Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

2023

“I was waiting on a moment 

But the moment never came 

All the billion other moments 

Were just slipping all away” 

Low quality speakers filter The Flaming Lips into the shop, sound varied as it carries from aisle to aisle. David is currently tucked between two shelves, a box of CDs balanced on his thigh or hip. Wherever he can get a better handle of it - so gravity doesn’t win out and cause the merchandise to slip from his arms and plummet to the floor. He keeps having to stop stocking to reorganize the displays left in disarray by customers with no real intention of buying anything who picked up a mountain of records only to abandon it anywhere they pleased.

It’s monotonous work but it’s not the worst thing he could be doing on a Friday night. He likes the feeling of the hard plastic casings slipping from his fingertips to the shelves, enjoys the rhythmic clicking and the scratch of wood. Every so often he’ll pick up an album he hasn’t heard in a while. He’ll take in the cover art, getting a refracting glimpse of his crow’s feet in the reflection at the same time he catches a moment from his youth he associates with the set of songs. 

David hums along to the shop music under his breath, a habit that makes the time go by faster while completing the menial closing tasks. If he’s lucky, no one else will come in tonight. No last-minute shoppers hoping to snag a new release that they haven’t been able to keep on the shelves for days now. He’s had to explain to multiple sets of teary-eyed teenagers this week that restocks come in on Mondays and Thursdays and they pace out when they put stuff out on the floor – and no, he won’t put it on hold. 

The phone rings at the front causing David to jump a little. He barely spares it a second thought, adjusting the box on his side and continuing to unload the discs in their designated sections. 

The phone continues ringing and David’s shoulders fall, resigning himself to what he predicts his fate will be. 

“Can someone get that?” he calls out toward the front. He gets no response, maybe the faint chirp of a cricket hidden in a corner somewhere. The whole shop stills as if his coworkers are hoping David has the object permanence of an infant and will forget anyone else is even there. As if he isn’t the one who wrote this week’s schedule and knows exactly who’s supposed to be running the front. 

Weighing his options and deciding he’d much rather deal with an annoyed customer than a raging bitch of a customer calling for the second time after no answer, David accepts defeat after the fourth ring. With a heavy sigh he bends down to set the box of CDs on the floor, feeling something pop in his back on the way up. What he really needs after a long week at work is for someone to lay him out on the ground and steamroll all the tension out of his joints. 

As expected, Frankie’s plopped on the stool behind the cashier's desk with a folded-over paperback novel in her hand, twisting her body on the rotating seat. She’s framed by a halo of stickers littering the wall behind the front counter, a collage of leftist art and band logos layered sticker over sticker over sticker with decades between them. 

“Phone’s ringing,” Frankie mumbles, not bothering to spare a glance in David’s direction even as he’s rounding the counter and encroaching on her personal space to reach the shop phone.  

“Astute observation,” David grumbles, checking the caller ID on the off chance that it’s just Bill checking in to see how closing is looking. He is not so lucky. 

“You know I don’t care if you’re reading up here when it’s slow but when I ask you to answer the phone it’s not a suggestion.” 

A pink bubble forms from Frankie’s pursed black lipstick before it pops with a loud smack. She draws the deflated remnants back into her mouth and chews, obnoxious and pointed, before looking up at him. “You really don’t want me to answer the phone. Remember what happened last time?”  

David does in fact remember what happened last time and he hates to admit that she has a point. Frankie shrugs, adjusting the fuzzy purple cardigan that’s fallen down her arms so that the collar hits below her shaggy, box-dyed haircut, held in pigtails by matching purple scrunchies. “They ask for you nine times out of ten anyway.” 

David wants to argue back but he knows it’s true. All he manages is a begrudging “Yeah, well, still” before he picks up the phone and raises it to his ear. “Thanks for calling Vinyl Frontier. David speaking. How can I help you this evening?” Emphasis on ‘evening.’ Emphasis on the fact that it’s five minutes before 8 PM and David wants to have closed shop by 8:15 PM.  

Despite this, he remains polite and rehearsed. He’ll probably never get over the way his voice raises an octave when the customer service curtain goes up, shedding his aloof, usual tone. Even Frankie can’t help but let the corners of a smile show from behind the book she’s buried herself back in. 

Vinyl Frontier is Jersey City’s prime destination for all things physical media including vinyl, CDs, VHS tapes, DVDs, comic books and more with the rarest finds and coolest collections the city has to offer– which could have been a true statement about 20 years ago. Unfortunately, the only thing prime about the destination is the number of years David’s been working there. A grand total of seven, surrounded by poster-plastered brick walls and that secondhand smell.  

David does like his job, despite what his pre-closing hysteria would have some believe. He wouldn’t still be here over half a decade later if he didn’t and he certainly wouldn’t have accepted the managerial position he was offered  nearly four years ago. He liked it when he was making $12.50 an hour and he’s not turning his nose up at the salary he makes now. 

If pressed hard enough David might even say he loves it at the end of the day, barring the annoyances that come from working in general. Capitalism is a hellscape pretty much anywhere. It’s undeniably rad to be working somewhere dedicated to keeping physical media in circulation and is easily a step up from folding clothes at a big-box store or busting his ass driving for those food delivery apps.  

The customer on the other end of the line launches into a nearly nonsensical rant about one of the products she bought not being up to her standards. David jerks the phone back from his ear, distancing himself from the shrill voice emanating from the speaker. Frankie raises her eyebrows, pleased to have dodged the bullet. 

“No, a CD wouldn’t automatically come with the record… Sure if you buy both the record and the CD you’d get them both, but they don’t come as, like, a package deal or something like that.” David balances the phone between his shoulder and cheek, grabbing a pen off the counter and writing ‘Where’s Hunter?’ on the back of whatever receipt he can find laying out. He slides the strip of paper over to Frankie, who reluctantly puts down her book to read it. 

“Vape break” she mouths back, nodding toward the movie shelves which remain visually devoid of Hunter save for a cloud of smoke rising up from the very back corner of the store. 

David rolls his eyes. If he can go the measly four hours between his lunch break and close without having a cigarette than Hunter can keep the vape in his fucking pocket ‘til they’ve at least locked the doors. 

He turns his attention back toward the rather one-sided conversation happening over the phone. “Yes, I’m sure they have bundles at Target and online but we’re not actually selling Target exclusives unless they come to us secondhand and even then I don’t-” 

He’s cut off again, causing him to flick his eyes over to check his phone where it’s plugged into the store’s auxiliary cord. A mere two minutes from close. He briefly wonders if he could get away with hanging up the second it ticks over to the next hour. “Well, we don’t guarantee anywhere that we’ll have the same CDs in stock as we do records, so… No, that’s not something we do and there’s no need for expletives…Okay, I’m going to-” 

She hangs up on him mid-sentence. David sighs. “Almost forgot to go fuck myself today. Glad I got a reminder.” 

Hepasses the phone off to Frankie so she can hang it back up on its hook. She takes it, too pleased to have avoided the interaction. He reaches behind her to dig through the pockets of his leather jacket which hangs off the back of the occupied stool. “I’m going to lock up the front and count tills. There’re a couple boxes I didn’t finish unloading that have your name written all over them.”  

Frankie groans, making a melodramatic show of sliding off the stool and dragging her chipped black nails across the top of the front desk as if trying to gain traction against the moving feet at odds with the rest of her body. She stumbles to like the soles of her shoes are made of solid lead. David’s lip quirks up a little, slightly amused at the display. 

The pages of Frankie’s book fan upward when it’s closed and tossed onto the counter, warped from a cracked spine and folded edges., “God, what is this? Work or something?” She drags out a sigh before heading down the CD aisle, beat- up and doodled- on sneakers squeaking with every step on the concrete floor. 

Frankie is not a bad kid, despite the show of defiance she puts on every time David assigns her a task may suggest when viewed from an outside perspective She’s just as passionate about the job as he is. Just as giddy to dig through the inventory and find the real gems people are going to love, to send them home with something foundational to their music taste. She also knows the younger crowd better than he does though she’ll never hear him admit that. He can’t go around doling out his respect like it’s an unlimited resource.  

David locks the front door, flips the crooked sign hanging in their window to say CLOSED, and delights in putting Hunter on bathroom duty. As usual, he turns up the volume on the shop speakers now that it’s just the three of them, something that tends to get them complaints from the customers who aren’t fond of David’s taste when they’re open. Why they don’t expect loud music of various genres to play inside a record store David will never understand. 

He’s been passively listening to whatever comes on, mostly up-tempo new wave or alt-rock stuff that lets him zone in on what he’s doing and get the closing work done faster. Psycho Killer by Talking Heads comes to an end with a cacophonous rapture of guitars and the high squeal of microphone feedback, and it takes a couple seconds before the familiar bass line of Here Comes Your Man by The Pixies kicks in.David’s hands still where they are. A stack of bills slips from his palm into the till, and he immediately loses track of what number he was on. 

He can’t help the little twitch of a grimace that crosses his face. He should really remember to take it off the store playlist if he doesn’t want to hear it. If he knows that no matter how many times it comes on, he can’t get past the feeling of complete and utter yuck that overcomes him when he hears it.  

Luckily the number of tracks on the store playlist totals to a couple thousand hours of songs David could wax poetic about and on the rare occasion this one pops up he’s more than capable of pressing skip. He reaches down, swiping his phone open to his music player to press the next arrow, willing shuffle to find something easier on his ears and heart. 

Frankie is immediately outraged, shouting from the back of the shop, “Seriously?! Did you really just skip The Pixies?!” 

“Yup,” he draws it out into a two-syllable word, popping the ‘p’ at the end with dignity. He recollects the money in his steadied hands, counting under his breath as he flips the bills over in his palm. 

Her head pokes out from between two of the back shelves, wide-eyed and in awe of David’s audacity. “Absolutely criminal. What’d they do to you?” 

“It’s not The Pixies I have a problem with.” He shrugs, bobbing his head to the bright strumming of The Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry. “Besides– my shift, my music.”  

“That’s cause you won’t let anyone else use the aux when you’re scheduled!”  

“That’s cause you’ll play that uh…stuff.” David gestures vaguely, indicating the excessive distortion and vocals that are repetitive or pitch-shifted enough to be considered psychological warfare."

 “Hyperpop.”  

“Sure, yeah, if that’s what they’re calling it.”  

Her jaw shifts in annoyance, eyes narrowing in on David like she’s attempting to catch him in a crosshair. “Just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s not good. You’re just stuck in 1990.” 

“Do you think the New Music Monday displays just appear on their own every week? If anyone’s an advocate for the potential of next generation musical artists, it’s me. I would just prefer less…sounds.” David leans down to shove the till he just counted into the under-counter safe before starting in on the last till of the night. “And if I’m stuck anywhere, it’s 2000-and-fucking-5.” 

“We’d be doomed if you didn’t let me slip in my picks every so often— probably out of business” Frankie adds matter-of-factly.  

At some point she started unloading CDs on the shelves again with little regard to alphabetization, just making sure they’re in between the correct genre labels. David knows without a doubt he’ll have to go through and reorder them the next time he comes in, but it can wait till the soles of his feet aren’t straining in his boots from an eight-hour shift. 

David breathes in through his mouth and out through his nose, resigned to the fact that this is the so-called tight ship he runs. “Truly you’re what’s keeping the world spinning,” he mumbles, tone dripping with sarcasm. He lowers his head, denying Frankie any further attention in favor of counting pennies. 

Frankie’s offense is audible. “Fascist,” she hisses, just loud enough for David to hear but quiet enough for plausible deniability if he were to press her on it. Despite this, she seems pleased enough by the new selection. David can hear her sneakers shuffling as she bounces on the balls of her feet in time with the new pick.  

It doesn’t take long to finish up the last of the closing tasks. By the time everyone’s clocked out and David’s double-checked that the front doors are locked behind them, it’s a respectable 8:25 PM. Could be worse , he thinks as he twirls the metal hoop of his keys down his pointer finger before shoving them back into the twill-lined pockets of his leather jacket. They’re not breaking any records but he’s going to take the just under thirty-minute close as a win. 

It's classic late January outside, the kind of cold that would be welcome at the beginning of the season but borders on oppressive now. The little flurries of snow Jersey got last week weren’t enough to stick, melting once they touched the ground warmed by pedestrian traffic and car exhaust. It’s just cold, bitter and wind chilled.  

When David turns toward the street he has to tuck his chin down into the collar of the knit cardigan layered under his jacket. The blast of brisk air he’s hit with is almost refreshing after a day spent in the stagnant air between rows of admittedly stale-smelling merchandise.  

He unlocks his phone, winces slightly from how bright the screen appears against the night covered sidewalk below, and swipes over to his missed text messages. The unread ones are mostly mundane. Ash sent him a picture of the paper schedule for this weekend’s shifts at the bar. It could be worse. He could be working alone or, god forbid, without them. The light emanating from his phone screen catches the sigh he releases in the form of condensed air. 

Below Ash’s message is an unread text from Jonah, a simple ‘hey’ with no frills or emojis to buffer its intention.  

David can’t stop his eyes from rolling. An innocent ‘hey’ from Jonah only ever really leads him to one place, face down in scratchy sheets with a pair of hands pushing marks into his hips, and it’s not something he’s even remotely feeling tonight. 

His bike is parked against the curb just in front of the store. One of the surprisingly few perks of working there for so long is that he finally has the leverage to convince Bill to give David reserved parking right behind where he usually parks his vintage Cadillac. David shrugs his backpack down his right shoulder, letting it fall to his side so he can access the front pocket for his riding gloves and the main pocket for his helmet.  

Hunter leaves, huffing something unintelligible under his breath before pulling his bright orange beanie down over his ears and jaywalking to the other side of the street.  

Frankie lingers against the shop, leaning back against the front display windows while David settles onto his bike. He eyes her, watching her shoulders pull themselves inward as if it’ll make the layers of her magenta puffer coat warm her any faster. 

David slips his hands into the faux leather of his motorcycle gloves and tightens them on his wrists. If his fingers could thank him for the warmth they would. “You good?” he asks in Frankie’s direction. It takes her a second to register that he’s talking to her, eyes downcast and brain somewhere else entirely. She blinks up at him, mouth falling open into the shape of a question. “You need something?” he asks again, more pointed once her eyes are on him. 

“No, I’m fine.” She adjusts the pin-covered straps of her backpack. “My girlfriend’s gonna pick me up.” 

“Good for you, kid.” David imagines she’s telling the truth, but he doesn’t love the idea of a girl in her early 20s lingering on the street after dark. Even if he knows she happens to have a pocket knife collection and is more than capable of fighting someone off with pure vitriol alone if need be. He lets both of his feet rest on the pavement beside his bike and scoots up on the seat, repositioning for comfort rather than riding. “I’ll wait with you.” 

She rolls her eyes, driven by the immediate assumption that he doesn’t trust her alone or thinks she’s up to something nefarious. “You don’t have to do that.” 

David simply reaches into the inner lining pocket of his jacket, feeling around in the depth of it before his fingers settle over his current pack of Marlboro Silvers and the cool metal of his lighter. “Yeah, I do,” he insists, simply and with little intention of arguing despite Frankie’s crossed arms and pierced nose set in a snarl.  

A part of her must have wanted the company. After a couple of silent moments, only filled with the flick of David’s lighter as it catches flame to the cigarette tucked between his lips, she’s back to pressing his buttons. “Those will kill you, you know.” She nods her head in his direction just as he takes his first, much needed drag.  

The smoke doesn’t linger on his tongue for long before David laughs, blowing it up toward the sky through his chuckle. “Yeah, well...” he starts, eyes falling to stare at the glowing tip of the cigarette delicately caught between his gloved fingers. Its bright, shifting orange looks like a welcoming neon sign against the dark street in front of him. “living’s overrated.” It leaves his mouth, breathy and almost hesitant, like an incantation he’s grown to be wary of.  

His lungs expand, burning with cool winter air and smoke. Sometimes he thinks about those anti-smoking campaign shorts they’d show during high school health class. People who weren’t much older than David is now with tubes in their chests or holes in their wrinkled throats, looking far beyond their years in age. He thanks his lucky stars when he catches sight of himself in the mirror every morning that he doesn’t look jaundiced from the tobacco, nails and teeth chipping off yellow. Though, he sometimes wonders if flayed open he’d find a set of black lungs, flesh that looks more like something you’d scrape off the bottom of an oven than a working organ. 

He wonders how much those people were paid to be called a cautionary tale. He wonders how many of them turned right around and bought a new pack with their hard-earned American Lung Association money. Would someone find him to be a worthy deterrent? Does he look pitiful enough for that? Has his voice gone raspy enough after decades of inhalation to scare teens out of their dad’s glovebox? It’s just something he wonders. How sad does he look? 

“So, what are you doing tonight?” Frankie breaks the silence, shifting her weight back and forth between her heels and toes. David’s response of a curt shrug doesn’t seem to satisfy her curiosity. “It’s a Friday,” she reminds him in a sing-song tone like this wasn’t information he was already keenly aware of. Not only does Friday mark the end of the week, but it also marks when the direct deposit hits his bank account. 

David flicks the ash from the end of his cigarette. The glowing fragment gets picked up by the wind and drifts down the street. “So I’ve heard.”  

Frankie has this habit of prying, of taking any moment of quiet between the two of them and attempting to dig a little bit further into what she already knows about David’s life. She’s made herself a fairly substantial little hole that she can bury herself in and wait it out until David’s least expecting it. Then she’s back at it again with the questions that may seem innocent to anyone else but feel like full-blown interrogation to David, an entirely different kind of can of worms to open up. Regardless of how little she chips away, she’s proud of any wear and tear she can impart on David’s hard exterior. 

There was one day a couple months ago when she stopped him in his tracks on the way to refresh the local artists section. She almost tripped him, sticking her sneakers out right in front of his ankles in an attempt to force his attention. She’s lucky he didn’t go toppling with the box of albums that he’d technically be responsible for if broken. 

