Chapter Text
When Exer is still eighteen, he tells David about Jackson.
They’re sitting in Exer’s flower garden, the sun a dark orange over the tall fences of the backyard. The title of Best Friends has been renewed for a full day now, and they’re both still settling into the feeling of it, their conversation flowing with gaps it didn’t used to have, like a stream broken up by large boulders of awkward. The butterflies fluttering around his backyard seem to find their way into his stomach, somehow, and every time amber locks with sky blue Exer kind of wants to use his trowel to bury himself.
But they’re okay, and that’s what matters.
David’s up to his elbows in soil, hands covered by gardening gloves a little too big for him and hair pinned out of his face as he weeds Exer’s butterfly garden. He’s got a decent pile of grass and clovers to his right, and his cheeks are flushed red as he reaches between the stems of a crocus and a daisy to pull up a weed further into the garden. Exer’s not allowed to help, apparently, so he sits off to David’s left, holding a few miscellaneous tools in case David decides he needs them. It’s probably for the better, considering what happened the last time Exer tried to weed his backyard himself.
“Are these all magic?” David asks, a little breathless from the garden work. He wipes an arm over his forehead, the necklace at his throat glinting in the late afternoon sun.
“Just a few,” Exer replies, fiddling with the gardening shears. He runs a finger over the blade, pausing when he’s reminded of blades of a different kind. He’s made up with Brenda, mostly, but thinking back on their relationship, and the night it ended in particular, still fills him with a guilt that curdles in his stomach and makes him feel sick. “I mean, I helped them grow with magic, but most of them were from seed packets and didn’t just… spontaneously appear.”
“These?” David asks, pulling his arm back through the gap and tracing a gentle hand over the petals of the crocus. “Crocus flowers aren’t usually sold in wildflower packets, or butterfly garden starters.”
“Yeah.” Exer sets the shears aside, crawling a little closer to David. His jeans are going to get dirty, already dusty at the knees, but it'll probably come out in the wash. The string becomes almost invisible as Exer reaches forward, wrist brushing David’s as he carefully pulls the crocus bloom down to look at it. “This one and the four next to it are all from my magic. I guess I could go back to the playground and grab that one, but I…”
Exer swallows roughly, dropping his hand from the bloom and letting it rest on his knee. David doesn’t make him finish his sentence. “How often does it happen?”
“Depends. They used to crop up all the time, but it’s been a little easier to manage recently.”
“I wonder…” David hums, leaning back and looking at Exer, seemingly working something out in his head. “When we were… fighting, I guess, there were a bunch of random flowers that kept appearing in my driveway.”
“What?” Exer asks, a couple octaves higher than intended. He feels his face go warm, and he finds a butterfly to watch rather than the amusement in David’s expression.
“I started pulling them up after a while, mostly because I didn’t want Dad to crush them with the car,” David continues, pulling off his gloves and setting them aside. “They’re in a vase in my room, have been for a couple weeks, but they haven’t even wilted yet. It’s really weird.”
Exer’s fingers twist around the string in his lap, and he bites the inside of his cheek. “Um.”
“That was you, wasn’t it?” David asks, thumb pressing into the freckle at the crook of his elbow. They’re dotted around his body in the most random of places, like his hip or the underside of his jaw. There are a few on his arms, and a couple on his legs that are only visible during the summer months when David decides to wear shorts. Exer wants to press his fingers to all of them, or maybe his lips, if he were ever given the chance.
That’s wishful thinking, though, and Exer is trying to avoid doing that too much.
“It wasn’t on purpose,” Exer mumbles, grabbing one of David’s pulled up weeds to tear to shreds. “I don’t control it, it just happens.”
“I’m not angry about it,” David reassures, leaning over to rest his head on Exer’s shoulder as he admires the snapdragon bloom, pale fingers hovering a couple inches away from it. “It was just really weird at the time, and I didn’t make the connection until now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I just said I wasn’t angry about it,” David says, elbowing Exer before leaning on him again. Exer tosses the remains of the weed into the dirt. “Stop apologizing or we’re gonna have problems.”
“It’s kind of embarrassing,” Exer mutters, suddenly hyper aware of his own breathing as David settles into his side. The string rests across their laps, and Exer wraps it around and around his wrist.
“I think it’s nice,” David whispers, hand falling into the soil. “That you were thinking of me.”
Always, Exer thinks, closing his eyes. Not a single moment passes where you’re not somewhere in my mind, where your laugh doesn’t ring from someplace in my soul.
But that’s weird, and too much, so Exer just says, “I was.”
David nods against his shoulder, a silent me too that brings the butterflies back to Exer’s stomach. “They were beautiful. Pansies, pink camellias, primrose… they made me happy, even if I wasn’t sure where they were coming from.”
“I’m glad.” The wind is sharp, and it tangles in Exer’s hair. “How do you know so much about plants?”
David hums, plucking a blade of grass from the earth and folding it over and over. “My mom had a lot of books on floriography and plants when I was little. She was part of a gardening mom group or something, I dunno.”
“And you read them?”
“It was a good distraction,” David says, eyes narrowing. “You know, from the screaming. Better to focus on the pretty flowers than the fact that my parents could hardly be in a room together for more than an hour without wanting to kill each other.”
“Oh,” Exer’s nails bury into his palms, almost hard enough to hurt. “I’m sorry, I didn’t–”
“No,” David interrupts, breathing out a sigh and running his free hand through his hair. “Don’t be. I didn’t mean to be harsh, I just don’t like thinking about it.”
Exer nods, tilting his head to the side until it rests atop David’s. “You don’t have to.”
“I should,” David says, and Exer feels his pulse speed up against his wrist. “It was so long ago. I should be over it by now.”
“I don’t think so.” Exer shrugs with his unoccupied shoulder. “I still think about my mom a lot, and I never even knew her. It was a hard time in your life, and you had to face a lot of things you shouldn’t have really early on. You’ve moved past it, but it’s okay to still be upset when you think about what happened. I remember how it used to be, and I know it was rough on you, so I’m happy to listen when you talk about it if that helps you.”
David just pulls back and blinks at him, appreciation and amusement warring in his eyes. “You–”
“I sound like my dad,” Exer finishes, burying his head in his hands. “Goddamn it.”
“It’s not a bad thing,” David says with a laugh, the sound ringing clear through the garden and Exer’s ribcage. “I think your dad is pretty rad.” David snorts, resting his cheek on the palm of his hand. “Ha, dad, rad. I’m a poet and I didn’t even know it.”
