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Ant and Spider’s lives have been intertwined since birth.
Two mothers joined at the hip despite their differences, two sons with one heart and one head between them. Spider’s known Ant since before he started eating worms in the kindergarten playground. Ant’s known Spider since before he stopped being able to look his mother in the eye.
They’re inseparable, a duo. Even their names match each other.
So Spider’s seen Ant do some pretty fucked-up shit. From the typical stuff, like munting in Spider's upstairs toilet after drinking three-quarters of a Fat Lamb in forty seconds — while Dusty tried to sweet-talk his mother into ignoring the disgusting heaving sounds — to the less typical. To the refusal to drink within a kilometer of a church. To the time he fell asleep after taking a handful of adderall. To all of the little fucked up rituals that make Anthony Vaughn Spider’s Ant.
The nervous breakdown and half-arsed attempt at chopping his dick off was a different kind of fucked up, though. That’s the reason they dragged Spider to the sick-bay with a high off his arse Ant in tow; because Spider is Ant’s best friend, and after eating an entire handful of pot gummies and having a mental breakdown, a best friend is probably what he needs. Kind of. Other than like, a snack and to stop being high, probably.
So when Miss Obah, Woodsy, and Voss stroll out of the room and leave them in the kind-of-capable hands of the school nurse, a best friend is what Spider White will be. He’d be the best friend in the world if it meant Ant won’t try to chop his dick off again, Christ.
“Fuckin’ hell, Voss’s insane.” He says as he drops onto the end of the sick-bed. He shuffles around, swinging his legs up so that like Ant, they’re crossed in front of him. He leans back on the balls of his hands.
“Yeah, man.” Ant says back, but he doesn’t give Spider anything more than a glance.
“Fuckin’ batshit, seriously. I mean what was all that shit about that fuckin’ song? I dunno. Crazy.” He tries again. Still, Ant doesn’t respond in the way he wants.
“Yeah.”
Spider sighs.
Ant looks fucked. He looks legitimately, actually fucked up for the first time in a while. His eyes are so wide that Spider thinks they might burst, the sclera so red it looks like he might have some kind of disease. They look frightened, afraid, and his lips are pursed into a grimace. He’s chewing on his cheek, too, and his hands are balled up in his lap, so hard his knuckles are going white. Spider hasn’t seen him this messed up since year nine, when they were still learning their limits and he ate too many brownies in Spider’s attic bedroom. Spider still remembers that night, still remembers the way Ant’s hands were shaking.
He sighs again, a little bit louder this time. Then he does the only thing he can think of doing, which is to scoot a little bit closer and click his fingers in his face.
And it gets Ant’s attention. At the sound and sight of the click, he snaps his eyes up and lets them wander for a few seconds, before they settle onto Spider.
“Dude, are you alright?” He hums, voice filled with more concern than he was expecting. It feels croaky, foreign in his throat. Ant switched from chewing on his cheek to chewing on his lip, and he wrings his hands together.
“Didn’t he just say that guys don’t talk about their feelings the same way girls do?” He mutters back. Spider shrugs.
“I’m not askin’ you to talk,” He sniffs, and Ant blinks. It looks… kind of like he’s getting what he’s saying. “I just want to know if you’re going to try and chuck yourself off the roof if I go back to class.”
“Oh.”
Spider snorts, and the sound startles him. But after a moment of fear, a smile twitches at Ant’s face like he’s trying to imitate him. Maybe seeing Spider laugh makes him feel a little better, a little safer. The thought makes Spider a little antsy, like he wants to move around, maybe leave. But the moment he thinks about leaving he feels something akin to dread settle in his stomach, and he — mentally — shakes his head.
“Oh what? Are ya’?” He tilts his head. The twitch of a smile on Ant’s face gets a little bit wider, and he shakes his head.
“Nah, man.”
“Are you gonna try and chop your dick off again?” He asks, a follow up. And at the word dick, he gets a proper smile. He can’t help but roll his eyes, because the moment Ant gets high, he decides that dick jokes are the epitome of humor again. They still are, don’t get him wrong. But inebriated Ant genuinely believes so.
“Nah.” He hums, and his voice sounds less on-edge. Spider gives himself a metaphorical pat on the back.
But he doesn’t say anything else, so Spider lets the silence settle, shelter them like the blanket around Ant’s shoulders. He also lets himself think.
He thinks back to that night in year nine, doona cover wrapped around their shoulders and vomit bowl sitting on the other side of the bed, waiting. He thinks about how it had been a long, long day at Hartley High, about how Ant had bombed a maths test and how he had only barely passed — He thinks about how Ant’s mother had told him to go walk around the neighborhood and think about how he could do better. Obviously he hadn’t gone thinking about his actions; he had shown up at Spider’s back window with a paper bag full of brownies from Cash, and told him that he was bummed.
Bummed was the wrong word for it. Ant was miserable. And being miserable led him to where he ended up; snot pouring out of his nose, hiccups bouncing from his throat, wrapped up under the doona and clinging onto Spider for dear life. Obviously Spider had let him, because that’s his best friend for fuck’s sake. But he had let himself run his hands through his hair, let himself mutter quiet reassurances as he kept his eyes fixed on the vomit bowl.
He didn’t want Ant to munt in his bed.
It hadn’t been the first time he had seen Ant like that. But until today, it was the last. Spider lets himself breathe, lets his fingers twitch, like he’s about to reach out.
