Work Text:
On a normal day, Angus is home before Gregg. The Snack Falcon operates at obscene hours, which is perfect for Gregg, whose hours of operation are equally obscene. Sometimes Angus will stop by while he finishes out his shift, sitting up on the counter to keep his feet from becoming a casualty to Gregg’s violent sweeping. Gregg will give loud exasperated accounts of his boredom, and then he’ll grab Angus’s hand when he finishes, leading him out of the shop. It will take them at least five minutes of fiddling with the elevator buttons to get the doors open, and it will be a great relief when they finally do.
Today is not a normal day, so when Angus heads to their apartment, he finds Gregg is already there. There’s music playing. He doesn’t recognize the band, but it’s something punk. Kinda acoustic. Grating vocals, but that comes from passion. Although it’s not loud enough to bother the neighbors, it wouldn’t take much more to get there. From the kitchen, Gregg shouts a greeting. The air is filled with a charred smell that makes Angus’s stomach knot in some old forgotten reflex he would rather not admit to. When he turns the corner, Gregg is sitting on the ground in the kitchen. On the counter by the stove is what used to be... bread?
“Surprise!” he says, throwing his arms up into the air excitedly. “I made brownies. Romantic gesture!”
Angus smiles a little bit and offers Gregg a hand. It’s sweaty when he grabs hold. He takes the opportunity to pull Gregg close, tucking his head above Gregg’s and feeling the day's tension leave. There’s a tremor running steadily through Gregg’s body that Angus doesn't like.
“They taste like an ashtray that came from the cigarettes a piece of charcoal smoked,” comes Gregg’s muffled voice.
“Did you try it with whipped cream?”
“Yes.”
“Dang. The gesture was nice,” Angus assures. “Maybe we can give them to that guy downstairs with the compost bin.”
“Can you compost burnt brownies?”
Angus shrugs. “Carbon?”
The quiet is filled by the off key singing of folk punk as he and Gregg get to work dealing with the mess. For once, he did a pretty great job of keeping things tidy as he went along, but Angus guesses that’s what made it a romantic gesture instead of a regular pan of brownies. All that’s left is a spoon, a few spatters of batter on the stovetop, and the pan it was baked in. They make quick work of everything but the pan, which they chalk up as a loss.
“What do you wanna watch toni-“
“Wanna go to the woods?” Gregg blurts abruptly.
Angus pauses a little too long. “Oh, uh-“
“I need to get out of here,” Gregg says. “Like right now now now.”
So Angus says, “okay,” and they leave.
As they walk slowly through old empty lots, Gregg talks in that way he does when he can’t be comfortable with silence. Absent and meaningless. Angus tries to offer some response when he can, but he doesn’t think it’s actually helpful.
The sun is warm and bright even as it dips below the late winter horizon. It’s albedo. He must’ve read about it somewhere. When the concrete absorbs all the heat. The lots are flat and endless like the sky, plants growing over in the median between concrete and dirt. Nature eating into mankind. It’s where the good parts of growing up happen, he guesses, so it’s comforting. Gregg is here, so it’s comforting.
When they make it to the forest, only the slightest bit of light blocks the stars. Gregg finds a tree to climb, and Angus is content to sit quietly on the dirt and dead leaves while the branches above him rustle. It’s that time of year in the space between winter and spring where he can feel nature trying to push forwards again. The toughest blades of grass begin poking through the winter slush. The toughest leaves begin to sprout on bare trees. Getting started is always the hardest part, he figures.
Gregg slides down the tree with a dull thunk, landing close by. His head lolls to the side to rest against Angus’s.
“Check out this stick I found,” he says, displaying the stick on Angus’s foot.
It’s long and hefty, but it’s small enough to comfortably hold. “That’s a pretty good stick,” he assesses.
“It’s literally perfect in every possible way. It won’t even give you splinters.” Gregg rubs his hand across it to demonstrate. It doesn’t look comfortable, but he doesn’t get stabbed either, so he counts it as a win.
