Under Control.

chapter fifty two.

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The sound of the city is a cacophonous blur against the sound of Nora's racing, breaking heart.

There's a panicked ringing in her ears, a high pitched scream against the sound of her body thud-thudding along, her rushing breath, and her feet drumming on the sidewalk as she dashes for home. She can't move fast enough and her body is on fire and her mind is racing, and she's crying, even though she doesn't know when she'd started to or when she might stop.

Thoughts like a cruel echo are ricocheting though Nora's head — 'Why did he invite me in the first place? When did he write those songs? What did he mean by it? Who else knew? Why now? Does he hate me? Did he just want to hurt me? Why? Why would he do that? Did she know? Was it an inside joke — a goodbye? Am I all alone? How do I get out from under this? Where do I go? What do I do?' — and no single one of them makes sense above the rest.

It's a mess, all of it, and it had been one since long before tonight. But now it was made all the worse, and Nora doesn't have any idea of what to do about it.

All she can do is to keep moving, each step that little bit nearer to home than the last, and hope that once she reaches the familiar darkness that she knows is waiting for her there, that peace might finally come.

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It's late enough to be technically tomorrow, and Nora has hopes that the knocking on her door is just her neighbour, or maybe Albert — or even the two of them together — instead of who she knows it must be.

Nora is in bed, and she's not moving, and she doesn't want to see him. She wants to hate him, even if she can't manage it. And all of that is an easier task in the dark, far away from his sad and searching eyes.

'Nora! Let me in. It's me — let me in.'

But, Julian wasn't easy. He is stubborn, and loud, and he cares too much about everything. And especially, he cares about her.

'I'm not going anywhere until you open the fucking door, Nora!'

He shouts again through the hardwood, and then there's a body-shaped thud that Nora can feel as much as she can hear. And it's then that she knows for certain, that Julian means to make himself an immovable object in her hallway, and in this night, and her heart, too.

And so there's nothing left for it, Nora knows, except to let him in.

She creeps her way through the apartment, dodging the squeaking floorboards like only someone who lives with them could do, and then she makes her way up to the peephole in the door.

All she can see out in the murky greyness of the hallway is Julian's feet stretched out in front of him, and pointed toward the wall opposite her door. He was leaning up against it, the door, and even though Nora can't see his face she can imagine in her minds eye the sight of him, serene in his drunken obliviousness, and with his high-renaissance face resting against the chilly wood that stands between them.

The reality though, that was waiting for her out in the wasteland that was the hallway, was a far different scene than what Nora imagined it to be —

Julian is loose, that much is true. But only because he is beside himself, and because he had tried and failed to numb the feeling of it all before he'd dared to walk into the waiting inferno that was Nora.

Despite what he knew she believed, Julian hadn't invited Nora along to the gig with the intention of hurting her. He didn't want to harm her, not ever, or to make her upset. He had wanted her to hear the songs for no other reason than the simple fact that he loved her, but, as was usual with him of late, everything had gone all wrong, instead.

Julian had been writing the tracks that, cobbled together, made up the new album for as long as he'd been in Nora's thrall. And he had felt like the shape of them and it all together was an honest reflection of who they were, and what they'd tried to do and be for one another. The world that stretched on between them was where their problems lie — his drinking, the band's traveling, her job, them both being afraid — and Julian understood now that they had never fully managed to get beyond the fear that lurked in the foundations of their togetherness.

The darkness that was their individual worries and doubts about who they were and what they could be to one another had long fed into the unease that they both felt, not just about being hurt by the other but about causing hurt, as well. And they'd grown so afraid of the delicacy and the fragility of the thing that lived between them, he'd realised, that in the end, they'd only set themselves up to fail.

And so, they had. And that was one of Julian's greatest regrets.

Or so it had been, until tonight.

He had wanted to do it right. He wanted another chance to get it right with her, because trying with anyone else didn't work, and he knew that beyond any lingering doubt, now. And Julian felt like he'd found clarity during all of the too-late nights he'd spent locked away in the studio, and he had wanted the chance to bring what he'd found into the light. And so that's what had been his motivation for inviting Nora to hear him sing all of those songs in a crowed room, in the first place — he'd thought that he was being brave and proving something to her by saying all of the things that he had left unsaid for so long, finally aloud.

But, he'd realised his mistake almost as soon as he'd first opened his mouth to start Under Control.

He hadn't missed the unmistakable look of betrayal that had spread across Nora's face, even at a distance, under the haze of the smoke and lights. And even though Julian was far from anything like perfect, realising that he was the undoing of Nora in that moment had been the undoing of him.

The only person who had recognised the flaying of Julian alive on stage had been Albert, and despite the fact that things hadn't been great between Albert and Julian lately, it had been him who had recognised it all right away. He'd seen the regret and the pain in Julian's swimming eyes and the panic that was laden in the way he tumbled off stage to drink like a fish to water, just as soon as he set foot back in the dressing room. Because, Julian hadn't been drinking, not as much. He'd been working and figuring things out and trying to see the world more clearly, just a bit. But as soon as he had staggered off that stage tonight, Julian had gone to pieces.

He was raw, like a man skinned alive walking around a room on fire, and he couldn't be still.

He couldn't settle, he couldn't live with himself — not until he found a way to make it all right.

And so he had attempted to numb himself and failed at it before he'd fled out into the night, and in his wake, he'd left a room full of admirers, his band, and the date he'd brought along but shouldn't have. He'd stumbled though the city like any other Friday night drunk, except Julian knew exactly where it was he was heading, and why.

And when he got there, he'd found that he was a man without a plan. Because he'd never gotten so far as thinking about what might happen when he arrived at Nora's — and that was a fact was best evidenced by the reality of him having spent the last half hour sitting on the floor outside her apartment.

But for Julian, there was no choice to be made other than this one — other than to stay, and wait, and hope. And so that's what he was doing, until Nora crept up on him, her silent steps never once giving her away.

And, until she reefed the door open out from behind him, and delivered Julian crashing onto the cold floorboards at her feet.

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I have once again underestimated December.

Not related to the story at all — just a little bit of insight into the state of myself.

Story insight is this: Here. We. Go.

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