[california] write about love [kate]

Liam felt more like a person in Los Angeles than London, especially in February. He’d use the climate as an excuse if anyone asked him. But in truth,  he needed an escape from his social circle more than the weather. Of course, the way Charlie and Sam were treating him now had always been wearing. It had made him angry all year, made him defensive and desperate to show how exactly-the-same he was in spite of their assumption that he’d become an entirely different man overnight. Until the press started doing it he’d been able to keep from swinging. But now he felt like the next awkward crack Charlie made about his mincing or hair product or silk dressing gown might get met with a stinging hex.

He was still himself, that was what he’d been telling everyone. But that wasn’t true either. He may not be the archetypal homosexual, but a great deal of his old self had been constructed to hide the parts of it he was. Now he knew if he admitted an inch his mates would assume a mile.

They all made fun of each other all the time, that was how their friendship worked. Liam disliked that this in particular crossed a line. He’d never had a problem with the lack of respect his friends had for him until now. Could he consider himself dehumanized if he hadn’t really been humanized before? To some degree he had always been a caricature. And he supposed it had always been confining. But… Confining himself had been different, he thought.

All of it was very messy, emotionally, and Liam had no interest in dealing with it. So he’d fled the country. His reputations weren’t gone in America, but they were diluted. He had a clifftop house to live on his own terms in. And it might not have been his main priority, but at least it wasn’t fucking raining.

He’d made a little music, drunk a lot of rum, and now he was out of things to do. In a committed relationship now, Liam had been forced to confront that he’d never done much for fun besides try to get laid. He wasn’t sure what to do at a club without a goal. Subtracting his debauchery friends left only the friends who sold him drugs. So he’d been spending a lot of time with Gabriel. Don’t you have anything better to do? his friend had finally replied, once Liam had stopped bothering the iguana and asked to help brew. Go read a book or something.

He only had a few of those over here, but it was an idea. He brought home an armful of new releases and dropped them next to a pool chaise.

Out of Eden, by Dahlia Anthony. Liam had never wanted to be fond of poetry, but as much as he admired lyricism he couldn’t help but be. And his literary muscle could use some toning—the kind of music he was writing these days wasn’t anything he trusted Charlie to set words to. Maybe Ollie, someday. But he wanted to give it a shot himself, to see if he could.

Ms. Anthony was clearly getting some romantic issues out herself. Liam thought about writing Charlie, sending him the one about the matching tattoos with her ex. He should give this whole book to Charlie, actually. Or make sure he never read it, given the way he was reacting to talk of Kate these days. Once Liam started reading through the lens of Baker/Duenas conflict, a lot of it started feeling very on the nose.

Even the music the first night they’d met. The color scheme at their wedding. A couple of other details that sounded right but he wouldn’t have been sober enough to remember.

Liam sat there for a while, wondering if he was losing his mind. There was no way Kate would have the bollocks—no, that was stupid. Just because he was a coward didn’t mean she would be.

He went back to the bookshop. “Dahlia Anthony” had no other books, and the staff hadn’t met her. Liam was now thrumming with energy, desperate to discuss this. Writing Charlie across the ocean would take too long. He tried a pay phone, but couldn’t figure out long-distance. Why had he wanted to isolate himself again? Of all the stupid ideas— Surely Gabe wouldn’t care, but maybe? No…

Whether Kate was still living at the house Charlie bought Liam had no idea, but he knew if he’d been her he’d have laid claim to everything. He stood outside and repeatedly rung the doorbell. How odd, to think how close Charlie had come to having a life here. He’d never been able to imagine it, but right now the thought sounded sort of nice.

Kate answered the door, and looked, reasonably, very surprised to see him. Liam had no good explanation. “Sorry—” He held up the book. “—Am I mad, or is this you?”

@Kate Baker

Wasn’t it the most exhausting, circular thing in the world, to have to clean up messes one had diligently tried to avoid? The only way Kate could have made this book more anonymous would’ve been to not write it.

She’d used a pen name, she hadn’t run her mouth to anybody who was likely to leak information to untrustworthy sources or papers, she hadn’t gone to any book signings, nothing. She’d even kept most of her dealings with the publisher to letters and a few essential meetings. This was something she’d done for her own self, to try and fill a void that wouldn’t go away (she wasn’t sure even that worked), to maintain a source of income, and to figure out where she really wanted to be in her life--and with whom.

