another wave of tears.

Steve moved to the bed and knelt beside her, setting down the plastic bag he was carrying. “I can’t hear you,” he said gently. “What’s wrong?”

“Vickie dumped me,” she eventually managed.

“Oh… God. I’m sorry.” Steve hesitated. “What happened?”

Robin hiccuped and wiped her nose on the blanket again. “She said it wasn’t working. The long distance. She said she couldn’t… be loosey-goosey anymore.”

“Loosey-goosey?” Steve echoed, frowning, “Wait… what does that even mean?”

Robin sniffled, looking away. Steve reached out and brushed her hair back from her face. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”

She gave a little shake of her head and wiped at her tears. Steve opened the plastic bag and pulled out a roll of toilet paper, then balled up a wad of it in his hands. “Here,” he said, holding the wad to her snotty nose. “Blow.”

Robin scowled at him but blew her nose. When she looked back at the bag, she noticed it was full of more loose toilet paper rolls.

Steve smiled. “I stole them from work,” he admitted. “We were out.”

Robin gave a weak laugh. “You’re ridiculous.”

“I know,” he said. “But at least now we’re set for…you know… emergencies.”

They sat in silence for a moment before Robin said, “I just wonder if…Maybe if I’d transferred to MICA, we could’ve made it work. I was stupidly unrealistic. And who was I kidding? That I was worth all the effort–”

“Okay. I’m gonna stop you right there,” Steve leaned back and looked at her properly. “Robin Buckley, if Vickie thinks you need to change to be worth the effort, that’s her problem, not yours.”

She looked unconvinced.

“Seriously, you’re funny,” he said. “You speak, what, like a million languages?”

“Four,” she corrected. Did Pig-Latin really count, though?

“Four,” he repeated. “You care a lot about the people in your life. You spent a summer in Maryland for Vickie, and even kept paying New York rent to do it. Which is insane, by the way. And let’s be real. You would hate Maryland. Who the hell wants to live in Maryland?”

“There are so many fraternities there.”

“Exactly. And like… this isn’t the worst possible scenario.” He gestured around them. “Now you don’t have to schedule your whole life around a phone anymore. You don’t have to feel guilty every time you go out. You get to figure out what you want, just for you.”

She swallowed. “I didn’t want it to happen like this.”

“I know.” Steve said and then added, “When Nancy and I split, I thought I’d blown everything. I didn’t know who I was supposed to be. But if that hadn’t happened, I never would’ve noticed people like Dustin… or you. I probably would’ve stayed in Hawkins, working for my dad, thinking that was it.”

He met her eyes. “It sucked. But it wasn’t the end. And for the record,” he said, more firmly now, “I wouldn’t change a thing about you. Not even your chronic verbal diarrhea.” Robin glowered at him, and Steve gave her a small, crooked smile in return. “Until you remember how great you are, I’ll believe it for both of us.”

Her eyes burned again, but the pressure eased instead of tightening.

“You sound very sure,” she said.

“Yeah.” He shrugged lightly. “Because I know you.”

She wiped at her cheeks. “Thanks, Steve.”

He tore off more toilet paper and handed it to her before standing up. “Come on. Get dressed. We’re going out. Someone at work said SideWalk has two-dollar beers and stand-up tonight.”

“You hate open mics.”

“I do,” he agreed. “But tonight? Watching someone else have a worse night might be exactly what we need.”

❊❀❊❀❊

They decided to walk instead of taking the subway, winding down the blocks past curbside trash and the large late-night crowds. They’d been to a handful of open mics since they moved to the city. Robin enjoyed them while Steve tolerated them for the lack of a cover charge and occasionally for cheap drinks. Sometimes Jonathan would come hang out and take photos of the musicians and various chaotic acts on stage for extra money.

SideWalk was busier than either of them expected for a Tuesday: the room was packed with small round tables, coats draped over chairbacks, and a three-deep bar where people jostled for cheap well drinks. Robin and Steve slipped in as the previous comic was finishing to scattered laughter and polite applause; the MC, a stout man with thick black glasses, bounded back up on stage, mic squeaking. “Alright, let’s keep it going! Give it up for Kathy Goren!”

Steve and Robin eased into two cramped seats at a corner table just in time to see the next comic take the stage. She was chubby, round-faced, with dark shaggy hair, wearing a corduroy jacket over a stiff, novelty tuxedo t-shirt. She adjusted the mic stand and waited for the room to settle.

Robin squinted, looking up at the comedian on stage. “Hey, I think I know that girl,” Robin hissed to Steve, nodding toward the stage. “She’s in my screenwriting class.”

“Hello,” Kathy said.

A chorus of “Hi” came back from the crowd.

“Hello,” she repeated, deadpan.

“Hi,” the room responded again, this time less enthusiastically.

Tugging at his collar, Steve shot Robin a look that said he might be sorry he suggested this.

“Hello. That’s all I do. Hello,” she paused for effect. A few small laughs trickled out. “How are you doing?”

The audience replied with the standard, “Good,” and one person yelled back, “Shitty!”

“I don’t really care,” she said, voice flat, “but at least you’re trying to be honest. Because a lot of the time, people lie. You meet someone on the street, say ‘Hi, how’re you doing?’ And they say, ‘I’m fine! How are you?’ and you say fine, and then you say, see ya.” She let the silence stretch. “Because you can’t really be fucked with human communication, can you? And if you tell people the truth, they often get upset. Like if you told them, ‘Aw, awful. I’m terrible. I have hemorrhoids. I don’t know who the fuck Eric Bogosian is. I lick spoons for money. I have a rash on my back that I can’t see. And all my avocado trees have been wiped out by a massive flood.’”

Robin let out a surprised laugh.

“But what the fuck is anyone supposed to say to that?” she continued, “But I’m doing okay. Which is surprising, because I’m bisexual. For those of you who do not know what that means…it means I can’t drive, and that pigeons judge me personally—”

“Faggot!”

Robin’s shoulders tensed. The word cut across the room like ice in an otherwise cheap gin. Robin’s shoulders shot up to her ears, an old and ugly reflex.

“Excuse me?” Kathy’s voice was calm, but the air in the room shifted. A few heads turned toward where the yelling had come from. Steve’s hand rested on Robin's arm while he glanced around at the crowd.

A beat of silence; Robin heard only the clink of glasses.

The heckler quickly resumed yelling obscenities, but Kathy didn’t look fazed. She seemed more annoyed that someone was interrupting her set.

Kathy leaned into the mic. “Listen, dude,” she shot back, “the whole idea of heckling is to be funnier than the person on stage. Don’t get so pissed you can’t think, alright? I’ve set the bar very low so far, and you aren’t doing any better, so why don’t you fuck off?”

When the heckler didn’t stop, Steve called out, “Hey, asshole, shut up!”

Robin gave him a quick, nervous look.

A red light beamed from the back of the room, signalling it was time for Kathy to wrap it up. “Well, I guess that’s my fucking time,” she said before walking off, followed by the MC coming back to the mic, making a half-hearted joke about tough crowds before introducing the next performer.

Steve looked at the door, then back at Robin, “Do you want to get out of here?”

She nodded. They left their beers behind, and Robin scanned the crowd for Kathy, but didn’t see her. They headed to a nearby bar, spending the rest of the night talking about her breakup and whoever Steve was currently dating: apparently, a girl named Emily.

“She’s amazing,” Steve said. “Super cute, kind of knows everyone, and she can actually cook. I mean, who even does that these days?” Robin had smiled weakly, already imagining how fast this was going to crash.

By last call, they were both pretty drunk. When Robin woke up the next morning, her bedroom spun around her, and she had serious cotton mouth.

Groaning, she stumbled to the bathroom, puked quietly in the toilet, drank a couple of glasses of water and brushed her teeth. She knew she had to get to class today to talk to her professor about the assignment she had never finished. She took a few aspirin and proceeded with the gruelling task of getting ready for a long day of being hungover in public.

Robin made her way to the subway station, her shoulders hunched against the cold, her head pounding in time with each step. The platform smelled even worse in her current state, a mix of road salt, piss and damp winter coats. She took a seat in the train and pressed her forehead against the cool glass window as the car lurched forward, staring blankly at the blur of tunnels.
Her stomach twisted, and for a moment, she was worried she was going to puke again. Since the phone call and going out, she hadn’t really allowed herself to process her feelings. Drinking had been an easy escape from thinking of a life without Vickie. Now, riding the train, it’s all she could think about.

When she made it to class, she slumped into a seat at the back of the room. Their instructor, McNamara, arranged his notes on the desk at the front. He was short and square-shouldered, with a severe, beaky profile. He reminded Robin of Sam the Eagle from the muppets.

“Good morning,” McNamara greeted, “You all had homework due today: a single scene that contains a clear objective. Before the break, you will read aloud in pairs to identify objectives, obstacles, and turning points in your scenes. Then we’ll discuss the beats together.”

He moved to the projector, clicked the remote, and the screen flickered to life. Robin squinted against the harsh glow. GOAL → OBSTACLE → STAKES → TURN appeared in big, block letters.

“Remember, we’re not here to indulge in pretty language. We’re here to make stuff that works on the page and on the screen. That starts with understanding what a scene does.” He walked around the room as he spoke, “Every scene,” he continued, “is an experiment. It asks a single question: Will the character get what they want? The scene’s job is to answer that question by the end, yes, no, or partial, and to change the protagonist’s tactical situation. If a scene doesn’t change something, information, relationship, or power balance, then it is ornamental. You can write lovely paragraphs all you like, but you will not make a drama.”

As he went on about Syd Field and the Hero’s Journey for what felt like the millionth time, Robin nudged her notebook open with the side of her hand. Nearby, Kathy sat with her own notebook open, looking alert as she sipped from a to-go cup. Robin continued studying her classmate, occasionally scribbling down a note.

When McNamara broke off from the lecture and asked them to get into pairs, her gaze flicked from one student to the next, unsure who to approach, before calling out, “Kathy!”

Kathy looked over, confused.

“Robin,” Robin elaborated, gesturing to herself, “want to be my partner?”

Kathy shrugged and brought her stuff closer to Robin’s seat.

“I almost didn’t recognize you without the tuxedo.”

“What?” Kathy was giving Robin the same face that most people gave Robin when they first met her, like she was a different species.

Robin rubbed her palms against her jeans, her head throbbing still, “I was at SideWalk last night.”

Kathy’s face went from confusion to grim embarrassment, “Oh. Oh God. That’s mortifying.”

“You’re mortified? You were so cool up there.”

“I bombed.”

“You didn’t bomb. That guy was a homophobic asshole.”

Kathy’s eyes flicked to Robin’s for a moment before relaxing, “Nah… I should have ignored him or said something funnier. Instead, I got pissed off when I’m supposed to be entertaining people.”

“Well… what were you supposed to do? How could you do that if he wouldn’t shut up?”

“What I should have done is turned it on myself,” Kathy took a sip from her to-go cup, “Made it into a bit, then moved on.”

“I thought you were funny.”

Kathy gave her a skeptical look.

“Like… in an absurd way,” Robin clarified.

“Thanks. I appreciate that,” Kathy said, brushing it off, though she didn’t hide the hint of a smile. “You doing okay, by the way? You look like you crawled out of a blender.”

Robin groaned. “Might have drunk too much last night,” and then, “My girlfriend broke up with me.”

“That’s rough. Want some of my coffee? Might make you feel a bit better,” she held out her cup to Robin. Robin’s stomach twisted.

Robin shook her head. “I think what I need,” she said, deadpan, “is like ten pounds of grease.”

Kathy’s gaze landed on Robin’s sparse notebook. “Did you finish the homework?” she asked.

Robin pressed her lips together.

“Then let’s get out of here. Grab some food.”

“But… didn’t you want feedback on your scene?” Kathy’s homework was out in front of her, and it looked like she had spent a lot of time on it. There were even red pen notes in the margins.

Kathy shrugged. “Fuck it,” she said, standing. Robin hesitated for only a second before giving in; there was no way she could argue with McNamara about skipping homework while stinking of beer. On their way out, Kathy dropped her scene homework on McNamara’s desk while he was busy with a pair of other students.

❊❀❊❀❊

They ended up at Waverly Diner near 6th Avenue. Robin had been here a few times by herself after class, but she had never come here with anyone else. She loved the worn booths and the warm lighting that now softened the pressure behind her eyes.

Robin ordered three eggs with bacon and pastrami and a glass of orange juice, while Kathy ordered another coffee and buttermilk pancakes.

When their food arrived, Robin poked at her eggs and watched the yolk wobble, trying not to gag, but the warmth from the plate and the orange juice started to dull the edges of her hangover.

“How long were you and your girlfriend together?” Kathy asked, cutting into her pancakes.

Robin hesitated, fiddling with her fork.

“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Kathy added, “I just know that when I’m feeling like shit, I need to talk stuff out.”

Robin sighed, shrugging. “We were together for five years.”

“Seriously?” Kathy made a face as if someone had just squeezed lemon juice in her eyes, “That’s rough. Do you live together?”

“No,” Robin said, “we had been long-distance for a while. She’s at Johns Hopkins right now. Pre-med.”

“I’m guessing the distance is what killed it?”

Robin shrugged again.

Kathy blew out a breath like she was about to say something and then stopped herself. “Well… if it makes you feel better, the last time I got dumped it was because I puked on a girl at her birthday party.”

Robin winced and let out a small laugh, “Okay, that’s tragic. And kind of deserved.”

“Oh, totally,” Kathy said, then grinned a little, “But also… funny now? At least in retrospect. Kinda? Maybe? It was during ‘Happy Birthday’, with everyone singing. Total nightmare. But… like, I find it helps to remember that all the shit making you sad right now? Someday it’s just a funny story you tell later, you know?”

Robin managed a small, unconvincing smile, “I guess so.”

They chatted animatedly for a while; the conversation was easy and light. Robin learned that Kathy was a drama major and that she had played the ghost in the school’s production of Hamlet the year before. During her one scene, she tripped over her sheet and almost knocked the student playing Hamlet off the stage.

As they talked, Robin felt the tension of her hangover easing, though she wasn’t sure what to do next; going back to class felt off-limits after skipping out early.

“If you’re feeling up for it, I’m heading to the film co-op,” Kathy said before wiping her mouth with a napkin. “I need to grab some photos I left in the dark room. Cici might crawl through my window tonight and strangle me in my sleep if I don’t.”

Robin raised an eyebrow, “Cici is human, right?”

“Pretty sure she’s human. A bit of a pill, though.”

Robin smirked, “Well, okay, then. That is not at all terrifying for someone whose brain is currently functioning at roughly thirty percent.”

Kathy laughed. “You’ll survive. It’s not far.”

“Cool,” Robin said, sliding out of the booth and grabbing her coat.

As they left the diner, Robin found herself looking at Kathy and wondering for a moment if the other girl was flirting with her or just being friendly.

Robin followed Kathy down a side street off 6th Avenue, her boots crunching over scattered leaves. Kathy’s knitted scarf whipped around her neck as she tugged open a steel door plastered with stickers: some advertising punk shows, some student film festivals, some illegible remnants of whatever had come before. Robin almost missed the sign painted on the glass: The Dark Room, a film strip curling and twisting around the letters like a ribbon.

“Welcome to my favourite shithole,” Kathy said with a grin, holding the door open.

Robin stepped inside. The first thing she noticed was the smell: a pungent cocktail of chemical developer, coffee, and something vaguely like wet cardboard. She wrinkled her nose. “Ah, eau de indie filmmaker. Subtle,” she muttered, earning a snort from Kathy.

“It’s actually really nice once you get past some of the grime,” Kathy said, pointing at a stack of dirty mugs left on the counter. “People just need to learn to clean up after themselves.” She grabbed the mugs and started up the stairs, making a follow-me gesture toward Robin.

Robin followed Kathy up the tight staircase, gripping the chipped wooden railing as it groaned under her weight.

The next floor was a chaotic entryway: a counter with a battered cash box and a stack of photocopied schedules, a communal coat rack overflowing with jackets, scarves, and backpacks, and mismatched chairs forming a casual waiting area.

As they climbed higher, the stairs opened into a wide loft-like room. Exposed brick walls were lined with shelves of dusty film reels, camera equipment, and stacks of journals. In one corner, a large projector screen hung against the wall, flanked by folding chairs and a scattering of beanbags. Robin’s eyes landed on a tall woman crouched by the projector table, wiping down dust from the surface. Her face was heart-shaped, framed by dark curls that fell loosely around her shoulders. She wore a simple blouse tucked into high-waist trousers, sleeves rolled up as she worked.

The woman glanced up briefly, her expression shifting from concentration to quiet annoyance.

“Hi, Cici!” Kathy called.

“Stop calling me that,” the woman said, her voice flat. A pause, then she added, “You left your photos in the dark room again. I told you to stop doing that.”

“I’m sorry, Cecilia, I forgot,” Kathy put the coffee mugs down on the table and rocked back on her heels. “Hey, this is my friend from class, Robin. I was going to show her around.”

Cecilia didn’t reply. She simply returned to her work. Kathy glanced around. “Is Uncle Al around?”

Cecilia looked up again, her dark eyes flicking over Robin with an appraising glance.

Robin offered a small, hesitant smile. “Hi! It’s nice to meet you.”

“You look like death warmed over,” Cecilia said bluntly. “He’s in his office.”

Then she turned back to the counter, ignoring them completely.

Robin touched her face, suddenly self-conscious.

Kathy shook her head at her and mouthed, It’s not you.

They left Cecilia’s desk and moved down a hallway, Kathy already half a step ahead. The building felt like a maze. They passed a couple of closed doors and bulletin boards layered with curling flyers before Kathy stopped in front of an office with a window clouded by old tape residue.

“Uncle Al?” Kathy called, knocking once before pushing the door open.

The office was small, lit mostly by a desk lamp and whatever daylight managed to slip through the grimy window. A man sat behind the desk, reading glasses low on his nose, dark curls gone soft with age. He looked up, surprised, then smiled.

“Hey,” he said, “You’re supposed to be in class.”

“I know,” Kathy said. “I just needed to grab my headshots, and I wanted to say hi.” She stepped inside, “This is Robin. She’s in my screenwriting class. She’s a film student.”

Al stood, offering his hand. “Al.”

“Nice to meet you,” Robin said, shaking it. His grip was gentle, solid.

Kathy was already backing toward the door again. “I’ll be right back,” she said, patting her pockets like she might forget what she was doing mid-sentence. “Dark room. Two minutes.”

And then she was gone, leaving Robin alone.

Robin hovered near the doorway, suddenly very aware of how she looked, tired eyes, wrinkled sweater, the faint sense that she might still smell like vomit from this morning.
Al studied her a moment, taking stock of her.

“Rough morning?” he asked.

Robin felt her cheeks turning red. “A little. But not like…” She felt the need to clarify immediately. “I wasn’t feeling great earlier. Kathy took me to lunch and asked me if I wanted to come here so I wouldn’t just crawl back into bed.”

Al nodded, visibly reassured, about what Robin didn’t know. “That sounds like her. She’s a good kid. A bit of a scatterbrain, but.” He gestured to the chair across from the desk. “Sit. She’s going to be longer than two minutes.

Robin did, grateful for something to do.

“I’ll make tea,” he crossed the room and filled the kettle at the sink, settling it on the hot plate. “Peppermint, okay?”

“Yeah,” Robin said, “That sounds really good, actually.”

The kettle whirred quietly.

“So,” Al said, leaning back, folding his arms. “You’re a film student.”

Robin nodded.

“Mm, what films do you like?”

She thought for a second. “Agnes Varda. Cleo from Five to Seven, especially.” Then, warming to it, “The Apartment. The Hidden Fortress. Children of Paradise.”

Al’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s a hell of a list.”

The kettle clicked off. He poured water into two mugs, dropped the teabags in and brought them over. Setting one carefully in front of her. Robin’s eyes flicked to a framed photograph on his desk: a woman, looking straight at the camera with a faint, knowing smile. The photo looked like it had been taken a decade ago; the woman’s hair was styled into a soft perm.

“Varda sees people. Kurosawa understands movement. Carné knows how to let a room breathe. And Wilder…” He smiled. “Wilder knows how to be kind without being soft.”

Robin wrapped her hands around the mug. The steam smelled clean and sharp in her nostrils. “I like how they… let you notice small things. People shifting in a frame, or a room, just… breathing.”

“Are you working on anything right now?” he asked.

She hesitated. “Not really. Classes have been… a lot.”

He made a soft, dismissive sound in the back of his throat. “Film students,” he said, “Always ‘too busy’ to make films.”

He turned to his desk and started rummaging through a drawer, pushing aside notebooks and loose papers until he pulled out a stack of videotapes, their labels handwritten and worn.
“Here,” he said, laying them out. “Alright. Given your taste, you might like these.”

He handed them to her one by one:
“La Règle du Jeu.”
“Orpheus.”
“A Matter of Life and Death.”
“Brief Encounter.”
“And Ikiru,” he added, tapping the spine. “For when you forget why you’re doing this.”

Robin stared at the pile, “Oh, I couldn’t take these!”

Al waved it off immediately. “You can.”

She shook her head, hands tightening around the mug. “No, really. What if something happens to them?”

“Something will happen to them,” he said mildly. “You’ll watch them.” When Robin didn’t take the tapes he added, “This isn’t me being generous. This is me doing my job.”

