Guys, I mentioned that this story would have a sequel in Chapter 18! Why were half of your reviews freaking out over the news about this sequel? Does no one actually read these things? Maybe I should stop writing them...

Anyway, prepare for some serious angst in this chapter. I recommend listening to Social Distortion's "Dear Lover" (the title of which became the title of this chapter) to prepare yourselves.

Many thanks to kb18142, IslanderBib, egyptian1995, EllaMichelle, Keefer, r2metoo, and one guest for your reviews to last chapter!

After Lu and Balthazar got back home, the bassist pulled out his laptop and booked a flight and a room at the same hotel his mother was staying at. He'd texted her with his new phone number and gotten the information from her, but booking a flight last-minute like this was expensive. The only reason he didn't start drinking the moment he got home was because booze and fresh facial piercings didn't mix. Cigarettes and fresh facial piercings didn't mix, either—he could tell Balthazar was dying for a smoke.

"You alright?" the blonde asked, gently running his fingers through Lu's hair as the younger man sat perched in front of his laptop.

He didn't answer for a minute, mulling over all possible responses in his head. Was he okay? He supposed he should have been—it wasn't like his father had been a huge part of his life. Only his absence had been particularly noteworthy, and it wasn't like he could have been in Lu's life any less than he had been on Wednesday. But on the other hand, he wouldn't ever have the chance to confront him, to resolve the last eighteen years of his life. It was just over, just like that. "I guess," he finally muttered.

"You guess?"

"Yeah. I guess. I don't know, Balthy, how am I supposed to feel? I mean, I'm not delighted he's dead or anything, but it's not like I'm really gonna miss the asshole. He's just... I don't know, just a little more gone than he was three days ago."

"That's fine, love. You don't have to mourn him. All things considered, I would probably question your sanity if you did. But I can understand being a little sad."

Lu sighed and rested his face in his hands, letting Balthazar continue to stroke his hair. "Yeah. I am. Just a little."

"Want me to come with you?"

"What? To Mississippi?"

"Yes."

Did he want Balthazar to come with him? Every instinct he had was screaming yes. Of course he wanted the blonde to come with him.

But he knew he couldn't bring him. Not if he wanted to avoid arousing his bandmates' suspicion. He wanted to keep them in the dark as long as possible, even if the plan was to inform them eventually.

"Yes," he said quietly as Balthazar finally stopped playing with his hair. "But you need to stay here. My dad's family isn't the most liberal group of people."

"You don't have to tell them who I am. It's not like you tell anyone who I really am to you, anyway."

Lu's stomach clenched. "That's not fair. I told you why... why I can't. And my mom knows," he added.

"But you can't tell your best friend?"

Lu felt his temper flare, but for the first time, there was an undercurrent of desperation and frustration. "This is why I want to wait to tell them—shit goes south for me quick. This—this is bound to be awkward if and when we break up, and I want as few people to be affected by it as possible. It wouldn't be a problem if we weren't in the same fucking band, but we are. I know Gabe is gonna have some smart-ass comment, probably several, and—"

"So you're withholding the information because the band joker will do what he does best?"

He could hear the anger in Balthazar's voice now, and it just pissed him off more. He'd explained what was going on, after all. He'd told him repeatedly why he wanted to wait. It wasn't fair for him to try to guilt Lu into confessing when he wasn't ready. "No," he growled. "I'm withholding the information because I want us to get used to this before we go telling people we have to work with." He wanted this to last, and rushing things seemed counterproductive. "I'm not used to this."

"Like I am? I haven't been in a relationship in four years, and it figures that when I finally am, he wants to keep it a bloody secret."

"Now wait a goddamn second—"

But Balthazar stood up. "I don't know, Lu, it seems like you're embarrassed to be with me or something. Maybe it would be better if we weren't. That would save you the trouble of having to tell anyone about us."

Lu's blood ran cold and all the anger drained out of him. "Can we not do this right now? I just want to get through the next few days, which is gonna be hard enough without... without you there. And I'm not embarrassed by you. But we can talk about this when I get back."

Balthazar was silent for a few moments. Finally, he let out a derisive snort and said, "Yeah. Sure." Without so much as a backwards glance, he left Lu there in the living room and went to their bedroom.

The strawberry blonde wanted to curl in on himself and scream. That wasn't how the conversation was supposed to go. They weren't supposed to fight like this. He couldn't even fathom where Balthazar's blowup had come from, but the singer's words chased themselves around in his head.

Balthazar wanted to break up. Lu had pissed him off so much that he just wanted to end it. They'd barely had a fucking chance to be together, and it was already over.

But maybe it was better to let it go now. Maybe the breakup was inevitable. There was no point in prolonging it. The best thing they could do was end it now before one of them got too attached or—Heaven forbid—fell in love with the other.

Still wishing he could pour himself a drink (or, better yet, take a drink straight from the bottle), he closed the lid of his laptop and settled himself in on the couch for the night.

If he expected the next morning to go better, he would have been sorely disappointed.

Their spat last night aside, he had hoped Balthazar would drive him to the airport so he didn't have to leave Bones there for three days. But when he woke up, the singer was gone and Lindsey wasn't parked out front, so he took that as a fend for yourself indication. He threw some clothes in a bag and put his suit in a garment bag and put it all in the passenger's seat of the hearse.

He hadn't slept too well on the sofa, so when he finally got seated on the plane, he fell asleep almost immediately. Fortunately, there weren't many people heading to Mississippi that day, so he was able to make himself comfortable right away without someone right next to him.

He woke up just as the plane landed and peeled himself off his seat to stumble toward the exit. As soon as he picked up his garment bag from the luggage carousel, he went outside to wait for his mother. She knew he was coming and when, so she was only about ten minutes later in arriving.

