onward, forward

Con could have imagined any number of things—ended friendships, petty bullshit, even leaving the band—but he never would have thought Seven capable of this. It seems unnaturally fucking cruel, taking the vote out on Olive most of all when she was the only one who voted to keep him a damn lead. He never in a million years thought Seven would break things off, and in such spectacular fashion?

Well, maybe the dramatics he should have foreseen. Fucking Seven.

Finally he pulls into his own driveway, putting the truck into park and turning the key, and the dark abruptly swallows everything. For a moment there’s only the ticking of the engine and the sound of Olive’s sniffling. Connor shuts his eyes, taking a fortifying breath.

She needs you, he tells himself. No bullshit.

He pops his door but doesn’t open it fully, glancing over at Olive again. “We’re here,” he says—redundantly, he thinks, until he sees the dazed way Olive blinks and straightens, eyes flickering nervously at their surroundings.

She sniffs and wipes beneath her nose. “This is your place.”

Con unbuckles his seat belt, nodding. “Yeah,” he says. “Sorry. I didn’t think…” He hesitates, uncertain how to phrase the next part. I didn’t want you alone in your apartment if Seven came back. Making that decision isn’t really his right, is it? But Olive had been worse than inconsolable, and the thought of just dropping her home and washing his hands of it turned Con’s stomach. The thought of staying over at their place with her was equally untenable. If Seven came back and found them both there together—

Yeah, no. He’d do a lot for Olive, but he’d sooner walk over broken glass than put himself in that situation. Or her, for that matter. Seven would give him an I knew it look and Connor would probably break his nose. Helping no one, and certainly making everything worse.

So: his place. Neutral ground, so to speak. Seven certainly won’t be coming around here.

Not if he knows what’s good for him, Con thinks darkly.

He’s jolted out of his thoughts by a low, pained whine. When he looks over, Olive’s face has crumpled again.

“I can’t even go home,” she says, and bursts into fresh tears.

Oh, god. He reaches for her across the center console, hesitates, and draws back. Without a word Connor opens his door and steps out onto the driveway, rounding the front of his truck and approaching the passenger side. He opens it and Olive turns away from him in her seat, hands over her eyes, making such horrible sounds. It barely sounds like crying, it’s so sharp and ugly, sounding like it’s tearing itself out of her throat. It’s fucking awful. The kind of crying that makes you tear up just to listen to it.

He can’t start crying too or they’ll be out here until the sun rises. Careful not to touch her, he leans over her and presses the buckle of her seat belt, drawing it back carefully so it doesn’t hit her. “C’mon, Olive,” he says, feeling helpless. “Let’s get you inside.”

She doesn’t say anything in response—she’s insensible again, just crying and crying and crying. Like there’s a well of sadness in her so deep she’ll never dry out. It might be the worst thing he’s ever heard.

Fucking Seven.

In an adjoining house a dog starts barking, and Connor takes that as his cue. “Sorry,” he murmurs, and bends to gather her into his arms. He hoists her out of the car, one arm under her knees and the other around her back, and kicks the passenger door shut with the heel of his boot.

Olive doesn’t resist. He doesn’t even know if she’s aware she’s being carried. The sobs shake her entire body. He’ll be surprised if she can even speak tomorrow.

He’ll be surprised if she wants to.

Getting in through the front door is tricky, but Olive isn’t so heavy, and it only takes a minute of blind fumbling with his keys before he gets it in the lock. He wasn’t planning on anyone coming over tonight so he’s just praying the place isn’t in too bad a state—though, honestly, he doubts she’ll even remember this come morning. She has bigger problems right now anyway; she’s probably not gonna judge him for having dishes in the sink. Not that she would even on a good day. Olive isn’t the judgy type.

