For better or for worse, sharing bad habits brought people closer.

It was how Nora first ran into Lockewood all those years ago. Whenever he clocked out from his daytime shift at the bar, Lockewood walked outside to smoke, an activity he preferred to do alone for the most part.

The night Nora and Kinsley ventured into the bar they always remembered driving past but never entering, she excused herself after watching a young man who looked barely old enough to be there—it turned out he wasn't old enough after all—sing his third Queen song at the karaoke open mic. Nora stepped outside and straight into a cloud of smoke. For someone who partook in the same bad habit, she coughed a lot when she did.

It wasn't unlike the moment she stepped outside during their lunch break between conversations with Porter and being poked and prodded by different staff. Nora didn't know how many pictures they could take of one person without getting bored, but she held the impression they would take whatever she gave them. And, considering it would be their last chance to take advantage of her, she allowed herself to be as generous as possible. She hadn't planned on running into one of her bandmates after nearly throwing up after talking to Erin, and she considered him the easiest to confront out of all three, but some habits were hard to kick. Lockewood appeared out of thin air when she thought she snuck away to be alone. Nora never figured out if that was a simple but frequent coincidence, or if fate had strung them together during times of crisis.

Where Nora tended to gravitate toward the spotlight if only because her self-centered ego wouldn't allow her to walk out of a situation without proving her right to be there, Lockewood was the kind of person who hid strategically in the shadows. He could be deceptively reserved, taking on the persona of someone who acted as if he couldn't care less to be there, but once they had gotten to know him, it became clear he wore a mask to shield himself from those who sought to take advantage of him. Considering how Roslyn ended up, Nora couldn't decide if he succeeded or not.

"Can I borrow a light?" Nora lowered herself onto the wet step, breathing in the faintest scent of moss and spilled liquor. She scooted closer to him to avoid the scarlet stain splashed across the cement.

Lockewood once told her she spent so long being preyed upon that what she thought was her self-preservation had turned her into a predator. (When an Aries Sun couldn't balance their short temper with their competitive nature, that turned her into an apex predator.) It was the first time she understood what he meant, the first time she understood the severity of her decisions.

"What happened to the one I got you?" he asked as he pulled a lighter out of his jacket pocket and held it up for her. She leaned forward, a cigarette already dangling from her mouth. The lighter in question was a birthday present three years ago. Some fancy vintage one he found at a consignment shop in Stockholm and had repaired so it was basically brand new.

Wisps of smoke flickered in and out of frame. Nora wasn't sure where to look. They didn't have a spectacular view in front of them, and she wasn't sure Lockewood wanted to acknowledge her more than he already had. She settled for staring at the scuff mark on the toe of her boots.

"I forgot it at home."

Lockewood hummed.

"At least we don't have to do this anymore, right?" She tried to be lighthearted and make it sound like a good thing. It should have been, but she wasn't sure how believable anything sounded anymore coming out of her mouth. If Porter accused her of lying the entire day, she wouldn't blame him. Some of the things she had been forced to say just to save herself from being targeted were things that would have never otherwise crossed her lips. After all, she didn't need anyone to convince her to say those things.

She stepped over her bandmates all on her own if it meant achieving those dreams she once thought to only be a fantasy. The sick part of it was how long it took her to realize she was the problem. (Nora was always the problem.) And it wasn't even her bandmates screaming in her face about how she screwed them over by signing a new deal behind their backs, one that left her name as the singular spotlight on a shiny marquee. When she got home, stared at her empty apartment for months, unable to leave her house for anything other than a minute or two of fresh air, she realized how utterly alone she felt.

"Wasn't my favorite thing to do but it's a small price to pay to be able to do what I love."

That was purposeful. Nora deserved it.

"This isn't the end of the road for all of you," Nora replied. "You'll still get to sit in front of a dozen other cameras while they try to search for a single sign of life in your eyes."

"Is it not?" Lockewood blew a stream of smoke directly into her face, which he made look effortless and like a total coincidence, and it took everything to not cough it up. "If this, theoretically, is the last time I'll ever have to sit through one of these, it would have been nice to decide that all on my own."

"Is it even possible to decide something for yourself while you're in a band?" Nora tried to ask, but it only backfired.

"You've made a lot of those, haven't you?"

