Hard To Look At You

by john_bellamy

Summary:

Five years after a horrific accident shattered everything, Gary Barkovitch swore he’d never return to Maine. But when his father dies, he's called back. Gary comes face to face with the boys who once called him a murderer. Old guilt rises fast, and so does something he never expected when he locks eyes with Collie Parker, the quiet one whose voice still haunts his nightmares.

Now Gary has to decide whether to keep running from the past or confront the pieces of himself he left behind.

Notes:

Happy birthday to Kelsey, who went to see this movie in theaters with me 3 times, and who lets me know any time something new gets posted/updated on the Parkovitch tag.

Please excuse any typos, this is a birthday fic for my bestie/beta reader so this has NOT been beta read.

Chapter 1

Barkovitch is 16, and he hates Maine. Hates it with a fiery passion that could probably melt all the ice off the planet if anyone would let him try. Maine is nothing like Kentucky. It’s only November and already the temperature hovers in the low 50s; far too cold, he’ll announce to anyone within a 15-foot radius. 

It’s too dreary. It rains too much. Even the sky feels heavier here. There are no major league sports teams either—a go to gripe of Gary’s. Olson always shoots him down, pointing out there aren’t any in “bumblefuck Kentucky” either. Gary just shrugs off Olson's logic and mutters he doesn’t even like sports.

But nothing in Maine feels like home. Maine sucks. Gary never misses a chance to tell people he only ended up here because the factory back in Kentucky shut down. His Pa couldn’t find work anywhere else. He says it with a kind of pride, as if daring anyone to laugh or pity him. Nobody ever does. They just look at him sideways, uncomfortable. Gary feels the distance.

He doesn’t fit in here. Back in Kentucky, his school had been tiny. The kind of place where everyone knew everyone else’s meemaw's middle name. Gary had known those kids since before he could walk. Sure, he got into fights, but so did everyone else. His foul attitude and sailor’s mouth were background noise, nothing special. Here, his crass, negative attitude stood out like a sore thumb.

He’d tried to make friends, he really had, because he promised his Meemaw when he and his pa moved that he’d at least try. But then Olson had laughed at him on his first day in homeroom when he made some offhand joke about her.

 “What the fuck is a Meemaw?” Olson had cackled. Gary felt his face go hot, the kind of heat that starts at the base of your neck and climbs up until the tips of your ears feel like they’re on fire. Olson kept mocking his accent, stretching vowels into a slow, twangy mockery. Gary spent the rest of homeroom in tight lipped silence, neck burning, hands shoved under his thighs to keep from smacking himself for being such a stupid hick right off the bat.

However, he does manage to fall into a routine. He quickly comes to find out that there are a few boys in his grade who walk the same route home as he does, and after a while they let him fall into stride with them. Not really one of them, but close enough. For the first few months, it feels somewhat like a friendship. He knows, somewhere deep down inside of himself that the only reason they tolerate him is because they all just happen to walk the same direction after school. But their tolerance is still more than he’s gotten from anyone else so far. Occasionally he earns himself a groan, or a “Shut the fuck up, Barkovitch,” mostly from Parker, whenever Gary gets too loud or too racy. But even the insults are a kind of attention, give him a sense of acknowledgement.

Now Gary, who hasn’t belonged anywhere since he moved to Maine finds himself looking forward to the walks home with Garraty, McVries, Olson, Baker, and Parker. Even if he isn’t really a part of the group, it’s something. It's a sliver of connection to a world outside of the little bubble he locks himself into.
Then two weeks before Thanksgiving, everything changes.

 

It starts with a new face. At first, Gary feels a flicker of relief when he spots him standing awkwardly in homeroom, clutching some paperwork and looking around like he’s been dropped onto the wrong planet. For the first time since school started, Gary isn’t the newest or strangest thing in the school.

Gary finds out pretty quickly that the new kid, Rank, walks the same route home as the rest of them. For the first week he manages to behave himself. Plays nice, just like his Meemaw would tell him to. He keeps his smart mouth shut even when the scrawny boy shoots him that dour glare he always seems to have plastered on his face.

But after the first week, a bitter afternoon with the wind cutting through their jackets, Gary feels the words scratching at his throat like they’re demanding to be let out. His camera thumps against his chest with every step, his jean jacket buttoned all the way to his throat to ward off the sharp gusts.

He can't hold it in anymore.

“Hey man," Gary drawls, breath fogging the air in front of him, “I been meanin’ to ask; 'Rank’… that short for somethin’?”

Rank flicks his eyes over, giving him a dirty look. The kid has a funny lookin’ face, Gary thinks. Not ugly, just odd, like his features got arranged by someone who wasn’t paying attention.

“It’s just Rank,” he snaps.

Gary tries, by god, he tries, to let it go. He nods, hums an “Mm,” like he’s satisfied.

But he’s not. He never is.

“Yeah, but what’s it short for?”

Rank’s jaw twitches. “Just. Rank.”

That little crack of irritation is all the invitation Gary needs. A wicked spark lights up in his chest. His Meemaw would've smacked him upside the head, but she’s not here.

“No fuckin’ way,” Gary laughs, glancing around at the other boys to see if they were sharing in his amusement. “You’re fuckin’ with me.”

No one laughs. McVries is giving him that stare Gary knows a little too well by now, the one that feels like a warning written in big red letters. A normal person would shut up right about now.

Unfortunately, for every person around him, Barkovitch has never backed down from a bad idea or paid attention to a stop sign in his life.

“Aw man,” Gary says, smirking, “your mama must’ve failed with the ol’ coat hanger thing, and had to take it out on you some other way.”

He sees the swing coming before Rank even turns. Gary hops out of the way easily, stepping into a slow backward walk, hands up in a gesture of false surrender.

“Barkovitch, back off,” Parker rumbles, his dark eyes narrowed.

“Come on,” Gary says, feigning innocence. “Can’t take a fuckin’ joke?”

Rank's cheeks are flushed red, Gary can see his jaw clenched up tight.

“Okay, okay,” Gary says, raising one hand in mock apology. “Just one more thing, Rank.”

“Let it go, man.” Garraty warns sharply.

“Don’t take the bait, Rank.” Pete says, voice edging on pleading.

But Gary’s mouth is already running ahead of him, too fast to stop, too loud, too eager to claim the moment. It feels good, for once not being the joke. Not being white trash. Not being Olson’s punching bag. Not being laughed at for his accent or his Meemaw, for being a hick, for anything.

“I think I heard your mama was givin’ out coupons for blowjobs on 42nd,” Gary says, voice bright and purposefully cruel. “I was thinkin’ of takin’ her up on it. What do you think about that?”

Everything that happens next comes at him in fragments.

Rank lunges.

Gary steps back.

Rank’s foot hits the edge of the curb at the wrong angle.

His foot slips, a flail of arms, a startled sound that doesn’t quite escape Rank's throat.

Brakes screeching.

A wet crunch.

A heavy thud.

Something warm spatters across Gary’s face. He freezes mid-breath, lifting his shaking fingers slowly. When he pulls them away, they’re smeared red. His ears ring. His heart drops straight through him.

His mind desperately grabs at the simplest explanation possible.

Deer. Gotta be a deer. Hit by a truck. Happens all the time.

Except the thing lying crumpled on the asphalt has a human hand. A small one. Palm up, fingers curled, arm bent back in a way that an arm is not supposed to go.

“Get up.” Gary’s voice comes out thick. He takes a stumbling step forward, his legs feeling like they're about to give way underneath him. “Kid, get up!”

Rank doesn’t move.

He’s twisted in ways bodies aren’t meant to twist, limbs bent like a broken doll. His eyes stare straight upward, unblinking, at the cloudy gray sky.

“Fuck, Barkovitch, you fucking asshole!” Garraty’s voice tears through the air, but Gary hears it like it’s coming from a million miles away.

“Get up!” Gary screams, voice cracking. It doesn’t even sound like himself.

“Hank, Art, go call 911,” Pete says, trying for a calm tone, but failing. The tremble in his voice betrays him.

Gary’s heart hammers against his chest. He looks at the others, shell-shocked, pale, and sees his own horror mirrored on their faces.

“You saw that, right, Parker?” Gary pleads. Collie snaps his head to look at Gary. His face is twisted in disgust when he looks at Gary. “I-I didn’t touch him! I didn’t do shit to him!” Gary’s voice climbs higher, desperate. “I didn’t!”

“You fucking killed him.” Collie breathes, disbelief and horror mingled in his tone.

Gary shakes his head so hard his hair whips across his eyes.

“No, I didn’t fuckin’ touch him!” he yells. In the background, Hank and Art sprint through someone’s yard, hammering on a front door, shouting for a phone.

Gary slams his palm into the side of his head.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

“I didn’t fuckin’ touch him,” he whispers. “I didn’t. I didn’t.”

His voice trembles, the words barely sounding convincing to his own ears.

And Rank lies there in the street. Still not getting up.

 

Pa lets Gary take a week off school before the patience burns out of him. Then, he’s damn near beating Gary’s bedroom door off its hinges, hollering through the thin wood, calling him a crybaby faggot and demanding he get his sorry ass to school. His old man’s voice shakes the whole damn house.

Gary barely hears him. He barely hears anything these days.

He hasn’t slept more than an hour, maybe two, at a time since it happened. His nights come in jagged dreams: Rank’s body, the thud, the blood, the impossibly heavy stillness. He hasn’t eaten more than a handful of crackers, a piece of toast. Hasn’t left his room except to piss. The whole week is a smear that blurs together. He remembers the cops talking to him in pieces: questions, nods, Rank’s name spoken too quietly, an officer with pity in his eyes that made him feel sick to his stomach
He’s not in trouble. He knows that much. The man who hit Rank was drunk, speeding through a residential neighborhood.

But Collie’s voice is louder than the cops, louder than Pa, louder than anything else.

You fucking killed him.

Gary keeps replaying the moment. Rank’s foot slipping off the curb, the stagger into the street, the incoming car he didn’t even know was there. He hadn’t touched him. Jesus christ, he hadn’t even been close to him. Did  the cops tell that to the others? Did they tell Parker, McVries, all of them, that the driver had been drunk? Did they tell them Gary wasn’t at fault?

But the nightmares didn't care about whose fault it was or wasn't.

 

When Gary finally forces himself into school, his stomach is clenched so tight he feels like he’s got a fist lodged under his ribs. He keeps his head down, eyes glued to the linoleum floors, the fluorescent lighting so bright it burns his eyes. He caught a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror before he left the house. The dark circles under his eyes looked bruised. His blue eyes were bloodshot, his straw-blond hair a knotted mess that he couldn't be assed to brush before he stumbled out the door.
He can feel people staring at him, their eyes burning holes in his back. No one whispers loud enough for him to hear. He didn't know what he had been expecting, but the quiet is worse, like a calm before the storm.