“You know, we’ve been working together for like two years now,” she said like he wasn’t still finding his balance. “I still don’t know anything about you outside of the fact that you work here.” 

“Great,” he’d replied with little show of hiding his disdain for the idea of sharing anything more than that with her, “it’s working then.” 

Since then, it’s been a game–more a one-sided challenge–to see what new information she can squeeze out every time they’re on shift together. Despite David’s best efforts, hell hath no fury like a nosy coworker.  

He catches a familiar glint in Frankie’s eyes, a brief flash of hope illuminated by the dingy street lamps. She’s got David right where she wants him. “No after-work plans?” she asks between loud smacks of her bubblegum. David can practically see the questions lining up in her head, waiting for their turn to see if they’ll be shot down or not. She continues, “Nothing special to kick off the weekend? No hot date?” 

Well, he has a shopping list burning a hole in his pocket, but he’s not sure helping out his landlord by getting his groceries on the way home could be considered a hot date. Mr. Kavinsky isn’t really his type, even if he’s generous about late rent and cuts a little off the top whenever David does favors for him. Not that a sweater vest and bifocals couldn’t get him going if they were on the right person, but not in this context. 

David’s fingers bring the filter of his cigarette back up to his lips, letting him take another short breath in. “If you count speedrunning the grocery store before it closes, then yeah, I guess I have plans.” The smoke sits in his chest for a few beats and when he releases it on an exhale, a buzz lingers in the back of his neck and shoulders.  

“Well, what time do you work tomorrow?” 

David tilts his head back slightly, looking suspiciously at her through lowered eyelids. “I don’t have a shift here ‘til Monday” 

“Noooo, not here,” she draws out the protest, pushing herself off the front wall of Vinyl Frontier to point down the street. “I meant at that bar you work at!”  

‘That bar’ is a little hole in the wall just a couple blocks over called Charlie’s, a grimy dive in a trendy part of town where the clientele is just well-off enough to tip decently. David’s been picking up shifts there for nearly two years now, a reliable source of income on top of the full-time hours he already does at the record shop. 

He bounced around for a bit before that, trying out things like doordashing and overnight warehouse stocking– lonely jobs. Despite his nature, David does his best in an environment where he’s being held accountable to just be a living, breathing person. He forgets how to otherwise. 

When he first got hired as a barback he was doing weeknights, locking up Vinyl Frontier and immediately trading in his name tag for a waist apron. It’s got to be pretty bad when even he can acknowledge that working 12 PM – 2 AM almost every day of the week was going to run him into the ground before he reached his 46th birthday. 

Luckily, or unluckily depending on who you ask, David has made it to 46 and Charlie’s is just a weekend gig, something that keeps cash in his pocket and his freezer stocked with frozen pizzas. 

David huffs a snide laugh at Frankie’s assumption. “If it’s not about this job then it’s none of your business, is it?” he gestures, pointing toward her with the burning end of his cigarette. 

“Thought I would stop by once I get off of my shift here tomorrow night.” She sniffles from the cold, gloved fingers coming up to fiddle with the metal of her septum piercing. 

David leans forward, forearms resting on the handles of his bike. “Are you even old enough to get into a bar?” 

She scoffs, arms crossing tighter over her chest. “Dude, you know I’m 25.”  

“What? On your fake ID?”  

She can’t help her lips from turning up at the corners. The sole of her shoe grinds into the concrete like she’s smushing him underneath it. “You think you’re so funny.” She jabs at him. “Shouldn’t you want more business anyway? Don’t you get paid more? It’s not like you could stop me from showing up if I wanted to.” 

David clicks his tongue, releasing smoke on the shake of his head. “I’m actually really good friends with the bouncer and I’ll make sure he doesn’t let you in. He’ll blacklist you from every bar in the city.” Her unamused stare tells him she’s not buying it. “It’s true. All the bouncers in the area are in a super-secret bouncer society where they share intel on the problem people. In this case, you.” Charlie’s doesn’t even have a bouncer, but she probably doesn’t know that. 

He can feel the reverberation of bass spreading up the street before he even sees headlights turning the corner. A light blue Subaru, adorned with peeling window stickers and a pair of fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror, almost hits the curb as it pulls up behind him. Inside he can slightly make out the figure of another girl, aided by the fact that the neon green streaks in her hair stick out through the dark windshield. 

His eyes dart back to Frankie to exchange a look. He raises his eyebrows, feigning an impressed expression. “Your ride, I assume?” Her eyes roll in response, deflecting his judgement. 

“Fine, I won’t come visit,” she resolves, but the sigh she lets out as she drags her feet across the sidewalk toward the parked car is long and melodramatic as ever, continuing even as she opens the passenger side door and throws her backpack somewhere into the backseat. “Guess I’ll see you on Monday if your deathtrap of a bike doesn’t kill you first.” The well-meaning smile she tosses at him as she ducks down into the car tells him she’s only a little disappointed her guilt tripping didn’t work. 

“You drive safe too, Frankie.” He sends a two-finger salute toward her before bending down to extinguish the butt of his cigarette on the asphalt beside his boot. He shoves the remnants in one of his pockets, making the mental note to dispose of it somewhere better than the drainage grate lining the street, before putting on his helmet. He takes a deep breath, flips down his visor, and turns the keys in his bike’s ignition– revving the vehicle to life. 

__ 

“Whoa! Watch out, people! Biker gang rolling through.” 

There’s a chime overhead as David pushes open the door to his preferred bodega and steps through the threshold, alerting the on-duty attendant to his presence. The ‘ding-dong’ is less welcoming and more of distorted announcement, pitch having shifted in the years since its installation. 

As if he was waiting, Anthony–one of the regular employees that David has built up a repertoire with over the years–lowers the folded over magazine he was scanning to toss the goading comment his way. He means no harm by it and assures David so by leaning across the counter to dap him up. 

“Hey, Tony.” David untucks his helmet from under his arm and shoves it into the backpack hanging off his shoulder. He crosses over toward the counter and pretends to know what he’s doing with the gesture, following the movement of Anthony’s hand fluidly enough that it's satisfactory but still not quite getting the rhythm of it. A high five that’s just a little bit off but not enough to attempt a redo.  

“Usual?” he asks, already turning back to the array of nicotine and tobacco products lining the wall behind him. 

David’s nose scrunches as he thinks. He’s probably due for another pack. He’s been slowing down these days, an attempt to smoke less and save whatever little lung capacity he has left, but he has too many stressors in his life that require a smoke to go cold turkey. “Yeah, go ahead. I gotta pick up some other stuff for Mr. K but you know the drill” 

Anthony clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, shooting David a wink to say ‘I’ve got you’ before reaching up and picking a pack of Marlboro Silvers off the wall. “They’ll be up here waiting for you.” He nods, tossing them off to the side of his register before going back to reading his gossip rag. Truly, fine literature. 

David shoves his gloved hands into his pockets. The rush of warm air that’s hit him since entering has him sniffling, like his skin itself is thawing out. His pupils constrict with exposure to the hanging rows of bright fluorescents that illuminate the aisles in front of him. 

It’ll be a quick stop, he reminds himself, in and out. He’s ready to crash on the couch, ready to throw on a horror movie and kick off his weekend. He won’t even let himself consider that Friday doesn’t mean no work tomorrow. It just means he doesn’t have to set an alarm and gets to have an afternoon nap before he goes in.  

It wasn’t the worst work week comparatively, but one of those where seemingly everyone needed something from him. The kind that leaves you exhausted, feeling like overworked dough that grows rigid as it stretches and risks snapping.  

He’s not the only one bouncing through the aisles of the local shop at this hour. Despite the fact that he gets off work later than the average person, he’s still fallen into the clientele rushing to get home for the weekend. There's a calm panic to the act, a secret mad dash that, paired with the overhead lighting, feels almost clinical. If David imagines hard enough, he can picture himself twenty years younger, still doing rounds at Angel of Mercy while everyone moves in organized chaos around him. It’s not something he likes to imagine. If anything, it’s a reminder that not everything that has changed with age is unwelcome. 

David lifts the bulky pair of headphones wrapped around his neck up onto his ears and pulls his phone out of his pocket to replace the unfamiliar pop song playing over the shop’s speakers with something admittedly abrasive, yet much more his speed. He scrolls through his downloaded music for a couple seconds, settling on TOOL in the hopes that it’ll turn the cold cornerstore lighting and general funk of his day into more of an aesthetic. A soundtrack to his moping. 

He only has to pick up a few things. Mr. Kavinsky’s lists are usually short, primarily made up of products David can easily transport back home on his bike. Today’s list consists of a jar of kosher pickles, original Wheat Thins, a quart of half and half, and a box of antacid tablets– clearly essentials on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. 

David’s boots fall heavy on the tile to the rhythm of Stinkfist as he makes his way through the store. He knows his way around for the most part. Mr. Kavinsky’s lists don’t shift wildly with variety. He’s a simple man with simple tastes and he goes through more pickles in a week than David thinks should be humanly possible or healthy. 

His urgency betrays him as he swings too fast into the condiment aisle, almost running into a young couple, probably in their twenties and living it up by the looks of it. They’re engaged in some hefty PDA, little care for David’s presence or the fact that he almost knocked his teeth out on the young man’s football player back. 

“Excuse me?” David musters, greeted by nothing but the girl’s giggles as her boyfriend slides his hand further across her hip. Really , David thinks, the ketchup and mustard gets them going? He squeezes past, perhaps not so politely bumping against their connected shoulders to get by, mumbling a lack-luster “Thanks a lot” under his breath, tone devoid of any actual appreciation. 

If they say anything he doesn’t notice. He looks over his shoulder once to see their kissing has stopped and that they’re staring him down with a similar lack of remorse, offended he hadn’t just taken a lap around the perimeter of the shop to get to the pickle jars just a couple feet past them. He wonders if he was so unaware at that age, if the high of newfound freedom adulthood brought made him more insufferable to be around than he remembers.  

His hand reaches up and passes over a couple of labels before he finds Mr. Kavinsky’s preferred brand. “The crunch, my boy!” he hears him rave in the back of his mind. Just like he’s standing at the threshold of his apartment, smelling his wood polish and basil plants, “You don’t get crunch like that anywhere else.” David maintains they might as well make Mr. Kavinsky their unofficial mascot. 

David circles around to the salty snacks for the whole grain crackers and detours to the medicine aisle for the tummy tablets before making his way to the back wall lined with fridges and freezers to grab that half and half. He lingers here longer than needed, sparing a moment to recall his fridge back home and convincing himself it could use a restock on whatever cheap ale is on sale this week. Now that he thinks of it, watching a movie on his couch wouldn’t be complete without a pint of ice cream.  

Sometimes David feels like the universe is laughing at him, like all the stars align in sinister ways to condemn him. An agreed upon fate to always stumble his way into inconvenience or devastation– something cosmic. If you’d had asked him before he stalled for too long in front of the ice cream doors of the freezer section what the universe was plotting for him now, he’d have made some comment about the general dead-end nature of his employment. He’d have said it was only a matter of time before Mr. K could no longer keep his apartment rent-controlled and he’d have to move out of the city, or that he was always one hairpin turn from careening into the side of an Amazon delivery truck on his bike.  

He wouldn’t have said Logan Nelson. 

The name wouldn’t have even come to mind. 

David’s music softens the sound of boots encroaching behind him Steps that fall slow, hesitant to enter his space. He bobs his head, completely unaware of the hand raising toward his shoulder till it’s tapping lightly on the leather of his jacket. He’d have mistaken it for the wind if not for the muffled sound of a deeper male voice cutting through the plucky bass opening of TOOL’S Schism. 

I know the pieces fit ‘cause I watched them fall away.  

He reaches up, pulling his headphones down to rest around his neck. He can still hear the music blaring tinnily from the speakers, but he can hear the voice more clearly now. It hits him like a sudden bout of nausea, gruffer than the last time he heard it yet gentle in its nervous sway. 

It’s familiar, like falling into the indentation of a couch you’ve owned for years. In a moment’s notice it holds him, cradles him from the back only to push him over the edge. It’s the most bone-chilling sound he’s ever heard. “David?” it asks, like it has any right to speak his name, “David Radford?” 

David’s body betrays him, already turning before he can consider an alternative motion, to break and run for the door. He looks. Stills, Parts his lips only for no words to come out of his open mouth.  

He thinks about lying, about saying he has no idea who that is and that he’s just trying to go about his shopping and to please leave him be. There’s no way the man in front of him could possibly know who he is. He’s just passing through, not from around here and not planning to stay either. His name isn’t David. It’s Matt. It’s Gavin. It’s Adam. Anything but David and no, they’ve never met. He thinks about apologizing, about ducking his head and running away with his tail between his legs.  

Really, he’s already given himself away. The truth is in the tense silence sinking into the space between them. The truth is the twisting skin at the corners of his mouth in the form of faded scarring, hard to notice behind his stubble unless you knew why it was there. The truth is in the little gasp that leaves his mouth the second their eyes meet for the first time in nearly twenty years.  

“David…” he repeats, this time not a question but a soft and assured remark. The bodega lighting desaturates him but illuminates his soft expression from every angle, making it impossible to shy away from.  

“Logan,” David replies, and acknowledging him makes everything real. He feels like he’s standing at the center of a frozen lake, watching the ice crack beneath him. What does he do? Every action could make the veins spread faster, grow wider across the surface. What is the situational equivalent of getting down on his belly and crawling to safety, distributing his weight enough to not cause a collapse. 

Logan used to be bronze, warmth emanating from every inch of skin, now sickly in color under the shop’s glow. Even the stormy green of his eyes is colder, more hurricane than tornado. He looks casually disheveled, a scarf hanging unevenly over his navy blue puffer coat, undone to expose the khaki-colored knit of his sweater underneath. Even under the layers David can tell he’s filled out more, shoulders and chest even broader than his memory could concoct. 

His hair is windswept, falling in short waves at the top but cropped closer than it was when they were younger. Looking at him straight on you used to be able to see little peaks of blonde, spilling out on either side of his neck from a grown-out mullet. It used to be a rich dirty blonde, now grayed and lightened with age.  

He somehow doesn’t look fifty years old yet at the same time he does. The crinkles adorning his skin are classy, indicative of a well-lived life, a wise leading man in his own romantic comedy. The gray in his sparse beard, framing his chin and peppering his temples, makes him look sophisticated.  

David isn’t one to be insecure about his own signs of aging, but he knows he’s grown soft in the center, stomach folding over itself when he sits in small but pudgy rolls. He knows the gray in his hair has come in like messy strokes of paint, like the brindle coat of a dog, rough in texture. The skin under his eyes sags away from his cheek bones and his hooded lids bring the rest of his face down with them. 

He doesn’t think about Logan very much these days, but maybe deep down he’d always hoped he was worse for wear. If he had let himself imagine this scenario, running into each other years down the line, he would’ve hoped that he wouldn’t feel so small in the man’s presence. That he wouldn’t feel as hopeless as he does right now. 

He thought about him a lot a few years ago, nearly five or six when the name Jigsaw started popping back up in the papers. He couldn’t get away from it then, had to take time off and hide out in his apartment to avoid the ignorant small talk of “Did you hear Jigsaw’s back?” The rumors were quickly quelled  when news broke of some corrupt cop using Jigsaw as a scapegoat for his crimes.  

Yeah, he thought about Logan a lot back then. Not now. He’s made the very purposeful choice to only spare so many of his thoughts. 

An awkward chuckle falls from Logan’s lips, a scoff of disbelief. “I didn’t know you were still in the area,” he says out loud, making David wonder if it was meant to be an inside thought, “how-ow have you been?” 

David always knew that there was a greater than zero chance of them running into one another. If he was really so worried he could have packed up his entire life and left Jersey when everything happened, but he didn’t. He thought about it for a bit. Fucking off to the Midwest where rent would’ve been dirt cheap and the possibility of Logan ever finding him again decreased to that of finding a needle in a Missouri haystack. Of course, he’d considered where Logan was, knew the answer was probably just a neighborhood or two over, but he never prepared for the possibility that Logan would be right in front of him.  

It takes David a few seconds to process that he’s been asked something, that Logan’s expectant glance drawing up and down his cowering frame isn’t just sizing him up. When words finally do leave his mouth, they feel chosen for him, like an answering machine message he hardly remembers recording. David can’t make it to the phone right now. He’s too busy running so far away from here he hadn’t realized he’d left his body behind. 

He shrugs, adjusting the strap of his backpack when it falls in consequence. His voice comes surprisingly steady. “I’ve been worse. It’s mostly good right now.” It is mostly good right now, but it feels like a lie slipping through his teeth or a secret that shouldn’t have made its way out. It’s not his to spread and it’s certainly not Logan Nelson’s to hear. 

“That’s really good, David. That’s...” Logan trails off, thoughts shifting behind his eyes like he’s walking them back. He puts physical distance between them, another tile or two between the scuffed tips of David’s boots and his. David hadn’t realized ‘till now how close he had inched back into the freezer doors. “I’m sorry that I’m catching you off guard. I just saw you over there and I- Well, the last thing I want to do is make you uncomfortable.” 

Logan tosses a glance over each of his shoulders and David wonders if it’s out of paranoia. Maybe he’s looking for someone or something. David’s eyes follow but no one lands in his sight line. Perhaps it’s just the shadow of Logan’s guilt, ever-present. He sucks his teeth. “I really didn’t think this through. I’m sorry. I’m really happy to hear you’re doing well. Sorry for imposing.” 

He nods, a parting gesture, and ducks his head to turn away. When his feet move David matches them, taking a step forward with every step Logan takes to leave. David doesn’t understand it but he has the urge to grab him, to reach out and hold him there just to exist in the awe that this is really Logan. His Logan. A version of him that David had considered but never thought he’d meet. Surely, by now, he’d be rotting in a jail cell or living on the run, sifting through a stack of fake IDs every other week. 

