Chapter Text
November 6th, 1961
Rolan was 9 when he first uttered the phrase, “Promise?” the first of many on an old, run down playground just outside their school’s cafeteria. It was the strongest bond one could make, something bound by destiny itself… or at least, that was what his parents had said to keep him from staying up past curfew.
“I promise we’ll stay together till the end! Cross my heart, hope to die!” A young blue eyed boy with soon to be blonde hair had reassured him, raising a hand to his chest and dashing across it with his finger.
The muddied brunette sitting beside Rolan had inched closer to him, balancing on the edge of the bench that the three of them had claimed at the start of the year. “Hope to die? Why?”
“Because I’ll die if I break the promise.” Kian had explained proudly.
“What? But I don’t want you to die!” Rolan protested, “I dig it.” Rand shrugged.
Kian had faltered, but regained his composure just as quickly. “Fine, cross my heart, hope to survive.” Rolan pursed his lip, musing at the alteration. “I guess that’s a little better…”
“Yeah, I like that one more.” Rand affirmed, copying the gesture across his chest with his own hand.
“... stick a needle in my eye!” Kian continued.
“What? No!”
Kian and Rand had laughed, orange leaves brushing past them in a chilled autumn breeze. After a while, Rolan did as well, relishing the moment because as far as he knew, they were right.
They’d stay together forever,
until the end.
–
March 17th, 1970
“Rolan?” Kian inquired feebly, almost letting slip a crack in his voice.
Rolan spun around on the spot, nearly tripping over a box labelled ‘Living Room’ that he’d been cowering over a second before. He steadied himself, holding the notebook close to his chest with white knuckles and watery eyes.
“Kian?” Rolan’s voice caught in his throat, an apologetic look on his face.
He slinked into the room, his hand instinctively closing the window behind him without much thought.
Kian hated silences, unfortunately this was one he didn’t know the right way to break.
He let his eyes fall over the room again, staring at the years of memories and everything he’d remembered to once be Rolan’s bedroom crammed carelessly into cardboard. Of course they weren’t his memories to pack away, but damn if it didn’t hurt to see the figurines he’d given Rolan on his birthday sticking haphazardly out of the ‘Office’ box.
It felt empty. It felt bitter.
And it felt painfully familiar.
Kian’s eyes flicked back over to Rolan, who immediately averted his gaze in response. He was still clutching at his notebook. It was the only thing not stowed away to be shipped to god knows where.
He knew he’d have to be the one to say something, he was all too familiar with Rolan’s silence tactics.
“I’m waiting for you to say ‘this isn’t what it looks like’, man.” Kian gestured restlessly to the room.
Rolan seemed to wilt, eyes darting from one side of the room to the other. Anywhere but at Kian.
His jaw clenched, it was answer enough.
Under any other circumstance he would have felt annoyed, but all he could bring himself to feel now was cheated, and god did it feel a whole lot worse.
“Houses or towns?” He asked dryly.
Kian watched Rolan screw his eyes shut, maybe out of fear, maybe out of guilt. “States.”
He felt something catch in his throat.
Everything felt just a bit fuzzy in the moment, whether it was because of the frustration bubbling in his stomach or the sadness prickling at the corners of his eyes, he wasn’t sure.
Rolan spoke up, but to Kian his voice was oddly distant.
“I was going to tell you, really, I was, I just-” Rolan choked on his own words,
“I just didn’t know how to bring it up and– and it– ...” He trailed off, eyes locking onto his notebook as Kian’s eyes stayed fixed on him.
“And somehow staying silent was your best bet?” Kian finished in a strangely small voice.
Rolan finally met his gaze, a pleading look, one he wasn’t sure was asking for just forgiveness.
He recognised that look, the one he’d seen every time a desperately dishevelled Rolan appeared at his front door just needing someone to be with. Someone who would take the information of how many tears he’d let fall to the grave.
And Kian had made a promise he would, even if Rolan had broken theirs.
“I was trying to come up with a way to tell you– really, I was,” Rolan stepped forward, trying to blink away the small droplets of water forming in his eyes. He distractedly slipped a hand into his pocket, “I wrote a letter with everything, it–”
Kian watched his expression falter when it returned empty.
He took in a shaky breath, “Rolan…” His opposite hand reached to squeeze his own wrist in some half-hearted attempt to quell all of the impulsive thoughts fighting for attention in his mind.
Rolan didn’t seem to hear him.
“It was in my… it- it had–” Rolan muttered helplessly, throwing the notebook across the floor as he wrung his jeans pockets and desperately began rifling through the box nearest him.
