Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The apartment had that particular stillness of a midweek night. Erling sat in the armchair by the window; outside, a streetlight flickered. He did not bother turning on the lights. The darkness felt right. A bottle of Fireball sat on the side table, its label worn at the edges from frequent handling. He poured himself two fingers, the whiskey hitting the glass with a sound that seemed like a small surrender.

He held it up to the light. Amber, but a strange amber—the color of something artificial trying very hard to look natural. The aroma rose to meet him before he even took a sip: cinnamon, sharp and sweet as candy, with something chemical underneath, a note of alcohol constantly reminding him that he should not be drinking. Artificial, but comforting in the way something can be comforting precisely because it is so consistent.

The first sip burned. Not the good burn of quality whiskey, the kind that opens into warmth, but the burn of something that wants you to know it is there. Hot cinnamon flooded his mouth, followed by sugar, cloying and insistent. He swallowed and felt the liquid travel down his throat, a warm trail settling in his chest.

Second sip. The burn was gentler this time, his mouth already numb. And that was when it happened: the aroma caught at the back of his throat and, for a fraction of a second, it was not Fireball at all.

It was Jude.

The recognition was so physical that his hand tightened around the glass. It was not the exact scent—the Fireball was too sweet, too shallow—but its ghost. The cinnamon, yes, but Jude had never smelled like candy. Jude smelled like cinnamon bark, dried and crushed, mixed with something greener, something that lived beneath the skin. His scent had layers. The top note was always that spice, warm and inviting, but underneath it was something darker, almost woody, and beneath that, something Erling had never been able to name but had always associated with peace. The way a child can press their face into a parent’s sweater and feel the world shrink until it becomes something bearable.

He closed his eyes. The memory came with a clarity alcohol should have dulled, but instead sharpened, as though his brain had stored that particular file in high definition, untouched by time.

Jude in the morning, before his shower, when his scent was strongest. The way he filled the small bathroom when they brushed their teeth side by side, Erling’s hip pressed against the sink, Jude’s warm shoulder against his. Jude bent over the stove, insisting on helping even if all he did was stir the pasta sauce, the heat from the burner drawing his scent into the kitchen like an invisible cloud. Jude asleep, one arm draped across Erling’s chest, his breathing slow and steady, his scent in its most honest form because he was not performing anything, not hiding anything. Just his raw, unfiltered truth seeping into the sheets, into Erling’s skin.

There was one particular Tuesday, three years ago. Rain against the windows, the kind that came down in storms. Jude had arrived soaked through, his hair plastered to his forehead, his jacket dripping onto the doormat. He smelled of wet wool and that scent of cinnamon and wood, intensified by the rain, almost feverish in its intensity. Erling pulled him into the hallway, pressing his face against Jude’s neck, just below his ear, and inhaled so deeply that it hurt his lungs. Jude had laughed, the sound vibrating against Erling’s lips, and said, “You’re like a bloodhound,” and Erling had answered, “Only for you,” saying it in a way that frightened him.

He drank again. The Fireball was becoming more palatable, or his tongue was becoming more numb—one of the two. The apartment suddenly seemed too large. After Jude left. No, after Erling made him leave. Let’s be honest about whose fault it was. He kept finding traces: a shirt Jude had forgotten at the back of the closet, still holding his scent weeks later. A coffee mug with a chip in the handle that Erling could not bring himself to throw away. The indentation on the other side of the bed took months to disappear.

He had washed the sheets, of course. Multiple times. But sometimes, in the deepest part of the night, when the heating came on and the old pipes groaned, he could swear he could sense him—that ghost of cinnamon, that trace of something green and alive. His brain playing tricks on him, probably, the cruelest talent of his mind: conjuring what he wanted most and could not have.

The bottle was half empty now, or half full, depending on whether you were the kind of person who saw a glass that way. Erling had never been that kind of person. He saw things as they were: a bottle that had been full and now was not, a bed that had been shared and now was not, a scent that had been real and now existed only in memory and in cheap cinnamon whiskey.

He poured another glass. He drank more slowly this time, letting the liquid linger on his tongue, hunting that ghost. The alcohol was doing its job now, softening the edges of the room, thickening the air. His fingers felt loose around the glass. His chest felt loose too, in a way that was dangerously close to something he might call a feeling.

