Under Control.

chapter nine.

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Nora's very bad day had ended up spinning into a bad week, and then into two.

The bad day itself had been pretty much run of the mill bad — nothing out of the ordinary, really. Just an artist who wasn't as good as he though he was trying too hard to make a splash by being an unmitigated dick, and thus, making his dickish-ness Nora's problem by extension. But then the bad day had rolled over into a bad night after her run-in with Julian, and that had rolled over again into a full-blown car crash of a week when her boss had let slip that she'd heard about the show Nora had been putting together on the side. And since then, Nora had been doing little more than making nice and being a good girl.

Every day she showed up to work early and made a habit of artfully avoiding her boss. Then, at the end of it all, she would return home again and sit alone, mostly in the dark, and occasionally interlude her various doings with intermittent weeping.

So, bad.

Things were bad.

Fab had made an out of the blue appearance a couple of days after her set-to with Julian, but as far as Nora had been able to tell, he had been none the wiser about any of it.

He'd tried again a few days later, but by then Nora had worked herself up into a panic about work, and so she'd been in such a rush to get out of the office that she'd blown him off in the process. Which, on top of everything else she had going on, was something that Nora was still feeling badly about.

Albert, as was his way, had been overall less subtle about the whole situation. He had shown up the morning after the night before at what was at an undeniably unreasonable hour on a Saturday for him, and had all but refused to leave her apartment until he was sure that Nora wasn't holding any of Julian's shitty behaviour against him. Nora had assured him that she wasn't, and had then tried to get him to leave well enough alone. But, Albert was stubborn — almost as much so Nora — and so that combined with the fact that Al knew what darkness looked like when he saw it, meant that he hadn't believed a word she'd said to him.

She'd eventually gotten Albert to leave that night, mostly just by way of not arguing with him when he tried to be sweet to her. And by the next day, Nora managed to suck it up and apologise to Fab, too. But amongst the mess of it all, there was still one person left who she had not seen — one person who hadn't dared to attempt any apologies of his own.

And that person, was Julian.

Julian, it seemed to Nora, had all but ceased to exist after his efforts that night, and she hadn't heard from or laid eyes on him since. But little did she know that all the while she was sitting alone in her apartment and feeling sorry for herself while trying to put her life back together again, Julian was doing the very same thing just a few blocks north.

Julian had been a veritable nightmare since his blowup with Nora. He would manage to get his shit together every night just in time to make it over to the studio or whenever else they needed to work. But during daylight hours? It was then that he was a true terror. And few people had found themselves feeling the brunt of Julian's misery more than Albert.

The worst of it came on a Friday night almost two weeks post, exactly.

Their apartment was bustling but not bursting, mostly with friends and girls they were hoping would become friends, even if only for the night. Lips had been loosened by a mixture of brown liquor and an assortment of additives, and then, before Albert could stop him, Fab was the one who first raised the topic that Julian had been trying so ardently to avoid.

'Has anyone heard from Nora?' The wiry drummer asked, more hair than anything else and with big, wide, innocent-looking brown eyes.

And it was with that one, unassuming little question, that Julian finally came to his senses.