He saw the notebook fall open on the floorboards with a skid and clatter, turned to a page with various scribbled out attempts at some sort of note.
Almost all of them started with ‘Rand and Kian’, while the rest of it was lost to led scrawls.
Kian suddenly became aware of his own heart pounding against his ribcage.
Hysteria had taken over Rolan’s search. He was now desperately ripping through every box of papers, files and notebooks he could manage to get his hands on. “I was planning on giving it to– to you at prom and it– god, where did I leave it now?”
“Rolan, you can’t go flipping your lid like this–” He repeated, willing himself to tear his gaze from the notebook and stepping forward.
“I know it’s here, shit, it has to be here!” But Rolan was a storm, unwavering as it became lost in its own disarray.
He tensed, moving towards him around boxes of memorabilia. “Rolan!”
Unresponsive. “Where the hell is it?!”
“Rolan, for fucks sake!” Kian shouted, grabbing Rolan’s upper arm with an unfamiliar force and turning him around.
Their noses brush one another as Rolan is turned to face him and Kian’s breath catches.
His mind goes strangely blank.
Rolan’s breathing slows immediately, eyes wide, glasses askew, and lips parted. Kian’s gaze involuntarily drifts down before quickly flicking back up to meet his eyes.
One beat passes, and then another. He can’t help but stare.
With any other context Kian would have been grateful for an opportunity like this.
His voice softens to something barely above a whisper as all of his previous frustration suddenly feels like a secondary priority.
“I don’t want some bogus letter,” Kian relents, his grip easing as his fingers run tenderly from Rolan’s arm down to his wrist. Searching.
“Whatever it is you want to say you can just say it to my–”
But the words escape him as quickly as they come,
when he feels a pair of lips meet his own.
Kian freezes, but only for a moment. He knew he wouldn’t let himself make that mistake again.
The initial shock dissolves, replaced by a thoughtless bliss as he screws his eyes shut and relaxes into it.
If there was one thing in the world Kian could never find himself getting tired of, it was getting caught off guard when he least expected it.
He feels a warm hand rest itself on the nape of his neck, running fingers across the soft blonde hairs that line it. Something close to electricity trails down the length of his back with each touch, he shivers, leaning in and pressing their bodies closer.
Every butterfly in his stomach seems to sing.
Slow and steady, it always was with Rolan.
The small click of a doorknob separates them.
Kian releases Rolan at once, parting and taking several paces backwards. His foot catches on one of the boxes as, with a crash, he hits the hardwood floor.
Supplies go tumbling out of the box, scattering across the wood or otherwise rolling to a halt some few feet away.
He finds himself staring dizzily at the ceiling above. There’s a ringing in his ears, an aching sensation already beginning to course through his spine. He lets out a strained groan.
From the doorway he hears a familiar man’s voice let out a sound of surprise.
“Kian!” Rolan’s father peers into the bedroom, moving the mattress that had been leaning against the door a second before. He stares, taken aback by both the mess and the sight of Kian sprawled haphazardly on the ground.
“Are you alright, son? Rolan didn’t tell me you were coming over.”
He sits upright upon being acknowledged, “Sorry, Mr–” a jolt of pain immediately rushes to his head and the urge to hurl is unmistakable. “Mr. Deep. I’m just fine.”
Scrambling to his feet he quickly dives down to retrieve everything that had fallen out of the box, already working out an explanation in his head. “I, uh, just came to say hi to Rolan and, well…”
Kian stops, halfway through picking up a pen that had rolled next to a Beach Boys top hits cartridge. The one he remembered lenting to Rolan just a few months prior.
“Help with the packing.” From the corner of his eye he could see Rolan tense.
But he kept his silence.
Mr. Deep hesitates, apparently weighing the answer in his head before feigning a smile.
“Well that’s very kind of you, but we’d prefer to know whenever one of Rolan’s friends is in our house.” He gives a very sour-faced look towards both the mess around the room as well as the floral-print button-up Kian is sporting with one too many top buttons undone.
“Preferably before you enter it, that is.”
Kian smiles half-heartedly, “Right.” rubbing a hand across the back of his neck and feeling the spot where Rolan’s fingers had been.
Still warm.
Apparently satisfied, Mr. Deep gives Kian another grin and slips back out of the room. “Well, I’ll leave you boys to it… it was nice to see you again, Kian. No roughhousing.”
With another small click, the door shuts. There’s the sound of distant footsteps retreating downstairs.
And then, nothing.
Alone.