The streetlight outside flickered unsteadily. Erling watched the light stretch across the floor, reach the leg of the armchair, and stop short. He thought of Jude’s hands. The particular way Jude held a pen, his thumb pressing firmly against the side. The look of his knuckles when he was cold. The scar on his left index finger, from a kitchen knife and three stitches.

The Fireball tasted nothing like Jude’s hands. But it tasted enough like Jude’s neck, Jude’s collar, Jude’s pillow, to make the difference seem irrelevant. He finished the glass. Poured another. The night was young, or old, depending on how you looked at it. Erling had stopped checking the time hours ago.

The glass was empty again. Erling set it on the side table with more force than he intended. His hand felt strange, disconnected, as though it belonged to someone else who was very bad at operating it. The Fireball had done its job. The room had acquired that particular tilt that drunk rooms get, the floor not quite where the floor was supposed to be, the walls breathing in and out with a slow, patient rhythm.

His phone was on the coffee table, face down. He had to stand to reach it, and standing was its own negotiation with gravity. The world swayed to the left, then settled. Three steps to the coffee table. He picked up the phone. The screen lit at his touch, far too bright, making him flinch. The time read 11:47 p.m. Later than he had thought.

He opened his messages and scrolled. His thumb moved through the conversation list with the clumsy deliberation of someone navigating unfamiliar terrain. Most of the names were work contacts, inactive group chats, a few friends he had not seen in ages. Before Jude. Before the breakup. And then there it was. Jude. No last name necessary. Just Jude, sitting in his contacts like a land mine he had carefully avoided for three years.

He tapped the name. The conversation was loaded. The last message was from Jude, sent 1,142 days ago. A simple “Take care.” Erling had never replied. He could not. He had read it roughly seven hundred times, and every time it felt like swallowing glass. His thumb hovered over the text field. The cursor blinked. Waiting. He began to type.

He deleted it. It seemed like too much. Too desperate. The "lately" was a lie anyway, he'd been thinking about Jude constantly, being quite honest he'd never stopped thinking about him, which was the whole problem.

He deleted it. How was he doing? What kind of question was that after three years of absolute silence? The banality of it turned his stomach. As if they were acquaintances who'd lost touch after taking a class together, not whatever it was they had been. His fingers moved again, slower this time, the alcohol making them heavy and uncooperative.

He read it back. The words looked small and pathetic on the screen, diminished by the white space around them. Not enough. Too much. Completely wrong. He deleted it. The phone was warm in his hand. His palm had started sweating. He wiped it on his jeans and tried again.

He deleted it. Christ.

That was worse. Drunk-texting about olfactory memory? He wasn't seventeen anymore. He set the phone down on the coffee table and rested his head in his hands. The room spun gently. His chest felt tight, a band of pressure around his ribs that had nothing to do with the alcohol and everything to do with the fact that Jude's name was on his screen and three years of silence stood between them like a wall he'd built brick by brick and now wanted, desperately, to tear down with his bare hands.

Delete. Too vague. Cowardly.

His thumb hovered over the send button. Erling could feel his heartbeat in his fingertips, a dull, insistent thud. Three years. Three years of silence, and he was going to break it with a drunk apology at midnight? Jude deserved better. Jude had always deserved better. He deleted it.

Erling was crying now. He hadn't noticed until he felt something wet on his cheeks, warm and sudden. The tears blurred the screen, he wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand, smearing the wetness across his face. One more attempt. Just one.

Three words. The simplest thing he'd written all night. No context, no introduction, no emotional excavation. Just a question, a door left ajar, nothing more. His thumb found the send button and pressed it. The message went with that distinctive sending sound that always made his stomach drop, this time, the fall was dizzying, a plunge into something bottomless. He stared at the screen. "Are you awake?" sat there in the blue bubble of his own messages, small, vulnerable, and irrevocable. He had done it. After three years of careful absence, he had reached across the void and touched Jude's shoulder. The read receipt hadn't shown up yet. Jude could be asleep. Jude could have changed numbers. Jude could see the message and decide that three years of absolute silence was a pattern worth keeping.