The house is dark, the living room lying silent and still to his right with the kitchen just beyond it. He squints—yes, there are dishes in the sink. Fuck. To his immediate left is the front closet, and further down the wall the door to his bedroom hangs open. He does some quick thinking as he shuts the front door behind them. Olive can have the bedroom, his couch is comfortable enough, and he’s fallen asleep on it enough times himself to know it won’t hurt him for a night. He’ll have to strip the bed but he has a clean pair of sheets… somewhere… and Olive can borrow some of his pajamas if she needs something to sleep in.

Olive in his shirt. No, nope. He’s not thinking about that.

She’s curled herself into his chest, still crying but silently now, biting her lips so hard he’s worried they’ll bleed. Connor carries her into the living room and sets her down on his couch, the lump in his throat returning twofold as he pries her hands free of his shirt, trying to be gentle. He kneels in front of her, trying to get her to look him in the eye, but it’s no use. “You can stay here tonight,” he says. “I don’t mind.”

“I don’t—w-want to—”

If he didn’t know her as well as he does he might have taken that to mean I don’t want to stay, but thankfully he knows Olive pretty damn well, so he knows she means something more along the lines of I don’t want to inconvenience you. Which is ridiculous, and also so her it hurts.

“You’re staying, Olive,” he says, tone firm. “We can talk about it in the morning if you want, but tonight you’re staying here. Okay?” He doesn’t wait for her to respond, standing and shucking his denim jacket. He tosses it onto the side of the couch opposite to her. “You’ll have my bed, the couch works for me.”

Olive’s lower lip wobbles, tears welling up in her eyes. “No, Connor—”

He sweeps a hand between them, sweeping away her attempt to argue. “No choice. Sorry. I insist.” Con rubs his neck, sucking air through his teeth as he thinks. “There’s fresh towels under the sink if you want a shower, and I think I have an extra toothbrush in the medicine cabinet.” Truthfully he knows he’s just trying to solve little problems because the biggest one he can’t do anything about.

“Why are you—” Now it’s her whole chin wobbling, and the tears spill over onto her damp cheeks. Olive pulls her knees up into her chest, seeming to do her level best to make herself small. “Why are you being so… s-so nice to me?”

Because I’m in love with you, and I have been since we were fifteen, and the thought of someone breaking your heart makes me want to tear my beard out, or do something really stupid that might land me in jail.

Obviously he can’t say that.

“Because you deserve nice,” Connor says, which is the better thing to say, anyway.

…but apparently not, because all Olive does is burst into frantic sobs again.

“Hey,” he says, a little panicked, and quickly sits beside her on the couch. “Hey, hey, hey… Come on…” She shakes her head, still sobbing, but doesn’t pull away when he puts an arm around her and tugs her into his side. He shushes her in what he hopes is a soothing way and lets her cling to him, her hands hot in the material of his shirt. There’s probably mascara smudged all over it, which he doesn’t have the first idea how to get out, but he can worry about that later. He’d sooner burn the whole shirt tomorrow than ask Olive to let go of him right now.

They sit there for how long he doesn’t know, but it feels like a small eternity. Connor holds her as she cries, alternating between petting her hair and stroking her back, making small sympathetic noises in the back of his throat when it isn’t too tight to let him. Eventually Olive quiets to the small, jerking cries, and then the miserable sniffling. Even when your life feels like it’s falling apart, crying that hard for that long takes it out of you, he supposes.

Connor tries to stand but Olive’s grip on him tightens, a small, hoarse noise of protest leaving her. “I’m just gonna get you some water,” he says quietly. After a moment, and with surprising reluctance, she lets go.

In the kitchen he takes a moment to breathe while he fills a cup with water from the tap. Jesus, this is not how he thought his night was gonna go. It’s not how he thought any night was gonna go. The possibility of Seven and Olive breaking up never even occurred to him, it was so remote—so absurd a thing to consider. Everyone knew they were going to be together forever and die hand-in-hand in the fucking nursing home seventy years from now a minute after one another. Everyone had known it even before they were together. And then they got together—finally, everyone and their mother said, rolling their eyes—and that was it.

Connor bites at a hangnail on his thumb, brow furrowed, staring intensely at nothing at all. That was supposed to be it.

