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There’s something about sitting on the roof at one in the morning that feels almost holy. Not really, though. In the end, it’s still one in the morning and you’re still a college student.
But it’s something.
Hobie idly looks over the ridge of the building he’s sat on. The city lights are still burning, the night air is cold as hell, and he should probably go inside to avoid the risk of catching cold. He doesn’t.
Instead, he pulls a pack of cigarettes out of his coat pocket and lights one. Hobie watches the red glow turn from a bright flare back down to a smoldering orange, and takes a drag on it. He’s quite proud that he doesn’t cough.
Hobie’s feet are going numb. He should go inside. He takes another breath of smoke, reveling in the way the nicotine makes him pleasantly warm and dizzy- or maybe it’s just the lack of breath.
Here’s the thing: Hobie’s never been in love, but that doesn’t stop him from being a hopeless romantic. He wants to sit on the roof during finals week and chain smoke an entire pack of cigarettes, forgetting that consequences exist and that he won’t ever be in love.
Hobie takes another drag.
Next to him, someone sits down. “Hello,” Hobie says.
Pavitr doesn’t dignify that with a response, just grunts and wraps the blanket he’s holding closer around him as he leans on Hobie’s side. Hobie smiles, and leans further into Pavitr. A silent acknowledgement that yes, I’m here. “Wanna smoke?”
“Bad for you.”
“I know,” says Hobie, and brings the cigarette to his lips once again. “Fun, though. Makes me feel okay.”
“It’s the nicotine,” says Pavitr. “ ‘Course it makes you feel good, it’s a drug.”
Hobie hums. “That’s what college is for. Smoking and wondering what you’re going to do next, and then not really knowing the answer.”
Pavitr looks at Hobie curiously. “Are you okay?” he asks. “I mean, obviously you’re not, because you’re saying things that clearly prove you’re not, but do you want to talk about it?”
Hobie lights another cigarette and drops the butt of his old one on the roof, not really caring where it ends up. “Of course I’m not okay,” he says easily. “When have either of us been okay?”
Pavitr motions for the pack of cigarettes. Hobie hands it to him. “I mean,” Pavitr says as he fumbles with the pack, “Neither of us were okay, but that’s not for lack of trying, is it?” Pavitr finally gets both the pack of cigarettes and the matchbook open, and lights himself one. He takes a long drag, and immediately starts coughing from the smoke.
Hobie presses his mouth into a thin line, his version of a smirk, and pats Pavitr on the back until he stops coughing.
“You-” Pavitr sucks in a deep breath of the cool night air. “You don’t have to laugh at me, you know.”
“Not laughing,” Hobie says, but there’s a hint of mirth in his voice. “Try to stay alive if you’re going to make big emotional points, okay?”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Pavitr says, but there’s no real heat behind his words. “God, how do you stand that stuff?”
“Practice.”
“Well, don’t practice too often,” says Pavitr. “If you smell like smoke all the time, I’m never letting you into my apartment again.”
“I won’t,” Hobie says. “It’s just...” he trails off.
“Just what?” asks Pavitr. When he doesn’t get an answer, he crowds his way into Hobie’s personal space. “Just what, Hobie?”
“It’s been a long day.” Hobie blows more smoke in a thin line, watching it slowly dissipate into the air. “Needed something to take my mind off of it.” He waves his hands, gesturing to the sky, which is woefully devoid of stars.
Pavitr scoffs. “Are you sure that’s just nicotine? You’re acting stoned.”
“I’m not stoned, Pavitr. Stressed, maybe.”
Pavitr looks worried, which in Hobie’s opinion is sweet, but also completely useless. “Are you... do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really,” Hobie says. He wasn’t even sure what he would talk about if he were to open himself up. “Life’s a bitch and everything sucks.”
“That doesn’t sound like a very healthy mindset.”
“Maybe not,” Hobie says. In truth, he’s done with all of everything. Hobie just wants to sit in the snow, getting progressively colder, and destroy his lungs in peace. Which he tries to do, company or no, but his brain abruptly short-circuits when a pair of arms wraps around his back to meet at his torso.
“Hi,” says Hobie, putting his hands over Pavitrs.
“Hi,” says Pavitr into the back of Hobie’s jacket. “We should go inside.”
Hobie doesn’t have a comeback to that, because Pavitr’s right, so instead he points to the sky that still only has seven visible stars in it, and says “It’s pretty.”
“It’s gross and polluted. It’s cold out here, let’s go inside.”
Hobie absentmindedly takes off his jacket and hands it to Pavitr. “It's still pretty,” he says.
Pavitr pauses, and actually looks up at the sky this time. “What’s the point? Sky’s still going to be there in the summer. You don’t have to freeze your ass off to see it.”
“Yeah, but-” Hobie pauses, struggling with what he wants to say. “I don’t know,” he settles on. “I think something’s missing. Not with us, but in the grand scheme of things, something’s missing. I want to yell about it and tell the universe that something is wrong and it needs to be fixed, but in the end, that won’t do anything, so instead something is just going to be missing, and I have to be content with the fact that I don’t know what that thing is, and I can’t replace it. It feels violent,” Hobie says. “Just... yeah. It feels like something big and grand and violent has been done to me but I don't know what it is. And freezing myself to death out here is the masochistic finale of that.”