She looked up at him. “Your job?”

“My job,” he said, settling back into his chair, “is making sure people with good instincts don’t get buried under homework and forget why they wanted to make films in the first place.” He gestured toward the stack. “Those are reminders.”

Robin’s throat tightened a little. She swallowed. “I promise I’ll bring them back.”

“I know you will,” he said easily. “And if you don’t, I’ll forgive you.”

Kathy opened the door, a large envelope tucked under her arm.

Al glanced over his glasses. “How’d your headshots turn out, meyn meydl?”

Kathy gave him a flat and long-suffering look.

“That bad?”

“They’re not great… I don’t know why I can’t take a decent photo of myself.”

Robin straightened a little. “What are the headshots for?”

“Promotional stuff,” Kathy said. “Auditions. Trying to get gigs. You know.”

Al smiled fondly. “Kathy wants to be on Saturday Night Live.”

Kathy groaned, “Not now. Obviously. I’m not delusional.” She glanced at Robin, defensive but sheepish. “But yeah. Eventually.”

Robin looked at the envelope under Kathy’s arm curiously. “They can’t be that bad.”

Kathy handed her the envelope wordlessly.

Robin pulled one out.

“Oh,” she said.

She pulled out another.

“Oh no.”

By the third, she had to clamp a hand over her mouth to stop herself from laughing. The lighting was harsh, the angle unforgiving. Kathy’s expression was somewhere between startled and deeply inconvenienced.

“Oh wow,” Robin said honestly. “These are…awful. But,” she gathered the photos back into a neat stack, “I actually know a really good photographer. He’s a friend of mine. Really nice. Not creepy. I can put you in touch, if you want.”

Kathy hesitated. “You’d do that?”

“Of course,” Robin said easily.

Al watched the exchange from his chair, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Okay,” Kathy smiled. “Yeah. Okay. That would be rad. Thank you.”

Robin smiled too, tea warm in her hands, some of the tightness in her chest easing.

❊❀❊❀❊

Robin flopped onto the couch the second she got home, putting the tapes from Al on the coffee table. She barely made it through the apartment door before her body demanded relief, and she let herself sink into the cushions. She closed her eyes, letting the day slide off her. The next thing she knew, it was dark, and she could hear Steve in the kitchen, clanking pans and dishes in the sink.

Robin groaned and pulled a cushion over her head.

Steve soon came into the living room, carrying what looked like a bowl of a poor man’s idea of spaghetti. He looked at the tapes on the coffee table and frowned. “More foreign films?”
Robin lifted her middle finger in reply.

Steve ignored her. “Dustin called while you were asleep. He’s not swinging by on his way to Hawkins this break, but Mike might be in town. He’s in Boston right now. Some kind of Great Beatnik Odyssey or whatever. We were talking about grabbing lunch, if Will and Jonathan get back to us.”

Robin paused, remembering. Will had started at NYU this semester. She hadn’t heard from him since September. “I wonder how Will’s been.”

Steve nudged Robin’s feet to make room for himself on the couch. “So… staying in town for Christmas, or are you running back to the suburbs?”

Robin thought about the bus rides to Baltimore,  the too-early mornings, the cramped seats on the Greyhound, the taste of a roadside egg salad sandwich, and the familiar anticipation that used to carry her all the way there. All of that was gone now.

The sadness came back for a moment.

Steve adjusted his position beside her on the couch, solid and warm. Robin’s gaze drifted to the stack of videotapes on the coffee table. “Guess I’m staying here.”

“Huh,” Steve spun a forkful of spaghetti. “Then, guess it’ll be our first Christmas in New York.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Jonathan stood over the stove, making coffee in a battered saucepan, watching the grounds rise and sink back again. He stirred once with a spoon, then let it be. Hopper had taught him how to make cowboy coffee on a rainy afternoon while they were packing up the old cabin that Hopper, his mom, and Will had been living in. They had boxed up the coffee maker too early, and they’d needed caffeine to get through the last stretch of hauling boxes and arguing about what could be left behind.

Now he was doing the same thing in his small railroad apartment on the Lower East Side because his former roommate had stolen his coffee maker when he left, along with the TV and Jonathan’s acoustic guitar, a scuffed Yamaha with a crack near the soundhole that Jonathan had meant to fix once he had the money. Jonathan watched the steam curl toward the ceiling and tried not to think about how pissed off he still felt about it.

He had more important things to think about. He needed to figure out how he was going to pay the utilities now that he wasn’t splitting them fifty-fifty with anyone. He considered disconnecting his phone line, turning the idea over carefully, weighing whether it was something he actually needed. He’d taken a second job with a catering company to scrape together the rest of the rent for January, and Mike had given him a hundred dollars to help out while he stayed there; something Jonathan hadn’t asked for but couldn’t refuse, if they were going to have a place at all.

He had slept poorly after working a late shift catering a wedding, and now he was heading to campus for the studio booking he’d made for Robin’s friend’s headshots. The thought of spending an hour with a stranger, posing them and pretending he was fully present, made his jaw tighten. He took a breath, poured the coffee carefully into a mug, and told himself he only had to get through the morning, and then he could figure everything else out.

❊❀❊❀❊

Christmas was coming quickly this year. Jonathan hadn’t had time to think about it, and he’d already told his mom and Will that he wouldn’t be coming home for break like he had the year before. He knew his mom would be disappointed, but he couldn't afford the time off. The decorations strung across the city felt accusatory in their cheer.

At the studio, Jonathan set his bag by the wall and went straight to work. He pulled a sheet of seamless paper, smoothed the curl with his palm, and taped it down. He switched on the strobe power packs one by one, listening for the quiet buzz and the steady tick that told him they were charging.

He moved through the space on instinct. After three years of school, he was well acquainted with the rhythms and habits of working in the studio. He tightened the last tripod knob and realized he wasn't alone.

A woman stood inside the doorway, shrugging out of a heavy wool coat that looked like it had survived a few winters. Dark hair fell into her eyes; she pushed it back with the side of her hand. She wore a striped knit under an overshirt that sat square on her shoulders; a small button was pinned to the pocket, too far away for him to read.

She stood arms loose at her sides, comfortable in her own skin — yet Jonathan noticed her eyes flick around the room. “Sorry, I’m late,” she apologized. “I couldn’t fucking find the room.”

“You’re not late,” he said, though he hadn't been watching the clock. He wiped his palms on his jeans and nodded toward the stool. “Come in. Sit.”

She perched on the worn wooden stool. Jonathan noticed that her shoulders made the key spill wider than he liked. He started making subtle adjustments while Kathy watched him reposition the lights.

Eventually, she broke the silence as Jonathan set the camera on the tripod and began loading film into the back.

“Thanks for doing this, by the way. I don’t know if Robin told you, but the headshots I tried to take myself were fucking abysmal. I looked like a missing person.”

Jonathan bit back a smile. He’d spoken to Kathy briefly on the phone to set this up, but they’d barely gone beyond when, where, and how much.

After a moment, he said, “Steve mentioned you’re a comedian?”

“Whose Steve?” Kathy asked as Jonathan snapped a photo.

“Robin’s roommate.”

Kathy gave him a blank look. “I do stand-up, yeah. Mostly just open mics right now. Not a lot of time to work on, like, a proper set. Not with the showcase coming up.”

Jonathan paused, the camera still pressed to his face. Something clicked into place, the way the light cut across her face, sharp and unforgiving, the same way it had onstage. He had a brief memory of a metallic robe tangling at her feet as she spoke gravely about unfinished business…

“Wait,” he said, “You were the ghost in Hamlet last year, weren’t you?”

Kathy scrunched up her face, “I was indeed the idiot who almost killed Hamlet in Act One. And I thank fuck every day that Hoffman graduated last year because I couldn’t look at him again after nearly launching him into the front row.”

Jonathan adjusted the focus, peering through the viewfinder.

“How did that even happen?” Jonathan prodded.

“​​The guy who made my costume made it too long.” Kathy laughed, a quick, unanchored sound, “I had to wear fucking platforms under that god damn robe.”

Jonathan noted how often she swore, the way it worked as punctuation. He didn’t take the shot. Her laughter kept resetting her face, pulling her out of the moment. He thought of the headshots she’d mentioned and understood why they hadn’t worked. She wasn’t staying still long enough for an honest expression to settle.

“So anyway, we’re doing The Crucible for this year’s showcase—Menzel’s Abigail this year,” she continued without pause. “Which, great, except it’s been kind of a disaster. No one can get through Act Four without losing it, and we still haven’t figured out the harness rigging, so our John Proctor just keeps spinning around the stage like Peter Pan.”

Jonathan didn’t respond. He had read The Crucible in high school for class, but he hadn’t enjoyed it. He kept the camera to his eye, looking through the viewfinder without taking the shot, waiting for Kathy to settle.

But Kathy started tapping her foot against the stool rung.

It wasn’t stage nerves, exactly. It was the same tight, buzzing impatience he remembered Nancy getting when she thought she was wasting time.

The tripod creaked softly as he unlocked the film back and set it on the table beside him, careful not to rush. He reached for the Polaroid back instead.

He snapped it into place, slid a fresh sheet from the box, and loaded it with practiced fingers. He checked the light meter again.

Then, without looking at her, he asked quietly, “Where are you from?”

“Oh, um, Detroit. I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I moved here when I was twelve.” Her shoulders drew in a fraction, and her mouth tightened then softened, and the restlessness was finally ebbing away. Jonathan eased the camera to his eye and took the shot, but instead of bringing the feed up to check, he let the image linger in the machine for a beat.

He unlatched the Polaroid back, slipped the developing print free and held it at the edges so he wouldn’t smudge it. The picture was grey and slow at first, her face a ghost of itself, and he set it down on the table face-up, leaving it to bloom.

“Why did your family move here?”

“They didn’t.” She hadn’t said it unkindly, just matter-of-factly.

Jonathan felt a twinge of regret at his line of questioning and for what felt like the millionth time that he had Nancy’s instincts. The way she would steer a conversation back to where she wanted it. It would make taking other people’s photos a little easier.

Jonathan didn’t, so he did the only thing he trusted: he stopped talking.

Kathy watched him for a beat, then offered, “I lived with my Uncle for a bit, but now I’m squatting in an old walk-up above a boarded-up bodega on Rivington.”

Jonathan blanched, “Squatting?”

Kathy’s eyes glittered with amusement at his reaction, and Jonathan snapped another photo.

“Yeah. The landlord scarpered, so now people just parade through it like it’s a hostel for the romantically bankrupt.” Jonathan paused on scarpered, filing it away with the rest of her strange, deliberate phrasing. “No heat, no running water, but I’m hardly ever there, so it doesn’t really matter.”

Jonathan found himself briefly wondering where she showered, and then, just as quickly, dismissed the thought and kept his mouth shut. He lifted the Polaroid from the camera and, this time, let it develop in his hands. The image came up exactly as he’d hoped: her expression more subdued now, but her eyes still hinting at private amusement, the slight crook of her nose catching the light. He placed it on the table with the other photo, satisfied.

“You might have a point—my roommate just up and left without warning. I have no idea where he went.” He added, almost as an afterthought, “And he took my broken guitar for some reason? I don’t even think you could pawn that?”

Kathy sniggered, “That really sucks, man.”

Jonathan unclipped the Polaroid camera from the tripod and swapped in his 35mm. He threaded the first roll, checked the meter, and clicked the shutter a few times to settle the lights.

Kathy began looking openly around the room and then at Jonathan for what felt like the first time.

“The place I was at before one roommate put a lock on the fridge. Like, she put a padlock on it! I lived off Mr. Noodles for like eight months until I finally gave up and left.” Jonathan noticed that Kathy was looking more relaxed; the intensity in her eye had softened enough, and the rest of her posture had followed suit.

Jonathan rolled his shoulders. “Alright. Let’s do the real ones.”

They traded small talk while he nudged poses, a shoulder down, chin up, and the clicks filled the quiet.

They finished faster than he’d expected, and for a second, he felt disappointed before he reminded himself that he had a class and a hundred other things to do.

Kathy stayed and helped him gather stands and clip cords, her movements quick and practised. When they were finished, she dug into her coat, counted out the cash, and handed it to him.

He took the cash from her gratefully, realizing it was a little bit more than what he quoted her as he pocketed it. “I won’t be able to develop them until later this week,” he added. “I’ll call you when they’re ready.” He offered her one of the Polaroids; she glanced at it with a pinched brow, then tucked it into an inside pocket of her coat.

“Sounds good, Jono.” Kathy gave him a small wave before leaving him alone in the studio.

He slung his camera bag over his shoulder and took one last cursory look around the room, already thinking about bills, finals, and the rest of his life closing back in.

❊❀❊❀❊

His class that day was in an overheated seminar room in the sub-basement that stank of mould. Jonathan shoved through the door with a stack of prints under his arm, the edges of the paper still warm from the dryer.

His classmates had already started pinning up their works in progress for critique. There were bathroom portraits, contact sheets presented as final pieces, and abandoned interiors, or, as their instructor, Gus Abruzzo, liked to call it, ruin porn, with emphatic pleasure. Jonathan suspected he didn’t actually think much of abandoned buildings and that he probably just liked saying the words.

He slid into the doorway and then set his prints down on the nearest table. The group was already rearranging prints, propping thumbtacks between packed images. Abruzzo, a tall man in his early fifties, was moving down the line with a red pen behind his ear.

“Late,” Abruzzo called out without looking at Jonathan, “You trying to be dramatic, Byers?”

“Really sorry,” Jonathan panted. He felt hot from running down eight flights of stairs.

“Alright,” Abruzzo added, “Pin up your photos. We’ll run the sequencing in ten.”

Jonathan carried his prints up to the corkboard and began arranging them. The first was a three-quarter portrait of a woman seated in a living room, half her face in shadow and a child’s small, blurred form pressed into the corner of the frame. The second print pulled back: the same room wider now, a draped figure on a sofa the viewer couldn’t fully see.

Jonathan felt the wriggling feeling of anticipation of exposure that always came before a critique. This was the last one before break, and he’d have to wait until the new year to continue developing the series.

Two rows down, Roy was pinning up his latest series of boudoir photos. Compositionally, they were fine, Jonathan thought, but clearly just an excuse to see naked women. And unfortunately for Roy, Abruzzo wasn’t impressed with technical skill alone; he wanted intention and a little guts.

Abruzzo continued walking around the room, and the class watched him silently. He paused at Roy’s photos, grimacing.

“Ah, boudoir,” he said, like he tasted something unpleasant, “Neat. Clean. Very saleable, if you’re into catalogues.” He tapped a print. “Composition’s tidy, O’Connor, but whose desire are you photographing? Yours, or whoever you imagine is buying the photograph? If you want to explore desire, show me the desirer. Don’t just dress the sitter up as a prop.”

Roy flushed, his ears turning pink.

Abruzzo moved on to the next series of photos,s another student had pinned up: a sequence of peeling wallpaper and mouldy sinks. Abruzzo crouched, sliding the red pen out from behind his ear. He leaned in close, then circled a dark seam where the wall met the floor, tapping it twice.

“Beautiful surfaces,” he remarked. “But remember. Decay isn’t a concept in and of itself. If you fetishize deterioration, you risk turning someone else’s story into decor.” He drew a small arrow towards the shadow pooling at the baseboard. “This. This is where something almost happens. There’s tension here. Find the human presence behind the damage. Otherwise, you risk these becoming postcards of neglect. Find the narrative pull.”

The girl whose photos they belonged to quickly took down notes in her composition notebook, taking the feedback in stride.

Abruzzo worked his way around the room that way while students either defended, explained or fell silent. His comments were never meant to be cruel, but he expected thicker skin from anyone planning to do this for a living.

When he reached Jonathan’s prints, he stood and looked without speaking for a beat.

“All right, Byers,” he prompted finally. “Talk me through these.”

Jonathan's response came out uneven; he was suddenly nervous, the words stumbling a bit. “Portraits. Interiors. I— I’ve been trying to show…an impression of presence and absence. Memory, maybe.” He felt each phrase thin under Abruzzo’s gaze.

Abruzzo nodded once. He leaned in closer, studying them. He didn’t mark them. He leaned in, then stepped back. Did it again. Finally, he reached up and nudged one of the photos a fraction of an inch to the left, then another slightly lower, reordering the sequence by instinct.

“Hm,” he noted. “You’re circling something.”

Jonathan swallowed.

“These immediately make me think of nineteenth-century Hidden Mother photographs,” Abruzzo explained. “You know them?”

Jonathan hesitated. “Sort of. The… the ones where the mothers are hidden behind a curtain so the children stay still?”

Abruzzo nodded. “Exactly. Long exposures. The body erased in service of the image.” He tapped the second print. “Presence disguised as absence. Structural, but denied visibility.”

He stepped back again, hands on his hips. “What you’re doing here isn’t mimicry. It’s closer to an echo. You’re staging around that tension, someone holding the scene together while remaining just outside of it.”

Jonathan opened his mouth, then closed it. “I wasn’t really thinking about… parents.”

“I know,” Abruzzo observed. “That’s the interesting part.”

A few students shifted. Someone coughed.

“These are strong because they’re restrained,” Abruzzo went on. “You’re resisting the urge to over-explain. But right now, they’re hovering. They’re almost too polite.” He pointed to the blurred child in the corner of the first frame. “This is where the image wakes up. That friction. The partial figure. The intrusion.”

“You’re building a visual grammar of interruption,” Abruzzo stated. “Something unfinished. Something leaning. I want you to push that. Don’t clean it up. Don’t resolve it. Make the absence heavier. Make the presence harder to ignore.”

Abruzzo was looking directly at Jonathan now, and Jonathan wanted to look away but couldn’t bring himself to.

“How?” Jonathan pressed.

“Scale. Cropping. Proximity. Risk.” Abruzzo’s mouth twitched. “Stop standing politely outside your own work.”

Jonathan’s throat worked. He managed, “I guess I don’t want them to feel… staged.”

Abruzzo tilted his head. “Everything is staged. The question is whether the staging reveals or conceals.”

Abruzzo straightened, finally turning around to face the whole class, the red pen moving in small, decisive circles; they had moved on from Jonathan’s work.

Jonathan blinked hard, surprised by the sudden sting behind his eyes.

“When we come back from break,” Abruzzo instructed the class, “I want to see the process. Not just the outcomes. Contact sheets. Test strips. Work prints. Three different crops of the same frame.” He pointed once at the second image. “Blow this one up, Byers. And, McCarthy, for heaven’s sake, push your blacks!”

After that, he dismissed the class, wishing them all a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

The tension in the room broke immediately. Thumbtacks came free with soft clicks; chair legs scraped the floor. Jonathan sat where he was for a moment, feeling both hollowed out and strangely motivated.

Finally, he stood up, took his prints off the corkboard and slid them back into their sleeves.

Behind him, Roy muttered, “Jesus. That was intense.”

Jonathan heard a girl give a small, bitter laugh, “At least he doesn’t think your photos are awful.”

“You do need to push your blacks, though,” Roy drawled.

Jonathan rolled his eyes and shook his head before heading for the bus.

❊❀❊❀❊

It was late by the time Jonathan slipped out of his worn chef’s jacket. He’d spent the rest of the day catering a modest gallery opening downtown, hauling trays of canapes and carafes of fruit punch through a chilly East Village loft. His uniform was spattered with food, road salt crusted up his pant legs, and his feet ached with every step.

Instead, when he pushed open the door to his small apartment, he found Will — flushed, coat still on — wrestling a scraggly little Douglas fir against the wall. Past him, Mike was visible at the kitchen counter, unloading groceries, while Robin laughed from where she was crouched beneath the tree, trying to keep it from tipping over. Jonathan let his backpack drop to the floor with a dull thud, his shoulders sagging.

“Can you see if this side is straight yet?” Will called out to Mike, squinting down the length of the tree.

Jonathan paused in the doorway. Robin noticed him and flashed a grin, rosy-cheeked from exertion. “It’s fine, it’s fine. We’ll sweep up the pine needles in a bit.”

Jonathan stepped inside and shrugged off his coat.

“Hey, you guys,” he said, voice tired. “You got a tree?”

“Yeah,” Mike answered, pulling a jar of Ragu from one of the plastic bags. “It was kind of a pain. My car’s still stuck at the shop.”

“So they called in reinforcements,” Robin added, looking a little harried but pleased.

Jonathan closed the door behind him and rubbed a hand through his damp hair, flakes of snow melting into his hair.

The tree was comically thin in places and lopsided, its branches bare on one side. “Not exactly Rockefeller Center material,” Robin remarked, catching Jonathan’s expression, “but we figure if we turn the bad side against the wall, you won’t even notice.”

Mike put the last of the groceries away and plopped down on the floor nearby, grinning, while Will and Robin continued fussing over the tiny tree.

Jonathan lingered by the doorway; the sight of them should have filled him with festive cheer, but all he felt was a quiet, creeping stress. His apartment was cold, and the only furniture he really owned was a small loveseat and a TV cubby with no TV in it. The little tree didn’t brighten the space so much as underline how bare it was.

Jonathan excused himself and ducked into his bedroom to change. He peeled out of his work clothes and pulled on a pair of threadbare sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt, then added another layer against the cold. Sitting on the edge of his bed, he emptied the pouch from his bag and counted the cash: fifty-five in tips, plus the hundred Kathy had paid him earlier. That would cover the power bill and the phone, at least.

