Fic: The Last Parting (Nathan Barley/Mint Royale!Fast Fuse-verse)
Title: The Last Parting
Fandom: Nathan Barley/Mint Royale (Fast Fuse universe)
Pairing: Dan/Sasha, Jon/Neil mentioned, past Dan/Jones!Neil
Rating: PG
Warnings: Erm ... het pairings? Imaginary Cornish towns?
Word Count: 2700
Disclaimer: Nathan Barley belongs to Brooker and Morris. Mint Royale belongs to Edgar Wright. The Fast Fuse universe is on loan from eggnogged.
Notes: OKAY let me explained the complicated background of this fic: it is a sequel to my fic "Stolen Hearts, Vintage Souls" (and to thirstyrobot's companion fic, "When the Whistle Blows"). It also takes place about 10-15 years after Nathan Barley and Fast Fuse, several years before eggnogged's FF futurefic "Both Sides".
I'll be posting it here in my LJ, and linking to it on fast_fuse_fic, and probably on nakedskillsclub, but I don't think I will post it to BSH, as the primary pairing IS Dan/Sasha.
The Last Parting
Dan wakes with a start. The first things he sees are treetops, flying past him at alarming rates, and for one insane moment he thinks he's flying. Then he recognizes the low purr of an engine and the gentle bumps of tires passing over the road and realizes he's in Sasha's car, and he'd fallen asleep with the passenger seat pushed back. He sits up. Sasha turns to him and smiles. "Hello."
"What time is it? Where are we?"
"Nearly dinner time, and we're nearly there."
"Where's 'there', again?"
'There' turns out to be a small town on the Cornish coast where they'll be spending the night before heading on to Truro in the morning. They're going there to visit Sasha's little brother, who plays football for Truro City. Dan likes Sasha's family, far more than he likes his own. Like Sasha, they are easy-going and warm, and they don't mix love up with expectations and shame.
Dan stretches, as much as he can in the cramped car. He checks his phone. There's a message from Claire, thanking him and Sasha for the birthday gift they'd sent for Louise, her daughter; and one from the deputy editor at the magazine, filled with silly questions. He closes them without answering. His head is still fuzzy. He needs a drink. Or coffee at least. Or tea. Coffee always makes him think of ... anyway.
It's drizzling as they pull into the village; they have to lean forward and peer through the windshield to find the hotel they're staying at. The rain really starts coming down just as they arrive, and then it's a mad dash from the car park to the front door.
"You look like an English Sheepdog," Sasha says while they stand in front of the desk, waiting for someone to check them in. She reaches out and fluffs his damp hair. He still has a bad habit of forgetting to cut it. Sasha claims she likes it long, anyway.
"My hair's not that gray."
"So you say."
"If I'm old, you must be getting on a bit, too."
Sasha sticks her tongue out at him just as the hotel manager reaches the desk, and retracts it quickly with a guilty look. Dan smiles in triumph, feeling like he's won.
:::
After they've dried off, and Dan has made himself look less dog-like, they wander off in search of food. There aren't many choices; not that it's a depressing sort of small town, but it isn't an over-developed tourist trap, either. It's somewhere in between. An ordinary place. They finally go to the pub for dinner. Dan has ginger beer. A long time ago, he'd have been looking at Sasha the whole time, wondering if she was worrying he was going to order a drink and get blasted. She never looked worried though. He'd asked her about it once, and she'd said, "You're a grown man. You're responsible for your own choices. You know how it would make me feel, you don't need me reminding you every few minutes, do you?"
Through an open doorway by the bar he can see a back room, where people are playing darts and pool. While Sasha is in the bathroom, he watches them idly; the man who is throwing right now, getting bull's eyes every time, looks oddly familiar to him, or at least the back of his head does; the set of his shoulders, the shape of his back. He feels like he's watched nearly this exact scene just as intently before, but he can't remember when. It isn't until the man throws his last dart and turns to the side that he catches that devastating profile and a name rings through his head like a warning bell: Jones.
