Under Control.

chapter eighteen.

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Everyone had managed to at least semi-successfully check their shit at the studio door, and the night ends up being a reasonably productive one.

They solve a few things they'd been stuck on, and there's momentum as they begin to get towards being done. Nothing, seemingly, is enough to stop them, at this point. Not even Julian's determination to race towards numbness.

But by the time the sun is peaking over the city skyline, Albert has begun making plans to recruit at least one other someone to help him get Julian home and into bed. Or, he says, at least, onto the floor inside or near the general vicinity of their apartment.

But while everyone's busy making plans for him, Julian slips out. And by the time anyone realises, it's already too late.

He's gone.

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Nora wakes to a chill in the air, and a fright by her front door.

She has barely slept, her body feeling bruised inside and out from the unrelenting awfulness of not just yesterday, but the last few weeks and months as well.

After storming off from Albert last night, it had only taken her getting as far as four blurry blocks before she'd asked the taxi driver to turn around again. But by the time she'd gotten back to where she'd left him, Albert was gone. Nora knew, then as well as now, that the way she was feeling had almost nothing to do with Albert. He'd been sweet and things had been wild lately. And so there was a scorn of embarrassment that twisted in Nora's gut even now when she thought back to how she'd acted last night, and about what she'd said.

Part of it all had to do with the fact that everything that had happened in her life recently was nothing that she'd seen coming. She had not seen Fab coming, or her boss's approval, or her new job. And she definitely hadn't seen Julian coming, nor could she ever have predicted anything that had come along with him. So part of it all was that — was feeling unmoored. But it was also the feeling that she'd betrayed Julian's confidence somehow by spilling all of her hurt and confusion over him to Albert. And even though she suspected that Julian might have done the same to him about her, and maybe even to the rest of the band too, Nora still couldn't shake the sense that she had been unfair to him.

It was a fog about her, all of the swirling mass of feelings she had nowhere to put, and so it takes her a second too long to realise that there's a body slumped by her front door.

She drops her mug in fright when she first sees him — before she realises who it is — and it's that which wakes him.

He's wincing all of a sudden, Julian, and Nora can't tell if it's from the sudden brightness of the morning against whatever it is he's done to make himself look so pallid, or if it's the shock of him having taken a ceramic victim, shattered in shards by her bare feet. Or maybe, Nora wonders, it's because he regrets being here at all — because Julian regrets her, and all of the mess that stretches on between them.

But then, before she can decide or spiral anymore than she already has done, Nora finds herself opening the door, with Julian's name escaping her sleepy mouth in the shape of a timid whisper.

'Jules,' He wobbles to his feet, and Nora reaches out to steady him once he's found them. 'Are you okay?'

He won't look at her directly, but Nora can see what she's worried might be blood on his hand, and then he laughs at her question, his face tilted toward the ground. He's gazing away from the sun and her heavy gaze too, so Nora tries to coax him inside, over the threshold and into the warmth of her apartment, with her a gentle hand on his forearm. And all it takes is that, for him — the feeling of her skin against his — and Julian manages to find himself in space, again.