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“It’s okay,” Julian said softly. “Take your time.”

Time. Atticus had given Kai so much time, had waited for so long, and Kai had brought it all to an end with a few thoughtless words.

“He’s done,” Kai said, nearly spitting the words out. “He’s done waiting. He’s going to move on.”

Julian laughed.

He fucking laughed .

Kai was shocked out of his sniffling by the sound.

“I don’t know what he said to make you think that,” Julian began, still chuckling softly.

“But I can confidently say that it’s not true.

Maybe he just needs some time, some space to get over whatever you two fought about.

But I promise you, Atticus is not going to move on from you. Not after one hard day.”

The words washed over Kai, going against everything he felt inside. Everything his mind had been screaming at him since the moment he’d gotten in the car and left Atticus standing in his doorway.

“And take it from someone who has always been royally fucked in the head,” Julian continued, “you are not broken.”

Kai couldn’t help but scoff. Just because Julian had gone through some shit in the past, shit that Ori had only ever alluded to in the few conversations they’d had about it, didn’t mean Kai’s problems weren’t real…

“You are allowed to be sad.” Julian’s words interrupted his thoughts.

“You’re allowed to be angry, you’re allowed to be sharp.

Be those things as much as you need to. They aren’t bad things to feel, they don’t mean that something in you is beyond repair.

You can be all of those things and still be worth loving.

You don’t have to have one without the other. ”

Kai didn’t know how to respond. He had always thought of the negative emotions he felt as exactly what he’d told Julian they were. Baggage. Something he needed to break free from but didn’t know how.

“It’s okay to have bad days. Or even weeks, or months. Maybe a part of every day will be bad, sometimes that’s just how it is. But you can still exist with all of that. You can still have the things you want, the things you deserve with all of that .”

Kai couldn’t keep quiet any longer, a question pressing past his defenses.

“What if it’s too late?”

The words came out as a whisper, made him feel so small in the dark room he sat in.

“Kai,” Julian said, his voice solid and almost teasing. “Atticus has seen you sad. He’s seen you living with the hard stuff. And he’s stuck around through it all. I don’t think he’s going anywhere any time soon.”

The pressure holding Kai’s heart and lungs in a vice-like grip lessened.

Just a bit. Just enough that he felt a little more at ease.

He remembered the night Atticus had come home, had seen him breaking down over the call with Theo.

Remembered the way Atticus had handled it all, had just let Kai sit with his overwhelming emotions.

Had just been there, a steady presence, a shoulder to very literally cry on.

“Are you going to be okay?”

Kai didn’t know if he would be okay, and said as much. Julian hummed once again.

“I think you will be,” he said. “I would bet real money that Atticus is just as scared about all of this as you are. Just give it a day or so, let him lick his wounds and he’ll be back to his normal, dumbass self.”

Kai couldn’t suppress a small laugh.

“Thanks, Julian.”

“Of course,” the other man said. “Unfortunately, I’m being summoned. Ori needs my assistance in this apparent pissing contest.”

“Your sets do always make him shine a little brighter,” Kai said. He could practically picture Julian smirking at his words, preening at the compliment .

“It’s true,” he sang. “You sure you don’t want to talk to him right now?”

“No,” Kai said. He did feel better, if only just a bit. “I’ll text him later. You can fill him in on everything.”

“We do love a good evening filled with gossip,” Julian said, his voice laced with a teasing lilt. “It’s going to be so boring once he moves into his place next week.”

They said their goodbyes, and Kai set his phone on the cushion next to him.

He felt lighter, like he could sit a little taller, no longer quite as weighed down by it all.

Not just the things that had happened that morning, the words spoken in the heat of anger.

But all of it, all of the things that normally tore at him, normally filled him with such piercing shards…

it all felt a little less sharp. It was as though, as Julian’s words sank into him, each of those shattered pieces were ground down a bit, just enough to keep them from tearing through his skin.

Kai rose, walking across the room to the window. The sunlight was harsh, searing his vision as he twisted the blinds open. His skin warmed immediately, tear tracks drying, pulling at the skin of his cheeks.