He brings Olive her water, setting it down on the coffee table in front of the couch.

“You don’t have any coasters,” she says in a small voice, waterlogged and wobbly.

“What?” Con considers the table. Huh. He doesn’t. How did he never think of that? “Oh, yeah. I live like an animal in here. Sorry you had to find out this way.”

His joke doesn’t get much of a response, but she doesn’t start crying again, at least. She sips meekly at her water as he watches—he gets the feeling she does it just because he’s watching—and she sets it back down so carefully, like she’s afraid to make a sound, right in the little ring of condensation where he placed it to start. So it doesn’t stain the table twice.

God, he loves her.

“Okay.” He clasps his hands, sucking in a breath to counter the ballooning affection in his chest. “I can get the bedroom ready. Do you wanna—” Connor pauses, hoping he can say this next thing normally. “You can borrow some clothes of mine if you want. I mean, they’ll be too big, but, you know, whatever. If you’d rather not sleep in yours.” There. Totally fine.

Olive bows her head, a hand lifting as if to tuck her hair behind her ear before falling limp back into her lap without touching it. “You don’t have to,” she whispers.

No, I do. He really can’t conceive of doing anything less. But he’s thinking about how he loves her too much and he always gets a little paranoid about it when that happens around her, like she’ll be able to pick up on his brainwaves or literally smell it on him somehow, so Connor forces a shrug. “What are friends for?”

Friends, he reminds himself sternly.

A tear drips off her chin. “I don’t d-deserve it…” Softly she starts to cry again, shoulders shaking.

He’s being a fucking jerk, worrying about his own bullshit when Olive is in this state. Connor sits back down beside her, getting a look at her hands in her lap, furiously picking and worrying at her skin. He reaches out to still them. “C’mon, Olive,” he says. “That’s not true.”

She only cries harder, not responding. He sighs and sways to rest his head against hers, squeezing her hands, feeling the way they tremble under his.

He hopes, with a viciousness that startles him, that Seven is going through the same thing completely alone.

That makes him uneasy. Seven is—was?—his friend, too, just as long as Olive and the rest of the band. There’s years of history there, stretching all the way through high school and college—is this really where all that ends? With one messy, awful party, and Connor praying he’s in pain? He thought he was a better friend than that.

Then again, he thought Seven was a better person than this. Maybe they’re all disappointed tonight.

Eventually he manages to coax Olive to finish her water, and after that she curls up on his couch with her arms wrapped around herself, legs tucked up so tight it seems like she’s trying to make herself disappear. He leaves her there, though he hates to do it, to do what he said he would and get his bedroom ready.

He flicks the light on and immediately squints, screwing up his face. After his eyes adjust he hurries around the room picking clothes up off the floor, tossing them into the hamper that’s there for a fucking reason but you’d never guess it by the way he lives. Suddenly the room that was perfectly fine for him this morning is too cramped, too dark, too dirty. It’s impossible to picture Olive here, nevermind that she’s just in the next room over; none of it is good enough. And why does he have so many magazines? Music, sports, TV, news, does he just grab the entire newsstand every time he leaves the house? An embarrassing amount of them are relegated to the space beneath the bed via swift kick. He doesn’t have time for that.

He cracks a window and sets about stripping and resetting the bed, pausing halfway through to glance through the doorway toward the living room. Olive isn’t visible and it’s been strangely quiet for a while, he realizes. “Hey, Olive?” he calls, shaking a pillow into its fresh pillowcase. “You okay?”

There’s no response, but he didn’t really expect one. He tosses the pillow onto the bed and wanders back out, brow furrowed.

Olive is still right where he left her, the glow of her phone illuminating her face. She’s staring at her lockscreen—a photo of her and Seven, cheeks smashed together. Olive is beaming into the camera and Seven is looking at her. Every time the screen goes to sleep she taps to wake it again and goes on staring. Her tears are soaking into the cushion beneath her cheek.