Logan looks exactly how a much younger, more naïve David would expect him to look in his late 40s. Fuck, probably 50s now. He looks like a man stopping at the cornerstore on his way home from work. A man who has a partner and a family waiting for him to make dinner. He isn’t leaving pools of blood behind him with every step. His polite smile and the laugh lines that David catches a better view of when he turns are anything but sinister. This is a Logan that David spent years romanticizing, mourning, and attempting to forget. 

David should let him walk, should make the escape while it’s available and let himself go about his night like this was all a weird post-shift bodega hallucination. He can wake up tomorrow and maybe, if he repeats it enough, convince himself that this was a dream. A trick of the light. A ghost. 

“Wait,” he calls out instead, to Logan’s surprise. The taller man halts, head snapping back up in what seems to be genuine shock.  

David takes a moment of anticipatory silence to study Logan a little longer, noting the patched elbows on the sleeve of his coat and the well-rounded contents of his grocery basket. David is suddenly a little insecure about his selections of beer and ice cream. God, he shops like one of his coworkers. 

David clears his throat before continuing. “Are you doing okay?” he asks, and it’s so far from the first question he should be asking him. It’s not even close to the level of consideration he deserves. He isn’t quite sure if he’s asking out of polite obligation, actual interest, or a penchant for self-sabotage. 

Logan pauses, confusion knitting his brows together, but it doesn’t take long for softness to melt the threads. He relaxes his shoulders, letting his head fall with the exhale of a chuckle. “Y’know, David, I’ve been worse,” he says, echoing the earlier sentiment. 

His smile is hauntingly familiar. A ghost he remembers but hasn’t been privy to the manifestations of for some time now. David regrets the permission he’s lobbied Logan’s way to laugh like that, to smile so earnestly while David feels his bones growing heavy and cold, encased by ice. He’s cage diving with a shark and he’s left the door wide open. He’s buckling himself into a car with the brake lines cut. 

Logan clears his throat, an awkward attempt to ground himself. David wishes the visible discomfort was more cathartic, wishes he could find any solace in the nerves Logan attempts to disguise. He deserves the unease, “Hey, uh, I wanted to say-” Logan swallows, eyes flitting momentarily upward. David wonders if he’s trying to remember his lines. “-I am… so sorry, David.” 

David doesn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t this. 

He is unmoving, paralyzed by the chill running up his spine while Logan keeps still as to not scare the shaking animal before him. After a few moments of silence he continues, “I know it probably isn’t any consolation considering everything that happened, but I want you to know that I think about you, often, and I- Uh…I know how wrong I was. It was awful. I know that now. It’s about twenty years too late, but I know and I’m sorry.” 

David had imagined what an apology from Logan might look like. He imagined a version of him, nearly twenty years younger, the only version of him David had ever known until a few minutes ago. An apology has only ever been a fleeting desire. It’s something he thought about when he couldn’t sleep, when his anger kept him awake and seething. A momentary catharsis at the thought of Logan groveling to earn his trust back.  

Though, truthfully, the potential of an apology terrified him. An apology meant dredging it all up, coming face to face with the reality of the situation and Logan himself. That’s something he’s actively avoided, whether consciously or not, for two decades. 

In those moments where he allowed himself to imagine it, the moment never looked like this. It didn’t take place on a random day, an unceremonious run-in sandwiched between mundanities. Yet, here they are, a random Friday in January with eighteen years separating then and now, and an apology lingering in the air between them. Here it is, interrupting his routine in the shitty little bodega he stops by on the way home for cigarettes with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Half Baked melting in his basket. 

David can’t decide if it feels like a minor inconvenience or like the rapture is upon them. He’s not sure whether tomorrow he’ll barely remember the details of the interaction or if the words will stick in his skin like burrs that itch after they’re picked out.  

Regardless, lighting doesn’t strike Logan down with the word “Sorry.” The wind doesn’t pick up and howl against the automatic doors. The ground doesn’t open to swallow either him or Logan whole. Nothing changes. 

“Logan-“ David starts but doesn’t get very far. 

“Excuse me, can I squeeze past really quick?” A feminine voice rings out to their right. Without even looking her way David can tell she sounds wary to break up the tense conversation, apparent even to a stranger that something about this interaction is ill-fated. 

David’s eyes are stuck on Logan long enough to see him back up into the shelves behind him, to see the Southern Hospitality kick on as he makes room for the woman to squeeze between them. “Of course. Sorry to be in the way.” 

David blinks, a rapid attempt to snap himself out of the uneasy haze that’s taken over. “Yeah, shit- I mean, Sorry. Go ahead.” She shoots him a look in response to the profanity, her wrinkled eyes narrowing behind wire framed glasses. 

There’s an unspoken agreement to wait in silence 'til she is well down the aisle, to continue the conversation when it’s visually apparent they are out of the earshot of other customers. David shifts his weight between his feet, trying his best to match his breathing with the back-and-forth motion. He can hear TOOL still playing through the headphones hooked around his neck, resting on his shoulders. 

I know the pieces fit. I know the pieces fit. I know the pieces fit.  

When David lets his eyes sneak back up to look at Logan, he feels like a hand is collapsing over his heart. Logan is looking at him, soft and open, like he hasn’t in years but as he always did. As David always remembered but attempted to suppress. 

Logan smiles, deepening the lines in his cheeks. His hand comes up to rub some of the tension he’s no doubt feeling from the back of his neck. “This isn’t really the best place to catch up, I guess.” He gestures to the store around them that David knows like the back of his hand. Suddenly it feels so foreign. 

“No.” He adjusts the strap of his backpack. “It’s not.”  

“Listen, you can say no,” Logan starts, annihilating all of David’s expectations for the rest of this conversation. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. I know this is horrifically uncomfortable, but, if you wanted to maybe catch up sometime. Like, actually talk about everything… I’ve always wondered how things ended up for you. We could get coffee. Something low stakes.” His face reeks of hope. David notes the shake in his voice. 

He wants to believe that Logan means that. He hates that he wants to believe him. 

A moment passes. Logan’s optimism visibly wanes over the few seconds it takes David to respond, “Yeah,” he agrees, against his own best interest, “Maybe.” 

“Yeah?” Logan responds, excitement too evident. It makes David’s stomach drop again but he sticks to his guns, refusing to let his fear show, “Here. Let me-“ 

Logan reaches into the pocket of his jacket, pulling out a little leather-bound journal and a blue ink pen. He flips to the back, past pages of messy writing that indicate the journal is well used, before he scribbles something out. He rips the page from its binding, the edge tearing cleanly, before he folds into up twice 

“I mean it. No pressure at all. I really don’t want this to be a source of dread for you, but I’m sure you have questions, and they deserve answers,” Logan reiterates as he offers up the folded paper, breaching the gap between them to pass it off. It’s the closest they’ve come to touching since the interaction began. David can feel the ghost of Logan’s hand when the page slips between his fingers. It’s warm. It makes the pads of his fingertips buzz. 

David thinks the paper should be emanating the smell of copper and smoking lead. He thinks it should be torn, jagged at the edges and stained rusty red. His legs should give out from the weight of simply holding it.  

“Thanks.” David looks down and a Jersey area code phone number stares back up at him. He swallows, aware of how dry his mouth has gone, as he pockets the paper. “I’ll uhm-…Call. Yeah. Text, maybe.” 

Logan nods, a genuine smile taking shape. “Whatever makes you more comfortable”  

Logan takes him in, just as David had. Keep looking , he thinks but doesn’t say, There’s not much left of what you knew.  

  “I like the jacket, by the way,” Logan eventually admits. “It’s very you” 

“Thanks.” David switches which hand holds his basket and wipes his sweaty palm onto the rough fabric of his dark jeans, “I, uhm, like your scarf.” He nods toward the neat rows of crochet hanging down over his unzipped jacket. The yarn looks mottled, primarily a soft turquoise with ochre and light brown speckled throughout.  

Logan beams with pride. “Thank you! My daughter made it.” 

The word ‘Daughter’ seems to echo in the small space. It passes through him and radiates off the walls, coming back to hit him twice as hard. Daughter.  

“Daughter?” 

“Yeah, she’s fourteen. She’s my everything.” Logan chuckles, awkwardly, most likely seeing the same twisted irony that David does. He plays it off with the clearing of his throat as he steps forward, around David and toward the door of the freezer. “And right now we’re actually supposed to be having a Rom-Com and ice cream night, so if I’m not home soon I might get a lecture.” 

David backs up so he can open the freezer. He reaches for two pints of Häagen-Dazs, a classic strawberry and a peanut butter chocolate. He puts them in his basket, shifting around the other groceries to tuck the pints safely in between the other cold items, before turning to David once again.  

He sighs when they’re eyes connect. “It’s okay even if I don’t hear from you. I promise I won't…” His voice trails, unable to say the words. “It’s not like I’m going to…Y’know. I don’t want you to be scared of me. I know that’s not really a possibility. You have agency here. I just- “ 

“I know,” David cuts him off, because he does know.  

“Good. Okay.” Logan’s lips tilt up at the corners. “If I don’t see you again. It was really nice to see you now.” 

David doesn’t know if he nods. He doesn’t know if he smiles back or waves Logan along. All he knows is that a moment later Logan’s turning, his body pivoting toward the aisle that’ll lead him all the way back toward the front counter. “Have a good night, David,” he says, like he’s savoring the name. Not a moment later he’s on his way. 

David doesn’t look down, doesn’t go back to perusing the store for junk food he doesn’t need, doesn’t take his eyes off Logan the whole time he’s paying. He laughs with the clerk, making one of his easy, charming jokes. David doesn’t look away until Logan has zipped his jacket up, readjusted his scarf, and walked back out into the cold night. 

To say David is shaken doesn’t capture the full weight of it. He’s ‘shaken’ when he’s startled from sleep and he has to splash cold water on his face to remind himself he’s still alive. He’s ‘shaken’ when he gets a call from an unsaved number that looks vaguely like his mother’s knowing damn-well she passed three years ago. 

This doesn’t shake him. It’s seismic. He’s surprised the whole city doesn’t feel it, that bags of chips aren’t falling off their shelves and no one is scattering for safety. 

“Yo, Danny Zuko.” A teasing voice cuts through his absent thoughts, familiarity splitting the daze. “That’ll be $42.01” 

David’s vision unblurs, an empty basket and his bagged groceries coming into focus in front of him. Tony taps his carton of cigarettes against the counter before tossing them in with everything else, getting David’s attention.  

He doesn’t mean to be so jumpy but his muscles strain against his skin at the sound. He blinks up at Tony, mouth falling open with nothing to say. Tony stares back, expectant. “Don’t look at me like that. You know I don’t make the prices.” 

David’s chest feels tight, like all the sinewy parts keeping the bones of his ribcage in place are pinching his lungs. He reaches up and rubs gentle circles into his sternum, hoping to ease the feeling. “Sorry. I was spacing out.” 

One of Tony’s brows quirks up. He doesn’t know David well, but he knows him enough that a little concern shows through his teasing nature. “Must really need these cigarettes, huh?” 

David chuckles, half-heartedly, as he finally digs into his wallet for his card. “Yeah”  

He bites the inside of his lip, ripping tiny bits of skin off while he waits for the transaction to go through. “That guy. The one that just checked out,” he starts, not sure when it leaves his mouth whether it’s going to be a question or a warning statement. “Blue jacket. Dirty blond. Does he come in often?” 

Tony scrunches his nose, looking up to the tiled ceiling to think. “I think I’ve seen him around before. The faces blur especially people who only come in from time to time. Maybe once every few months? Why?” 

“Just,” David swallows. The reader below beeps at him to remove his card. “I thought I recognized him.” 

“You want me to ask the morning shift?” Tony asks, a sincerity David isn’t familiar with coming from the man who sells him cancer sticks every weekend.  

David’s quick to shake his head. “No, it’s okay” He’s quick to put away his card and swipe his bags from the counter. “Thanks man.” He’s quick to turn on his heels and brave the world once again. 

The outside air is too much. It fills his lungs immediately, cold and dense. He wonders briefly if he can die from breathing in too much oxygen– if it will oversaturate his cells and cause his bodily functions to crap out on him. He feels too full of it. Despite the visible air leaving his panting mouth, he can’t seem to rid himself of it fast enough. 

He looks over his shoulders, panicked eyes scanning every inch of the parking lot before hopping back on his bike. He needs to go home. 

__ 

David hurriedly enters the stairwell of his apartment complex, making sure to fully shut and lock the front door behind him. On occasion it gets stuck on its dingy weather stripping, peeling up from decades of rubbing against the bottom of the door. He doesn’t linger, doesn’t steer right to check his mail before heading up to his second story apartment like he typically would. He shakes off the cold, separates out Mr. Kavinsky’s bags from his own, and drops them at the older man’s welcome mat before starting up the stairs. 

He only gets about a third of the way up when he hears latches undoing behind him. It causes momentary panic. He imagines every unusual turn he took to get here, every look over his shoulder to ensure he wasn’t being followed and worries how it may have been for nothing.  

He found him. He followed at an inconspicuous enough distance that David couldn’t tell through the drizzle and fogged out headlights that he was there. He’s here, somehow lock picking his way into David’s building, and- 

“David, my boy, ‘zat you?” 

David turns, quickly, giving himself a crick in his neck. Mr. Kavinsky has poked his head out of his apartment’s door frame. The shiny top of his mostly bald head catches the stairwell light and the puffy white bits of hair that stick out around his ears are unkempt. One hand still rests on the locks he’d just undone while the other pushes his glasses further up onto the bridge of his nose. 

David’s sigh is one of relief and reluctance– relief that it wasn’t who his anxiety concocted but reluctance that he can’t just hide, that he must go through another interaction pretending his heart isn’t pounding out of his chest. He grips the wooden stairwell railing and clears his throat. “Hiya, Mr. K. Who else would it be?” 

“Of course it’s you, stomping up my stairs with those boots of yours.” He steps further out into the hall, keeping a hand on the door frame for support. He’s a lanky man but his back, hunched with age, could trick someone into believing he’s not as tall as actually he is. He carries his limbs close, his movements always small and short. “Glad I caught ‘cha. Did you want to come inside for a cup of coffee?” 

Mr. Kavinsky has always been good to David. As far as city landlords go, he’s aces. David regularly counts his lucky stars that he met the one property owner in Jersey City with little interest in turning a profit. Several years ago, when his then-apartment got too expensive to justify and he met with Mr. Kavinsky about leasing one of his upstairs units, he had asked what David could comfortably pay and met him there.  

The extra things he does for Mr. K are just a ‘Thank You’ to the man keeping him off the streets. He doesn’t mind running an errand or taking out the garbage. He usually doesn’t mind stopping in after work and playing a game of Gin Rummy over decaf coffee and polite conversation, but he knows that polite conversation with Mr. K can turn too long too quick. The man loves to tell a story. 

“I really appreciate the offer,” he hopes there’s no tremor bouncing his words off one another, that he doesn’t sound as deeply rattled as he feels. He could swear he’s shaking the whole building. His hand tightens on the rail just in case, “but it’s been a long one. I think I just need to get some sleep.” 

The look he throws at David is skeptical. “Well, I’ve never known you to get tuckered out before midnight. I should know.” He raises a hand, pointing to the brownish stained ceiling. “Some nights I hear you pacing around till 4 o’clock in the morning.” 

David forces a laugh, “Well, today took it out of me.” He hopes he doesn’t sound dismissive. He really does appreciate the offer, the free coffee and the company, but he can’t help his eyes from darting to the front door. His feet slowly start walking backward, up the stairs. “I’m uh- Going to head up now.” 

The look goes from skeptical to sad, but understanding all the same, “Well, you let me know if you need anything from me. Thank you again.” He’s slow to lean down, careful when he grabs the handles of his grocery bags to take them inside. “You’re always such a big help, my boy.” 

“Goodnight, Mr. K” David rushes out, already turning around and continuing his trek up the stairs before the door of the downstairs apartment shuts. 

 After what feels like forever, fumbling with his keys and jiggling them in the door to make the locking mechanism click open, he finally gets inside his apartment. The door closing behind him is too loud and the subsequent silence that follows is too quiet. His heartbeat fills it, creeping up to his head to pound in his eardrums. The empty space left behind falls to his stomach and opens a pit of dread. 

He falls with it. He doesn't decide to sit. Every cell in his body just unceremoniously becomes ten pounds heavier and gravity takes hold. The drive home feels like a blur along with everything else that’s happened since he set foot in the store. He could be convinced it happened to someone else if he didn’t have the evidence in a plastic THANK YOU bag on the tile floor of his entryway. He could be convinced it was a scary story, something he’d heard about second hand that his body reacted to anyway. 

It’s every bad dream he’s ever had that he’s woken up from with sweat-soaked sheets. Later, after brushing his teeth he’d wipe toothpaste from his mouth, look at his reflection, and repeat That wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t have been real.  

He doesn’t think that mantra will work this time if the folded piece of paper burning a hole in his pocket and searing his skin is anything to go by. . 

His hands raise unsteadily to tug at his messy hair. It’s been a couple days since he had a proper shower, and he can feel the oil build up on his palms.  

How must he have fucking looked?  

Logan saw him like this. 

Logan fucking Nelson. 

David pulls his bottom lip in between his teeth, bites down on chapped skin until he breaks it and tastes iron. It takes him back too far. He’s waking up in a warehouse, sharp tugging pain searing the corners of his mouth. The rain that’s begun pounding against his windows reminds him of soaking wet hair, of a cold warehouse, of metal framing his tender skull. 

David can’t help the sob that leaves his throat like a stunted hiccup. His stomach churns, bringing about uneasy nausea that forces him to attempt to stand. Tears blur his vision. He can barely pull himself up onto his knees before he’s falling forward. His flat palms catch him just in time. He heaves, gasping breaths building up before being forced out.  

It takes him several minutes for David to pull himself into a standing position and stumble his way into the bathroom. He sheds his jacket and cardigan on the way, leaving them strewn across the living room floor. He knows there’s Diazepam in the medicine cabinet, and despite how forcefully he’s thrown into the panic attack his body instinctively knows which bottle to reach for. He pops one, then pops two, because what could it really hurt right now? 