He feels like a ghost drifting through the hallways, unseen but watched.

By lunch, the knots in his stomach have twisted into something stabbing. He steps out of the lunch line, tray of gray cafeteria mush shaking in his white knuckled hands. He spots the guys at their usual table. His breath catches in his throat.

He starts toward them slowly, cautiously, like approaching a wounded dog that might bite.

Garraty notices first. The stocky boy looks up, goes even paler, and looks away quickly. He nudges Art. Then the others look up one by one and Gary feels their disgust like a blast of cold air.

He stops dead in his tracks about twenty feet from the table. His chapped lips part, but nothing comes out. For the first time in his miserable life, Gary Barkovitch has absolutely no words.

Art suddenly stands so abruptly his chair shrieks across the floor. The noise cuts through the cafeteria chatter, quieting everything.

Gary knows, he knows, he needs to get the fuck out. His body is already turning, legs ready to bolt, when Art’s voice rings out across the cafeteria.

“HEY, BARKOVITCH!”

Gary freezes mid-step. Art never yells. Art, the pastor’s son, always calm, always level-headed. Hearing him shout feels wrong.

“You’re not just a pest no more,” Art says, voice ringing off the walls, “now you’re a murderer!”

Gary’s blood goes cold. He turns halfway back toward them. Collie stares him down with that dark, angry expression. Olson’s jaw is clenched so tight it looks painful, eyes glued to the ceiling. Garraty stares at his tray like it's the most interesting thing in the world.

“Y-you can’t fuckin’ say that shit,” Gary manages, throat tight. “I didn’t do shit, I didn’t fuckin’ touch him.”

“You fuckin’ got him killed!” Art’s voice shakes with fury.

“Shut the fuck up!” Gary explodes. His hands move before his brain manages to catch up. He hurls his tray at the table. Gray mush splatters across the floor. The wet slap of it makes Gary’s stomach roll.

“Fuck off! Fuck you!” he shouts, the words empty and panicked. His heart is pounding so loudly he can hear it in his skull. The bile rises fast, too fast.
He bolts.

He barely makes it to the nearest bathroom before he’s retching over the sink. Nothing comes up except burning acid. He heaves until his ribs ache and his blue eyes water. When the spasms in his stomach finally cease, he rinses his mouth and staggers out a side door just as the bell rings for next period.

 

When he gets home, Pa’s not back from work yet. Gary rifles through the kitchen cabinet, finds the half-full bottle of Jack Daniels that his father reteats into every night. He snatches it, brings it to his room, and unscrews the cap with shaking hands.

The first mouthful hits like fire. The second burns deeper in his stomach. By the fifth, his throat feels raw, his stomach lurches, but he forces more down. He crawls onto his squeaky twin mattress, curls around the bottle under his dingy comforter, and keeps drinking until everything blurs and fades.

He wakes hours later to Pa standing over him. The beating comes hard and fast. A black eye, bloody nose. It hurts, but honestly, Gary hardly feels it. He clutches the bottle to his chest as if it’s the only thing keeping him anchored.

Two days later, he’s on a flight back to Kentucky. Meemaw paid for it without asking any questions, just said, “Come home, baby.” in that quiet drawl that nearly made him sob.
Gary Barkovitch is about to turn seventeen.

And he swears on his Ma’s grave he will never set foot in Maine again.

Chapter 2

Notes:

I have more chapters lined up, I am just working on editing them!! Not sure how long this will be, but will update the chapter count when I have a better idea.

Collie straightens his tie for what feels like the hundredth time, rolling his shoulders in an attempt to loosen the tux jacket biting into him. The damn thing feels like it’s been tailored for someone who breathes less often than he does.

“This is fucking stupid,” he mutters.

Next to him, Olson snaps his gum loudly. Collie cringes, the sound scraping right down his spine.

“My baby wants sunset photos of the bridal party, so sunset photos of the bridal party she shall have,” Olson fires back, side-eyeing him like this is all Collie’s fault. Collie still doesn’t get it, why anyone would want to get dressed up early for photos weeks before they actually get married, but Garraty murmurs, “Honestly, kinda sweet,” and so Collie lets it go.

“Your wedding isn’t even for another month, Hank,” he points out, adjusting his cuffs.

Hank shrugs, blowing a pink bubble before popping it with a dramatic flair. “Look at it this way, boys,” he says, voice clipped with that Boston twang. “We get the bridal party photos done now, means we don’t gotta take shit after the ceremony. Which means we go right to the open bar.”

Pete gives a triumphant, “Hell yeah,” and Collie rolls his eyes.

He still feels like an idiot wearing the tux Clementine picked out for all the groomsmen a full month early. The fabric’s stiff, the color’s weirdly off-charcoal, and the bowtie feels like a polite method of strangulation.

“Who’d she get to do the photos?” Stebbins asks, fussing with his blond. He’s been doing it on and off for twenty minutes, despite the fact that the photographer is probably about to redo it.

“Fuck if I know,” Hank replies. “She said he’s in the photography program with her.”

That gets Collie’s attention. After high school, they’d all ended up at the same local college, a comfortable inevitability. It’s where they met Stebbins and Harkness. Collie and Hank were the engineering majors. Garraty went to English. Harkness, journalism. Stebbins, business. And Clementine, tiny, bright-eyed Clementine, was an art major. She and Hank had met during freshman orientation, stuck together ever since. Now, two years later, they were tying the knot.

“Anyone we know?” Collie asks, reaching for his tie again only for Hank to slap his hand away.

“Nah. She said he’s new.” Hank snaps his gum again, and Collie has to resist the very real urge to pin him down and pry the gum out of his mouth.

Hank’s phone buzzes. He flips it open, thumbs flying over the keypad.

“Alright, boys, the girls finished their pics. It’s go time.” He claps loudly, corralling them up from the stiff chairs. “Move it, move it, we’re losing light!”

They spill outside into the park Clementine chose: a wide field bathed in warm orange glow. The tall grass shimmers gold, the soft breeze stirring it like water. A couple of yards away, Clementine’s bridesmaids cluster around a figure Collie assumes is the photographer, chattering excitedly. Their dresses gleam even brighter in the sunset light, soft pastels and delicate fabrics that look way too thin for the crisp evening.

Clementine spots them and breaks off from the group, running to Hank with a squeal. She throws her arms around his neck and plants a kiss on him. She’s tiny, delicate, black hair gleaming like onyx, almond eyes bright with excitement.

“Baby, the photos look amazing, you have to see them,” she gushes, linking her arm through Hank’s and tugging him toward the cluster of bridesmaids. “I had a good feeling when I saw his work in the gallery room, but these came out even better!”

Hank nods along dutifully, and Collie rolls his eyes. Not in annoyance, more in a here he goes again way. Hank worships this girl, and honestly, it suits him.

“Hey!” Clementine calls, waving as the guys approach. “Hank, guys, this is the photographer. Garret, right?”

“Gary, actually,” a voice says.

Collie’s entire body goes still. His blood turns to ice water.

He knows that voice.

It takes him straight back to a cafeteria. To a scream. To a splatter. To a boy he never saw again.

Clementine’s sister steps aside, and there he is.

Gary Barkovitch.

Older. Taller. Still lean, but filled out in a way that makes him look more like a man and less like the scrawny, loud mouthed kid Collie remembered. His blond hair is longer now, brushing his shoulders in soft waves. He’s wearing a tan button-up, cuffs unbuttoned, nothing like the stained band tees he used to wear. His cheekbones are sharper, his brow furrowed in concentration as he explains something to Amelia, gesturing at something on the screen of his camera.
He hasn’t looked up yet.

Collie feels winded. Seventeen again. Back in the street. Back in the cold. Back staring at a crumpled body and hearing Art's voice call someone a murderer.
The silence around him is heavy, thick enough to choke on. The others feel it too. He can tell by the way they stand rigid, staring.

Finally, Gary lifts his head.

His gaze meets Collie’s.

Recognition doesn’t come instantly. Gary blinks, studies him, confused.

And then it hits.

Hard.

The color drains from Gary’s face in a single breath. His lips part. His posture tightens. His fingers go still on the camera.

Stebbins clears his throat, loud in the thick, unmoving air. He can clearly tell something is wrong. Anyone could, but he has absolutely no idea what.

“So… are we gonna get these photos done or what?” he asks slowly, looking from one face to another like he’s checking for a punchline.

Clementine flicks her gaze between Gary, Hank, and the others, confusion knitting her eyebrows. She’d been buzzing with excitement minutes ago; now she looks like she’s accidentally walked into the tail end of a fight she didn’t know was happening.

Gary breaks first.

“Aw man, fuck this,” he mutters, barely audible. The words come out strained. He moves suddenly, grabbing his camera bag off the ground with far more force than needed and slinging it over his shoulder.

“Wait, wait, the photos aren’t done yet!” Clementine cries, her voice cracking with bewilderment. “Hank, what’s going on?!”

Hank snaps out of whatever spell he’d been under and reaches for her hand.

“Clem, baby, this is a bad idea. Just let him leave.” He tries to sound solid, definitive. Instead, his voice shakes at the edges. It doesn’t convince anyone, least of all himself.

Collie doesn’t move. He just watches Barkovitch, trying to untangle the storm of feelings twisting in his gut. He’d always pictured this moment, what he’d do if he ever saw Barkovitch again. He’d imagined walking right up to him, socking him in the jaw, making him feel at least a fraction of what he’d made everyone else feel. For years, that fantasy carried its own bitter weight.

But then a year passed. Then two. Eventually, Collie figured he’d never see the bastard again. Barkovitch seemed like the type to vanish into the night or wind up facedown in a ditch off some dirt road; gone before any of them got closure.

Yet here he was. And Collie felt… nothing he’d prepared for.

“No, we still have pictures left to take!” Clementine protests, chasing after Gary’s retreating back. The blond barrels forward with his shoulders hunched, refusing to meet anyone’s eyes. He brushes hard past Collie, so hard Collie takes half a step back, but Barkovitch doesn’t look up, doesn’t acknowledge him, doesn’t even flinch. He storms toward the park lot like he’s desperate for escape.

“What the fuck, did I get dressed up for nothing?” Stebbins snaps, irritation roughening his voice.

“Remember that… thing that happened in high school that we told you about?” Art ventures. He speaks like he’s afraid of summoning something by name.

Stebbins squints at him, and even though he wasn’t there, the dawning recognition is obvious in his expression. “Oh.” His mouth drops into a small, round shape of dread. He turns just in time to watch Barkovitch make a beeline for an old red pickup truck, every step radiating anger.

Clementine’s frustration boils over. “Can someone please tell me what is going on?” Her sister, Amelia, jumps in too, hands thrown up, voice rising in tandem. Now she’s demanding to know why Hank “scared off” the photographer.