Kate hadn’t been given the slightest amount of time to bask in her accomplishment--and it was an accomplishment, to be a published writer, with moderate success already--before having to fill up a water can to go around and put out fires. The water can sort of seemed shitty and useless, too, so what was the use? Maybe letting the whole thing (whatever “the whole thing” was) burn down made more sense. That’s why forest fires were good, right, because at the end of all things, after the destruction of the old, established trees, it made room for new vegetation? Fresh air. New beginnings.

People talked about those a lot in life, new beginnings. It was a nice, feel-good concept in theory, but Kate wasn’t really sure she believed in them. You couldn’t forget everything in your life; you couldn’t un-know a person, you couldn’t just start over. You couldn’t un-love a person once the deed was already done, could you? Only replace it with different loves for different people, but it could never be duplicated or erased.

She wasn’t sure if it depressed her or invigorated her to know she was stuck with all she had and the only thing that mattered was what she decided to do with it. Kate wasn’t under the impression she could drink or fuck the pain away to an alternate dimension and then after awhile it would be gone--it would always come back and always rear its ugly head in such case. Pain had to be felt to be dismissed, and maybe not even then could it really be.

First there’d been the dilemma with Cordelia, and that was still sort of up in the air, and then she’d had to tell her family that there might be a potential conflict and maybe she’d be over at theirs more often because if people were going to be all over her, she didn’t want to be alone. They were upset she hadn’t told them about her intentions to publish a book, obviously, but she’d argued with them it was private and she was only telling them now because she had to.

The first ring at the doorbell shouldn’t have startled her, considering all the goings-on she’d just been turning over in her head, but the subsequent incessant rings did. She gave Simon a quick, reassuring pet and shoved her in the bedroom (for extra safety measures) before she went to the door.

Kate didn’t know who she’d been expecting--Cordelia, or her sister, Francesca, maybe, based on the repetitive doorbell-ringing. Francesca had a key, though, and even when she hadn’t she’d had no problem letting herself right in. All of that seemed more plausible than the person before her eyes, though. Liam Thompson was the last person she’d ever expected to see at her stoop. By himself. Holding her fucking book. If there was a list of people she’d expected, in any given situation, he would have been at the bottom every time. The literal last. He hated her and she didn’t particularly care for him.

He may as well have petrified her, she stood so still for a moment with her eyes shot wide open and her skin probably turning that telltale bluish-green, too, no doubt.

Kate’s cold fingers flew up to one side of her face to hold her head up, or something, since the dizzy feelings were making it more difficult to do that by the second, and she shook her head, though she didn’t know at what. That wasn’t going to make him go away. Liam was nothing if not persistent when he wanted something, wasn’t he?

“Um. Come in.”

She said nothing else, just retreated into the house to let her cat out of the bedroom. “Close the door behind you, please.”

Kate didn’t answer. Liam laughed sharply, almost a little uncomfortable watching her freeze up in shock. This wasn’t surprise-to-see-him shock. This could be nothing but he-was-right shock, and Liam, now shocked himself, laughed again. “You’re joking,” he said.

She was not joking. She also didn’t want to have this conversation outside. Still caught in some odd muddle of amazement and hilarity. Liam closed the door behind him and followed Kate into the house.

He sidestepped the cat, hesitant to embarrass himself trying to pet it only to be rejected. He’d already embarrassed himself enough by reading poetry in enough depth to sleuth this out. Kate had written it, though, so…perhaps she had different standards. Or he had the high ground here, embarrassment-wise, which Liam preferred to believe. “Honestly I’m impressed,” he said, sort of smugly, as only someone with that particular high ground could say. “Really—imagine the nerve!” It was still astonishing him as he looked down at the book in his hand again and back up to her. Therapy and junk was one thing, publishing one’s life was another entirely. Liam was scared stiff of both.

Of course—publishing one’s life was just what Charlie had been doing for years. And most other musicians, aside from the ones with enough imagination to make things up. Good god. He pitched a fit about Charlie’s creative control every now and then, but Liam was truly thankful he had found someone else’s thoughts to play instead of his own.

He turned over the book again. He really ought to re-read this when he got home. When he’d gone through it first he’d noticed the similarities, but he hadn’t really believed his wild theory was true. What insight could he gain about Kate’s mindset in all this? He’d always been awfully baffled by it all. Maybe he’d be able to figure it out?

Something told him he’d just be even more confused.

Liam dropped the book on a countertop. “So—” This was the important question. “Was it meant to be a secret, or were you hoping he would read it?”