Dear God, that is Jones. That is definitely Jones, and he's standing not twenty feet away from Dan, in a pub in a tiny town in Cornwall, and he hasn't seen him in well over a decade.
Except ... it isn't Jones, because he's come to terms a long time ago with the fact that "Jones" hadn't really existed. He doesn't know who Jones really was, and he never had. Over time he's come to think of him as purely fictional, like an imaginary friend he has outgrown.
Now here he is, a figure mixed of memory and fancy, made flesh, and he's lifting a pint to his mouth and laughing and smiling with a man who's standing very near him, who has one hand at the small of Jones' back. A man with a mop of untidy curly hair, just going gray, and the beginnings of a promising beard. A man whose face looks at the same time oddly familiar and yet utterly alien to Dan.
You ... reminded me of someone.
Jones, what the hell are you talking about?
"Dan?" A hand on his shoulder, and Dan pulls his gaze away and looks up into Sasha's eyes, and feels a wave of combined relief and guilt. "Are you all right?"
"Sorry," he says. "Got caught up in thinking about someone - I mean, something."
Her forehead creases but she doesn't pry. Dan holds her hand and keeps her attention on him, because out of the corner of his eye he sees that Jones and his companion are leaving, and he doesn't want her to see him. Either of them. He doesn't know exactly why, doubts Sasha would get jealous, even though he's told her about Jones, well - most of it, anyway, not about how and why Dan suspects he left. But he doesn't know what Jones is doing here, and worries that drawing attention to him would be a bad idea. He keeps his own head down, but as he hears their feet walk across the floor towards the exit, he feels a heated gaze on him. He glances up, and yeah. Jones has seen him. He's looking at Dan with a restrained shock and a tinge of horror, and then his eyes drift over to Sasha and there's a flash of recognition, and a softening. Then Jones is wrapping an arm around the other man's shoulders and guiding him away, and they're gone. Dan lets out a long breath.
"You sure you're all right?"
"Just tired."
"Tired? You slept half the journey, you lazy sod." She's smirking at him now, in that way he loves; it's the expression she most often wears in his dreams. It seems all at once snarky and naughty and affectionate, and it makes him feel loved. A long time ago, when his life was a mass of wreckage, and his bones and his dignity were broken, and he'd felt like fucking Sisyphus, condemned to watch every effort he made fail, he'd looked into her face and in that same expression had discovered he might be able to love again, too.
:::
Later, as it's beginning to get dark, Dan puts a hand on Sasha's shoulder, waking her from a light doze. "I'm going out for a walk."
"Thought you were tired," she says, yawning.
Dan takes a cigarette out of its packet, sticks it in his mouth at a jaunty angle, and winks at her. It is a bad habit he still hasn't broken. Everybody needs one vice.
Sasha wrinkles her nose and pushes him away playfully. "Go on then."
He takes the cigarette out of his mouth so that he can give her a kiss, and then leaves, calling out that he won't be long. Outside, he wanders around, drifting down the main street and smoking, sniffing at the salty air of the nearby ocean. The rain's cleared up, but the air is chillier now.
In a way, he almost expects it; maybe that's the real reason he went for this walk. He hears Jones' feet first, a long-forgotten but once familiar gait. Then he says, "Dan."
He stops and turns. Jones is standing a few feet behind him, wearing an oversized blue jumper that probably doesn't belong to him. His hair, Dan notices now, is longer than when he'd known him, and it's a pure, glossy black.
"Aren't you going to say hello?"
"Hello, Jones."
He flinches. "That's not really my name. You know that, right?"
Dan nods. Then, "What should I call you, then?"
Biting his lip, he looks thoughtful for a minute and then says, "Never mind. Just call me Jones. It's easier that way."
"I didn't come looking for you," Dan blurts out suddenly. "It's a coincidence. I'm on my way to Truro tomorrow."
Jones smiles. "I didn't figure you had, Dan, don't worry." He crosses his arms. "So you're with Sasha?"