“Oh my God,” Exer groans, shoving David lightly. “Shut up, you’re the least funny person.”
“You don’t really think that,” David says, wiggling his eyebrows. “I see a smile.”
“No you don’t,” Exer argues, but when he drops his hands, he’s grinning despite himself. “You must be going crazy.”
The smile faults on David’s face and he pulls back a little further, hands falling to his lap as his voice takes on a more serious tone. “Speaking of crazy.”
Exer hums, not quite sure where the conversation is headed just yet. “Yeah?”
“Tell me about what happened with Jackson.”
Ice floods Exer’s veins, and he chuckles nervously. “Are you sure?"
“I’m sure,” David says, tugging at a loose thread in his jeans. “I want to know.”
“Well, um,” Exer begins, tucking his knees up to his chest and twisting the string around and around and around. “I think it really started with Pamela.”
“Junior Awards?” David guesses, raising an eyebrow when Exer cringes.
“Yeah. I don’t know if you remember what happened, but–”
“I do,” David interrupts. “She accused you of being… a witch, I think?”
“Witchcraft,” Exer corrects. Not human.
“So she found out that you had freaky magic powers,” David says, wincing when Exer can’t stop the hurt from flashing over his face. “Sorry. Not freaky. She found out that you were– are magic, and decided to call you out? How’d she know?”
“She’s just observant. And I’d stopped being careful because I was… because I felt invincible, I guess. Pamela saw me do things she couldn’t explain in any other way, and she thought it was unfair that I had cheated my way into having so much.” Exer lets out a shaky breath before continuing. “I thought so, too. I still do. I don’t know why I let myself become like that when I’d sworn when I was little not to use my magic unfairly.”
“And we bullied her off the stage,” David realizes, sky-blue eyes going wide as he looks down at his hands. “We turned it around on her, and we ruined her life.”
“It wasn’t your fault for believing in me,” Exer whispers. “She doesn’t blame you.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that it happened , Exer,” David cries, throwing his hands up. “We could have found a better way out of it if you had just told me.”
“I know.”
“Fuck,” David curses, and Exer can hear the anger beginning to bubble beneath his words. “And we did it again with Jackson, didn’t we?”
“ I did it,” Exer insists. “It’s not your fault.”
“The hallucinations, the fainting…” David looks up at him, hair tangled between his fingers. “That was all you.”
“It was,” Exer agrees, tears beginning to well at the corners of his eyes.
“I mean, I knew, but I didn’t want to– I had kind of hoped, you know?” David says, a strangled laugh tearing from his throat. “I thought that maybe, somehow, that was separate.”
“I’m sorry,” Exer whispers, because even now he doesn’t know what else to say in situations like this.
Exer half expects David to yell, maybe, to get upset and cry or lash out, but instead he simply asks, “Why?”
And somehow, in the quiet and broken way he says it, that’s almost worse.
There are so many reasons, but they all feel like excuses, sticking to his tongue and in his throat like bubblegum. I was hurt, I was angry, I was tired, I was lost, I had so much hate that I couldn’t figure out what to do with it all.
I was scared.
I was so in love with you that I didn’t know who I was beyond the ache of it, and I felt as though I might lose you, which felt worse than losing myself if only I could keep holding on to the little bits of you that I could reach.
“I thought he was going to take away everything I loved,” Exer says softly, amber locking with sky blue, fingers twisted in the string connecting him to the everything beside him. “I was scared that you’d see how much better he was than me and leave me behind. I thought that I would lose the throne that I’d worked so hard to claim, and that everyone would leave me behind when they realized that he was the better person.”
“It’s kind of sad,” David mutters, eyes shining with tears as he lets his head hang, “how easily you always think I’ll abandon you.”
“It’s not because of you,” Exer reassures, the blades of grass between his fingers coming loose and breaking from their roots. “I just never expect anyone to stick around.”
“Why?” David asks, wiping his cheek dry with the back of his arm. “What happened that makes you so sure that everyone will hate you if you’re not perfect?” Exer stays silent, and David shakes his head, blond hair falling out of its pins. “What did I do?”
“Nothing!” Exer says again, more forcefully. “You did nothing wrong.”
“Then why are you so afraid of me?” David cries, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “You always act like you have to walk on eggshells around me, or lie to me, or become randomly convinced that I’m going to leave forever the instant you make a mistake.” Exer flounders, mouth opening and then closing again as he tries to figure out what to say, and David sighs. “I’m just tired of being treated like I’m– fragile, or something. I’m not stupid , or weak , or some– some perfect person. I make mistakes, too, and it’s hard to tell you about mine when you try so hard to make it look like you never do anything wrong.”
“I don’t think you’re stupid,” Exer whispers.
David groans. “You’re not getting my point. Just– keep telling me about Jackson,” David says with a wave of his hand, and Exer jumps on the subject change, even if it’s really not much better.
“It wasn’t on purpose,” Exer says, but he backtracks when he realizes that it isn’t entirely true. “Well, it was at first.”
Exer explains the entirety of the start to their Senior year, beginning with Jackson mentioning “green” and ending with Exer getting decked in the hallway and then finally telling the truth to Pamela. It’s not an easy story for him to tell, and by the end, there are tears pouring down Exer’s cheeks and sobs hiccuping from his chest. He feels hollow, but not the burning sort of hollowness he’d felt before, just a sort of empty ache where the secret used to press at his ribs.
David just listens, like he always does, and he doesn’t run.
He should. Exer’s telling him about how he’s a monster and a bully, how he’d hurt and then hurt and then hurt again, how he’d used every grain of his own twisted self-hatred against someone who didn’t deserve it. Exer has ruined people with the hands that David began holding somewhere in the middle of his story, has told so many lies with the same tongue that he speaks the truth with now. Every part of him has been corrupted and scarred, but David still looks at him like someone worthy of listening to, of caring about, and Exer is reminded again why he’d tried so hard to hold on to the sun even though it had burned him in the end.
When Exer’s tears run dry and his voice goes hoarse, David tucks him into his side and whispers, “Thank you for telling me.”
Exer can feel the tension in David’s shoulders, but he’s done all that he can. David knows almost all of the terrible things that Exer has done, but even as anger-tinged guilt flits across his face, he continues to cradle Exer in his arms as though he deserves to be treated as precious.
And maybe, just maybe, he does.
“I’m sorry for not telling you sooner,” Exer says, voice cracked and nearly gone. “I was… I got in too deep too fast, and I knew that if I told you, you’d stop me.”