He wasn’t sure how he was going to afford photo paper for Kathy’s headshots, but that was a problem for later. He pushed that thought aside, then scrubbed a hand over his face and stepped back out of his bedroom.

Will and Mike were now both on the floor with a scatter of coloured paper and pipe cleaners between them, the remains of a five-and-dime shopping bag crumpled nearby. They sat close, knees nearly touching, shoulders brushing when one of them leaned too far to grab the scissors.

Jonathan watched Mike. He’d been quieter lately, keeping to himself more than usual. Now he was laughing and leaning into Will, almost buoyant, almost like himself again.

Mike laughed at something Will said, sharp and unguarded, his eyebrows lifting as he looked at him. Will ducked his head, smiling, already reaching for the glue stick.

Robin was in the kitchenette, fiddling with the kettle. “So. The co-op continues to be…,” she drawled over her shoulder, “an enriching social experiment.”

She appeared a moment later with mugs of hot herbal tea, a gift from a girl Jonathan had dated briefly last year that he never used, and distributed them amongst them.

Jonathan noticed Robin took the mug with the broken handle for herself.

“That bad?” Jonathan lowered himself to the floor beside Will and Mike. He picked up a half-finished paper chain that Mike had set aside in favour of more chaotic shapes.

Mike’s ornaments were lopsided and cheerful, circles and stars cut too fast, already piling up. In contrast, Will had created deliberate silhouettes, folded and cut with patience, shapes nested inside shapes. They looked like elaborately colourful snowflakes.

“Not bad,” Robin paused. “Good, actually. Really good. It’s…” She searched for the right words, then shrugged. “It’s a good distraction.”

“From?” Jonathan asked

“Everything. The breakup... Steve’s hair in the drain. McNamara’s crits. You know.” She waved a hand, dismissive, then added, “And Al’s great. He was actually suggesting I submit to this film festival that is coming up in April.”

Will smiled. “That’s good.”

“Yeah, but there’s this girl who works there, Cecilia. She’s kinda… intense?” She frowned into her mug. “Like, way too particular. She makes me feel seen in the worst way when I’m just trying to do my thing. Even when I know she’s not even looking at me, I can feel her judging me like she’s got eyes on the back of her head. It’s… exhausting, because it’s not like I don’t know what I’m doing.” She stopped, then huffed. “I am a film student. A pretty decent cinematographer, too, compared to most of the, I don’t know, neanderthals in my program who all wanna be some kind of totalitarian Stanley Kubrick.”

“Hey! What’s wrong with Kubrick? I love The Shining,” Mike interjected.

Robin gaped at him, then let out an exasperated laugh. “What’s wrong with Kubrick? He’s a total asshole, Wheeler!”

Mike grinned, scissors flashing in his hand in a way that made Will’s eyes track his movements nervously. “Asshole or genius?”

“Both,” Robin shot back, “But mostly an asshole.”

Jonathan snorted before he could stop himself.

Robin pointed at him. “You know I’m right!” Then she said, “Anyways… I can’t tell if she hates me or just hates everyone. But it’s nice to be around someone who takes their work seriously, you know? It makes me want to work harder. I feel like I haven’t felt that in a while.”

Will was looking at her with a soft expression.

“So,” Robin tried, failing to sound casual, “New Year’s is coming up… anyone got plans?”

“Please, don’t get me thinking about New Year’s, it’s not even Christmas yet,” Jonathan said, only somewhat jokingly.

Will glanced up from his cutting, “Tom invited me out,” he laughed, a little nervous and a little pleased. “He and his roommates are having a party.”

Mike’s smile faltered, just for a second, before he let it smooth back into place. “Oh. Yeah. That sounds… cool.”

Will hesitated, then added quickly, “You could come too if you want. I mean…it’s not, like, formal or anything.”

Jonathan registered the invite with a small, involuntary grimace. Nobody looks forward to being a third wheel; he’d seen Will shoulder that role plenty of times before.

Then he remembered Tom — twenty-eight, older than Will, older than Jonathan…

“You should go with him, Mike. Could be fun,” he blurted before he could stop himself.

Robin shifted, picking up on the tension in the room. “I mean,” she put her mug down, “you’re right. We still haven’t even talked about Christmas. Steve and I were thinking you guys should come over for Christmas Day,” she added, looking hopeful.

Mike looked around the apartment with a confused expression. “Couldn’t we do something here? We already brought the tree all the way over.”

Robin avoided Jonathan’s gaze, staring intently at the paper ornament Will was working on.

Will saved it, thankfully. “I haven’t seen your place yet, Robin.”

Jonathan handed the paper chain he finished to Mike. “You got anything for the top of the tree?”

Mike took the paper chain before reaching for more paper. When he leaned over, he took a closer look at Will’s ornament, squinting. “How’d you get the edges so clean?”

“I folded it first,” Will explained. “Then cut.”

Mike frowned thoughtfully. “Like… all the way? Or just in half?”

Will smiled despite himself. “Depends on what you want. If you fold it more than once, the shapes repeat. You have to think backwards.”

“Backwards,” Mike echoed, trying to picture it. He picked up one of Will’s scraps and mimicked the motion, badly. “So this is why mine look mutilated.”

Will laughed, a quick, surprised sound. “You’re cutting too fast. You have to let the scissors do the work.”

Mike paused, watching Will’s hands instead of the paper. “Oh,” he breathed, genuinely impressed. “Yeah. That makes sense. You’re,” He shook his head, smiling. “You’re really good at this.”

Will ducked his head, ears pink. “It’s just paper.”

“Still,” Mike reached for another sheet, angling his body closer to Will’s. “You should do the star for the top.”

From the couch, Robin met Jonathan’s eyes, eyebrows lifting a fraction.

A little while later, the tree stood mostly decorated. Jonathan pushed himself up. “I’m gonna turn in.”

Robin gave a small nod. Will smiled, distracted; Mike waved without looking up.

Jonathan closed his bedroom door and lay down, staring at the ceiling. The radiator ticked through the wall, and from the living room came the sound of laughter, paper rustling, the low murmur of voices. The sound followed him into sleep.

❊❀❊❀❊

The next morning, when he woke up, Jonathan felt pinned to the bed. His chest felt tight, like someone had put a stone there while he was sleeping. Before he even opened his eyes, his mind began assembling lists… things that had stacked up while he slept: bills, homework, the shift slip tucked into his wallet from the catering dispatcher, the shift he’d promised to cover next week for his co-worker.

He didn’t know how long he lay there, avoiding the alarm clock he knew was about to go off. He kept imagining its glowing red numbers, dread building toward the inevitable blaring sound that would command him essentially to: Get up. Get out—you lazy lout. Get into your working clothes. Until finally, he did get up.

Shift followed shift, each one folding into the next: crits, odd jobs, long evenings hauling platters that rattled like a metronome in the catering van.

On top of everything else, Mike’s car trouble had crept into conversation the way bad news usually does: in pauses. Jonathan learned the particulars across awkward nights over instant ramen. Finally, Mike showed him the mechanic’s estimate scrawled on a loose scrap, parts that had to be ordered from out of state, and labour that doubled once someone actually scheduled the job.

Mike started circling listings in the Village Voice, folding the pages into quarters, leaving it open on the counter like he planned to come back to it. Somewhere in there, he stopped feeling like a guest.

Privately, Jonathan found himself hoping Mike would stay in New York.

It would certainly solve a lot of problems, though he would never admit it aloud. Will had been right: no one wanted the room. Jonathan had tried everything: flyers on corkboards, word-of-mouth through classmates, a handwritten notice tacked to the bodega, but nothing.

The math had made sense on paper: move into the smaller bedroom, rent out the larger one at a higher share, and a new roommate would be more likely. But the idea left him cold. He imagined himself boxed into the small space, his bed barely fitting, his life compressed even further than it already was. The thought made him vaguely claustrophobic, a little sick.

Mike wasn’t part of that math, he told himself. Not really. Mike was still a guest, even if Jonathan had started hoping otherwise.

Still, Jonathan noticed Mike beginning to settle in: staying up late in the living room, typing away on his old Canon; attempting to cook for them, badly, but with commitment; the television he’d dragged in off the sidewalk one afternoon, beaming until Jonathan explained about bed bugs.

They crouched together, inspecting vents and seams with a flashlight, poking at dust with the end of a pencil. In the end, they were both satisfied: it worked, even if it was fussy. Jonathan even had a VCR, miraculously spared by his former roommate.

“Probably would’ve been hard to carry a TV, a guitar, and a VCR,” Mike had quipped.

Jonathan went over the numbers again, telling himself he just needed a little more time. Something would give. It always did.

Christmas was also coming.

Jonathan had been spared the horrors of hosting and quietly thanked Robin for putting hers and Steve’s heads on the chopping block instead. He’d hoped to skip holiday obligations this year, but even avoiding family meant navigating socializing and shopping–and he still needed to go to the post office.

Maybe Robin sensed his stress, or maybe she had her own. Either way, they’d agreed to do a Secret Santa…and to Jonathan’s dismay, he had drawn Steve. He’d never bought Steve a gift before, and had no idea what someone like him would actually want.

So there he was, in one of the cramped electronics shops on Canal Street, staring at a shelf of compact audio mixers with no fucking clue what he was doing.

He’d been pretending to browse for ten minutes, picking up boxes, setting them back down, reading the same specs without absorbing a thing. Half the labels might as well have been in another language. Steve worked at a radio station as an assistant, technically, so Jonathan figured something practical made sense. Something Steve could actually use. Something he wouldn’t have to pretend to like.

He was squinting at a handwritten price tag when a familiar voice said, “If you’re looking for something that actually works, don’t get that one.”

Jonathan looked up, startled. Kathy stood a few feet away, her scarf askew, holding a list in one hand and a bulging paper bag in the other. “Hi, Jono.” she said, amusement lighting her eyes.

“Oh,” He chuckled awkwardly, exhaling. “Hey. I didn’t, hi.”

She gestured toward the mixer he was holding. “If it survives a week without acting up, consider it a miracle. Uncle Al got a bunch for The Darkroom, and half the channels bled into each other.”

Jonathan set it back on the shelf. He didn’t know what that meant, but he was sure it wasn’t good. “Good to know. I’m buying a Christmas gift,” he added, “for someone who works in radio.”

Kathy hummed, scanning the shelves. “Okay. Budget?”

Jonathan hesitated, eyes flicking back to the price tags.

Kathy just nodded and led him a few steps down the aisle. “This one’s good,” she pulled a smaller, taped-up box with a reduced-price sticker forward.“It’s basic, but solid,” she peeked inside the box. “Missing a gain knob, though.”

Jonathan stiffened. “Missing?”

“It’s a standard part. Five-minute fix tops. My Uncle probably got a drawer full of them somewhere.”

“Um,” Jonathan hesitated, guilt pricking at him; he still hadn’t finished her photos. He’d barely even thought about them, buried under shifts and bills and everything else. He shifted the strap of the backpack on his shoulder; the rolls were still inside, untouched. “I, uh. I still owe you your headshots.”

Kathy waved him off without looking.“The school’s closed right now. Where the fuck are you supposed to develop them?” She tucked a few items under her arm, then paused, glancing at him. “Actually…me and Uncle Al are just doing the end-of-year clean-up at the co-op. Getting it ready for the New Year.”

Jonathan looked down at the mixer, then back up at her.

“There’s extra photo paper,” she added. “And the chem’s free to use.”

“Really?” he asked, hope threading his voice.

“Yeah,” she said easily. “And Uncle Al can look at the mixer for you. I am heading there after this if you want to come with me.”

Jonathan hesitated, then nodded once. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay. That’d… that’d be great.”

Kathy’s smile widened, satisfied, and she returned to the shelves. “Cool. I just need to grab a couple more things.”

She drifted down the aisle, picking up a few items, and Jonathan followed, clutching the mixer box. She asked him about his roommate situation, about how long he’d been in the city. Jonathan felt a bit disoriented by her familiarity. He wasn’t sure if this was Kathy’s way with strangers, or if she was folding him into Robin’s orbit.

Once they finished paying, they headed toward the co-op, taking the subway most of the way.

“Are you… Christmas shopping?” Jonathan asked once they were seated. Kathy was hugging two bulging bags to her chest like a teddy bear so they wouldn’t spill.

“What? No.” She sounded distracted for a heartbeat. “These are for my Uncle. He sent me out to replace a few things before he does a proper order.” She paused, then added, “And anyway, I’m Jewish. Hanukkah ended a few days ago.”

“Oh, sorry,” Jonathan said quickly, rubbing the back of his neck. He’d met Jewish people before; he was just still learning the city’s calendar of small talk.

Kathy kept her eyes forward, watching a little girl nagging their mother. “Oh, relax. I don’t give a fuck.” The mother shot her a look; Kathy returned it with a casual shrug that said, what do you want? “If anything, I’m sorry you lot have to run around like maniacs for a month hunting for presents.”

“Don’t you get gifts for Hanukkah?” Jonathan asked, curious now.

“Like cheap chocolates and a four-in-one if you’re lucky,” Kathy laughed, tossing her head back. “I’m twenty-four, Jono.”

Jonathan opened his mouth, then closed it. No words came. She continued, voice even but carrying a trace of humour. “I do love latkes, though. I don’t get why you guys make such a fuss over turkey, it’s like chewing sandpaper.”

He told her about his mom’s infamously bad holiday cooking. How the runny mashed potatoes acted as a soup more than a side dish.

They continued chatting as the subway rumbled downtown, the bags on Kathy’s lap shifting slightly with each jolt. She asked about his photography and if anything recent had “wowed” him. Jonathan mentioned Nan Goldin, marvelling at how she “shows life as it feels.” Kathy agreed with him, her taste leaning toward documentary work over anything staged.

“Funny opinion for an actor,” he teased. She lifted one shoulder in a small shrug, letting him have the thought without argument.

Later, when Salgado came up, she snorted. “If it needs to take up the whole wall to impress, it’s not good, it’s just big,” she told him dryly. Though he disagreed with her take, Jonathan found himself laughing at her bluntness, the easy give-and-take feeling different from the usual back-and-forth he had with his friends.

Their conversation carried them all the way to the co-op, where Kathy unlocked the door and ushered him upstairs.

Jonathan followed her into the main room. An older man, presumably Kathy’s uncle, sat hunched over a table, headphones on, the faceplate of a reel-to-reel deck removed and set beside him. One spool turned slowly while the other hung slack, tape threaded loosely between his fingers as he adjusted something inside the machine.

Kathy set her shopping bags down quietly near the table and waited.

Jonathan hovered a step behind her. The room warbled softly with the sound of the machine. After a moment, the man glanced up, registering them with a small start.

“Oh,” he said, tugging the headphones down around his neck. “You’re back,” he squinted at the bags. “How was shopping?”

“I got most of what was on your list,” Kathy replied, handing him back the list.  “But there were a few things I couldn’t find. I circled them for you.”

“And who have you brought along this time?”

“This is Jonathan. He’s friends with Robin. He’s the guy who took the headshots for me.”

Jonathan smiled self-consciously at the older man.

Al looked up properly then and smiled back. “I’m Al. I’d shake your hand, but my hands are filthy.” He gestured toward the open machine. “Had to use lubricant.”

“It’s alright.” Jonathan said. “What are you working on?”

Al brightened at that, turning the reel slightly so Jonathan could see. “Pinch roller’s slipping. The whole thing starts eating tape if you don’t babysit it. They don’t make these parts anymore, so you learn to be patient.”

Jonathan nodded, genuinely interested, and the two of them drifted toward the mechanics of it, how the tension had to be just right, how one loose part could throw the whole thing off.

“Okay, folks,” Kathy cut in, like she’d heard this conversation before. She reached for Jonathan’s shopping bag and pulled out the mini-mixer, the missing knob obvious. “Uncle Al, do you think you could put a new knob on this?”

Al took the mini-mixer from her, turning it over in his hands. “Where’d you get it?”

“Canal Street,” Jonathan offered. “Used electronics place.”

“It’s a Christmas present,” Kathy added.

“I can fix that for you, no problem.” He set it down beside the reel-to-reel, “Give me half an hour.”

He peered at Jonathan with a faint glint of amusement.“She’s been a real social butterfly lately,” he said, nodding toward Kathy.

A flush crept up Kathy’s face; it was the first time Jonathan had seen her look embarrassed. “It’s not like I don’t have friends.”

Al just raised one bushy eyebrow at her.

Kathy leaned against the table, ignoring his teasing, “I told Jonathan he could develop in the dark room today, I’m cleaning out the back room, but I’m not touching the darkroom until tomorrow, so I figured now would be OK?”

“Fine by me,” Al replied. “Paper’s still in the bottom drawer.”

“Come on,” she said to Jonathan. “I’ll show you to the darkroom.”

“Take your time,” Al added, going back to work.

Kathy steered him down a curved hallway that smelled slightly of vinegar and wet concrete, a clever curve that prevented any stray light from creeping into the darkroom. It felt like a secret passage. He noticed her hand brushing against the wall’s corrugated plastic to steady herself as they turned the corner. At the end was a heavy wooden door with a red-green bulb over it. Kathy flipped the red light on with a practiced motion.

She showed him where they kept the chem and the paper drawer. “Usually we charge for sheets for folks without membership,” she explained, tapping the drawer, “but this is stuff people mostly leave behind over the years. It’s all free to use.”

“You don’t need me hovering,” she added, already backing toward the door. “I’ve got things to do out front.”

Jonathan lingered near the doorframe, fidgeting with the strap of his bag. His eyes drifted around the cramped darkroom: the drying racks, the chemical trays, a flyer taped near the sink advertising a New Year's Eve house show. “Okay.”

“I’ll come by after I’m finished, though,” she added as an afterthought. Then she was gone.

Alone, the room settled around him. The red light softened the edges of everything. Jonathan hung his jacket, set up his negatives, and got to work. The quiet helped. So did the routine.

When the headshot came up in the developer, Jonathan let out a small, satisfied breath. The photo made Kathy look confident and approachable, with a sharpness in her eyes that felt true to her. It wasn’t flashy or posed; he didn’t think that was what she wanted. These weren’t the headshots of someone angling for a leading-lady role. He tried, absurdly, to picture a southern-belle version of Kathy declaring that she’d “always depended on the kindness of strangers” on a stage, and it felt completely wrong. No, he didn’t think she was aiming for anything like Blanche DuBois or Nora Helmer.

He lingered a little longer over the tray, arranging the negatives.

Beyond Nancy and his brief friendship with Argyle, he hadn’t had much luck with friends. Classmates were useful for projects and after-class drinks, but the competitiveness wore on him, the one-upmanship felt like an art-school version of the same high-school snobbery of the jocks who had bullied him. Kathy seemed to take her work seriously without taking herself too seriously, and that was… refreshing.

When Kathy came back, she leaned over the counter, watching the prints dry.

“Oh, thank fuck, I look normal.”

“Uhh… thanks?”

“If I can ever find them, I’ll show you the headshots I took. But these are great.” She almost tripped over the sink looking at them, “Like it’s still me, but these are great. I finally have something to use for promoters.”

“Are you planning on putting on any shows after the showcase is over?” he asked, starting to pack up his things.

“Nah, nothing but open mics for now. I’ve got some new material I’m trying out next week at SideWalk, now that we are on break for rehearsals.” She paused, her brows drawing together, then added, “Is this funny? — So… George Bush is president… because he’s apparently really good at saying complicated things. And people listened to him over and over, telling us, with all the empathy in the world, that he does not like broccoli. And we thought — yeah, that’s the guy we want deciding foreign policy.”

Jonathan gave her a mock disapproving look. “Are you trying a bit on me?”

Kathy didn’t answer; she just looked at him expectantly.

Jonathan wrinkled his nose.

“Damnit. Oh well.”

His gaze returned to the flyer near the sink. “There’s a punk show on New Year’s Eve,” he said, nodding at it, improvising. “I was thinking of going. If you want to come.”

Kathy hesitated. “I have a meeting that night,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

Jonathan exhaled softly, “Ah. That’s okay.”

The word echoed in the small, dimly lit darkroom. He didn’t know what kind of meeting anyone would have on New Year’s Eve, and for a moment, he wondered if she’d thought he was asking her out. He considered clarifying, then decided it would be awkward, maybe even insulting. The disappointment sat heavily in his chest.

He reached out and adjusted a print on the drying rack to keep his hands busy. The faint red light made his skin look washed-out.

“Well, thanks, Jono. See you around,” she said, picking up the stack of headshots.

She wavered at the door, glancing back, but he could not make out her expression, then she slipped out the door, leaving Jonathan alone in the red glow. Only the steady drip of the faucet filled the quiet.

When he left, Al glanced up from the reel-to-reel, now running smoothly. He handed Jonathan back his mini-mixer, the new knob gleaming.

“Come back anytime. Darkroom’s better when it’s used,” Al added.

Jonathan thanked him and went back out into the cold, feeling less overwhelmed than he had in a long time, but he was still mildly disappointed, wondering if he had done something wrong.

❊❀❊❀❊


Mike had started working at Kim’s Video, and that, along with writing, kept him busy most days. In the evenings, once they were both off work, they settled into the ritual of watching whatever stack of old horror or sci-fi films Mike had “borrowed” from the store that day. Mike laughed at every bad special effect, pointed out every visible splice, and occasionally asked Jonathan’s opinion. Jonathan had grown used to the rhythm: the movie ran, they argued about the merits of the effects or the soundtrack, and by the time the credits rolled, the room would fall silent as they made their way to bed.