Unfortunately nausea wins out, probably before the pills have any chance to enter his system. He collapses onto his knees, doubled over his toilet, and throws up into the porcelain bowl. He clutches the ledge of his tub for a semblance of stability, gagging between his tears.  

Time passes. He doesn’t know how much but he knows the answer is too long. His body feels feverish, his brain scattered all the way between his bathroom floor and the bodega freezer aisle. He doesn’t want to go back and pick up the pieces.  

It’s not a pretty sight. A grown man dry-heaving on his bathroom floor, face bright red and wet with tears. 

Calm comes in the form of the feeling of something nudging against his back. He hears a raspy, inquiring meow and sighs in shaky solace.  

“Hey buddy,” Davis rasps right back, throat shot from sobbing. He adjusts his position on the floor, leaning his back against the cupboard doors below the sink so the chubby cat can walk between his legs and settle into his lap. He focuses on the vibration of his purrs, finds some rhythm in them that he can match to his breathing and regain control over his lungs., “It’s okay. I’m okay. No worries.” 

TC, short for ‘trash cat’, was just that. A rascally brown tabby found in the dumpster outside the back of Vinyl Frontier when David had just started working there. He was infested with fleas, half of his right ear was missing, and he had an extra set of thumbs on his front paws. David thought he was perfect from the moment he laid eyes on him and decided in all but thirty seconds that that cat was sleeping under his roof that night. 

A wide, tomcat face stares up at him. TC blinks, wiry whiskers twitching in response. David scritches him behind the ears, traces the ticked lines in his fur down the back of his neck, even cracking a smile when TC preens into the touch. He trills. “That’s so true,” David says out loud, sniffling between words. “Let’s get you some food.” 

__ 

David’s shower that night is long and hot. He lets water pelt his back, lowers his head to continue soaking his dark hair long after it’s been washed. He stays in until his skin is pruning, and the bathroom is visibly thick with steam. The water is beginning to run cold anyway.  

When he gets out his body is pink and raw to the touch. It blooms white where his fingertips press into it, reminding him that he’s still got blood running through the capillaries in his skin – that he’s alive and that tonight wasn’t a Melatonin-induced nightmare. 

Once he’s dressed, he makes his way back out into the living room. He stares at his leather jacket for a moment, laid out on the floor like a corpse, before picking it up and reaching inside the right pocket. His fingertips immediately feel dirty again as they grasp the lined journal paper. 

He’s not sure why he’s surprised he doesn’t recognize Logan’s number. It wouldn’t make sense for him to. He knew Logan’s landline by heart, remembers late nights dialing it with dreamy anticipation, but that’s long since been disconnected.  

He does recognize the messy script though, hardly changed since the last time he saw it. There’s a box somewhere at the top of his closet, pushed toward the back of the shelf, with cards and letters written with a matching scrawl. Maybe it’s gotten a little neater. More patient, but still a doctor’s hand. 

He should tear the piece of paper into little bits and scatter them to the wind. He should take a lighter and watch it crisp and curl with flame. He should hold it under his running sink then watch as the name and number blur and melt away into the water. 

Instead, in spite of himself, he pins it to the fridge with a magnet. 

David tries to go about his night like something hasn’t shifted. He paces his living room for a bit, restless but typically so. He turns on the TV and maneuvers between shows looking for something that will keep his attention for more than a minute. Even the ostentatious needs of rich couples on House Hunters: International doesn’t keep him engaged. He tries to eat his ice cream but only gets one bite in before he decides it’s too sweet. His fingers won’t still. They pick at his cuticles until his nail beds are bleeding. A bad habit. 

He goes through the rolodex in his brain of people he could call, then who would understand, and the list comes back blank. Ash, his closest friend from the bar, doesn’t know the specifics of everything. The only people outside of himself that know what happened are the cops who interviewed him, Logan, and the people from the Jigsaw support group he went to a few times.  

He could call Mallick. They were never best friends but out of everyone he met at those cultish group therapy sessions he’s the only one he’d kept up with afterwards. Though, he looks a bit like he’s going to pass out every time they talk details. Even then, he doesn’t know about Logan. 

He can feel the number staring at him from the fridge. It’s a scab that can’t stand not being picked. David can’t stand not picking it. 

David goes out onto the fire escape and chain smokes his recent purchase until it's too late to justify being awake. Before he finally crawls into bed, he turns his bathroom light on like a terrified child would to ward off a boogeyman.

Chapter Text

June 2003  

There was a point in his life, David remembers, that summer felt freeing. It felt like warmth radiating off the exposed skin of his scrawny limbs. It felt like plunging into crystal green pools and dripping dry on the way to get shaved ice from down the street. It felt like independence, an escape from dreary winters and rainy spring days locked indoors. 

Summer doesn’t hold that same feeling anymore. Now the warmth that used to soak into his body, making his skin break pink, is an oppressive heat that radiates from the pavement long after the sun's gone down. Summer nights feel good when you’re a teenager sneaking out of the house once your mom is down for the count after her usual combination of sleeping pills and alcohol. Once that’s gone summer is just too fucking hot. 

Tonight is too fucking hot, but David stands outside with a leather jacket wrapped around his shoulders anyway. He can feel sweat bead at the back of his neck, dripping from his hairline, but his safety net stays on. The deep pockets serve as a home for his CD player which currently spins Placebo’s “Without You I’m Nothing” into his ears for the third time tonight. 

“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” he murmurs, an unlit Marlboro 27 tucked between his lips. His thumb flicks down repeatedly on the ignition wheel of his favorite lighter, sparking but offering no flame. He throws up a silent prayer and tries a few more times, raising his unoccupied hand like there’s any wind to interfere. Still, no dice. 

The resigned sigh he lets pass through his pursed lips is heavier with more than just the weight of his unlit cigarette. His head falls back onto the concrete pillar he’s leaning against, an eye-sore of brutalist architecture framing the staff entrance to Angel of Mercy Hospital. It feels cool against the back of his skull.  

It’s just a couple of minutes past 4:00 AM on a weeknight, meaning the floors are only half-staffed and David’s break started an hour later than it should’ve due to the fact that he was the only one available to clean up the aftermath of a severed radial artery.  

He wasn’t privy to the details, but he overheard two nurses talking about a freak kitchen accident and shards of metal in the wound. By the time they were done in there, the bed sheets looked tie-dyed, a striking contrast of red splattered generously against off-white. 

David’s an orderly or, as he likes to call it, a glorified janitor. The work itself isn’t very difficult, just unpleasant for those who don’t come face-to-face with death often. His primary job is getting the empty rooms ready for the next crisis. It’s stuff he gets to keep his headphones on for: turning down sheets soaked in various bodily fluids, mopping the operating room post-surgery, and restocking supplies. It’s messier work than he ever saw himself doing, but he can’t say for certain he’d ever seen himself doing anything. 

He occasionally interacts with patients, helping them in and out of bed or moving them through the hospital, but his abysmal bedside manner hasn’t improved with experience.  

It’s ironic to say he wanted to get some fresh air after the ordeal, knowing damn well he was going to pop a cigarette into his mouth the second he stepped foot outside, but the air out here is anything but fresh. It’s an unusually humid 85 degrees, tolerable but irritating where his clothes meet his skin. It smells like the city, like garbage steeped in gasoline. Breathing in cigarette smoke is a reprieve. 

David reluctantly plucks the unlit cigarette from his mouth and tucks it, along with the empty lighter, into his scrubs pocket. He’s used to self-sabotage, a victim of his own negligence far too often, but forgetting to store an extra lighter or even a box of matches in his employee locker feels like a betrayal. 

He weighs his options– which are minimal and require vastly different levels of effort. He could quell the monstrous case of irritability bound to hit him around 5:00 AM by popping over to one of the million corner stores the city has to offer, but he’s pinching pennies and the knowledge that he has a four-pack of lighters on his kitchen counter qualifies buying another as an unnecessary purchase. 

The other option is finding himself a corner table in the hospital’s cafeteria and treating himself to a lukewarm, but complimentary, soup du jour. Maybe he’ll discover that the hospital’s chicken noodle has been the cure for all his ails this whole time.  

The hospital’s staff door, metal-framed and heavy, is pushed open behind David. His previously downcast, unfocused eyes flick up to glance over his shoulder. A blur of navy blue scrubs exits the building, pausing to stand at the edge of David’s peripheral. He looks just long enough to confirm the shape of a broad man and sends out a hopeful thought to the universe that it isn’t anyone from oncology. 

“Hey, dude, do you have a lighter?” David asks. He turns to face the figure, moving one of his headphone’s ear cups off the ear closest to them.

He curses the universe, because the Powers That Be should’ve known not to send him the cute guy from radiology either. He didn’t even think he had to ask. 

“Mine, uh Fuck- “...won’t light.” 

David doesn’t know much about Logan Nelson outside of work. Now that he thinks about it, he doesn’t know much about him when at work either. He does know that Logan works as an X-ray technician during the day shift as part of his residency program. They typically only cross paths when David is heading home for the night, or the morning depending on how you look at it, exchanging simple “hellos” and “goodbyes” in passing but never engaging in meaningful conversation. 

One time, Logan asked David if he knew whether the creamer in the staff fridge was communal or not. He did not, and the conversation ceased there. Another time, Logan held the elevator doors open for him as they started closing despite David being an inconveniently far distance down the hall which led to several awkward seconds of speed walking and a breathy ‘thanks’. 

Every interaction they’ve had has been so inconsequential, Logan has probably immediately forgotten each one. David, however, has the closest thing to a crush he’s had since high school and plays every moment with Logan back in his head, analyzing every split-second facial expression and beating himself up over his lack of charm. 

Logan is far outside of his type. David likes guys he meets in grimy bars with tongue piercings and patchwork tattoo sleeves. He likes bass players who pin him to graffitied bathroom stall doors and suck bruises into his neck. The guys who likes love-bombing him until they can’t accept that they’re just as gay as the guy they’ve been fucking for weeks. 

He doesn’t like clean-cut guys, guys who could be hired as firefighters on their looks alone, but something about Logan makes David’s palms clam up and his mouth go dry. He’s disarmingly handsome, a face that’s just too pretty to work in a real hospital. He belongs on a medical procedural, making middle American housewives everywhere fan themselves while folding laundry. 

It’s clear Logan is on his way out for the night. If David hadn’t said anything he probably would’ve skirted by with little acknowledgement thrown his way. David is used to blending into whatever wall he’s planted himself against. 

But now Logan looks at him, cocks his head a little like the interaction is unexpected but not unwelcome at all. His eyes are a little wider than usual and he does a quick glance back at the empty space behind him, making sure it’s him David is speaking to. 

“Oh! Not with me right now,” Logan answers after a beat, shrugging and shoving his hands into the pockets of his lightweight utility jacket. He offers up a smile though, tight-lipped but kind. “I’m sorry.” 

“Shit,” David curses. His frustration is directed more at the circumstance than at Logan, but he crosses his arms in front of his chest anyway. “Thanks anyway, man.” 

David turns back around, letting the weight of his body pull him back into the pillar with a disappointed sigh. His feet, which he’s been standing on since midnight, ache from hours on the floor. He thinks about plopping down onto the curb in front of him, painted red for emergency parking. He thinks about an ambulance swerving full speed into the parking lot and taking him out on its way to the loading bay. A guy can dream. 

David expects the conversation to be over there. Another interaction for him to lament over on his early hours bus ride home, berating himself over how he could have been cleverer in Logan’s presence.  

The sound of Logan fiddling with the keys in his pocket pulls David from thought. Logan is still there, only a bit forward now, lingering in the space beside him. He shifts his weight back and forth between his feet, tall body swaying like a thick-trunked tree threatened by the wind. One could make the argument that Logan looks nervous, but David’s too busy mentally untwisting the knot in his own stomach to make the argument himself. 

There’s a moment of silence, the only sound being the thrum of the nearly vacant highway running past the hospital before Logan asks, “Are you on break?” 

David can’t help but invent an excuse that Logan must only be engaging in small talk because he’s waiting for someone to pick him up. Maybe that ‘80s Chevy he’s seen Logan pull up to work in is out of commission for the night and he has a friend or girlfriend on the way to get him. Maybe David’s smoke spot is Logan’s agreed upon pick up spot and he’s just being polite despite the inconvenience of shared space.  

“Yeah, I am,” He eventually answers, his brain taking a moment to stir. “You’re heading home?” 

Logan nods, humming in affirmation. “To sleep like a baby.”  

“I didn’t even know you were working tonight,” David comments, an attempt at conversation that he’s sure sounds stunted. He hopes the miniscule grimace that passes over his face goes unnoticed. The last thing he wants is for Logan to think David is keeping tabs on him. It’s just rare that their shifts overlap like this and usually he would notice. Maybe the fact that he would’ve noticed is weird in itself. 

If Logan is made uncomfortable, he doesn’t say so. “Yeah! I was supposed to have today off but Angela’s son got the flu, and she asked me to cover. Hard to say no to her, y’know?” 

There’s a vague recollection of an Angela in the back of David’s mind but the names and faces of coworkers he doesn’t regularly interact with blur together. If he knows Angela, he certainly doesn’t know enough about her to agree with the sentiment. 

“Totally. She’s great,” he says anyway, because of course he does. He clears his throat of the white lie before continuing. “That’s really cool of you.” 

Logan’s head shakes, insistent. “Oh god, no. It’s nothing. Really, I’m being selfish. She bakes a mean banana bread and I'm just trying to get in her good graces.” 

David dips his chin down to laugh, huffing a breath of air. When he looks back up, Logan is grinning too. No, he’s gleaming at him. He’s a fucking dream boat and it wipes the smiles right off David’s face. He settles back against the pillar, pretending to fiddle with the wires connecting his headphones to his CD player. 

Logan draws his eyes up David, observing his closed off body language. David wonders what his read is, if Logan can guess his BPM from here. “Your shift going alright?” 

David chuckles, stifled and awkward. “Guess it’s alright if you don’t mind cleaning up literal shit.” 

Logan’s broad nose scrunches in response. “Well, sounds like you need that cigarette.” 

“Not in the cards I guess,” David sighs. He lets his backpack fall to his side, straps hanging on by a thread, so he can dig through it for his wallet. He thinks if he takes a right up at the end of Sheppard Street there should be a gas station before he hits the corner of- 

“Would you want to get coffee with me?” 

David’s head snaps up at the surprising invitation, unsure that he’s heard Logan correctly. The question comes so suddenly, with the force of someone who’d been building the courage to ask it. His face warms at the thought. 

They stare at each other, the offer still ringing out unanswered in the space around them.  

Logan clears his throat. “I don’t know how long your break is, but there’s this diner like two blocks over. Sometimes I have another job after this one that goes pretty late so it’s a good 24/7 go-to for me. It’s nothing fancy but they have a good drip, and they make a mean scramble. I’ll pay,” he tacks on.  

There's a slight southern twang to his voice that peeks out between his words. Every time David tries to place it, the lilt disappears, neutralizing into a middle-of-the-road American accent. 

David cocks his head, looking Logan up and down in a similar manner to how he was observed earlier. Logan’s posture shrinks, bashful under observation. David breathes in. “Okay.” 

Logan straightens, piqued by the response, “Yeah?” 

David pushes himself off the concrete pillar. “Fuck it. Why not?” He’s positive he doesn’t have time in his break for a full sit-down meal, but it’s a slow night and so what if he clocks back in a little late? He’ll make something up. He’s good with pulling excuses out of his ass. “Lead the way, Nelson.” 

Logan’s lashes flutter, his jaw shifting with a smirk. “I didn’t know you knew my last name.” 

David opens the flaps of his jacket, arms stretching out toward the night. “Aren’t I just full of surprises?” 

__   

David’s not very familiar with the area of town they work in, nicer than where his own apartment is but far on the other side of the city from the places his type typically hangs. He doesn’t know where they’re going, but he follows Logan’s stride, hands tucked in the pockets of his jacket, thumb running over the smooth surface of his CD player as some kind of grounding technique. 

David’s always been someone who’d rather sit in uncomfortable silence than awkwardly scramble for topics of conversation to fill the void, but he finds himself with too many words caught in his throat and an anxiety-riddled brain that won’t let them leave. He feels a little sick with the expectation of the moment, like he’s on the verge of losing a game he’s sunk hours of time into.  

There should be a manual for this, he thinks, talking to men like Logan. Maybe there was this whole time, but it was reserved for straight girls and only found between Cosmopolitan magazine articles and taught at sleepovers. 

Logan doesn’t seem to mind filling the silence one bit. He talks about his shift, how the night went and what work drama he got caught in the outskirts of today, leaving spaces between sentences in case David feels up to jumping in. He doesn’t really, not beyond the occasional hum of acknowledgement or nod of his head, but it’s something David notes and feels comforted by.  

“What were you listening to?” Logan asks, slowing down to keep pace despite the length of his legs which carry him twice the distance David’s do. 

He knew Logan was tall, but he hadn’t stood beside him for long enough to really notice how much taller he actually was. He must stand a few inches over six feet and here David is barely scratching five-foot-eight. 

“Placebo,” David stops biting the skin off his chapped lips to answer. Logan’s head tilts, eyes blinking at him with no recognition. “They’re a band. I take it you don’t know them?” 

Logan shakes his head. “Not big into music.”  

The rubber of David’s shoes skirt against the concrete as he stops suddenly. Logan follows, almost tripping over his own feet. 

“You just like... don’t listen to music?” 

Logan’s hands come up in protest. “No, no, I do! I listen to it and like it! Mainly what’s on the radio, though. I guess I’m just not well-versed,” he insists, almost panicked by the thought that David would be so disinterested in his music opinions that he’d turn right back around and head back to the hospital. “I’d love to be exposed to more stuff. I’ll check them out!” 

