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Pac doesn’t think he’s ever really paid attention to the stars before. Kind of hard to do, when he's been spending every waking moment trying to survive. Back with his parents who he barely remembers at all, or alone at the orphanage just trying to protect himself, then trying to protect both himself and Mike, and then on the streets with Mike ever since the orphanage shut down, on the run and trying to make sure they can provide enough for themselves to keep each other going.
…Yeah, there’s always been a lot going on. Either way – no time to look up at the sky. He’s spent his life being busy enough on the ground.
But tonight is different. Tonight, he and Mike have found themselves an unguarded rooftop, and the night sky is unusually clear. From what Pac vaguely remembers having picked up from books when he was younger, the further away from a city you are, the more stars you can see, and he’s never seen anything that looked like the big impressive illustrations of galaxies and night skies in the science books he was never allowed to read too long as a kid. So he thinks that in reality, there’s a lot more stars that they could be seeing right now. Something about a thing called light pollution.
But the few they can see from here are still pretty cool, he thinks, now that he has the chance to look.
Pac didn’t even want to look at them when they first got up here. He was more concerned with finding them a place to sleep that was reasonably sheltered from the wind, while not being in an alleyway somewhere down below, because people have been stealing from each other more often as of late, and he and Mike haven’t exactly made themselves many friends with their pickpocketing habits, even if they try not to go for people who seem just as badly off as them. (They don’t want trouble – they just want to survive.)
But then Mike looked up, and he pointed out the stars, and he sounded so hopeful about having a place safe enough to let them have a view like this, and Pac could feel the flicker of hope in Mike’s soul in his chest.
So he agreed, and now they’re lying here on the rooftop with their stolen coats and threadbare blankets, for tonight – however temporarily – safe. Mike is gazing at the stars with a kind of quiet wonder, and it’s hard for Pac to be worried about the location being unsafe when he so rarely gets to see Mike have moments of peace like this at all.
(It’s not like Pac has to be taking care of him, he knows that. He and Mike have had that discussion several times by now. It’s just that Pac can’t quite agree that he doesn’t have to take responsibility in some way. He is the older one out of them – he should be taking care of Mike; or at least, Mike needs it more than him.)
Hey, Pac? A poke comes at him through the link, sleepy and a little fuzzy around the edges, disrupting his train of thought.
Yeah?
I love you, bro. Mike shifts closer to Pac, and half-buries himself into his shoulder, and Pac kind of feels like there’s something very small, and very fragile, beating tiny wings somewhere in his chest.
Yeah?
Yeah.
He’s trying very hard not to let tears well up in his eyes, because—that’d be silly. That’s not something to cry over, he’s meant to be strong. It’s such a tiny thing, he can’t cry.
But still—
Mikey?
Yeah?
I love you, too.