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"I'm going to fuck this up."
"You're not. If anyone can do it, it's you."
Rob doesn't know what to do. This wasn't covered in class, nor in films, and certainly it's never been one of those important man discussions his dad likes to try and have every so often.
His best friend is sitting on the edge of Rob's bed, looking like he hasn't slept in three days, like he's aged twenty years, like –
Like his mum's just died.
Mike is falling to pieces even as he sits there, back straight and gaze steady. His best friend is falling to pieces and Rob doesn't know what to do.
"Axl – hasn't stopped crying, and," Mike's voice cracks on the y, "and Ty's just gone... quiet. He won't – I can't –" He takes a deep, shuddering breath as Rob watches helplessly. "I can't get through to him. He won't – talk."
Rob makes an aborted move to – to what? Take his hand, touch his arm, do something, because this is his best friend breaking apart in front of him, and he doesn't know –
He sits down next to him, shifting so their thighs are pressed flat together.
"What about Anders?" he asks.
Mike laughs bitterly and scrubs his eyes with the heel of his hand, although he didn't seem to have been crying. "I haven't seen him."
"Mike –"
"He hasn't been home. He just – left," and Mike's voice is thick with the effort of suppressing something that Rob knows are tears.
They were seven when Anders was born, three months early and loud with it. He remembers it well; Mike had turned up on their doorstep with a blank look that Rob came to recognise as an expression that meant something had gone very wrong at home. He sees it many times, over the next fourteen years.
"My baby brother's coming," he had said. He'd told Rob's parents that his dad had dropped him off.
They were thirteen when Mike told him – dead of night, curled up under blankets and protected with a fortress of tarpaulin – that Anders came early because his dad had pushed his mum down the stairs.
Rob had tracked his fingers up Mike's arm and kissed him quietly, because he hadn't had the words.
He doesn't have the words now, but he's got a fiancée and Mike's – well. It doesn't matter.
"He's sixteen and grieving," Rob puts an arm around Mike's waist, ready to be thrown off. But Mike turns into the gesture, fitting them together. "He's probably out drunk somewhere. He's Anders."
"I think he's alive," Mike mutters into the intersection of Rob's shoulder and neck. "I – I think him and Ty, I think they talk."
"There," Rob squeezes him close, Mike's hair tickling against his skin. "See?"
If anyone can do this, it's Mike, and Rob knows this with all his heart. His best friend can do anything.
He'd be a fucking better dad than their real one, anyway.
Rob likes to think he's easy-going – typical New Zealander says his mum with all her Australian ways – but he hates Johann Johnson with a passion that surprises him every time he thinks about it, and it's barely a tenth of what that man deserves.
He'd shot through when Mike was fourteen, beating his son black and blue and broken on the way out. And that had been the end of the kissing, the touching, the Mike that only Rob knew properly.
Anders had told him at school, his voice light and his eyes focusing just a moment too long, "Mike's in hospital. Dad's fucked off. Might be connected."
"Strange kid," Val had said quietly. "He barely seems –"
"Trust me. He's bothered."
The Johnsons take care of their own, always have.
"I should," Mike pushes himself away from Rob, "Go. I've an interview in the –"
"An interview?" he's brought back to the present with a bump; eyes narrow as he puts two and two together. "Tell me you didn't."
Mike says nothing.
"You dropped out." It's not a question.
"There's a construction company looking for new hires," his friend mumbles, eyes fixed on Rob's knees. "It'll be more stable, I'll have better –"
"You were less than a year away from graduating!"
Rob runs a hand through his hair, something like an exasperated groan spilling from his lips. It's so, so much easier to get angry with Mike, because this is what Mike does.
"The kids don't need you being a martyr, Mike."
"They need me there in the evenings, not trying to finish uni and –"
Mike is rational and sensible and he always has been. He was the kid at school who'd sneak Rob the answers when Rob was daydreaming. But there's an edge now, a manic edge accompanying too-wide eyes and too-sharp tones.
He covers Mike's mouth with a hand and forces him to breathe through his nose. He feels the harsh, shallow breaths against his palm. Mike's eyes only widen.
"Stop," Rob says softly, removing his hand.
"I can't afford to –"
"You're not doing this alone," he cuts across, before Mike can work himself up again. "Val and I are here, and I can whip Anders into shape if needs be. Ty's capable of looking out for himself, and Axl's a sweetheart."
"I –"
"We're here, mate, and it's going to be ok, yeah?"
The tension leaves Mike's shoulders all at once and he slumps forward, like it was the only thing keeping him upright. He is shaking, Rob notices with growing worry. Shaking in a bizarre, mechanical way; jitters that jerk through his whole body, like waves battering at a rigid seawall.
Waves break.
Rob's beginning to think that Mike will too.
"You'll be of no use if you start panicking too," his inner Val scolds.
Rob can't bring Mike's mum back.
He wouldn't want to bring his dad back.
Mike's face looks – hollow, for lack of a better word. Material stretched over a skeleton. His eyes are sunken into his head and his hands are shuddering.
That, at least, Rob can fix.
"Right," he says, injecting authority into his voice. "Back you go."
"What?" his friend looks at him like he's suddenly gone mad.
"You're on a bed. Lie down."
Mike looks about to argue, but Rob pushes lightly at his shoulder and he just... falls.
"Now you're going to sleep, I'm going to finish my essay and see if I can track down your bro, and then when you wake up we're going to have some pizza and beers, ok?"
"I shou –"
"Ok?"
"Ok," Mike says finally, defeated. "Ok."
He is out like a light, so fast that Rob scarcely believes it.
And how long has it been? Since Mike slept at all?
There are some questions Rob never wants answered.
His essay looms up at him from his desk, and it's never looked less tempting. He has three days to write it, and he was already struggling. Writing it now, with Mike lying on his side and snuffling quietly, seems almost impossible.
He could do with a nap, Rob supposes.
Gently, he nudges Mike further into the bed and presses up against him. Mike mutters something in his sleep – not common, he’s not Anders, but not rare – and shifts around, until he’s pressing his face against Rob’s shoulder.
“It’ll be ok,” he whispers, staring at the ceiling. “We’ll all help you. It’s all going to be fine.”
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