“Do you ever feel like people are… just moving on without you?” Mike had asked one night, after a particularly slow double feature. He hadn’t elaborated, and Jonathan hadn’t pressed, but he understood.

Will had been distracted lately, caught up with Tom and his own projects. Aside from hauling the tree over, neither Mike nor Jonathan had seen much of him. Jonathan had heard Mike mutter about it once, almost embarrassed—Will’s always too busy for me.

The frustration was easy to see, Jonathan felt for him, but he couldn’t help thinking of the times Will had waited for a call from Mike that never came, or been cancelled at the last minute because he wanted to see El. He would never bring that up now; El was gone, and dredging it up wouldn’t be fair. Instead, he listened, watched Mike’s retreat back into his writing
.
Recently, Mike had brought a small wooden desk into the living room, the kind with tiny drawers, claiming it as his own writing space. Mike rarely mentioned what he was working on; he simply disappeared into the pages of his draft, scribbling and erasing with equal measure.

A couple of days before Christmas, Jonathan was surprised to find an envelope with his name on it on the counter one morning when Mike had been at work. Inside, he found half of January’s rent.

He didn’t want Mike to be in a position to pay rent while he stayed there. He hated the thought of it. And yet, when he saw the envelope, something in him cracked. He felt a sting of shame, but it was mixed with something heavier: gratitude so intense it almost made him cry, standing there alone in the kitchen. For a moment, he almost picked up the cash to put it on Mike’s desk.

Instead, he left it where it was. He went to work and put it out of his mind until he got home. Where he found the envelope again, this time on his night table, clearly moved there by Mike. Jonathan sat on the edge of his bed, staring at it, letting the mix of shame, relief, and gratitude wash over him before finally turning out his light.

❊❀❊❀❊

Christmas morning found Jonathan, Mike, and Will stepping into Robin and Steve’s small apartment, scarves wrapped tightly, snow melting off their boots. They peeled off their coats in the entryway.

The kitchen smelled of cinnamon rolls, slightly scorched at the edges, and a faint hint of pine from the tabletop evergreen. A crackling vinyl version of A Christmas Gift for You played softly. Morning light filtered through frosted windows, illuminating mint-green walls adorned with movie posters. Red and green string lights sagged around the edges of the windows, casting colour over the coffee table piled with gifts.

Mike turned to Jonathan with an unusually strained smile. Jonathan already knew Mike hadn’t drawn him in the Secret Santa name pull—this morning he’d found a Burn EP outside his bedroom door when he got up. Jonathan slid onto the couch beside him.

They had barely settled when an oven timer dinged.

“Get out of here, Buckley!” Steve called out.

He emerged just long enough to set a plate of cinnamon rolls on the coffee table, their caramel centers bubbling over, before disappearing back into the kitchen. Robin was shoved out of her own kitchen by the commotion, laughter rising as Steve declared the turkey in the oven. Once the chaos settled, they began the gift exchange.

Steve made them play a dumb game: whenever it was someone’s turn to receive a gift, everyone else closed their eyes while the giver scrambled to place it in front of them. It was clumsy and noisy, and Steve’s overblown seriousness made everyone groan and laugh. Jonathan caught Robin peeking during his turn and smothering a grin.

When Steve opened Jonathan’s gift, the small, secondhand mini-mixer, his genuine surprise made Jonathan feel proud.

Robin had picked oil pastels for Will, who unwrapped them carefully, while Steve pointed out the marks on the couch, made when Robin tried to wrap them.

Mike, for his part, had nicked copies of Paris, Texas and Breathless from work for Robin, the stickers still picking at the edges of the plastic cases. She examined the residue and feigned scandal.

Steve had given Mike a worn adventure module Dustin had recommended. Mike flipped through the pages, expression distant, then closed it, almost forgetting it on the table when he left later with Jonathan.

Later, when it was Jonathan’s turn, he kept his eyes closed as Will scrambled to place a couple of well-thumbed guitar chord books in front of him. When he opened his eyes, disappointment and guilt hit him — he didn’t have a guitar anymore, and Will didn’t know. He forced a small, awkward smile. “Thanks,” he said.  Mike furrowed his brows, opening his mouth as if to say something, then let it go when Jonathan shook his head.

The day passed faster than Jonathan expected. They settled on the couch with drinks, half-watching Christmas specials while Steve cooked dinner. Outside, the snow drifted lazily. Jonathan noticed Mike carefully pouring wine for Will, who sketched beside him, clearly distracted.

Dinner was surprisingly delicious, though Jonathan hadn’t had much to compare it with. His mom was a terrible but well-meaning cook. Last year, Hopper had attempted to help out, but that hadn’t led to any better results.

For once, it felt okay not to be at the helm. As Steve carved the turkey and passed around plates of stuffing and cranberry sauce, Robin set out the wine glasses and opened up two more bottles of wine.

After dinner, they returned to the living room for Gremlins. Jonathan sat on the floor, Will between Mike and Robin, Steve half on the broken armchair.

Mike yawned, propping himself against the couch, eyes drooping; Will bounced his knee anxiously, glancing at the clock. By the movie’s halfway point, Mike had fallen asleep.

Will’s attention was clearly elsewhere.

Just before midnight, the credits rolled. Will stretched. “I’m gonna head out.”

Mike stirred. “You’re not crashing at ours?”

Will shook his head, cheeks pink. “Actually… I’m going to see Tom.” He hesitated, smiling sheepishly, excited and nervous.

Jonathan felt his stomach twist. He supposed he should have known. Will was an adult now, allowed to make his own decisions about things like sex, but he still hadn’t shaken his hang-ups about the older man. He knew he’d have to, eventually, for Will’s sake. He just wasn’t there yet.

Will grabbed his coat. “Merry Christmas!” Robin called after him. “Merry Christmas!” he answered, already halfway out the door. Jonathan watched the door click shut.

Mike muttered, running a hand through his hair. “I’m beat.”

Jonathan nodded. “We should probably get home.” They could have left with Will, but Jonathan sensed Mike needed a little space.

They didn’t talk much on the walk back. Snow swirled around them, and the city felt strangely quiet. When they got home, Mike went straight to his room.

Standing alone in the living room, Jonathan felt a tinge of loneliness, and something else,  a quiet melancholy for the day being over, a feeling he’d never really associated with Christmas before.

❊❀❊❀❊

The stretch between Christmas and New Year’s left Jonathan in limbo until a last-minute call sent him to a New Year’s Eve catering shift. He’d been quietly bracing himself for another New Year’s by himself. He wasn’t going to a house show by himself, not with a roomful of strangers who probably knew each other in some way. Any classmates he might have called were likely out of town for the holidays or had better friends to spend the night with.

January rent paid, he covered bills and set aside a tiny cushion for February — when Mike would probably leave. Jonathan wouldn’t let himself hope Mike would stay. He would have to find a roommate in the new year, but for a few days, at least, he could breathe.

The days after Christmas found Mike working most afternoons at the video store, while the tree in their apartment quietly shed its needles until the floor beneath it looked dusted green and brown. Jonathan considered saving the decorations Mike and Will had made, maybe folding them carefully into a shoebox for next year. Everything felt suspended, time stretched thin between one year and the next.

On New Year’s Eve, Mike left to meet Will at Tom’s. Jonathan had reluctantly bought him a six-pack of Budweiser and told him not to take drinks from strangers, to call if he needed anything. They had an answering machine now; Jonathan could always check it later, after work.

Mike rolled his eyes but promised him all the same. Jonathan watched him go and wondered, briefly, if Nancy had ever hovered over him like this.

But when Jonathan arrived at the loft already in uniform, his boss cut him loose. He’d overbooked staff, assuming most wouldn’t make it. Too many hands, not enough work, another party that didn’t need him. Jonathan hadn’t even taken off his coat yet when his boss approached him, but he left without arguing.

The walk home left him feeling like shit: crowded groups of people in novelty 1991 glasses and paper hats, already loud, already drunk.

He put Donovan on and lay back on the loveseat, a joint burning down between his fingers as Young Girl Blues spooled out of his stereo.

The smoke softened the room, blurred the edges of an already spectacularly mediocre holiday, making it almost feel palatable.

The phone rang after ten. He hesitated, then answered, thinking of his mom or Will.

“Jooonnnnnathaaaan?” Mike’s voice came thick over the line.

“Mike? What’s going on?” Jonathan braced himself.

“I… I don’t know where I am,” Mike mumbled.

“Where’s Will?”

“Wuh—Tom! He’s with Tom… my hand…” His voice cracked, almost whining. “Hurts so bad.”

Jonathan frowned, trying to make sense of it. “What do you mean? Are you hurt?”

“I—ow! Fuck! My hand, it’s—ugh, I can’t…” Mike’s words stumbled over themselves. “I’m at a pay… pay… phone.”

Jonathan leaned forward. “Okay… what’s around you? Can you see any street signs?”

“Stupid… I don’t… can’t… it’s loud…” Mike sounded like he was turning in circles. The line filled with muffled clanging and curses.

“Mike! Focus. Are you safe? Can you stay put?”

“I… I think… maybe… can you come?” His words slurred so badly that Jonathan had to strain to catch them. “I don’t know…”

Jonathan ran a hand over his face. He’s completely wasted. “Of course I’ll come, Mike. But… can you see anything around you? Anything that might… help me find you?”

More silence. Then, Mike’s voice, small and uncertain, “There’s… uh… a bar… with no door and, like… colourfuuul flags? The… street… bends weird…”

Jonathan froze, brain racing. “The street bends…? Flags…no door… Mike, are you near Christopher Street?”

A hiccup, a mumbled “Yeah… I… think…” and then the call cut off.

“Mike?”

Jonathan swore, yanking on his jacket and boots before heading out the door.

Since he’d been outside earlier that evening, it had started to rain, and by the time he reached Washington Square, he was soaked through. He shivered and shoved his hands deep into his pockets, which were still moderately dry compared to the rest of him. He had no idea whether he would actually find Mike, and he kept wondering if it had been stupid to leave the apartment in case Mike tried to call again. But he was already more than halfway to Christopher Street.

The guilt hit him hard then. Buying Mike that six-pack felt suddenly reckless. He was just trying to—what? He heard a voice that sounded an awful lot like Nancy’s offer: Get your ex’s brother drunk?

As he came up on Judson Memorial Church, he looked up through the rain, trying to get his bearings. He hadn’t smoked very much, but the anxiety made him feel more stoned and disoriented than he was. Then, as he lifted his head, he saw a familiar figure coming out through the church doors.

It was Kathy.

His stomach dipped. He should keep walking. Head down. Just pass her.  They weren’t friends. She’d said she was busy tonight. And she was what…at church? But it was too late, she saw him.

They stood there in the rain, suspended.

“Uh, hey,” Kathy’s voice was flat, guarded. Her eyes looked a little red.

“Hi.” Jonathan’s words came out thinner than he meant them to.

“What are you doing here?”

“Walking,” he said, then winced. “I mean, yeah. Just walking.”

“Right. Um.” She glanced past him.

“So what you… go to church now?” The question landed wrong as soon as it left his mouth.

“I had a meeting.”

“At church?”

Jonathan could see Kathy’s jaw working.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” she snapped, then looked away. “But they have AA meetings here.”

Heat crept up Jonathan’s neck despite the cold rain beating down on him. “I’m sorry. Shit. You’re right. That is… none of my business.”

“New Year’s… big drinking night.” She said, rubbing the sleeve of her worn coat across her face where the rain had collected. The edge in her posture softened, though her eyes still looked wet. “Sorry. That was mean of me. I mean, yeah. It’s weird. Church? On a Monday?”

“You’re Jewish,” Jonathan said without thinking, then immediately felt like an idiot.

Kathy startled, then laughed, brief and real. “Yeah.”

She looked at him more closely then, like she was actually seeing him. “What are you doing out here? I thought you were going to that house show.”

“My kid brother’s friend is really drunk,” Jonathan said. “And lost. I’m trying to find him.”

“Oh. That sounds important,” She checked her watch, then looked back up. “I’ll walk with you.”

“You don’t have to—” Jonathan began to protest.

“It’ll give me something to do until midnight,” she said, fixing the collar of her coat. “We’ve got, like… an hour?”

He hesitated, then nodded, and they fell into step together under the streetlights, rain tapping steadily around them.

❊❀❊❀❊

As they walked, silence hung between them until Kathy finally spoke.

"Sorry, I snapped at you. I didn't mean to blow you off before. Going out in general is still kind of hard unless it's framed as work... I know we don't know each other at all, but… I'm trying to be less of a self-absorbed jackass."

Jonathan didn’t say anything to this.

“You—uh, you’re a good guy, you know? Even if you’re freaking out.”

“I’m not freaking out,” Jonathan said defensively.

“This kid is drunk and from the butthole of Indiana and has no idea where he is? I would be freaking out too.”

“I… I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to him.”

They hurried down Gay Street to Christopher, following a row of rainbow flags Kathy had spotted. Near the corner, through the rain-streaked glass of an old phone booth beneath the arched window of a boarded-up nightclub, they could just make out a body slumped on the ground.

Jonathan felt a wave of relief as the lanky outline resolved into Mike.

Kathy hung back while Jonathan moved up to the booth. He opened the door; Mike looked up, eyes unfocused and glassy. There was blood on his face and hands.

Jonathan’s heart lurched. “Mike.” He stepped into the booth.

Mike blinked, the focus returning. “Jonathan?”

Jonathan eased him forward and took his injured hand. The worst of it ran from the webbing between his pinky and ring finger down into his palm, split wide and still bleeding. Smaller slices crossed his knuckles, flecked with glass.

“Mike, what happened?”

“I—fucked up. Punched a window.” Mike told him. His words ran together, and he looked ashamed.

Jonathan pressed a clean part of his scarf against the wound. Mike hissed and tried to withdraw his hand. “OK, easy, hey. You need to get this looked at,” then, “Where’s Will, Mike?”

Mike started sitting up. “With Tom. They… Will’s okay. Promise.” He wobbled slightly. Jonathan steadied him as he started to stand up.

Jonathan could feel Kathy’s presence behind him.

“Do you want me to get a taxi?”

“He needs to go to the hospital.”

“It’s cheaper and faster to get a taxi. It’s New Year’s Eve — paramedics and the ER will be busy,” she reasoned.


Jonathan considered this, “We’ll get a cab,” he agreed. “Come on, let’s go.

Kathy left them both to go stand near the street to flag down a cab while Jonathan wrapped Mike’s hand as best he could to at least keep it from bleeding on anything in the taxi.

Once a yellow cab came to a halt, Kathy waved them over. Mike groaned, and Jonathan helped him into the back seat.

“Nobody throws up,” the cabbie said curtly from the front seat. “Not in my car.”

Jonathan shot an apologetic look at the driver, who didn’t seem to be paying attention.

Jonathan reminded Mike to keep gentle pressure on his hand. When Mike didn’t respond, Jonathan did it for him.

Kathy sat as if it were any other night; her calm expression betrayed only a faint trace of exhaustion.

She leaned forward. “Hey, Mike.” He looked at her, head wobbling. “We’re about ten minutes from the hospital, but it might take longer with traffic. If you feel sick, lean forward and take slow breaths: in through your nose, out through your mouth,” Kathy said, demonstrating.

Mike didn’t seem to be listening. His eyes were open but unfocused; to Jonathan, he looked less drunk than emptied out.

Kathy studied him for a second, then looked at Jonathan. “He’ll sober up while we’re waiting.” She seemed unbothered, as if she were commenting on the weather. She settled back against the seat and watched the rain stripe the windows.

Inside the ER the fluorescent lights felt punishing after the dark cab. Jonathan handled the paperwork while Mike sat slumped in a plastic chair between him and Kathy.

While Jonathan quizzed Mike about his father’s insurance and wrote it down, Kathy pulled out a small notebook from her pocket.

Jonathan heard her read off odd observations and jokes to distract him. A nurse had wrapped his hand perfunctorily with gauze and confirmed Mike would need stitches.

“In the year 2000…Car phones will be so small they will be surgically implanted in your head, and you will still refuse to answer them.” Kathy read to Mike.

Mike groaned.

“No? OK — how about this?” Jonathan heard her flip a page. “Ass cancer has to be the most embarrassing kind of cancer.” That seemed to snag Mike’s attention.

“What the fuck?” Mike said.

“Listen — there are no bad ideas in brainstorming,” she replied mildly. “OK, how about this…” She continued reading her bizarre observations and one-liners to Mike. When Jonathan finished the paperwork, he looked up and saw Mike give a small, appreciative smile at the last joke, tears welled in his eyes from pain, and too much cheap beer.

After what felt like forever, a nurse called Mike’s name. He stood up unsteadily, and Jonathan let him lean on his shoulder.

“I’m going to the vending machine,” Kathy told Jonathan, tucking the notebook into her coat.

He and Mike followed the nurse down a hallway to a small room, where they waited for the doctor.

Jonathan watched Mike sitting on the crinkled paper covering the exam table. Mike seemed to be withdrawing into himself again.

Jonathan broke the silence. “Hey, Mike,” he said softly. “It’s okay.”

Mike made no move; he just breathed heavily.

“I know things have been… hard for a while now. But I’m here for you, okay?” Jonathan’s voice wavered; he’d never been good at this, but he felt it was the right thing to say.

Mike looked up at this, “I… uh,” he began, then stopped.

“I know Will’s been distracted with Tom,” Jonathan continued. “And I know that probably hasn’t felt great.” He hesitated.

Mike looked down and swallowed.

“I know he means a lot to you, Mike. But he’s not the only one who cares — I do, too. I… I care about you a lot. If you ever need to talk, I’m here.”

Mike’s eyes glistened. He didn’t speak but gave a tiny nod. Silence settled between them except for distant announcements. Jonathan watched, suddenly self-conscious about how long he’d been staring. Mike had been struggling for a while — at first, Jonathan thought it was just maturation, settling down — but more and more it seemed to Jonathan that Mike was depressed. The last time he’d been like this, as far as Jonathan knew, was after El… What had changed recently?

Finally, the nurse returned with a doctor, and they began treating his hand — first freezing it, then slowly stitching. The doctor asked Mike questions while the nurse suggested he look at Jonathan during the stitches, since he was bleeding quite a bit and might feel faint because of his blood alcohol level. When they were done, they returned to the waiting area, where Kathy waited with two steaming Styrofoam cups of coffee — one for her and one for Jonathan.

She handed one cup to Jonathan.

Jonathan glanced at Kathy. “You know, I don’t know how you stay so calm.”

Kathy sipped her coffee while quietly watching Mike. “Hospitals don’t bother me much,” she said. “My dad’s a rabbi; he visited the sick a lot when we were growing up. It’s part of our tradition: Bikur Cholim. I grew up tagging along with him; Jonah, my brother, came more often than I did.” She took another sip and winced. “Why does it taste like rainwater?”

Jonathan sipped his coffee; though it tasted weak, he was grateful for the warmth and caffeine. He felt tired and looked forward to going home.

“Let’s see your hand,” Kathy said. Mike, considerably more sober now, lifted his hand for her to inspect. “Badass,” she told him. “Now let’s get the fuck out of here.”

It was light out when they stepped outside. They called for a taxi at the front desk — most approaching cabs were already taken — and sat on a nearby bench to wait.

While they waited, Kathy pulled a pouch of tobacco and rolling papers from her inner coat pocket.

Jonathan watched Mike watch Kathy. A slow confusion crossed Mike’s face as he realized he didn’t know her. “Wait — who are you?” he asked.

“The girl who paid for your taxi ride,” Kathy said.

“Um?” Mike said.

“Kathy’s a friend from school,” Jonathan said.

“Oh. I think I knew that,” Mike said, testing the thought aloud.

Jonathan decided Mike might still be drunk.

He’d ask later…about Will, about whatever had set him off. It wasn’t a conversation for a park bench at six in the morning.

He wasn’t sure how Mike had made it through the night without throwing up. Maybe fighting interdimensional monsters had permanently strengthened their stomachs.

“Here.” She pulled three rolling papers from the packet and handed them out along with a chewed-down pencil. “Write your resolution,” she said, as if it were a game.

Mike squinted at the rolling paper she handed him. “What? That’s stupid,” he said.

“So was punching a window,” Jonathan told him.

Mike conceded, took the pencil from Kathy, and clumsily began to write with his non-dominant hand.

“‘If you smoke it, it’ll come true,” she told them, like it was a fact.

“Isn’t that like birthday candles?” Mike said, but Kathy ignored him.

When the pencil reached Jonathan, he hesitated. He felt foolish; New Year’s resolutions weren’t something he’d done growing up, but Kathy was already rolling Mike’s cigarette. He didn’t know what to write. Eat less chocolate? Drink less? Wasn’t that what people said? He hovered the pencil over the tiny paper, frowned, then wrote: I’m all lost in the supermarket. The graphite barely showed up on the thin sheet.

Kathy collected Jonathan’s paper without reading it and began rolling his cigarette.

Mike already held his in his good hand like a foreign object.

Her fingers moved confidently, even in the cold.

When they finally lit them, the tobacco burned unevenly, crackling faintly.

Mike coughed immediately.