“I don’t know,” David says with a shrug. “I used to just kind of go along with whatever you said. I might’ve just kept making fun of him just because you were.”
“You seemed pretty independent,” Exer says, leaning back a little to get a better view of David’s face.
“Maybe I was,” David says, gaze drifting out over the butterfly garden. “I was raised to follow directions and not really question them, but maybe I’d managed to break that mold more than I’d thought.”
“I think so,” Exer comments, twirling the grass between his fingers. “You put me in line a couple of times.”
“I like to think I would have stopped you, if you’d told me.” David looks back down at Exer, searching his face with sky-blue eyes. They’re brighter than the clouds behind him, the grayish skies of November pale in comparison to the summertime that David has always embodied. “I don’t like being mean.”
“I know,” Exer says. It might rain soon. Kingsmont is always rainy in the fall. “I’m sorry for putting you in a situation where you had to be.”
“I chose to follow you,” David mutters, weaving his fingers into Exer’s curls. “I chose not to question you because I thought blind loyalty was what it meant to be a friend. My actions aren’t your fault.”
The orange sun dips below the horizon, and Exer says, “I’m proud of you for walking away. It hurt a lot, but it helped a lot to have that break, I think.”
“I hated walking away from you,” David admits, pulling Exer a little tighter into his chest. “I kept wanting to turn around and run back to you, but I knew that would hurt worse in the end.”
“It was the right thing to do,” Exer assures.
“It didn’t feel like it.”
“It was,” Exer insists, leaning back into David’s shoulder. “It helped us both a lot.”
David just nods, seemingly done with the topic, and Exer lets it drop. The wind rustles through the butterfly garden and teases the vegetable sprouts, and somewhere in the distance, a dog starts to bark.
They’ll get through this, too. It’s hard to have all of his secrets out in the open, but Exer knows that it’s better this way.
Well, almost all of them.
The string glitters at his wrist, and Exer tucks it into his jacket pocket. That conversation can come later, when the dust has truly settled and all the little unsureties in their friendship have been smoothed back into place. He has time now that the world’s no longer ending.
He does still have a few things left to do, though.
“I think I’m going to tell Brenda and Ron,” Exer whispers, anxiety twisting in his chest. A couple green sparks flash across his fingers, and the sprouts in the butterfly garden bloom a little more. “About the magic, I mean.”
“Why?” David asks, tapping a pattern onto Exer’s arm. “Not that I disagree, really, but what made you want to do this now?”
“I’m tired of hiding,” Exer says honestly. “And they deserve to know. I’ll talk to Pamela, too, just so she’s aware, but I’m going to tell them soon.”
David opens his mouth as if to protest, but he closes it again and simply mutters, “Okay.”
“You don’t have to be there–”
“I will,” David interrupts, glaring down at Exer.
Exer chuckles, closing his eyes and letting the breeze cut across his cheeks. “Thank you.”
The back door opens, and Harry’s voice comes drifting out over the backyard. “Boys! Wash up and come in for dinner.”
“Yes, sir!” David calls, shaking Exer off of him. “C’mon, get up.”
“I’m going,” Exer groans, rolling over onto the dirt. “Are you staying after dinner?”
“Do you want me to?” David asks, arching an eyebrow as he stands and dusts himself off.
Always .
“Sure,” Exer says instead. “We can do a Four Colors rematch.”
“What, so you can cheat me out of my fair win streak?” David says, rolling his eyes. “I think not.”
Exer shoves him playfully, and David returns it, making Exer stumble as he sprints towards the house. “I’ll beat you fair and square.”
David throws open the backdoor, tossing Exer a lopsided grin over his shoulder. “You could never catch up to me, Campbell.”
“Wash your hands!” Harry shouts from the kitchen. “And if you’re staying, go ahead and change into your pajamas. No dirt in the dining room, please!”
David turns around to face Exer, a playful grin on his lips and laughter in his voice. He leans in, just a couple inches away, and whispers, “Race you.”
Before Exer has time to react, David’s sprinting up the stairs, his laughter echoing down the stairwell as his feet pound the wood. Exer blinks himself back into functioning and gives chase, shouting “That is unfair !” up the stairs as he tries not to slip.
David wins, because he always does.
The string glimmers between them as they sit at the dining table, Exer’s right hand hovering just centimeters from David’s left, the string almost nothing in the middle.
Exer has told the truth, almost the whole truth, and nothing fell apart.
And now, just maybe, he’s ready to tell the rest.
When Exer is still eighteen, he tells a lot of truths, and burns more than a few bridges.
School returns to normal– well, as normal as it can be. People still fawn over Exer in the hallways, and Exer tries his best to keep up his cheerful and confident exterior. It’s a little easier, with David by his side again, but his presence makes it more difficult, too. He’s gotten so used to being authentic around his best friend that he struggles to conjure up a semblance of what he was like before, even though it’s been only a few weeks since he was walking these halls like he owned them.
Jackson still hates him, understandably so. When Exer passes his locker, the brunette makes an annoyed sound and shoves his textbooks in with a little more force. Exer turns away, pulling his Walkman a little more firmly over his ears. It itches in the back of Exer’s head, the urge to fix it the way he tries to with everything else, but he’s learned from his fight with David that sometimes giving things space is the right route to take.
It still hurts, though, the leaden weight of guilt that presses him from every angle. He moves a little slower than he used to, each step heavy with apologies he can’t voice and regret he can’t shake. His body aches with it, and every time Jackson snubs him, the guilt gets a little heavier.
But he brought this upon himself, and Jackson deserves time, so he doesn’t bring it up, doesn’t do anything about the tension stretched between them even as his hands twitch with the urge to fix.
He drives that urge into other things, like his garden and his job. Both are coming along nicely, the garden coming into full bloom even as the weather turns harsher. He burns off his excess magic there, letting green sparks fly into the flowerbeds and land within the freshly turned soil. Harry has taken to bringing his newspapers outside to read on the back patio, and Exer joins him sometimes, just to enjoy a quiet moment with his dad.
Work at Cup o’ Cat is going smoothly, as well. He hasn’t had a magic attack in a while, at least at work. They creep up on him sometimes, during the day or late at night, an arc of lightning that shoots through his body and then fizzles out into harmless green glitter at his fingertips. The string glows as it always does, shimmering a little more with each passing day, and Exer does his best to pay it no mind.
