Momentum
by athens7 as Jack (font: Courier New)
and mazaher as Patrick (font: Verdana)

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2. Separation

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Jack leaves (Patrick’s POV)

It is too much. I am disassociating. I am reliving one evening in November, four days after he had moved in next door.

We meet for dinner, at my place as he’s not yet found a cook. We talk about a hundred things on cigars and cognac-- G.B. Shaw’s new play, whose title is rumoured to be The Devil’s Disciple; the way Joseph Joachim plays the final fifteen notes in Mendelssohn’s violin concert on his Cuypers violin; developments of immunology after the death of Louis Pasteur. We fall silent. He stands up to go, stretches his hand in a final goodnight. I want to catch his arms, pull him to me, kiss him fiercely. I don’t, the sudden taste of tears up my nose.

The gaping precipice of hell was but one step ahead, lethal and luring. How can hell feel so much like heaven?
But hell it is, and now I’ve plunged us both in its eternal jaws.
I raped him.
I destroyed us.
Is there a way to turn time back on its axis, and stop myself before I do this to him?
There must be a way. There must be!
But no.
“Forgive me,” he murmurs, and like that, he’s gone.

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Jack leaves; Jack goes to Patrick,

or

Jack leaves, Patrick goes to Jack