“We have no follow-through,” Kathy said. “These won’t last a week.”

Jonathan took another drag to prove her wrong. He was used to smoking weed; tobacco burned differently in his lungs.

Sitting there in the pale morning light, it occurred to him that it was 1991.

Mike frowned at his cigarette as it came undone. Kathy looked half-asleep. Jonathan found himself once again looking forward to his own bed.

Chapter Text

The gates of the Central Park Zoo sat squat against its surroundings, the lettering too cheerful for January. Robin and Al halted, scuffing snow from their boots in near-synchrony.

The city didn’t disappear as they stepped inside, so much as lowered its voice. Traffic became a steady murmur, like someone talking through a wall. The wind moved freely, combing through bare branches.

There were only two people besides them: an old man with a thermos bent over a guidebook and a teenager in a parka hovering near the penguin pool. Their presence made the zoo resemble a borrowed living room more than an attraction.

Al had suggested getting out after they’d spent most of the day unpacking and testing the equipment he’d ordered over the holidays. It had arrived all at once, shrinking the back storage area, gear stacked along the walls, half-open cartons narrowing the walkways, cords spilling across the floor. Robin had lost track of the time somewhere between untangling cables and re-reading the same page of an instruction manual. Kathy was already back to her rehearsal schedule, and most of the co-op workers and volunteers were tied up until next week. By mid-afternoon, the place had started to feel claustrophobic.

Standing there now, looking at the penguins waddling along the ice, Robin found her thoughts drifting back to the co-op's stairs. Cecilia had been bundled against the cold, keys in hand, heading up toward the main floor. She’d said hello to Al, warm and automatic, and Al had returned it without breaking stride. Did she glance at Robin? If she did, it was brief. Robin's own greeting died on her lips.

Now, of all places, she was at the zoo. She hadn’t known what to expect when Al suggested it, but she rarely said no. He was easygoing, usually making anywhere feel like fun, so she followed.

“So,” Al remarked, nudging her lightly with his elbow, “think Gus is still pacing his twelve-hour figure eights, or has he finally learned to nap like a normal bear?”

“What?” Robin asked, shaken from her thoughts, “Whose Gus?”

“A polar bear. He’s… well, he’s a little famous here. Paces in circles for hours, doesn’t really sleep much. People call him the ‘bipolar bear.’ But he’s harmless. Mostly. He’s just… very himself.”

She laughed, incredulous.

“Like any animal in the zoo,” Al added, “and maybe… like a few people we know, too.”

Robin looked over at him. He was starting to walk toward the next exhibit.

“How’s this for a break from The Darkroom? It feels good to be somewhere that isn’t full of cords.” He paused at a plaque. “I like to come here when my thoughts feel stagnant. Artists can get inward; it’s healthy to remember there’s more than our own work.” He shook his head, smiling. “I personally like to watch the snow monkeys, very relaxed creatures. I used to take Betty and Kathy here when she was younger. Kathy loved the petting zoo; she’d push right up to the piglets.”

“Is Betty your daughter?” Robin asked.

“Oh no, no. My late wife,” he clarified, the faint smile still present.

Robin didn’t know whether to offer her condolences, so she changed the subject.

“So… I watched that film you lent me. Nostalgia, the one where he burns the photographs on a hot plate while the voiceover’s always describing the next one before you see it.” She considered her words. “It didn’t really feel like a documentary. It felt more like… a guy reminiscing?”

Al made a soft, pleased sound. “Yes. Frampton.” He nodded once. “It’s not interested in facts. It’s interested in delay. In how we misremember. The image is already gone by the time the story catches up to it.”

“So it’s… intentional, not just… off?” she asked, curiosity tugging at her.

“Very intentional,” Al replied. “It takes confidence to let yourself be the subject.”

Oh, great. Cool. Love that. Robin thought. Just need to acquire confidence. Should be easy. Probably sold at Duane Reade. Next to the cough drops. She had a shoebox with Super 8 reels under her bed and no idea what they added up to. Snow. Steve’s hands. Streetlights. One accidental shot of her own shoe for thirty seconds. Visionary. She had been “letting herself be the subject” for two months. If that was a thesis, it was a very bleak one.

“Have you ever made a film like that?” Robin asked, she felt childish.

Al rubbed his thumb along his jaw. “I’ve tried, in my own way. Not exactly like Nostalgia, but I’ve made films that don’t try to tell a straightforward story, more about being inside a moment, letting the camera capture memory and feeling. Film isn’t about explaining, it’s about experiencing. You show what’s there, and let the viewer find their own way through it.”

Robin watched as one sea lion hauled itself onto the rock, only to be nudged off balance by another. It slipped back into the water, circled once, twice, then tried again. Each slip and circle punctuated her own restless thoughts.

“Okay, but what if you don’t… have a story?” she asked. Casual. Extremely casual. “Hypothetically. Like, what if you’ve been filming stuff because you thought maybe meaning would show up eventually, and instead you just have… weather.”

Al looked amused; it was an expression that made him and Kathy look more directly related. “Weather can be quite dramatic.”

“Sure, if you’re a storm chaser,” Robin said quickly, “I have like… eight minutes of pigeon. Very marketable.”

To his credit, Al didn’t laugh. He let the silence stretch, fingers tapping lightly against the railing.

Robin leaned further over the railing, pushing herself up on the balls of her feet. “I’ve been shooting on Super 8. Like you said. Just carrying it around. Shooting stuff that feels… charged.” Her voice wavered, “But I don’t know what it’s building toward if anything.”

“And what’s been on your mind lately?”

Not what have you shot?

But.

What have you been thinking about?

Robin stared at the water where a sea lion cut a clean arc beneath the surface.

The answer arrived immediately, which was deeply inconvenient—Vicki’s kitchen in Maryland at two in the morning. Cecilia not looking at her on the stairs. An ACT UP poster, half-torn off a lamppost, the word SILENCE ripped clean through.

She swallowed.

“I don’t know,” she blurted, “School. Film II starts next week.”

“And?”

“And I didn’t pitch last semester. So now I’m above the line on everyone else’s projects. Producing. Coordinating. Making sure everyone else’s vision survives contact with reality.” She made air quotes, “Thrilling.”

He remained still, eyes on the pool, letting the words settle in the air between them.

“I told myself I didn’t pitch because I was busy,” she went on. “But I was just… split. Half in New York, half in Maryland. Turns out you can’t make a cohesive… statement, when you’re geographically and emotionally undecided.”

A sea lion barked, loud and sudden.

Robin released a short, sharp breath, “And there’s that April festival you mentioned. And I want to make something for it. Like, actually make something. Not just hold the boom mic for someone.”

She played with the sleeve of her shirt underneath the cuff of her jacket. “I like working at The Darkroom,” she added, as if she needed that on record. “I like being here. I just…I don’t want to feel like I’m orbiting everyone else’s projects forever.”

Al was looking at her now, one hand resting lightly on the railing.

“And it doesn’t have to be amazing,” she rushed on. “I just want to make something that feels like it belongs to me. Which is a very dramatic thing to say about a student film, I’m aware.”

The wind skimmed across the water.

“And I keep thinking they’re going to figure out I don’t actually have anything to say,” she admitted.

Al turned to watch the sea lions for a long moment.

Then: “What feels urgent to you right now?”

Robin waffled, words caught somewhere between thought and speech. “I just feel… adjacent to things. Important things. I don’t know where I fit.” 

“That’s not nothing.”

Robin squinted at him. “It kind of feels like nothing.”

“Sometimes,” he replied gently, “you’re not missing the story. You’re just too close to it to see the shape.”

The wind cut across the pool again, sharp and clean. She imagined Gus tracing his figure-eights, convinced he was moving.

“Great,” she muttered. “So I’m emotionally pacing.”

“Or gathering.” Al offered.

❊❀❊❀❊

Back at the co-op, Al slipped into his office to look over a pile of old logbooks. Robin went back to the instruction manual she’d left open on the worktable, but when she rounded the corner, Cecilia was already in her spot, folding the plastic cover over the video film processor like she’d been the one there all afternoon.

Robin froze. “Hey, I was working on that,” she protested, picking up the manual she’d dog-eared before lunch.

Cecilia didn’t look up. She slid the cover closed and set it down. “I did it for you. Now you don’t have to.” A pause, “It was mostly calibrated.”

Irritation jolted through her. She wasn’t sure when little things like this had started to stack, but they did, quietly, like dust in a corner. “Oh. Thanks,” she said, sharper than she intended.

“So,” Cecilia said, with the faintest attempt at a smile, and gone almost immediately, “was it really all happening at the zoo?”

There was the faintest pause after it, like she was waiting.

“Al wanted to get out,” Robin said. Short. She kept her voice level because she didn’t want to give Cecilia anything to read into. Robin wasn’t blowing off work, or whatever Cecilia was implying.

Cecilia went back to packing. Robin stood there for a breath, her cheeks heated, and she looked down at the manual, embarrassed. She slid the page back onto the table and walked the long way around the room to sort cables.

❊❀❊❀❊

Near suppertime, Robin stopped by Al’s office to say goodbye on her way out. Her stomach growled; the street meat she and Al had grabbed that afternoon was long gone.

The door stood ajar, and Cecilia’s voice floated from the desk, low and clipped.

“…I just—if I finish it, it’s easier for everyone,” Cecilia said, clipped. “It’s not that I want to micromanage, I just—she leaves things half-done, and I end up redoing them.”

Al’s reply was softer than Robin expected and firmer than she’d heard him be before. “Cecilia. You’re not being helpful by taking over. It’s not your job to do that, and Robin’s still new here. Give her the chance to finish her work.”

“But it’s quicker—”

“Quicker isn’t the point,” Al cut in. “Let her fix it. She’ll learn. Don’t keep stepping in.”

Robin’s grip tightened on her bag strap. Cecilia’s voice dropped; it sounded threaded with exasperation and something else—worry, maybe. “I’m just trying to make things easier,” she protested.

“Then talk to her about it. Don’t decide for her,” Al said. The growing firmness in his tone landed like a hand on a shoulder.

Chairs scraped. Keys jingled. A sound, maybe Cecilia gathering up some tools. Robin backed away, told herself she could let it go, but her fingers had curled into her palms hard enough to sting. She leaves things half-done. The sentence wouldn’t quit looping. She was not some hapless newbie. She’d run a radio station during a military quarantine for God’s sake.

But as she descended the stairs to the outside, the thought kept nipping at the edges: did some part of Al agree with Cecilia?

❊❀❊❀❊

When Robin arrived home, shoulders slumped, the first thing she noticed was the cold. Not just cold, but freezing. She swore she could see her breath in front of her face, just like she had on the walk from the subway.

“Steve?” she called, spotting the lights on in the living room.

He rounded the corner still in his coat and hat, looking adorably miffed, though she knew it was more than that. For the past three months, he’d been waging a quiet war against Loretta and her chaotic approach to heat. Some days the radiators blasted making it feel like August; others, like tonight, the apartment felt only a thin wall away from the outdoors.

Robin stamped her feet and rubbed her hands together. The cold swallowed up whatever lingering thoughts she’d had about Cecilia. In theory, that made her mad too, being this uncomfortable in her own apartment, but right now it was almost a relief to be angry about something simpler.

“She did it again!” Steve gestured vaguely at the walls, the air, the injustice of it all. “I’m calling someone this time!”

“Who are you calling, Steve?”

“I don’t know. The super?”

“Loretta’s husband, you mean?”

Steve looked helpless. “There have to be people you can call!”

Robin just looked at him. The kind of look that said: I don’t think there is anyone to call. She’s got us by the balls, Steve.

He looked determined and defeated all at once.

“Why don’t we go out?” Robin suggested. “Somewhere with actual heat. For a bit.”

Steve dragged a hand through his hair.

“We could call Will. Classes don’t start until Monday.”

She hadn’t told Jonathan, but over Christmas, she’d helped Will acquire a fake ID so he could go out with Tom and his friends. It wasn’t as though Jonathan hadn’t seen Will and Mike drinking before. And it wasn’t as though any of them had waited politely for twenty-one back in Hawkins.

Steve looked like he was about to object, but then nodded. “Yeah. Let’s get out of here. Maybe if we get drunk enough, it’ll feel warm when we get back.”

Robin shot him a look.

We are not getting hammered tonight, Harrington.

He raised his eyebrows in return.

Oh, we absolutely are, Buckley.

❊❀❊❀❊

They rang Will and settled on the Boiler Room. Robin and Steve took the subway—Steve had had enough of the cold for one day. When they pushed through the door, a wave of heat, fryer grease, and stale beer hit them; Robin heard Steve sigh beside her.

“See?” she grinned. “Civilization.”

Will was already tucked into a back booth beneath a crooked beer sign. They ordered a plate of fries to share and their drinks—whiskey and Coke for Robin, a beer for Steve. Will had what looked suspiciously like a warm glass of the house white.

Steve stared at it, “I cannot believe you’re drinking wine here.”

Will glanced down at his glass, then back up. “It was cheaper.”

“There’s a reason for that,” Steve added.

Robin snorted into her drink as Will glanced down at his glass again, studying it now with faint suspicion.

Conversation loosened around them. Robin had never imagined she’d get this close to Will Byers when she first started hanging around with Steve. Will had been impossible to miss in Hawkins, Zombie Boy, sure, but there had never been a moment, as a pre-teen, when she thought she’d be sitting across from him like this, watching Steve The Hair Harrington fall into a teaching mood, ordering them all Irish Car Bombs and demonstrating with theatrical precision. Will tried to copy him and failed spectacularly, sputtering and coughing while laughing at himself, while Steve slid back from their booth to grab a fistful of napkins for Will’s shirt up at the bar.

Robin watched Steve for a moment, then turned toward Will.

“How are things with Tom?” she asked.

Will paused, just a fraction, as Steve approached their booth again, wiping beer from the table with a napkin before handing Will a small pile for his shirt. “They’re good,” he said carefully, “Mostly.”

Robin tapped her fingers along her glass.

“He and Mike haven’t really been getting along,” Will added, careful, like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to talk about this, “It’s stupid stuff. Or maybe not stupid. I don’t know.”

Steve’s eyes flicked up at this.

“What kind of stuff?” Robin asked.

Will shrugged, but it wasn’t casual. “Tom thinks Mike’s… clingy? Intense, maybe. And Mike thinks Tom’s condescending.” He stared at the condensation on his glass.

Steve had a look on his face that told Robin that he knew something but wasn’t allowed to say anything.

“New Year’s was weird. Mike left early. Didn’t say goodbye. I haven’t heard from him since.” He tried to make it sound fine; his voice betrayed him. “Which isn’t like him.”

Steve went very still. Robin caught the change and gave him a look that said plainly: what do you know, dingus?

“Since?” Robin repeated.

Will looked down at his hands. “It’s been a week,” a small pause, “I figured he just needed space.”

Steve picked up his beer; he didn’t drink from it so much as use it to hide his expression.

Robin watched him. “Steve.”

Steve set his beer down and exhaled through his nose. He didn’t meet Will’s eyes right away. “He hurt his hand.”

Will looked up sharply. “What?”

“He punched out a couple of windows,” Steve then quickly added, “But he’s fine. Totally fine.”

“When?” Will asked.

“Um,” Steve said finally, “New Year’s.”

The word hung there.

“Why didn’t he call?” Will said to himself more than to them.

“How did you know all this?” Robin asked.

“I went with him and Jonathan to Kathy’s improv thing a couple of days ago.”

Robin stiffened. Then: “You. Went to improv?” Robin tried her best to ignore the stinging sensation returning to her chest. Why hadn’t Kathy invited her? Wasn’t she too busy with rehearsals? Robin tamped the feeling down.

“Hey!” Steve shot back. “I didn’t want to go. I thought I was just cutting Byers’ hair, and next thing I know I’m trapped in a folding chair watching grown adults pretend to be malfunctioning escalators while one guy ‘hosts a cooking show’.”

Will stared at his glass. The Baileys had curdled into soft white clouds in the beer.

“They did that thing where the audience shouts out random jobs, and this poor guy had to interview for ‘underwater dentist.’ For ten straight minutes. Ten. I have never felt time move slower.”

Robin was suppressing a grin, “You’re exaggerating.”

“I am not. It was agonizing,” Steve insisted. “Count yourself lucky.”

“Is Mike okay?” Will asked, worrying at his lower lip.

“Yeah. Yeah, he’s okay, man.” Steve leaned forward a little, steady. “He needed some stitches. That’s it. Jonathan's looking after him.”

Will nodded, but the crease between his brows didn’t smooth.

“And, uh,” Steve scratched at the back of his neck. “He’s been helping out some people at Kathy’s improv group. With some Rocky… picture thing.”

Robin stared at him.

“Rocky Horror Picture Show, Steve.”

“Yeah. That.” He waved a hand. “The one where everybody yells at the screen and throws toast or whatever.”

“Rice,” Robin corrected automatically.

“Whatever,” Steve said. “But they’re not doing THAT. They’re staging it. Mike’s helping with lighting. They need help with props and set stuff, too. He was talking about building something when I left.”

Will looked up. “He didn’t tell me that.”

“He probably is going to,” Steve hurried on, “He’s just… distracted.”

“Right,” Will’s eyes fixed on the wood grain.

Robin watched the exchange carefully. She didn’t know exactly what was going on with Mike lately, but she’d noticed something shift. Since the night of decorating that sad little Charlie Brown Christmas tree at Jonathan’s, Mike had been closer to Will. Hovering. Leaning in when Will spoke. Watching him when he thought no one else was looking.

It was familiar.

It reminded her of the way Mike used to orbit El, attention narrowed down to one person, the rest of the world falling away. The kind of focus that could feel wonderful if it were yours. The kind that could wreck you if it wasn’t.

Tom did say he was clingy…

Will’s fingers worried the edge of his napkin again.

Robin made a decision.

“Shots?” she offered lightly, clapping her hands once against the table like she could reset the mood by sheer force of will.

Steve looked at her, then at Will, then back at her. “We’re already drinking.”

“That’s the point.”

Will forced something like a smile. “Yeah. Okay.”

Steve slid out of the booth. “Fine. But I’m not getting us anything blue.”

❊❀❊❀❊

By the time they spilled out onto the sidewalk hours later, the cold didn’t bite as much. Will headed off toward the subway with a lingering hug.

“Get home safe,” Robin had told him

“I will.” Will had give gave her a quick smile.

Steve watched him disappear down the street.

They walked, shoulders bumping as the city blurred in sodium-yellow light. Halfway down the block, Steve veered toward a glowing pizza joint.

“Absolutely not,” Robin said.

“Absolutely yes.”

They emerged with two floppy, greasy slices each, eating them folded in half, grease soaking into napkins that were already losing the battle.

For a while, they didn’t talk.

Then Steve said, “He didn’t look fine.”

Robin glanced sideways at him. “Mike?”

Steve chewed, then swallowed. “Like, I know Mike doesn’t want it to be a thing. But it was… a thing.”

“How bad?”

“He punched through glass, Rob.” His voice was lower now, steadier than it had been at the table. “More than once. Jonathan seems worried about him.”

Robin slowed a little.

“That’s not normal,” Steve added. “That’s not just ‘clingy.’ That’s… I don’t know.”

They walked another few steps in silence.

“Do you think we should… do something?”

“I don’t think we can,” Steve said after a moment. He shrugged. “I might help out with the Rocky thing. Keep an eye on him. Jonathan’s got enough going on.”

Robin felt her chest warm. Steve didn’t even know Mike the way the others did, but he cared anyway. That was the thing about him. He decided you were his, and that was it.

She felt lucky.

Even if he was an idiot sometimes.

They reached their building. The radiator clanked somewhere inside like it was threatening to try again. They kicked off their boots and coats in a messy trail. The apartment still held a chill, but it didn’t sink into Robin’s bones the same way. Her cheeks were warm. Her hands. Her chest.

Steve flopped backward onto the couch dramatically. “See? Warm. Science.”

“That’s the whiskey,” she said, toeing off her damp socks.

“Same difference.”

She stood there a moment, looking at him.

“You worried?” she asked.

He stared at the ceiling.

“Yeah.”

They went to bed, the cold still technically there, but dulled at the edges, softened by alcohol and pizza.

❊❀❊❀❊

On Monday, classes started again with more humdrum than usual, like even the building itself wasn’t thrilled to be back. Film II met in the same drafty room as Film I, the overhead fluorescents blaring down on them, the air still holding the ghost of mouldy mugs of coffee from last semester.

The room hadn’t changed. Neither had McNamara.

He stood at the front of the room with his dress shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows, a stack of syllabi tucked under one arm like he was about to distribute verdicts instead of paper.

“Film,” he began without preamble, “is not for people who scare easily.” His gaze swept the room. “If you’re looking for a medium that forgives indecision, take up watercolour.”

A few students laughed, not because it was funny, but because it sounded like something you were supposed to laugh at. 

Robin privately thought that made no sense. Watercolour was notoriously unforgiving. She had watched enough foundation-year students have full meltdowns over pilly paper and accidental blooms to know that. One wrong wash and the whole thing buckled.

Robin scanned the room out of habit. Most of the same faces from last semester. A couple of new ones. A couple were missing.

One absence was louder than the rest.