He’s come to terms with his feelings, for the most part, but Exer still has no idea how to go about telling David about them, or even about the string. The flowers do it for him, roses and marigolds blooming from the cracks in the sidewalk as they walk together to school. Exer pulls them from the ground before anyone can get suspicious, and David tucks them carefully into his backpack, a light pink dusting his ears every time.
Exer convinces himself it’s because of the cold, because he’s not quite ready to deal with the implications of anything else just yet. He promised himself he wouldn’t focus too hard on the signs, so he keeps his mouth shut and his head down, never reading between the lines no matter how easy it would be to infer.
David doesn’t say anything either, just tucks them away with a thin smile and then closes his backpack, using Bowie to pull the zipper along its track.
It’s an odd thing, their friendship. The rhythm they’ve settled back into is a little off-kilter, like a vinyl that keeps skipping. They’re trying to mend years of toxicity and miscommunication, of Exer stringing David along and holding onto him selfishly, like a prize, like something he owned. David used to follow him almost blindly, and Exer would let him, because his blind loyalty made it almost certain that Exer could lie and cheat all that he needed to in order to keep himself afloat, to keep David safe and firmly in his hold.
Now, however, they’ve seen those cracks in their friendship. David makes his own decisions, and he tells Exer when he’s doing something wrong rather than ignoring him or letting it slide. Exer listens, and he stops trying to protect David, both from himself and from the world in general. They aren’t joined at the hip like they used to be, but it’s for the better, because the codependency they’d settled into before had become something unhealthy.
And Exer tells David everything.
The string glitters around his wrist as he finds David outside their second period classroom.
Almost everything.
He’ll get to it soon. He wants it to be special, to be perfect , on the off-chance that David harbors feelings for him too. There’s hope, and it rests in the flush of David’s cheeks, the easy tilt of his crooked smile, the way his fingers intertwine with Exer’s naturally whenever they’re alone. There’s a maybe in the cadence of his words, in the way his expression goes soft and fond in a way it always has but Exer had never let himself read into before.
But Exer isn’t ready, so he tucks these observations into the corner of his heart where he keeps all of his other silly, lovesick musings and follows David into History.
Pamela is in this class, as well, and Exer waves her over as he sits at his desk. For whatever reason, he’d chosen to sit at the front of every class this year– probably another dumb decision from the beginning of Senior year, when he’d been fighting tooth and nail to remain the center of attention. David, as usual, had chosen the seat beside him, so at the very least he isn’t alone at the front. He can feel his classmates’ eyes on him at all times, the itching feeling of being watched even when he isn’t doing anything. He used to relish in it, but now it makes Exer want to crawl out of his skin.
There are still about ten minutes until the bell, so Pamela comes over to chat, half-sitting on the edge of Exer’s desk. David remains standing behind his chair, creating a sort of barrier between their conversation and the prying ears of their peers. Exer appreciates it, especially considering the topic he wants to discuss with them.
He takes a deep breath and leans in, hands clenched in his lap as he whispers, “I’m going to tell Brenda and Ron today.”
Confusion flickers through Pamela’s expression for a moment, and David mirrors it, whispering, “Tell them about what?”
“Y’know, the…” Exer wiggles his fingers as if to demonstrate. A few sparks dance across his knuckles, but he knows that David and Pamela can’t see them. “The M-A-G–”
Pamela shushes him almost as fast as David slaps a hand over his mouth, and Exer raises an eyebrow at both of them.
“People can still spell, dummy,” Pamela admonishes, leaning in and keeping her voice low. “It’s a wonder you kept this a secret for so long.”
Exer bites David’s palm, hard enough for him to yelp and pull back but not with enough force to break the skin. David flicks him in the ear, grumbling under his breath about Exer being a feral cat and putting him up for adoption, but Exer ignores him in favor of answering Pamela. “Nobody’s paying attention. It’s fine.”
“Why do you want to tell them?” Pamela asks, drumming her fingers against her thigh.
“They deserve to know,” Exer says, twisting the string between his fingers. “Besides, I owe it to you and Jackson.”
David’s expression shifts, eyes narrowing at the mention of the Jackson fiasco. “Are you ready to tell them?”
No, Exer thinks, nerves twinging in his chest. “Yes.”
“Jackson’s trying to heal,” Pamela says quietly, reaching over the table to take Exer’s hand. “Just like you. I don’t want you to feel stuck again.”
“There might be some other way to do this,” David agrees, although Exer knows he’d prefer if Exer were honest. David’s a good secret keeper, though, no matter how talkative he might seem. There are a bunch of things even Exer doesn’t know about him, and David hasn’t slipped up with any of Exer’s secrets before. He won’t push him, and Exer knows that he has a choice here that he hadn’t with Jackson, Pamela, or even David himself.
But even so…
“I want to,” Exer says, voice firm even as his confidence begins to waver. “I have to tell them.”
“You might lose them,” Pamela whispers, brown eyes flicking to David and then meeting Exer’s. “They might not take it as well as you hope.”
Exer’s eyes well up at the thought of losing his friends, but he knows that he can’t keep going like this. If he’s going to be honest with some of them, he needs to be honest with all of them. “Yeah.”
“We’ll be here,” David says, voice soft as he squeezes Exer’s shoulder. “We’ll be right beside you the whole time.”
Pamela nods, and gratitude warms Exer’s chest. “Thank you guys.”
“Of course,” Pamela says, giving Exer a semi-awkward side hug. “That’s what friends are for.”
Throughout the rest of the school day, Exer can’t help the way his leg bounces under his desk. The string is constantly in his hands and between his fingers, green sparks skittering across his knuckles and over his skin. David occasionally nudges Exer with his knee under their desks, a silent I’m here , and it puts Exer a little more at ease.
It’ll be okay.
That’s what Exer keeps telling himself, anyway.
Exer has the day off of work today, so they pick up Lucy-Furr and head to the lake after school. David is enamored with the garden, immediately taking off to inspect every bush and bloom. The butterflies follow him, fluttering around his head and making him giggle as they land on his outstretched hands. His hair shines in the golden light of mid-afternoon, the string trailing just behind him as he reaches towards a monarch butterfly that flits amongst the goldenrods.
Even with so many other things on his mind, Exer can’t help but take a moment to think about just how beautiful David looks when he’s happy.
Pamela gives Exer an amused look from the anemones, her black-stained lips quirking up at the corner. Lucy-Furr is frolicking in the bushes beside her, black ears occasionally visible through the flowers as she chases after the loose petals. His cheeks flame as he turns away, crossing his arms over one another and burying his fingers in the sleeves of his sweater to quell their shaking. He still doesn’t really know how he’s going to go about this, but he’s got an hour or so to think, at least.