David eyes him. To be fair, he hadn’t expected Logan to have a particularly eclectic music taste. He is a tad preppy, after all, in a way that David is surprised to find a little endearing. He settles on “You do that” and continues walking. 

The diner Logan eventually leads him to is classic Americana. David looks in through the big front windows facing the street to see checkerboard floors and distinct cherry red vinyl booths. It’s mostly empty save for a few late night diners, sparsely scattered around the restaurant. There’s a neon sign above the awning, flickering and faded with age but still legible in the dark. Deb’s All-Day Diner.  

As they approach the front door, Logan quickly skirts past David to hold it open. David pauses in the entryway, taking a moment to narrow his eyes in curious observance of the gesture.  

Logan nods, polite as can be. “I know you can get it yourself. It’s just what I do,” he says before David can even tease him for it, like he’s read the shorter man’s mind. 

“There he is!” A raspy but feminine voice, thick with a Jersey accent, rings out from behind the bar top upon their entrance. “Man of the hour.” The woman is older with a well-kept bouffant of bright auburn hair that almost matches the diner's accents as well as her lipstick. 

“Morning Debbie,” Logan tosses out with a noticeable air of confidence. Without even stopping to take in their options for open seats he bee lines straight for a window booth like he owns it, tucked a little out of the way from the pair of truckers eating pie at the counter and the group of businessmen seemingly at a pre-work breakfast meeting. 

David follows, lifting a shy hand to wave “hello” to the woman Logan’s greeted as Debbie. She smiles back but it’s pursed, a little inquisitive of Logan’s guest. It hits David that maybe this isn’t something Logan does often, asking their coworkers out for early morning coffee. He swallows and shimmies into the booth across from where Logan has planted himself. 

“The Debbie?” David asks a playful awe to his tone, glossy seats squeaking under him as he adjusts. “Of Deb’s All-Day Diner fame?” 

Logan nods. “The one and only.” he grins past David, eyes following Debbie as she rounds her way over to them, stopping by another table to top off their waters. “Brought a friend,” he says on her approach. 

Up close Debbie's age is a bit more apparent. Her kind eyes are framed by wrinkles, highlighted by powder blue eyeshadow. The drawn-on beauty mark accenting her mouth moves with the corner of her lip up into a smile. “What a treat for me. Two cuties sitting in my section. My lucky day.”  

David mutters a soft “thank you” when she slips a plastic-sheathed menu in front of him. The cover is weathered with age, making some of the text a bit hard to read, but the pictures of food dotted around the page are still bright and enticing enough that David’s stomach grumbles. The smell of pancakes on hot iron wafting from the kitchen pass can't be helping. 

“Can I get you the usual, doll?” she asks, pulling her server pad from the pocket of her half apron and clicking a blue pen with her painted fingers. 

“Oh, not tonight, Deb.” Logan clicks his tongue, lifting the menu up a bit to scan it briefly before passing it back her way. “I wouldn’t say no to a plate of hash browns, though.” 

Debbie tosses him a wink, scribbling his order down onto her notepad before tucking his menu under her arm. 

Logan looks across the table to David, the most eye-contact they’ve made all night, “Whatever you want is on me, by the way,” he insists, soft eyes warm enough to warrant David shucking his jacket off into the seat behind him. 

“Just a coffee’s fine,” David says to which Logan’s nose scrunches, a little disapproving. Logan makes so many little faces and gestures that David wonders about. “Really. Thanks though.” 

“Coffee for me as well,” he tacks on as Debbie is grabbing David’s menu from him, “With-” 

“A little cream. A little sugar,” Debbie finishes, like a mantra held close to her heart, and shoots a wink his way. “I’ll be back in a few.” 

Logan looks to him once they’re left alone. His expression is expectant but gently so, like he knows David’s mind is bustling with questions after the ten minutes tops they’ve spent in each other’s company. His eyes are green like David’s own, but less dingy, deep and rich like shifting velvet. A color that he imagines is only found in nature in the form of butterfly wings and Logan Nelson’s eyes. His smile is effortlessly kind, just a hint on his lips that changes his sharp stare into something amiable. 

David feels the intensity of it still and hopes the pink of his cheeks disappears behind the neon light emanating from the window and signs above the counter. “So,” he starts, braving conversation. “What is the usual?” 

Logan seems amused by the question. “Southwest Scramble. Eggs with onions, peppers, sausage, and a handful of cheddar cheese. Maybe a side of hashbrowns or a Coke if I'm feeling fancy.” 

“Is the accent a product of too many Southwest Scrambles?” David asks, prodding playfully. 

Logan lets out a brief but boisterous laugh from across the table. “You can still hear it?” he asks, genuine surprise in his tone.  

David nods enthusiastically, earning another laugh. He feels a sense of accomplishment with each one. 

“No, the accent is actually a product of living in Texas for the first 18 years of my life.” Now that he says it, it’s even clearer, faded but distinctly Texan in the melody of a soft twang and flattened vowels. 

“Did you move here by choice or against your will?” 

A tinge of disapproval must be evident on David’s face because Logan is quick to defend his home state. “Listen, I love Texas. My family is still there, and I try to visit as much as possible but, no, I chose to leave. I didn’t see myself in a rural town of a little under 3000 people for the rest of my life.” His shoulders rise in a shrug. “Everyone knew everyone there. I grew up wishing I could get even a fraction of anonymity. The second my sisters learned how to drive I was begging them to take me on weekend trips to San Antonio or Austin. Anywhere that I wasn’t ‘ the Nelson boy .’” 

“Shit, I can imagine why.” David blows a huff of air through his slightly parted lips. “I was born and raised in the awe-inspiring state of New Jersey. I’ve always lived in or near the city. I grew up in Paterson and I think my mom might still be there. I don’t know.” 

He can tell Logan wants to ask, wants to pick apart what exactly David means when he says he doesn’t know where his mom is, but sees him make the mental choice to put the thought away for later. David’s glad. He doesn’t feel like getting into it right now. After all, is it not just another sob story about a mother who never really wanted to be one? 

Debbie swings by their table to drop off their coffees, setting between them a container of sugar packets and a couple of french vanilla creamer singles. She gives a brief nod and flashes a polite smile, but doesn’t intrude on the conversation, quickly bustling over to a recently seated couple a few booths over.  

David almost wishes he had the reprieve, a second where he was sure Logan’s eyes weren’t on him. He’s never been anxious before about what someone would think about how he drinks a cup of coffee. He wonders if he’s doing it right, holding a mug correctly or sipping for long enough, like it’s his first day on planet Earth. He wonders if he should pick out a packet of white sugar or throw in a dash of cream just for the ritual of it all. 

Logan, seemingly much less concerned with how David feels about his choices, opens three creamer pods and dumps them into his coffee one after the other. A sugar packet follows. He stirs, sips, and adds one more for good measure. He doesn’t even have to drink Logan's coffee to know it’d coat his mouth in a sickeningly saccharine film.  

Sweet tooth , David thinks fondly, a little endeared to the opposing shades of brown contained in their mugs. 

“So,” Logan starts again, once his coffee is tweaked to his liking, “are you going to med school?” 

It’s a perfectly natural question. They do, after all, know each other from rushed interactions against a backdrop of medical chaos. Though, David can’t help but cringe at the question. It makes him feel like a kid being asked what he wants to do with his life, like there's the expectation of a certain response– the correct one. 

“Uh, no, I’m not.” David shakes his head, “I've never wanted to go back to school. I barely graduated high school, so...” 

Logan must sense David’s discomfort through the slouch of his shoulders and the tightness of his lips. “Sorry. That was a really presumptuous question.”  

David hums, shoulders shrugging off the question, “Easy assumption to make with the scrubs and all, but no, they don’t want a guy who can barely take care of himself to become a doctor,” he says, attempting to dissuade any concern Logan had about offending him. He knows most of the other orderlies at Angel of Mercy intend on furthering their career in the medical profession eventually, whether it be through medical school or promotion. He knows he has a habit of falling into jobs others use as ‘jumping off points’ but never taking any plunges himself. “It’s a weird job to fall into if you don’t want to do something adjacent to it.” 

Logan nods behind his mug, taking a long sip before asking, “If you don’t mind my curiosity, why do you work at the hospital?” 

David sucks in a breath. “It pays well, and I like working nights.” His nerve filled fingertips tap the side of his own cup. He watches the ripples in his dark coffee form from the vibrations, fanning out in circles before dissipating within a second. “Good people, I guess.” 

David comes up with around 20k a year after taxes and all he has to do is stomach some blood, get bossed around, and smoke a few cigarettes to make it through the night. If he digs deeper, lets himself explore the thought a little more, he knows there’s something about the proximity to success he enjoys. Sure, he’s not passionate about the work he does and truly finds it hard to believe anyone could be, but he’s surrounded by people who are passionate about what they do. You don’t go into a career with this much stress attached, with this much baggage to take home, if you aren’t. His coworkers are people who aspire for better, who set career goals, and being around that does make him feel a little less like he’s failing. 

It’s probably safe to assume that Logan isn’t here because it’s the best gig he could find, and David doesn’t doubt Logan would think of his motivations as alarmingly selfish. David clears his throat. “What about you? Like, uh, what led you here?” 

Logan nods, accepting the answer despite its brevity and accepting that David’s bandwidth for answering particular questions is slim. “I did med school twice, actually. I didn’t finish the first time because I, uhm, went overseas.” 

The words ‘overseas’ leave his mouth in a sort of hushed murmur, remnants of shame falling onto the table with it. It takes David a moment for his brain to work out what Logan means but suddenly the clean-cut look and biceps stretching against the fabric of his scrub sleeves make a little more sense.  

He can’t help his gut reaction, leaning back into his seat to put as much physical distance between them as possible. His expression twists, mouth souring and brows furrowing into distinct disapproval. David can’t lie and say he’s a fan of this new information.  

Logan doesn’t look surprised. Understanding, if anything. “I know. I see the face. I was a field medic for the army. I didn’t go to fight or because I thought it was a good cause I just-” He cuts his explanation short, thinking about it a tad longer before some regrettable excuse tumbles from his lips unplanned. “I was younger when I made that decision. I don’t think I even fully grasped what I was signing up for. Y’know at that age how you’re just so desperate to prove yourself to anyone and anything? I just wanted structure, and I got that, but I also got some really fucked up stories to go with it.” 

Logan looks down at his hands, clasped around one another on the table in front of him. They wring each other out, squeezing hard like they’re going to tug all the memories out through each palm. “I was honorably discharged after a pretty harrowing experience.” Logan sucks in a breath, in an attempt to steady himself. “The thing about being a field medic is that you’re right in the middle of the worst of it and well... shit happens” 

David’s eyes flicker between Logan’s hands and sullen, downturned eyes. For the first time he notices the little knicks scarring Logan’s knuckles, the healed over cuts on his fingers, littering the skin like little specks from another life. He sits forward in the booth once more, wrapping his hands around his still warm mug and leaning over the table a bit. “Military guy from Texas. Kind of a walking red flag, no?” David jokes, clearly tongue-in-cheek.  

His spine tingles when Logan glances back up at him, eyes bright and thankful for David’s teasing, his unseriousness cutting through the memory. “Yeah, well, they didn’t want me anyway,” he whispers, like it’s a secret, but his words stay lighthearted. “Don’t ask, don’t tell, y’know?” 

“Oh,” David does know, personally, “Yeah?” he asks, trying not to let hope be the underlying emotion. 

Logan nods, and that’s certainly a revelation, because prior to this David was so impossibly sure that the man he was sitting across from and having coffee with was straight. 

Before he can get his brain back up and running to ask any follow-up questions he may have, Debbie approaches with a plate of hash browns fresh off the grill, and gently places them down in front of Logan. “Can I get you boys anything else? Refills on your coffee? You sure you don’t want anything, babe?” She aims the last question in David’s direction. He shakes his head. 

“No, Deb, I think we’re all good out here,” Logan answers verbally on his behalf.  

As Debbie walks away to tend to her other customers, Logan reaches down to the end of their table where the condiments sit and picks out ketchup, a bottle of Tabasco, and a shaker of pepper. “But, uh, once I got home from the war I took a long, good look at what I wanted to do with my life,” he starts once again, finishing his answer to David’s question while he loads up his shredded potatoes with the works. “I still don’t fully know yet, but I'm giving myself options. I’m doing a combined residency in diagnostic radiology and pathology. I’ll figure it out in time.” 

David takes a sip of his coffee, letting the bitterness sit on his tongue for a moment before swallowing. “And you don’t feel like you’re failing because you don't have it figured out?” 

Logan’s head tilts. “Should I?” he asks, devoid of genuine worry. He mixes his hash browns together with his fork before pointing the end of it at David. “Have you figured it out?” 

David’s eyes widen on an exhale. “Guess not. When I think about what I want to do I think about making enough money to get through the week. I’d love to just keep my head down and do something that doesn’t break my body and spirit.” 

“There’s nothing you’re passionate about?” Logan asks between bites. 

David shrugs, short and sheepish. “Plenty, but in terms of work I don’t have a ton of wiggle room. The stuff that interests me isn’t going to pay my rent.” And the stuff that pays his rent has him scrubbing his hands under boiling water to get the feeling of brain matter off. “Nobody is living to work. We work to live. That’s the bitch of life.” 

David hates to be so vocally apathetic. His humor is typically self-degrading and rather bleak, but he can tell it makes Logan uncomfortable. If not uncomfortable, it makes him a little sad. David is oh so aware that he doesn’t want to make Logan sad. The thought of disappointing him with anything he might say is already so heavy. Sometimes he just thinks he’s doomed to disappoint. 

Logan seems to ponder David’s words, brows tugging together into little microexpressions of concern. It almost looks like he’s crunching numbers, pulling apart and piecing David together in his mind. “How old are you?” he finally asks. 

“26 in November. You?” 

“30 in August” Logan replies like he’s proven a point that should be so obvious, “Sounds like we have ample time to figure stuff out. It’ll all fall into place.” 

David scoffs. “What like fate? You believe in that stuff?” He doesn’t mean to be judgmental, but it’s a far-fetched concept at best. 

Logan laughs, taking the challenge in stride. “Well, not really fate. I believe that if you really want something and you’re willing to put the effort in to get it, then it’ll find you one way or another.” His fork clinks against his plate as he sets it down. “I believe that we make choices, and I believe that those choices dictate where we end up. The things that go around will come back around eventually.” 

“So, Karma?” 

Logan squints, considering for a moment. “Something like that” 

David is more willing to believe that while individual choices can influence immediate results, there isn’t some big, cosmic entity ensuring that people get what’s coming to them. No one’s keeping score. If there was a guaranteed punishment for shitbag behavior there’d be a lot less shitbags. 

“Do you believe in god?” David asks between nibbles at the inside of his cheek. 

He’s surprised that Logan chuckles, almost choking on his hashbrowns in the process, like there's some big inside joke here that David doesn’t even realize he’s contributing to. “I believe in coffee and 4 AM breakfasts,” he jests, clearing his throat a bit before taking in a big breath and letting it out as a loaded sigh. “No, I don’t believe in god. I used to. I can’t anymore.” 

David won’t push for details. If something has really happened that stripped Logan of a belief as big as religion, well, that’s none of his business. Yet. 

“I don’t suppose you’re religious?” Logan adds, less of a question and more of a statement based on their conversation thus far. 

David shakes his head vehemently, a dramatic back and forth. “Aren’t these second date questions?” 

“I didn’t ask you on a date yet.” 

David’s shoulders stiffen. “Yet?” 

Logan nods, glancing intensely from behind the brim of his coffee mug as he raises it to his lips, letting David sit briefly with the thought. “Yeah. You’ll know when I'm doing that.” 

His mouth goes dry, tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth like he’s swallowed all the maple liquid in one of the diner’s syrup pitchers. He can’t help but glance over his shoulders, look over at the bar, take an account of everyone in the room and make note of how far away they are from the conversation, assessing the possibility that they’d heard the flirty exchange. David’s bold with his queerness but there are still places he restricts it to, and he doesn’t know how friendly the clientele at Deb’s diner is yet. 

“Right, well um- My mom is Jewish so by extension I guess that makes me technically Jewish too, but I’m also technically her son and that isn’t very apparent these days,” he says once he can finally pull himself together. “The major tenants I live my life by are keeping my head down and minding my business.” 

Logan clicks his tongue. “Miss a lot with your head down.” 

“I catch what counts,” David assures him, gesturing to Logan with his nearly empty mug, and offering a warm smile in exchange for all the warm smiles thrown his way throughout the night. “Sometimes it catches me;” 

It’s 15 minutes past when David was supposed to be back at work by the time they notice they should get going, but they’re still slow to part. Logan apologizes for keeping him so long over, but David can’t say he’s bothered. It was a special occasion after all. It’s not often that he welcomes company. 

Logan covers the cost of David’s coffee despite his insistence that he has enough change and orders him one to-go too. David doesn’t turn it down, knowing the caffeine will quell his need for a nicotine fix ‘til his shift ends. They walk back to the hospital staff entrance together, side by side, appreciating how a breeze that’s kicked up while they were in the diner has shifted the outside air from dense and muggy to pleasantly warm. The slivers of sky above them, visible beyond the tall buildings lining the street, have lost their stars and are in the midst of turning a hazy purple to mark the beginning of dawn. 

“Should we make a habit of this?” Logan asks, shifting his balance on the pavement to purposefully nudge David’s shoulder with his own. 

“What? Making me late to work?” 

Logan laughs, too loud, the kind of laugh you reserve for the funniest thing you’ve heard all day and David’s pretty sure this wasn’t that. Still, he feels the recognition in his gut, like a burning furnace. He smiles, a bashful, lopsided grin and nudges Logan back. “I would really like that. Yeah.” 

When Logan drops him off, David lingers by the door to watch Logan load into his faded green Chevy. One of the parking lot’s street lamps illuminates the area around him, almost perfectly centering him in its orangish glow. He tosses a two-finger salute in his direction before shutting the truck door behind him. When he finally pulls out of the parking lot, he turns north onto the main road.