“I already paid him for the photos!” Clementine shouts, as if the wasted money is somehow the most concrete part of this surreal mess.

“Fuck, Clem, trust me,” Hank pleads. “You don’t want that guy around. We went to high school with him—”

“High school?! He said he’s from Kentucky!” Clementine’s voice spikes with incredulity. Anger sharpens the edges of her words.

“It’s-just trust me, okay? It’s a long story.”

Collie’s ears start to ring. The arguing, Hank’s frantic explanations, Clementine’s disbelief, Amelia’s accusatory questions, begins to blur into a single chaotic hum. Pete is staring at the ground, shaking his head like he’s watching a car crash he can’t stop. Stebbins looks utterly lost and more than a little pissed that their whole day off has unraveled into nothing.

Collie feels that sick, twisting coil in his stomach tighten as Barkovitch’s truck coughs to life. The engine backfires sharply, and the red pickup peels out of the lot, gravel spraying in all directions. It tears down the gravel road faster than necessary, dust ballooning behind it. 

For years, Collie imagined this moment. What he’d do, what he’d say, the justice he’d finally deliver. He’d had a dozen versions of the confrontation in his head. In every single one, he wasn’t frozen. He didn’t stand there doing nothing.

But reality isn’t a fantasy. And faced with Barkovitch in the flesh, alive and real, and still radiating that same awful weight, Collie didn’t swing, didn’t yell, didn’t even speak.
He just watched him go.

The red truck shrinks down the road, dissolving into the horizon until all that’s left is the drifting dust.

Chapter 3

Summary:

Thank you everyone for the kind comments, they feed my soul. I'm working as hard and fast as I can on this between work and school, so your patience is much appreciated! Thank you so much for reading, everyone has been so sweet!!

I know Gary's grandma isn't usually a character, but I felt like showing her gives Gary's background something a bit deeper. Hope everyone enjoys their weekend!!

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Gary’s eyes burn, both from the wind blasting through the open window and from the sting of humiliation clawing up his throat. He tears through the neighborhood, tires skidding over loose gravel as he takes a turn too fast. His pulse is pounding in his temples, hot and furious. His breath comes uneven, ragged. He smacks himself hard across the cheek. The sharp crack echoes in the cab. It cuts through the racing thoughts for half a second, but the relief is fleeting.

Idiot. Fucking idiot.

He’d been excited, damn near thrilled, when that Clementine girl approached him. Sweet voice, warm eyes, a smile that could make even this godforsaken stretch of Maine look gentle. And most importantly, she didn’t know him. She looked at his work like it was actually worth something. She gushed, told him how she’d been searching for a photographer who could “let the light speak He’d felt his chest tug in that way he hated, but also craved so badly. Stupid fragile hope.

She’d told him she was getting married soon. Wanted golden hour photos of her bridal party. Something romantic, something special, something she could treasure forever. He’d swallowed the nerves and agreed. Hell, he’d even felt proud.

When she’d said “Hank,” he hadn’t even thought of Olson. He’d never called him by his first name, not once. He didn’t even see the trap he was walking into. And now here he was, skin crawling, humiliation boiling in his gut. Two lousy weeks back in Maine, and he’d already run right into the only people he never wanted to see again.

He’d sworn five years ago he’d never come back. Swore it with the bruises still blooming on his ribs, with his Pa’s last shove still imprinted in his mind. And he’d meant it then. He’d carved a life in Kentucky, tiny and worn out as it was, with Meemaw in the little trailer that smelled like cornbread and his Meemaw's baked apples. He’d tried to bury Maine and the ghosts that haunted it and him.

But then came that phone call last month. The hospital. Pa finally keeled over. Heart, liver, something, Gary didn’t ask. He hadn’t shed a single tear. Hard to cry for a man who taught you fear before he ever taught you anything else.

Coming back to clear out the house had made him sick in a way nothing else did. Meemaw came too, she'd said she didn’t trust the place not to swallow him whole if she didn’t tag along. She urged him to stay awhile, talked about how their Kentucky town was drying up, no jobs left, factories closing. In Maine he could take classes, learn photography all proper like, make something of it. Besides, she'd told him, she was 'gettin' too old' to maintain the yard and trailer on her own.

He’d nodded along, smiling weakly just to make her feel better. The moment she’d turned away, he’d stumbled to the bathroom and thrown up the bologna sandwich he'd had for lunch.

 

The truck rattles as he pulls into the cracked driveway. Pa’s old rust bucket shudders as he turns the keys, engine coughing before it dies with a pitiful sputter.

“FUCK!” The word rips out of him, raw and furious. He slams his fist into the dashboard. Pain stabs, but it barely scratches the surface of what he feels. He hits it again, and again, and again until his knuckles split and warm blood smears across the cracked plastic. He only stops when his fingers go numb.

He breathes hard. The silence that follows is suffocating.

Gary steps out of the truck, clutching his throbbing hand. The yard is a jungle of weeds and old beer cans. Gary hasn't had a chance to get it cleaned up yet. The house still looks like it’s sagging under the weight of every fight that ever happened inside it. He rinses his hand under the cold hose water, watching the diluted pink swirl over dead grass.

He climbs the creaking steps, wincing at each groan of wood like the house itself remembers him.

Inside, it’s different. The air smells warm: chicken and dumplings, thyme, bay leaves. The living room glows with lamplight, soft and golden. The old television hums quietly as Meemaw’s soaps play, filling the space with familiar, comforting chatter. Nothing like Pa’s house used to be: dark, silent, cold. Affection nonexistent, dinner usually being a slice or two of cold pizza that Gary would scrounge out of the fridge from behind Pa's cases of beer. He'd eat in silence in the kitchen, usually not even bothering to microwave his food.

“Gary?” Meemaw’s voice floats out from the kitchen, soft as cotton, tremulous with old age.

He glances down. His knuckles are still raw, red, and tender from his beatdown of the dashboard. He clenches his jaw, shoves both hands deep into his pockets.

“Hey, Meemaw.” He tries to make it sound casual, like he’s fine, like everything is normal.

She shuffles into view as he enters the kitchen, small and stooped with age. Her once-bright hair is now nearly snow white, wispy around her temples. Her blue eyes are clouded and milky, but her warmth hasn’t dimmed one bit. She shuffles to him in her pink slippers, and wraps her arms around him with surprising strength.

For a moment, everything loosens. His chest, his throat, the horrible buzzing panic in his mind. He thinks about telling her everything. The photoshoot, the panic, the past slamming into him like a freight train. She’d listen. She always did. She’d sit him down, warm hand over his, listen until he ran out of words.

But he can’t worry her. Not when she followed him all the way back here. Not when she’s all he’s got.

“How’d it go with that sweet girl?” she asks brightly once she pulls away. She smells like lavender lotion and laundry powder. A familiar scent that calms his spirit.

“Good.” The lie comes out thick, clumsy. He drops his bag and sinks into a chair at the kitchen table. Meemaw clicks her tongue.

“Sweetie, my eyes might not be what they used to be, but that don’t mean I can’t hear when you’re lyin’ to me.” She lifts the lid off the pot of soup, stirs it, and turns the heat off. Her movements are slow but sure, practiced. Gary hangs his head, fingers combing through his hair, pulling, like pain might anchor him to something real. His throat tightens.

When he’d looked up and seen them his whole body had gone cold. His mind had braced itself for an all out brawl right there in the grass, cameras, dresses, and sunset be damned. Art’s last words to him all those years ago still rattle around in his skull, sharp as glass. He still hears them in dreams, wakes up drenched in a cold sweat at least twice a week, choking on his own breath. He’s imagined this moment a hundred times over the last five years, but none of it had prepared him for the real thing.

The second his eyes met Collie’s, time collapsed.

Collie wasn’t the same kid he remembered. The seventeen-year-old with the soft cheeks and too big hoodie. He was taller now, broader through the shoulders. His jet black hair fell in thick sheets down to his chest, framing sharp cheekbones and a jawline that didn’t exist back then. He looked grounded. Solid. Like life had filled in all the soft edges and hardened them. His stare, though, was the same. Piercing, like Collie saw right through Gary, down into the ugliness inside of him.

They all looked that way. Familiar and foreign at the same time. Frozen in that strange middle ground where boys had turned into men, but the ghosts of who they were still sat behind their eyes.

"Her fiancé." The words come out sticky, thick. He's trying to fight back against everything roaring in his head. The anxiety, nausea, the scramble of too many thoughts with too much history. He breathes in through his nose, out through his mouth like Meemaw had taught him. It isn't helping. His hands still tremble in his lap. His stomach still twists like someone has it by the fist.

“He’s uh… I went to school with him. Back when Pa and I were livin’ here.” His voice trails off and he picks at his cuticle until a hangnail tore and blood beads up on his nail. Meemaw doesn't comment yet. She shuffles around the kitchen with the soft sounds of cabinets and clinking dinnerware, pulling bowls down like she hadn’t heard him but Gary knows she had. She always hears everything.

“Did you get into a fight?” she finally asks. She sets a bowl and spoon in front of him before lowering herself into the chair beside him. Gary shakes his head. He picks up the spoon with his uninjured hand and stirs the soup listlessly without bringing any of it to his mouth.

“Naw. I took off. he admits. Meemaw sips her soup, nodding in that knowing way of hers.

“Well, I’m glad you ain’t get yourself into any trouble.” Gary’s jaw clenches.

“We should just hurry up, get the house cleaned out, and get the hell back to Kentucky.” His stomach churns. He hasn't eaten since breakfast, but the idea of food right now makes bile crawl up his throat.

Meemaw sets her spoon down harder than usual, clinking against her bowl, and folds her hands together. She fixes him with that sharp stare that makes him feel eight years old again, caught doing something he shouldn’t. Even with cataracts clouding her eyes, turning them milky at the edges, her stare still cuts clean through him.

“Gary,” she says, voice soft but razor edged, “you ever consider that after five years, maybe those boys realized you didn’t mean for what happened?” Gary’s mind goes blank. He hasn't considered it. Not once. And from the looks he’d seen today? He didn’t think it was true. Collie’s face twisted into something he couldn't quite place. Hank’s panic. Pete’s avoidance. It all told the same story. He shrugs and pokes at a dumpling until it falls apart in the broth.

“Sweetie,” Meemaw continues, her voice gentling again, “you got into school. You can have somethin’ here you can’t back home. I know it’s hard for you. Lord knows I know.”
The tips of Gary’s ears burn. His face prickles with embarrassed warmth. Their trailer walls back in Kentucky were paper thin. He knows she’d heard him crying into his pillow those first few months after he moved back. He hates that, hates the vulnerability, hates that she knows him.

“I know…” he whispers, but the words were hollow. Meemaw reached over, lays her warm, papery hand over his, and gives it a soft pat. He wants to believe her. He really does. But that gnawing rot in his gut refuses to go quiet.