He nods.
"Good. I liked her."
"You only met her once or twice."
Jones smiles enigmatically. "That's all I needed." He pauses. "The man I was with today ..."
"He your boyfriend?"
Jones laughs. "I forgot how blunt you are. Yes. He's my ... boyfriend."
Dan chooses not to bring up this man's similar appearance to himself; they don't look exactly like, but it's almost like one is a ghost of the other. Which one's the ghost and which one is real is purely subjective, he supposes. He will also avoid any mention of the intimacies of the past. It doesn't matter, Dan decides. Those warm embraces and smoldering looks are stone cold dead now, and it's only right they should be.
But as if he knows exactly what Dan's thinking of right now, Jones' face suddenly turns very serious. "I ... my schedule's demanding. Our time together, it's kind of precious. So ..."
"I'm not going to bother either of you, don't worry."
He blushes. "Sorry. I should have known you wouldn't." They stand there for a minute, feeling a bit awkward. Dan can’t stop comparing this person up to his foggy memories of the Jones of over a decade ago. Besides age, there's just something different about him. It drives home to him the fact that this man really is not Jones, no matter what Dan is calling him.
"Hey," Jones says, "Can I have one of those?" He points towards Dan's cigarette.
Dan takes his packet out of his inside pocket and offers it to Jones, and they lean in together to light Jones' cigarette from his own. That close, Dan is hit full on with Jones' scent, and that is right; he'd forgotten it, but now it comes rushing back to him. That's something you couldn't fake.
Jones jerks back, as though uncomfortable from the shared intimacy of the moment, and puffs rapidly on the cigarette. "Haven't had one in years," he mumbles around it. "J- my boyfriend got me to quit."
"Don't fall back into it now."
"Just this one."
"He'll smell it on you when you get home."
Jones laughs. "Don't worry about us," he said. "One little cigarette isn't going to cause an upset." He takes a long drag. "How's Claire?"
So ordinary. Dan is surprisingly grateful. "In Canada. She works for the CBC now. Got a little girl ... Louise."
"Ah, so you're an uncle now."
Dan nods, half-smiling. He likes being an uncle. He's never wanted to be a father, but being an uncle is something he's quite good at.
"Can't imagine Claire as a mum, to be honest."
"She's all right. Lou's a pretty good kid. Sort of a tomboy. She's obsessed with bugs right now."
"And you're an editor," Jones says.
"How'd you know that?"
"I'm in the city a lot. I've seen the magazine. I have to admit I was a little taken aback at what you renamed it though. House of Jones, seems a bit odd."
"Much better than SugarApe. We're mostly a music mag now."
"And Sasha? Does she still work there?"
"No, she went back to school. She designs clothes. Sells them online."
"You've all done pretty well for yourselves, then. I don't usually get to find out what happens to the people I ... meet." Jones inhales once more and then drops the cigarette on the ground, only half-smoked, and stubs it out with his boot. "There, that's all I needed."
"What you told me at the hospital," Dan says abruptly, "that I should pull myself together. I thought about it a lot, while I was getting better."
Jones frowns. "I'm sorry about that. Leaving right then. I hadn't planned it that way, that's just how the timing went ..." he trails off. The conversation is getting a bit too real now.
"It's all right. I understood. Eventually, anyway."
Jones sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "I should get going."
"Me as well." They look at each other, both trying to figure out what the appropriate way to say goodbye is, for the last time, and for the first time, because that weird day at the hospital hadn't been a proper goodbye, not really. Then Dan thinks, fuck it, and pulls Jones into a loose, friendly hug. Jones gives a little laugh of relief.
"Dan," he says, as he pulls away. "I've got a question. Something I've been thinking about for awhile. You seem to have it all together - don't make that face - maybe you've got an answer for me."
"What is it?"
For a minute he doesn't say anything, just worries his lower lip with one finger. Then he says, clearly and succinctly, as though, just as he's said, it's a question that has been on his mind for awhile: "Is it wrong to ask someone you love to make sacrifices for you over and over? Even if they say it's all right?"
