Chapter Text
There was something missing.
Willem glanced around his apartment, carefully studying each fully-furnished corner, every inch of the dark wood floors, watching the sun stream gently from the floor-length windows and into the sprawling white couch that curled around the coffee table to face the 52-inch flat screen floating against the brick wall. It was a beautiful apartment–although it did scream bachelor–with all of its little potted plants and decorative liquor bottles in place, and yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something missing.
He walked over and leaned against the couch’s armrest and peered into the beautiful, marble-lined kitchen area with its dark cabinets and gold handles and clean white backsplash, then walked a little further forward to study his bedroom. It had the best view of the entire apartment, a perfect New York City skyline in the distance, and it lit up the room’s expanse–the bedroom alone was bigger than so many of the apartments he’d lived in before–and in its glow the light bounced off the white of his bedspread and the lighter brown of his floors.
He had wanted this for so long.
In his entire adulthood, this seemed to be the most difficult of his ambitions to reach, demanding both an accumulation of dollars that was dizzying in sum, and extreme luck with the competitive tournament of New York real estate. But against all odds, he’d managed both those things, he had won.
He’d celebrated, too, extensively, with dinners in Cambridge with Harold and Julia, small parties with his friends and theirs, drinks with Kit and Emil, and a generous donation to the disabled children’s program he had worked at for a summer. He had enjoyed every second of bickering with Malcolm over interior design trends, and enjoyed even more the ability to spend on furniture, on household appliances, on decorative plants, without worry.
He was so far from the ranch in Wyoming now, so far from a life of loans, of jealousy, of, at times, hunger–it was a dream come true in so many ways.
And the fact that it was, made it all the more unsettling when he found himself feeling like there was something missing, like perhaps a toothbrush or cellphone charger left behind on a family vacation.
Willem took another lap around his apartment.
The novelty of every little expensive detail, from the gorgeous rug in the living room, to the oak accents on the ceilings, it still hadn’t worn off, the millisecond of disbelief would still arrive, but eventually he dropped himself on the white flax linen sofa, and sighed.
For a while he sat there, thankful and yet thoroughly confused, before he pulled out his phone and began to look for a number–Jude’s number.
And before he could press dial, it hit him, very quickly and very clearly, what exactly was missing.
* * *
Willem had left him.
But that wasn’t fair for him to think so, not at all, and he rarely felt this way, he rarely felt like he was the center of a singular action that had probably nothing to do with him–but he hadn’t been able to escape it this time. He felt abandoned and hurt and so deeply alone it almost truly ached, a gut-punch to the stomach and a prickle in the throat. And very quickly, shame, because of how dependent he’d become on the joy he felt coming home and knowing Willem would be there, how reliant he allowed himself to be on someone who deserved far more than to be stuck with his cripple of a friend.
Willem hadn’t left him, he figured, not really. He had just finally received what he deserved, a breakthrough movie and a beautiful apartment, a life he had long earned and had been deprived of, and Jude knew this.
He was happy for him. That was true, and that was the most prominent thing he’d felt when Willem broke the news for the first time.
Your happiness for someone you loved, someone you knew had deserved it, was a different sensation from your happiness for your own success, your own gifts. The latter was small and would quickly be extinguished by the fear of how much you don’t deserve it, how easily it can be taken away from you, but when it was someone you loved, when it was someone who was the best person you knew, it was the contrary. It was the purest form of happiness, the most genuine expression of pride, and every time Willem would share these things with him, he’d only feel satisfied that the universe was giving him what was long overdue. And he still felt that way, he truly did.
He felt that way for days, up until he had settled into his own apartment, starting to envision his life in Greene Street, and began to slowly realize what exactly he had lost.
Jude sat down on the couch, lifting his legs up slowly to lie down.
He couldn’t cut himself right now, it was still daylight, and Malcolm would be coming over in half an hour to oversee the renovations they could start on, but dear God did he want to, the flesh on his arms prickling themselves seductively, the wrenching of his insides begging for release.
And yet he knew, logically, there was nothing wrong, that nobody had come after him, nobody had tried to hurt him. All he was feeling was the painful evidence of the reliance he’d stupidly allowed to foster, despite all the lessons his history had taught him, despite his prayers for Willem’s success.
How had allowed himself to become so monstrously selfish, he wondered. So much of what he had–a large apartment that could cater to his needs, a job that allowed him to afford it, friends who had helped him move in–were things he hadn’t earned.
Willem himself had given him so, so much. Kindness and help and company, all bestowed upon him so unthinkingly, knowing Jude could offer so little in return. His friendship in itself was a marvel, the fact that his loyalties were mostly to Jude before anyone else, that he would be constantly around to help him when his body would fail, those were things he would always except Willem would grow tired of doing, and yet never had.
He didn’t deserve any of it, he didn’t deserve Willem, so how could he complain about this?