Under Control.

chapter twenty three.

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There was a torrential nature to the traffic at airports. It flows in a desperate, frantic kind of a way, and there's something about it that inherently fosters panic.

You can see it in the jerky stop-starts of break lights as they try to decide if the car in front of them is coming or going, and in the skipping steps of people rushing to unload baggage and bodies, and to make it back behind the wheel to leave again before anyone can wave an angry arm or shout at them to hurry up.

Both Julian and Nora know that's what they're driving into — panic, and a rush. And there's an apprehension about it all, combined with everything that's been left unsaid between them, that has seeped out into the heavy air that surrounds in his steamy, overloaded car. And it was making hearts race, and stomachs flip.

Nora had tried to convince Julian last night and then again this morning that he didn't need to drive her to the airport. That she'd be fine in a cab, and it might have been easier to say their goodbyes at the apartment. But, he'd been determined to do this. It felt like the right thing, in his head. Because the truth was that they hadn't managed much between deciding to try, and then doing little else for the past several weeks than just that — than being together, making up for lost time, and avoiding the looming separation that had been hanging over them all the while.

And so, this was the domestic nicety that Julian had decided he was capable of — driving his not-girlfriend who he loved very much but was also terrified of loosing, to the airport. On a Saturday morning. Before he was due to rush back across town to make it back to his own place just in time to catch a cab himself, and set off on his own way.

Fear was the thing that they both had in common. Neither of them had managed yet to find the bravery to bring it up — it, being the shape of their relationship. What they each wanted, what they were doing together, and what that meant for being geographically apart. Instead, what they had managed to do was to take each other on every conceivable surface of her apartment, avoid being spotted by Albert almost-but-not-quite doing the same thing at his, and had spent several long nights and lazy mornings in the meantime chatting about everything and anything else. Everything, except for that.

And so, part of the tension hanging over them now was the guilt that they might be doing to themselves and each other exactly what they'd done the last time the band had gone out on tour. Only this time, there was the added complication that Nora would be spending the first three weeks apart basically incommunicado herself, while she hopped from hotel room to hotel room across Western Europe for work.

Missing each other before they'd even parted had thread a strange tension through them both and the moment, too. Since they'd left the apartment, Julian had been gripping the steering wheel like he was about to rip it off, and Nora had been fighting back tears since the first turnoff. And it was made all the more hopeless for the fact that they were both too scared to admit even that — that they'd miss the other, and that they had, in fact, managed to be good at being together while they'd been given all too brief a chance.

'I don't think I'll be around when you land,' Julian broke the fragile quietness first, making sure to get all of his words out and in just the way he wanted before he let his eyes flit over to Nora's. 'I can try and call you when I get in? I mean, only if you want.'

Nora nodded before she answered him, swallowing around the lump in her throat. 'Yeah, I'd like that. Just, you know, so that I know you all arrived in one piece.'

Julian nodded too, and then Nora nodded more and took another steadying breath to see if the latest one would help any unlike all the rest she'd tried before. 'I left the list on the fridge, of where I'm staying.'