Under Control.

chapter fifty three.

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'Ah, fuck!' Julian, loose limbed from the tidal waves of whiskey and regret sloshing around in his system, collapsed heavily onto the floor with an unforgiving thud, his head knocking on the wood by Nora's socked feet. 'Nora,'

Either with thanks to muscle memory or just the fact of his body being accustomed to his absolute disregard for his own wellbeing by now, Julian manages to make a startlingly quick recovery, sitting up almost as soon as he's fallen down, and he keeps his wide, sad eyes on Nora all the time. He shuffles over to shut the door behind them before he's fully vertical, and then as he gets clumsily to his feet, he searches every little part of her he can see for some tiny sign that things might be okay.

'You've got one minute to say whatever the fuck it is you came here to say, and then I'm getting the baseball bat.'

Nora is small and made up of shadows and her voice is venomous. She has her arms crossed over her chest, and she's shaking — from the cold, from his eyes raking over her sparking skin, and from the anxiety left over from the breaking of her heart.

'It's not what you think, alright? I promise — it's not what you think, Nora.' For every step forward Julian takes, Nora takes another away from him. 'Please don't do that — please don't...please? Just, I fucked up, okay? Again. I fucked it up. But I wasn't trying to hurt you,' There's a crack in Julian's voice, a sliver of unadulterated dismay amongst the rasping devastation, and at the sound of it, Nora can't help her gaze from flicking towards his crumbling face.

'You invited me there to hurt me, Julian—'

'No! No, I didn't.'

'The part I don't get is why...like, why ask me to be friends in the first place? Were you just biding your time, so that you could humiliate me in front of a room full of strangers?'

'Nora, fuck! No, just—'

'You already broke my heart. That wasn't enough for you? Not wanting me to live with you, or to be in your life anymore — you couldn't have just left it at that? Because I didn't just loose you, Julian. I lost everything. My friends, my job. I'm about to loose this apartment. There's nothing left of me. You already took it all. What more do you want from me? Huh?'

Their minutes promised were well and truly up, but all Julian could do was to stand and watch Nora weeping in the dark, too far away for him to get at, while his heart raced in his ears and his body blazed from the inside out.

'Can you please just go?' Nora gasps, and she sounds so small for it. She looks as broken as she feels, and she's shaking and crying, and she wants Julian to hold her almost as much as she wants him to leave. 'I can't do this anymore. You win, okay? I heard you. So please, just go.'

Julian can't think of anything that might be enough to fix this, between them. Not this time. He doesn't know how to explain what he'd done without meaning to. He didn't know how to tell her how he felt and he didn't know how to stop her from falling apart across the way from him. All he could do, was try — try anything, keep trying. And so before he speaks again, he sinks to his knees on the cold, hard floor in the middle of the empty room, in her hollow apartment. And then, he takes a breath.

'Nora,' Julian chokes on her name, the shape of it wrapped up in a sob that rips itself from his chest. 'I love you. Okay? I do. And you fuckin' terrify me, but I love you, and I didn't mean to hurt you, and I know that's what you think, but it's not true.

'I wanted you to hear the songs because I thought I'd figured it out — us. And maybe I should have just told you that, but...I'm not good with words. You know that.' Julian knew exactly what it was he wanted to say, but knowing how to say so had never been his greatest strength. 'And so, I've been writing these songs, and I haven't been drinking, and I've been working so fuckin' hard... and, just, that's all I've been doing.'

Julian sees Nora's eyes cast over him with his second to last confession — the one about not drinking — and even though he knows he scarcely looks like a man who's been recently sober right now, the way her gaze softens at the realisation of his clean, shaggy, newly-jet black hair, his new shirt, and the hint of put-togetherness that's only just fallen by the wayside, lets him know that she sees him.

Just like always.

'We were scared. The whole time, we were so scared of fucking it up or hurting each other. So, we never really did it for real, you know? Or that's what it felt like to me, anyway. I just wanted you to be happy, and I wanted to tell you that — I wanted to tell you that I love you, and that I see it all, now. But I couldn't figure out a better way to do that than with a song, because that's how I... that's me, Nora. That's how I figure shit out. And I thought that I had.' Julian stumbles at the sight of the salty tracks falling down Nora's face again, his voice straining, before a tide breaks across his own.

He wanted her to hear this — to hear him. He needs her to understand. And he's never wanted anything more, but still, he has no idea if he's failing or succeeding.

'I did want to be your friend. Because I want you any way I can — I'm always gonna want you. But I couldn't do it, because we're not. We're not friends, and we never were.' Julian lurches forwards on his knees, and finally, when he moves toward her this time, Nora doesn't fall away. 'Because, I just...I love you. And I don't know how to not.'

Julian finishes, and he's out of breath. He's out of it — of all of it, and almost hope, too. He wants to reach for her, his twitching hands desperate for the feel of her, his heart wishing that his gentle touch might be enough to soothe her and all the hurt he's caused not just tonight, but for always. He wants her to look at him, and meet his sorry eyes, and to see that he means every little thing he's just said.

He wants everything.

But just knowing that Nora believes him when he says he didn't — doesn't, wouldn't ever — mean to hurt her, would be enough.

'Julian,' when she finally speaks, Nora's looking at the moon and not at him. She says his name in the way that only she does — the 'a' shaped almost like an 'e', the last two letters a gallic blur — and the sound of her rips through him, the breath is gone from him again, and almost all the hope he has dies, too. But then she meets his watery gaze, and he can see her there, at a distance that might as well be miles, in the shadows across the floorboards. And with that, something inside him softens.

Life without Nora is cold, and Julian has been frozen for so long — just numb, and alone. But here, now, tonight, even after it all, she can still send a shiver though him just with a passing glance. And that's all it takes to thaw him.

'Jules,' Nora tries again, the shape of his name on her lips swallowed up by a lilting gasp that's almost drowned out by the thud of her feet on the wood floor, and then the soft crash of her body colliding with his.

'I'm so sorry,' Julian gathers what he can of her against the mess of himself and them both, tangled together like they are. He wants to steal her body against his. He wants to feel her warmth, and never let her go. He wants her to hear him, and to absorb his words, and know that he means them. So he whispers them over and over again into her open mouth, filling her up with all of his sorries and kissing her between, sealing them in.

Nora sobs between kisses and every time she does, Julian tries to swallow it down like he might be able to take her sadness away by drinking it up. But too, he knows, that sadness is a part of this, between them — it's part of the risk of loving, and of failing.

It's proof of what they mean to each other, and that it matters.

Julian wants to believe that Nora's salty tears, smudged over his weary face and mixed with his own, mean that she believes him. And he hopes that her mouth on his and her hands in his hair and her legs wrapped around his waist, might mean that she forgives him, too.

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Here, have an extra update.

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