Kian waits for a beat longer, anticipating some other interruption. Finally, he exhales, a wave of relief overcoming his nerves.
He doubles over and lets out a careworn chuckle, just glad they had heard the click when they did.
“Dude, you’ve gotta learn to lock your door.”
From across the room Rolan chokes out a very feeble, “Yeah, yeah I guess I do…”
There was always a comforting quietude to Rolan’s room, something that Kian found himself letting his walls down in every time. He glances to the ground beside him, reaching to scoop up the Beach Boy cartridge.
He turns it over in his hand and eyes the small piece of notebook paper taped to the back of it. His own handwriting.
‘Enjoy the hits xxx’ Beside it was a heart in black pen ink, one he knew he didn’t draw himself.
He sighs and slips it into one of the boxes, beginning to toss the strewn supplies back in with it. After a minute or two he sees another pair of hands join in, collecting pencils, pens, and rulers in fistfulls beside him.
It’s quiet, even more so calm. Kian had never been the cleaning type but he found that all of his complaints seemed to melt away whenever he’d feel his hand brush Rolan’s.
The two of them continued like that for over half an hour, repairing the messes made from Kian’s fall and Rolan’s panicked scramble.
It felt strangely domestic just reorganising Rolan’s possessions. Occasionally, he’d find some sort of hidden treasure amidst the clutter; Rolan’s first character sheet, a palm tree pattern shirt Kian had gifted him, otherwise a worn out set of dice Rand had left behind but insisted Rolan kept.
At some point he had heard Rolan mutter a small, “It’s fine if you don’t feel the same way.” while replacing the various files and documents in the ‘Office’ box beside him.
Without missing a beat, Kian had leaned over and planted a small kiss on his forehead. He saw him freeze as he pulled away again and handed him a fallen dictionary. Rolan’s cheeks were burning.
He’d always loved how easy it was to take Rolan by surprise.
“Okay.” They carried on in silence afterwards.
When everything was returned to their proper place the two of them had stood back up and surveyed the room at large. In the moment Kian hadn’t realised just how lifeless the room looked with everything finally packed away.
Kian stared at the boxes, denial infecting his perception of it all. He let his lids fall, shutting them tight and letting the darkness absorb him. A part of him hoped that if he wanted it bad enough everything in the room would return to how it always had been.
That it would be Rolan’s room again.
But the only thing he saw when his eyes fluttered open again was the empty space.
What once was.
His heart sank in his chest when he found himself face to face with reality.
“You’ve gotta tell Rand.” Kian’s voice was grave, suddenly discovering that it was quite hard to look at Rolan in the moment.
From his left, he felt Rolan’s shoulder brush his arm, while his hand just barely grazed his fingers.
“I know.”
Without much thought, Kian took Rolan’s hand into his own.
His eyes fell on a box labelled ‘Keepsakes’. Of the surface contents he spotted an old photograph, 1961, the three of them: Kian beaming up with brown un-dyed hair, Rand muddied and bruised with a gap-toothed grin, and Rolan captured half-way through a laugh.
‘Cross my heart’
Kian’s grip tightened, rubbing his thumb absentmindedly against the back of Rolan’s hand. “Do you want me to come with you?”
Rolan’s head dropped to rest on Kian’s shoulder.
In a single shaky breath, Rolan conceded. “Please.”
–
March 17th, 1970
However many hours later, Rolan sat at his parent’s kitchen table, pursing his lip as the receiver held inches from his ear rang and went dead for the 5th time in a row.
He swallowed down dread, placing the phone back on the cradle with a familiar click. Steadying his hands, his eyes trailed from the dial to Kian, meeting his worried gaze with his own distressed one.
They stared at one another, a mutual apprehension.
“Maybe he’s home?” Kian posed quietly.
Rolan chewed the inside of his cheek, fingers kneading the sore spot from where he’d carried Rand home a few days before. “Maybe.”
The memory of leaving his house was foggy, even more so the memory of walking to Rand’s. He wasn’t sure if they arrived too fast or too slow by the time the two of them stopped in front of the back door.
Rolan found himself staring at the knob for well over a minute. His hands shook, riddled with sweat as he slowly reached to turn it. He felt a steady hand graze his shoulder, resting gently on his back.
A part of him wanted to reach around and hold it.
A part of him wanted to take advantage of the little time he had left.
Rolan breathed, bracing himself and turning the handle.
It was quiet as Rolan slipped his shoes off and Kian trekked dirt across the tile. The kitchen was dark, the late afternoon sun glazing the appliances in a faint orange light. Their landline phone hung loosely from its cord, and Rolan carefully slid it back into its place on the wall.