“I’m not really hungry,” he mutters, pulling his hand free and nudging the bowl away. Meemaw’s lips twitch into a faint, sad smile. After a moment, she nodes.

“I’ll put it in the fridge for later,” she says gently.

 

The hot water hadn’t soothed him in the shower. If anything, it stripped him rawer. Now he stands in his old bedroom, towel draped over a chair, hair dripping down his neck. His thin pajama pants hang low on his sharp hips, and he’d dug out one of his ancient band tees, the kind with a cracked logo and a frayed neckline. It clings to him like a memory he doesn't want to relive.

He sits cross legged on the bed, trying to slow his breathing. Trying to stop thinking. Trying to stop feeling. His fingertips trace absent-mindedly over the faint white lines on his left arm, barely visible scars, pale as old thread. The skin there always tingles, itches when he's overwhelmed, like it remembers the sharp burn of a razor and offers the same escape. He ignores it.

He ignores everything. But deep under the dread, the guilt, the fear, something else buries itself in his stomach. Something he hates. Something he didn’t have a name for and doesn't want one for. Something that has coiled itself tight inside of him the second he’d seen Collie in that suit. That stupidly tight suit that hugs every muscle that boy had grown into over the years. He looked good.

Too good.

Good in a way that makes Gary’s stomach lurch, and his ears go hot.

Collie, broody, silent, Collie, looks nothing like the traumatized kid Gary remembers. And that did something ugly to Gary’s insides. He groans and throws himself backward onto the thin mattress. The springs squeal under even his slight weight. He smacks himself, once, twice, three times, hard enough to make his eyes water. He hears his father’s voice with every hit.

Faggot.

Sissy.

Homo.

His breathing stutters. He curls into a tight ball, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes until stars burst across his vision.

“Parker looked like an idiot in that suit,” he growls to himself. He repeats it, harsher, faster. “Looked stupid. Tight and stupid.” But the lie tastes sour. He tries to swallow it down anyway. He wishes he’d stopped at the liquor store on the way home. Wishes he had a bottle. Something cheap, strong, anything. Something that could yank him into numbed-out silence and drown the screaming ricocheting inside his skull.

Right now, he wants oblivion.

Chapter 4

Notes:

I hope everyone had a good weekendddd. I buckled down and got more chapters done so will continue posting as I'm able to get editing done. Thank you again to everyone who has been reading, supportive and leaving comments, love you all lots!

The fall semester settles in, and just like in high school, the world keeps spinning whether they're ready or not. But something hangs thick between Olson, Baker, Parker, McVries, and Garraty, heavy, sour, unspoken. It had been there ever since the evening of the photoshoot. Not one of them has tried to address it. Parker, for one, would be thrilled to shove all those feelings into the deepest, darkest corner of himself and lock the door forever.

Barkovitch is probably long gone by now anyway, Parker reasons. No way he’d stick around town after that.

They are all hanging out on the broad concrete steps outside the art building, picking at lunch. It's uncharacteristically quiet. Garraty is picking apart the cookie his mom tucks into his lunch every day, breaking off crumbs like he wants to keep his hands busy. Stebbins chews mechanically through his daily rotation of protein, starch, and vegetables. Collie has a half eaten steak burrito from the food truck he usually swears by, but it tastes like paste today.

“This is real miserable, boys.” Pete finally cracks the silence. Collie swallows a bland bite, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Clem’s fucking pissed at me,” Hank grumbles. He balls up the wrapper from his chicken sandwich and shoves it into his backpack to discard of later. Collie lifts a brow.

“The photos?”

“No, the state of the economy,” Hank snaps, voice dripping sarcasm. “Of course the goddamn photos, fuckstick.” Collie glares at him.

“Just because your girl’s pissed doesn’t mean you get to be a bitch to us.” Hank at least has the decently to look chagrined and nod apologetically, pulling his cap off his head and twisting it in his hands.

“I saw him this morning.” Garraty speaks up quietly, but every head snapped toward him. His cheeks flush pink and he swallows hard. “Just in the parking lot. He looked rough.”

“Good.” Art stabs at a strip of beef like it had personally wronged him. Collie feels that familiar sick gnawing in his stomach, the feeling he hasn't shaken since seeing Barkovitch again.

“Did he say anything?” Collie asks before thinking it through. Garraty shakes his head. Stebbins gives Collie a long look that he can't quite read, but ultimately Stebbins drops his eyes back down to his lunch. 

“Nah. I sat in the car till he left. Didn’t want a huge fight.” He shrugs. Pete claps a supportive hand on his shoulder. Collie can't help remembering how bad Gary could get. One time, back in high school before everything went to hell, Gary had gotten into a fight and turned feral, all teeth and fists. Collie'd had to grab him around the waist and haul him off the poor bastard.

“Baby.” Clementine’s voice floats down from the art building steps. She looks elegant as always, even when she's irritated. She plops down beside Hank, kissing his cheek. Her nod to the others is stiff.

“I’ve been looking at new photographers,” she announces, already pulling a folder from her bag. “Found a few that are pretty decent.” She gets out her salad, arranged perfectly, of course, while Hank flips through the sample prints.

“These all look great, Clem. Just get whoever you want,” he urges.

“I did get whoever I wanted.” Her tone is prim and sharp as she stabs at a cherry tomato. “Now I have to get my second choice.” She shoots the boys a pointed look. None of them meet her gaze.

“Hank told you what happened, right?” Collie asks tentatively. She tosses her sleek hair back and chews, swallowed.

"Yes. He told me what happened five years ago. Have any of you even spoken a word to him since then?” Collie shakes his head. What was there to say? They barely speak about it to each other anymore.

“Oh, shit,” Stebbins mutters, stretching one long leg and nudging Collie’s knee. Collie follows his gaze and saw a familiar head of pale blond hair at the bottom of the stairs.

Gary approaches slowly, hesitantly, clutching an envelope. He's paler and thinner than Collie remembers, eyes skittish, moving like he was expecting a trap. A handkerchief holds his hair back, his jeans are frayed, and he's dressed in a jean jacket.

That denim jacket.

“Get the fuck up!” Gary’s desperate cry plays through Collie's mind. His stomach lurches. Was it the same jacket?

"Gary, hey.” Clementine is the only one who speaks when he stops in front of them. He nods jerkily at her. Art and Pete straighten up, but stay silent. The quiet stretches. After a moment Gary extends the envelope to Clementine

“I got the photos developed. 'Nd your check’s in there. I didn’t cash it or nothin’.” His voice scrapes out rough. Collie notices the scabs on his knuckles, fresh, red, raw. Clementine takes the envelope slowly, glancing briefly at Hank, who is staring at his shoes like they contain the secrets of the universe.

The instant the envelope leaves his hands, Gary stuffs both fists into his pockets, pivots on his heel, and took off fast like the devil himself is snapping at his heels. Clementine tears open the envelope. Her face pinches, not in anger this time, but in something more complicated.

“These look amazing,” she mumbles, sounding miserable. She passes them to Pete. Hank balls his fist and taps it against his thigh.

“We’ll find someone, Clem. Don’t worry,” he says, though his voice is strained. Pete hands the photos to Collie. Collie thumbs through them. Infuriatingly, they are insanely good. The golden hour light haloed the bridal party. The sun hangs low, burning and molten, spilling warm gold across everything it touches. Light catches in the girls' hair, turning every strand into something soft and shimmering. Their skin looks smoother, warmer. Shadows stretch gentle and long behind their bodies, smoothed at the edges instead of harsh. And Amelia, Christ. In her translucent pink shawl, gazing toward the lens through lowered lashes. She looked angelic.

Gary took these?

The argument behind him swells: Clem and Hank, then Art, then Garraty, voices tangling like wires.

“I want him to do the photos!” Clementine cries out, standing abruptly. “I don’t want JC Penney catalog pictures to show our grandkids!”

“Kids?” Hank squeaks. Collie winces. It was like watching a man dig his own grave live. The bickering continues until Collie can't take the sound of it. He shoves the photos back into the envelope.

“I’ll go talk to him,” he mutters. No one seems to have heard him.

“I’ll talk to him!” he barks louder this time. He jams the envelope into his jacket pocket and tosses the rest of his burrito aside.

“Gotta do everything myself,” he grumbles, and jogs down the steps after Barkovitch.

Barkovitch’s blond hair makes him easy to spot. Collie moves quickly, his gait long and steady. Up ahead, Gary glances over his shoulder, eyes narrowing the moment he spots him. He immediately picks up his pace.

“Barkovitch!” Collie calls out. He has the longer stride, but even so he has to break into a jog to close the gap. Gary doesn't stop, doesn't even slow down, but Collie finally catches up enough to fall into step beside him.

“Fuck off,” Gary snaps at him, voice drenched in venom. He stares straight ahead, jaw knotted tight. Collie swallows, the lump in his throat rough. He wants to be anywhere but next to Gary Barkovitch. He wants to bury the nauseating, indescribable feelings twisting in his stomach, the same ones that had blindsided him at the photoshoot, deep enough that they’d never claw their way back up. But Clementine was heartbroken over this. Someone has to fix it.

“You need to take the rest of the photos,” Collie says plainly. Gary cuts him a dark, sideways look. 

"I don’t need to do jack fuckin’ shit.” His eyes flash viciously, lips curling into a scowl that felt like a threat. Collie bites the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste copper.

“Look, this isn’t about you, or any of us, or the shit you pulled back in high school. It’s for Clem-”

The punch comes out of nowhere. Collie didn’t even see Gary move. Pain explodes across his nose, and he staggers back a step, hands flying to his face. Warm, slick blood coats his fingers.

“Fuck!” he hisses, blinking through the stinging tears that sprang to his eyes.

“Don’t fuckin’ say shit to me!” Gary is shouting now, voice cracking. “Stay the hell away from me, Parker!” Students are starting to stare. Collie moves on instinct. He lunges forward, grabs Gary by the collar of his jacket, and hauls him behind the stone pillar beside the walkway. Gary stumbles, letting out a pained grunt as Collie slams him against the concrete column

“Cut it out-” Gary’s protest is choked off as Collie’s forearm presses up under his chin, not quite choking Gary, but close enough to make a point. Gary grabs at the hand Collie has fisted in his jacket, jagged nails digging crescents into Collie’s skin. Up close, the scent of Gary hits Collie: clove cigarettes, vanilla, caramel candy. It's disorienting, wrong. But Gary doesn't swing again. His chest heaves against Collie’s arm, fury simmering hot and bright behind his pale eyes.

Collie must look psychotic: blood dripping from his nose, breath coming hard, hand trembling with the effort not to deck the bastard.

“You’re going to go back to Clem,” Collie says through clenched teeth. “You’re going to tell her you’ll finish the photos. You’ll do it, and then you will fuck off and stay the hell away from us.” Gary opens his mouth, no doubt to spit some kind of venom, and Collie slaps his free hand over Gary's mouth without thinking.

