Chapter Text
“Hey Rich?”
“Yeah?” Michael paused, and stared up at the night sky once more. They laid side by side on the top of a cold, grassy hill in the neighborhood park.
It was eery, the empty swingset still in the calm night, and the play structure, usually packed with the neighborhood kids, was now entirely unoccupied. As one would expect, at four-thirty in the morning.
Michael heard Rich shift beside him, cuddling into the warm coat Michael had leant him. Michael toyed with the bracelets around his wrist before continuing.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Dude, I think we’re past the point of permission.” Michael heard Rich take a slurp of his slushy.
“Fair point. I guess I was wondering, like, I know the squip made you do it or whatever, but like,” Michael fumbled, reaching blindly for the right words, “are you, like, actually an asshole?”
Rich couldn’t help but laugh, his shoulders heaving lightly, breaking the careful still of the night. Michael felt a breeze wash over him, and he turned to Rich, waiting patiently for a reply.
His laughing slowed and faded away with an exhale. Rich’s smile soured as he stared upwards into the foggy sky.
“I wish I could say it was just the squip, you know?” Rich swallowed, “but… truth is, I know what I'm doing. I know, and I know what it's doing to people.” Michael watched him reach up and rub his hand roughly across his face. “The squip, it’s been a part of me for so long that some days it’s hard to tell where I end and the squip starts. It stopped being the squip a long time ago.”
Rich shook, whether it was from the brisk night or the sudden shock of brutal honesty, neither could tell. Michael was, in contrast, still.
“Truth is, I’m just a bad person trying very hard not to be.”
Michael let that sit, an undisturbed truth hanging alone in the cool night air, before responding.
“Honestly, I think all of them are. Teenagers, that is.” Michael ran a hand through his hair, working out the wording. “They’re kind of all fucking horrible. The shit they pull, it’s, shit like that just wouldn’t slide with anyone else, but, since they’re all like that, nobody fucking cares, you know? So, I don’t think it’s entirely your fault. When in rome, right?” Michael exhaled, and took a final sip from his slurpee before setting it down next to him. “I guess we're all kind of all horrible people.”
Rich was quiet, mulling this over in his head. Michael could see him lightly chew on the inside of his lip, and started when Rich's eyes met his own.
“You’re not a horrible person.”
Michael sighed, letting his head fall back against the grass.
“I know.”
It was silent again, leaving both of them alone in thought, until Michael continued.
“That’s what makes it worse.”
And with that, Rich understood.
More than he ever had, he understood.
He understood that Michael didn’t. He would never understand how teenagers sacrificed life-long friendships for a roll in the hay with whomever happened to be their “dream girl” that day. He would never understand how someone could let something as shallow as popularity rule one’s life, or how sex was the key to modern happiness, or how even if he didn’t really like it, sex might be the only way, or the only consolation, or the only way to cope that meant any sense.
And it would hurt when Michael’s friends relinquished themselves to the mindless chase, because Michael would never understand being slave to something, either a supercomputer or a crushing libido. Because Michael, with all his intelligence and independence, would never be a slave to anything but unwavering loyalty and devotion.
But people were always going to screw, and people were always gonna screw things up.
And Michael was always going to hurt for it.
And in that moment, Rich wanted nothing more than to keep that from happening.
“Shit like this shouldn’t happen to people like you.”
And nobody said anything else, Rich sucking up the last of his blue raspberry slushy, straw slurping quietly in the night air, until even that stopped, and they stared up, identical, mirror images, at the night sky.
The breeze was slow, and the metal chains of the swingset in the park chimed in time with their breaths, letting out a puff of fog with each exhale.
Michael had never been one for silence, much preferring the constant thrum of his headphones pounding probably way louder than required, blocking out the insults or the laughing or the silence, because it was with the silence that his mind rebelled and twisted, churning with an anxious urgency that sent his head reeling and bile creeping up the back of his throat, his stomach clenching angrily.
It was with the silence that Michael knew what it was to be lonely.
“Alright, fuck this.” Michael groaned, shooting upright and quickly climbing to his feet, brushing off grass and the dew that had collected on his shorts.
Rich stared at Michael, watching him look over the playground at the foot of the hill. Rich watched Michael’s hair push back against the wind, fluttering and lifting in the air. Rich watched his eyes sparkle and focus behind rounded glasses. Rich watched his neck slope upward, more dignified than he thought he’d ever see Michael act. Not that he’d thought about it much, or at all. Prior to this night, he really thought very little of or about Michael.
“Let’s climb.”
Rich stared, finding his eyes drawn to the curve of Michael’s jaw while he talked.
“What?”
“Let’s climb.”
“No yeah, heard that part, but,” Rich trailed off, “climb what?”
“The,” Michael ran his hands through his hair before gesturing off the hill, “Play… structure, thingy. Let’s climb it.”
“Dude, it’s like… four AM.” Rich reiterated, legs crossed over one another, calves bare against the dewy grass, sharp against his sensitive skin.
“Thus the basis of its appeal.”
Michael’s eyes never left Rich’s as he watched him climb to his feet, tugging out the creases in the coat, his ring finger swiping a spot of dew off his cheek.
“Alright,” Rich smiled, taking a step towards the playground, “let’s climb.”
They half slid down the dewey hill, taking quick, stumbling steps up the stairs to the top of the structure, hands gripping tightly at the poles as they climbed to the plastic roof, cool under their palms. Rich made it up before Michael, and watched him scramble up the side of the ledge, hands searching for purchase when he attempted to heft himself up to the top.
Rich’s heart leapt when Michael’s foot slipped slightly, sending him scrabbling, panicked, eyes widened and lips parted. Rich’s arm shot out quickly, latching onto Michael’s wrist with an iron grip. Michael stilled and his breathing settled into a calming rhythm when his foot found a solid foothold. His wrist slid from Rich’s warm grip, before his hand gripped Rich’s with the same force. Rich carefully helped Michael up, hands still clasped together tightly.
Rich’s eyes locked with Michael’s while he crouched on the cold plastic of the play structure, roof slick with condensation. Slowly, Michael and Rich settled down, separating before sitting as comfortably as they could on the slick, unforgiving surface of the roof.
Rich shoved his hands deep into the soft fabric of his coat’s pockets, and looked off to the side.
Michael sighed.
“This was probably a bad idea, wasn’t it?”
Rich nodded, thoughtful, “I guess, yeah.”
“How are we going to get down?”
“Maybe don’t think about that just yet.”
“Alright,” Michael turned to Rich, and Rich met his brown eyes with his own. The night was silent again, Michael thought, and it wasn’t exactly a new concept, the need to fill that void with something, more that the nothing he was used to, less than the pounding noise of Jake’s party. He took a chance. “So tell me what to think about.” And they talked. And Rich’s eyes were softer than Michael had ever seen them.
Eyes only ever spotted in passing, directed sharply, notably calculating for a high school bully, now holding his gaze like warm hands he wished would hold his.
Michael thought while Rich spoke. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had looked at him like that. Had it been Jeremy? He had thought it would have been.
But then, he had thought a lot of things, some that seemed silly now, and some that were unendingly heart crushing.
And maybe what he remembered was just the product of his grasping to connections that weren’t even there. Maybe Jeremy had never looked at him like that. Maybe the eyes Michael remembered frequently finding himself gazing into, icy pools of promise of a love returned, had always been but a fragment of his twisted, unrequited imagination. Maybe the warmth he saw in them was merely a reflection of his own.
Maybe Jeremy didn’t love him at all.
Jeremy didn’t love him at all.
Jeremy wasn’t his.
And he sure as hell wasn’t Jeremy’s, was he?
So what did he owe him?