Your name is Dave Strider, you are thirty years old, and you've been "thinking about it".
Your mind has been more or less made a warzone - torn apart to shreds, emptied, filled, emptied again, all to give your very best attempts at fucking figuring this shit out. You have wracked your brain, looking at it from every possible angle. You admit that the... kiss, could have meant something - mainly due to the aforementioned returning, as well as his further mentioning of the crush. That combination had to mean something... right? Sure, he said past tense, but there's just a small, small chance he was convincing himself of it due to Molly, right? Maybe he'd been going through the same trials you had, just he was a married man and -
This is the part where it always gets hard, where the difficulty has risen every night for as long as you've been thinking, thinking. It's the part where you tense up and shake just so with worry, with the fear that these hopes will put you standing right on a skyscraper's ledge, ready to either take flight (almost like those tragic orange wings from a surreal reflection you try too hard to not remember), or, come falling down to the frying concrete. Until now, you've been cowering in the middle of the roof, staring at a ledge that told you nothing but too-real gravity and its imminent baggage along with it. What with what's been presenting the past eighteen years, it really made sense that the sky was never meant for you (it never has been, not for anything). And you continue to shake, as that thought you've been so sure of is not so sure (are you justified?).
Despite your shaking and your glued together teeth, you're stepping to brave the ledge.
It's nearing the Christmas season when you're next with John (you're looking into every gesture every word before they even grace reality's seams, you weren't like this when Rose first made you think, but now you are and now you can't stop) and in the bitter December chill you're unloading box after box from a tell-tale moving truck.
Molly and John tried to make things work - but according to what you've heard from Casey in your occasional phone calls (she always sneaks on when you talk to John and then he gives you two some privacy, because Casey demands it), "Mommy doesn't really talk to Daddy no more, 'e's sad and Iun like it." You understand the woman's disbelief, but it really doesn't sit right with you that anyone could simply cut John out like that (not to mention poor Casey getting tied up in it). You try to take into thought that you're biased, so you ought to try your best to sympathize, thinking how it would be alarming, should you perceive them so, to find the one you've been so intensely in love with to be without the sanity you knew them to have and depended on in your own hectic life. But then again, maybe you're the insane one because it'd make no difference to you. John could tell you today that he wanted you two to make a rocket ship out of puppet ass to fly to the moon and you'd be behind him every step of the way (though you'd complain and you'd make fun of him, he'd know your support was full).
But regardless, those two are now 'separated', and John's gotten himself a little place across town. Should the divorce go through, you aren't sure how much custody Molly wants. You know John would want equal, so Casey can have both parents, and it'd only really be fair. You'd like that also, so it's easier for all of them, no extra effort on anyone's part (being a single parent must be tough shit), and everyone still has their family. It'd be okay, you think.
Yet you find yourself wondering how John's going to hold up when you head back home (having come up here in an instant when we called you, shakey, asking for help moving out), and he's then left in this lifeless new home, the white walls staring back at him as his family is gone.
You don't think you'll have the heart to take the plane ride back.
Hands on the last box from the very frontend of the truck, you heave it into the too vacant home, thus far only showing some furniture and unloaded boxes. You were the muscle, while he emptied and organized everything (you offered the reverse, to save him the pain of too-soon reminders, but he insisted. You do have to admit to yourself that that was probably for the best, given your growing desire to shatter all Molly-associated items into forgotten, miserable, bits.) so he's on his shins, looking through pictures, having the most pathetic look on his face that you've ever seen. So you naturally do the only thing you know to do.
You walk over and collapse on his lap, back of your hand over your forehead in a dainty motion as you monotonously whine, "Oh Egbert, so much lifting, I don't think I can go on," and a dramatic headfall, "Oh fuck, oh god, don't forget me." He's laughing and pushing you off of him, while you continue your pitiful act and smother yourself closer. "How could you be so cruel to a dying man, John, how could you."
He's on top of you now, trying to tickle you or something to show his irritation, he doesn't seem to have really thought it through. But you're quickly flipping your positions, rising a "So much for a dying man!" out of him, and then spurring another good wrestle, you trying to be conscious of the many boxes surrounding your floor arena. This seems to be a constant with you two, but for both your aching hearts, a bashing of familiarity is bliss, if only for an instant.
And soon you find yourself as you were last, settled over top him and your heart pounding out of your chest, only now you are sick with this new thing called hope and alcohol cannot save you this round (and if you're going to be honest, aside from distraction, it has never really saved you). You try to remain as was, but you feel his pulse under your fingers, you see his breath escaping over his laps (they look so soft they feel so soft you remember you remember). You want nothing more than to simply lean down and take those lips as yours. Some part of you is saying it's free game, he's technically unmarried (separated, but close enough to be honest), but even before any relationship he was off limits, so you have to stop yourself. And in stopping yourself, you're restraining your breathing as always, staring down at the love of your life, and doing nothing.
The awkward silence continues as your lack of movement, or words, surprises him, until he decides to make better of it (and take advantage of it), with his fingers curling into your sides and forcing an erupting, bubble of a laugh out of your throat. You aren't sure if the feeling that wafts over you is painfully bitter, or painfully sweet, but the usual "bittersweet" doesn't seem to quite cover it.
Over the course of the evening, you think that your being here is really helping and that, that helps you. You see him smile (when he doesn't and even when he does it breaks your heart) and you hear him laugh and for his first night in his new home, you think it's probably really really good to have someone with him - and maybe it's actually good for once that you care so fucking much, because maybe that's why you're able to make it special, whether he remembers or not.
Thinking like this, you think about how great it'd be if you could stay like this - every night, keep him company and never let him be lonely. Help take care of Case when he got too tired, maybe even clean for once (pshh).
Even if it's just you daydreaming while setting the place up, thinking domestically like that is, kind of nice. And maybe, maybe you're beginning to grow your wings.