David can’t shake the feeling that something very important has just happened to him.

Chapter Text

2023  

Saturday morning isn’t any kinder to David. He hits snooze on his alarm three times before the need to piss and a cat pressing needy paws into his legs finally pulls him from bed at 11:00 AM. 

From the moment he wakes there’s an inescapable heaviness weighing him down with each step. He’s certain that if you cut him open you’d find nothing but pounds of coarse sand pouring out from the body cavity. No pumping organs or sinew-covered bone to keep his body from collapsing in on itself. 

David wishes he could easily convince himself that last night’s run in with the past was nothing but a nightmare, but there’s a pint of ice cream in his freezer and a piece of paper on his fridge with a number written out in a quick scrawl waiting for him when he drags his stiff body into the kitchen to feed TC. The number carries no name with it but doesn’t need to. If he lost the little paper scrap in the mess of his apartment only to find it decades later, he’d know exactly who it belonged to. 

He tries to keep his mind off Logan during the day, busying himself with all the tasks that have been accumulating on his personal to-do list for weeks. He strips his bed and picks up the clothes haphazardly thrown on his bedroom floor to do a load of laundry.  

He finally goes through the box of old t-shirts kept at the back of his closet and decides which to keep. He throws more out for donations than he maybe would have on a different day, but the past is a bit of a sore subject right now. 20-year-old concert tees with split seams and faded logos feel a lot less significant when he remembers Logan took home a matching one. 

He organizes his records alphabetically, then by color, then by genre, before eventually settling on alphabetical again. 

He takes breaks, if you could count chain-smoking on the fire escape between tasks as a break. TC sits beside him, blissfully unaware of the crisis David’s been thrown into but happy that he gets to roll around and bare his belly to the sun whenever it peaks out through puffy winter clouds. David stays outside until his nose is cold, and his cigarettes are so low they burn his fingertips.  

Just sitting doesn’t feel good. He watches dust particles float around his apartment, catching the light as they drift through space. They make him feel so stagnant in comparison. Like still pond water, murky and foul. 

The onset of evening doesn’t make him feel any better and when he thinks about shedding his house clothes to put on a button-up for work, he wants to slip and fall on the way down his stairs. He calls in, making up an excuse about a nasty head cold going around and needing to take the night off to rest.  

He feels leeched, like the pulpy remains of a citrus squeezed for everything it has. Logically nothing has really changed, but it all feels so glaringly different. The walls of his apartment feel different– tainted after seeing a version of him they had not previously known. His skin feels wrong, like if he tore it off he’d find it was just a costume all along and inside this 46-year-old man lives a 26-year-old boy. He’s scrawnier, paler, and so guarded even though that rancor doesn’t protect him when it matters. 

Everything in his present life had been untouched by what happened to him, untouched by Logan, and he worked hard to make that a reality. Now, the illusion falls, and David realizes just how present Logan has always been. He’s in every album that David sorts through with shaky hands, in every shirt he shoves into a garbage bag to be dropped off at a thrift store, and in every cigarette butt flattened into his ashtray. 

It makes him itch deep under his skin, persistent and unreachable. Scratching the surface isn’t enough. It isn’t dermal. It’s wriggling around inside his muscles. 

His phone buzzes around 8:00 PM. The screen lights up to reveal a message from Jonah, one of the last people he’s in the mood to hear from right now.  

‘me and the guys are gonna stop by charlie’s after work. let me know which way i'm headed afterwards’ 

His eye roll is involuntary. 

David does like Jonah. He likes him in the way you’re supposed to like guys who take you out for drinks and kiss you stupid afterwards. Jonah is charming and gregarious in a way David has never known how to be. He’s the kind of guy who walks into a bar not knowing a single person there and comes out with at least three numbers and a life-long friend. He’s objectively gorgeous, with tattooed olive skin and a well-kept anchor beard framing his sharp jaw and pointed features.  

He’s also 12 years David’s junior, which does bother him to an extent. Some may not see it as that significant of an age gap, but David feels the disparity when they’re together. It was fun at first, being the older man who caught the interest of some bachelor in his prime. This thing between them has been off and on for nearly two years, but there’s a reason it hasn’t gone anywhere meaningful. 

Jonah has a bit of an ego. He makes it no secret that he thinks David’s life is a little sad, treating him like something he can lead toward a more successful future. Jonah’s a tech guy, making decent enough money that if David truly wanted to settle down, it’d be a little idiotic to not consider a life of house husbandry. Jonah’s offered that, to pull some strings to find a place for David in the startup that he works for which he would be terribly underqualified for regardless. 

“You shouldn’t be so worried about money at your age.” He’d told him once while they were lying in bed skin to skin, passing a joint back and forth while Jonah's thin fingers twirled at the ends of David’s dark curls. “You shouldn't want to work at a secondhand store for the rest of your life.” 

It’s hard not to find the superiority off-putting, especially considering the fact that David’s been smoking since Jonah was born.  

So, David keeps him at a distance. Every time Jonah pushes forward, David takes a step back. Every time Jonah suggests exclusivity or some kind of definitive next step to their relationship, David pumps the brakes, keeping things casual. 

Everything's been casual since Logan. Several of his flings over the last 18 years have had the potential to turn into something more, something healthy and substantial, and at least a couple of them probably could have really worked out for him long-term.  

He’s passed on some great guys. Guys with steady incomes who were nice to him. Guys who never asked for anything in return but for David to offer a fraction of the affection they were giving him. 

Whatever he and Jonah have, David’s pretty sure it’s on the way out. He doesn’t bother texting back. 

David sleeps through Sunday morning and the afternoon goes by too fast to talk himself out of work again. It’s for the best that he goes. Missing out on a weekend’s worth of tips would be less than ideal once bills start rolling in, even if the lord’s day isn’t particularly busy. 

He works his shift on autopilot, body and brain in communication with one another to keep everything business as usual while his actual consciousness rummages around in the back of his mind– through the anxieties and the what-ifs, latching onto every counterproductive thought. 

His run-in with Logan was one in a million at the very least, a single, uneventful grocery store encounter. Had it been anyone else, David would have left the conversation with peace of mind that the likelihood of running into them again was slim to none.  

It was Logan though, and he left the door wide open behind him with the opportunity for David to invite him back in. 

Why doesn’t he want to slam it shut? Why is his own foot keeping the door propped open? 

A part of him can’t shake the feeling that Logan’s here now, about to walk through the heavy double doors any second, and David’s going to have to serve him with a poker face and trembling hands. 

He doesn’t, of course. Not only does he not know where David works, but despite everything David doesn’t think Logan would attempt to run into David on purpose. Still, his eyes flit toward the door every time it opens. It’s always just another group of young adults, here for a good time and completely unaware that the bartender is falling apart. 

David’s between orders, grabbing glasses for a flight of draft beers with one hand while he pours a round of Fireball shots with the other. He sets the pints down with too much force, glass clanking loudly against the epoxy bar top, and passes off the shots without so much as a glance of acknowledgement toward the group of girls who ordered them. Everything is done with a little bit of an edge, every greeting laced with dilute venom as his internal thoughts leak through passive-aggressive actions. 

He sees Ash approach him out of the corner of his eye and knows the interrogation is coming before it even begins. His thoughts fizzle out like the foam heads on the pints he pours. 

“Are you planning on paying for those glasses if you break them?” she asks, leaning forward on the counter to catch a glimpse at the severity of David’s pout. When he doesn’t answer right away, she reaches over with a towel to wipe spilled beer off the counter in front of him, pushing further into his space. 

He’s known Ash for as long as he’s worked part-time at the bar, but most people would guess they’ve got decades of friendship under their belt, closer to siblings than friends. David is used to throwing up walls every time he senses someone easing their way into his life, quick to shut down the option for closeness. Ash just walked in, didn’t even bother knocking.  

She’s younger than him, like most of the people he works with, but only by five years. Which puts them relatively on the same wavelength. She started at Charlie’s long before David did, becoming something of a daughter to the owner and quickly finding herself with co-owner responsibilities. 

David knows bartending is something he does just to make ends meet, but Ash is built for it in a way he isn’t. She could probably take ten orders at a time, making them all in under three minutes without breaking a sweat or forgetting a single detail. David maintains she should have gone on to do bartending competitively or become one of those celebrity chef drink slingers who do crazy tricks with $100 bottles of vodka. 

She would never. She has two kids to raise, a 6 and a 10-year-old who think the world of her and who she provides the world for. Besides, she’s too much of a people person to give up working behind a bar. 

She’s got a face that you trust, rounded with no harsh edges. You’d barely know she had just entered her 40s if not for the soft crinkles adorning her skin. A few wispy grays grow into her dyed hair, but it looks natural- no harsh break where her color ends. Her reddish-brown bangs part like curtains on her forehead, too short to be swept into the small ponytail at the back of her head.  

Her eyes are kind but sharp, forgiving for everyone but David, who she knows too well to let his hissy fit go unnoticed. 

She waits for him to say something, patient enough to stand there all night if she has to. 

David passes off the flight of beers before looking toward her with a put-on smile, too tight to pass as authentic. “Yeah, yeah. Sorry. I’ll be more careful.” 

Ash slings her towel over her shoulder, immediately putting on the same tone he’s heard her use with her kids. “You doing okay?” she asks as she reaches out a tattooed arm to squeeze David’s bicep. “You get into a tiff with room temp. Guinness guy again?” 

David shakes his head but does a quick glance around just to make sure that guy isn’t anywhere near the bar. The last thing he wants to deal with is a regular looking for an argument. “No. No tiffs.” He straightens out his shoulders on an exhale. “I’m cool.”  

“Cooool,” She repeats like it has no meaning, dragging the word out with little belief in its truth. “Mhmm.” 

David shrugs, turning back toward the bar to grab an order from a recently approached customer. He orders a Jack & Coke for himself and an extra dirty martini for the girl clinging desperately to his side. He tosses his card onto the bar, missing David’s outstretched hand entirely. Jack and choke , David thinks, as he runs the card and starts a tab. 

He reaches past Ash to grab a rocks glass and add ice. She’s clearly not satisfied enough with their brief conversation to leave him be, still planted beside him, staring up expectantly. He sighs as he grabs the Coke gun. “Is my disposition not sunny enough for you?”  

Ash grabs a cocktail shaker and a chilled martini glass, silently agreeing to help him with orders if she’s going to take the time to prod at him. “Mostly cloudy from where I'm standing.” 

He hums, deep and jaded. “Sorry. I forgot my cup of pep on the way in, and we don’t keep any behind the bar.”  

They put up their drinks at the same time. Ash waits for the couple to taste them and make their way back to their booth before grabbing David by his shirtsleeve and tugging him away from the bar, physically separating him from the ability to escape the conversation via customer. “Alright, lay it on me.” 

“Hey, I’m working!” he protests, but she moves to stand directly in front of him, keeping him face to face with her as he tries to step to the side. She’s shorter than him, but she has a serious stare that could make even the burliest of men feel smaller. “Seriously, I don’t-” 

“You don’t lie to me,” she interrupts before he can fumble a lame excuse again. “What’s wrong?” 

David stutters over a protest, but falters with the acceptance that there's no way he’s getting through tonight without running his thoughts by Ash anyway. He lowers his voice. “I ran into an ex-boyfriend the other day.” Ash knows a few of his exes, and he can see her eyes lift slightly as she runs numbers in her brain, placing bets on who it could be. He can guarantee she hasn’t heard of this one. “He wants to meet up.” 

“Meet up as in...” She trails off, brows waggling suggestively. “ meet up ?” 

David’s scoff coincides with an aggressive shake of his head. “No! God, no.” He’s having a conniption just thinking about meeting Logan for coffee. The last thing he wants on his mind is a reconciliation to that effect. "He just wants to talk, to catch up, I guess.” 

Ash puffs her bottom lip out, nodding in consideration. “Okay, well, you don’t sound very enthusiastic, so I assume things didn’t end on the greatest of terms.” 

“That puts it mildly. We were younger. I was about 28 when we broke up? 29?” He can’t help but laugh, short and sardonic. “He put me in a... reckless situation.” 

“A reckless situation? That’s vague.” Her stare narrows. “Like a Crash 1996 reckless situation?” 

David rolls his eyes at the reference, only momentarily letting his thoughts linger on a very handsome 90s James Spader. No, if he got off on being in a Jigsaw trap it would’ve made his life a lot easier. “The details are really messy-” 

“That’s not a no.” 

“He did something that hurt me. Physically and emotionally, I didn’t even find out he had a hand in it until like two years into our relationship. I broke up with him almost immediately and we haven't seen each other since.” He notes that Ash’s intrigue has soured into sympathy. “I ran into him on Friday night, unexpectedly, and he offered to meet up for coffee and talk about everything.” 

“David?” 

He nods. 

“Is this about the...” Her hands come up to her own face, miming the trail of matching scars at the corners of his mouth, faded from distance and time. 

He’d never told her why they were there, and she’d respected the unsaid boundary knowing well enough when to not push her luck with David’s leniency for her curiosity.  

She’d told him once that she worked as a florist in her early 20s, that there were certain flowers that you had to ease open for presentation, carefully ensuring they didn’t lose petals in the process. Other people had compared conversations with David to pulling teeth. Ash compared them to the gentle coaxing of a rose bud. 

One of his petals may fall to the floor, but he nods anyway. 

“Fuck that. No,” she immediately spits, firmly placing her hands on her hips. “Who does this guy think he is? Absolutely not-” 

“I’m considering it.” David squeezes his eyes shut for a moment, scared of the disappointment he’ll see cross her face. Ash is maybe the only person he trusts to tell him what he needs to hear. Sometimes it feels like she’s years wiser than he’ll ever be. 

He opens his eyes, dropping his gaze down to the floor between them, two pairs of clunky leather boots touching toes on a grimy bar floor. “I like to think that I’m a rational person, y’know? Most of the time I know which decisions are bad ideas, things I'm going to regret.” When he looks back up, Ash’s expression is tilted in lighthearted dissent, making him stop to smile and breathe before continuing. “Honestly, Ash, there are so many answers I never got from him– stuff that has driven me fucking crazy for years. He’s the only person who could give me closure.” 

Ash breaches the arms crossed over his chest to grab one of his hands and holds it softly in her own, giving it a little squeeze of comforting encouragement. She nods. 

He nods back, thankful for the touch. “It’s not like I want him back in my life or anything like that. I’m actually freaking out at the idea of him even knowing where I get groceries. But, now that the offer to figure out what the fuck he was thinking is out there, I can’t help but consider it.” 

Ash puffs up her cheeks and huffs, clearly understanding the weight of the situation and feeling it herself. The hand that isn’t holding David’s reaches up to push her wispy bangs out of her face. “I trust you. I wouldn’t leave you alone with my kids all the time if I didn’t,” she finally says after a moment “But you’re leaving out some pretty big details. This guy isn’t dangerous, is he?”  

The Logan that David remembers, the Logan he loved for two years, wasn’t dangerous. He remembers how gentle his touches were, how even the strongest kisses felt worshipful and soft. He tries to think about those same hands locking his skull into a chunk of metal and it doesn’t compute. His Logan was never dangerous, but did he ever really know Logan to begin with? 

David swallows. “No. I don’t think so,” he mutters softly before stating, with a bit more confidence. “What the fuck do I know though?” 

She doesn’t fully believe him, her lips twitching in doubt, but doesn’t argue. “Will it drive you crazy if you don’t go?” 

“Yeah.” David nods. “I think so.” 

“Well.” She drops his hand, finger coming up to poke him dead center in his chest. “You tell him you’ve got one mean bitch in your corner if he tries anything.” 

She leaves him with that, heading over to the other end of the bar to help a customer flagging her down for another drink. She immediately jumps into customer service Ash, toothy grins and flirty winks galore. 

__ 

David reaches into the fridge and cracks open a shitty pale ale when he gets home. He steps back, leaning his lower back against the edge of the kitchen counter. He brings the beer can up to his face and presses his cheek into the cold condensation, as he stares down the sliver of ripped paper on the front of his fridge door. 

Logan still crosses his 7’s. David has a pet peeve for people who cross their 7’s. He’s always said it’s pretentious, but he wonders how much of that disdain comes from the act just being something Logan did. He wonders how many other mundane nothings were ruined for him just by association. 

David read something once about the amount of people who climb Mount Everest knowing there's a 10% chance they won’t make it to the summit. There’s a one in ten chance that they’ll freeze to death on the way up or that the altitude will rip the breath right out of their lungs. 

They do it anyway, for whatever reason. For some it’s nonsensical spirituality that drives them, because they think it’s paramount to their journey to self-discovery. Some people are wealthy idiots willing to risk it all for recognition. 

For others, it’s just because the mountain is there and they just want to fucking say that they could. 

Typing Logan’s number into his phone feels a lot like tying on a pair of hiking boots. 

‘hey. it's david. how is wednesday?’ 

__ 

David picks the place.  

Really, Ash picks the place. 

Once he and Logan agreed upon Wednesday at noon, David had reached out to her for coffee shop suggestions. He’s more of a gas station kind of guy, stopping wherever coffee is the cheapest and comes in generic paper cups. It’s better to meet on neutral ground, somewhere Logan’s never been and David doesn’t frequent, just in case the meeting goes south. 

It’s your standard city coffee shop, replicating the same aesthetic as every other cafe around the corner. Weathered, exposed brick peeks out from behind limewashed walls, paired with industrial accents and stainless-steel espresso machines that hiss behind the counter.  

There are a couple of cozier looking seating areas, parallel brown pleather couches occupied by college students on their laptops, but David opts for a two-seater table tucked into the corner.  

It’s good that it’s busy. Good that there will always be someone just a couple steps away in case he needs an escape, but he’d rather not have anybody in immediate earshot. 

David strategically sits against the wall, eyes facing the door so he can watch for and steel himself when Logan comes in. He hooks his backpack over the top rail of the wooden chair and sinks into the seat, shimmying with slight discomfort. 