Walking past the dish covered island, the living room was in an odd disarray.
By no means was disorder unnatural in the Rand household, in fact most of the rooms would always have some sort of cluttered pile collecting dust in a distant corner. But the common denominator between the trash had always been just that, it was always forgotten junk.
Blank papers and reports were stacked high and scattered across the coffee table. A telephone Rolan didn’t even know the Rand’s owned was sitting atop a stack of photographs, all of which featuring a beaming Rachel Rand.
A framed picture of Rachel was tipped over, laying next to an open phone book.
Rolan reached to set the picture upright again, looking down at the phone book and frowning. It was open to emergency contacts.
“Rolan?” Kian whispered.
Rolan peered over his shoulder, seeing Kian standing at the bottom of the staircase. He was pointing up the stairs, at the hallway,
at the third door on the left. Rand’s bedroom.
Rolan tensed, bracing himself.
–
March 9th, 1970
“Man, don’t you have any friends?” An irritated Rand had groaned, pressing a cigarette to his lips some Monday afternoon and trying for the umpeenth time to master his smoke circlets.
Rachel sat next to him on the curb, legs pulled up close to her chest with her chin resting against them. From the corner of his eye, he could see her considering the question.
“Yeah, I’ve got friends.” She shrugged.
“Then why don’t you go play with them?” Rand batted away smoke with his free hand, cursing under his breath at another failed attempt.
Rachel fanned the smog away from her glasses, frowning. “I just thought that–” She coughed, “–we could hang out today.”
Rand furrowed his brow and glanced at her. “Why?”
She shrugged again, trying to catch his eye. “Cause you’re my brother.”
He snorted and took another drag from his cig. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, Cindy Smith’s brother takes her to the mall all the time.” Rachel stretched her legs out onto the pavement, absentmindedly wiggling her shoes in front of her. “He got her a Lite Brite the last time they went.”
“I’m not getting you a Lite Brite.” Rand grumbled. He stomped out the rest of his bud, scraping the smoking remains across the asphalt and reaching into his pocket to retrieve a new one.
“You don’t have to get me anything.” She leaned forward, watching him light the cigarette with a strange glint of intrigue in her eye.
Rand never did understand what Rachel saw in him.
“Look, if you want to go to the mall so bad you can just ask Ma’.” He concluded with the cigarette hanging loosely from his mouth, “Or, better yet, you can just go yourself.”
Rand could see her face fall as he got to his feet, wiping off the mud collecting at the bottom of his shoe on the front lawn. He turned on his heels and headed towards the house, one hand in his jean pocket and the other reaching up to retrieve the cig between his lips.
A hard tug on the back of his shirt stopped him.
He stumbled backwards, managing to keep his balance but still looking over his shoulder angrily. He scowled at the sight of Rachel’s hand gripping the hem of his tee in fistfulls. She stood, breathing heavily, as though she put every ounce of her strength into stopping him in his tracks.
“What?” He spat.
“If you take me to the mall I’ll stop bothering you for a whole week.” Rachel declared.
Rand raised a brow, considering it.
Finally, he sighed, swatting Rachel’s hand away from his shirt and turning to face her.
“Fine, fine, I’ll take you to the mall… but it has to be on the weekend.”
“Sunday?” She posed, and Rand nodded wearily.
Rachel’s face immediately brightened with a wonder he couldn’t quite comprehend. “Promise?”
He eyed her outstretched pinkie, a small smirk on his face as he raised his own.
“Yeah, I promise.”
–
March 17th, 1970
Rand heard the quiet creak of his bedroom door behind him.
He didn’t react, not immediately at least, he just sat with glassy eyes staring down at a stack of black and white posters on the floor in front of him. That, and the small twine bracelet tied around his wrist, tight enough to leave his fingertips prickling with numb pins and needles.
Maybe it was for fear that he’d lose it. Maybe it was for fear that he’d lose her with it.
From the doorway he heard a voice, less a voice and more so a buzzing.
He forced his eyes shut and bowed his head, willing the thumping in his temples to stop. But the world kept spinning, and with it, his own harrowing thoughts.
Another buzz, “Rand?”
Rand’s eyes shot open, breath catching in his throat as familiarity set in.
Kian.
“Rand?” He repeated, this time, more clearly.
He remained turned towards the window, he didn’t think he could handle looking them in the eyes.
“Hey.” Rand said in an uncharacteristically small voice.