Dan considers this, rolling the cigarette around between his lips. He isn't normally the go-to person for philosophical quandaries amongst his friends and family, being known for his sardonic attitude and all, but Jones' question is one he's found himself considering a lot, as well - especially in those days when he was still getting better, and relearning how to be a human being again.
"It depends," he says at last, "how much you love that person. And whether what they're making a sacrifice for is worth it."
Jones looks down at his feet. "How d'you know it's still worth it?"
"It's worth it if you love it as much as you love him," Dan says frankly.
Raising his head, Jones looks oddly stricken. Then he just looks torn. "Don't know if you've made me feel better or worse, Dan," he admits.
Dan laughs and stubs his cigarette out. "Sorry."
"It's all right. I never thought the answer would be painless anyway. Goodbye, Dan."
With a wave, he takes off running. Dan watches him as he heads up a hill, eventually disappearing into the darkness. For a few minutes Dan stands there, imagining that the house at the top of the hill, with the lights on the second floor on, is Jones', though in the end it's too far away to know really.
:::
Sasha's asleep when he gets back to the hotel room, a copy of Wide Sargasso Sea spread open on her chest. He plucks it off and looks for her bookmark, but there isn't one, of course. She always folds the pages over. And she calls me lazy. He marks her place and puts the book on the bedside table, but despite his attempts at being quiet, when he sits on the edge of the bed to take his shoes off, she wakes up.
"That was a long walk."
"It was a long cigarette."
She rubs her eyes and looks at the alarm clock. "Oh, it's only been twenty minutes. I must have fallen asleep not long after you left." She yawns, and Dan hides his own surprise, because it really had felt like longer than that. Twenty minutes to say goodbye to someone properly, forever.
But as he undresses and discovers that in his absence Sasha's ingeniously hid his pajamas somewhere in the room, promising only to tell him where they are if he comes over and kisses her, he decides that maybe the goodbye's stretched out for years, and tonight was simply, finally, the last parting.
The End
Fandom: Nathan Barley/Mint Royale (Fast Fuse universe)
Pairing: Dan/Sasha, Jon/Neil mentioned, past Dan/Jones!Neil
Rating: PG
Warnings: Erm ... het pairings? Imaginary Cornish towns?
Word Count: 2700
Disclaimer: Nathan Barley belongs to Brooker and Morris. Mint Royale belongs to Edgar Wright. The Fast Fuse universe is on loan from eggnogged.
Notes: OKAY let me explained the complicated background of this fic: it is a sequel to my fic "Stolen Hearts, Vintage Souls" (and to thirstyrobot's companion fic, "When the Whistle Blows"). It also takes place about 10-15 years after Nathan Barley and Fast Fuse, several years before eggnogged's FF futurefic "Both Sides".
I'll be posting it here in my LJ, and linking to it on fast_fuse_fic, and probably on nakedskillsclub, but I don't think I will post it to BSH, as the primary pairing IS Dan/Sasha.
The Last Parting
Dan wakes with a start. The first things he sees are treetops, flying past him at alarming rates, and for one insane moment he thinks he's flying. Then he recognizes the low purr of an engine and the gentle bumps of tires passing over the road and realizes he's in Sasha's car, and he'd fallen asleep with the passenger seat pushed back. He sits up. Sasha turns to him and smiles. "Hello."
"What time is it? Where are we?"
"Nearly dinner time, and we're nearly there."
"Where's 'there', again?"
'There' turns out to be a small town on the Cornish coast where they'll be spending the night before heading on to Truro in the morning. They're going there to visit Sasha's little brother, who plays football for Truro City. Dan likes Sasha's family, far more than he likes his own. Like Sasha, they are easy-going and warm, and they don't mix love up with expectations and shame.