The tabletop is a mosaic of sharpie graffiti signatures and random stickers. He leans his forearms against the walnut surface, picking anxiously at a half-ripped decal advertising someone's photography business still clinging to the wood.  

This is the first time since their breakup that he is expecting to see Logan and despite what one may assume, their initial run-in isn’t making the lead up to this any easier. David feels a little like he’s lined Logan up for a shot before centering himself in the crosshairs, like he’s just waiting for the trigger to be pulled knowing full well what it’s going to do to him. It wouldn’t be the first time Logan left him bleeding. 

It’s only a couple minutes after their agreed meeting time when Logan shows up, a tad breathless from a hurried entrance. He never liked being late, if you could even consider anything under five minutes ‘late.’  

He pulls off his beanie, a hand coming up to immediately sweep his short, messy hair back into place as he looks around the shop. He’s almost frantic ‘til his eyes land on David, as if he was worried he had missed him or that he never came to begin with. 

Logan’s never been good at holding his emotions close to his chest, always carrying an open hand with his heart pinned proudly on the outside of his shirt sleeve. He physically relaxes when their gazes meet, chest heaving with relief. David knows it’s relief because he knows what a lot of Logan’s emotions look like, what they sound like, how his sighs feel when his head rests on Logan’s bare chest. 

Logan politely excuses himself past a couple of people congregating near the entrance, eyes trained on David the entire time. He feels too seen, like a spotlight has dropped from the ceiling just to illuminate the corner he’s tucked himself away into. David sinks back in his chair as the stage fright sets in, placing his palms flat on the table as he considers pushing himself into a standing position and running.  

He doesn’t, staying seated but on extremely high alert. He’s a stray cat being approached at the edge of a fenced yard. Logan’s hand may be held out in a gentle gesture of good nature and his scent may be familiar, but David is still skittish enough to dart through the slats at the first unexpected movement. 

Logan smiles, shrugging off his brown denim jacket and draping it around the back of his chair with every intention of getting comfortable across from David. There is a moment where neither of them says anything, both waiting for the other to make first contact.  

Eventually Logan speaks, pushing up the sleeves of his pine green, waffle knit sweater and reaching into the back pocket of his jeans for his wallet. “You haven’t ordered?”  

His glance tips down toward the empty table. The question has an obvious answer and a part of David, younger David who is more easily tempted into reaction, wants to sling some attitude his way.

He always feels a bit like he’s fighting his younger self. The sardonic punk he used to be trying to wrestle his way to the front despite how much personal work David has done to keep him a memory. It doesn’t help that the source of so much of his rage, of what ultimately made him distrust the world with such fervor, is standing before him. 

David crosses his arms and shakes his head. He feels like his saliva has turned into thick, black treacle, making his tongue slow to detach itself from the sticky roof of his mouth. 

Logan juts a thumb toward the espresso bar. "Iced Americano? Extra shot?” he asks, and it honestly takes David by surprise. 

“Uh, yeah.” He blinks, relaxing his hands so they rest gently on the table instead of stiffly plastered to its surface. “You remember.” He expects the statement to come out as a question but he finds himself simply stating a fact, like he’s commenting on the weather. 

Logan, almost bashful, brings one hand up to rub at the back of his neck. “You never really liked changing it up.” He laughs a little, clearly trying to break the tension. Hope glints in his eyes at the thought that it might be working. 

It’s true that David is a habitual person and that this aspect of him hasn’t faltered with age. He still appreciates consistency in his day-to-day life, maybe more now than when he and Logan were together. He likes having his ‘regular’ orders, not one for the risk of trying new things and ending up with something he doesn’t like. He wears his boots till the heels are tearing away from the soles, keeps his dresser stocked with identical black crew socks, and owns several pairs of the same dark denim jeans. He loves the formulaic monotony of monster-of-the-week television and low budget horror movies. 

It’s a quirk that isn’t all innocent. It’s responsible for the frustrating itch that sets in under his skin every time his plans undergo last-minute alterations. It contributes to the neurotic tendencies that must be woven into his DNA, parts of himself that passed down from his mother. Something slightly out of place or a task done in the wrong order can lead to ruminating on destructive thoughts. 

It feels like dangerous information for Logan to be privy to. 

“Yeah, well.” David works his jaw. “It’s been a while. I’ve changed a lot.” He wants Logan to feel the chill of his words. 

The older man doesn’t negate the claim, but his smile falters into something more wistful. He shrugs. “Has your coffee order?” 

David’s tongue runs across his bottom teeth. The spotlight beams down on his skin, bringing beads of sweat to the surface of his brow. He cracks a knuckle at the thought of being known too well. “Iced Americano,” he confirms, but holds a hand up to keep Logan in place. Correcting one aspect of his prediction, he says. “Half-caff.”  

Logan tosses David a two-finger salute before turning on his heels and heading toward the register. 

The lighting provided by the big windows lining the front of the shop is much softer than the harsh, cool light of the bodega where they first ran into each other. It wraps around Logan and diffuses the fuzzy edges of his shadows. His skin looks sun-kissed despite it being the middle of winter, like he’s been coated in a thin copper glaze and then kiln-fired. He was always warm to the touch, a human furnace giving off so much more than he took in. 

He stands in line patiently, green eyes gleaming with the window’s reflections as they wander everywhere but toward David. It’s clearly purposeful avoidance. David doesn’t know why, but he’s thankful for it. They haven’t even really talked yet and David has already had his fill of Logan’s incisive stare. It’s ironic that he can’t look anywhere else. 

He knows reopening this wound is among the heavy hitters for all-time worst ideas. He hasn’t forgotten how long it sat untreated, bleeding out and staining everything he touched. David had spent year after year adding layers of dirty bandages over the gash, dealing with the resulting infections. Eventually the pain subsided from a deep, sharp sting to a persistent, dull ache and he assumed that meant it didn’t bother him anymore. He hadn’t even realized how much of him was still covered in old, sticky blood. 

Logan oozes charm as he orders. Even from here, David can tell the girl behind the register is a little enamored. He was always a dream customer, well-mannered and prepared. A good tipper too. When they would go places together David would feel an ill sense of pride at the idea that he was the one who got to go home with Logan at the end of the day, that he was maybe inciting jealousy in someone who’d fallen in love with an engaging stranger in the span of their short interaction. 

The charm feels insidious now. An oil slick coating his true intentions, refracting pearlescent light to distract from his toxic viscosity and covering up Logan Nelson as he truly exists and not as David remembers him.. David knows it’s only a matter of time before the veneer cracks and he sees a glimpse of that version of his ex-boyfriend. 

Logan waits by the counter for their drinks to be ready, probably not wanting to come back to the table just for a few minutes of strange silence while they’re made. After he’s passed off the cups, he tosses a parting comment and bright smile back to the barista and heads toward their table. David quickly looks down to his hands, wringing themselves out in his lap. 

If Logan noticed the staring he doesn’t say anything, simply taking his seat across from David and scooting his chair in. “Okay, uh...” Despite one drink being iced and the other being hot, he still rotates the cups to find the scribbled-out indication for which drink is which. “This one’s yours, obviously. Sorry.” 

It isn’t the first indication that Logan is nervous, but it feels earnest in a way David can’t deny. He has the urge to console Logan, to offer himself up in little bits until Logan feels grounded, but even David can’t find his footing.  

He has to remind himself not to let his softer parts show–that this isn’t a matter of making Logan comfortable enough to open up about what he did. David is owed this. 

Still, as much as he wants to be a brick wall that all of Logan’s words bounce off of, he knows he has to give somewhere. 

“Sorry it took me a couple of days to reach out to you,” David says, taking his drink and slowly sliding it back toward himself. 

He isn’t sure if he really means it, but it feels like the civil thing to say and civil is how he’d like to keep things for now. 

Logan is quick to shake his head, a humble disapproval of the sentiment. “No, It’s okay. I understand. There was no expectation, of course, but I’m glad you said yes.” 

Logan takes a half sip of his coffee, jerking it away and sputtering slightly from how hot the drink still is. He’s clearly a little embarrassed, hand coming up to cover his mouth. 

David doesn’t want to smile, doesn’t want to show the vulnerability attached to it, but he can’t help but find the action amusing. It’s humanizing, but he ultimately knows it’s a carefully curated act. 

“Vanilla latte?” David tosses his own guess out, gesturing toward Logan’s drink. 

Logan smiles behind the lid, tongue darting out to swipe excess coffee from his lips. “Sugar-free vanilla latte but I’ll still give you the point.” 

Logan sets his cup down on the table, lacing his fingers easily around the circumference. Eventually, he clears his throat, inching forward on his seat slightly but not so much that David feels imposed upon. 

“There’s a lot to talk about,” he starts, wiggling the tension out his shoulders before he speaks again. David would say ‘a lot’ is an understatement. “The other day when we ran into each other I mentioned how I think about you a lot. It’s usually me wondering how you’re doing after all this time–where you’ve ended up and how you got there. That kind of stuff.” 

David knows that meeting in such a public location comes with the silent acknowledgement that they have to be vague about the specifics of their breakup, but he feels the weight of what they both know behind every single one of Logan’s words. “I told myself if I ever ran into you again, I’d ask you if you wanted to catch up, even if I was kind of setting myself up for the rejection.” 

David swallows. “Why?” 

He assumes, based on Logan’s quick succession of blinks and the curious tilt of his head, that he has no idea why David would even be asking that.  

“What? Because I-” Logan sucks the inside of his cheek between his teeth, recalibrating his words. “Cared about you. I know it didn’t feel like that in the end, and there’s no one to blame for that but me, but I never stopped wanting you to be happy.” 

David is a lone juror listening to someone’s testimony, trying desperately to read between the lines for an ounce of truth. 

“So.” Logan raises a hand, sweeping it between them to open the floor for David. “How are you?” 

He’s inclined to play this like a strategy game, like they’re on either end of a chess board. David needs to at least feel like he’s a couple moves ahead. He should keep his answers short, keep Logan at an arm's length, maybe a leg’s length- the length of multiple arms and legs stacked between them.  

His most prominent fear is that every word he utters is an invitation. He doesn’t want Logan under the impression that anything he says here gives him free rein in his life.  

“Things are fine. I can’t complain.” It’s already untruthful. There is a lot in his life he could complain about. He could earn an Olympic gold medal in complaining. David shrugs. “I work a lot. I manage a record store. It doesn’t exactly pay a livable wage, but you know I like music so... I've been bartending off and on for a couple years now to make up the rest.” 

He’s not sure whether he should take offense to Logan’s surprised guffaw or the amused tilt to his parted smile. “Whoa, David! That’s great!” 

David digs what little nails he has into the wood of the table and rips the corner of a sticker up. “Don’t patronize me,” he bites, nipping at the figurative hand Logan extends. 

Logan’s face twists in a moment of confusion before he realizes he’s offended, quick to put the conversation in reverse and course correct. “Oh, no. No, David, I mean it. Sorry if that came off as insincere. I just- like you said, you love music. I had always hoped you were doing something more... you. You know?” 

You don’t know me anymore, David thinks, grinding his right-side molars into each other. Don’t act like you know me.  

He doesn’t affirm or deny, just hums in acknowledgement before raising his iced coffee to his lips and letting the flavor of slightly burnt espresso wash over whatever bad taste he had on his tongue. 

He doesn’t want to linger on it even though Logan still looks like he’s done the conversational equivalent of hitting a deer. If he hit anything, it’d been roadkill for years now. 

 “What about you?” David asks mostly to politely keep things moving, but also because his curiosity has never been easier to satisfy. “Still... medical?”  

Logan nods. “Forensic pathology, yeah. Still in medical examination.” 

“Playing with dead bodies.” David punches down before he can catch himself, a poisonous sting that hits exactly where it’s intended based on how Logan winces. 

Sheepishly, he clears his throat. “Examining dead bodies. Objectively determining a cause of death,” he corrects, like it makes much of a difference. Now that David knows what Logan’s free time consisted of when they were together, his career choice feels like a black comedy. “I used to get really caught up in the investigative part of the job, getting people justice. These days, I just want to give them peace. It feels good to provide answers, give people comfort.” 

When they were together, David never saw the red flags spanning the walls behind Logan, unfurling when he stepped into a room. He never saw the stains Logan’s footprints left or how beneath every long-winded ramble about philosophical bullshit in the middle of the night, between their wrinkled sheets, there was always an ideology so much more sinister lurking just under the surface. 

“I’ve been in therapy,”  Logan adds, unprompted. “Something we’ve talked about is my inclination to heroize the work I do. Some people feel that peace and justice are inextricably linked. I’ve learned from experience that if you drive yourself crazy trying to find justice in everything then you'll never really know peace.”  

His eyes flicker down to his clasped hands. David remembers he used to bite his nails. The edges are now pristine. 

David blinks, thinking about all his attempts at counseling that have failed due to a number of factors, his failure to look the slightest bit inward without feeling accountability as a crushing weight, his inability to connect with the kind of person who goes to school for nearly a decade just to earn a PhD in emotions, among others. 

Regardless, Logan’s therapeutic successes don’t really change much. It’s not like David reaped any of the rewards. 

“Well.” He breathes an ambivalent sigh. “Sounds like you’re doing well for yourself.”  

Logan snorts, amused by what could very much be considered a jab. “Gotta make my mama proud somehow.” 

The mention of Logan’s mother, even as a passing joke, causes the cord wrapped tightly around David’s heart to gain some slack. “How is your mom?” 

Elaine Nelson has crossed David’s mind more than once over the past 18 years, typically as a series of fleeting recollections brought on by a familiar perfume, blooming roadside daisies, or the warming of sweet yeast. To this day, and not for a lack of trying, he’s never had a better cinnamon roll than the homemade ones straight out of the Nelson family’s kitchen. 

While David’s memories with Logan were tainted with the knowledge of his ‘apprenticeship,’ a gloomy filter casting shadows over every tender touch, the memories he has of Logan’s mom have stayed a soft glow. 

He’s lost track of how many times he could have used a classic Elaine hug, warm and maternal, unyielding in its strength. 

Logan is seated back in his chair, cheated sideways so that his long legs can cross under the table, but still his whole body perks up at the question. “Mom’s great! She’s getting up there in age, obviously, but she still gets around. Gardens almost every day. Does pickleball on the weekends.” He reaches back into his jacket pocket to grab his phone, quickly maneuvering to the photo app. He turns the screen toward David to flick through an album of family pictures. 

David is happy to hear it, genuinely, but he can’t make himself look for very long. Age has coated her sandy blonde hair in fine silver and elongated her face into delicate points. She’s still beautiful, still obviously Logan’s mother, and that alone has him blinking back tears. He wishes there had been a way to keep her in his life despite everything that happened. 

“And Charlotte’s firstborn just graduated college with a master's degree in biochemistry. Which, God, that makes me feel ancient,” Logan continues, flipping through the series of photos of family dinners and beautiful ceremonies taken over the last couple of months. “Get this, Harper got married a couple months ago, back in November.” 

David’s genuine reaction betrays him, a little too excited. “No shit?” He lurches forward in his seat, reaching across the table to grab the phone and zoom in on the wedding photo Logan’s flipped to, clearly taken from the perspective of a groomsman. “Harper? Your sister? We’re talking about the same Harper here, right?” 

She was always the butcher looking of Logan’s sisters and she still looks devilishly handsome, sporting a well-tailored slate gray suit with a pink rose pinned to her lapel. She’s laughing, holding hands with a beautiful woman in a lacey, mermaid-style wedding gown, pure elation radiating off the both of them. 

Logan chuckles, shaking his head in equivalent disbelief. “Yeah, I know. She decided marriage wasn’t a scam after all.” He looks at the photo himself, the epitome of pride as he takes it in, before clicking his phone off and sliding it back into his pocket. “She mentioned trying to find you online so she could invite you. You were a really good friend to her when we were together. I knew that, but- I discouraged her. I thought you wouldn’t have-” 

“I wouldn’t have come,” David finishes his sentence, followed by a tight-lipped, but well-meaning smile. It’s lighthearted, no malice for the rescinded invitation. “You were right. I couldn’t have.” 

He loved Harper like she was his own sibling, but he knows there is nothing that could have gotten him to go to that wedding knowing Logan would be lined up at the altar. 

“They don’t know the gritty details of our breakup.” Logan admits, solemnly. “Just what I've told them.”  

“What have you told them?” 

Logan blows a huff of air. “That it was my fault.” He looks up to the ceiling, trying to find the memories floating above and between them. “That I didn’t make you my priority. That I was trying to turn you into someone you weren’t. They’ve always been curious if there was more to the story than that but-” 

“They shouldn’t know,” David says, and he means it, despite the sinister truth behind the lie. He wouldn’t wish that knowledge upon anyone who loves Logan like he did.  

There’s a loaded moment of silence, a gap in the conversation that trying to fill feels like sinking into ice water. Logan decides to plunge in. 

“I got married, too.”  

It shouldn’t be a shock. Of course, he did. Logan Nelson got married.  

It feels like the most obvious thing in the world. Expected, like the changing of the seasons. Like how you know heavy winter snow won’t stay in thick layers on the asphalt forever or that the little green buds crawling up tree branches are destined to bloom before the end of April.  

After all, David was present for their relationship. He knows that if they’d been capable of getting married in the mid-2000s, Logan would have had a ring picked out by their first anniversary. He’s the most hopeless romantic David has ever met, incapable of falling in love without falling hopelessly. 

Still, he can’t hide the blister of emotion he feels at the admission. It peeks out through a crack in his surface, most likely reading as surprise. “Oh, yeah?” 

Logan nods, tapping his half-empty cup. “Her name was Christine. Chris to me and the people who knew her. We were only together for a year before she got pregnant with Melissa and we decided it was in our best interest to get hitched. Don’t get me wrong though, we were kind of crazy about each other. It probably would have happened soon regardless.” He chuckles, soft and breathy. His smile is slow to drop. “We had a couple of really good years.” 