She most certainly was not joking, and Kate was sure Liam had figured that out by now (she should have known the gay man in Banshee was probably going to be the first to riddle it out--heterosexual men’s intuition normally left a lot to be desired), so he knew it wasn’t a joke either.

Immediately, Kate’s feet took her into the kitchen and she lugged a bottle of tequila out of the freezer, sloshing some into a frozen margarita mix she’d made, by hand, earlier that day. “You want a drink?” She asked him, ignoring everything else he’d said so far, as she was making quick work of cutting a lime on a board. “Cause I’m gonna have one. Or four.”

Unlike with Cordelia, Kate knew that being on her best behavior probably wasn’t going to change the outcome of this situation. Even if, over the last few months, Liam had decided he didn’t hate her guts anymore, her actions wouldn’t change how he responded. She’d tried that before--being nice, cordial, polite, even kissing his ass a little, and none of that really had changed his attitude, materially speaking. She had to respect that he thought what he wanted and felt how he wanted without much worry for others’ opinions of him, even if it meant he was an asshole in the process sometimes. All that to say, she felt safe cracking open her tequila and having a drink. Or four.

“I don’t know what you mean by the nerve,” Kate retorted crossly and took a large gulp of her margarita, emptying a third of the liquid in the glass, and looked at Liam squarely. “You guys advertise your personal lives voluntarily all the time, and with your real names.”

The hard cover of the book made a confronting smack when it landed on her kitchen counter and she shrugged, setting her glass back down to be able to grip the edge of the stone with both hands. “It’s complicated. Kind of a mixture of both,” If what she said was going to get back to her ex husband, she didn’t see the point in lying, and it wasn’t an if thing now, it was a when. “I wasn’t planning on telling him right away, but. Eventually.”

Kate pulled out a bottle of tequila, but Liam raised his eyebrows as she set to work chopping lime wedges and mixing cocktails. “Sure,” he said, in amusement. “If you’re making ‘em.” How like her to put effort even into her stress drinks. Liam wasn’t sure anyone else he knew would bother with more than opening a bottle.

He leaned against the counter and looked down into his margarita, shaking the slush around, until Kate’s reply made him open his mouth at once. “Oh, come on.” It felt ludicrous. Charlie and his lyrics, maybe, but the rest of them? Letting the media have its way with him (unavoidable) was very different than publishing his own thoughts (he’d persistently avoided doing that). Even interviews weren’t unfiltered and unguided the way a book was. For so long the thought of anyone knowing him at all had felt unsafe, uncontrolled and terrifying. Even under a pen name, he knew he himself would never have had the stones to take his public narrative in his own hands. To put the responsibility for it on his own shoulders.

It was very clear in his head, but he couldn’t distill it into the right words. Liam looked back at Kate. She was looking at him now, and he shifted awkwardly under her intense gaze. She was wrong in some way he couldn’t figure out how to dispute, or maybe she was just right, and either way he wasn’t about to admit it. So he dropped the subject entirely and swallowed a gulp of frozen margarita.

A mixture of both. “Does that mean don’t tell him, then?” If Liam had been able to get to Charlie first he’d have gleefully speculated and made all the mean-spirited fun he could. But now that he knew, and more importantly that Kate knew he knew, the thought of telling Charlie about it felt somehow unsporting. He really had not thought coming here through.

“I mean, going to the trouble to use another name makes it seem like, you know, a secret,” he said. “Like you were hoping nobody would come knocking at your door about it, anyway.” He took another sip. “Am I the first?” He’d like to think so, but she seemed like a person who’d know more readers of poetry than he did.

“I can’t stop you telling him,” Kate told him, much too abruptly after he’d finished his sentence to seem indifferent or suave. She took another big drink and pulled a face as it slid down her throat; the bite of the tequila that burned around her tonsils after her swallow told her she hadn’t stirred it around enough. “Actually, I’m really surprised you came here first at all instead of immediately calling him.”

Her brown eyes narrowed and she followed that rabbit trail down further, considering just exactly how he’d ended up here. There must have been a reason--some kind of barrier, he wanted something from her, or he was just curious, but the last supposition seemed least likely of the three. “I don’t know if I can ask you not to tell him or what use it would do if I did, but I guess I sort of hope you won’t,” A hissing breath came out through a small opening in her lips and she started speaking again on the exhale, “For as long as everything stays a secret, anyway.” In other words, potentially not long at all.

