Nocturama
Acepilot

Author's note - No.26 in the Road series. For reasons concerning my delusional little mind, the number 26 is significant to me in terms of the Road series (it's got to do with "The Rain" being no.13), so I was trying to write something really good. I'm not sure if I achieved it. I hope you all enjoy it anyway. I promise, I'll write a happy Dil fic soon. I feel like I owe it to everyone for messing with the poor guy so much lately. Please review. It's kind of a "getting back to basics" fic. My apologies to all the Dil fans out there - I'm really, really bad at writing Dil. Hopefully I haven't massacred him too much. Remember that there's a reason he's been miserable for months (see no.3 - "Cannibal's Hymn"). This was a songfic, but seeing as my songfics have been getting deleted, I've removed the lyrics.

Disclaimer -The characters from AGU are property of KlaskyCsupo.

SUB-NOTE - There is going to be an immediate sequel to this, closing out the D/A trilogy. It will be out soon, hopefully within the next week.

I'm sure that, somewhere deep in Phil and Tommy's hearts, they thought this outing was a great idea. I'll admit, I've not been myself lately. For months now. I hadn't really noticed it, but my brother and best friend called me on it, essentially trying to get me to snap out of the deep blue funk I've been in since...well, since the Homecoming dance, I guess. Wow, I can't believe it's already been that long. Christmas has come and gone, my brother has gotten married, Phil and Kimi are engaged...it seems surreal. It's been...six months, I guess, since I last spoke to her.

When she used to be the only one I spoke to.

Which was why, the moment that we walked into the club tonight, I became eerily aware that something was out of place. I had a tingling down my spine. My initial thought was aliens, but I quickly dismissed it. No alien with any taste would be caught dead in this dive.

No, it was her.

It took me less than five minutes to see her leaning against a pool table, with those...friends, of hers. Casual, easy-going, not haunted by anything like I am. Her eyes practically sparkled. She looks so beautiful...

But then she always did...

"Dude, I'm sorry," Phil mutters to me, clapping a hand on my shoulder. "You want we can go somewhere else?"

I shake my head. "No, it's okay. I've got to deal with it sometime, right?"

I'm trying to sound confident, but I'm aware that I'm failing miserably.

I wonder if she thinks of me. At all.

That night, sitting out on the oval, when she kissed me. I dream of it. She plagues my sleep like some kind of ghost of my past life, a ghost I haven't been able to leave behind.

"Do you love me?"

I take my shot in our pool game, but no matter how much I try to concentrate on anything - anything at all - it all comes back to her.

It's not like me to run. I'm different. I'm daring - sort of. I like to do things differently. So why is it that whenever I need to do something...normal...I can't? Why do I run away? Why haven't I tried harder to talk to her, why haven't I pursued her?

Because I'm afraid...

Afraid that, if I do, I'll just lose her forever. And I really don't know if I could deal with that.

Of course, it's not like I really have her now...

How the hell did we go from being best friends from age 11 to 17 to suddenly being...nothing. We're not even enemies. We're just...nothing to each other. Or I'm nothing to her.

Maybe it was because I fell in love with her.

I didn't mean to, I really didn't. It just kind of...happened. One day, we were best friends, the next...it just seemed like a natural progression, y'know? Like growing up. It was our relationship - our friendship - moving to the next level, and part of me wondered if it had always been like this and I'd just failed to notice. I asked Tommy and Phil about it later, and while Phil said he and Kimi had more or less worked out in that manner, Tommy said that it was a distinct change between him and Lil, rather than the "really comfortable friendship" thing that Phil and Kimi had experienced.

Of course, the sticking point between me and Amanda as opposed to Phil and Kimi is that Kimi reciprocated the feelings of more-than-friendship. I haven't been so lucky.

An eerie sense of deja vu drifts over me as I let the door to the club drift shut behind me. I lean against the cool cement of the wall, my hands buried in my pockets, letting the harsh night air wash over me.

