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“Chloe misses you.” Byron says suddenly and he hates it. Hates how those three words are enough to stop Alphonse in his tracks, his anger melting away in seconds. Hates how Byron can just pick him apart like a soldier disassembling a pistol, slide to barrel. He can’t even remember what they were arguing about in the first place.
Alphonse growls in the back of his throat, twisting his body away from his engineer as he runs a ragged hand through his curls. Save for the unsleeping streets of São Paulo singing through the cracked window near his bed, his room is deceptively quiet. It’s late, when all the audience and actors of the circuit have gone away and these words are uttered only for him.
He hates how he can never tell when Byron is still performing or not.
It would be easy to just look into his eyes and tell because for as much as Byron has infiltrated his thoughts, Alphonse knows he's left his mark on his. The only thing more terrifying than Byron’s façade is the chance that beneath all the barbed wire is a glimmer of sincerity that matches his.
“What are we doing?” Alphonse whispers instead. From across the room, Byron sighs. He can hear the solid clicking of his nail tapping against his cane, the sound of its heel grazing the floor in telltale discomfort in spite of his refusal to sit down. He sounds tired too. When he finally meets his gaze, his expression is unreadable, unrecognizable. Moonlight softens his features and Alphonse thinks of fireworks dancing on the shores of Brighton beach.
“You tell me.” He murmurs, and his voice is so painfully soft Alphonse wonders if it’s all a trap. A part of him wants to snap back at the implicit accusation- to demand how this is any of his damn fault and start the game of tossing blame back and forth like before.
But Byron steps past him, fingers brushing his knuckles in a way that could be accidental or fate, and leaves him with the wreckage once again.