“Shut the fuck up. I’m serious. I can’t stand you, Barkovitch. I don’t even want to look at you. But Clementine is good people, and for whatever godforsaken reason, she wants you to take these stupid fucking pictures.” Gary’s fighting posture falters. Collie feels the tension seep out of his shoulders by degrees. Not gone but easing.

“Keep your mouth shut,” Collie growls. “And nod if you get it.” Gary glares at him for a long, dangerous moment. Then, begrudgingly, he gives a sharp nod. Collie exhales slowly, loosening his grip. Thank God. He had actually gotten through to the lunatic. He starts to pull his hand away, but before he can Gary lunges.

Teeth clamp down on Collie’s hand, hard enough to make stars burst behind his eyes.

“Jesus Christ!” Collie jerks back instinctively. The little psycho had actually bit him.

Without thinking, Collie’s hand snaps across Gary’s face in a brutal slap. The crack echoes against the building. Gary stumbles, tripping over his own feet and crashing back onto the concrete.

“Fucking freakshow!” Collie shouts, clutching his throbbing hand. The teeth marks are already rising in angry pink ridges. At least the bastard hasn't broken the skin. Gary pushes himself up slowly, cheek already turning red from the blow.

“Fuck this,” Collie spits. “Do whatever the hell you want, Psychovitch.” He turns on his heel and marches away before Gary could stand. Because if Gary says one more thing Collie isn't sure he could keep himself from throwing him straight through a goddamn window.

Collie returns to the art building steps five minutes later. Clementine is gone, off to her next class. Only the guys remain. Their reactions say everything, sharp intakes of breath, winces, curses. His nose is still bleeding. Blood streaks his upper lip and chin. And the teeth marks, well, those were obvious too.

“Jesus, man,” Pete mutters. Garraty pulls a paper towel from his lunchbox and wets it with a splash from his water bottle, handing it over with gentle sympathy. Art tells him to tilt his head back and ice it later. Hank, face is stiff, but he claps Collie genially on the shoulder.

“Thanks for trying, man,” he says quietly.

 

Later, after his last class, Collie is heading toward his truck when someone calls his name. He turns just as Clementine jogs up, breathless and beaming. Before he can react, she wraps him up in a tight hug. She can barely get her skinny arms around him.

“I don’t know what you said, but Gary told me he’ll finish the photos!” she exclaims. Her joy is so genuine it actually makes Collie’s chest ache. He swallows the truth of how the conversation actually went.

“Yeah. No problem,” he mutters, neck burning. They say their goodbyes; she thanks him profusely again. She practically skips away. Collie looks down at his hand. The teeth marks are fading but still clearly visible. He stares at them for a long beat, thinking about Gary's wild eyes, ragged nails, the sudden bite.

“Crazy bastard,” Collie mutters.

Chapter 5

Notes:

Had a surprise day off work thanks to a burst water pipe so I was able to get editing done!! Rating has been officially changed to explicit. Enjoy, there's more to comeeeeee!!

Gary barrels into the house like a tornado, shoulder first through the door, shoes kicked off midstride, bag dropped with a heavy thud onto the armchair. He tosses a quick, shaky “hey, Meemaw, long day, need a shower,” toward the kitchen before she can even ask a question or greet him with a hello. He doesn’t wait for her reply. He takes the stairs two at a time, his heart thudding in his throat.

The bathroom door slams behind him louder than he intended. He twists the lock, then he just stops. His legs give out, and he sinks back against the wooden door, palms pressed flat behind him, chest heaving like he’s run a marathon.

He’s been keeping himself barely held together ever since lunch, ever since the incident with Parker, and now that he’s alone, the seams pull apart fast.

A sound punches out of him from deep in his chest, half groan, half sob, and he drags both hands over his face up into his messy blond hair, fingers digging into his scalp and pulling at the roots. His skin still stings. His cheek throbs in a deep, pulsing ache. When he finally forces himself to the sink, the face staring back from the mirror looks worse than he expected, His eyes are red rimmed and puffy, cheeks blotchy, a bruise already blooming under the skin where Parker slapped him.

He touches the spot with two fingers and winces at the sharp stinging sensation.

“Great,” he mutters. “Real fuckin’ great." He yanks his shirt over his head and throws it into the corner. His hands are shaking as he turns on the shower. The pipes rattle, coughing before a steady rush of water spits out from the showerhead. Steam fills up the small room, but it does nothing to calm the buzzing under his skin.

He can’t believe he bit Parker, like some rabid dog.

He doesn’t even know what possessed him. One second, he was trapped against that pillar, Collie’s hand fisted in his jacket, arm pressed against his throat, the next he was sinking his teeth into the only part of Parker he could reach.

He hadn’t meant to punch him, either. But the second Parker brought up that day, the moment those words brushed the edges of the worst moment in Gary’s life, something in him snapped, violent and blinding.

And then Parker’s hands were on him. Slammed against the pillar, Parker’s breath hot with fury. Blood dripping down over his lips, jaw clenched so tight Gary could hear it grind. That look in Parker’s eyes, dark, furious, sharp enough to cut, like he wasn’t sure whether to shout at Gary or kill him.

Gary’s dick twitches in his jeans.

That jolts him hard back into himself. He freezes, horrified.

“What the fu- oh, Jesus Christ.” His voice cracks, disgust and panic mixing. “What the fuck is wrong with me?” He claps a hand over his mouth and squeezes his eyes shut, like he can physically shove the thought away. He slides back down the door for a second time until he’s sitting on the cold tile, knees pulled up to his chest, back pressed against the thin wood. The steam is getting thicker, fogging the mirror. 

“Jesus, Barkovitch,” he mutters into his palm, voice shaking. “You really are one sick fuck.” He lets his head fall back against the door with a dull thud, breath coming in ragged, uneven pulls. The shower hisses beside him, water pounding against the tub floor.

He closes his eyes and forces a breath in through his nose, out through his mouth. Slow, steady. He tries to shove the thoughts away, to wall them off in some far corner of his mind, but they seep back through the cracks. The scent of Parker’s sandalwood aftershave. The press of his forearm against Gary’s throat, close enough to choke, but controlled. Held back at the last possible second.

Fuck it, Gary thinks. He drops his hands down to undo his belt and grips his dick in his hand. He brings his other hand to his mouth and bites down on the skin between his thumb and forefinger. Being quiet was never his strong suit. 

His skin is hot, prickling, his nerves sparking in a dozen directions he doesn’t want them to go. The memory won’t leave him alone. His body won’t let it.

He lets out a muffled whine as he strokes himself. His brain keeps replaying it, the slap, sharp and ringing; the heat blooming across his cheek. Parker’s eyes gone dark and furious, inches from his own. Gary presses his fingers to the tender bruising and can barely contain the choked out groan that bursts out of him at the sting. His breathing picks up as he strokes himself faster. He replays Parker's words in his head as he strokes himself.

“I don’t even want to look at you.” He thinks of Parker’s voice, low and venomous

It floods him with a rush he hates, one that makes his stomach twist tight with something far too complicated. His pulse stumbles. He's leaking precome and he moves his hand faster over his dick, chest heaving and low moans leaking past his lips, muffled by the pounding rush of the shower and his hand.

The memory of that moment swallows him whole: the weight of Parker pinning him against the column, the sudden awareness of how little effort it would’ve taken Parker to squeeze just a bit harder, just enough to blur Gary’s vision, to tip him right over the edge into that hazy place where the world narrows to sound and heat.

An awful, traitorous shiver runs through him. He sinks his teeth harder into his skin, he presses his fingers harder into his cheek and with the stinging pain, remembering the absolutely dangerous look in Parker's eyes as he held Gary down, he comes with just a few more strokes, panting into his skin, spilling onto his stomach with a low, muffled moan.

The shame comes crashing down hard in seconds.

“What the fuck is wrong with me?” Gary breathes, horrified, nauseated by the way his own thoughts are spiraling out of control. He jerks his hand away from his bruised cheek as if burned. “Sick. You’re actually sick, Barkovitch.”

He pushes himself upright, breath shaky, and strips out of his jeans with clumsy, furious movements. He steps into the shower and cranks the water as hot as it will go. The heat blasts him, reddening his pale skin within seconds, but it still doesn’t feel like enough. He scrubs hard, his shoulders, arms, chest, until his skin stings from the friction, until the scent of soap overwhelms everything else. He keeps going long past the point where it starts to hurt.

He wants the memories scalded away, the thoughts erased.

He wants to be clean.

 

When he finally turns off the water, he feels wrung out, empty in a way that leaves his limbs weak. He doesn’t even look toward the stairs as he slips straight into his room. The bag he left by the door left behind and forgotten for the time being.

Gary’s hands shake as he reaches to the top shelf of the closet. His fingers brush cold glass. He pulls down the bottle of Kentucky Gentleman he’d hidden away. Cheap, harsh stuff he hates, but reliable in the one thing he needs it to do.

“This never happened,” he mutters to himself, even as another voice whispers the opposite. Too late. Way too late.

He cracks the seal and takes several gulps, each one burning painfully down his throat. His stomach rolls in protest, and he has to brace a hand on his knee to fight down the urge to retch.

He crawls into bed, dragging the comforter over himself, curling protectively around the bottle like he had so many years back in this same room, this same bed. The shame feels the same. The guilt feels the same. The hollow ache in his chest hasn’t changed at all.

He forces down another mouthful. One, then two, until the edges of everything begin to soften, until he can feel himself loosening, floating, slipping away from the day.

At least, he thinks bitterly as his eyes drift shut, there won’t be a beating to wake up to this time.

Chapter 6

Notes:

Whoop whoop, 6 chapters, I can't believe it! It's the longest one so far, I think.

Hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving. I went into anaphylaxis and got stabbed with an epi so I had a little extra downtime for this one.

“This is fucking stupid.” Collie mutters, echoing the same words he said the first time they tried this. A week. It’s been a whole week since everything went down, and they’ve barely seen Gary except in passing. Collie’s caught sight of him on campus twice. Gary with his shoulders up around his ears, darting his eyes away like Collie was a live wire about to shock him. And both times, Gary turned on his heel and headed in the complete opposite direction, practically sprinting away.

In statistics class it’s worse. Gary sits in the very back, always. First one in, last one out. He keeps his head down and never, not once, looks Collie’s way. He’s wound tighter than he was before their confrontation, jittery in a way that sets Collie’s teeth on edge.

Collie glances down at his hand, rubbing a thumb over the faint crescent where Gary’s teeth had broken skin. The bruise on his cheek is long gone, but the memory is burnt into him with uncomfortable clarity. Without thinking, he tugs at the knot of his tie. Hank slaps his hand away.

