He feels old.

Has done since 1981, when he started feeling normal again, and he had a bout of the terrible lucks. Not any sort of psychiatric term, the terrible lucks. They’re of his own personal invention, because he’s been living in dog years since he was seventeen, and the first offenses occurred. That had all stopped mattering at some point, because he’d had a new proper noun to make sweater sets for—watch scary movies with, if watching means peeking at the screen through his fingers periodically because he’d never been able to sit through the disembowelments and evil spirits haunting houses and girls getting drenched in animal blood. Westley Thomas does not live in the present. It’s this rut kind of thing that he’s stuck in. It had taken him longer to get over the second Her than it had the first. Because the second had taken over for the first, when he was making all the wrong decisions again and She had just kind of been there in a not-very-poetic way; Marlene had been an anchor when he was this stupid symbolic boat stuck in the middle of a storm. A storm of his own invention, but a storm nonetheless.

Then she died.

As all good things do.

And he kept getting this ache in his chest, like he knew that this was going to be the last time he could bring himself to try. The first had set the pattern, the third had ended it. He probably sat for a week in his (their?) shared bedroom staring at all of the shit that she had left behind because she had to go and leave him, like everyone always did. Wes is that apathetic character that everyone hates in the novel that everyone loves, proverbial little black rain cloud pulled up above his head by a puppeteer’s strings. Sometimes things felt normal. He liked those times best, because he started to forget what Marlene had sounded like when she laughed, and what she looked like when she was mad, and he could just revel in the memories that he might have made up with the passing of time. She’d been gone a decade when he realized that he wasn’t really bothered by it anymore. It came along with the territory of hitting his thirties and growing up—making it to places he had always wanted to go, but never got around to going to because he’d tethered himself to people and places and things.

Without anyone, it was easy to get lost. That was the good thing, though. Westley had never had a chance to be lost, before. He had been preoccupied by teenaged obsessions, and then post-adolescent obsessions, and then going back to the teenaged obsessions in this sick circle kind of thing.

They’re sitting side by side on a couch—not Westley’s place. It’s cold outside, so they’re drinking tea like they’ve done hundreds of times before. Except it’s not the same, because it’s been five months since they put another friend in the ground (more than a friend, in some cases); Wes isn’t sure what to say. Silas isn’t saying much either. “Do you want me to put the kettle on again?” he asks for something to fill the silence. It’s deafening, just sitting there in miniature comas. Suspended in their own bubbles. How are they supposed to—

God, he feels old; creaky bones and smoker’s cough old. He’s never smoked a day in his life, and his lungs still feel too heavy. Made out of lead, weighting him down, but maybe that’s a good thing, because without them he might float away? Today on the day when they’re sitting on the couch drinking tea because it’s cold outside and not talking. Silas shrugs. He hasn’t touched his original cup—it makes Westley nervous. Silas is the one that’s supposed to try filling the silence. His one and only job in this barely functioning friendship and he’s seemed to abandon it. Westley pries the mug from his hands and makes the short walk to the kitchen, discarding the cold tea, putting the kettle on the backburner and waiting for it to whistle.

“Drink it,” he says when he gets back to the couch, forcing the cup to Silas’ mouth. “If you’ve resigned yourself to a life of couch surfing, that’s fine. But you still have to eat and drink while the cushions take an imprint of your arse.” It only gets a tentative sip of tea from the other man. Westley sighs, setting it both drinks on the coffee table. “Em would probably be incredibly pleased to know that you’re still mourning her and have turned practically catatonic, but, that doesn’t mean it isn’t pathetic.” Another shrug. “It’s a good thing the kids are off at school. If they could see their father figure looking like this, they’d need loads of therapy. Loads. Galleons and galleons worth of therapy, Silas. Do you have galleons upon galleons to send your children to intense psychotherapy?”

Pushing someone’s buttons isn’t fun when they’re not rising to the attack. Westley jabs his finger into Silas’s arm. All he gets is a muttering of, “this is rubbish.”

“Three whole words! You’ve bowled me over, Abercrombie.”

“Have I?”

“Indeed you have. It was such an astute observation delivered in such a small package.”

“Oh.”

“Would you like to expand on the thought? So that I can, dunno, help you? Be your beacon. Your lighthouse!”

Silas turns his head ever so slightly to look at him. Not a look that screams Silas; a look that makes Westley want to sink into the cracks between the pillows and not come up until some sense of normality has been restored. “How can you be happy, Westley? Emmeline is gone. She hasn’t just popped off to get milk at the market. She’s—gone. So how can you be happy? Unless you’re happy that she went and got herself killed! I don’t know anymore. I should know; I usually know everything! But I just… don’t know.” Silas has spent his whole life getting lost, and now, he’s forgotten how. When Westley scoots closer to him, rests his head on Silas’s shoulder—it fits. Falls in to place. There aren’t going to be bells or whistles or fireworks going off in his field of vision. That’s not what he’s expecting. It’s that stupid coming home cliché, the puzzle pieces analogy. They fit (hips touching, hands kind of fumbling to find each other).

He breathes out. “You still have me.” Breathes in. “It isn’t much. But at least I’m still here.”