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Now you can hate me for making you cry.

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I'm alone and I'm dancin' with you now
In your old room, in your old house
I'm alone and I'm dancin' with you now
In your old room but there's nobody there—Ryan Adams, Now That You’re Gone

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Cloud stands at the window, looking out at the dreary morning. It matches his mood. He has procrastinated taking care of the house, or The House as it had grown in his mind, for years and had finally put it on the market months ago. Years to put it on the market, days to return the realtor’s call.

It was Zack’s house. Would have been their house, someday. The thought is a scraping sensation inside his ribcage, even now. He doesn’t know what else Zack could have been thinking, to put his name on the title like that. It was one more thing they Didn’t Talk About.

Entirely too many things in Cloud’s life are capitalized. Too many issues take on a life of their own. He should stop that. He slides down the wall; it was Zack’s room, their room.

He thinks of Reno. Well, he thinks of Reno a lot, and the loft they now share. He and Reno talk about everything. Life with Reno is like a stream of consciousness novel. Reno is so unlike Zack but then Cloud now is so unlike Cloud then.

“I’m sorry,” he says to the empty room, feeling silly. But he knows, and he knows Zack knows, living for the both of them would eventually become dying for the both of them if he doesn’t move on. Living is living.

He shifts on the hardwood floor, ass becoming numb. The realtor is late.

He wonders what it would have been like to share a life with Zack here, and he can’t wrap his mind around it. Zack’s happy bounce will always be a part of him, but it’s a part of his memories. Reno, all lightning and flowing water, is a part of his now.

It feels less disloyal than he thought it would. He finds he wants to get off this cold floor and go home to Reno, who has coffee. He knows he doesn’t have breakfast—Reno can’t cook to save his own life without burning the place down—but he has coffee. Zack was a decent cook; Cloud can see him now, rocking toe to heel while he waited on something to finish frying or boiling or whatever.

Reno once shut his hair in the toaster oven and didn’t notice anything until the smell tipped him off. He set a beer hugger on fire by leaving it on the pilot light. He had to be told how to boil eggs and still wouldn’t do it if there were pop tarts in the house to eat.

Oh well. Cloud leans his face into the wall and listens to the rain. He can almost say Zack’s name now without a hitch in his breath, but not quite. Someday it will be possible, he doubts it will ever be easy, but it doesn’t lessen his love for Reno. A sweetness fills his chest at the thought.

He hears a car door. Thank Gaia.

It is easier than he thought it would be. He realizes suddenly that the key has sat in the kitchen drawer, staring at him accusingly for years. It is The Key. That part of him that has never moved on and Reno, bless him, has never said a word but just taken what Cloud could give.

Reno deserves more. Hell, Cloud deserves more. And for the first time, he thinks, maybe so does Zack.

The ride home isn’t short under the best of circumstances; the surviving suburbs lie far out from the urban areas where Cloud lives now. But it’s longer when all he really wants is to be out of the misting rain and in his own home, out of the home of his past and some alternate reality future. He wants real.

The door closes behind him and he smells coffee. The cup is in his hands before he can even ask and he sips from it, hot and bitter and soothing. He puts it down so he has two arms to hold Reno.

“Everything go ok?” The question has more words in it than the sentence.

“Realtor was late.” So does the answer. “It’s done, now.”

They stand for a while.

“Nice to be home.”