Last term, a girl with box braids who barely spoke in class had pitched an experimental piece about a fraternal twin experiencing body dysphoria through the lens of Alice in Wonderland. The concept had been strange and specific, a body that wouldn’t cooperate, that grew too large for the house it lived in, knocking over lamps and splitting doorframes, unable to shrink back down into something manageable.

“It’s about gender,” she’d said, playing with the end of one of her braids. “And visibility. And—”

“I don’t get it,” McNamara had interrupted.

She’d tried again. “It’s about feeling like—”

“I don’t get it.”

A third attempt. Smaller now.

“I don’t get it.”

Each repetition landed flatter than the last, until the room stopped being a classroom and started feeling like a spotlight. The girl's shoulders rounded, braids slipping over her shoulders like a curtain closing.

Robin remembered watching her shrink in real time.

She wasn’t there now.

Three rows back from Robin sat Sonny Klein, already leaning back in his chair like he owned the building. He wore coke-bottle glasses that gave you the uneasy feeling he was always looking at you, even when he wasn’t.

They were building a studio set for his project this semester. A stylized character study of a “mad woman” with hoarding tendencies who burns down her house in the third act.

“It’s manic,” Sonny had said during his pitch. “Operatic. About decay.”

“This one has legs,” McNamara had replied, nodding slowly. “And it's doable.”

DOABLE?

Robin had waited for the follow-up question, something about nuance. Motive. Hell, even something logistical, like how they were planning to safely simulate an unpaid actress lighting herself on fire.

None of that came.

Instead, they’d moved straight into square footage and lighting diagrams.

Robin stared at Sonny’s excited gestures as he described the house filling up with junk, newspapers stacked to the ceiling, broken bottles catching light like something beautiful.
The whole idea made Robin feel a bit sick.

But Robin hadn’t pitched, so she couldn’t say anything.

By the end of class, Sonny had divvied up roles with the brisk authority of someone who had already decided what kind of director he was going to be. Robin remembered that he had listed Kubrick among his favourite directors at the beginning of last semester.

“Craft services,” he’d said to Robin, glancing at her only briefly. “We’ll need someone there.”

This fucking guy.

It wasn’t an insult. It was worse. It was an assumption.

Robin had shrugged like it didn’t matter.

Which, technically, it didn’t.

Craft services meant she could show up and work and then get out of there after the studio build, without anyone bothering her. It meant she could work on her own projects.

Still, as McNamara launched into a lecture about commitment and “separating real filmmakers from dabblers,” Robin found her eyes drifting to the empty seat where the girl with the box braids had once sat.

❊❀❊❀❊

Monday at the co-op felt different from Friday. Busier, but cleaner. Someone had cleared the back worktable over the weekend; the usual stacks of half-open boxes were gone, replaced with neat piles of labelled reels. Orders had been sorted and shelved in their proper bins. Even the floor looked swept.

Robin stepped inside just as the front door swung open again behind her.

Cecilia.

They nearly collided.

Cold air rushed in with her, carrying lemon soap and something warmer underneath. Cumin, maybe.

For a split second, they stood in each other’s path, the ends of Cecilia’s dark hair peppered with white from the light snow outside;  Robin was already shaking meltwater from her toque.

Their eyes met.

Cecilia’s mouth parted slightly.

Robin felt the heat rise in her face.

“Morning,” she said quickly, already shifting sideways.

“Morning,” Cecilia answered, watching her.

Robin didn’t stay long enough to see if there was more. She bolted up the stairs, two at a time, because why be graceful now?

She headed straight toward the central table where Al usually set up on Mondays, mentally running through the task sheet for the week. There was a printed list taped to the filing cabinet: intake, labelling, two restoration assessments he was in charge of, and scanning that needed to be done. But Al often had side projects that didn’t make the sheet. Things he preferred to handle on his end, or needed an extra pair of hands for.

But he wasn’t there.

Robin went to his back office and saw the door was slightly ajar, a general invitation to pop in.

He was standing behind his desk. Contact sheets were spread out over the surface, edges aligned. A yellow legal pad sat to his right, notes written in neat, slanted script. A thick book lay open beside it, several pages marked with thin paper tabs flagging passages.

Robin lingered at the edge of his desk. “What are you working on?”

Al didn’t look up right away. He was studying a strip of images through a loupe, adjusting the angle toward the overhead light.

“Mmm…thinking,” Al said, and set the loupe down with care. He tapped the legal pad with his index finger. “And taking some of my own advice.”

​​He rubbed the bridge of his nose, then looked at her properly. “I’ve spent the better part of a decade focused on everyone else’s projects. Which is wonderful and invigorating in its own way.” A faint smile. “But I don’t get to lecture people about making work if I’m not making any myself.”

Robin remembered him chiding her good-naturedly when she first met him about being too busy to make films.

“What are you looking at right now?” she asked, coming around to his side of the desk.

She leaned over the contact sheets.

They weren’t new.

Some of the stills were clearly pulled from older footage. In one strip, she recognized a younger Kathy, thinner in the face, her hair longer and curlier, her expression serious in a way Robin had never seen. Fourteen, maybe fifteen.

Another strip looked much older. Black and white. The motion was slightly staggered, with fewer frames per second. A family gathered around a table lit by candles. No one is smiling. Everyone posed as if the camera were something to endure rather than commemorate.

And then, another sequence. A woman with bright blonde hair, caught mid-turn. The light hit her in a way that made her look almost overexposed against the darker room.

She glanced at Al.

“Home videos?”

Al nodded. “Yes. I compiled these years ago.” He rested a hand lightly on the desk. “Then I put it down. Never picked it back up.”

He gave a small, practical shrug. “After the zoo, I figured it was time to pull them out again. See if I’m different enough now to understand what I was trying to do back then.”

Robin shifted to another strip. “When was this footage of Kathy taken?”

Al leaned closer, squinting slightly. Then he laughed, soft, almost surprised.

“Her fourteenth birthday.” He shook his head. “She was a very serious child, if you can believe it. Didn’t want a party. Betty insisted anyway and made some monstrosity of a Care Bear cake.” he frowned. “Grumpy Bear, I think.”

Robin looked at the image of fourteen-year-old Kathy, solemn, and imagined her being forced to pose in front of a lopsided iced cartoon bear. It reminded Robin of how her own mother would steer her by the shoulders into better light. Chin up. Smile again. One more. Just in case. She had one of those photos. One of her and Nancy in their Cheeto-orange caps and gowns still hung on the fridge at the apartment, held there by a Tweety Bird magnet.

“She looks different,” Robin said.

“She was,” Al replied.

“What were you thinking about when you put these together?”

“I think,” he said slowly, “I was trying to see if there was a pattern.”

“In what?”

“In how things carry,” he said. Then he seemed to come out with whatever he was thinking about: “How was your class today?”

Robin exhaled sharply. “Awful.”

She launched into it before she could stop herself, Sonny’s film, the make me a sandwich tone of the classroom, the better films that could have been made, the logistics of setting a woman on fire, “It’s diabolical,” she finished.

“Mmm.” Al folded his arms loosely. “Yes. Unfortunately, we haven’t come as far as people like to think.” A beat. “I’m sorry your classmate left the program. It sounds like she would have made an interesting film.”

“She shouldn’t have been bulldozed like that. He didn’t even give her half as much time as any of the guys to explain her thesis.”

“No,” he agreed simply. “Sometimes institutions are very good at rewarding conformity while insisting they value originality.” He glanced at Robin, “You might not know this,” he said, “but Cecilia didn’t go to film school.”

“She didn’t?”

“No. Largely self-taught.” A faint smile. “And I would argue she’s making some very invigorating work.”

Robin narrowed her eyes slightly.

“You should ask her to show you sometime,” he added.

Robin felt a slow, dawning suspicion that Al was attempting to orchestrate something that felt suspiciously like a playdate.

She crossed her arms. “Subtle.”

Al’s expression remained serenely neutral. “I have no idea what you mean.”

❊❀❊❀❊

Robin took the projector case from the storage shelf and set it on the long table by the window. Tomorrow, there would be a school field trip visiting the co-op, which meant everything had to work without drama. Twelve eight-year-olds and one exhausted teacher would arrive at ten, and nothing made an adult more vulnerable to the teasing of children than fiddling with equipment that was supposed to function. The kids were programmed to learn about animation, primarily stop-motion and flip books, and they would watch a few short films before a resident artist led a tutorial.

She unlatched the case, lifted the projector out, and set it down carefully. Bulb check. Belt tension. Spare leader strips in the kit. She moved automatically, grateful for tasks with clear endpoints.

From the back editing room, a radio pronounced the news at medium volume. “…coalition forces continuing operations in the Gulf…” The announcer’s voice was flattened by static. Robin carried the stack of educational reels toward the doorway and leaned her shoulder against the frame.

Cecilia sat at the Steenbeck, one foot tucked under her, sleeves rolled up. A strip of 16mm threaded through the machine; the small monitor flickered with a pale image Robin couldn’t fully see from where she stood, something sunlit, something with trees. “…Secretary of State James Baker is expected to meet with Iraqi officials in Geneva later this week in what many are calling a final attempt to—” Cecilia reached out and shut it off. She didn’t turn around. She reached for her headphones and the cassette player in her bag.

Robin lingered longer than necessary, frustration coiling under the room’s hum. “That was abrupt,” she said, trying for airy but landing on defensive.

Cecilia didn’t look back. “It was loud.”

“It really wasn’t.”

Cecilia adjusted the footage with precise movements. “I need to focus.”

Robin stepped inside anyway and placed the film canisters on the side table. “Focus on what?”

“Work.”

“That narrows it down.” Robin came closer. “What are you working on?” Her interest sharpened when she saw a tree with a swollen, pale trunk anchoring a vast umbrella of heavy green branches that cast a deep, sheltering shade.

“It’s nothing.”

“Looks like something.”

“It’s just footage.”

“Of?”

Cecilia’s fingers tightened on the edge of the table. “A tree.”

Robin waited. Up close, the footage wasn’t a flat image at all but a stitched sequence. Found frames fluttered under, stubborn paint: a smear of azure dragged until it read like sky; tiny frames spliced into a staccato beat so the tree seemed to breathe, to blink like a cine-insect. Cecilia had punctured sprocket holes and threaded little painted frames in a rhythm that read like stop-motion choreography; along the edge Robin noticed small ants, painted in black and gold, marching and dancing until it seemed to swallow the tree whole. The work was tidy and reckless at once.

Robin almost forgot to be angry. A bright, traitorous ache caught under her ribs at watching Cecilia pull something living out of nothing. God, it’s annoyingly good and it’s not even finished.
Cecilia sighed. “From my family’s backyard. When I was a kid.”

Robin softened, “I’ve never seen a tree like that. Where did you grow up?”

Cecilia didn’t look at her.

“It’s pretty.”

“It’s just a tree.”

Robin felt the familiar flare of irritation. Cecilia didn’t like her; that much was plain, and Robin still didn’t know why. Al had told her to ask, and she had. This was what she got.

Robin let out a slow breath. “Okay, can I just,” She stopped, then started again, faster. “Did I do something? Because I get that I can be… a lot. I talk too much, I jump ahead, I forget to label things sometimes. I know that. I’ve been hearing that my whole life.”

Cecilia finally looked up, genuinely caught off guard.

“But I’m not incompetent,” Robin pushed on, words tripping over each other now. “And I’m not lazy. And when you redo my work and then tell Al I leave things half-done, that—” She laughed once, sharp and humourless. “That doesn’t make me feel good.”

Cecilia went still. “I didn’t—”

“I heard you.” Robin said, “I wasn’t spying or anything, it’s just, I was going to …You said it was easier if you just finished things because I leave them. Do you know how many times I’ve heard that?” She laughed once, breathless. “That I’m almost good. That I’d be great if I could just-” She cut herself off, gesturing toward her own head. “-fix whatever this is.”

The room felt suddenly too small.

“I like it here,” she said, quieter now but no less intense. “I want to be useful. If I mess something up, tell me. I can take it. Just don’t decide for me that I can’t handle it. That’s—” She faltered, searching for the word, “that’s not fair.”

Cecilia aligned the edge of the film strip exactly with the guide.

“I’m not asking you to like me,” she added, backing off a fraction.

Silence stretched between them.

Cecilia didn’t soften. But for a second, she looked unsure.

“I need to focus,” Cecilia said again, though it sounded different now.

“Yeah. Right. Work.” Her voice had gone flat.

She gathered the reels, suddenly desperate for something with a checklist and a finish line. She didn’t look back at the Steenbeck again.

❊❀❊❀❊

Later that week, after a gruelling return that left her brain feeling packed with cotton, Robin sat in the studio watching other people build their dreams up in the forms of fake kitchens and living rooms.

The deeper she got into the program, the less space there seemed to be between assignments. This semester was especially dense. One more year and then– what? The thought rose in front of her like Kubrick’s monolith, smooth, silent, impossible to argue with.

She needed to do something to evict Kubrick from her brain.

Robin gave her update to McNamara and the class on craft services for the shoot in three weeks: coffee budget, templates for call sheets, dietary restrictions, and then helped assemble flats in the studio, drill whining in her ear.

Around her, Sonny and his friends prepped auditions, pinned up storyboards for McNamara to critique, and debated lighting tests like minor gods adjusting the sun.

Robin tried not to resent them. She thought of Nancy. Nancy would have inserted herself without asking permission, and she would have refused to be sidelined. Hawkins’ own Nancy Drew, shotgun in hand, solving grizzly murders before breakfast. Nancy did not wait to be invited to the table.

Robin was not Nancy.

And right now she wished, fiercely, that Nancy were in New York with her.

They were only filming three projects this semester. One was a loose lift of a Dostoevsky short story; no one seemed to recognize this, including McNamara. The other was a generational drama about women arguing over the length of a skirt. It had likely been chosen because at least one female director had to make the slate. McNamara spoke about it dutifully, without the spark he reserved for Sonny’s “mad woman” opera of decay.

Even Robin, who could argue feminist theory until the cows came home, had to admit the skirt film had been the safest pitch in the room.

She wiped drywall dust off her jeans and tried not to think about how badly she wanted to be pulled in by an artistic expression of her own design.

And that was how, on Saturday, she found herself back at the zoo watching Gus the polar bear swim laps.

Robin stood leaning on the railing with crossed arms. The pool below was the colour of oxidized coins, a murky green that clouded whatever might be under its surface. The concrete enclosure reminded Robin of a punch bowl. There was almost no vegetation, just the hard geometry of the stone ledges. The whole place smelled faintly of chlorine and damp stone; sounds bounced off the plaster and glass with the hollow echo that reminded her of gym shower rooms.

Gus moved through the water with a determination that made the enclosure feel even smaller. Up close, he was not the abstract idea of a polar bear she had seen in plush toys or nature documentaries growing up. He was enormous. His shoulders rose out of the pool like pale boulders, fur slicked darker where it clung wet to muscle. He wasn’t the clean white she had pictured. His fur was cream, yellowed at the joints, faintly shadowed where the hair thickened at his neck.

He didn’t swim so much as trace the same arc over and over, a steady figure-eight. His head stayed level as he swam. Not scanning. Not searching. Just fixed ahead.

In a documentary, Gus might have been framed by miles of white snow and ice flows. Here he was framed tightly by water and concrete walls.

Years ago, cleaning out The Squawk with Steve and Nancy. She had found a mouse running in tight, frantic circles along the baseboard. It had kept circling even when nothing chased it. When she came back later, it was dead. Nancy had suggested tossing it in the trash. Robin had carried it outside instead, unsettled by how insignificant its life had suddenly seemed.

Watching Gus, the same quiet ache surfaced, the sense of movement without progress.

He turned again.

Robin felt her arms tighten where they were crossed against her chest. After another pass, she reached into the satchel at her waist and pulled out her Super 8. She lifted it and framed the turn.

The motor began its soft, mechanical hum, almost purring.

❊❀❊❀❊

Robin crossed toward Fifth with her camera bag tucked against her ribs, her collar already damp where meltwater had slipped inside. A small storefront glowed just off the park. A red crescent moon hung above the door, the words Bajo la Luna Roja curved beneath it. The windows were misted; light pooled on the wet sidewalk.

She wanted warmth: a small table, a working heater, something hot to push the damp from her bones before she trudged back to her nearly as cold apartment. She hoped to wait out the rain so that at least her camera could stay dry. The afternoon had felt like a small victory. The footage of Gus wasn’t much yet, but it was a start, an idea she could build on.

Inside the restaurant the air was thick with garlic and grilled meat. A handful of late diners occupied corner booths; near the back a couple leaned over a plate of empanadas. The space was cozy: white walls hung with tango murals and cheap Xul Solar prints, small wooden tables, and a long dark bar.

One person sat alone at the bar.

Robin stopped.

Cecilia.

She held a paperback in one hand, a glass of Malbec at her elbow, long legs crossed.

Robin’s first instinct was to leave.

“¡Hola! ¿Para cuántos?” boomed the host. An athletic man with a neat moustache grinned at Robin.

Robin stopped mid-step. “Ah, solo, por favor,” she said. Her accent felt rusty, even to her own ears.

The man brightened. “¡Ah, bien! Una mesa aquí.” He led her to a small table near the bar and pulled out a chair.

Robin sat, very aware of how close Cecilia was. Maybe she could still leave.

Cecilia looked up. Their eyes met.

Robin’s hand lifted before she could stop it, not quite a wave, more a brief, awkward flex of her fingers. She felt her face pull into something meant to be a smile and land somewhere closer to strained.

Smooth, Buckley.

The host followed her gaze and laughed. “¡Oye! No seas descortés, hermana, ¿es tu amiga?”

Cecilia didn’t move. She remained on the stool, one hand still braced on the bar, her thumb marking her place in the book.

Cecilia let out a breath that read like resignation. “Somos compañeras de trabajo.”

Not friends. The words landed coolly.

Robin heard the accent wrap the vowels differently; his Argentinian cadence bent phrases in ways her Hawkins lessons hadn’t prepared her for. Before she could parse it, the host crossed the room and planted himself beside her table. Up close the family resemblance was obvious, the same mouth, the same nose.

“¿Alguna alergia?” he asked briskly, rolling the r.

“No,” Robin said too quickly.

“Bien.” He nodded and disappeared into the kitchen, then popped his head back out. “Cecilia, deja de ser tan tímida y siéntate con tu amiga.” He prodded before vanishing again.

There was an awkward hanging silence before Cecilia closed her book and came around and took the seat across from Robin.

“Did I… interrupt something?” Robin asked quickly. “I can move.”

Cecilia averted her eyes, “Sorry about Julio,” A quick, sideways smile. “He gets excited when Americans speak Spanish.”

“I didn’t mean to—” Robin gestured vaguely toward the bar. “Complicate your evening. I didn’t know you worked here, too.”

“I don’t. My brother and my sister-in-law are the owners. I didn’t know you spoke Spanish,” Cecilia replied instead, studying her.

Heat rose in Robin’s neck. “High school Spanish, mostly,” she said. “Some classes later. I— I speak French and Italian too. And English, obviously. I can pick out some Russian.” She almost added Pig Latin and bit the thought back; it would sound ridiculous.

“That’s… a lot,” Cecilia said.

Robin shrugged. Her confidence deflated. “It’s mostly patterns.”

“I struggled with English when we first moved here.”

“Oh, yeah, it must be hard to learn as a second language. English is the worst. It’s full of words that look the same but sound different. And words that sound the same but mean totally different things.”

“It still feels like guessing. It’s not an honest language.”

Robin had the uneasy sense she’d missed something.

Cecilia must have noticed this. She pushed some loose hair behind her ear, then added, “I don’t mean you. I just… I like when things say what they are.”

Julio returned carrying a tray piled with empanadas, a bubbling provoleta, and a platter of thin grilled steak lacquered in chimichurri.

“¿Quisiera una cerveza, por favor?” Robin asked when he hovered over the bottle. She wanted a beer to relax her nerves.

“Sí,” Julio said to her and then to Cecilia, “vino para mi hermana.” He poured, teasing Cecilia about relaxing, then set plates in front of them as if he’d known exactly what to bring.

Cecilia looked slightly embarrassed under her brother’s attention.

The conversation that followed was halting. Cecilia answered in short sentences; Robin filled the gaps too quickly, veering between questions that felt too personal and observations that sounded rehearsed even to her own ears. It was the awkwardness of two people who had only ever been professional, trying to share something almost domestic.

Cecilia’s gaze dropped to the camera bag tucked beside Robin’s chair.

“You were shooting today?”

Robin straightened slightly. “Yeah. Just some footage at the zoo.”

“Oh, right. You um, like it there? I mean, you found something interesting?”

Robin took a bite of food before answering. “Depends. I’m not even sure what I’m looking for.”

Cecilia’s focus shifted to her glass, suddenly very intent.

Robin cleared her throat and reached for her beer, taking a longer swallow than she meant to. The quiet stretched, stretching her own nerves with it.

“So our screenwriting professor did this thing last semester,” Robin said, a little too eagerly. “Whenever a scene of ours wasn’t working, he wouldn’t just get us to critique it. He’d make someone act it out in front of everyone. So the writer could see why it was bad.”

Cecilia’s mouth twitched. “That sounds cruel.”

Robin picked at the label on her bottle.

“It was,” Robin said. “But it kind of worked. You’d hear your own dialogue out loud and realize no human would ever say it. One girl wrote this completely unhinged soap opera thing where a mother and daughter got heart transplants from each other and then somehow everyone started falling in love with the wrong person. It made zero emotional sense!”