“You’re not the first,” Kate told him trepidatiously, and she wavered in pitch a bit on the last word. Unlike Cordelia, Liam was privy to many more insider private details of the dissolving of Kate’s relationship with Charlie, so despite their rocky history, she felt less inclined to hide things from him. Perhaps it should have been the opposite; after all, since Liam was closer to her ex, there was a much greater possibility he could relay information directly to him and be believed immediately. “A reporter from the Daily Prophet who tried to squeeze divorce information out of me before was here earlier today. I tried to get her to shut up but I don’t know how long I’ll be able to convince her to keep a lid on it.”

Kate’s fingers raked through her hair. “Did you read the whole thing?” She asked Liam suddenly, with her palm facing the ceiling and out to the side while she frowned, deeply, in confusion. “I don’t even understand how you figured it out,” Kate laughed dryly as she acknowledged the elephant in the room. “I used a pen name because I wanted to keep it on the DL for awhile. Shield him from the initial publicity if the launch went well.”

“I tried,” he admitted, and mumbled quietly as he continued: “Couldn’t—figure out the pay telephone.” This was embarrassing (Kate had always been better at the Muggle world than he was) but better she know that than think he’d come to her first out of the goodness of his heart. “Might’ve gone mad if you weren’t in,” he said with a little laugh after a large sip of margarita. “Wasn’t the sort of thought you can wait on, y’know?” He wasn’t sure whether Kate was impulsive in that way—but she had tried to manage him for a good while, so either way she knew.

There had been, even earlier today, a reporter from the Daily Prophet. At once Liam felt sour that someone had beaten him, but the hilarity of the entire situation overtook it quickly. “Good lord,” he laughed. Before continuing he managed to shape his thoughts into something less personally cruel, but hadn’t stopped chuckling. “At least not putting your name on means you’re only getting the people with reading comprehension knocking down your door.”

Labeling himself as a person with reading comprehension was probably a bit strong. Liam finished his margarita in one last swallow and let himself admit it. “It was the details, I reckon,” he said. He pushed his glass back across the counter toward the sink—asking for a refill felt ruder than even he was willing to be. “I mean, don’t think I’d have been able to tell if you’d stuck to the big picture a little more,” he went on. “Not as if you’re the only woman out there with a scumbag husband. But the wedding tablecloths?”

He shrugged. “Artistically, though, I think that stuff makes it.” That was something Charlie did with lyrics too, and he’d always been fond of it.

“Anyway, I dunno.” (Why had he put down his glass? There was nothing left to gesture with now.) “I guess I’ve got some respect for keeping things on—the DL.” The slang sounded ridiculous in his mouth and he regretted it immediately, but too late. Either way, it was hard to say what he’d do upon being faced with Charlie. It seemed likely that impulsivity would come back, but he wasn’t going to tell Kate that. She thought he was enough of a dick as it was. “I think he’d figure it out, if he read it, though,” Liam said. Plausible deniability? Unless Charlie came to her saying Liam told him, which on second thought he would definitely do.

“It’s not like I have plans to go back to Britain until he pulls another album out anyway,” he added. "Reckon you're safe."

“Ah,” Kate clicked her tongue and raised her eyebrows then, the admission he’d already tried to call Charlie putting this situation into a much clearer perspective. Much less confusing that he’d come here to use her as a sounding board as a last resort, despite her being the author of the book in question. Cursed book, may as well have been, at this rate. Multiple unfriendly (or, not benevolent, anyway) visitors in the last 48 hours just because of some little words she’d put down on paper. “Makes sense, then. I’ll remind myself not to feel special at all at any point during this conversation.”

Without asking, Kate refilled Liam’s glass and her own and meandered in toward the living room. It was a bit much to stand in the kitchen and play out the same scenario twice in one day, so perhaps if she changed the setting she’d be able to differentiate between these two scenarios a little more, remember their idiosyncrasies and the he-said-she-said banter better.

“Have a seat,” She told him and curled up, legs tucked underneath her, on the couch. It struck her immediately that there were traces of Charlie everywhere in this house, and she hadn’t taken the time--nor necessarily wanted to--to erase them. Probably wasn’t healthy. Maybe she needed to motivate herself with something else, like that it was objectively fun to redecorate living spaces, but that suggested a permanence she wasn’t really inclined to introduce.

“I don’t think she just figured it out by herself,” Kate admitted. “We have mutual friends, so it’s probably already circulating between them. It might be too late for me to do real damage control.” What a crushing thought. She wasn’t typically a pessimistic person, but it was difficult not to feel like this was all for naught.

