It's odd how, when it's all said and done, one's entire life can be put away into a few boxes and transported so easily. Living in one place for years or longer, one feels as though their existence is spread out over the town, the community, every person they meet and everything they touch. In the end the good-byes are far too easy to say, and the belongings far too easy to put into boxes. It's so easy it's almost like suicide, the path of least resistance, the eternal cop-out; and the feeling of running away makes him sick to his stomach.

He forces the bile back down his throat, throwing another pile of shirts into a box and then covering it with tape. This time tomorrow he would be onboard a bus taking him to the complete opposite side of the country. Almost three thousand miles from the town he has called home for what seems like an eternity, but in fact is only a few years. Young though he is, he already knows that those few years will always be looked back upon as some of the best he's experienced, if not the best.

The walls are bare now. No fliers to remind him of the shows they'd played, the euphoric feeling having been shuffled to the back of his mind as a memory, perhaps to remain forever that way. At the current point in time, he could not imagine being on stage again. He had hardly glanced at the acoustic guitar before throwing it haphazardly into it's case and setting it with the rest of the packed items. It would not be something he was in a haste to unpack when he got where he was going.

The pictures have been removed from the walls too, and only with use of extreme self-control, packed instead of burned or thrown away. Those still-frames, reminders of moments in time that he would never be in again, taken at the time to remind them all of how much fun they were having now only mocked him. Told him in sharp hues and drastic lines and soft curves those exact things he would never again have. Whispered to him, Look at what you're leaving. See what you've turned your back on.

Fighting the acute urge to vomit again, Jesse kicks the last box in the room into the corner with all the others. They have all been labeled, to be shipped out in bulk tomorrow, no doubt reaching his destination days before he would. The floors were now bare as the walls. Everything is done, he realizes with a pain to his heart, which he imagines is similar to taking a bullet, except that for this time there is no welcomed darkness to engulf him as there is after a gunshot. He's packed, he's cleaned, he's said his good-byes and in all reality there is nothing left to occupy his time until that bus leaves.

Matty would be coming early tomorrow to help him take the boxes and ship them, and then take him to the bus station. This has all been arranged by phone, Jesse hasn't seen Matt since he decided to leave. Since their last show. He knows it will be Matt who will be hardest to say good-bye to. Matt who has always cared, always listened, never done him any wrong. Yet he also knows that Matt will understand, better than most, why he is leaving. No one should be asked to deal with this.

With more than the obligatory touch of bitterness, Jesse throws his backpack over his shoulder and starts to head out of the house. He refuses to spend another night here, though he knows not where he'll end up instead. Lint was still asleep, despite it being six in the afternoon; he'd been asleep since he got back around four this morning. And Jesse does not intend to be around when he wakes up. Their good-byes had come in the form of an argument, various possessions thrown at the walls in anger, incredulous cries. "How can you leave me?" "Why didn't you tell me? "What will I do without you?"

Jesse had also refused to comfort Lint when the last had been spoken through tears, crumpling to a ball on the thin carpet. He knew Lint wouldn't understand, no matter how many times he gave him the reasons. Everyone else had seen it coming, Lint had been far too drunk. Their friendship, resulting relationship, everything they'd done together, had always been done with the force and fury of a thousand hurricanes. It was only fitting that the end of said friendship would come in the same manner.

Jesse knows he's the asshole here, in Lint's eyes if no one else�s. That he can deal with. He can deal with Lint badmouthing him after his escape. Calling him a traitor, a Charlton, a fake. He can deal with being the worst mistake Lint has made. If it'll make Lint feel better, then he can and will do it.

What he can't deal with is the voice calling out to him just as his hand touches the doorknob, sounding sleepy and confused.

"Jesse?"

Fingers straighten themselves, uncurling from the doorknob. His feet make a slow, clumsy circle to turn him around, facing the voice and owner of it. Lint looks confused, despairing, and sober for possibly the first time in a month. He says nothing, unsure of what to say. Lint stumbles forward a few steps, not drunken, groggy.

"I'm sorry, Jesse," he tells him sincerely. "Please...don't go. I'll make it better."

Jesse nearly reaches out for him, nearly nods and says he'll stay, but the bitterness catches up to him. The memory of the time spent soothing Lint every time he got too fucked up. The memory of watching Lint charm other people the way Jesse himself had been charmed. The feeling of being nothing special, no one in particular, the way Lint had yelled at him the night he told him he was going. He shakes his head.

"Please?," Lint tries again, looking like he could be shattered by the smallest push.

"No, Lint," Jesse tells him, as firmly as he can manage. The look of abandonment crushes him and he strives to find the words that may comfort Lint in his absence, soothing tone and reassuring syllables in place of a warm body and a hand through his hair. "This isn't your fault. I just...I have to go."

For a split second Lint looks as though he may give, fall to the floor and beg. But then he stands up a little straighter, steeling himself, nodding at Jesse tensely. Jesse breathes an inward sigh of relief, for once thanking the walls Lint has built up, the ability he's taught himself to hide his emotions in the face of conflict.

"I understand," he manages, though not sounding like he understands at all. "Even if you stayed, it wouldn't be the same."

Jesse nods as well, pausing for a second before turning back to the door and opening it, making it down the steps without a look back, no matter how many times in years to comes he'll look back. It would not be the same.