Cecilia looked something close to amused.

“And Kathy got picked to perform it,” Robin said. “She had to play all of them. She did every character. Voices. Blocking. It was brutal,” Robin went on. “But she committed. Fully. Which somehow made it worse. Or better. I don’t know. The girl who wrote it looked like she was going to cry half-way through, but after that, she rewrote the whole thing.”

Cecilia set her fork down carefully, expression tight. “You seem very fond of her. Kathy.”

Robin blinked. “She’s funny. That’s all.”

“That must be convenient,” Cecilia replied, taking another sip of her wine.

The air shifted.

“I didn’t mean—” she stopped, “She works hard.”

“I’m sure she does,” Cecilia said. Flat. “Must be nice.”

Robin's hands curled slightly in her lap. She’d been warming to her a moment ago, now the shift felt like a gust of cold air she hadn’t expected.

“It was just a story,” she said, sharper than she meant to.

“Sure.”

Silence settled again, heavier this time.

Cecilia glanced toward the bar. Then back at Robin.

“I should go,” she said, already standing up.

“You don’t have to go,” Robin said quickly. It came out defensive.

Cecilia gave a small nod and moved back to her original seat at the bar to gather her book and coat. She kept her eyes on the door.

Robin sat there, fork in hand, appetite gone.

Chapter Text

Will woke with his face buried in a pillow that wasn’t his.

The bed was wider than the single at the boarding house; he’d sprawled halfway across it sometime in the night. Tom slept beside him, close enough for Will to feel the heat coming off him.

Will lay still for a moment; the dull ache at the base of his spine reminded him of the night before. He sank a little deeper into the mattress, tempted to close his eyes and steal a few more minutes of sleep.

One of Tom’s legs had drifted against his. The mattress dipped under Tom’s weight; Will found himself oddly aware of it. He was briefly tempted to sniff the pillowcase, which would almost certainly smell like Tom’s shampoo.

Then the light caught his eye.

Winter sun pushed through the gap in the curtains, brighter than it should have been.

Will frowned and rolled onto his back, squinting at the window. 

His eyes landed on the poster across the room, the bold red-and-black design for Breathless, the French title À bout de souffle printed in irregular letters. One corner had peeled from the wall and curled inward. He’d spent much of the night staring at it while Tom talked beside him.

The light felt wrong…too high, too pale.

It had to be later than ten.

He leaned over the bed and grabbed the alarm clock from the nightstand.

The numbers blinked back: 12:03 PM.

“Oh no.” Will sat up so fast the mattress groaned.

Tom grumbled and reached blindly for him. Will yanked his shirt over his head, The Cure tee with the growing hole under the left armpit, and felt a cold spike of panic.

“I’m late!” He was supposed to meet Mike an hour ago.

“You’re making a lot of noise for someone who just woke up,” Tom mumbled, voice rough with sleep.

Tom’s hair was mussed, one cheek still pressed into the pillow. He looked absurdly good for someone who’d slept through half the day: that lazy, dangerous attractiveness that made Will a little dumber.

“You could stay,” Tom added.

Will fumbled for his socks, found one under a rumpled heap of Tom’s pants, and pulled it free. A crooked stack of books leaned against the wall beside the bed, threatening to topple whenever someone shifted. Will recognized a few titles; Jonathan had copies of the same ones back home: Discipline and Punish, a battered copy of The Stranger, and Manufacturing Consent, bristling with folded pages.

“I can’t.”

“Sure, you can.” Tom propped himself on one elbow; the blanket slipped from his shoulder. He gave that soft, indulgent smile, the one that made him look as if he were doing Will a favour by existing. “Call him later. Say you’re sick.”

​​Will shook his head and reached for his other sock, still damp from yesterday’s walk from the bus stop. Tom’s voice stayed casual, too reasonable. “He won’t know the difference.”

“I promised,” Will said.

Tom watched Will search for his gloves, “People get sick all the time,” he said airily. “Mike will survive a couple of hours without you. Friends lie about little things. It’s fine.”

“Friends don’t lie,” Will said, without thinking.

Tom blew out a breath, “That’s a very strict policy.”

“Did we forget to set the alarm?” Will asked.

Tom didn’t bother to look contrite. He stretched, the comforter sliding from one hip. “I turned it off.”

Will stopped. “You what?”

“You looked exhausted,” Tom shrugged, “It’s not like you had anything urgent today.”

The words should have sounded soothing; instead, they felt like a small, deliberate wedge.

“Seriously,” Tom said, watching Will tie his shoes. “Mike won’t care if you’re an hour late. Or if you don’t go at all.”

Tom reached out; his hand found Will’s sleeve. His thumb brushed the inside of Will’s wrist in a way that lodged in Will’s chest and made him forget the next sentence he wanted to say.

“Come on,” Tom coaxed. “Stay. We’ll get lunch. We’ll walk around.” His fingers pressed, a small possessive anchor.

For a second, Will let himself picture it, staying, the two of them wandering the city on another snowy afternoon, Tom talking the whole way. It was a tempting picture.

Then Mike came back to him.

New Year’s Eve. Mike, clutching a beer can, shuffling from foot to foot near a cluster of laughing partygoers, while Will slipped upstairs to the roof with Tom and his friends. Losing track of time. Coming back down and realizing Mike had left.

At the time, Will had told himself Mike was sulking.

Then Steve told him about the windows.

Will had called the day after the Boiler Room and offered to help with the props, trying to sound casual, trying not to sound guilty.

Will gripped his laces. “I promised Mike. I’m sorry. I have to go.”

“Fine. Be the saint. Go play responsible adult.”

Behind Will, the alarm blinked 12:10 PM.

Tom reached over and switched it back on.

Will’s brows furrowed. He leaned down and kissed Tom on the cheek. “I’ll see you Monday.”

Tom tipped his head back against the pillow and looked up, his mouth tilting into that crooked, knowing smile.

“Promise?” he asked.

Will pressed his lips together and slung his bag over his shoulder.

❊❀❊❀❊

Will pushed through the front door of Theatre for the New City and stamped the snow from his boots. The lobby was still, but the sounds of work carried from deeper in the building: metal clinking, a table scraping across the floor.

He passed the darkened box office and followed the noise down a tight hallway. His shoulder brushed a bulletin board thick with old posters. The noise grew louder as he went, echoing off the low ceiling. Ahead, a door stood ajar, light spilling across the scuffed floor.

Will pushed it open and stepped inside.

The stage lights were only half on. A painted castle wall stood crookedly against the back of the stage, the stonework half done in thick grey brushstrokes.

Mike crouched downstage, beside a long worktable strewn with parts. He had a screwdriver stuck between his teeth. Around him: lab props, glass beakers, coiled wires. In front of him sat a box fitted with two radio dials and a bank of switches. A small desk lamp had been clamped to the table so he could see what he was doing.

Will paused, watching him.

Mike always got that look when he was absorbed: shoulders hunched, black hair falling into his eyes, altogether unaware of the world around him.

A slow warmth spread through his stomach, catching him off guard.

“Hey,” Will called out.

Mike jumped, the screwdriver clattering to the table. When he saw Will, the surprise melted into a grin.

“Will!”

He pushed himself upright and stepped around the table like he’d been waiting to show someone what he’d been doing.

“You made it.”

“Sorry, I’m late,” Will said. “I overslept.”

“Well, you’re here now. So.” Mike said, his arms lifted for a second like he wasn’t sure what to do with them, then dropped back to his sides. He pointed at the table. “Um, look. This is the lab console for Frank-N-Furter’s scene.” He tapped the box.

The prop was a strange, beautiful mess. A metal panel scavenged from old filing cabinets, two radio dials crookedly mounted, a row of toggles, and a large red knob on the left that looked like it belonged in a submarine.

Will leaned closer. “Does any of it actually do anything?”

Mike grinned. “Some of it does.”

He tapped the red knob. “This is the main one. Frank-N-Furter flips it during the Rocky reveal, then the covered tank/table rolls out.”

Will nodded.

Mike turned the knob a little, and a soft click came from inside the box.

“It’s not powering anything directly,” Mike said. “That would be—”

“—a terrible idea,” Will finished immediately.

Mike’s grin widened.

“Exactly.”

Mike crouched so Will could see into the panel. Both peered into the little forest of wires.

“It just closes a relay,” Mike pointed with the screwdriver. “That sends a contact signal backstage.”

Will traced the wire path with his eyes. “So the fog machine’s on its own circuit,” he said.

“Yeah.”

 “And the knob tells it when to fire.”

“Right, actor actually triggers the effect, instead of pretending to.” Mike smiled.

Will squinted into the open panel. The wiring inside was neat in a way that made it obvious Mike had spent hours on it already, bundles zip-tied together, labels written in black marker along the insulation.

Will studied the panel for another second.

“You should stagger it,” Will said.

Mike frowned. “What?”

“The fog and the lights.” Will grabbed a scrap and sketched. “If they hit together, it’ll feel flat. If the fog fires first and the lights pop half a second later—”

Mike’s eyes lit up.

“—It’ll look like the machine’s building power.”

“Exactly.”

“We could run the fog through the relay,” Mike said, thinking out loud, “and then feed the lighting trigger through a delay.”

Will pointed to a small component already mounted near the corner of the panel.

“You already have a timer module.”

Mike followed his finger and laughed.

“Oh my god, I do.”

“Did you forget you installed it?”

“In my defence, it was like three in the morning when I started.” Mike rubbed his neck.

Will snorted.

Mike grabbed the screwdriver again and crouched beside the open panel. “Alright. Let’s try it your way.”

They bent over the console, shoulders close enough that the desk lamp painted both their faces in the same circle of yellow light.

Rewiring fell into a rhythm. Mike loosened a terminal; Will threaded the wire through the delay unit. Mike soldered as Will steadied the clamp.

Will’s eyes flicked to Mike’s hand; stitches neat across the knuckles, skin a little taut from healing. Heat flared behind his eyes. He almost asked if it still hurt or why he’d done it, but the moment was warm and easy; the words died on his tongue. He kept his attention on the wire.

Mike’s hand brushed past Will’s to the wire; for an instant, their fingers covered one another. Mike’s gaze flicked up. The contact was small but felt like a pulse through Will’s chest. He held the wire while Mike turned the screw.

“Okay,” Mike said after a moment, sitting back. “Moment of truth.”

He turned the big red knob.

The relay snapped shut with a mechanical click; a pilot bulb by the timer flickered a beat later. Will leaned in. Mike flipped the knob, click: open. They ran the test again and again while Mike adjusted a tiny screw on the timer.

At some point, Will realized he’d been leaning halfway across the table—nearly shoulder to shoulder with Mike. “Oh, sorry.” He stepped back. Mike looked at him for a moment, then smiled sheepishly.

“It’s fine,” Mike flipped a toggle and pointed to a second wire. “That one goes to the lighting board once they patch it in.”

Will felt the warmth from the desk lamp, and a small, ridiculous part of him wanted to lean just a little closer.

They spent hours tightening wires and testing the relay; Mike shaved a fraction of a second off the delay and declared it perfect.

“Are you two planning to electrocute the cast, or is this one of the safer experiments?”

Will looked up to see who’d spoken.

A tall Black woman wandered in from the wings, a paint roller slung over one shoulder like a spear. Her dark, relaxed bob was tucked under a silk scarf, sleeves shoved up to her forearms, one cuff streaked with grey paint.

She stopped a few feet from the table and peered down at the open console.

“Tell me,” she said lightly, “are we building a theatrical masterpiece… or a very elaborate fire hazard?”

Mike looked up at her, smiling good-naturedly.

“Hey, Sage.”

“Michael.” She pointed the roller at him. “If this explodes at rehearsal, I will hang you by your ears.”

“Fair.” Mike grinned. She leaned over to inspect the wiring. “Oh, nice. You’ve gone full mad scientist.”

“Almost done,” he said. “We added a delay so the fog fires before the lighting cue.” Mike gestured toward Will. “This is Will. He helped figure out the timing.”

Will straightened. “Hi.”

Sage smiled and shook his hand; her grip was light and warm. “Sage,” she said. “Set design, occasional ladder wrangler, and the one to blame if the castle wall collapses.”

She looked between the two of them, then back at the console.

“Well,” she said. “If you two manage to resurrect a glittering muscle man from a tank without electrocuting anyone, I’ll consider it a triumph of modern engineering.”

“That’s the plan,” Mike said.

“Good, because. I’ve just spent two days making that wall, I’d hate for it to be stormed by a peasant revolt.”

“In this scenario, are we the peasants?” Will asked.

She gave him nothing but a quick salute with the paint roller and headed toward the crooked castle backdrop.

Will watched as she climbed the ladder in three long steps and immediately began repainting part of the stonework like she’d been in the middle of the task all afternoon.

They kept working long after the first rush of activity faded. The console eventually got sealed up and pushed aside, and Mike hauled the creation table over from the wings, a metal platform that would roll onstage during Frank-N-Furter’s big laboratory reveal. Someone had already bolted a frame of pipes and coils to the sides, but half the tubing still hung loose, waiting to be attached.

Over time, people drifted in and out of the theatre in loose shifts, brushing snow out of their hair and scribbling their names onto the time sheet tacked to the wall. Someone dragged a ladder across the stage. Someone else carried a stack of painted flats past the wings.

Will was leaning over the console with a pair of pliers when the lobby doors opened again.

Two people slipped inside.

One of them was Jonathan.

He had his camera bag slung over his shoulder, though he looked like he’d just come straight from work. His hair was wind-tossed, and there were dark half-moons under his eyes that made him look like he hadn’t slept much lately. But he was smiling.

Not the tight, polite smile Will was used to seeing—a real one.

The woman beside him said something; Jonathan laughed, adjusting his scarf. Will couldn’t hear them, but the exchange looked easy, familiar.

For a moment, Will just watched them.

The woman was as tired as Jonathan, like she’d also been running from one place to another all week. She was wearing a long dark skirt, flats that weren’t suitable for the weather and a plain blouse beneath her coat. Something about her felt familiar: Will frowned, trying to place her.

Jonathan said something, and she bumped him with an elbow. “Oh, fuck off,” she laughed. As they crossed the stage, she glanced up at Sage, who dabbed darker grey into the stonework with a sea sponge, and gave a stiff nod.

Sage paused halfway through dabbing the stone and looked down at her. For a second, her face settled into an exaggeratedly unimpressed look, one eyebrow arched.

“You come back to puke on me again?” Sage asked.

The woman’s mouth pressed into a tight line, her gaze dropping briefly in embarrassment.

Then Sage went back to dabbing.

Mike’s voice cut in beside Will.

“Hold that a second?” Mike said. Will steadied a length of tubing while Mike secured the clamp.

“Yeah.”

Jonathan drifted toward the work table. “Hey.”

“Hey, man.” Mike looked up.

Will wiped his hands on his jeans. “Hi.”

Jonathan glanced at the half-disassembled prop. “You two been here all day?”

“Pretty much.”

“You guys want to grab food with us? We were coming by to say hi before heading out anyway.”

The woman stepped closer. “I would really love to go somewhere warm before I have to go back to my walk-in refrigerator.”

“Where are you staying again, Kathy?” Mike asked as he started packing their tools.

Will looked again. Then it clicked: the girl who’d bickered with Tom, the one from the day Tom asked him out, the same girl Robin said had called Tom a dick.

Will bristled.

“Some boarded up shithole on Rivington,” Kathy said.

“I thought you liked it there?” Jonathan asked.

“I did, until the guy who cracked it open left, it’s like the fucking Warriors, only everyone smells like patchouli, and everyone’s fighting over wall space and a broken couch that, in my gracious opinion, smells like rat piss. And everything is worse since this morning.”

“What happened this morning?” 

“One of the girls found out she’s pregnant. Nobody’s really sure what that means yet.”

“Jesus.” 

“Yeah. I figured I’d escape before anyone started forming alliances.”

Jonathan nodded toward the door. “We could go to Veselka. It’s open.”

Kathy perked up, “Pierogies?”

Jonathan shrugged, “It’s cheap.”

Mike glanced at Will. “You want to—”

Robin’s voice echoed in Will’s head: My friend Kathy says he’s kind of a dick

“Actually, I was going to head back to my place,” Will said a little too quickly.

Mike's expression faltered. “Oh?”

Will cleared his throat, looking at Jonathan. “I promised Mike I’d show him my place.”

Mike seemed surprised, then a smile spread across his face. “Yeah, we should do that.”

“Alright,” Jonathan said slowly.

Something about his tone made Will glance up. Jonathan looked faintly puzzled.

“I’ll see you at home,” he told Jonathan.

Kathy lingered. “How’s the hand?” she asked, eyes on Mike’s fingers.

Mike flexed them. “It’s fine,” he said quickly, avoiding Will’s eyes. He nodded toward the door. “So, your place?”

He didn’t look at Will when he said it.

Will reached for his bag, and they grabbed their coats.

❊❀❊❀❊

Jonathan and Kathy parted ways with them outside the theatre.

Kathy shuffled, glancing at Will. “Uh… nice… meeting you,”  she said, like she’d missed a cue and was trying to catch up.

Jonathan shot her a look, brows pinching, then waved at Mike and Will. “Later.”

They headed in the direction of Veselka.

Will thought he heard Kathy hiss, “What? What the fuck was I supposed to say?”

Mike and Will lingered a moment, then drifted toward the Astor Place subway entrance jutting from the sidewalk. A small newsstand by the stairs caught Mike’s eye; he snagged a copy of the Village Voice and slid it under his arm. Will followed him down the steps, stamping snow from his boots as the smell of wet concrete and subway grime rose to meet them.

The station was busy but not crowded; a gust of wind rattled the stairwell, carrying the faint echo of a saxophone from the street. They found a bench on the platform. Mike unfolded the paper and flipped to the horoscopes.

“Your birthday’s… March twenty-second?” he asked, leaning a little closer to the page.

“You don’t believe in this stuff,” Will said.

“No,” Mike said. “But Max was really into it when I visited her. She had a whole book, just for that year, about her sign or whatever. I figured if she’s obsessed, maybe you’ve got some… secret cosmic powers too. Will the Wise.” He nudged Will lightly with his shoulder.

Will rolled his eyes.

The 6 train rumbled in, metal screeching along the tracks. They slid into a car just as the doors opened, settling onto a bench, the city rumbling beneath them. The paper spread between them. Will could smell sawdust on Mike, cut with the faint tang of piss from the station. He tried to ignore both for very different reasons.

“Alright. Aries!” Mike said, then started reading. “You won’t be the one everyone notices this week, but you’ll have a hand in shaping who catches the eye, and that could be more entertaining than being the center yourself. Someone close to you is more unsettled than they appear; your small choices could stir feelings you didn’t intend to. Keep an eye on who seems suspicious; you might be looking in the wrong direction. The real surprise comes from letting others act while you watch, quietly knowing more than anyone suspects. If you can sit tight, you might find yourself caught up in events that matter far more than you expected, and maybe in someone else’s heart, too.”

“What does that mean?” Will asked, laughing at Mike’s expression.

“I have no idea.”

“C’mon, let’s read yours.”

“I think we’re both Aries, actually.” Mike flipped to the word search and the funnies, his hand moving a little stiff.

“Is it sore?” Will asked, glancing at his hand.

Mike startled. “Oh, uh, no. It’s fine.” He pulled out a pen from his coat and handed it to Will. “Help me out here.”

Will took the pen. For the rest of the ride, they searched side by side, shoulders brushing, hands bumping now and then as they moved across the page. Their shoulders brushed again as Mike leaned closer to the page, and this time neither of them moved away.

❊❀❊❀❊

The boarding house kitchen was warm; the stove was almost always in use by the steady rotation of tenants, so the heat clung stubbornly in the air even though winter was pressing hard against the windows.

There was a thin woman in a wool sweater at the stove when they first came in, stirring something in a dented saucepan that smelled of garlic and onion.

“Evening,” the woman said without turning.

“Hey,” Will replied automatically.

Mike hovered a little awkwardly near the doorway while Will crossed to the counter where the communal tea tin had migrated. The tea sat in an old biscuit tin, its faded lid no longer quite fitting. Inside were the usual mismatched assortment: crumpled paper packets, loose leaves in little baggies, most brands Will didn’t recognize. They were a coffee family growing up.

He filled the kettle, set it on the burner, and turned the knob. Mike finally came in and sat at the long wooden table. There was a dining room, but Will never ate in there. He often brought his meals to his room.

Beside him, the other tenant scraped her spoon along the side of the pot and dumped a portion of rice and beans into a bowl before leaving Mike and Will alone together once more.

The kettle began its slow metallic hiss.

While they waited, Will noticed Mike’s fingers drift to the stitches across his knuckles, scratching lightly along the edge of the bandage without seeming to realize he was doing it.

The kettle whistled.

Will poured the water into two mugs, dropped a tea bag into each from the tin, and carried them over.

Mike stopped scratching when the mug appeared in front of him.

“Thanks,” he said.

They sat.

The kitchen window rattled faintly in the wind outside, and somewhere down the hall someone shut a door too fast. The tea steamed between them, the smell of the rice and beans still lingering faintly in the air.

Mike cradled the mug in both hands. The warmth made his shoulders loosen a little.

Will sat across from him, elbows resting lightly on the table.

It felt… nice.