Kate’s warm brown eyes surveyed Liam carefully. Of course he knew about keeping secrets. He’d kept one of the biggest ones a person could keep for years. Despite himself, he could probably appreciate the effort things like that took. “Right. Of course you do.” She agreed, much more tenderly than she’d normally address him, considering their history.

“I’m sure he’ll figure it out,” Kate blustered and shifted on the couch, “I just wasn’t--anticipating it would be this soon.”

Her eyes narrowed. “When’s the next album out? It can’t be any time soon, can it?” She had to admit that she went out of her way not to listen to Banshee’s music a great portion of the time these days. Too painful--to be included in the material, or not. Both things were a separate kind of suck, each with their own drawbacks. Kate was fairly sure that a certain floozy was the subject of many of the tracks Charlie was writing now, and she didn’t have a burning desire to voluntarily curse her ears with that.

“You’re really staying here until then? Hmm.” She clunked her glass onto a carefully placed coaster, sitting atop the coffee table. “California’s not so bad, huh?”

Liam had a feeling he and Kate were both surprised how long it had taken for him to offend her. But he had, and she’d been passive-aggressive in return, and he rolled his eyes with relish. Really, if she’d thought he was asking her as anything less than the absolute last resort, that was on her. She knew him. She knew all his loyalty fell to Charlie and always had.

But here she was making him drinks and inviting him to sit and he was feeling less and less eager to tell Charlie what he’d discovered. Speaking face to face, the resigned note in her voice, the fact that he wasn’t even the first person today to confront her about it… Merlin. Too pathetic to get any satisfaction out of knocking down a peg.

Despite his newfound pity, he still struggled to listen to this without replying well that’s what you get, stupid. The public wasn't to be trusted with their secrets, and she'd given them a giftwrapped box of them. It was remarkable how everyone he knew acted like they’d never experienced the wizarding gossip mill at all. No one considered Liam a paragon of self-control, and generally rightly so, but when it came to keeping his personal life personal—he’d never titled a song Oliver.

Kate had definitely heard about the Oliver development; it was clear in her voice. Liam cringed and ignored it. The last thing he wanted was to discuss that with a woman who wrote poetry. He moved on. “For what it’s worth, I can’t see Charlie picking that book up,” he said. “I think he’s a bit more particular than I’ve been lately.” Snobbier, if he even went to magical bookshops at all. “If as many people are catching on as you say, though, I’m sure he’ll get ahold of it sometime.” Hopefully no one would take to throwing them at him during shows.

When were they releasing an album? "Dunno, it's up to them." Anything he'd written lately sure as hell wasn't going on a Banshee album. He was fine in California until there was something Charlie and Sam wanted him to play. "Oi, I always liked it here," he muttered. Again the thought of Californian Charlie drifted through his head, and he felt a pang of fondness for the future that had never come. "The others deserve Britain." It was as drab as they were. He didn't think Charlie had worn a color since last Halloween.

He looked down at his hands--he hadn’t realized he’d left the book on the kitchen counter and wished he’d taken it with him to flip through. “I should reread your book now, I think,” he said. “Anything in there about what you saw in him in the first place?” He took another gulp of margarita, feeling too cowardly to meet her eyes as he asked. But if ever he was going to ask... This was the closest they'd had to a civil conversation in years, and he'd been desperately curious for just as long.

Despite herself, when Liam wasn’t being an asshole, Kate had to admit that she found him actually… funny. Her face twisted into a slightly amused, half-confused expression as he plainly slammed his home. “They deserve Britain?” She was grinning by then. “What’s that supposed to mean?” She could guess, based on all the negative stereotypes that circulated among Americans that British people were snobby, elitist, cold, depressed, boring…

All of those things hadn’t necessarily been disproven the whole time she’d spent in London, and she’d thought Massachusetts was kind of bad when she lived there, so--yes, it was worse than New England, in the original England. The cultural differences here were night and day. There was a special carefree, laid-back attitude here that couldn’t be replicated in other areas of the English-speaking, white-people-dominant world. Kate couldn’t blame Liam for appreciating it as such. The disturbing part about all this was that she hadn’t thought twice to pick up and leave her home behind for the person she loved, and if she dug around enough, she knew she’d do it all again in a heartbeat. Wasn’t that part of why she still had some fingers in that pie?

“I can’t really see him picking it up either.” Kate nodded and agreed. “I kind of felt like nobody I know would be that into poetry--or, unlikely to pick up anything new, anyway, because… new poets. Not that great.” The side of her mouth pulled down to imply her displeasure. No complexity or intimacy in most of the new poetry that was being written--twenty years ago, maybe, but not now.