Dan stretches, as much as he can in the cramped car. He checks his phone. There's a message from Claire, thanking him and Sasha for the birthday gift they'd sent for Louise, her daughter; and one from the deputy editor at the magazine, filled with silly questions. He closes them without answering. His head is still fuzzy. He needs a drink. Or coffee at least. Or tea. Coffee always makes him think of ... anyway.
It's drizzling as they pull into the village; they have to lean forward and peer through the windshield to find the hotel they're staying at. The rain really starts coming down just as they arrive, and then it's a mad dash from the car park to the front door.
"You look like an English Sheepdog," Sasha says while they stand in front of the desk, waiting for someone to check them in. She reaches out and fluffs his damp hair. He still has a bad habit of forgetting to cut it. Sasha claims she likes it long, anyway.
"My hair's not that gray."
"So you say."
"If I'm old, you must be getting on a bit, too."
Sasha sticks her tongue out at him just as the hotel manager reaches the desk, and retracts it quickly with a guilty look. Dan smiles in triumph, feeling like he's won.
:::
After they've dried off, and Dan has made himself look less dog-like, they wander off in search of food. There aren't many choices; not that it's a depressing sort of small town, but it isn't an over-developed tourist trap, either. It's somewhere in between. An ordinary place. They finally go to the pub for dinner. Dan has ginger beer. A long time ago, he'd have been looking at Sasha the whole time, wondering if she was worrying he was going to order a drink and get blasted. She never looked worried though. He'd asked her about it once, and she'd said, "You're a grown man. You're responsible for your own choices. You know how it would make me feel, you don't need me reminding you every few minutes, do you?"
Through an open doorway by the bar he can see a back room, where people are playing darts and pool. While Sasha is in the bathroom, he watches them idly; the man who is throwing right now, getting bull's eyes every time, looks oddly familiar to him, or at least the back of his head does; the set of his shoulders, the shape of his back. He feels like he's watched nearly this exact scene just as intently before, but he can't remember when. It isn't until the man throws his last dart and turns to the side that he catches that devastating profile and a name rings through his head like a warning bell: Jones.
Dear God, that is Jones. That is definitely Jones, and he's standing not twenty feet away from Dan, in a pub in a tiny town in Cornwall, and he hasn't seen him in well over a decade.
Except ... it isn't Jones, because he's come to terms a long time ago with the fact that "Jones" hadn't really existed. He doesn't know who Jones really was, and he never had. Over time he's come to think of him as purely fictional, like an imaginary friend he has outgrown.
Now here he is, a figure mixed of memory and fancy, made flesh, and he's lifting a pint to his mouth and laughing and smiling with a man who's standing very near him, who has one hand at the small of Jones' back. A man with a mop of untidy curly hair, just going gray, and the beginnings of a promising beard. A man whose face looks at the same time oddly familiar and yet utterly alien to Dan.
You ... reminded me of someone.
Jones, what the hell are you talking about?
"Dan?" A hand on his shoulder, and Dan pulls his gaze away and looks up into Sasha's eyes, and feels a wave of combined relief and guilt. "Are you all right?"
"Sorry," he says. "Got caught up in thinking about someone - I mean, something."
Her forehead creases but she doesn't pry. Dan holds her hand and keeps her attention on him, because out of the corner of his eye he sees that Jones and his companion are leaving, and he doesn't want her to see him. Either of them. He doesn't know exactly why, doubts Sasha would get jealous, even though he's told her about Jones, well - most of it, anyway, not about how and why Dan suspects he left. But he doesn't know what Jones is doing here, and worries that drawing attention to him would be a bad idea. He keeps his own head down, but as he hears their feet walk across the floor towards the exit, he feels a heated gaze on him. He glances up, and yeah. Jones has seen him. He's looking at Dan with a restrained shock and a tinge of horror, and then his eyes drift over to Sasha and there's a flash of recognition, and a softening. Then Jones is wrapping an arm around the other man's shoulders and guiding him away, and they're gone. Dan lets out a long breath.
"You sure you're all right?"
"Just tired."