He could hear a pair of shoes stepping into the room, the door closing with another creak and a click. “We tried to call you but you, uh, didn’t pick up.”
“Yeah,” Rand affirmed dryly, “I guess I didn’t.”
He sighed, grabbing the topmost poster from the pile, the feeling in his legs only halfway there as he stood up on the spot. “I was out. Ma’ needed help printing something.”
His finger traced the edges of the paper, picking at the corner absentmindedly before stopping once he realised what he was doing.
And then, Rolan’s voice buzzed in his ears too.
He felt a strange knot in his gut tighten.
“Are…” The question trailed off, obvious enough but still something Rand had to brace himself to hear.
“Are you okay?”
All at once the throbbing and buzzing stopped. Everything was still, as though it too was awaiting his answer. He breathed, harsh and uncertain.
Rand’s head bowed again, looking down at the black and white print.
“Rachel.” He stated hollowly, looking his sister in the eye.
She was smiling back at him.
“Rachel, she’s gone.”
The words left him, detached and barely his own. He knew if he took any matter of time to process the words he was saying, he wouldn’t have been able to say them at all.
Kian’s response was barely more than a whisper from the doorway.
“... What?”
“She was at a sleepover. I was supposed to pick her up last night, and then she didn’t come home.”
Rand hated how matter-of-fact his own voice sounded, like he was just explaining something he’d seen in the news or summarising the latest episode of some TV show to someone.
“I was supposed to pick her up.” He repeated, rubbing a finger across the poster and watching the still drying ink smear with it.
“I was supposed to be there for her. I was supposed to take care of her.” He felt his brow knit in frustration, loathing, resentment, and hatred. Every muscle in his body tensing as the corners of his vision began to cloud.
His eyes trailed from the poster to his own hand. Fresh ink now stained his fingertips, black smeared across the previously pristine paper from where he had traced the large letters printed in a large impact font.
Rand choked, “I was supposed to be her brother.”
‘MISSING, Rachel Rand’
“And now she’s fucking gone.”
Rand turned to look at them, a dreadful hopelessness echoing from every corner of the room.
They stood side by side at the door, Kian’s eyes wide and Rolan’s mouth half-open.
“Shit, man, that’s-” Kian’s voice cracked, trailing off into a guilty silence. It was a situation words couldn’t fix, and they both knew it.
Rand swallowed.
And then, something flickered.
Like a match being struck, Rolan began to speak.
Rand wasn’t sure where it came from, but he could sense it a split second before it hit. It was as if something horrible was building up at the back of his throat. Something indignant and vexed.
Rolan spoke, barely above a whisper. “Rand, that’s awful… I’m– I’m so so–”
“No you’re not.” Rand felt the poster crumple in his hand, paper threatening to slice deep into the soft of his palm.
He watched Rolan choke on his own words, a slack-jawed shock he had only seen once or twice before.
But never with the trace of fear that it had now.
“What?” Rolan croaked.
His head was buzzing again and so were the spots behind his eyes. It made everything around him difficult to place, it all seemed out of focus and just a bit hazy.
“I said, no you’re not.” Rand strained to keep his voice level, but the quivering between his words was giveaway enough.
“You’re not fucking sorry.”
Not now. God, not now.
“Rand, come on.” This time it was Kian who spoke. His voice was serious, something close to a warning.
But Kian wasn’t aware he was only fanning the flame.
Rand felt his grip on the poster tighten, the crunch of paper audible from every corner of his quiet bedroom. He could feel the atmosphere change as everyone’s breaths caught in unison.
Rand had always been brash.
“You know, you’re one hell of an actor, Rolan. For a second there I really thought you gave a shit about us.” Rand said through gritted teeth, thrusting the crumpled remains of Rachel’s poster at Rolan’s feet.
Rolan flinched as it hit the toe of his sneakers, bouncing off and rolling to a pitiful stop on the stained carpet beside him.
He stood, stunned, trying to meet Rand’s gaze with a searching look, “Rand, what are you talking about? Of course I give a shit about you, I always–”
Rand cut him off with a bark-like laugh, “Oh, that’s fucking rich.” His words were filled with every drop of pent up frustration and anger that had begun to fester since they had entered the room.
Or maybe he’d been holding it in for a lot longer than that.
“Look,” Rolan started again, desperation seeping from his words. “I want to help you! You’re my friend and I fucking care about you!”
The resentful part of him that was bubbling red hot in the moment enjoyed the look on Rolan’s face.
Another part of him hated himself for it.