“You brought it with you, right?” Her head twitched toward the kitchen counter where it laid abandoned on the bench. “You’re here already. Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

“You want to know what I saw in him?” She grinned. This was almost comical, really, that Liam wanted to know what had drawn her into Charlie, because the whole time she’d known her counterpart here it had always been what was wrong with their relationship, how much he didn’t like her, how he wished she’d disappear off the face of the planet.

“I had a crush on him the first time you guys came to the United States and met my dad, during the war. I was just a kid then so nothing came of it, but. When I met him for the second time it was like… an electrifying connection. Felt like we’d known each other a long time. So we wrote letters,” Kate cleared her throat and glossed over the gory details. He could ask for more if he wanted them, but she’d assume for right now that he didn’t. “For a while. I thought about dropping out of school because I hated the distance that much. But I waited, because he wanted me to, and graduated.”

She paused and focused on a random point on the floor close to where he sat. “He was earnest about being with me, he was thoughtful, he was spontaneous, he made me feel special. He could have any girl in the world and I felt like the only one. I was, for a long time, despite all the… randoms.” Of course he would know what that meant. 

“So I didn’t care what anyone else thought. Who cares about other people’s opinions or your reputation when it’s the love of your life, you know?”

Liam, as he always did when asked to explain himself, felt foolish. It took him a minute to put it into words. “They’ve just got no interest in style, have they?” Thankfully they hadn’t ever seemed to need it.

He’d worried his comment about picking the book up would insult her, but Kate was going along with it and for some reason that made him feel even more foolish. He turned over the book in his hand. “I dunno,” he said. “I’m no poetry expert.” She had to know he was no lyricist at least. “I just brought a shitload of books home to keep me busy until the next album.” He shrugged. He hadn’t disliked it, but the idea of Kate thinking he’d picked up her book out of genuine interest was too humiliating for Liam to allow. Civility was his limit here.

Speak now or forever hold your peace, she said, and he replied with an honest laugh. Maybe what she’d fancied about Charlie had been his smart mouth?

But now she was giving him the whole history. Liam couldn’t keep himself from staring at her, gobsmacked. He knew everyone was different with women they were after, but the way she described Charlie was baffling.

Liam had struggled as young teenager figuring out how to lie to women. Eventually he’d caught on that girls didn’t take to the sort of self-aggrandizing blatant falsehoods he told his mates, the bravado and the machismo—it was easier to string them along with judicious application of the truth. Liam didn’t doubt Charlie had opened up to Kate. It wasn’t as if they could open up to each other, and everyone needed that. But it amazed him that she’d ever considered him an honest man. Were women really in the dark about it? Did they really take men at their word?

He took a large gulp of ice and awkwardly shook his head before he opened his mouth.

“I just—never understood why you wanted to be with him when—it didn’t seem like anything about him was what you wanted,” he said. Or Charlie her, Liam supposed, but she was stunningly fit so he'd questioned it less. “He’s a chauvinist, and he’s an arsehole, and he drinks like a fish and shags any bird who offers, and that’s just who he is, innit? Couldn’t imagine why you’d try to make him into a good husband instead of just going after anyone who already was.”

He picked at a loose thread on his sleeve. “Couldn’t fault you at first, I figure,” he said. “Not as if you know whether anyone’ll change before trying.” Two years ago he’d have described himself the same as Charlie, or probably worse. He’d never have foreseen his jaunt into committed monogamy. Or even worse, the solitude and the poetry. Two years ago he’d never have had this conversation. But his own transformation felt like an entirely different circumstance. “He sure did his damnedest to show you he wouldn’t, though.”

Who cares about other people’s opinions, she said. Liam snorted, less out of derision and more out of amusement with his own worries. If the conversation had been any more antagonistic he’d have taken it as a deliberate jab. “Power to you, I s’pose,” he replied airily, and took another sip. “Personally I can’t discount them.”

Her eyebrows rose slowly. No interest in style? Kate supposed that none of them had ever shown a pointed proclivity toward the world of fashion and material items, but she wasn’t sure she considered that a bad thing. Charlie had never smelled bad, never made a mess, always looked clean and put-together--of course, except when he didn’t, but that wasn’t his fault. Leaving certain things untreated was his fault, but the existence of symptoms wasn’t, and Kate really wasn’t sure how many people he’d told so she kept quiet.