I have magic , Exer thinks, letting some of the green mist pour from his fingertips and dance around his hand, a shimmering snake that coils between his fingers and dances in his palm. How do I prove that in a way that won’t get anyone hurt?
The plants are a no-go, his attempt with the rose had proven that much. They are one of the most unpredictable components of his magic, and he’d prefer to avoid strangling his friends if possible. There’s levitation, but that’s risky, and there’s teleportation, but knowing his luck he’d get splinched between dimensions or something and that would really suck.
I wish there was some way that they’d just believe me .
But that’s not likely, considering it’s magic and all, so Exer sits on the boulder by the lake and thinks until he runs out of time, threading the string between his fingers and watching the boy at the other end sit amongst the flowers borne of love for him.
Lucy-Furr lets out a warning meow from beneath the tangles of a peony bush, and then Brenda and Ron are there, and Exer still doesn’t quite know what he’s doing.
“This place is beautiful!” Brenda exclaims as soon as she’s out of the treeline, breaking away from Ron’s side and half-sprinting down what little path remains. “I don’t remember there being this many flowers before.”
Ah, that’s right. Exer had taken her here once when they were dating, somewhere in the middle of their relationship. They’d laid under the stars together on one of Harry’s old picnic blankets, Brenda’s head on his chest and his arm around her shoulders. Her sky-blue eyes had shone beneath the starlight, her smile a campfire that couldn’t warm the cold recesses of his soul, couldn’t reach where sunlight could no matter how hard she burned. It had filled his lungs with smoke, her smile, and he’d wanted to reject it with his whole body because she smiled like she was in love and he returned it knowing he wasn’t.
But she’d said I love you , and he’d said I love you too and kissed her in the back of his car because she was close enough and he was in love but not with her.
They’ve talked it through, though, and things are mostly okay in the same way that everything else is. She smiles at him, campfire-bright, but it doesn’t burn or choke him anymore. She bounces around the flowerbeds much like her brother, and the atmosphere should be tense or somber but it’s hard for them to be serious in a place with so much beauty. It’s for the better, Exer supposes, because if there were any more anxiety buzzing beneath his skin he might explode.
Ron looks confused and a little bewildered, but Pamela is quick to take him by the arm and introduce him to Lucy-Furr, who she herself had spent a solid fifteen minutes fawning over on the way here. All in all, everyone settles in quite nicely, and it gives Exer a little bit more room to breathe.
David comes over to check on him, legs brushing the ferns as he takes a seat next to Exer on the boulder. A purple pansy rests just behind his ear, stem curled against the shell, seemingly quite happy to be so close to the sunshine it was made for. Exer resists the urge to reach out and touch it, instead shifting over to give David a little more space on the rock.
“You ready?” David asks, interlocking his fingers with Exer’s and giving them a brief squeeze.
“I think so,” Exer says, even though the truth is not at all . “I’m– I don't know how to prove it.”
David shrugs. “As long as you don’t kill us, anything should do the trick.”
“Helpful,” Exer deadpans, fingers tightening around David’s. “Thanks.”
David flicks him in the ear with his free hand, and Exer pretends to bite him. The familiarity of the action soothes the nervousness rattling in his stomach just a little. “It’ll be okay. I can talk to Bren after, too, if you need me to.”
“Okay,” Exer says, breathing out a long breath and resisting the urge to let his head fall against David’s shoulder. “Thank you for being here.”
“Of course,” David whispers, and he pulls Exer to his chest anyway.
“I’m sorry for dragging you into this,” Exer mutters, letting his head fall against David so that he can look up at him.
“You didn’t drag me into anything,” David insists, giving Exer’s shoulders a squeeze. “I want to be here.”
“Hey! Enamorado! ” Pamela calls, and Exer shoots her a glare. He knows what that nickname means, if only because she’d taken to using it on him after he’d told her about his more-than-friendly feelings for David. Her smile is gentle, though, not teasing in the slightest, and his glare slips. “You ready?”
David gently pushes Exer away after one more quick squeeze, an eyebrow raised in a mirror of Pamela’s question. The truth is no, not really, or maybe I don’t think I can ever be ready for something like this, but he’s run out of time to stall, so he just takes a deep breath and says, “Yeah. Can you guys come over here?”
It goes about as well as can be expected, really.
There’s a lot of confusion, a little bit of anger. Exer tries to demonstrate by making the water of the lake move, forming a spiral that circles over the lake before dropping back within it. He can’t muster the control for it at first, but then David reaches for his arm and tells him that it’s okay, and somehow, it soothes the magic enough for it to work.
Well, mostly. He can’t hold it for long, his hands shake too much, so when the water falls back into the lake there’s a splash zone. Exer’s hair gets soaked, but it makes David laugh, so he figures it can’t be all that bad. It breaks the tension in the air, and at the end of the day, they believe him.
They believe him .
They’re scared, sure, and Brenda and Ron need time to process, but they believe him, and that’s more than he could have hoped for. They didn’t run, or call him a monster, and he didn’t kill them or drop them or hurt them or anything else. A little water is better than the alternatives.
He told the truth to more people, and the world didn’t end. They don’t hate him.
His whole body goes kind of light and fuzzy with relief, and he cries more than he really cares to admit. They stay there with him through all of it, sitting around the boulder in the center of his flower field and holding onto whatever parts of him they can reach to ground him as tears flow down his face almost as fast as the thank-you's pouring from his lips.
God, he loves his friends.
And they love him too, which is the more surprising part.
David walks him home, the pansy still tucked behind his ear, and tells him how proud he is. It brings the buzzing to an almost overwhelming swell. It makes Exer want to tell all of his secrets, to get everything off his chest and put it out in the open for the world to judge because there’s no room for dark secrets in the light joy that thrums beneath his fingertips. The string lengthens when David leaves Exer’s front porch, but he can’t bring himself to be sad about it through the sheer amount of love and hope in his chest.
Maybe it’s that high, buzzy feeling of relief that drives him to nearly tell the entirety of Jeanes High about his magic.
It’s a stupid decision, in retrospect, and if David and everyone else hadn’t saved his ass he probably would be chained up and halfway to an asylum, or worse, a government facility by now.
It starts with an apology.
He doesn’t expect Jackson to forgive him, or even to listen, really, but Jackson deserves an apology. Exer intends it to be a simple explanation and promise to leave Jackson alone forever, maybe even a truce if Jackson were feeling magnanimous. It’s supposed to be simple, quick, and just one-on-one.
