Perfect

The place was too quiet.

Louis never thought he would even think that, after the way Avery's constant flow of techno music and classical shit drove him crazy, but there it was. His footsteps echoed in the emptiness of the big two bedroom.

Made him feel like he was lost.

In the two weeks since Ave had left, Louis had worked steady, putting in enough overtime to cover a fricking heart transplant, let alone the shoulder surgery he was about to have. The work kept him away from home, kept the loneliness at bay. Now that he was off for the duration of his surgery and recovery though, he was feeling it. He was missing Ave.

God, he couldn't believe Avery would leave him like that. Just take up and go. Sure, things had been rocky for a bit, with him hurting all the time, the slightest touch making him feel like a grizzly being poked out of hibernation, but he couldn't help it. Wasn't like he wanted to switch jobs, either, but his boss had shafted him, not wanting to pay the comp, shutting down the construction company and saying there was no work. Plenty of work for the fucker in roofing, though, which was the next business the shithead had opened, hiring a bunch of newbies to do piss poor work for no money.

A lawsuit was perfectly reasonable, but Louis wasn't one to air his laundry in court, and he couldn't blame the whole shoulder fiasco on Don, anyway. The injury was old and just kept getting worse, what with him using and abusing the joint hanging sheetrock and drywall, so Louis just kept on keeping on, getting another job and new insurance and taking out a small loan to cover what no one else would.

Stood to reason that he didn't need Ave bitching at him about towels, for fuck's sake and if Ave could leave him so easily, good riddance to him.

Didn't keep him from being lonely.

Louis sighed, something he couldn't remember ever doing so much of in his whole damned life, and picked a shirt up off the floor, sniffing it. Good enough. He had a whole day between tonight and surgery to recover, so he was going out, having a few beers and maybe hooking up with someone hot for a kiss and a grope in the back of a bar somewhere. Yeah, that would take his mind off everything.

The shirt looked nice with his cargo pants, and his curly brown hair never reacted well to a comb, so Louis figured that was as good as it was gonna get. He checked his teeth for the remnants of his hamburger helper dinner and headed out. Even with the bad shoulder he had a damned good body from working construction all his life and, despite the dark circles under his eyes, Louis figured he could find someone who liked the look of him well enough.

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