Kate wasn’t sure whether his shameless gaping had anything to do with surprise, but she assumed probably part of it did, and then the other part was undoubtedly an assumption that Kate was deluded and saw things through rose-colored glasses. A lot of people, friends, family, enemies, and acquaintances alike felt this way, and it was understandable, because they hadn’t actually been in the relationship to experience what she had, and much of what they heard was from other people.

She was surprised when she found herself angry at the statements he made next; Kate felt a rush of heat bunch up in her chest and her eyebrows pulled together to meet in the middle of her forehead. Kate bristled and fidgeted out of her relaxed posture to line up straight with the back of the sofa. “I don’t really think it works like that,” Kate started graciously, considering how exactly to tell Liam that he was off-base with several of the things he’d said--sort of. Wrong enough that she could understand why he’d been largely unsupportive of her relationship practically the whole time it had gone on. “I don’t think you can just. Write down things you want in a person on a list and have that person materialize right before you.”

Kate’s hands squeezed into little fists and then relaxed, and she stretched her fingers out slowly, breathing in deeply to calm herself.

“And I didn’t try to make him into anything.” She added honestly. “That’s not what it was like. We saw each other a few times before I moved here and I didn’t read English newspapers. What I knew of him was all that I had, which was that he had been kind to me years ago, helped me get out of a situation I didn’t want to be in, and liked me for who I was.” Kate swallowed and choked on some tears, she’d noticed the last part of her sentence turn upward in tone like she was trying not to and the lump in her throat and she couldn’t have that. Not in front of Liam--and he wasn’t making her emotional, but retelling this story, from her perspective, to one of Charlie’s friends was.

“Everyone wears the rose-colored glasses at first, and I did, until I got to England.” This was firmer, maybe she was out of the woods now and she could finish the conversation without becoming too passionate for her own good. “I knew all those things about him. I don’t know why everyone tries to act like I didn’t. That’s why I broke up with him one time before,” Kate’s eyes slid down to stare at her hands in her lap, but she wasn’t holding anything, so there was nothing to fidget with. She picked at her nails instead.

“But I’m not stupid. I knew he was an asshole. I knew he was controlling sometimes and that he was cheating on me, but I loved him because there were other things that most people don’t see.” She looked at Liam. “I don’t know what your relationship is like now, but you’ve never been the most pleasant person. I’m sure he would understand exactly what I mean.” Her eyes were serious, but not unsympathetic.

“What actually happened was that he asked me what I wanted him to do. So we tried that. And I just felt like…” Her shoulders shrugged and she made a face, mostly unwilling to finish the sentence but aware she’d probably have to to make any sense, “He needed to go through whatever he was going through without me there. I thought it was making him resent me. I wanted to stick around but he didn’t really fight for me to, not like he did the first time.”

Kate paused, feeling almost alone with her thoughts instead of with a person in front of her, one whom she really shouldn’t be spilling her guts to. “I didn’t have an idea of what I wanted, really. Husband, kids, a house… anything like that. Just what I should want. None of it even crossed my mind until I was already in love. And all of that was secondary to just wanting to be with him. There were--expectations, that were felt… because of how my family is, but. Like I told you, I’m trying not to care about other people’s opinions.”

And then he’d said he cared. He couldn’t discount them, and what for? Other people’s opinions were poison to relationships. Kate couldn’t lie and posit that she’d never cared about Liam’s, though, because of course he was one of Charlie’s closest friends and someone she had to work with on a regular basis while she’d been manager. “...I get that.” Kate admitted. “It’s sort of a recent development for me. And I always… cared about people’s opinions that were close to him. So maybe that’s why he was always so nervous about what my family thought.”

He’d almost forgotten why coming to Kate’s had been a stupid idea, but now he knew. What had he been expecting, to ask for her opinion and her not to give it? For her to understand his position? To understand hers? They were viewing this situation from such starkly different vantages, too different to get their points across. There was no bridging the gap between a lover’s intent and a friend’s impressions.

(It made Liam wonder, uncomfortably, what Ollie’s take on their own relationship was. The last thing he wanted to imagine was one of his boyfriend’s mates coming to his house someday and telling him it had all been painful to watch.)

There was something impressive in the fact that she was saying all of this, aloud, and had words for it. Perhaps he should have been less surprised that she’d ventured into poetry. But on the other hand, she was talking nonsense and he was compelled to argue. And he didn’t want to. He couldn’t start a fight with someone who had words for things and expect to win.