But there are too many people in the hallway, his friends have a tendency to be overly helpful, Jackson is still understandably pissed off, and nothing in Exer’s life can ever play out simply.
It starts with an apology, and then somewhere in the middle of that apology, Exer’s head goes fuzzy. It’s like a magic attack, but not quite– there’s no pain, just this vague feeling as though he’s watching himself but also not, like his actions aren’t really his own but he’s still stuck in his body. His vision is blurred green at the edges, and halfway through his apology, Jackson says that the only way to make things better is to tell everyone the truth, and some switch in Exer’s brain flips from he doesn’t have to forgive me to I have to make this better no matter what.
He’s saying words that he doesn’t understand, and then he’s running onto the stage for reasons he doesn’t know, and then his hands, scarred with years of breaking while trying to fix, reach for the microphone to do the very same thing he’d been teaching himself not to.
Exer should be shaking as he stares down this assembly of his peers, but he’s not because he’s not really himself, and there’s too much green mist everywhere to really make out their faces at all. The microphone screeches, feedback echoing in his brain as he opens his mouth. It seems so simple in the moment– he has to tell everyone about the magic. It’s the only way to fix things, to make everything better, even as his chest tightens so much that he can’t quite breathe.
The words begin to fall from his lips, such a simple solution to such a complex problem, his mind reeling with feedback and mist and devoid of any sort of thoughts. His whole body hurts. No– his whole body is numb, pins and needles prickling beneath his skin as the microphone squeals and he says words he can’t hear. Everyone is chanting his name, and it echoes through him like a pulse, a rhythm that he can’t make out through the haze.
Maybe this is a panic attack. Maybe it’s dissociation. He doesn’t know.
All he knows is he has to fix it, fix everything, and this is the only way.
Mariah and Norman tackle him, but the words don’t stop.
There’s so much green, and so much noise, and everything feels like it’s being played through a damaged VCR.
“I have mag–”
A hand wraps around his face, covering his mouth and yanking him away from the microphone. It’s Pamela. She’s yelling at him, and he’s answering her, he thinks. He doesn’t know what he’s saying, what he’s doing. He barely knows who he is right now, and there’s so much noise .
Exer, Exer, Exer, Exer, what are you doing, are you insane, Exer, Exer, disconnect the microphone, no, you’re going too far, Exer, get down, stay here–
Everyone’s onstage.
This is a mess.
The microphone screeches and falls from his hand as all of his friends tackle him to the ground, rolling across the stage with an ear-splitting whine that finally silences the auditorium.
Exer can see through his own eyes at last, and the first thing he can make out through the green is terrified sky blue.
The string hangs down from the stage, and David is right there, the microphone in his hand and panicked confusion written across his face.
What are you doing? He mouths, eyebrow raised as he searches Exer’s face for some kind of answer, but Exer doesn’t have one.
I don’t know.
Exer is never in control.
But David is there to pick up the pieces, to fix what Exer breaks, just like he always has.
There’s no way to get out of this without consequences, but David does his best, reshaping the commotion into an apology for bullying, which is long overdue anyway. Slowly, Exer begins to fall back into his body, and when David hands him back the microphone, the words he says are his own. He apologizes, he explains himself, he even cries a little, and as the eyes of Jeanes High begin to look on him with more disdain than revelry, Exer finds himself feeling oddly relieved.
They know he’s not perfect now. He doesn’t have to keep smiling through everything and pretending to be fine, to be good, to be worthy of the throne.
Exer Campbell isn’t the king. In truth, he never was, and his false crown has crumbled into sand between his scarred fingers, his iron fist loosened and shaking. They don’t love him anymore. He’s not their savior, or their idol, or someone worthy of putting on a pedestal. He’s just Exer, flawed and fucked-up and honest for once and God, it feels so good to be seen, even when all they can see is a jealous, broken bully.
That’s not all he is, and he knows that now, but at this point he’ll take anything other than perfect . Everyone is chanting Jackson’s name, and the only thing Exer can think through the fuzz in his brain and the pounding in his bones is good for him. He deserves it.
Exer steps off the stage and it feels symbolic to be out of the spotlight, on the ground with everyone else who used to look up to him. He manages about two steps forward and then collapses into David’s arms like a puppet with its strings cut, still not quite real enough to hold up his own body weight.
“What were you thinking?” David hisses through his teeth, but he pauses when he sees the glazed look in Exer’s eyes. “Hey, man, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Exer says, and he finds that he’s almost smiling. “Yeah, I’m great.”
The lights of the auditorium dim. Exer wonders why, and then he realizes that it’s just his vision going dark. He holds on to David like a lifeline, clutching the back of his sweater as he cry-laughs into his shoulder. The principal is yelling, everyone is yelling, and there’s so much going on but it doesn’t matter because Exer isn’t perfect, and David is here , and everything is spinning too much for him to care about anything else.
“I love you,” Exer says into David’s ear, and maybe he yells it, he doesn’t know. “Day! Thank you, I love you. You’re my best friend.”
“We have to go to the principal’s office,” Day responds, pushing Exer back a little to look him in the eyes. “You made a mess up there. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m sorry,” Exer says, and he’s fine, he’s great, he’s swimming somewhere between the floor and the ceiling. “I didn’t mean to make a mess, I wasn’t– I couldn’t think. What did I say?”
“A lot,” David answers, eyes narrow. “We’re going to the principal’s office. Can you walk?”
That’s a silly question. Of course he can. He takes a step backward, but the floor isn’t where he expects it to be and he stumbles. “I don’t know. I don’t–”
David catches him by the arm, and there’s a metaphor in there about falling and skies but Exer can’t think straight. It’s too loud in here. Is this a panic attack? This might be a panic attack, but he feels too happy and too scared and too dizzy and too far away and too much . There’s still so much green everywhere, sparks on his skin and popping in his chest, and Exer might be crying but he’s not sure.
“We’re gonna go to the hallway,” David says carefully. “Cover your ears.”
It’s difficult– his arms are so heavy, and they don’t want to listen– but he does, and muffling the noise helps get some of the fuzz out of his brain. He closes his eyes, too, trusting David to lead him to wherever they’re going without letting him slam into a wall. They make it outside to the hallway, and it’s quiet enough that Exer’s ears ring as he lets his hands fall.
“Better?” David asks, pressing a hand to Exer’s forehead. “You’re really warm. Are you sick?”
“I don’t think so,” Exer says, but it feels slurred and weird coming out of his mouth. “Better now. I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.”