Connor reacts before he can think about it, leaning over the back of the couch and snatching the phone from her hand. “Nope,” he says, shoving it into his back pocket. Olive doesn’t even get mad. She just hiccups miserably. “This… isn’t helping,” Connor decides, rubbing a hand over his beard. “Come on, let’s get you up. You’ll feel better in some comfier clothes. Maybe a shower. Are you hungry?” He’s grasping and knows it.

Olive makes a soft noise that might be an answer in the negative. It’s hard to tell with that glazed look on her face.

“Okay,” he says, still rubbing at his chin. “That’s… probably for the best. I have no idea what’s in my fridge.” He sighs.

It turns out Olive is easy to coax out of the living room. He worried she’d be something like comatose, but when the crying jags abate and she isn’t struggling to breathe, she’s quiet as a mouse. He fetches her more water and she holds it cupped in her hands as she sits in the chair by his desk, watching him finish arranging the sheets on the bed. He fluffs his pillows for good measure, just to have something to do with his hands.

“I’m sorry,” Olive whispers. He glances over and sees her studying her glass of water, turning it carefully between her palms. She hasn’t drank any of it. “You shouldn’t have to deal with…” She doesn’t finish that sentence, her eyes welling with tears. “You’re too nice.”

“No more of that,” Con says, not unkindly. He gets the feeling nothing he says could convince Olive she’s not a burden, that he’s happy to do all this, so he doesn’t try. He kneels in front of the chair so he can look up into her face, resting a hand on the arm. “What do you need?” he asks. “What can I do?”

Olive shakes her head slightly, avoiding his eyes, and takes a tiny sip of her water. She sniffs. “I just feel so stupid,” she says, so softly he doesn’t know if he was meant to hear it at all.

You’re not the one who’s stupid. He doesn’t say it; he has a feeling badmouthing Seven wouldn’t go over well, even now. “You aren’t,” he says instead.

She tries to smile, tremulous and weak, and gives up quickly. She wipes her eyes with the heel of her hand, holding the glass on her bent knee, feet tucked up beneath her. “You might be right,” she says. “Maybe a shower would… help.”

They both know it won’t, but it’s a nice thought.

Connor pulls fresh towels out from beneath the sink and picks out one of his band shirts and a pair of pajama pants—the good flannel, so old they’ve gone soft. He leaves them folded on the counter next to the extra toothbrush that was, it turns out, in his medicine cabinet. That done, he lingers for a moment longer in the bathroom, looking at Olive perched on the toilet lid, not looking at him.

Her face is splotchy, eyes red and swollen, most of the makeup around her eyes cried and rubbed away. Her lips are bitten. She keeps her head tilted down, hair fanning across her face, like a kicked dog afraid of a repeat offense. It breaks his heart all over again. He wishes he could do more. He wishes he could hug her.

Instead, he takes a step back. “I’ll be right outside,” he says.

A little bob of a nod.

“Yell if you need anything.” What could she even need you for in the fucking shower? He has to say it anyway, even adding: “Seriously, anything.”

She doesn’t nod again. She just turns her face away, pulling her knees a little closer to her body. He’s embarrassing her, he thinks.

“Okay.” Connor makes himself leave before he can make it worse.

The air in his bedroom has cooled from the open window, the smell of the night—sweet, earthy—managing to settle his nerves somewhat. Connor runs a hand through his hair and listens to the rattle of the pipes in the walls as the shower turns on. He rests his back against the wall, and before he knows what’s happening he’s sliding down until his ass hits the floor of his bedroom. He goes on breathing, steady, in and out, and rubs a hand over his mouth.

Faintly, from beneath the door, he hears Olive start to cry. The shower isn’t quite loud enough to drown it out.

That’s what does it. His eyes sting and well up, and he thumps his head back against the wall. “Fuck,” he whispers, and hides his face in his hand.

This sucks. It all just fucking sucks. There’s nothing more to say.

He feels a buzz and pulls himself out of it, blinking hard and sniffling as he shifts his weight to pull Olive’s phone out of his back pocket. He’s worried for a second it’s— But it’s just Jazzy texting her.