Pavitr is silent. “It feels like,” he says slowly, “The world wants to hurt you by virtue of being a harsh place, and the only option you have is to destroy yourself before somebody else gets there.”
Hobie snaps his fingers, accidentally dropping the half-finished cigarette. “Exactly,” he says. “I want to finish the job before anybody else gets to it.”
“What if you didn’t?” asks Pavitr.
“What do you mean?”
“Just- what if you didn’t hurt yourself out of spite? I’m not-” he drops his head. “I’m not good with the sappy emotional stuff.”
Hobie picks up his cigarette and dejectedly realizes it’s gone out. “I’m not hurting myself,” he says. “Not really.”
“You called it a masochistic finale,” says Pavitr. “That’s not exactly a term that’s up for debate.”
“I mean-” Hobie pauses. “Yes. Yes, that’s what it is, but I’m also not hurting myself any more than I would normally be. It’s not like I’m cutting my wrists or starving myself, I’m just... being,” he finishes. “Yeah.”
Pavitr gives Hobie an absolutely withering glare, and Hobie actually shrinks under the weight of the gaze. “You realize that’s the same thing, right? Please tell me you realize that it’s the same thing.”
Hobie stares blankly.
Pavitr groans. “Oh my god, you genuinely think this is okay.”
Hobie goes to light another cigarette, but Pavitr grabs the pack from his hands before he can. “Nope,” he says. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”
Hobie grumbles and hunches further in on himself. Frustratingly, Pavitr just sits there with one hand steading himself on the roof and the other on Hobie’s back, and waits.
Hobie caves. Of course he does, it’s Pavitr, and he was never trying to hide anything, anyway. “It feels violent,” he says, and Pavitr nods. “It feels violent and that makes me feel violent, too. I want to use this as a way to cause pain because that feels right, and it won’t fill any kind of hole that I halfway think is there because I should be doing things that I’m not, but it’s something to do.” Hobie continues. “And yes, sure, it’s unhealthy, but what’s the other option?”
He leaves it open as a question, but both of them know that it’s not one. And Hobie is uncomfortably aware that Pavitr has never seen him like this.
“The other option,” says Pavitr, “Is not to.” Hobie looks at him in confusion.
“Not to do this,” Pavitr clarifies. “I’ve done my share of things to hurt myself passively and so have you, but you know, you can be miserable without making it into a scene.”
“But it’s more fun this way,” Hobie says. “It’s-” He reaches for the words- “Cathartic.”
Pavitr makes some sort of mouth motion into the back of Hobie’s coat. Hobie can’t tell what Pavitr is going for. Probably sticking his tongue out. “You could also-” he says, and oh, it feels so real right now so sharply different than when the two of them were sitting on the roof near-dreamlike, looking at their bodies from below and wondering what could have been- “go inside, study for your finals, and... I don’t know. Just do that.”
Hobie thinks about that. “It’s about letting yourself be not okay,” he decides, flicking his lighter on, and holding out his hand for the pack of cigarettes. Pavitr obliges, but grudgingly. Hobie lights another cigarette and takes a long puff of smoke, but he isn’t as lucky this time, and starts to wheeze. Mercifully, Pavitr doesn’t laugh at him. “Sure,” he says, once he’s caught his breath, “I could go inside and study and let myself be warm, go to sleep and hope that it’s all just my dreams catching up to me in the morning, but that would be mundane. This is letting myself be not okay, and maybe it’s self-destructive, but it’s also mine.” He pauses to blow smoke directly into Pavitr’s face. Pavitr screws up his face and punches Hobie in the arm. It’s adorable. “I have to let myself be not okay,” he continues before Pavitr can get a word in edgewise about the smoke stunt, “Otherwise I’ll sit here and pretend that I’m okay until it all boils over and that’s not good for anyone.”
Pavitr frowns. “Okay,” he says. “But if this is your time to be not okay, when do you get to be okay again?”
“I don’t know. Maybe never.”
“That’s not a very good answer.”
“I know,” Hobie says. “Maybe after finals?” he tries.
Pavitr wraps his arms tighter around Hobie. “I can see why you like that stuff,” he says. “Feel all weird. Like ‘m not in my own body.”
Hobie ruffles Pavitr’s hair. “You have odd reactions to things.”
Pavitr snorts. The two of them are silent for a while, the quiet occasionally punctuated with puffs of smoke and Pavitr’s attempts not to cough from the cigarettes. Hobie doesn’t know what’s about this is helping, but something certainly is. He feels less violent. More present. Less afraid of the overwhelming forever that’s certainly going to follow him after this short chapter of his life is over. And, he finds that he’s okay with that. He’s not fine , and he’s not going to be, at least not tonight. But that’s also okay, in its own strange trying-to-destroy-yourself way.
Hobie grabs Pavitr’s hand and pulls him up from where the two of them are sitting on the roof. “Let’s go inside,” he says.