Without looking at him, Lance presses on doggedly. “Unfortunately, I can’t pay you back right now,” he manages in an almost-normal voice. All of his money is in his accounts with Niall, or wherever else Niall put it. Maisie would tell him he’s an idiot for running off without figuring out how to get at least some of it first.

Robbie isn’t saying anything. Lance dares a look.

They’re almost the same height, which is a realization that appears to be striking Robbie, too. His eyes widen when Lance meets them without having to look up more than an inch. Sure enough, Robbie says, “You really grew up.”

Lance studies Robbie in earnest, even if it hurts to spend more than a moment seeing that face—one he couldn’t forget if he tried, but hasn’t seen in so long. Robbie has changed a little, Lance realizes with a start. It’s not that he’s aged, exactly—he looks tired, like he needs more than one good night’s sleep. And the slight smile that tugs on the left side of his mouth when he catches Lance’s eyes looks rusty, as though no one has coaxed it from him in a while. Lance feels a familiar spike of the old commingled jealousy and frustration toward Megan, apparently undiluted by the past several years and his supposed transformation from a child to an adult. You’re supposed to make him smile, he thinks viciously at her, wherever she is.

To get out of his own head, Lance speaks with a shrug. “Well, I’m not sixteen anymore.” So much for banishing intrusive thoughts. Lance immediately ducks his head. If that comment doesn’t raise the specter of his sixteen-year-old self between them, and that final, desperate, pathetic stunt—

“No,” Robbie agrees, his voice steady and without judgement. “I can see that.”

Lance’s eyes dart to Robbie’s and their gazes lock again, this time for longer. A second, two, three. Lance feels something pass between them…something he can’t quite articulate, but which startles him into the momentary belief that feelings beyond Robbie’s general sainthood and faithfulness to Danny brought him here. But then Lance remembers the years through which Lance fed his own delusions—blinded by a destructive fantasy. He looks away sharply, pushing his hand up against the wall less to steady his body and more to anchor his mind to something real, even if it’s just the texture of whitewashed cinderblock.

“Is there…” Robbie starts, and then trails off. Lance can’t bear to look at him again except out of the corner of his eye, but he seems like he’s biting his lip, showing a flash of perfect white teeth in the frame of his beard. “I want to ask if you have somewhere to go, but maybe it’s not any of my business.”

Robbie’s speaking very softly, and Lance is suddenly too aware of Tim hovering awkwardly to his left.

He shoots Tim a strained smile. “So, is there anything else I need to do?” Tim has turned out to be a really decent guy. He could have just shut the lights off and left Lance to tolerate the night of locked-in darkness as best he could; he didn’t have to bring all of his paperwork in and do it on a clipboard on his lap in the vestibule, leaving the lights on, or tell Lance a dozen long and wandering stories that ranged from his days in high school marching band to the difficulties of learning to two-step in time for his cousin’s wedding.