“Knock it off. You’re making me nervous,” Hank grumbles.

Collie gets an odd spike of déjà vu. Hank smacking his hand away like he’s a kid again, like he’s doing picture day in middle school and can’t keep still.

“Can we all just get through this?” Garraty asks, voice bordering on pleading. “Everyone just play nice. Please. My mom’s working tonight, so when we’re done, we can go back to my place.”

Art looks like he wants to be anywhere but here, but even he gives a stiff nod.

The old truck pulls into the gravel lot, engine rattling like it’s held together with duct tape. Collie spots that familiar blond head as Gary climbs out. He’s got his bag slung over one shoulder, his camera hanging around his neck, and his whole posture telegraphing misery. His shoulders are hunched, chin tucked down, back tense as a drawn bowstring. He doesn’t want to be here. That much is obvious.

“Barkovitch,” Collie says, giving the greeting the bare minimum of effort.

Gary doesn’t greet him back. Doesn’t look at him. Just cuts a sharp gesture toward the field.

“Let’s get a move on. We’ve only got about an hour of light left.”

Fine by Collie. The sooner this is over, the better. Judging from the others’ expressions, no one disagrees.

It’s strange, being photographed by the guy who bit him a week ago. Strange in a way Collie doesn’t want to think too hard about. But Gary, for once in his life, isn’t hostile. Isn’t twitchy. Isn’t even really present in the way he usually is. Loud, cutting, ready to spark off at anything. Behind the camera, Gary is different. Focused. Quiet. Comfortable. His voice smooths out, dropping its usual jagged edge.

“Relax your shoulders.” Click.

“A little to the left.” Click.

“Chin up. No—not that fuckin' much.” Click.

He moves fast, efficient, barely giving them time to think before he’s corralling them into the next pose. And he’s good. Really good. Collie knows it. More importantly, Gary knows it. For the first time, Collie sees what Gary looks like in his element. Someone competent, calm, even normal.

Hank explains that Clementine wants solo pictures too, something about a scrapbook she’s making with the bridesmaids’ shots. One by one, they go. Collie’s last. He hates it immediately.

He’s never been photogenic. Not in school pictures, not in family photos, not ever. He feels stiff and hulking and entirely the wrong shape for the camera. And Gary’s patience, unsurprisingly, wears thin fast.

“Jesus Christ, Collie, no. Not like that.”

“No, your shoulder, your other shoulder.”

“Stop locking your knees like you’re about to pass out.”

After almost ten minutes, Gary lets out a sharp exhale and lets the camera fall against his chest on its strap. He scrubs a thumb along the bridge of his nose. It's the same irritated gesture Collie remembers from high school. Then he stalks toward him.

For a split second, Collie’s muscles tense, An instinctive flash of Is he gonna hit me again? But Gary doesn’t raise a fist. He grabs Collie by the upper arms instead, fingers firm, and physically moves him.

“Have to do everythin’ myself,” Gary huffs, not making eye contact. He angles Collie’s shoulder toward the camera, pushes down on his broad shoulders with both hands.

“Relax,” he snaps. “You’re stiff as a damn board.” His hand slides to the small of Collie’s back, nudging him upright to fix his posture. Then he grabs Collie’s hands and moves them into place, clasped neatly in front of him. Lastly, hesitantly, Gary lifts Collie’s chin with his fingertips, turning his head. Their eyes meet for a fraction of a second. Gary’s face goes red.

Embarrassment? Anger? God knows. But he drops his gaze instantly, jaw tightening. He reaches up and adjusts a stray lock of Collie’s long black hair so it frames his face better. It’s shockingly gentle. Then he retreats quickly, lifting the camera again like it’s a shield.

Click. Click. Click. Gary exhales loudly.

“There we go. Done.”

Collie releases a long, slow breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. His skin tingles, electric and unsettled, and he can’t explain why.

They’re crammed into the tiny park station, the kind built in the sixties. Cement floors, buzzing fluorescent lights, and a faint smell of industrial cleaner and rain-soaked leaves. Gary sits on the bench by the window, hunched over his camera, carefully cleaning his lenses with an almost surgical precision. It’s the calmest he’s looked in days.

The guys move around him awkwardly, shrugging out of their stiff suit jackets and folding them back into dry-cleaning bags. Fabric rustles, zippers scrape, boots scuff the concrete. The tension in the room is thick enough to choke on, heavy and electric and waiting for someone, anyone, to break it. Of course, it ends up being Ray.

Good old Ray: too kind, too earnest, too determined to smooth out rough edges that don’t want smoothing.

“So uh. Barkovitch.” he starts, voice bright but wavering. Gary freezes mid-wipe and looks up through his lashes, eyes narrowing into thin, icy slits. Collie pauses halfway through zipping up his garment bag, gaze snapping instantly to Gary like he’s waiting for a fuse to spark.

“What makes you move back to Maine?” Ray asks, trying for casual, landing somewhere near painfully hopeful. The silence that follows is heavy. Long. Suffocating. Gary’s jaw works once. Twice.

“My pa died,” he says flatly. Ray’s cheerful expression falters like someone punched the air out of him. Collie can feel Ray regretting the question. And Collie remembers—vividly—how Ray’s own dad died when they were nineteen. The funeral. Ray standing beside the casket like a shadow of himself, Pete holding him upright while strangers shook his hand. Collie has never forgotten the hollow look in Ray’s eyes. Ray swallows hard.

“I’m real sorry to hear that,” he murmurs. Before the sympathy can settle, Gary barks out a laugh, sharp, ugly, joyless. It startles all of them.

“Please,” he scoffs. “Last thing that no-good, washed-up, useless, good-for-nothin’ drunk sack of shit ever gave me was a concussion and a bruised rib. Best day of my life when he croaked, if you ask me.” His smirk is razor-thin. His tone sounds amused, but Collie can hear the venom underneath it, hear it like a bruise under the skin. Ray looks like he wants to crawl under the bench and die, but because he’s Ray, gentle, optimistic Ray, he tries again, reaching for something kind to offer.

“Must’ve been hard on you and your mom,” Ray says softly. “Was real hard on her when my dad passed away.” Gary lets out a humorless chuckle and goes back to wiping the lens, methodical, almost too calm. He snaps the cap back on and tucks it away. Then he looks at Ray, looks at him with a stare that makes Collie’s stomach drop. It’s predatory. Hungry. Like Gary’s feeding on every ounce of Ray’s discomfort.

“Highly doubt that,” Gary says. Ray’s brows knit, confused. Gary tilts his head slightly, as if savoring the moment.

“Last thing my mama ever said to him was ‘look what you’ve fuckin’ done to me.’” The room goes still. No one breathes.

“’Bout five seconds later,” Gary continues, voice disturbingly even, “she blew her fuckin’ brains all over the living room wall.”

Silence. Absolute. Crushing. Cold.
Ray goes sheet-white. Art’s mouth falls open. Hank looks away, jaw tight. Collie feels something sharp twist inside his chest, pity, shock, and something darker all tangled together.  And Gary just sits there, hands calm, expression emotionless except for the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth like he’s daring any of them to say the wrong thing.

“I–I…” Ray stammers, voice small, eyes darting wildly between the others like he’s begging someone to jump in and save him. But no one speaks. No one even moves. They all just stand there, stiff as boards, letting him twist.

“I–I—” Gary cuts in cruelly, pitching his voice high and trembling in an exaggerated mockery. He jerks the zipper on his camera bag so violently it snarls. “Still wanna keep bein’ nosy, Garraty? Christ, you never could stop yourself from shoving your fat fuckin’ nose in everyone else’s business.” His words land like punches. Sharp. Deliberate. Meant to humiliate. Pete’s chair scrapes back with a loud, scraping shriek. He’s on his feet in an instant.

“That’s enough outta you, Barkovitch,” he snaps, stepping forward like he’s physically putting himself between Gary and Ray. His voice is low but hard enough to cut steel. Gary’s head snaps toward him. His whole posture shifts, shoulders square, chin jutted, eyes bright and wild. Hackles raised like an animal seconds away from biting.

“Ray’s trying to be kind to you,” Pete continues, every word cold and precise, “and honestly that’s more than you deserve. You’re an asshole, Barkovitch. You are now, you were then. You got that poor kid killed, and you’re still the same bastard.” There’s a beat, one terrible, stretched-thin moment where Gary goes very, very still. Then he detonates.

The flimsy card table clatters violently across the room, papers and cheap plastic chairs flying. Stebbins jumps back with a startled curse as it nearly takes his knees out. Art shouts something wordless. Hank instinctively ducks.

“FUCK YOU!” Gary shouts, voice shredding itself raw. “You can’t fuckin’ say that!” Collie freezes. Not because he’s scared because he recognizes that look. The exact same one Gary had at sixteen, standing in a high-school cafeteria with blood on his knuckles after Rank died. Ferocious. Cornered. Half feral. Pete steps forward, anger finally cracking his usual calm.

“We told you to stop!” Pete shouts back, chest heaving. “We told you to cut it out and leave him alone! But you wouldn’t, couldn’t, and that kid died because of it. Because of you, Gary!” Collie moves, rising so quickly his knee bangs the bench. He’s ready to grab somebody, anybody, before fists start flying. But Gary doesn’t swing. He doesn’t even move toward Pete. Instead he breaks open.

“You think I don’t KNOW that?!” Gary screams, voice snapping under the weight of something far heavier than fury. Collie stares. That. he hadn’t expected.

Gary’s whole face crumples into something raw. Almost young. He drags his hands through his hair with trembling fingers, gripping fistfuls of blond until his knuckles blanch.

“You think if I had known what was goin’ to happen I would’ve kept going?!” he spits, voice cracking. “How the fuck was I supposed to know, McVries?! Did any of you see it coming? Did any of you see the fuckin’ car?!” Pete actually recoils. not from fear, but from the shock of hearing Gary admit anything. Anything real.

“You fucks think I don’t think about it every day?” Gary rages on. “That I don’t have fuckin’ dreams about it like the rest of you? That I don’t hear it over and over in my fuckin’ head?” His voice drops into a hoarse rasp. “Fuck you.” The silence that follows is awful. Heavy. Grief-soaked. Gary drags in a shaking breath. When he speaks again, the fury has cooled into something worse: exhaustion.

“I never meant to hurt him,” he says quietly, still pulling at his hair like he’s trying to stop his brain from splitting open. “I was fuckin’ sixteen. I was bein’ a jerk. But if I had known, if I had even the slightest idea what was gonna happen? I never would’ve fuckin’ done it.” He lifts his head, eyes rimmed red, and locks onto Art.

“And you,” Gary says, voice dull with hurt, “callin’ me a fuckin’ murderer.” Art stiffens, color draining from his face. Gary looks around at all of them. Ray, Pete, Hank, Collie. Each name like an accusation. Each memory like a blade.