He thinks about Ant doing something to himself when he goes back to class, and his stomach flips. So he purses his lips together, and takes a breath.
“...Promise?” He mutters. His voice comes out… desperate.
Ant looks at him, really looks at him. His red eyes run up and down his chest, and narrow as they fix on his expression. Then, like he sees something hidden underneath his pursed lips, his frown lines and his furrowed eyebrows, he tilts his head and leans forward with a grin.
“Aw,” He says, and to Spider’s horror, he raises a finger and wiggles it at his chest. “Were you worried about me?”
“Piss off,” He scoffs. He backs off, like if Ant’s finger touches him, it’ll burn.
“You were scared-” Spider throws his hands up into the air.
“Forgive me for not wanting my mate to cut his dick off with a pair of safety scissors, stupid cunt,” He snaps, but there’s no heat behind it, Ant’s finger floats forwards, but he swats it away with an eye-roll. Ant doesn’t seem hurt, not in the slightest. Instead, he just snorts; a weird little noise that almost sounds like a sob. It makes Spider breathe a little sharper. “Where’d you even get those? They look like they couldn’t cut paper.”
“Found ‘em in the hallway.” Ant says. He sounds proud.
“Which hallway?”
“Dunno.”
Spider physically can’t stop himself from rolling his eyes again, and internally, he cringes when the action makes Ant’s smile twitch downwards. Ant still looks freaked out, he realises. Spider might be doing a good job at making sure he isn’t completely losing it, but that doesn’t mean the feeling has gone away — the panic is probably just lying underneath his skin, waiting for the moment Spider abandons him for second period math. He doesn’t want to go to second period math, not at all.
“Jesus. You’re fuckin’ geeked,” He sighs, and Ant wilts. It makes him look worse. It makes Spider feel worse. He shakes his head, and brings his hand to his forehead. He runs it, frustratedly, down his face, and he watches Ant bite at his lip again. He chews on it like it’s a piece of gum. “That's why you freaked the fuck out.”
“I didn’t freak the fuck out.” Ant says defensively, and Spider shakes his head. What Ant did was the definition of freaking the fuck out, the definition of making a stupid mistake and having to pay the price of it.
“Yes you fuckin’-” He starts, voice raising. But then he sees the way Ant’s eyes get wider, and he lets his voice soften. He thinks about that night, about the way his hands in Ants hair and his arms resting on his shoulder seemed to calm him down. He thinks about how he hates seeing his friend fried off his arse without him being fried as well. He thinks, only a little bit, about how he would feel if Ant freaks out again if he goes back to class. “Whatever… C’mere.”
Spider moves. He lets out a sigh and hauls himself down Ant’s end of the bed, nudging him with his elbow and settling with his back against the wall. He doesn’t watch Ant’s expression as he does it, doesn’t pay mind to the confusion on his face or the burning at the tips of his own ears. He thinks that what he’s doing might be childish. Or gay. Or maybe he’s just being a good friend.
He moves, and when he’s flush against the drywall he holds his arms out. Ant looks at him, and blinks.
“What?” He asks, and he blinks again. Spider sniffs, and shrugs.
“Come here,” He says, and like Ant still doesn’t understand, he says: “It’s a bad trip.”
Realisation dawns on Ant’s face. Spider knows that he’s remembering the night back in year nine, all the bad trips they’ve had to deal with over the years. Ant’s thinking about himself, about the first time Sasha tried LSD, about all those times when Spider drank too much, about when Dusty freaked out after trying ket for the first time. He’s thinking about all those bad trips. Sasha needed someone to hold her hand. Dusty needed a hug, and some breathing exercises to calm down. Spider wanted Ant right next to him, rubbing circles into his back, keeping a hand on his neck as he spilled his guts into the toilet.
“Oh.” Ant breathes, and Spider nods.
Ant starts to shuffle. He wiggles his neck, unclenching one of his hands so that he can drape the blanket over both their shoulders at the same time. Spider obliges, and after less than a minute, Ant’s head is pressed into the crook of Spider’s neck and his side is moulded against his own. Spider holds out his wrist, and Ant slowly unclenches his other hand so that they can intertwine their fingers.
It’s not weird, Spider thinks. Ant and Spider have been joined at the hip since birth; it’s not weird that sometimes they’re joined at the hip literally.
For a moment, they’re completely still. And then Spider realises that they’re still because Ant isn’t breathing, and he flicks him in the side of the head with his pointer finger. Ant starts, and Spider rolls his eyes.
“Take a breath, fuckin’ idiot.” He scoffs, but there’s no bite behind this either.
Ant breathes, in and out.
Spider breathes with him.
For a while, neither of them speak. Ant closes his eyes, lets his eyelashes droop downwards and his head fall ever-so-slightly forward. But he keeps breathing, and Spider counts the seconds between breaths until he realises that Ant is probably just taking a nap. A nap against Spider’s neck, pressed against his shoulder. He decides that he’ll think about the implications of this another day.
“...I’m sorry.” Ant says after a while. His voice is croaking, tired. But it isn’t miserable. Not quite. Spider brings a hand up to Ant’s hairline, and starts to run his fingers through the roots.
He doesn’t know what Ant’s apologising for; if it’s for making him skip maths or for almost chopping his dick off or for worrying him. Whatever it is, Spider doesn’t care.
“Don’t worry about it, man,” He murmurs back. “Come stay at mine tonight, yeah?”
Ant lets out a breath, long and tired.
Spider doesn’t need a response to know that the answer’s yes.