“A kind-hearted branch.”
“The kind of branch you borrow sugar from.”
Outside of the lots, the bite of late winter begins to creep back in as the sun leaves the sky. It’s getting dark, but Angus doesn’t mind. When it’s nighttime in the woods, it’s never really still like it is inside. Trees rustle, cicadas sing, the stars cast a dull silvery sheen on everything. The forest breathes. Life continues.
“Would you still date me if I gave myself a stick and poke?” Gregg asks.
“Yeah, but don’t give yourself a stick and poke. You’ll get tetanus or gangrene or something.”
He nods sagely in response and looks out into the thick of the woods.
“Would you still date me if I had tetanus?”
“Yes."
“What about gangrene?”
“Yes.”
“What about both?”
“If you had both that probably wouldn’t be your top concern.”
He hums thoughtfully. “Yeah. My top concern would be how sick my stick and poke looks. It’d be all…” he makes a wild gesture into the air. “Bam.”
Angus cracks a smile at that. Gregg pokes him in the stomach and returns it as a big squinty grin.
“I love your smile,” he says. Angus doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he nudges Gregg’s head with his own and hopes that it’s enough.
“You know you can just get a regular tattoo, right? You’re an adult.”
“Yeah, but it’s so much, y’know. We don’t have a lot to begin with,” Gregg sighs. “Saved for months to get the first one.”
“Yeah. Maybe one day,” Angus says.
“In Bright Harbor?”
“Yeah. Soon.”
Gregg wiggles his feet to crunch the leaves. It’s too wet for them to actually crunch, but it helps with the restlessness, so Angus isn’t about to point that out. “I can’t wait to get out of here. I’m going crazy, dude. Feels like I’m rotting. Feels like I’m trapped in a collapsing cave but the cave is Possum Springs and I’m… a stupid pigeon or something. In the cave.”
Angus breathes in sharp air and releases it in a sigh. “I’m sorry,” he says, and he doesn’t know why.
“I have this dream sometimes where I just… put on my shoes and walk away, but every time I try to cross the highway, I…” Gregg’s voice is soft and sweet and sad, and he talks like they are the last words he’ll ever say.
“We are going to get out of here,” Angus says sharply, and they both know it's as much convincing him as it is convincing Gregg.
Gregg leans in closer. His skin feels hot. Sickly.
By the time they break the comfortable silence between them it’s pitch black. Without the moon in the sky, the only light peeking through the stripped trees is from the stars. They look brighter without the moon.
Gregg stands up abruptly, and Angus feels cold without him there. He offers a hand to help Angus up, which he takes even though Gregg can’t really hold his weight. It’s the gesture that counts.
“Thanks for this,” Gregg says. Angus hums in response. “I can’t… It’s just hard-”
“I know. It’s okay.”
“You’re too good to me.”
“Nope,” Angus says, and they leave it at that.
When they get home, Angus microwaves a box of Stouffer’s ziti, too tired to actually cook, and they eat it on the couch while some mindless game show plays on the tv. Angus knows Gregg isn’t going to sleep tonight by the way his hands shake faintly with feverish energy. He’ll probably stay home though, which is good enough on a day like this. When they’re done eating, Gregg pulls out his guitar and plays absently. The strings buzz with the force of his strums. He’s always been kinda rough with his instruments. Angus plays a dungeon crawler on his laptop and hums along to the songs he knows, listening for hours until his laptop is dead and he can’t keep his eyes open. It’s 12:46 when he realizes he fell asleep on the couch, Gregg still plucking his guitar and kicking his feet.
“I’m going to bed, bug,” Angus whispers hoarsely.
“Heheh. Bed bug.”
“Wake me up if you leave.”
“I will.” Gregg smiles softly, intimately, and Angus feels so incredibly blessed to be able to see it.
Angus reaches down to kiss his forehead. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”