“You four wouldn’t even fuckin’ look at me,” he mutters, voice shaking. “Wouldn’t say a goddamn word to me.” Collie feels something twist in his stomach. Something guilt-shaped. Stebbins tries to edge further away, pretending desperately that he isn’t there. Gary laughs, a short, broken, ugly sound.

“So fuck all of you,” he says, not yelling anymore. Just… done. “Stay the hell away from me.” And then he storms out, the door slamming so hard the dusty window rattles.

No one follows. No one breathes.

Collie finally stands. He doesn’t know what impulse makes him do it—some stubborn instinct, some leftover charge in the air—but his body moves before his brain catches up. The others don’t say a word. They just stare at the spot where Gary had stood moments earlier. But Collie’s movement seems to break whatever spell they were under; slowly, awkwardly, they begin to gather their jackets and bags again, as though resuming the motions of normal life might erase what just happened. Collie doesn’t join them.

He walks straight for the door.

The cold evening air slaps him as he steps outside. Gary is already halfway across the lot, storming toward his old truck with long, furious strides. There’s a frantic edge to his movements like if he doesn’t get out of here, right now, he’s going to come apart. Collie picks up his pace.

“Gary!” Gary doesn’t look back. He speeds up. Collie breaks into a jog, gravel crunching under his boots, lungs burning with something that feels too much like panic.

“I told you to stay the hell away from me!” Gary snarls without turning around. He reaches his truck, yanks the door open, practically throws his bag onto the seat. But when he turns, Collie is there standing a few feet away, breathing hard. And something in Gary’s expression flickers. Surprise. Confusion. Maybe even fear. Collie swallows. He still doesn’t know why he followed him. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say. His mind is empty and buzzing all at once.

“I believe you,” Collie blurts out. Gary freezes.

“What you said… I believe you.” The words feel like they walk out of Collie’s mouth on their own. But the second they’re spoken, he knows they’re true. Gary laughs—a broken, brittle sound that has no humor in it.

“You believe me?” he spits. “What do you want, a medal? Want me to fuckin’ grovel and thank you?” Collie almost rolls his eyes, but he catches himself at the last second. Gary’s face is twisted in anger, but up close Collie sees the truth in his eyes. Water-glass shine. Red rims. A tremble he’s trying to bury under hostility. Gary turns away sharply, dragging the heel of his palm across his cheek in a fast, rough swipe. Like he can wipe the emotion off his face before it betrays him. Something in Collie snaps.

He doesn’t think. Doesn’t plan. His hand shoots forward, grabbing Gary’s arm hard enough that Gary startles, and then Collie’s pulling him in, wrapping an arm around him in a clumsy, instinctive hug. Gary goes rigid. Completely stiff, like Collie’s just stuck a knife between his ribs. He shoves weakly at Collie’s chest, snarling low in his throat. Collie braces, half expecting Gary to elbow him, or twist away, or bite him again just out of spite and panic. But after a few seconds Gary’s resistance collapses. He folds.

He sinks into Collie’s hold with a violent shudder, arms snapping up and locking around Collie like he’s afraid Collie will disappear if he loosens his grip even a little. His nails bite through Collie’s shirt, digging into skin. His forehead presses into Collie’s chest with a desperate kind of force. The scent hits Collie instantly: clove cigarettes, caramel, and this time cinnamon instead of vanilla. It’s warm, familiar, and disarmingly human. A choked sound vibrates against Collie’s sternum, raw, muffled, cracked. Then wetness blooms against his shirt, hot through the thin fabric. Gary isn’t sobbing. Not fully. But he’s breaking. Quietly. Violently. And only where Collie can hear it. Without thinking, Collie’s cheek comes to rest on top of Gary’s head. His hair is soft, tickling Collie’s jaw, electrifying something deep in his chest. For a heartbeat, a single, fragile heartbeat, they’re both still.

Then Gary shoves him back. No warning. No words. Just a sudden, forceful push that breaks the contact like it burned him. Gary wipes at his face again, avoiding Collie’s eyes with a stubbornness that borders on panic. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t even look up, just swings into the driver’s seat and slams the door. The engine starts with a rough growl.

Collie stands there, the night suddenly too big around him. Gary throws the truck into gear and peels out of the parking lot, taillights flickering red as they disappear into the curtain of trees lining the road. And then he’s gone.

The quiet that follows feels unnatural. Wrong. Like something important just slipped through Collie’s fingers and he has no idea what it was, or why it matters so damn much.
He stares at the empty road long after the truck is out of sight.

His shirt is still damp. And under his skin, something strange and electric hums, coiled tight and impossible to ignore. Collie has more questions now than he’s ever had, about Gary, about himself, about what the hell just happened, and absolutely none of the answers.

Chapter 7

Notes:

Apologies for the slight delay in posting this, just recovering from my allergy episode. Regular posting shall resume!

Slow burn is officially over and we're off the rails now. Enjoyyyyyy

Gary is conspicuously absent the entire next week, or maybe it’s just that Collie notices.

He doesn’t ask the others if they've noticed. But every time he walks onto campus, he finds himself scanning the quad, the cafeteria, the path by the library. Gary should be easy to spot, blond hair, twitchy movements, that perpetual scowl and a cigarette between his fingers, but he’s nowhere. 

Friday evening, Collie is sprawled on the living room couch, staring past the TV while his sisters bicker about what to watch. Something about a singing competition, then a crime show, then a Christmas movie, even though it’s still early fall. Their voices blend into a static hum. He’s barely listening.

Ray and Pete said they were “gonna watch a movie” at Pete’s place, but everyone knows what that means by now. Hank and Clementine are doing something last minute with their caterer; Art’s helping his grandmother get ready for some church thing the next morning; Stebbins, predictably, is going to the gym and had invited Collie, but Collie declined without a second thought. He’s bored, restless. Not in the mood to lift weights, plan weddings, or listen to his sisters fight about remote privileges.

And under that restlessness sits the same question that’s been tapping at the back of his mind all week: Where the hell has Gary been?

Before he can talk himself out of it, Collie gets up. Grabs his jacket. Grabs a twelve-pack from the fridge that he had bought with the intention of going to one of the guys' house that weekend. His sisters barely glance at him as he heads out the door, too involved in the remote debate.

 

It takes two wrong turns and one detour before he remembers the street Gary lives on. He’s driven past this house hundreds of times growing up, walked past it nearly every day after school, watching each year as the siding peeled a little more, the steps leaned a little further, the yard got a little more choked with weeds.

But tonight, it doesn’t look as bad. The grass is mowed. The trash is gone. The porch light works.

Collie parks, grabs the beer off the seat, and approaches the house. He knocks once, then shifts his weight, suddenly unsure if what he’s doing is stupid or intrusive or both.

After a long moment, long enough for Collie to consider turning around—the door creaks open.

She’s tiny and stooped. Wrapped in a faded terrycloth robe and pink slippers. Wispy white hair. Pale blue eyes that match Gary’s but hold a warmth he’s never seen in the other.

Definitely meemaw.

She squints up at him. “Can I help you, dear?” she asks, voice trembling with age and the same southern twang Gary hasn’t managed to shake.

“Uh yeah. Sorry. I was wondering if Gary was home.” He straightens a bit. “I’m Collie. Collie Parker? We’re in the same statistics class.” Her expression remains cautious, uncertain.

“I’m a friend of his,” he adds, hoping it doesn’t sound like a lie. Her entire face brightens like a switch has been flipped.

“A friend of Gary’s? Oh, that’s wonderful,” she says warmly. “So kind of you to check in on him. He hasn’t been feelin’ well lately. Come on in, sweetheart.” Collie steps gratefully inside, the warm air of the house washing over him.

“Thank you,” he murmurs.

“Gary’s upstairs, second door on your right.” She pats his arm, her hand barely covers a fraction of it, and shuffles back toward the couch. “I’m sure he’ll be real glad for the company.”

Collie isn’t sure about that, but he smiles anyway and climbs the stairs. They creak loudly under his weight. He hesitates outside the second door, then knocks.

A few seconds pass, then the door cracks open just enough for one suspicious blue eye to appear.

“What the hell are you doin' in my house?” Gary grumbles. Classic.

Collie holds up the beer. “I’ve got drinks.” A long beat of silence. Gary sighs heavily, then opens the door wider.

He’s shirtless, and Collie unintentionally notices the pale expanse of his back, dotted with freckles. Before Collie can read too much into it, Gary snatches a thin green sweater from his bed and yanks it over his head. His sweatpants hang too loose on his hips, a size too big. His hair is damp from the shower, curling slightly with leftover moisture, and the smell of his soap hangs lightly in the air: cedar, something sweet, and clean warmth.

The room is not what Collie expected. Old christmas lights draped around the curtain rod, Polaroids clipped to string. Film canisters in neat little rows on the desk. Posters of old bands, edges frayed. A surprisingly pristine Britney Spears poster in the corner. Collie decides he values his life too much to comment on that one.

Gary drops to the floor cross-legged in front of a small TV. Ocarina of Time flickers on the screen. Collie snorts.

“Yes, I’ll have a seat, thanks for offering, Barkovitch.” He sits on Gary’s bed. The springs squeak. It feels weird being here. Gary doesn’t answer, just starts his save file and holds one hand out expectantly. Collie rolls his eyes but hands him a beer.

The first several minutes are quiet, awkward but not hostile. By the time each of them has had two beers, and Collie is nursing his third, the tension has dissolved into something easier. Warmer.

Gary’s leaning against the bed, Collie stretched out behind him with his one leg on either side of Gary's head hips so he can see the screen. He's shoved Gary's pillow behind him to cushion his back against the wall.

“Dude,” Collie groans after Gary spends a full minute running Link in circles. “Grab the cobra mirror and hit the third sun. It opens the door.”

“I would’ve remembered that,” Gary snaps back, but without real heat. He leans his head back against the mattress, eyes flicking up toward Collie. For the first time, Collie sees him without the scowl, without the sharp edges. Gary looks normal. Relaxed. His mouth is curved in the faintest hint of a real smile. Collie can’t help himself.

He reaches down and threads his fingers through Gary’s hair. The strands are soft, still carrying the warmth of the shower. Gary stiffens instantly, breath hitching, but he doesn’t pull away. Collie tightens his grip not painfully, just enough to guide Gary’s head forward to look back at the screen.

“Pay attention,” he murmurs.

Gary lets out a tiny, involuntary sound, almost a whine, almost a breath, and his shoulders loosen. Collie feels it happen. Feels Gary slowly melt under the rhythm of his fingers combing gently through his hair, nails scratching lightly at his scalp. Gary says nothing.

But he leans back just enough that Collie can feel the trust, tentative, fragile, real, settle between them like a quiet, shared secret. Collie, to his own surprise, doesn’t pull his hand away.