They let themselves stew in silence while they finished their cigarettes. After all the fighting matches, it felt like an utter waste of time to keep them going after a year apart. And, truth be told, it exhausted her to keep up that energy. Being angry at someone else took a lot more out of herself than it did the other person. Lockewood choosing not to lay into her once again was his way of giving himself the break he deserved. Nora's tepid sense of peace regarding being able to sit beside him like old times was a byproduct of that self-care, not in response to something done for her.

"How's it going with Porter?"

"Surprisingly well," she answered honestly. Nora expected a lot worse, especially on her part, but both she and Porter had come out unscathed thus far. "No shoes have been thrown at any heads so I guess that's a good sign."

"So you've learned to control your temper then. Bravo."

"He hasn't insulted our music yet so don't hold your breath."

Lockewood smiled in a barely-there kind of way that came so naturally to him. "I don't think he's ever insulted our music, actually. You're the one holding onto a grudge."

"Did you not see his review of Winter? He tore it to shreds."

"One of your biggest flaws is that you've never been good at accepting criticism." He didn't pose it as a question, but it also wasn't an opinion Nora asked for, and maybe that was the problem.

"Is anyone good at accepting criticism?"

He cast a glance over his shoulder at the door. "Did you ever see any of us throw a shoe at Porter's head?"

"Okay, but I didn't throw it at him because of the review."

"Then what was the reason?"

She didn't want to embarrass herself even more. "The reason doesn't matter. The point is I didn't do it because I couldn't accept his criticism."

"The point is that you don't realize when the ones around you actually care about you. You think we're all enemies, so instead of letting us help you through this shit, the same shit most of us are going through, you lash out and throw us all into the line of fire to save yourself. It's not fair and you trying to deflect from that doesn't make it less so."

"I've never looked at you like an enemy."

"Haven't you, though?" Lockewood dropped the cigarette butt onto the ground and crushed it beneath his shoe. "Why else would you accept that deal? You even hid it from Marty. That's when you know how bad it is that you would hide it from the man who singlehandedly pulled us from the void and made all of this possible. If you weren't going to give a shit about your friends, the least you could've done was shown him a little more respect than you have. He deserved better. We all deserved better."

Nora just wanted to smoke. She didn't anticipate running into Lockewood outside, and she hadn't expected him to read her for fucking filth either. She knew as soon as the news came out about them breaking up, and eventually the confirmations about why, the rest of the world would do it themselves.

Running away now would only prove she was the coward they had all made her out to be.

Like some sick, cruel game she hadn't asked to play, Roslyn's music started playing somewhere in the distance, and the two of them shut up to hear where it was coming from. A janitor rounded the corner pushing a cart, and near the handles was their phone, propped up as it reminded them where it had all started.

"I may have lost my way but I never—"

"You make it sound like a one-time thing." Lockewood snorted. "It was calculated and planned, and you didn't take your decision back until last week."

Nora stared. "How did you—"

"We all know what's going on with each other, Nora. You don't spend eight years together without understanding your friends better than you understand yourself."

When Roslyn first started out, Nora was a mixed bag. She knew she had talent, and she knew Roslyn was the most capable of bringing it out of her. But that didn't mean she didn't have any beginner's nerves whenever they played a show, especially in front of a hometown crowd. Lockewood's support got her through that initial rough period. While Kinsley and Erin were great, Nora and Lockewood had the most similar process when it came to their music. It was why she spent so much time flipping through his songbook. Going through it felt as if she was witnessing herself strewn out on the page in ways she had never before. His scribbles made more sense than the thoughts in her own head.

Lockewood brushed his hands off before making his way back. Nora called out to him before he disappeared forever. Not forever in the sense that she would never see him again, but in a way that hurt so much more—close enough to still feel the memories but far enough they would only be strangers anymore.

"Is there ever a chance you won't hate me anymore? Maybe not now but eventually." When they were old and gray, perhaps.

He didn't turn around. "We never hated you, Nora. We were hurt and disappointed."

If she hadn't felt like a knife had been plunged into her chest, she might have been optimistic about his choice of tense.

"For the record, no one outside of our inner circle has supported us more than Porter," he said. "From the very beginning, he knew our potential and how we were wasting it. He saw through the bureaucratic red tape of our record label and knew we would go so much further if we just listened to someone who would tell us the truth. It wasn't his fault you weren't ready to hear what you needed to. I hope you don't hold that over him forever."