David looks him over, and then glances over Exer’s shoulder. “The principal’s coming. He’s got everyone else. We’ll talk later, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Exer agrees, and then he can’t talk anymore because the yelling is back, this time from the principal and Wendy, and he’s too exhausted to form words anyway.
They’re practically dragged to the principal’s office, and as Exer’s mind begins to clear, he realizes just how severely he’s fucked up.
They all have lunch detention for the next month, and they’ll be expected to serve and prepare the lunch food as well as wash the dishes. Exer doesn’t particularly look forward to having to face the entire student body on a daily basis, but he’s fine with it because it’s what he deserves. The part that makes his stomach twist is the fact that the rest of his friends are stuck with the same punishment even though they didn’t do anything, especially Pamela and Brenda. All they did was stop him from making a fool of himself, and associate with him, and now they’re stuck with a month of lunch detention even though he was the one who bullied Jackson and made his life hell.
He tries to open his mouth and protest it, but Wendy shoots him a glare that shuts him up. David does protest, but Brenda slaps her hand over his mouth before he can finish. Overall, it’s a horrible mess of a meeting, and the lunch detentions aren’t even the worst part.
No, the worst part is that he has to tell his dad.
Exer hates disappointing his dad, and it feels like that’s all he’s been able to do lately.
He was going to tell him eventually, sure, but not like this. Not with a note from the principal, to be signed by the end of the week. Not with all of his faults written out on colored paper where he couldn’t tell the full story before getting to the hard part.
The notes will be handed out tomorrow.
It’s always tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, and Exer doesn’t know how many more tomorrows he can handle.
He’ll tell his dad tonight, before the notes are sent home. That puts it sort of in his control at least, and even though it’s far sooner than he would have liked, at the very least he can explain himself. Not that anything he’s done is excusable, of course, but it might disappoint Harry a little less if Exer tells him how horrible things have really been as of late.
The principal dismisses them after telling them to go back to class. “Tomorrow is a new day,” he says, and Exer can only hope that it’s a better one. The door slams shut, leaving them all standing in the empty hallway, a stunned sort of silence hanging over them that sits like static in Exer’s ears.
“I can’t believe it,” David says, and it echoes against the linoleum. “Did that really just happen?”
He’s looking right at Exer, and then everyone is looking at Exer, asking him questions he doesn’t have answers to. Maybe he’s crazy. He doesn’t know why he went up there. He doesn’t know what he was thinking, or if he was even thinking at all. It’s all so fuzzy and distorted, and it feels like something that occurred lifetimes ago rather than ten minutes.
They call him brave, and Exer doesn’t respond because he doesn’t feel brave. Scared, yes. Tingly and numb and a little blurry around the edges, but not at all brave , because it wasn’t truly him that was up there.
At least it doesn’t feel like it, but what else could it have been?
He shakes off his confusion, because at least it’s over. Everyone knows the real Exer now, and if he wanted a fresh start, he certainly got one. Exer promises his friends no more jealousy, no more bullying, because he wants to be better . He’ll keep the promises this time, he’ll be honest and caring and he won’t let his self-hatred consume him to the point of ruin.
He promises no more secrets, too.
Exer looks David in the eyes as he says this, twisting the string in loops over and around his fingers. David flushes and looks away, and Exer’s grip tightens around the string, a sort of resolve flooding his veins.
I’ll tell you, he promises. Soon.
Because there’s really no good time to tell your best friend that you’re in love with him, especially when he’s a boy and you’re a boy and the whole world is a horrible, crumbling mess.
But Exer is working on keeping his promises, and he’s so, so tired of secrets.
Their group disperses and heads back to class, but David lingers behind, leaning against one of the lockers. Exer leans beside him, relishing in the quiet of the hallway for just a few more minutes before he has to face the rest of his peers in the wake of the assembly. The string hangs between them just above the tile, and Exer resists the urge to take David’s hand.
“Are you okay?” David asks finally, eyes drifting from the tile to Exer’s face. “You seemed really out of it earlier.”
“Yeah,” Exer agrees, because at the very least he can feel his fingers and hear himself think. “I don’t know what happened. I really didn’t mean to– to tell everyone . I couldn’t stop myself– I don’t even really know what I said.”
“That’s probably not good,” David says, a frown pulling at the corner of his mouth. Exer wants to wipe it away, because after all of this, Exer never understands how David can still be so concerned for him. “Do you need to go to the nurse?”
Exer shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
The silence falls again. David’s shoes tap against the ground, a satisfying rhythm that keeps Exer from drifting back into his thoughts for too long. Class started fifteen minutes ago, but they have notes from the principal excusing them for the first thirty, so Exer is content to wait here until he absolutely has to go back.
“It’s weird,” David whispers, tilting his head back to rest against the lockers. “I took you to the nurse earlier this year, and you were– god, Exer, you were hurting so much, and I never did anything about it.”
“I never let you,” Exer mutters, shoulders drawing up to his ears. “I– I used my magic to ensure that you wouldn’t. It’s not your fault.”
“It still feels like it is,” David says, running a hand through his gelled hair. It messes up the styling, but David doesn’t seem to care. “I’ve been thinking about it. The janitor’s closet, the nurse’s office, every time you looked at me like the world was ending– I should have tried harder, and then maybe we wouldn’t have ended up like this.”
“There’s nothing you could have done.”
“I know, I just–” David swallows, his hand falling limply to his side. “I don’t know how to explain it. It just… it hurts.”
“I wish I’d let you help,” Exer says, finally taking David’s hand in his. “I’m sorry that it ended up like this, that I dragged you and everyone else into my mess. It should never have gone this far, and I– I’m sorry.”
David looks at him, then, sky blue on amber, and Exer hopes he can see everything that Exer doesn’t know how to say.
“But it’s over,” David whispers, squeezing Exer’s hand. “Right?”
“I don’t know,” Exer admits.
David breathes out a half-sigh that sounds almost like a laugh. “Why can’t it ever be easy?”
And isn’t that the question of the year.
“Thank you,” Exer says, leaning his head against David’s shoulder. “For staying. For helping. For just… being here. Being you.”
“Let’s go to class,” David says, but Exer feels the way his pulse jumps against his wrist as they push away from the lockers. “For once, I think Calculus might be easier to deal with than all of this.”
“I’m sorry–” Exer starts, but David flicks him in the ear.