Her name was Christine.  

They had a couple of good years. 

The past tense doesn’t go unnoticed. 

“She, uhm- she died a while back.” 

Was it you? David thinks, feeling guilty that the possibility crosses his mind but not guilty enough that it doesn't percolate there. “I’m sorry.” 

Logan shrugs half-heartedly, like he’s appreciative but almost tired of the sentiment. “It’s been, jeez, almost a decade now. Eight years of single dadhood.” He turns his head, blinking back the tears building at his waterline. “And our daughter- she’s just the best. Awesome kid. I couldn’t have made it out on the other side of all that grief without her.” 

He and Logan talked about kids once upon a time, back when their future was dripping with optimism. Before meeting Logan, David hadn’t considered kids in any serious capacity. He was young, too selfish for his own good, let alone the good of a child. 

Logan though, he was always going to be a dad, and David would have done it with him. It’s hard not to see the perceived man of your dreams fawning over babies in public and not picture them as your own. 

David thinks they would have done it. If they’d lasted a couple more years. Once Logan was done with his residency and settled into a stable job. David can’t believe he once pictured himself as a pretty little housewife. It turns his stomach now. 

“Well, good.” David grits his teeth. “You always wanted to be a dad.” His leg bouncing rapidly under the table combined with the dull pulse of a headache coming on that tells him he needs a smoke. 

“I did yeah. I love it.”  

Something remains unsaid. 

I wanted to be a dad with you .  

David isn’t sure which of them should be saying it. 

“Is your mom still around?” Logan asks, a polite return of David’s question. David isn’t sure how much he actually cares, but Logan leans forward when he takes a sip of his drink. His eyes train expectantly on David while he waits for him to answer. 

David doesn’t have nearly as much to say. If his mom has gotten into gardening and pickleball, he has no way of knowing that. “She’s alive. I haven’t spoken to her since my 40th birthday.” 

Logan doesn’t seem too phased by this information, but he still wilts. “I’m so sorry.” 

David’s tense shoulders rise and fall. He picks at the cuticles of his thumb. “It was my choice.” 

Logan reaches halfway across the table before he stops himself, hand falling somewhere between them, flat onto the stickered surface. It’s clear he was going for David’s hand to stop the picking, something he would do instinctively if he saw the nervous habit start up back when they were together. David doesn’t even do it much anymore, the skin around his nails a far cry from the bloody, scabbed over mess they used to be. 

Logan looks between the hand breaching David’s space, and David himself, but doesn’t rescind it. It stays settled between them. Perhaps Logan thinks the limb has sprouted olives, becoming a pretty peace offering. “I’m still sorry. She should’ve been so much more of a mom to you.”  

He’s not wrong. Logan is maybe the only person who knows the intricacies of David’s delicate relationship with his mom, how strained it had become, almost impossible to maintain the older he got. Still, the words burn coming from him– because Logan should’ve been so much more of a partner. 

“Yeah. Thanks.” 

It feels like they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel, getting splinters stuck in the tender pads of their fingers trying to scrounge up any other topic of conversation that isn’t about the thing that has brought them here. They keep skirting past it, brushing up against it, bumping into it clumsily. It takes up so much space on the table between them that the legs might collapse.  

“There’s really no natural segue here, is there?” Logan finally says, picking at the wound. David’s bandages unravel and underneath is a horrible, festering mess. 

David attempts to tether his nerves. “Nope. I guess not.” 

Logan breathes a well contained sigh. Everything about him is measured, trying not to be too much at once. “Sorry, I just... I’ve thought about this for a really long time,“ he confesses. David can see him pacing in his thoughts, attempting to bring himself back to a calm center. “I’ve practically had this conversation rehearsed for years but now that it’s here I have no idea what to say. You’d think I'd know since I’m the one who said we should do this, but-” 

“I’ll get you started then,” David interjects, growing tired of the nervous waffling. “Why?” 

He plants his boots firmly into the cafe floor to halt his shaking legs. He grabs the edges of the table and leans forward to look Logan in the eyes. Since he sat down, David doesn’t think he’s fully made eye contact with Logan. Now, he wants Logan to feel like he can’t escape his searing gaze.

“Why me? I’ve replayed that tape over and over in my head every day for the past twenty years. I see it when I close my fucking eyes. It didn’t tell me why. It didn’t say shit.” To actually be talking about it out loud fills him with a strange exhilaration. He laughs, mirthlessly, as he quotes the doll. “ Most people are so ungrateful to be alive. What the fuck does that mean!? You knew me! That wasn’t- Fuck. That wasn’t true, Logan!” 

“You were so sad all of the time-” 

“And you thought that would fix it!?” His volume rises, but he stays controlled. His lungs itch to yell. His throat burns to scream. Despite this, he doesn’t want to cause a scene in public. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and lets new oxygen cycle through his chest. 

When David opens his eyes, he catches a glimpse of a much younger Logan, shoulders slouched inward, posture indicative of heavy shame. The body of a 50-year-old man with the sorrowful stare of a mistake-riddled kid. 

Logan waits to be sure David is done, that he has nothing else to drill him with before speaking. “I- I need to preface this by saying that I don’t believe in anything that made me do what I did anymore. I need you to know that when I tell you why I did it, it is with the utmost belief that it was all bullshit, David. None of it was rational.”  

Asking David to believe him is a big ask, but the Logan he knew was always sincere to a fault. He nods. Logan continues. “I thought I was helping you. I’d convinced myself it would work because I thought it had worked on me. I thought my trap had helped me.” 

His trap?  

“You were...” David trails off, overwhelmed with thoughts as he attempts to put what he knows about Logan and about their relationship into perspective with this new information. “You were a Jigsaw victim?” 

Logan nods. 

Even when things were good with Logan, even at their best, David always felt like the picture he had of who Logan Nelson was had printed a little fuzzy. Like the ink cartridge had run dry, the image faded and streaky. He had thought at the time that it was a product of where they were in life. David himself didn’t feel complete most days, just short of done baking.  

When the truth came out about Logan’s involvement in David’s trap several of those gaps filled in, making those that stayed empty even starker in contrast. That image has stayed frustratingly incomplete this whole time. 

This new information rocks him. It’s like finding the last piece of a puzzle that you gave up on years ago, the missing one that got kicked underneath the couch and has been collecting dust beside loose change and the occasional sock. 

David lets his eyes walk across Logan with this in mind. “Your scars,” he says, picturing thick, red lesions running the span of Logan’s broad back, crossing over one another. He remembers how they felt against his hands, remembers walking his fingertips across the keloidal skin. “They aren’t from the war?” 

“Not the one’s on my back, no.” Logan shakes his head, more of a quick twitch of his neck than a proper denial. “There’s the one on my left temple that you can see when I have my hair buzzed short and the one right under my collar bone. Those two I got in Iraq. All of the other ones were from my test.” 

The referral to one of Jigsaw’s sick displays as a ‘test’ makes the blood in David’s veins curdle. He doesn’t ask about the knicks littering Logan’s knuckles, the ones he’d spent several nights mindlessly passing his lips over, not once questioning where they came from.  

“I was the resident handling John Kramer’s brain X-rays when they diagnosed his cancer. They caught it much later than they should’ve because I fucked up. I got his scans mixed up with a patient recently in remission. Not only did I doom Jigsaw with a late diagnosis, but I also traumatized some poor cancer-free man and robbed him of a celebratory moment.” Logan’s eyes dart around warily as he recounts the story for what could very well be the first time in 20 years. Maybe it’s the first time he’s ever had to put words to the action. “A couple months later I woke up to a chain pulling me into a wall of spinning circular saws. I didn’t have a fighting chance. I was being shredded before I could even piece together what was happening to me or where I was. That was an accident, an overdose of sedatives. It caused me to wake up later than everyone else in my trap had, which John hadn’t intended. So, he did something he never did. He intervened, performed emergency treatment on my wounds, and spared me.” 

Referring to the man as John makes David’s skin crawl. It’s too casual, like they’re reminiscing about an old friend and not one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. It makes the personal tie Logan has claimed to have to him all the more real. 

David can hardly stomach it, but lets Logan continue. “I honestly felt grateful. I had been beating myself up for the swap since it happened. Racking up so much guilt for such a stupid mistake, thinking of all the grief I'd caused. It felt like an eye for an eye. It felt like violence with a purpose and you know how long I spent witnessing violence with no purpose. Despite how heinous it was, it made sense in a way that war never did for me. It felt like justice.” He shakes his head, hissing a soft, disapproving curse toward his own words. “And I felt chosen. I thought I had this new appreciation for life, this revolutionary shift in my perspective, that was going to make me so much more efficient at helping people. That’s why I joined the medical field, to help people, and this was just an extension of that.” 

David’s expression has surely been soured. His whole body recoiling from the man in front of him as much as it can without physically going anywhere. If he could blip into nothingness, he would have by now.  

“I don’t understand how that could have helped anybody,” David responds, feeling like the words have been churning inside of him, growing bitter by the second.  

David doesn’t even realize he’s started tearing up until his vision is blurring. He reaches up to dry his eyes with the sleeve of his flannel, turning his face away from Logan as he does so. 

"I’d been so convinced it helped me. I thought I was living, breathing proof that it could fix anyone,” Logan says, but his tone conveys that this isn’t a belief he holds anymore. “And I thought, hey, I know someone who needs that kind of purpose in life. I’m friends with this guy who I can’t stop thinking about, who I want the world for, because I can see how bright he could be if not for the sadness radiating off of him. I saw the way life was eating away at you and I thought you were just letting it.” 

David can’t help his choked laugh. It feels like sand sliding down the back of his throat. “Oh, fuck you,” he mutters under his breath, more sad than angry. 

Logan continues, but his voice is strained and pleading, “I thought you would get the same thing out of it that I did. That’s insane, of course. I'm the fucked-up outlier, y’know? But I wanted to help. I wanted to fix it but, god, David-” He waits until David has ever so slightly turned his head back to face him, until he can also look at him with red-rimmed eyes. "David, you were never broken. You never needed to be fixed. I- I was broken. You... were perfect.” 

The speech feels like Logan is digging his thick fingers into that metaphorical wound, splitting the flesh ‘til it’s sloughing off his bones in clumps. He imagines this is what it would have felt like had the bear trap gone off on him, had he listened to the timer tick down in his ear and let the metal contraption pry him apart with gruesome force. He feels like he’s laid down and hooked his own jaw on a curb, like he’s told Logan where to slam the thick heel of his boot down on the base of his neck. 

It’s a beautiful thing to say. At the same time, it’s a horrible thing to hear.  

The whole discussion has him feeling like simmering water, roaring in this superheated space. The sentimentality makes him boil. 

“Fuck that,” David spits, more angry than sad. “You pursued a relationship with me knowing what you did! Knowing that I didn’t know!” 

Logan ducks slightly, sheepishly scanning their surroundings for any attention his raise of voice may have drawn. At this point, the last thing on David’s mind is whether or not they’ve attracted onlookers. 

“Yes. Yes, I did, but I didn’t- David, I promise I-” Logan pauses, bringing his hands up to drag down against his frustrated face. The exhale that follows is full of excuses. "I'm- I’m sorry. I’m not going to defend it. I had feelings for you and I acted on them. I wanted to take care of you. I wanted to make it okay.” 

“Make it okay?” David doesn’t mean to be so pathetic, but his bark sounds more like a whimper. “Make it fucking okay? Did you- did you only date me to make up for what you did? To ease your fucking conscience?” 

He’s glad at least that Logan’s eyes widen, jaw softening in genuine dismay at the accusation. "No, David, no. Absolutely not. I loved you. I- Christ, I loved you incomparably. Losing you felt like grieving. I grieved you, us, our future. I know what it sounds like and looks like when it’s all laid out so plainly but David, I was in love with you.”  

David’s arms cross tightly against the front of his body, his hands balling into fists and relaxing to the rhythm in his head. He counts forward, then backward, and tries to keep his breaths from turning weepy.  

Logan carries on. “None of it was meaningful. Just because blood is spilt in the name of something doesn’t make it anything but blood.” He collapses his hands together between them, like he’s pleading or praying. “Before I got help, I used to talk about everything that happened like it wasn’t me who did it, like it was some other guy. These days I’m trying to acknowledge it rather than deflect it. That was me. I am that guy and I may be changed but I’m not reinvented. I’ve gotta acknowledge it so that I don't fall back into it.” 

David remembers being able to sense the wrongness in Logan. Something inside of him wasn’t sitting quite right no matter how hard he tried to make it fit. Almost like he was always wearing shoes two sizes too big.  

David would watch his boyfriend distract the world from noticing with his easy charm and a heart chipped from solid gold. He’d shoulder any burden so that others didn’t have to and David was the only one who got to see how tired that left him. David would hold Logan at the end of the day, making constellations out of the moles on his back, whispering soft assurances and reminding him that he was a good man. It’s what he thought Logan needed to hear. 

“ Fall back into it ? Are you at risk of ‘falling back into it’ ?” 

Logan hesitates, mouth opening to speak before his brain is ready to answer, “I, uh- I did. Years ago. 10 years after John’s death. Christine was murdered and I just- I lost it. I’d only ever learned one coping mechanism when I came home from the war and my response to violence was just... more unspeakable violence. My hands aren’t clean. I’m trying.” 

David doesn’t know what to say, stuck in the middle of processing everything Logan has already laid out on the table today. This answer doesn’t make it easier to digest, but it somehow doesn’t make it worse. For the first time since they’ve sat down, he realizes that he isn’t scared of Logan. He’s just so angry. 

Logan’s knuckles are white, hands still tangled together. “It’s actually, uh, It’s kind of serendipitous that I ran into you when I did.” 

“Yeah,” David questions, “Why’s that?” 

“My therapist suggested I reach out to you not too long ago. She doesn’t know the specifics of everything, obviously, but she knows I hurt you. She knows I loved you.” Logan sniffles, shaking his hands out to get the blood flowing again. “I didn't ask you here because I need you to forgive me. Honestly, I don’t think you should. I just- I’m glad you’re alive. It means everything to see that you’ve had a life despite this. Not because of it, but in spite of it.” 

David hates crying. He hates the way tears feel when they build up at the back of his throat or how his face turns the color of hot cinnamon candy. He hates being an adult man who still feels the need to release emotion in a childish tantrum. 

“I had to. I had to live.” David uses the heels of his palm to press into his wet eyes. He can taste the bitter saltiness of them before they’ve even reached the marred corners of his mouth. “If not, I might as well have died in that trap.” 

Logan nods, a devastating acknowledgement.  

“Logan, I am surrounded by love. Every day I wake up to my cat in my face and I know he loves me so much. I go downstairs and my sweet little old man neighbor tells me all about what he saw on the news that morning and then complains about the price of eggs. I think that’s a form of love. It’s care at least.” David swipes at his cheeks, chuckling softly as he recounts his daily routine. Logan smiles.  

“At work I have this 20-something-year-old coworker who wants to know everything there is to fucking know about me and even if my boss doesn’t listen to me he’s kept me on as a manager for this long now so there must be love there. I love what I do. I get to tell people about music all day. That’s fucking cool. I get to hear people tell me about what kind of music they love and recommend other music for them to love too. I go to my bar job afterwards and those coworkers tell me they love me all the time. My best friend’s kids love me like I'm their flesh and blood uncle.” He’s laughing now, tearful but joyous. His hands shake at his sides. “I'm surrounded by it. All the time.” 

The ‘ But’ that lingers in the air following the culmination of David’s thoughts is palpable. He makes Logan sit in it, staring him down with the intensity of a pit viper. He watches the man across from him deflate, whole body wilting like a browning bouquet. 

David speaks just as he senses Logan is about to. "But I think you took something from me. Something vital to making and keeping connections. Something vital to my ability to love. I think you took it.” He stands, pulling his jacket and backpack from his chair as he rises. “So, while this has been great. While I have gotten some much needed answers from you today. I find myself despairing at the fact that you robbed me.” 

David slowly pulls on his jacket, deliberately keeping his composure in order to feel like he has an upper hand. For once, he wants to feel like they aren’t playing cards open face. “You understand that, right? It’s been what? 18 years since we broke up? I feel like I've only been on my feet for 5. I based my future around you and then there wasn't a you anymore. That’s so fucking juvenile, I know, but you didn’t leave empty-handed. You robbed me of normalcy, of my ability to trust, of any sense of safety I could ever feel with another person.” David pushes his chair in, rounding the corner of the table and breaching the buffer of safety it provided. “I feel like every single person around me has something that I don’t. The saddest part is that I don’t think you could even give it back to me if you tried. A part of me thought that maybe I’d come here and you would be holding it in the palm of your hands and I could just take it, but- I think it’s gone. And if it’s gone then I don’t know what I'm doing here. I'm very sorry, Logan, for wasting your time but I think I need to go.” 

Logan stares at him, his glassy, awe-struck eyes reflecting remorse back at him. He stands cautiously, like he’s not entirely sure his legs won’t give up on him the second they’re bearing his weight. He clears his throat as he grabs his own jacket, moving at gunpoint. “I understand. It was good seeing you regardless. I’ll worry about throwing the trash away. You can get out of here.” 

David nods, but silently resents the idea that he would need Logan’s permission to ‘get out of there.’ He turns, a wordless goodbye, and starts towards the door. 

“If it makes you feel any better,” Logan calls after him, causing his feet to involuntarily halt their movement. He doesn’t turn around, but waits for Logan to continue. “I’d spend the rest of my life helping you find whatever it was you lost. I think John might have taken mine too.” 

It makes David glance back, just barely, over his shoulder to catch a glimpse of Logan’s sullen form in his peripheral vision. From here, David can imagine Logan in a pair of navy blue scrubs. He can imagine himself boiling in a leather jacket with a cigarette tucked between his lips. 

Logan takes a deep breath. “I can delete your number from my phone if you want, but if you want to talk again, I’ll answer in a heartbeat. I swear.”