Erling set the phone down on the coffee table, screen up, and didn't move. His breathing felt shallow. The apartment was very quiet. The streetlamp had stopped flickering and now cast a steady yellow light across the floor, lighting up the dust along the baseboards he'd been meaning to clean for months. He poured another finger of Fireball. He didn't drink it. He just held the glass, feeling its weight, the coolness of the glass against his palm. The cinnamon aroma rose to meet him and, for one mad, hopeful, terrible moment, he let himself believe Jude would answer. The phone lit up with a sound that cut through the silence like a knife. A message. Erling lunged for it, nearly knocking over the untouched glass of Fireball, his heart hammering against his ribs hard enough to hurt. Jude's name on the screen. A reply.

Simple. Careful. The kind of message that gave nothing away, but asked enough to keep the door open. Jude had always been better at this than him, the measured reply, the elegant opening. Erling stared at the words until they blurred from the tears that insisted on falling freely. His thumbs were moving before his brain had fully caught up.

Sent. Too sincere, too fast, but it was out there now, hovering in the digital space between them. Jude's typing indicator appeared. Three pulsing dots that made Erling's throat close up. Then they vanished. No message came. Erling didn't wait. The dam had broken, and what came out wasn't careful or measured or any of the things he'd promised himself it would be if he ever got this chance.

Sent. His vision was already blurry. A tear hit the screen before he'd finished typing the next message, a fat drop that warped the letters beneath it. He wiped it away with his sweater cuff and kept going.

Another tear. Then another. They were coming fast now, hot trails down his cheeks, dripping off his chin. His nose had started running. He sniffed hard, wiped his face with the back of his hand, and the phone screen went blurry with tears and mucus and he didn't care. Didn't care about anything except getting the words out, all of them, every one he'd been carrying for three years.

The crying was real now, the kind that made his chest heave, that came in waves he couldn't control. Every sob felt like it was being torn out of him, ripped from somewhere deep and raw. His thumbs slipped on the wet screen. He had to delete, retype, the letters swimming.

A message from Jude came in while he was typing. He saw it flash on the screen, something he couldn't read through the tears, just a smear of text, and kept going. He couldn't stop now. If he stopped, he might never start again.

His nose was completely blocked now. He was breathing through his mouth, ragged, wet breaths that sounded pathetic even to his own ears. The phone was slippery in his hands. He had to set it on his knee, wipe his face properly with both hands, his sleeves coming away damp. His eyes were swollen, his cheeks hot. He picked the phone back up.

Jude had sent another message. Longer this time. Erling couldn't read it. Couldn't afford to get sidetracked. Not yet.

Another sob tore out of him, loud in the empty apartment. He pressed the heel of his hand against his mouth to muffle it, but it didn't work. The sound was animal, wounded. He hadn't cried like this since the night Jude had packed his last bag, stood in the doorway, and looked at Erling with those eyes that held no anger, only a sadness so deep it had turned Erling to stone.

His thumbs were shaking so badly he could barely hit the right keys now. The screen was a disaster zone of tear stains and fingerprints. He didn't care. Let Jude see. Let him see the mess. Let him see what three years of repression looked like when it finally gave way. Erling kept writing about everything and nothing, about the happiest days they'd had, but especially about when everything had started to fall apart. Memories that hurt more today than anything else.

He hit send. He sat there with the phone in his lap, his face wet, his breath coming in sobbing gasps. The room was silent except for the sound of his crying, which had now settled into something slower, more exhausted, the kind of crying that happens when there's nothing left to give.

The phone buzzed again. Jude. Another message. Erling still couldn't look. He couldn't stand to see whatever was there, forgiveness or rejection or something in between that would hurt in its own particular way. He set the phone face down on the coffee table and rested his head in his hands. His whole body felt wrung out, hollow. Erling had said it all. Every word he'd been carrying like stones in his pockets for three years, laid bare in midnight texts to a man he'd pushed away because he'd been too afraid of his own heart.

The crying had settled into something quieter, just the occasional shaky sigh, the wet sniffle. His face felt tight, dried with salt. His eyes burned. Erling picked up the glass of Fireball and drank it in one go. The cinnamon burned all the way down, and for once, he was grateful for the burn.