The room seemed less imposing as he turned back toward it, light reaching every corner, filling every empty space. The quiet was still there though. It still left something in Kai feeling empty and desperate.

But after his conversation with Julian, Kai felt like maybe the emptiness was something he could deal with. Even if it was only for today. Kai wanted to sit with the words he had offered him, wanted to parse them out and see if he could find it in himself to believe them.

For the first time in a year, Kai felt a little less broken .

The sound of the can cracking open echoed through the kitchen. Atticus looked around, searching for the kitten. Typically, any time he opened her wet food, she came running. Crashing into the room as though she hadn’t eaten in days.

There was no sign of her.

Atticus decided to wait, to give her a couple more minutes before he went searching. He began to clean up the kitchen in the meantime. The trash needed to be taken out, a few dishes needed washed. He was putting away several glasses when his eyes snagged on something in the cabinet.

The two mugs that Kai had gotten them. One maroon, the other a pale pink.

A sickened feeling settled in Atticus’ stomach. He pushed it down, along with all of the thoughts it brought to the forefront of his mind. Memories of the horrible things he had said earlier that day.

The kitten still hadn’t turned up for her meal, so Atticus began to search the house for her. He checked her bed in the living room. Empty. But sometimes she preferred to sprawl on the couch and sleep, so he checked there as well.

The only thing he found on the couch was the blanket Kai had also gotten at the market. The hideous cat faces stared at him from where it had been folded neatly to drape over the couch’s arm.

Atticus had noticed that his clothes from the night before, the ones he’d shucked off outside, had been placed in the laundry hamper.

Kai must have gone out and gathered everything.

He must have been the one to pick up the blanket, to fold it up and bring it in.

Atticus couldn’t help but remember what they’d done on that blanket, how he had felt in those moments.

He couldn’t help but wonder if Kai had thought about it as well as he’d picked it up .

No. No, Atticus couldn’t do it. He couldn’t follow the train of those thoughts, couldn’t let himself think about how he’d fucked everything up.

It was too much, his fight or flight instincts kicking in, trying desperately to keep him from crumpling beneath the weight of it all.

He returned to his search to distract himself.

He checked everywhere, room by room. Each one was empty. It weighed on him, the way he felt so alone in his own space. He’d gotten used to not being by himself.

Atticus knew he was procrastinating. He’d walked right past his guest room, despite the fact that the door was cracked open. He checked every single other room in his home. Twice.

Still no kitten.

He could feel it before he even entered the room. The tightness in his chest, the clenching in his gut. Atticus pushed open the guest room door.

She was there, curled up into a tiny ball, her side rising slowly with measured breaths as she slept soundly.

She was sleeping on top of the old Cats hoodie.

The one that Atticus had told Kai to keep.

The one that Kai had been wearing all week.

It was folded neatly, placed purposely on the corner of the bed.

Kai hadn’t thrown it in the hamper with the other clothes from outside, as though he had maybe, for just a moment, considered packing it up and taking it with him.

Atticus reached out, gently waking the kitten. She yawned, blinking slowly, stretching out languidly before jumping down from the bed and leaving the room. Atticus stayed behind, his gaze fixed on the hoodie, fingers brushing lightly across the worn fabric.

Tears stained his cheeks as he finally picked it up and clutched it to his chest. Atticus sat on the edge of the bed, his hands gripping the hoodie so tightly that his knuckles were beginning to burn.

A sob wrenched itself from his chest. Everything that Atticus had been fighting to hold back, everything that had been building in him since Kai had walked out the door, it all came spilling forth. Wave after wave battering him, leaving him reeling with pain.

Atticus curled up on the bed, still clutching the hoodie close, as though he could keep from truly losing it all by holding on tight enough.

Tears soaked into the blanket, burning lines down his skin as they continued to fall.

He could hardly think straight, everything he wished he could have done or said differently pushing forward in his mind, fighting for the spotlight, filling his aching chest to bursting.

Guilt weighed on him, pushing back all of the anger he had felt in a flash of stupidity that morning.

Atticus had waited so long. He had never wanted to push too far, had never wanted to scare Kai away.

And he had ruined it all in a single moment, had said things he would never be able to take back.