“Stop apologizing, goof,” David says, a small smile on his face to show that it’s okay, really. “I forgive you. Yeah, this is hard, but it’s what I signed up for when I brought you those nachos. I promised I’d stick with you, and I meant it.”
When David tilts his head to the side, the golden chain of the sunflower necklace glints under the fluorescent lights, yet another symbol of the promises they’ve both made, of the work they’re both putting in to be better.
“Will your dad be upset?” Exer asks, guilt twisting in his stomach yet again as he thinks back on what else the necklace had meant.
David’s smile wavers, his expression flickering with something like fear. He shrugs it off, though, waving his hand dismissively. “Probably. But I’ll be fine. There’s not much he could do to me that I haven’t dealt with before.”
He laughs but it’s strained, afraid, and Exer fights down the urge to apologize. He’s not supposed to apologize when it comes to Mr. Miller or David’s family. It’s a rule, it’s always been a rule, and the pity only ever makes David feel worse.
It’s not his place to ask, but even so…
“You can come over anytime,” Exer reminds him as they begin to walk down the hall. “ Anytime. Just in case.”
“Thanks,” David responds, in that tone that means he appreciates it, he really does, but it’s time to stop talking about his home life please and thank you. “C’mon. We only have two minutes left on our passes.”
And Exer follows him because he always does, because he always will.
The rest of the week, well… it certainly goes. The next seven days are a whirlwind of events, occurring in weird up-down phases that leave him a little dizzy.
He spends time with David, which is nice. Ricky and Marty are their typical asshole selves and Exer has to resist throwing them into a wall when they go after David like they always do, which is not nice. Exer’s friends know the truth and don’t hate him, which is nice. However, the rest of the school decidedly does hate him, which is harder to cope with than he’d ever thought it would be.
David shows up to school favoring his right arm, which makes Exer’s blood boil, but he insists that it’s fine, that it’s nothing to worry about, so Exer leaves it be because no matter how honest they promise to be, there are certain things that have to wait.
Harry takes the whole hey-I-bullied-a-guy-and-turned-my-whole-school-against-him conversation far worse than Exer had expected him to. Not that he was expecting it to go well, obviously, but he wasn’t expecting his dad to react as harshly as he had. There’s disappointment, sure, and it weighs heavy on Exer’s heart, but there’s also an odd edge of panic to his words that leaves Exer confused. His dad also slams an entire bottle of wine, which is markedly not his usual calm and measured reaction to when Exer talks to him, so Exer frankly has no idea what’s going on. He spends the rest of that night lying awake with Lucy on his chest, trying to piece it together to no avail.
The magic attacks start up again, and even though he knows how to manage them a little better now, they’re still not easy to deal with. David, miraculous, beautiful David, seems to help soothe them, and has a wonderful knack for showing up right when Exer needs him the most. He visits Exer at work a little more, and Exer tries not to blush too much in front of his co-workers, or Pamela, who’s been hanging around a little more recently. Even so, she shoots him knowing glances every time David appears in his vicinity, and so Exer simply doesn’t look at her. It doesn’t help, but it makes him feel like he’s winning somehow, and he’ll take what he can get.
Lunch detentions are awful, as they’re intended to be. Having to face all of his peers every single day kind of makes Exer want to throw up, but he soldiers on because he has to, because he brought this upon himself. He feels bad that all of his friends are here with him, but it helps keep him from spiraling everytime someone comes through the line and looks at him with barely-concealed revulsion. At least he gets to cook, kind of, and washing dishes becomes methodical and soothing whenever he can get away from the front.
Jackson approaches him during one lunch detention and asks to talk, and Exer readily agrees. They all meet him at a tree by the fence, and Jackson explains his feelings on the entire situation. He tells Exer he went too far, which, yeah, and lays out exactly how Exer’s actions impacted him.
And then he forgives him, which leaves Exer reeling.
They’re not friends, not anything near, but the last of that lingering hatred and tension seems to dissipate into thin air. Some of the weight lifts from Exer’s shoulders, and he feels like maybe he can breathe again.
Man , communication. Who would have thought all it would take was a simple, honest conversation to resolve months of mutual misgivings?
And by the end of the week, there are still things to be resolved, sure. It’s never truly over, and there will always be repercussions to the things that Exer has done.
But for now, he’s making things better, one step at a time.
“I’m proud of you,” David tells him, sitting across from him at their diner. It’s an after-shift treat, he’d said, so that Exer could eat something besides sweets and coffee. Harry’s been off-and-on, and Exer’s tried to avoid eating at home so that he doesn’t have to cook or sit awkwardly across the table. He’ll order him something to-go and leave it in the fridge, a sticky note that says I’m sorry and I love you and maybe something in between stuck to the top.
“Thank you,” Exer says, prodding his burger with a fry. He’s trying to get better at accepting compliments instead of refuting them, and it’s kind of working. “I’m still worried that I messed some things up so badly that I can’t fix them, y’know?”
David hooks his ankle around Exer’s under the table. “I have a feeling it’ll all turn out okay. There’s no use worrying about things you can’t help, yeah?”
“I hope I’ve done enough,” Exer mutters, finally eating the fry he’d been toying with.
“I think so,” David says with a shrug. “And if not, you’ll find out. Give yourself a break. You’ve done a lot, Exer, and I’m sure that whatever’s left can wait.”
“Thank you for being here,” Exer says again, because he means it.
“That’s what best friends are for, right?” David says with a lopsided grin, teeth a little crooked but beautiful, always beautiful to Exer.
Right. Best friends.
The string lays across the table, bright green and glowing like it always is, looped around David’s wrist in the same place it’s stayed for ten years.
There’s really just one loose end left undone, one thing out of place in Exer’s heart, and it sits right in front of him.
I’ll tell him by the end of next week, Exer resolves, taking a sip from his chocolate milkshake as David starts off on a conversation about some new floriography book he’d found in the library. He shines like he always has, but somehow, Exer thinks that this time his sun won’t burn him.
The only way to know is to try.
But for now, Exer leans his cheek on his palm as David talks, his hands flailing like they always do when he gets into a topic, his hair falling just in front of his sky-blue eyes and his teeth a little crooked in that perfect way. He’s so radiant, even in the dim light of the diner, and Exer doesn’t even bother trying to stop the marigolds that bloom beneath their feet.
For now, Exer just thinks I love you, I love you, I love you, and that maybe, just maybe, he’ll be able to say it the right way soon.
The string glows as bright as it ever has across the table between them, and finally, finally, the worst of it is over.
The storm has passed, and for the first time in a while, Exer can almost see the sun.