"Tired? You slept half the journey, you lazy sod." She's smirking at him now, in that way he loves; it's the expression she most often wears in his dreams. It seems all at once snarky and naughty and affectionate, and it makes him feel loved. A long time ago, when his life was a mass of wreckage, and his bones and his dignity were broken, and he'd felt like fucking Sisyphus, condemned to watch every effort he made fail, he'd looked into her face and in that same expression had discovered he might be able to love again, too.
:::
Later, as it's beginning to get dark, Dan puts a hand on Sasha's shoulder, waking her from a light doze. "I'm going out for a walk."
"Thought you were tired," she says, yawning.
Dan takes a cigarette out of its packet, sticks it in his mouth at a jaunty angle, and winks at her. It is a bad habit he still hasn't broken. Everybody needs one vice.
Sasha wrinkles her nose and pushes him away playfully. "Go on then."
He takes the cigarette out of his mouth so that he can give her a kiss, and then leaves, calling out that he won't be long. Outside, he wanders around, drifting down the main street and smoking, sniffing at the salty air of the nearby ocean. The rain's cleared up, but the air is chillier now.
In a way, he almost expects it; maybe that's the real reason he went for this walk. He hears Jones' feet first, a long-forgotten but once familiar gait. Then he says, "Dan."
He stops and turns. Jones is standing a few feet behind him, wearing an oversized blue jumper that probably doesn't belong to him. His hair, Dan notices now, is longer than when he'd known him, and it's a pure, glossy black.
"Aren't you going to say hello?"
"Hello, Jones."
He flinches. "That's not really my name. You know that, right?"
Dan nods. Then, "What should I call you, then?"
Biting his lip, he looks thoughtful for a minute and then says, "Never mind. Just call me Jones. It's easier that way."
"I didn't come looking for you," Dan blurts out suddenly. "It's a coincidence. I'm on my way to Truro tomorrow."
Jones smiles. "I didn't figure you had, Dan, don't worry." He crosses his arms. "So you're with Sasha?"
He nods.
"Good. I liked her."
"You only met her once or twice."
Jones smiles enigmatically. "That's all I needed." He pauses. "The man I was with today ..."
"He your boyfriend?"
Jones laughs. "I forgot how blunt you are. Yes. He's my ... boyfriend."
Dan chooses not to bring up this man's similar appearance to himself; they don't look exactly like, but it's almost like one is a ghost of the other. Which one's the ghost and which one is real is purely subjective, he supposes. He will also avoid any mention of the intimacies of the past. It doesn't matter, Dan decides. Those warm embraces and smoldering looks are stone cold dead now, and it's only right they should be.
But as if he knows exactly what Dan's thinking of right now, Jones' face suddenly turns very serious. "I ... my schedule's demanding. Our time together, it's kind of precious. So ..."
"I'm not going to bother either of you, don't worry."
He blushes. "Sorry. I should have known you wouldn't." They stand there for a minute, feeling a bit awkward. Dan can’t stop comparing this person up to his foggy memories of the Jones of over a decade ago. Besides age, there's just something different about him. It drives home to him the fact that this man really is not Jones, no matter what Dan is calling him.
"Hey," Jones says, "Can I have one of those?" He points towards Dan's cigarette.
Dan takes his packet out of his inside pocket and offers it to Jones, and they lean in together to light Jones' cigarette from his own. That close, Dan is hit full on with Jones' scent, and that is right; he'd forgotten it, but now it comes rushing back to him. That's something you couldn't fake.
Jones jerks back, as though uncomfortable from the shared intimacy of the moment, and puffs rapidly on the cigarette. "Haven't had one in years," he mumbles around it. "J- my boyfriend got me to quit."
"Don't fall back into it now."
"Just this one."
"He'll smell it on you when you get home."
Jones laughs. "Don't worry about us," he said. "One little cigarette isn't going to cause an upset." He takes a long drag. "How's Claire?"
So ordinary. Dan is surprisingly grateful. "In Canada. She works for the CBC now. Got a little girl ... Louise."