Mike reached up again and scratched the stitches.

Will leaned forward before he could stop himself.

His fingers brushed Mike’s hand.

The contact was light, but Mike paused immediately.

“You keep doing that,” Will said softly.

Mike looked down at his hand like he hadn’t noticed.

“Oh yeah, they are kind of itchy right now.”

Will wanted to ask him about it, wanted to ask: how it happened, whether it still hurt, those questions snagged on something bigger than stitches. Why did he leave the party? Why didn’t Mike talk to him? Why call Jonathan?

Will didn’t move his hand right away. The stitches looked tight across Mike’s knuckles, the skin still pink around them.

“Does it still hurt?”

Mike blew lightly on his tea before taking a sip.

“You already asked that.”

For a second, it almost felt like they were holding hands. Mike’s fingers fidgeted beneath Will’s, almost hooking around his.

Will pulled his hand back.

“How’d it—”

Mike moved suddenly in his chair.

“Oh, wait.”

He leaned down and grabbed his bag from where it rested against the table leg.

“I meant to show you something.”

Will’s mouth stayed half open for a second before he closed it.

Mike was already digging through the bag, pushing aside a folder and a paperback before pulling out a worn notebook. The cover was bent at the corners, the edges softened from being carried around.

“I’ve been writing a lot lately,” he said, sliding it across the table.

Will looked down at it. For a moment, he didn’t touch it.

Mike’s hand lingered near the notebook before he pulled it back again.

“It’s dumb,” he said quickly. “Just something I started. Like… a story idea.”

Will finally picked it up.

The cover creased under his fingers.

Inside were faint pencil lines, coastlines, mountain ranges, roads sketched and erased and drawn again. The pages looked like maps redrawn too many times. They reminded him of the binders from their D&D campaigns growing up.

“It’s about a cartographer,” Mike said, his voice catching. “The planet he is from doesn’t exist anymore.”

Will turned a page. The lines crossed and blurred together.

“But he keeps charting places he remembers,” Mike said after a moment. “Streets from the old world that don’t exist anymore.”

Will traced a faded river with his finger.

“What happened to the old planet?”

Mike watched him study the page.

“I don’t know yet,” he admitted. Mike considered, then added, “Most people on the new planet are trying to start over,” Mike said. “But when he makes the maps, the old places keep bleeding through. Cities they lost. Roads that used to lead somewhere.”

Will nodded slowly.

“And the new planet?” he asked. “Is it better?”

Mike shrugged.

“Supposed to be.”

They fell quiet again, the notebook resting between them.

Will looked up and caught Mike watching him, hopeful… nervous.

Mike’s hand twitched toward Will’s on the table.

Will didn’t know what to do with that look.

He closed the notebook gently.

The kitchen smelled like tea and garlic and winter air slipping through the window frame.

“I can’t wait to read it,” he said gently.

Mike looked back down at the notebook, his hand retreating from the edge of the table.

❊❀❊❀❊

The rest of the night passed in Will’s room, just hanging out. Will pulled out a few prints from last semester’s intro to printmaking class, spread them across his desk, and explained each technique. Mike studied them longer than Will expected. Mike looked over each one longer than Will expected.

Will explained his lithography class, how different it was from anything he’d done before, how the process felt slower, more technical than drawing. He told Mike he thought he really liked it.

He could already see himself taking more print courses in the fall. Screen printing seemed interesting. Intaglio too.

Mike listened with the same care he always did, asking questions here and there, turning the prints carefully in his hands as if afraid to smudge them.

Eventually, it grew late.

Mike has to open the video store on St. Mark's Place in the morning. When Will glanced at the clock, he realized it was past the point where Mike should bother returning to Jonathan’s.

“You can just crash here,” Will said finally.

The room was cold enough that the windows sweated. The bed was small, but with two blankets, and Will couldn’t imagine either of them on the floor, not with the draft.

He considered suggesting they top and tail, like he’d done with Dustin or Lucas during cramped campaign nights, but before he could speak, Mike had already kicked off his pants, left in his long-sleeved shirt and boxers.

He climbed into bed like it was the most obvious solution in the world, pulling a blanket up over himself.

When he glanced back at Will, his eyes were half-lidded with sleep. He looked younger that way.

Will reached over to switch off the side-table lamp, then climbed in beside him.

In the dark, Mike murmured, “This is nice… seeing you. We didn’t get this before.”

Will stared in the dark, caught off guard. “We saw each other.”

“Yeah, but not like this, though.”

“Like what?”

“Dunno. Alone.” Will didn’t reply, listening as Mike’s breathing evened out.

Sometime before dawn, Will woke, his cheek pressed against someone else’s shoulder.

For a moment, he didn’t move. The room was still dark, the thin boarding-house mattress dipping under their combined weight.

Mike had rolled toward him in his sleep. One of his legs hooked loosely over the small of Will’s hip, warm through the blankets, not holding him exactly, just resting where it landed.

Mike’s ribs rose and fell slowly beneath the cotton of his shirt. Will listened to him breathe.

A faint smell of damp cedar and cheap soap drifted up, reminding him of that Halloween night, the rough fabric of his Ghostbusters jumpsuit against the patterned velvet sofa. The thought came unbidden: If we’re both going crazy, we’ll go crazy together, right?

Another memory surfaced, or rather, Will pulled it close. Tom’s small kitchen. Early morning. A roommate slamming a cupboard. Tom at the counter, smearing cream cheese on a bagel. Coffee and his aftershave, bright citrus, a dark thread of black licorice, Will’s nose buried in the hollow of his neck. A quick kiss without warning. Tom tasted like cream cheese.

He tried to stay in that memory. But Mike stirred against him.

Mike’s breathing didn’t change. Slow. Even. Completely asleep.

Will thought he should move. He probably should.

The weight of Mike’s leg across his hip pulled him back all at once, the slow rise and fall of his breathing pressing against Will’s chest. Will’s fingers had curled into the fabric of Mike’s shirt without him noticing.

Will loosened his grip slowly, heat creeping up the back of his neck, but stayed where he was, staring into the dark, counting the rise and fall of Mike’s breathing until the numbers blurred together.

When Will woke again, the room was bright with morning light. The pillow beside him was empty.

❊❀❊❀❊

Sunday was his.

Will spent it at his desk while snow fell outside, the flakes thin enough that the city beyond the glass never fully obscured. Despite the snow, it was mild, and for once, he didn’t need a blanket draped around his shoulders. A 2B pencil was pinched between his fingers, a cup of instant coffee pushed off to the side as he worked from small thumbnails toward something that might translate well to stone.

He started with a key drawing, ragged-winged children marching across a chaotic playground. He pencilled quick notes for layer separations in the margin. Sky and playground first, maybe as a rainbow roll? He could fit the blues and greens if he was careful… Clothing second. The final layer would carry the line work and shading.

Three pulls through the press. That was all the assignment allowed.

He adjusted the spacing of the figures, circled the sun and a few faces. Gum out. The white of the Arches paper would hold the highlights.

The second figure needed a different stride. He erased the leg and redrew it.

Mike’s stitched knuckles rested against the table in Will’s thoughts, the way his hand had hovered near Will’s before pulling back. The nervous scratch of his thumb along a seam, the angle of his shoulder as he leaned over the console. Will pressed the side of the pencil into the page, deepening the shadow beneath a swing.

He studied the sketch again, making a small correction, holding the layers in his head until the image began to settle.

Thoughts skittered between marks. Mike. Ten years old and grinning across a card table, crying out triumphantly when they won, the warmth of him still close from the night before.

A memory slipped in after, weaker: Tom leaning over the counter at work, his cigarette breath when he bent close.

Will dragged his attention back to the page, erased, redrew.

Three pulls.

❊❀❊❀❊

Monday had started out as a good day. Will’s work-in-progress critique went better than he expected; his instructor offered only a few suggestions, mostly about ink and paper choices. By the time his Modern Art and Architecture class let out early, the day had already gone his way.

The centre had slipped back into its beginning-of-term lull, long stretches of nothing to do, and he and Tom fell into companionable silence behind the counter, reading side by side and trading the occasional comment without really looking up.

By the end of their shift, it was dark out. Tom suggested they rent a movie. So they headed toward St. Mark’s Place, toward Mondo Kim’s. And maybe Will should have suggested another rental place. Will told himself it was just a stop on the way to Tom’s; they would get in and get out. But as they got closer, he couldn’t quite ignore the persistent question in the back of his mind: whether Mike would be there, and worse, whether Will wanted him to be.

They pushed open the doors. Inside, the store felt a little claustrophobic. Racks ran in close rows, VHS spines facing out like old paperbacks; handwritten category signs dangled from the ceiling, each scrawled in a different hand. The air smelled of plastic and sharp, lingering perfume. A low television in the corner looped clips; a chalkboard near the counter listed staff picks in a cramped, opinionated hand. No one stood behind the counter, but voices carried from somewhere out of sight, where employees milled around.

“What’s your poison?” Tom asked, walking through the rows.

Will pretended to deliberate. He paused at French New Wave, fingers hovering over the spines, then veered, almost abruptly, into Animation.

Tom made a soft, wounded sound behind him, as if Will had just shot him.

“What happened to liberté, égalité, fraternité?”

Will opened his mouth to ask what he was talking about when a short, disbelieving snort came from behind the racks.

Will froze.

Tom glanced over, mildly curious, but Will already knew.

There was a soft shuffle of movement, the faint thud of a tape being pushed back into place a little harder than necessary.

Then Mike stepped out from the end of the aisle, one shoulder catching the shelf as he came into view.

Will’s stomach dropped.

Of course.

His hair was combed into a neat side part that didn’t quite suit him. He wore a black T-shirt and a loose cardigan that was a size too small. It looked familiar; is that one of Jonathan’s?

“Oh,” Will said, already wishing he sounded more normal, “Hey.”

“Hey,” Mike replied, not quite looking at him, his gaze already dropping to what Will was holding.

Tom slid beside him, easy, unbothered. “Do we have an expert opinion, or…?”

Mike shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “You’re on your own.”

His eyes flicked back to Will, then to the shelf behind him.

“You looking for something animated?”

Will paused, “Yeah.”

“There’s one we just made a copy of,” Mike said, already turning, reaching up toward a higher shelf. “It’s—” he faltered, like he didn’t quite have the words for it, “kind of weird. You’d probably like it.”

He pulled down a tape and held it out, not to Tom, just to Will. It was a reused black case, the cover a faded photocopy of a red, hulking cartoon creature with its head tipped back, with pale spikes along its spine. The yellow background had dulled with copying.

Will glanced down at the cover, then back at the shelves.

Tom leaned lightly against the end of the aisle. “A ringing endorsement,” and wandered away to another rack of films.

Mike ignored him.

Will lingered, thumb brushing along the edge of the case.

Then, almost without thinking, he reached past Mike and pulled something else from the row.

“Or we could just do this,” he said. He grabbed a copy of The Last Unicorn, half-regretting his decision as he made contact with the case.

Mike’s hand lingered in the air for a second longer than it needed to before he pulled it back.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”

For a second, he looked at Will like he didn’t quite understand him. Then he dropped his gaze. Will felt like he should say something. Instead, he just stood there, holding the washed-out, pastel unicorn VHS, which he probably only grabbed because he vaguely remembered it from Lucas’s house, mixed in with Erica’s things.

Tom came back from the French New Wave section, carrying his own selection. “Decision made?”

“Yeah,” Will said, a little too quickly.

Mike had already stepped back and was putting the other tape away.“Cool,” he said, but there was something flatter in it now. “I’ll ring you up.”

Will wavered, then followed Tom, falling into step beside him.

Mike slipped behind the counter.

Will set The Last Unicorn down.

Tom placed The 400 Blows beside it.

Mike picked up the first tape and dragged the barcode across the scanner.

Beep.

He glanced down at the titles.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “The 400 Blows and The Last Unicorn.”

He scanned the second one.

Beep.

“Really committing to the whole high-low thing, huh?” He set the tapes back on the counter and nudged them forward with two fingers. “One for Maude and one for Harold.”

Will’s jaw tightened.

“Mike—”

Mike kept typing, the keys clicking faster than he needed to.

Tom leaned an elbow on the counter.

“I don’t know,” Tom said mildly. “I think it shows range.”

Mike glowered, “Yeah,” he said. “Or commitment issues.”

Will felt heat crawl up the back of his neck.

“Seriously, Mike.”

Mike finally looked up, eyebrows raised like he had no idea what Will meant.

“I’m not doing anything.”

The receipt printer whirred. Mike tore the paper off with a quick snap and tossed it across the counter.

Tom picked it up before Will could.

“No,” Tom said pleasantly. “You’re ringing us up. Which we appreciate.”

Mike’s mouth twitched. “Five days,” he said. “Back by Saturday.”

Will grabbed the tapes off the counter, the plastic cases clicking loudly in his grip.

“Thanks. I’ll see you later.”

Mike was already reaching for the next stack of returns beside the register.“Enjoy your range.”

Tom and Will walked half a block before Tom finally let out a short laugh under his breath.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “I don’t know why you’re so close with that guy.”

Will shuffled the tapes in his hands. “He’s not always like that.”

Tom glanced sideways at him.

“Really.”

They walked a few more steps.

“And did you see the thing he was trying to get you to rent?”

Will frowned. “The cartoon?”

“Allegro Non Troppo,” Tom said, like the name itself was faintly ridiculous. He shook his head. “It’s such a video-store guy movie. One of those things people pretend to like because it makes them seem smart.”

Will glanced over. “What’s wrong with it?”

Tom shrugged.

“It’s just a parody of Fantasia that thinks irony counts as substance. Very seventies. Very self-satisfied.”

If Will was honest, it sounded exactly like the sort of thing Tom would like.

Will laughed a second too late.

“Right,” he said.

Tom smiled a little and nudged his shoulder as they stopped at the corner.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You picked a good one.”

Will nodded, but the laugh he’d given a second earlier sat wrong with him.

❊❀❊❀❊

By the end of the month, Will had worked out a system.

He kept himself busy. He kept things… structured. He stopped seeing Mike alone. He kept Tom far away from him.

The theatre made it easy. Helping with props didn’t mean being alone with Mike. There were always other people around.

Steve had, inexplicably, become one of them.

Steve showed up most afternoons before his shift at the station, hauling things, making himself useful without being asked. His Little from the Big Brother program trailed after him most days, loudly objecting to being there, then just as loudly refusing to leave.

With Steve around, it was easier not to end up alone with Mike again.

Will noticed the way Mike hovered, the small, harmless bids for attention that didn’t feel harmless anymore.

Will told himself the old feelings had faded, that it made more sense to focus on Tom. But Mike needed him, too. Lately, that closeness felt heavier.

Will wondered if Mike was still going to leave.

What happened to that whole picaresque run he’d been on?

Without really choosing it, Will slipped into the routine.

At the theatre, it was easy to avoid being alone with Mike. People were always moving through: actors, techs, someone hauling flats, someone arguing over lighting. Will made himself useful wherever someone else was already working.

“Hey, can you—” Mike would start.

“I actually promised Steve I’d—” Will would say, already turning away.

Steve would look up, confused for half a second before catching on. “Yeah—yeah, I need help with the flats.”

Mike never called him on it.

That might have been the worst part.

Since the video store, Mike had been more inside his own head. Irritable. Harder to read.

It was the exact opposite of what Will was trying to do.

Will reached for a coil of cable, just to have something in his hands.

When he looked up, Jonathan was standing just inside the doorway.

For a second, Will thought he must have just come in, but the way Jonathan’s eyes tracked across the room, made it feel like he’d been there a while. Long enough to take everything in.

“Hey,” Will said, straightening a little. He nodded toward the back without really thinking about it. “Mike’s in the back—he’s working on something with Steve.”

Jonathan’s gaze flicked past him, toward the noise, Steve’s voice carrying, the kid protesting loudly about something.

“Yeah,” Jonathan said. “I saw.”

Something in the way he said it made Will hesitate.

Jonathan looked back at him then, properly this time, like he was focusing in.

“I actually came to see you.”

“Me?”

Jonathan jerked his head toward the door. “Come on. Let’s get something to eat.”

Will half-turned, already knowing who he was looking for.

“I was just—”

“That’s okay,” Jonathan said. “I won’t keep you long.”

He walked over to the door and held it open.

It wasn’t an order. If anything, it made it harder to say no.

Will hesitated just long enough to feel it, then set the cable down.

“…Okay.”

❊❀❊❀❊

They walked for a bit without talking.

Will kept pace without thinking, a half-step behind at first before matching his stride.

He kept expecting Jonathan to say something.

When they pushed into Veselka, the heat and brightness hit Will at once.

It was too bright inside. The overhead lighting bleached the colour out of everything just enough to make the reds duller and the whites a little gray. The place was packed, tables crammed close so people had to angle their chairs into the aisles.

They slid into a booth along the wall. The vinyl was cracked, splitting at the seams. When Will rested his elbows on the table, it rocked.

A waitress appeared almost immediately.

“Coffee?”

Jonathan nodded. “Yeah.”

Will echoed it a second late. “Yeah, coffee.”

She was gone again before either of them could register what she looked like.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. The noise of the other diners filled the space instead– one woman laughing too loud at another’s joke, plates clinking, another laugh this time from the other side of the room.

Their coffee came in thick white mugs, steam curling up from the surface. Jonathan thanked their waitress, then wrapped both hands around it without drinking. Will did the same.

Jonathan stirred in some sugar, then set the spoon down.

“Mom’s been trying to get a hold of you.”

Will looked up. “Oh.”

“She’s been calling me.”

Will gripped his mug. “I meant to call.”

“I know.”

Will took a sip and burned his tongue. “I’ve just been busy.”

“Yeah.”

Jonathan leaned back slightly. Still tense. Will knew that posture when he was trying not to push.

“You’ve been kind of hard to catch lately.”

Will frowned.

Jonathan let out a quiet breath through his nose. “You know what I mean.” Jonathan stalled before asking, “You and Mike all right?”

“Why wouldn’t we be?”

Jonathan held his gaze for a second, then looked away. “Just asking.”

“You sound like Mom.”

Jonathan’s mouth twitched, but there wasn’t a smile behind it. “Yeah.”

Will felt his shoulders tense. “So what, you came all the way here to tell me I forgot to call home?”

Jonathan didn’t answer right away.

Then: “No.”

Jonathan’s expression had changed. Not colder. Just… more careful.

“I came because you’ve been weird lately.”

That landed worse than if he’d snapped.

“Weird?”

Jonathan nodded. “Yeah.”

“I’m not being weird.”

Jonathan raised his eyebrows a little. Not mocking. Just tired.

“Will.”

“I’ve just been busy.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because it’s true.”

“Okay.” Jonathan leaned back again, still calm, still patient in a way that made Will feel about twelve. “Then what’s keeping you so busy?”

Will felt something burn at the back of his eyes.

Every answer sounded stupid.

Tom.

Work.

School.

Mike.

The constant feeling of picking one thing and dropping another.

“Nothing.”

Jonathan looked at him for a long moment, then nodded without arguing.

“Right.”

Will hated that more than if he’d argued.

He set his coffee down a little too carefully. “What?”

Jonathan met his eyes, “You don’t have to tell me everything.”

Will didn’t answer.

“But you don’t have to disappear either.”

Will swallowed.

“I’m not mad at you,” Jonathan said.

“You sound mad.”

“I’m not.” Jonathan let out a breath that almost turned into a laugh but didn’t quite make it. “I’m tired,” he said. “There’s a difference.”

Will didn’t know what to do with that. Jonathan almost never said things like that out loud unless he really meant them. Now he was starting to feel concerned.

The waitress came back and asked if they wanted anything else. Jonathan ordered them a plate of pierogies to share without looking at the menu.

When she left, Jonathan picked up the spoon again, fiddling with it. After a second, he said, “You know Mom only calls me when she thinks something’s wrong.”

“Mom always thinks something’s wrong.”

Jonathan ignored that. “So when you don’t call her back, she calls me. And when she’s worried, I get worried.”

Will’s face tightened before he could stop it.

Jonathan saw it and softened.

“I’m not trying to pin that on you,” he said. “I just thought you should know.”

Will went still. His first instinct was to apologize too much. His second was to get defensive.

He pushed it down.

“I didn’t mean to.”

Jonathan nodded. “I know.”

And then, because Jonathan seemed to know there was something else under the thing they were actually talking about, he said, “He’s probably not leaving.”

“What?”

“Mike.”

A pause.

“He’s got work. He’s settled in.”

Will stared at him. “Did he tell you that?”

Jonathan hesitated. “We’ve talked.”

Will’s mouth pressed into a line. “Right.”

“I didn’t say that to—”

Will swallowed. “Has he talked to you?”

“Sometimes.” Jonathan watched him for a second. “Did something happen?”

“I don’t know, did something happen?” The defensiveness was immediate. He heard it as soon as he said it.

Jonathan didn’t react.

“I mean with his hand,” Will added, “He won’t even talk about it.”

“He won’t talk to you about it either?”

Will looked down.

Jonathan was quiet for a moment. Then, gently, “Listen, I don’t know Mike. Not like you do.”

Will kept his eyes on the table.

“I just… happen to be around.”

When the pierogies arrived, steam rising off the plate, Jonathan thanked the waitress and nudged the plate toward the middle of the table.

Will picked one up, barely tasting it.

They ate in silence.