Connor stares dully at the lockscreen for a moment more before turning her phone off. He leaves it on the nightstand.

He makes up the couch for himself, which just looks like tossing a pillow and one of his spare blankets onto it. He does the dishes in his sink, scrubbing with more fervor than is strictly necessary. He paces up and down the hall, gnawing at the hangnail on his thumb until it tears and bleeds. He tries to watch TV with the volume low but his mind is too scattered, turning the events of the night over and over in his head until he feels like he’s gonna go crazy. He has no idea what happens now—he has no idea what the future looks like. For the band, for his friends, for himself. For her. Even for Seven, the asshole.

He ends up wetting his face in the kitchen sink and changing out of his party clothes, wrinkling his nose at the smell of cigarette smoke clinging to them. He sits back down on the couch, leans his head back, and listens to the soft canned laughter drifting from the TV with his eyes shut.

The quiet wakes him. Connor blinks his eyes open, staring up at the light of the TV playing across the ceiling. He lifts his head and winces as the muscles in his neck seize.

Olive?

He twists in place, peering into the bedroom. He can’t hear running water anymore. How long was I asleep? Connor is back on his feet with no memory of standing, moving for the door with worry nipping at his heels.

He stands in the doorway and peeks inside, wary. “Olive?” It’s dark. He doesn’t see her in the bedroom, but the light in the bathroom is still on, shining brightly from beneath the door. Connor crosses the room quietly and knocks. “Hey, Olive?”

Connor hears a shuffle, but there’s no response.

He puts a hand on the doorknob. “I’m coming in, okay?” He opens the door slowly, already wincing, praying he’s not walking in on anything he’ll have to apologize for seeing. Also praying it for his own sake. The door bumps into something and he stops, peeking around it. He sees a foot, attached to it a leg swathed in his flannel pajama pants. Thank god, he thinks, she’s dressed.

Olive sits on the mat beneath the sink, her back to the cabinet and her knees pulled up. There’s a towel draped over her head, like she was mid-drying her hair and gave up. He can hear sniffling muffled by the cotton.

Con just keeps discovering new ways for his heart to break into smaller and smaller pieces tonight.

He slips inside and shuts the door, breathing in the steam-laden air. He crouches and puts a hesitant hand on her—head? shoulder?—shoulder, he decides. “Olive?”

She jumps, then a second later reaches for him. The towel slides away, falling behind her back, and Olive pushes her damp head into his chest. She smells like his shampoo, coconut and cocoa butter flooding his nose. Connor sits rather than risk toppling over, wrapping his arms around her, and stares up at the ceiling so the sound of her crying—the jagged sobs again, horrible, horrible—doesn’t make him cry, too.

Fucking Seven.

After the heat of the bathroom the bedroom feels almost unbearably cold. Connor sets Olive down on the bed and folds the duvet over her, then shuts the window. He moves her water so it’s within reach. Even wrapped up in the blanket, she’s started to shiver. He leans over her, pushing her wet hair carefully out of her eyes. “You okay?” he whispers.

She gazes up at him for only a moment before shutting her eyes. Con moves to stand again, only realizing she’s curled a hand into the front of his shirt when he feels the tug. He stops, unsure what she’s asking of him. What he should do. But Olive goes on shivering, now miserably silent, and she’s not letting go.

Con swallows. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

He climbs carefully into bed behind her, trying not to jostle her as he gets settled. Olive is just a lump in front of him, which he’s glad for; he’s not sure what he’d do if— yeah, he’s not gonna think about that. Haltingly, he puts an arm over her. She’s still trembling, he can feel it even through the thick blanket. Connor breathes out and gets a little closer, until he can feel the space between them warming. Then he holds absolutely still.

Eventually her shivering subsides, but Connor doesn’t dare move. He doesn’t even move when he feels her breathing deepen, the tension in her body relaxing. Connor lays in the dark, staring at the lump that is the back of Olive’s head, his thoughts spinning him down a hole.