Metronome

“Alright.”

“Alright.” It's as if we are both mimicking each other and I can't even recall which one of us decided to stretch out their hand and who even shook it. All I knew that I was staring down at it, as if this were some cruel joke and tears were building up in my eyes.

I somehow had happened to hold the tears until I had gotten back to the student accommodation and cried my entire heart out, knowing that we just didn't manage to fit together and that someday I would find someone else. I told myself that it would be as early as summer, but that didn't happen. All of summer was locked up and earning extra money, enough for me to buy a phone on a plan since the previous one had stopped receiving Wi-Fi. I didn't want to ask anyone and somehow selling baked goods was enough to get it all out of my mind. Well, for a while when there was a time when the customers would actually come in and then I would imagine what else had they gone through and what was the reason they had gone with a pastry today.

I had also went down to Sainsbury's and bought a bunch of baked goods which didn't taste too good, but went well with strawberries as I had no ice cream craving. The problem with break-ups is that just like puzzles they always end up different than the picture they present on the box, with far more detail and a lot of time to end up wasting. I didn't watch anything or even turn on the computer, turning off the phone because I knew that Nick would never ever call again and I didn't want anyone else. I figured that the whole world could wait. I knew that the year would start and that would be it. With every small milestone I would tell myself that I'd find someone else, anyone even for a while seemed like a solution.

I even thought of shaving my head, just so that I knew that the curls he held were long gone.

There would be no reason we would run into each other and even if we would he'd avoid me. But every night to fall asleep I have to think of Nick, just to fall asleep again otherwise it becomes a disaster of intertwining thoughts which ask me why hadn't I tried, why hadn't I told him that all couples go through this. That arguing is okay, maybe even one fight is okay.

I usually just turn around to face the wall and trace my fingers over all of the photos which now have my ex boyfriend missing, it's smiling faces with people I'm no longer friends with. I've had a small group of friends, but it was dissolved rather fast. It always happened like that, it wasn't even because I was gay, it just would never work out. I wouldn't want to hang out and smoke weed, so that had been it. I would try to relax instead or go running around the old city part.

I don't think I'll ever believe that a LGBT person never tried going to one of those LGBT meetups. I think we're all desperately lonely and going to one makes us think that somehow we are less alone. I even sat in front of the computer one day and paid their membership fee, just to get to the board meetings, thinking that at least that would distract me, since I had no faith in my classmates and gay people danced more, so maybe that would be an advantage.

The first day of class was nothing and the days just ended up dragging themselves just as slow and my mind would make me paint scenarios where Nick was younger than me or would show up as any of my teachers and somehow that would be it. But instead I was greeted with less pleasant faces and no Nick. Instead I got a call from my mom saying how I should really try and converse with more people instead of binging shows. I just stared in silence, somehow recalling her saying that she had liked Nick.

The board has meetings every three weeks, so it becomes more of a torture to chew the days until then, because when you've got nothing to look forward to, you really don't have anything to look forward to. The group itself has two guys who desperately snog each other or smoke outside and somehow I end up clinging rather close to them. We don't talk much, but when we do it's just usual chatter and I know that Louis is older than I am because he had mentioned once. But I'm guessing the same goes for Liam.

I get to find out that the head of the committee or whatever is a kid with dyed blonde hair, who looks younger than all of us three combined, but I don't mind as the board meeting finally rolls in somehow. It's the usual bunch of a fair amount of older gay men, who I always imagine have slept among themselves, Louis and Liam who paid the entrance fee just because I asked so and unlike me they actually have a living. The kid starts everything by talking and telling us that we should already prepare for Pride even if it's been like three months after the one I attended with Nick last year.

Eventually the door slides open and I just keep looking at the footwear, before I hear a voice higher than my own and much older, apologizing and excusing himself for being late.

He's decided to dye his hair pink. He looks awfully lost and his eyes are fixed on me, like a lost puppy. Nick starts playing with the zipper up and down, as he is excused inside and he sits behind me. I turn my head around just to see my old ex boyfriend take off his jacket and try to ignore my gaze by quickly saying hi to Louis who sits right next to him.

Through the whole meeting which only discusses Pride, since nothing else seems to be rolling around, I keep glancing behind him and eventually I see Nick mouth a brief hi, putting his lips together in a thin line and nodding for me to pay attention. I start shaking briefly, a bit too anxious from seeing my ex who I am clearly not over. I try to tell myself that I can't look back to stare at his pink hair but I turn one of my numerous times to mouth a 'hi' back at him.

Once the meeting is over, Nick just leaves, excusing himself just as fast, not staying for any of the piping hot coffee or Liam's idea of somehow getting all of Pride on water, which is highly unappealing to anyone else besides his boyfriend, who is just agreeing to agree. Everyone just stays for a while with really bland chatter, which makes me wonder far too much what were he thinking and I can only imagine him going back, maybe playing with his hair, surely calling any of his friends who I would end up meeting far too often, listening to them telling embarrassing stories about Nick, who went around by Grimmy to them and I would call him that but once we broke up my brain would just stutter on calling him anything which someone close to him would.

The thing is when there is nothing going on, nothing really does happen, besides some anxiety and depression and the only desire is to tell someone how bad you feel, but I'm not close enough to anyone at this point and both me and Nick promised to delete each other's numbers off. Because who would want a rotten relationship back?

