Chapter Text
It all started with Josh’s car accident the year they turned seventeen, or it may have started even before that, the summer they met when they were thirteen. Josh called it chance, Markus was inclined to elevate it to luck, Simon thought it was predestination, how else could four people so different end up being so close?. He had told as much to North once; she had scoffed and called it nonsense to his face, but now, as Josh picked her up from detention in his ridiculously ancient Volkswagen Beetle so she wouldn’t have to walk home in the snow, she thought maybe she would call it a timely fluke.
Josh and North met first. Fate must have worked overtime to keep them together until Simon, ever their peacemaker, could get to them. Back then, after many court cases and a lot of bad blood that would never go under any bridges, North had been legally adopted by her aunt, Dr. Lucy Kline. They had left everything behind, moved back to the small town Lucy had grown up in; she wanted to give North a fair chance, a complete fresh start. At thirteen not unlike at seventeen North’s anger was ever smoldering, but at thirteen unlike at seventeen she had thought rage was all she would ever feel.
She was too proud and too self sufficient to ever admit she really didn’t know how that rage would have molded her without the three stupid dorks she had collected.
“Someone owes me a fiver” Josh said with a smile as they drove away from the school
“Don’t feel so smug” she scoffed, dropping a five in the glove compartment regardless
“Should we up the bet? 10 next?”
“I’m not a child, you can’t coerce me into good behavior by taking my allowance away”
“Oh no, no, my bets are for self serving purposes only. Either, you don’t get yourself into detention so I don’t have to come back to school to pick you up, or I win easy cash, a win/win” he said with an annoying grin “What was it this time anyway?”
She shrugged reaching for Simon’s jacket in the back seat, searching the pockets until she found a cereal bar. After she had defended his honor couldn’t Simon at least have better snacks?
“They were talking shit so I gave them something else to talk about” She bit into the bar, scrunched her nose, cinnamon was her least favorite flavor but it was the one Markus liked best and there you were.
Josh left it at that, knowing from her tone and her actually eating a cinnamon bar that he wasn’t going to get anything else right now.
Even as a little kid Josh had been aware that being brilliant was not enough, he didn’t have Markus’ money or status, but he had just as many plans. He simply couldn’t afford getting tangled in North’s anger. He had known that since the day he had met her, when he had caught her trying to set a trashcan on fire, which she had achieved with tremendous success.
Josh hadn’t slept that night sure Gavin Reed was going to come for him. Other kids were afraid of monsters under their beds, Josh’s bogeyman was quite real and lived only a block away. He still remembered the dread he had felt when Sheriff Anderson had knocked at their door the next morning. North had told them- All the nightmares from the night before crashed on him, had she told them he had started the fire? Were they going to take him away?
North, caught in her little try at arson, had told them how Josh had managed to put the fire out all on his own.
“Good job, son” Hank Anderson had said with a gruff nod and a pat on his shoulder. “If you come across any more fires call an adult to help you out, understood?”
And now here he was, picking The Fire up from detention as he had done at least a hundred times before, with time he had learned how to weather it and he could stand very close to it and it wouldn’t burn him, not too often at least. He liked The Fire, life would be dull without it. He desperately hoped The Fire wouldn’t get herself in bigger trouble. He hoped she wouldn’t need him to bail her out in the very near future, at least not more than 3 times- 7 times tops. Anyway, Markus was a trust fund child so they could probably afford a few more.
“Drive safe, dork!” North said as she climbed out of the car, knocking softly on the hood of the beetle twice.
“See you tomorrow!” Josh said as he watched her go inside her house, in a tone that meant ‘try not to get in trouble in the next 12 hours’
On his way back home it started snowing again, he would appreciate it much more if it weren’t for the ice, but there was a very distinct feeling he got driving just as it was getting dark, the snow fluttering in front of his headlights while he was comfortable and warm inside his car. When he was a child he liked to imagine he could see all sorts of spooks in evenings like this, any moment now he’d see one on the side of the road, maybe a lady dressed all in white, or an animal that didn’t look quite right.
That was when he noticed the hitchhiker and his heart skipped a beat in apprehension and fear, like he had seen something unsettling he shouldn’t have, so much so he didn’t slow down. One second later he was laughing at himself, he was seventeen and he still managed to scare himself, he was glad North wasn’t there to see it or she wouldn’t ever let him live it down.
Josh was just considering going back to pick him up, it was getting darker and the snow was getting worse. He was calculating his U-turn, looking into his rear-view mirror when it, incomprehensibly, shattered. Mirror chips fell all over Simon’s jacket which North had left in the front seat. He looked back at the road, already somewhat shaken, when he noticed the familiar figure standing right in the middle of it, so close to him his brain couldn’t comprehend how he had missed it before.
He jammed his foot on the breaks, his car skidding on the treacherous black ice. As everything slowed down, the last thing he saw were the bits of mirror glinting as they mixed with Markus’ pastels and scattered all over the car. The last thing he remembered thinking was that it was funny how only the blue ones were worn down to snubs. Could you buy the colors separately or did you have to get a full set when one shade ran out?
Then he hit the tree.