he doesn’t really know what he’s doing out here.

maybe it started as a drive - just a way to kill time, clear his head, stop pacing around the house like a dog too wired to sleep. he told himself he was going to maeve’s, maybe grab a coffee, sit at the counter until the sky started turning grey. but somewhere along the way he ended up turning down streets he hadn’t driven in months, letting muscle memory take the wheel until he was pulling off the main road into forest hills, creeping past dark trailers with his headlights off and the engine humming low like a secret.

the box was already in the car. he didn’t pack it tonight, didn’t even mean to bring it - it’s just been there, riding around in the backseat like some kind of passenger he doesn’t want to claim. billy’s things, or what’s left of them. a few old t-shirts that still smell like sweat and cheap beer, a broken watch, a handful of cassette tapes that barely play anymore, a cracked bottle of that godawful cologne he used to wear like armour. stuff that never belonged to tommy in the first place, even if it ended up in his closet, his garage, the back of his car. things that should’ve gone to neil maybe, or the dump, or nowhere at all.

but he couldn’t throw it out. not really. not when it all felt like evidence - proof that billy had existed, and that tommy had stood too close to him for too long to come away clean.

he kills the engine outside her place, doesn’t bother locking the doors, and walks the last stretch with his hood up, shoulders hunched like he’s bracing for something even though there’s no one around to see him. the box is heavier than it should be - not physically, but in the way things get when they’ve been carried around too long. he steps lightly, careful on the trailer steps, and sets it down beside the door like it might wake something if he drops it too fast.

there’s a note taped to the top. just a scrap of paper with the corner torn off and a line scrawled in his rushed, slanting handwriting: if you don’t want it, that’s fine. just figured you should have the choice. TH.

he’s halfway down the steps again when the porch light snaps on, bright and sharp and immediate, and his whole body reacts before his brain catches up - flinching not like someone new to getting caught, but like someone who’s been caught enough to know when it’s about to go bad.

“shit - sorry,” tommy blurts, voice low and rough and too loud in the quiet night. he glances down at his wrist out of habit, the cracked face of his watch catching the porch light just enough to tell him it’s nearly three in the goddamn morning, like that somehow makes any of this more explainable, like being caught lurking outside a teenager’s trailer isn’t already bad enough. “didn’t mean to wake you, i thought—i thought i was being quiet.”

he doesn't step closer. doesn’t even look directly at her, just keeps his eyes fixed somewhere around her knees like that’ll make it easier to stand there and not fall apart.

“i was just - leaving that,” he says, nodding toward the box, and the way he says it makes it sound like he still doesn’t know if it was a good idea or just another in a long line of things he’ll regret in the morning. they’ve never been close - never shared anything more than awkward glances and whatever scraps of conversation billy left between them and he knows whatever comes next is going to be sharp-edged and hard, maybe deserved, maybe overdue. but he doesn’t run. not yet.