I end up getting some food to heat up from the said Sainsbury's nearby, not even bothering by the Tesco on the way. I just go past the strippers in their flashy transparent heels, not even doing a second glance as they giggle around and stand like advertisements. Sometimes I wish I would have a reason to stay outside, or possibly any other location which would require me to walk even further, maybe I shouldn't have taken the bus at all and spent a whole hour getting back to the accommodation by foot.

But it gets worse. The lessons drag heavily and now it's in far a deeper blur, that I don't even understand what I am even learning or why had I decided on these odd subjects. I keep thinking of Nick and wondering how good he looks in his pink hair and I start thinking of all scenarios that I would meet him under, because he also paid the fee and surely sooner or later we would have to talk and it's only a question of when and how this would happen. I end up crying again, this time on the bed, a few days in, waiting for more days to pass. I wonder if I should put anything at all to the ceiling just to make it cozier and less lonely. I also avoided a party to attend, since it was on the day of a regular meeting, but I guess that's why Nick is avoiding those, avoiding more socializing, probably made it around to the pub. I guess a risk by going to the one of the few gay pubs in town with Liam and Louis, but they're far more chatty than usual and the topic creeps on past relationships.

“Harry?” Liam asks me as I try to think what to even say when it comes to my love life which had started in my late teens around 17 and all up to now. I don't even know what to tell to my newly acquired two friends. Well, since we're drinking beer I would assume that I could call them that.

“Yeah.” I pause and then I look back at them. I am positive that it's written all over my face that I've got a desperately troubled past with my lover and that I would rather not mention it. I take a small sip and nothing still comes out. I put a hand to my hair, tugging on one of the curls. “I had a very rough break up.

I really loved him. But it wasn't meant to be.”

I sip again.

They both glance at each other, rather confused and at this point I find it rather hard to differentiate them just like anyone else. Everything seems so blurry and I hope that I won't just space out again, instead I smile briefly, praying for any other continuation of a conversation only in an another direction. But instead they hold the pause for me to speak, but I am sure that I don't want to speak of it ever again or maybe I am just not ready at all yet. I don't think anyone ever differs from a break up to other people. It's all the same misery and dragging, a lost sense of not understanding where did the other person go.

I look around, as if wondering if there is anyone at all spying on us and I just glance back at them, still entertained in the surroundings but it all lasts no longer than a second and then I actually decide to speak.

“It just went sour. We would fight over nothing at all. His shirt. My part-time jobs. The fact that we would spend too much time with his friends. The fact that we would spend too much time together. It was... everything.” I take another gulp, mentioning the one fight we had where we fucking pulled each other's hair over something that I can't even recall at all. As it was possibly one of the first ever fights we had, it was something which caused all of this crimson to blossom and we kept fighting over everything small. Once we fought over the wrong flavor of cupcakes given to us by the cupcake store.

“But every couple-”

“Fights. I know.” I interrupt Louis really fast. I've heard it before and I've heard it from all of Nick's friends before they decided that it was over and there was no longer a point in keeping up talking to me. I mean, what was the point? I was the ex and now there was nothing else to discuss besides the fact that I would be walking dazed and asking how Nick was. “But we just had to many... And we gave up.”

I forgave him, he never did and that was it.

I start listening to their fights and I just wish that somehow Nick would show up at this pub, but besides the LGBT meeting he never shows up, because then we would surely cause a scene.

-

This was the first story which I guess in all of the blog's history I posted elsewhere first, yeah, you can find it on AO3 as well as something else:) but the blog is still the main platform and the home of all the stories, so please don't worry.

I'm super nervous about how the story is doing on AO3 and how it will be doing later as well. So yeah.

Gryles actually is the only pairing I read these days. I really enjoy it and it's one of the best written ones I've come across. So I decided to try my luck and dip into a fandom which until recent I've only been a reader of and a very timid reader as well. 

I was stuck for a long while not knowing which plot should I use and then I kind of started reading some story and read like a paragraph where Nick broke up with Harry and that kind of stirred something in me by doing a story where they've broken up and that caught my imagination. Then I started thinking about university and college. Since the most recent memories I have of the UK is college I decided to stick Harry in college and go from there. 

Reconciliation is a very big theme in my stories, I guess, because I've been there a lot both on reconciliation which doesn't work and which does. So I quite like exploring that and I've also been trying to work more on my imagination, memories rather than hunting down experience (yes, I've learned my lesson hopefully). 

Another basis for the story was the numbness which I barely even recall was when I broke up with my first boyfriend until I got my second one, which was so bad that I don't even recall anything besides how excited I got when my friend at the time invited me to hang out with what then became my second boyfriend. Both were assholes, everything is a regret xD 

I'm quite a big fan of going to the LGBT scene to be honest and I've recently gone back to it, before I was quite into being just with Callie and now I'm quite open to friends and whatnot. And I've never actually had a story where I talk about LGBT groups and the LGBT scene and whatnot, so I wanted to put that significant part of my life here. 

In the UK the memebership wasn't paid, but it is here and that was a reason why Nick wouldn't bail out. 

I hope you enjoyed it and if you did, please tell me so

Thank you for all your support

<3

Jamie