The whole time, though, he just kept wondering what was going on with him and Balthazar.

The blonde didn't text him or call him. To be fair, Lu didn't initiate contact, either, but he figured that was Balthazar's responsibility—after all, he'd been the one to storm off in a huff the night before.

Lu slipped the chain with the key over his head and into his pocket once he was ensconced in his hotel room. The ride to the hotel had been quiet; he hadn't felt like saying anything about either his father or the situation with Balthazar. He didn't know how he would have told her about the fight, anyway. After all, the one and only time she'd seen them together, Balthazar had been the picture of a caring, devoted boyfriend. His stomach clenched to remember how quickly it had all spiraled down the drain. One minute, everything was fine, and the next minute, he wasn't even sure if they were still together. They'd left a lot horribly unsaid.

There was a dinner that night that his aunt Lisa hosted at her house. The house was full of his cousins and second cousins, the oldest of whom was twenty-one and the youngest of whom was four months. He caught most of the older kids and a lot of the adults giving him strange looks, but he dismissed it at first. It was a bit surreal to be in such close proximity to so many kids all of a sudden. The last time this had happened, he'd been a kid himself. Still, it was a bit of a shock when one of the children, a little girl who couldn't have been older than two, wandered over to him and said, "Hi, Uncle Ross!" in her tiny baby voice.

His father's name had been Ross. Before he could even come up with a response, her father came swooping in and picked her up. "Sorry," he said quickly. "She... she thinks you're your dad. You're Lucifer Harrison, right?"

"Lu. Pellegrino," he added sharply. His mom had gone back to her maiden name after leaving his dad, and Lu's last name had changed, too.

"Right. Yeah, sorry." He gave Lu an embarrassed grin. "I'm Peter. Lydia's husband," he added, indicating the oldest of his cousins, another strawberry blonde. He barely remembered her—she would have been three when his mother took him away.

"Oh. Hi." So, he resembled his father. He didn't know why that surprised him, since he definitely didn't look like his mother. He hadn't really been able to remember what Ross Harrison looked like, though—all he remembered was a pair of cold blue eyes.

He managed to stay in the background for the remainder of the evening. Only his mother approached him toward the end. "You've been sulking all night."

"Should I be excited to be here?"

"Well, I suppose not. How have you been holding up?"

He shrugged. "Okay, I guess. Not looking forward to tomorrow."

"I know, but we leave on Tuesday. It's not so bad."

Part of him wanted to tell her what had happened with him and Balthazar, but he didn't know exactly what had happened.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

And just like that, the levee broke. With a sigh, he said, "We had a fight. Me and Balthazar, last night. He thinks I'm embarrassed to be with him or something and I'm not, I just don't want to rush into telling the guys about something like this if it's not gonna last, only the thing is, I want it to last but now I think we may have broken up and... and it sucks." It had been less than twenty-four hours since the last time he'd seen Balthazar, but he missed him a lot.

"Everything seemed okay with you yesterday," Melinda said softly.

"Yeah, I know. But then we got home last nights and he asked me if I wanted him to come with me and... well, yeah, I wanted him to be here, but..."

"But you still want to keep this from the rest of your band," she guessed.

"Yeah, basically. And I couldn't do that if he came with me."

"Look, Lu. I won't pretend to be an expert on relationships or anything. But if you really want this to work with him, you can't keep it from the people closest to you. Why is it such a big deal to you?"

For the first time, he really thought about it, and he finally realized he didn't want to shake up the band over something that might not last. The fact that he did want it to last was irrelevant, though—it hadn't really felt like a permanent thing. That's what he was waiting for—an indication that this would be something more that just a fling, that they actually both wanted to see where this relationship went. But now he didn't even know if Balthazar wanted to stick around. "I don't know if we want the same thing," he said finally.

"What do you want?"

"Something long-term."

"Honey. You said he offered to come here with you, right?"

"Yeah, he did."

"He probably wouldn't have offered if he didn't want something long-term as well."

Lu was silent for a few minutes as he mulled this over. She was probably right—Balthazar wasn't the type to suggest such a drastic action for nothing. And then the fight... it was obvious he cared enough to let his emotions show through. For the most part, when he was annoyed, he just showed idle condescension. He hadn't even gotten sharp with Lu after he'd punched him.

And for all his talk of "maybe this should just be over," he hadn't actually asked Lu to take off the bike lock.

He glanced at his mother, who was regarding him with a concerned look. "Yeah, I think you're right."

She scanned their relatives momentarily. "I think," she said hesitantly, "that maybe you don't need to be here. I think you're probably needed back home." She glanced up at him. Lu had started flat-out staring at her. "You left the state right after a fight. I'm assuming you didn't resolve everything you needed to. Lu, your father's dead and nothing's going to change that. But this shouldn't be what ruins your relationship with Balthazar. You need to go back and get this straightened out, okay?"

"Are you sure?"

"Positive. You don't know what tomorrow will bring. You should go."

Lu gave one quick nod before seeing himself out, dialing a cab as he went.

He packed up (not that he'd done much in the way of unpacking in the first place), changed his departure flight to the soonest he could (it left at midnight, giving him about four hours to get to the airport), checked out of the hotel early (fortunately, they didn't charge him for the one night he wouldn't be using), and took the hotel shuttle back to the airport. He wasn't too hung-up on missing his dad's funeral in light of the crap that had gone down with him and Balthazar. There were more important things to worry about than some dead asshole who hadn't been in his life anyway.

He went back home hoping it wasn't too late to fix things and trying not to remember that sleeping without Balthazar next to him was nearly impossible.

Motherfucking angst overload up in this bitch...