"Ah, so you're an uncle now."
Dan nods, half-smiling. He likes being an uncle. He's never wanted to be a father, but being an uncle is something he's quite good at.
"Can't imagine Claire as a mum, to be honest."
"She's all right. Lou's a pretty good kid. Sort of a tomboy. She's obsessed with bugs right now."
"And you're an editor," Jones says.
"How'd you know that?"
"I'm in the city a lot. I've seen the magazine. I have to admit I was a little taken aback at what you renamed it though. House of Jones, seems a bit odd."
"Much better than SugarApe. We're mostly a music mag now."
"And Sasha? Does she still work there?"
"No, she went back to school. She designs clothes. Sells them online."
"You've all done pretty well for yourselves, then. I don't usually get to find out what happens to the people I ... meet." Jones inhales once more and then drops the cigarette on the ground, only half-smoked, and stubs it out with his boot. "There, that's all I needed."
"What you told me at the hospital," Dan says abruptly, "that I should pull myself together. I thought about it a lot, while I was getting better."
Jones frowns. "I'm sorry about that. Leaving right then. I hadn't planned it that way, that's just how the timing went ..." he trails off. The conversation is getting a bit too real now.
"It's all right. I understood. Eventually, anyway."
Jones sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "I should get going."
"Me as well." They look at each other, both trying to figure out what the appropriate way to say goodbye is, for the last time, and for the first time, because that weird day at the hospital hadn't been a proper goodbye, not really. Then Dan thinks, fuck it, and pulls Jones into a loose, friendly hug. Jones gives a little laugh of relief.
"Dan," he says, as he pulls away. "I've got a question. Something I've been thinking about for awhile. You seem to have it all together - don't make that face - maybe you've got an answer for me."
"What is it?"
For a minute he doesn't say anything, just worries his lower lip with one finger. Then he says, clearly and succinctly, as though, just as he's said, it's a question that has been on his mind for awhile: "Is it wrong to ask someone you love to make sacrifices for you over and over? Even if they say it's all right?"
Dan considers this, rolling the cigarette around between his lips. He isn't normally the go-to person for philosophical quandaries amongst his friends and family, being known for his sardonic attitude and all, but Jones' question is one he's found himself considering a lot, as well - especially in those days when he was still getting better, and relearning how to be a human being again.
"It depends," he says at last, "how much you love that person. And whether what they're making a sacrifice for is worth it."
Jones looks down at his feet. "How d'you know it's still worth it?"
"It's worth it if you love it as much as you love him," Dan says frankly.
Raising his head, Jones looks oddly stricken. Then he just looks torn. "Don't know if you've made me feel better or worse, Dan," he admits.
Dan laughs and stubs his cigarette out. "Sorry."
"It's all right. I never thought the answer would be painless anyway. Goodbye, Dan."
With a wave, he takes off running. Dan watches him as he heads up a hill, eventually disappearing into the darkness. For a few minutes Dan stands there, imagining that the house at the top of the hill, with the lights on the second floor on, is Jones', though in the end it's too far away to know really.
:::
Sasha's asleep when he gets back to the hotel room, a copy of Wide Sargasso Sea spread open on her chest. He plucks it off and looks for her bookmark, but there isn't one, of course. She always folds the pages over. And she calls me lazy. He marks her place and puts the book on the bedside table, but despite his attempts at being quiet, when he sits on the edge of the bed to take his shoes off, she wakes up.
"That was a long walk."
"It was a long cigarette."
She rubs her eyes and looks at the alarm clock. "Oh, it's only been twenty minutes. I must have fallen asleep not long after you left." She yawns, and Dan hides his own surprise, because it really had felt like longer than that. Twenty minutes to say goodbye to someone properly, forever.
But as he undresses and discovers that in his absence Sasha's ingeniously hid his pajamas somewhere in the room, promising only to tell him where they are if he comes over and kisses her, he decides that maybe the goodbye's stretched out for years, and tonight was simply, finally, the last parting.
The End