“Well, you certainly didn’t care enough to stay with me this morning, did you?” Rand shouted, hand grabbing at fistfulls of his stained graphic t-shirt as the pressure rose in his ears.
In the doorway, Kian’s expression went slack, clearly aware of the fact he had heard something he wasn’t meant to. His eyes quickly flitted from Rand to Rolan in an instant, unsure whether or not this was something he had the right to speak during.
Rolan paused, fingers digging visible crescents into his own forearm as his mouth opened and closed helplessly.
It took everything in Rand not to break the silence himself.
Finally, Rolan spoke again,
and his words made Rand’s blood run cold.
“Rand, please.”
It was the same soft voice he had used last night, when they were sleeping amidst the pillows and blankets strewn across Rand’s floor.
Soft and affectionate, as though every sweet word he said under its guise was for Rand’s ears alone.
And it was the same one Rolan had muttered an unheard confession in when he thought Rand had succumbed to his own restless dreams.
‘I love you’
Rand froze.
Immediately, Rolan took advantage of the moment. He took a slow step forward, avoiding the untouched clutter that littered every corner of the room. “It was my dad- he called and it was something I couldn’t get out of, I tried.”
Rand wasn’t quite sure which would be worse,
“I want to help you find her, Rand. I didn’t mean to or want to leave you when I did, I swear, I wanted to stay-”
living within his own lie or living with the truth of the heartbreak.
He cut his explanation short, teeth clenched and a bitterness staining his tongue as he reached into his pocket.
“Yeah, just like you didn’t mean to move to Chicago without telling us.”
Rand raised the unfolded letter with a shaking hand, the hastily written note he had found forgotten underneath piles of pillows and strewn about blankets.
He watched Rolan halt in his tracks, the colour draining from his face.
It was the exact reaction Rand had anticipated, and it was the exact reaction Rand had feared.
Silence festered in every corner of the room, creeping up their legs and worming its way into Rand’s ears. Rolan stood speechless, staring at the letter with trembling hands.
Say something.
The bracelet around his wrist seemed to tighten, the beads digging into his flesh. Even she was disappointed in him now.
Just fucking say something already.
“You promised.” Rand’s grip on the letter grew taut, he could feel the paper crumple at the edges.
“God, we all fucking promised!”
Please. Anything.
And finally,
“I’m sorry.”
Rolan’s voice cracked, a whimper.
Those were the words that finally broke him.
Rand breathed, his eyes red, stinging and tired, the knot in his throat giving way to some sort of half-hearted cry. Rolan knew a second before, he always did, tearing forward to catch Rand as he crumpled.
Rand let himself fall, body limp and clinging tight to him. The letter fell to the floor and he buried his face in the crook of Rolan’s neck between heaving sobs.
He was warm. Warm and gentle. He always was with Rand.
He felt another pair of arms wrap around him, Kian’s calloused hand resting itself on the back of his head and running slowly through his matted hair. Affectionate. Comforting. Home.
Small droplets fought at the corners of his eyes. Eventually, his eyes screwed shut, his breath hitching as tears trailed down and stained Rolan’s shirt in dark splotches.
In a whisper, “I’m so sorry.”
and,
“I love you.”
Rand would’ve stayed there forever if he could.
He would’ve stayed and never let go.
He would have kicked and screamed at Rolan the whole way.
And maybe then he’d choose to stay.
Maybe then he could have loved him like he’d always wanted to.
Outside, the sun began to set.
Rand had always promised to watch one with Rachel sometime.
–
A week later, Rolan Deep was gone.
And a part of Rand left with him.
Kian remained by Rand’s side all throughout, joining in on every search party and helping pin up posters all around Galloway. Every once in a while, they’d get a letter from Chicago, and the two of them would sit down to read through Rolan’s tales of the big city and chuckle at his fascination with the mundane.
And then one day, they stopped coming.
The weeks seemed to blend together, and soon enough it had been months.
Somewhere down the line Kian had stopped Rand in the hall with a proposition.
“LA, dude! We could have our name on the billboards if we wanted!”
And a year later, Kian Stone was gone, too.
A part of Rand wished he had followed,
but the bigger part of him held tightly onto a small twine bracelet.
Rachel Rand was declared dead in 1977.
Rand kept Kian’s lighter, even after it had burnt out and exhausted its fuel however many years prior. He’d stowed it away in a small keepsake box under the basement couch, sitting right beside a neatly folded letter with ‘Rand and Kian’ sloppily written on the corner of it.
They were the most priceless things he owned, however cliche that was.
–