It wasn't all that different, all those months ago, when I'd come out of the hall and found her.

So, in some way, I'm not surprised to hear footsteps approaching behind me.

"I didn't think you'd come out," I mutter, not looking back to confirm that it's her, but knowing it all the same.

"I wasn't going to," she tells me, and I feel...something...wash over me with those words. I'm not sure what it is. It's like...relief, but that's not the right way of putting it. It's just...beautiful. It's beauty in four words with a slight Spanish accent. "But...I..."

"We need to talk," I finish for her, turning finally to face her.

The facade she was showing for her friends in the club is gone. In it's place, I see the Amanda of old. My Amanda. The Amanda who I fell in love with, what seems like so long ago.

But her eyes are suddenly sunken, hollow. Her mouth is not a smile but a painful and pained line, and her hair is no longer artfully draped to frame her face but rather to shield her from hurt.

"Things need to go back to the way they were, Dil," she finally tells me. "I can't cope with you being angry with me any longer."

"I'm not angry with you," I deny, but it's half-hearted. "I'm just..."

She steps up to me, takes my hand. I jolt at the touch. It's been so long that it feels almost foreign. "What?"

"I miss you, Mand," I tell her. "I need you in my life again."

"Can we be friends, then?" she asks, hopefully.

And I'm about to say yes. I'm seconds away from it.

But then I think about what happened. About that fateful night, the tearstained kiss, the misery, the fact that I haven't had a good time since without thinking of her. And I know that, if I say yes, it'll just happen all over again. And I'm getting tired of making mistakes, of being sad and miserable. I want to be the funloving guy everyone either loves or loathes. I want to be able to theorize and have a good time and drive the teachers crazy in what little time I have left at school.

And I want her.

"No," I say, finding no other way to put it.

She looks taken aback. "Why?"

I reach up and trace a finger along her jaw. "Because we came too close," I tell her. "We came too close to being something else, and I can't go back to what it was like before, Mand. I thought you loved me."

She steps back, her face aghast but I know I haven't said anything she didn't already know. "I'm...I'm sor -"

"Don't say it," I plead. "Just...just leave me alone."

"Dil - I..." her jaw works noiselessly, and I feel tears beginning to stream down my cheeks.

I'm crying.

I don't think I can remember once when I actually cried. Aside from physical pain, I don't think I've ever actually shed a tear. Not even that night on the oval. But...but now I can feel the tears slipping down my skin and they seem to burn into my flesh.

"I love you," she says to me, for the second time in our lives, and I feel a strange tingle course through me. But as with last time, there's no joy or love there. Just misery and pain.

"I want to believe you," I tell her. "But...I don't want you to do this just because you want a friend," I say. "I...I'm in too deep, Mand, and if you're not there with me, then this is never going to work. We've both got issues we need to work out. I'm going away for a while. When you've worked out yours, when I've worked out mine, if you still love me, then I'll be waiting. Anxiously. But don't say it to me now if you don't know whether you mean it or not."

She seems paralyzed by indecision and doesn't say anything, so I take that moment to flee back inside to find Phil and Tommy waiting for me. Both look sympathetic, neither look surprised.

"We saw her go out after you," Phil tells me, and points to the glass on the table. "We thought you might like that."

I look at the near-opaque glass with a wrinkled nose. "What is it?"

He shrugs. "Cola."

"And?"

"Nothing, just cola. Nothing helps like sugar."

I offer him a tired look and take a swig. It is, indeed, just cola.

"So how'd it go?" Tommy asks.

I shake my head. "I don't know."

"Can we be expecting to see the old Dil Pickles come out of retirement any time soon? Because we're starting to miss you," Phil tells me.

I glance over to where she's returned to the room, standing with her friends, her movements not quite as free as before, her face not quite as bright. Like she's got a lot on her mind.

"Maybe. Maybe sometime soon."

I hope.

To be concluded...

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