Liam knew he had to end this conversation immediately, but he was sensitive to appearing cowardly. How much did Kate know about Slytherin house’s reputation, he wondered? Surely she wasn’t from whatever Ilvermorny house collected the scumbags. It seemed like something Charlie would have told her, though, especially where it concerned the fleeing to America business.

(America was just that in his head: a place to flee to. Here he was, yet again—but not under threat of death. Under threat of what? Life?)

All he was doing right now was pre-empting an interaction that would get nowhere. That was maturity, yes? That was different from sheer cowardice.

Probably.

“Alright!” he said, voice sharply, dissonantly bright. “We’ve been putting that off for a while now, haven’t we?” He had achieved something, if getting the question out of his system was something. Maybe she’d been wanting to tell him he was a misinformed dickhead for just as long. And now they could ignore each other in peace and never speak again. He lifted his empty margarita glass before setting it down. “Thank you kindly.”

Liam gave her book one last fidgety little slap and turned on his heel, but before he got out of the room he paused. “I’m—not going to run straight home and tell him,” he said, his annoyance at himself clear in his voice. The last thing he’d expected this coming out business to give him was a bleeding heart—or if that was too strong a term for it, just a little less schadenfreude. Noticing it gave him that same squirmy feeling he got when he noticed so many things he did these days. Like he wasn’t himself.

“If people are catching on as quick as you say, though, obviously he’ll find out sometime.” If not Charlie, then Witch Weekly would—and then, subsequently, Charlie. “If I were you, I’d get ahead of it and let him know. Reckon he wouldn’t want to be blindsided.” Charlie’d always had more personal details for the public to blindside him with than Liam or Sam, and he’d never taken it kindly.

This was too obvious for him to act like it was even advice, so he regretted saying so at once. “Whatever,” he said, as if that helped.

Liam’s voice was startling when he spoke up, it sounded like a pointy needle if one of those could have a noise associated with it.

She frowned. Putting off what, exactly, she didn’t know because Kate had been under the well-evidenced impression, the whole time she’d known Liam and tried to work civilly with him, that he wanted nothing to do with her. How, in his critical eyes, could she possibly have had anything to offer him? In her experience, he was such a know-it-all that nobody else could have given him any knowledge that he’d appreciate, because he was always so confidently and insufferably right about everything. Even when he was unequivocally and totally wrong. Maybe Oliver was the exception to that, much like Kate had felt like an exception to so many of Charlie’s… proclivities. There was that chance and she understood it.

He was the type to strongly proclaim an opinion about something even if he didn’t have sufficient evidence to back the opinion up, probably solely for the experience of opposing another person and feeling like he was winning something in so doing. Maybe a lot of the repressed rage or bitterness or whatever chip he had on his shoulder was softening after not feeling trapped anymore, or like he could be himself--but if he didn’t feel trapped, what the hell was he doing all the way over here?

Kate jumped in her seat as he slapped the book. He wasn’t taking it with him, then, that much was clear, and he was too jittery and flitting about too much for her alcohol-addled brain to keep up with how quickly things were happening. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Kate admitted. “I honestly thought you hated me the whole time, considering you were, you know. A bit of an ass.” She smiled sheepishly, unable to tell whether or not it was sincere, but her eyes were squinting too so it seemed doubtful it came across that way regardless.

“But I’m glad you feel like you got something out of the way.” English people were big fans of doing things for formality’s sake, she’d noticed. “I didn’t think you were going to believe me about anything since you actually don’t know me that well, all things considered, but I guess I’m just going to have to live with the idea that everyone else he’s close to will continue to think of me as a deluded idiot.” Kate nodded curtly. She was really too drunk now after the few minutes she’d let things sit to be speaking this candidly, and she didn’t know if she could honestly defend herself if he decided to get scrappy, but when was she going to have another chance like this?

He told her he wasn’t beelining straight to Charlie to tell him about anything, but if he’d been so bursting with curiosity he’d had to come here, then Kate wasn’t sure how long his supposed decency could last. Liam was probably correct in that Charlie would want to know about the book from Kate, before anybody else knew about it, but that was assuming she wanted to do him that favor, and hadn’t she done him enough favors? Covered his shit up enough times when he’d left it there in the open?

“.... Right.” Kate said instead of letting him in on her internal dialogue. She’d said plenty already. “I’ll keep that in mind.” She wasn’t jumping to escort him to the door like a good host, but she’d get up and do it if he meandered that direction.