The phone buzzed again. Face down on the coffee table, the vibration traveled through the wood, a dull, insistent hum that Erling felt in his teeth. Jude. Another message. Maybe several. The conversation was happening without him now, messages piling up on his locked screen while he sat with his head in his hands and his lungs still catching on the occasional hitch of spent emotion.

He should look. He knew he should look. Three years of silence broken by a midnight confession that Jude was answering, and Erling was sitting there like a coward, too afraid to read the words. But reading meant knowing. Knowing meant feeling. And he'd already felt enough for one night. His body felt raw, every nerve ending exposed to the air. Another wave of feeling might actually kill him.

Except there was one more thing. One thing he hadn't done. One layer of pretense he could still strip away.

Erling picked up the phone and didn't look at the messages, swiped to the camera instead. In the front camera, the image that filled the screen made him wince, his face was a disaster. His eyes were swollen, the skin around them puffy and red. Tear tracks had cut clean lines through his stubble. His nose was red, his lips chapped from where he'd been biting them. His hair was a mess, flattened on one side from where he'd been pressing his hand against his head. He looked exactly like what he was: a man who'd been crying for twenty straight minutes.

No filter. No angle. No trying to look good, or dignified, or anything other than a complete wreck. He took the photo.

The shutter sound was obscenely loud in the quiet apartment. The image saved to the gallery, a square of absolute honesty, the kind that turned his stomach just to look at. He opened his messages with Jude. The conversation was long now, his blue bubbles stacked on one side, Jude's gray ones on the other, a one-sided avalanche of feeling received, still unread. He couldn't do it. Not yet.

The read receipt appeared almost immediately, Jude had seen it. Was seeing it right now. Was looking at Erling's tear-streaked face, swollen, honest, and stripped of every defense he'd ever built.

Erling set the phone down on the table, his hands were shaking. The apartment felt very still, as if the walls were crushing his lungs. Outside, the steady glow of the streetlamp had taken on a watchful quality, a patient yellow eye observing the scene through the window. He picked up the phone one last time, held down the power button, the screen gave its command: Slide to power off.

He slid it.

The screen went black, the room sank back into its own darkness, the only light coming from that distant lamp. The silence was total, no buzzing, no vibration, no possibility of a reply, because he'd removed the possibility entirely. He had said it all, shown it all, and then taken the receiver off the hook. Cowardice or self-preservation? The line between them had always been thin, and tonight it had vanished completely.

Erling stood up, his body swaying gently. The bottle of Fireball was nearly empty, he capped it, set it on the kitchen counter. His body felt leaden, every movement demanding more effort than it should. Exhaustion had settled into his bones, that particular tiredness that comes after emotional extremity, when the adrenaline has burned off and left nothing behind but the ash of spent feeling.

He walked toward the bedroom, not bothering with hygiene. Pulled off his jeans, tugged his sweater over his head, and collapsed onto the bed in his underwear. The sheets were cold, he hadn't turned on the heating. He lay on his back and stared at the ceiling, in the dark, the emptiness above him matched the emptiness inside his chest. Erling had emptied himself out, every secret, every feeling, every word he'd been hoarding like a miser for three years, poured out into text messages. Jude had seen it all. The words, the face, the wreck he'd become.

What happened next was entirely out of his hands. For the first time in three years, something about Jude wasn't his to control, wasn't his to agonize over in the private theater of his own mind. He had handed the script to someone else and walked off the stage. The thought should have been terrifying. Instead, lying there in the cold sheets, Erling felt something he hadn't felt in a long time. Lightness.

Not happiness, it was too soon for that, too raw, too uncertain. But a particular lightness, as if something heavy had been cut from his chest. The weight of things unsaid. The burden of a love that had lived entirely in the dark, feeding on silence. He had brought it into the light. Had lifted it up, messy and trembling, and said: This exists. This is real. What you do with it is your choice, but it exists.

He rolled onto his side, the empty half of the bed yawning open before him, the smooth sheets staring back at him in mockery. Erling didn't reach out, didn't pretend, just closed his eyes and let the exhaustion pull him under, into a sleep so deep and sudden it felt like falling.

The phone stayed off, tossed across the bed where another body should have been. And somewhere across town, or across the country, or across whatever distance three years had built between them, Jude was looking at the photo of a man who had loved him enough to lay himself completely open, and making a choice.