Work Text:
Michael had been going through his checklist -calculator, bag, keys, phone left on the nightstand- when a voice from behind him made him pause, “Big bear?”
Michael cursed under his breath and turned around -dammit he had been careful-
“Uh, Hey Badger, sorry I woke you”
Sly was bleary-eyed, blinking as they adjusted to the light in entry way.
“You didn’t, woke up to take a piss and noticed you were gone. Where are you headed off to?”
“Nowhere” Sly clicked his tongue and stepped closer, folding his arms, “now, you really expect to walk out of here, calculator in one hand and packed bag in the other, with just a ‘nowhere’?”
Michael didn't respond right away, finding it hard to look him in the eye all of a sudden
“Michael, we've talked about this, if you disappear again- look, I just need some idea of where to start lookin’ if you-” Don't come back.
“I know, I know. I'm sorry I just- it's not for a mission, alright, it's got nothing to do with Base- I'll be back before you know it”
Sly was looking increasingly unconvinced the more Michael spoke. Finally he just sighed, “I just need to burn some things, OK?”
Sly nodded slowly, understanding spreading across his face, “your journals?”
Michael nodded, relieved that he seemed to understand
“Right, give me 20 minutes to get a thermos and my coat”
“-no, wait”
but he was already working his way towards the kitchen. Michael followed, pausing only to set down his bag and the calculator he'd been clutching.
“Sly you don't gotta-”
“Oh hush now big bear, look, I won't read ‘em, I know how important propagation is to ya” Sly was scooping coffee grounds into the machine, enough to fill both their thermos’, “but this doesn't seem like the kind of thing you should do alone”
***
They landed with a dull crunch. The uneven landscape stretching out for miles and miles around them. A gray emptiness broken up only by the sky and a single, lone peak far in the distance.
“hey, this place looks familiar”
Michael hummed affirmatively, “it should, whole buncha movies were filmed here. Actually how I found the place, doin’ research for a Movies with Michael episode that never panned out”
Sly chuckled, he was very familiar with the number of scrapped podcast episodes.
They wandered aimlessly for awhile longer, no one else was in sight, and even the distant rumble of engines that was Michael's usual companion out here was absent today.
Burning the journals wasn't hard. piling them up, dowsing them with kerosene, and throwing a match down took less then 15 minutes.
The fire was large before too long, crackling and dancing before them. Long fingers caressing the pages and covers, their charcoal touch consuming an unknowable amount of days, even to Michael.
He'd given up trying to keep track a long time ago.
Neither of them spoke until the fire died down. The big pile of ash between them felt like an accusation. The irony of the phrase burning time was not lost on Michael.
He pulled a bottle of water out of his bag and emptied it, dousing last flecks of red that blinked up from the black. It was over. Michael felt a warm hand slide into his, Sly's crinkly-eyed smile greeting him when he looked up, “biscuits and gravy?”
“Yeah.”