I Might Be Holding Your Hand, but I'm Holding It Loose.

“Shit,” he groaned, yawning and stretching out his arms slowly. He licked his lips as they felt dry, and he opened his eyes, doing a double-take as he did so. He fumbled around for his glasses, unable to find them.
“To the left,” whispered Emma, rubbing her eyes fiercely, smudging what little make-up she wore. He nodded and followed her directions, eventually finding them and slipping them over his nose. He clambered back on to the sofa, groaning again. He cautiously slipped his Blackberry out of his tight pocket, groaning once again when he saw the texts and missed calls.
“She’s gonna think we had sex.” he stated, rubbing his forehead. “Why didn’t I go to the hotel last night?”
“You’d had some vodka. Then you started confessing pretty much everything that’s happened to you since we parted ways. You cuddled up to me like this,” she said quietly, pulling him into an embrace, so he was sat in her lap, head resting on her chest. “I was stroking your head softly, and you spilled out. You didn’t go back, purely because I don’t think you wanted to.”
“This has been the most civil we’ve been with each other since your arrival,” he smiled and pressed an existential kiss upon her neck, goose bumps soon decorating the surrounding skin. His lips hadn’t touched her in years.
“So it has,” she yawned, ruffling his hair and slowly pushing him off her lap, enabling her to stand up and yawn again. “I’m going to get changed, I won’t be long,” she smiled and he smiled back, nodding.
She disappeared into her bedroom, ridding herself of last night’s clothes, pulling on a light summer dress and some nautical necklaces, brushing her hair and touching up her make-up. She soon walked back out.

“Brendon?”
“Mmm?” he mumbled, turning around to face her, face full of Cheerios.
“Why did you propose to Rebecca if you don’t love her, and you lie to each other? I understand you have a sporadic nature, but this, this just doesn’t seem plausible.”
He looked up at her, licking his lips, frowning and staring intently, as he always did when he thought hard. He pressed his lips together and loosened his frown slowly. “She’s my only option,” he said honestly, startling himself as he said it. Everything he’d done with her, for her, had all been subconscious. The underlying reason was that he knew this was the best he could get in his shit life.
“There are other people out there, you could play the field, you could date whoever you want,”
He shook his head. “I’m broken. People with all of their pieces together don’t want broken people. However if you put two broken people together, you get something kind of alright,”
“Bren, that’s... that’s horrible,” she put bluntly.
“Tell me about it.”
“There’s still other ways, other options, you can’t just quit life because things haven’t gone right just yet,”
“I’m not quitting, I’m settling.” he frowned, placing his bowl in the dishwasher. “There’s a big difference,”
“No there’s not!” she exclaimed. “She doesn’t deserve you, Bear! You’re a douche but you make up for that with how sweet you are at other times. It’s not your duty to take care of someone who is incapable of anything remotely nice or-”
He hushed her quiet, dismissing her very valid points, and pressed green on his Blackberry. “Hello? Oh, sweetie, no I’m fine. I saw an old friend of mine and we got talking, I didn’t realize the time until it was too late, so she offered me a place to stay. That’s it, I promise. How did it go with Hannah? Oh, it was alright. We got what we needed to do done. My friend? She’s called Emma. You’d like her, she’s a sweet girl. Very caring, if a little touchy,”
She flicked him the bird. He mouthed ‘point proven.’
“Is she pretty? Very pretty, beautiful in fact. She’s cool, yeah. Always something interesting to say, which you can’t often find in people. Wait, what? Sorry darling, you’re breaking up, I’ll call you back.”
He hung up.
“Your fiancée is going to eat me alive,” she grumbled. “And what was the last thing she said? You could hear her, you just wanted to hang up.”
“She asked me if I would ever leave her for you. So I pretended I couldn’t hear her,”
“You’re making no sense, Brendon.” she groaned, cleaning up the little mess they’d made in the kitchen.
“She doesn’t like it when I lie, but I wasn’t going to tell her that I would leave her for you, was I? I’m not that dense,”
“Isn’t that the compliment of the year,” she growled. “I’m slightly better than Rebecca. Oh thank you,”
“That is not the way it should be perceived! It means you could tell me right now to leave her, for you, and I would. I’d pick up the phone and tell her it’s over. I’d write her a full-length letter and mail it to her. I’d go up to her face and shout it so loud her cheeks vibrated. Tell me,” he almost begged. “Tell me to do it,”
“I’m not going to interfere with your life choices...” she trailed off, rubbing her aching head.
“No, please do! I can’t make the right ones for myself, look where I am right now! Ryan, God forbid, beautiful Ryan has left me to do some project, and he’s doing it brilliantly, but I need my Ryan to do this Emma. And Jon, oh sweet Jon has left me too. You!” he exclaimed, flinging his arms around in the air. “You left me too! Granted it was before them but everyone is leaving me,” he mumbled, eyes drifting towards her stomach. “Our baby left us.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she tried to reason.
“Yes it was. I’m a killer, my hands are smothered in the blood of our unborn baby. If I’d treated you better, if I’d listened to what you had to say, if I’d not smoked so we had that little bit of extra money to get us by, if, if...” he slowly broke down into tears, floods of silent crying, showered in nostalgia and ache. She reached forward and pulled him into an embrace, cradling his shattered soul.
“I’m sorry,” she cooed. “For what I said before. It was out of line and you, you’re everything but a killer. You’ll be a great dad, we both know it. It just wasn’t the right time,”
“You suck at consoling me,” he laughed lightly, through tears. “What’s next, everything happens for a reason? Please,” he scoffed, a smile forming.
“I was heading in that direction,” she chuckled, rubbing his arm, tracing her fingers over his tattoo. “If you leave her it’s from your own free will, not because I demand you to,”
“How about asking politely?” he offered. “Better than demanding,”
“No.” she smirked. “Do. It. Yourself.”
“If I did do it myself, what would happen?” he asked, gazing up at her ocean eyes.
“I don’t know, you tell me,” she shrugged and he let go of her, pouting.
“That’s not fair! Don’t be a bitch, what would happen?”
“I am not being a bitch, Brendon Boyd Urie,” she smirked, raising an eyebrow. “If we get there then we can find out. Alright? Now go tend to your fiancée,” she smiled tapping his nose with her gun finger.
He sighed and grabbed anything he had brought. “Thanks for talking with me,” he smiled. “But you promise to follow through, don’t you? You promise to help me?”
“You got it.” she nodded, tipping her imaginary hat. He waved goodbye meekly and soon left the apartment, sighing and sinking to the floor as he did so, clutching his cell to his chest.

No one had called earlier. He just wanted to tell Emma how beautiful she was.