They sit like that for a long while, longer than Collie meant to. His fingers keep drifting through Gary’s blond hair, combing gently, sometimes catching at the roots just enough to give a tiny tug. Each time he does, Gary goes briefly rigid, a small, startled puff of breath escaping him, before melting again like nothing happened. The rhythm of it becomes almost hypnotic: tug, stiffen, exhale, soften. And Gary doesn’t snap at him. Doesn’t shove him away. Doesn't suddenly go feral like he has before. He just lets him touch him.

Collie drains the last of his beer, sets the empty can on the nightstand with a clink, and doesn’t open another. The air in the room is warm and hazy, tinted gold by the soft lights. It feels strangely peaceful. Peaceful in a way he certainly never expected to feel with Gary Barkovitch sitting three inches from his knee.

Another fifteen minutes passes. Collie watches Gary die the same humiliating digital death for what has to be the fourth time, and he finally gets fed up. He scoots to the edge of the mattress and nudges Gary’s leg with the toe of his boot.

“Move it.” Gary glances over his shoulder, confused, almost boyish. But he does as he’s told, scooting forward on the worn carpet without argument.

Collie drops down behind him. He could’ve sat beside him. He knows that. But instead, he settles with Gary’s back flush to his chest, their legs bracketing one another’s. He expects Gary to rear up like a spooked cat and bolt across the room. Instead, Gary mutters something under his breath that sounds like, “Bossy prick,” and stays exactly where he is.

If Collie is honest with himself, he has no idea what this is. He’s only ever dated girls, but there has been the occasional in the dark groping at parties where it hadn't mattered who had pulled him into a dark, cramped closet. He's never found guys not attractive, but he's never really stopped to think about it too hard. But right now, with Gary leaning against him, smelling like clean soap and clove cigarettes and something warm under it all. Collie’s not thinking about labels. He’s thinking about how Gary’s soft noises earlier went straight to the base of his spine.

He reaches forward, arms brushing Gary’s sides, and plucks the controller right out of Gary’s hands.

“You suck at this,” Collie murmurs near his ear. Gary’s whole body jerks like he’s been plugged into a wall socket. Ramrod straight, Breath caught.

Collie deliberately relaxes his own posture, giving Gary something loose and steady to lean against. Eventually Gary eases back again, tentative at first, then with a slow, relinquishing weight that settles fully against Collie’s chest. Their breathing starts to sync up without either of them noticing.

A few minutes pass. Collie gets through the puzzle on the first try. Figures.

“See?” he says, smug. “Told you you sucked at this.” Gary huffs, tilts his head back until it rests against Collie’s shoulder, eyes rolling halfheartedly.

“I would've figured it out after awhile.” Collie’s gaze drifts down the pale line of Gary’s throat, the tendons, the swallow, the way his pulse beats fast and close to the surface. When Gary turns his face just slightly, their eyes meet. Gary’s cheeks are flushed pink. His lips are parted like he’s been caught mid-breath.

Slowly, Collie sets the controller on the floor.

His hand finds Gary’s hip next, warm under his palm. He slips his fingers under the hem of the threadbare sweater, brushing against the smooth skin of Gary’s stomach. Gary’s inhale is sharp, almost startled. His shoulders tense again, but Collie stops and waits, patient. Like clockwork, Gary relaxes back into him.

Collie glances up. Gary’s eyes are closed now, lashes resting against his cheeks. The soft glow of the fairy lights paints him in gold. Collie watches the way Gary’s throat moves as he swallows, the faint tremor of his breath when Collie lightly traces the pads of his fingertips across his skin.

Collie lowers his mouth to Gary’s neck, barely brushing his lips against the warm skin at the curve where throat meets jaw. Gary inhales sharply and Collie freezes. Gary’s hand shoots back, grabbing at Collie’s leg, fingers digging through denim. Not pushing him away, anchoring.

Collie’s voice is low when he speaks, rougher than before. “Do you want me to stop?” Gary shakes his head immediately, fast, desperate, and a low, breathy sound slips from him, something that hits Collie like a spark straight through his chest. Collie presses his lips more firmly to Gary’s throat, feeling the jump of Gary’s pulse under his mouth. His hand spreads across Gary’s stomach, not pushing hard, just guiding, grounding, drawing Gary’s back more securely against his chest. Gary’s fingers clamp around Collie’s leg, clinging like he needs the contact to stay upright.

With his free hand, Collie threads his fingers back into Gary’s blond hair, picking up the same slow rhythm he’d had earlier: curl, tug, release. Each pass seems to undo Gary a little more. Collie trails his mouth upward, brushing kisses along the side of Gary’s throat, up the sharp angle of his jaw. Every soft press of lips draws a new shiver from Gary. It’s like watching someone unravel.

Gary’s breath turns quick and uneven, his shoulders rising and falling in short, helpless bursts. He squirms in Collie’s arms, unable to keep still, like every nerve in him is firing at once. He keeps leaning back, seeking more contact, more pressure, anything. Collie can feel the warmth rolling off him in waves.

Gary’s completely out of it now. Soft, dazed sounds slip from him before he can swallow them down. His head tips back against Collie’s shoulder, exposing the long line of his throat again as though he can’t help it. Each time he presses back into Collie, Collie has to fight to keep his own breathing steady.

But he keeps his touch steady. Slow, measured, intentional.

Gary’s fingers tighten again on Collie’s leg, almost shaking with the effort of holding onto him. His whole body seems caught between wanting to fold in on itself and wanting to melt entirely into Collie’s embrace. The tension rolling through him is hot and frantic, but Collie refuses to rush, refuses to let the moment tip over into something uncontrolled.

He keeps the pace deliberate, savoring every reaction he draws from Gary, every stuttered breath, every quiet sound, every instinctive push backward seeking him. The effect is intoxicating in a way Collie has never felt before. It's like he’s the one holding the wire that’s got Gary humming. And Gary is coming apart in his hands, piece by piece, soft and trembling and wanting.

Collie drags his lips down Gary’s throat, slow and deliberate, until he reaches the notch of Gary’s collarbone. He scrapes his teeth against the skin there, barely a scrape, just enough to tease at sensation, but Gary jolts like a live wire snapped through him.

“Payback’s a bitch,” Collie murmurs, a low laugh rumbling out of him. He isn’t expecting Gary’s reaction. Gary’s hand shoots up, fingers tangling in Collie’s black hair, gripping tight at the roots.

“Do that again.” Gary’s voice is barely a voice at all. It's thin, shaky, wrecked around the edges.

Collie pauses for a second, meets Gary’s blown out blue eyes, and then dips down again. This time he presses his teeth into the place where Gary’s neck meets his shoulder, firmer, more intentional. Gary arches so sharply that Collie feels it all the way down his own spine. A sound bursts out of him, loud, unguarded, almost startled. Collie’s hand slaps over Gary’s mouth before the noise is even fully out.

“Christ, could you be any louder, Barkovitch?” Collie hisses, breath warm against Gary’s cheek.

Gary tries to respond, but whatever he’s saying is swallowed by Collie’s palm, coming out as garbled words and shaking breaths. His eyes are unfocused, pupils huge, practically swallowing the blue.

Something in Collie snaps.

He pulls back abruptly, and Gary nearly loses his balance against the sudden lack of support, catching himself on the bedframe with a thud. Collie steadies him with one quick hand before shrugging out of his jacket and yanking his tank top over his head in one motion. His pulse is hammering under his skin. Gary stares up at him, wide-eyed, flushed, stunned.

Collie can’t help the grin that pulls at his mouth as he bends over to pull Gary up off the floor, holding onto Gary’s hips and guiding him backward onto the bed. Gary goes easily, breath catching in his throat. Collie leans over him, bracing himself with a hand in Gary’s hair, giving a small tug to tilt his face up.

“W–wait. Wait a second.” Gary’s words tumble out, breathless and uneven. Collie freezes instantly, hands loosening, every line of his body going still. He backs off just enough to give Gary space, but not so much that the moment collapses.

Gary swallows hard, eyes flicking anywhere but at Collie. “I haven’t… done this before.”

Collie’s chest rises sharply. His voice comes out rough: “You mean with a guy?”

Gary’s face goes an even deeper shade of red. “I mean at all. There was Mary-Ann back in Kentucky, but we didn’t… y’know. Not all the way.”

Collie hadn’t expected that, but he keeps his expression neutral, steady.

“Hey.” He reaches out, brushing his fingers lightly against Gary’s side, nothing heavy, nothing pushing. Just contact. “Do you want to stop?”

Gary shakes his head desperately.

“No.”

Collie nods once, slow and sure. His whole demeanor shifts calmer, gentler, grounding. He drops his voice low, softening it.

“Okay. Then just relax.”

Gary breathes in. Breathes out. His hands unclench on the blanket. He meets Collie’s eyes for the first time since he spoke. Collie reaches down with one hand to push Gary's shirt up, but Gary grabs his wrist and stops him. 

"Shirt stays on." Gary pants out. Collie nods quickly. 

"Scoot up a bit." Collie instructs him. Gary obliges quick, moving further up the mattress. Collie moves with ease, bracing his knees on either side of Gary's hips. Gary moans as Collie presses their hips together slowly. Collie can feel how hard Gary is and it's driving him insane. Collie begins to undo his belt first than Gary's.

"Lotion, or something?" He murmurs. Gary weakly gestures at the nightstand. Collie moves quickly, opening the nightstand drawer and retrieving a bottle of lotion. Collie drops it on the mattress and turns his attention back to Gary. He's tensed up again and so Collie quickly settles his hand in Gary's hair, pulling his attention back to him. Collie closes the remaining space between them and kisses him, slow at first, letting Gary set the pace. Gary’s whole body softens almost instantly, like the kiss knocks the air out of him in the best way. His hand slips from Collie’s wrist to the back of his neck, tugging him closer. The kiss deepens in a rush and becomes messier, more urgent. Gary's a bit clumsy at first, but Collie can feel him mirroring his own movements.

Gary wraps his arms around Collie’s shoulders and pulls him in until there’s no space left between their bodies, a shaky exhale slipping from him into Collie’s mouth. Collie lets his hand drift down press his palm against the hardness under Gary's sweats. Gary moans into his mouth helplessly, pushing his hips up into Collie's hand. Collie can't hold himself back anymore. He hastily pushes his jeans partially down his hips, followed quickly by Gary's sweats. He thanks his lucky stars that Gary isn't wearing anything underneath. He doesn't break the kiss, it seems to be helping Gary keep relaxed. Gary's fingers are raking through his hair while Collie with one hand uncaps the lotion and after a bit of fumbling squirts it into his hand. He reaches down and grasps his cock and Gary's in one hand, drawing  punched out groan from Gary. Collie keeps it slow, steady to start. Gary is moaning helplessly into the kiss, squirming and pushing up against Collie. 

Gary finally breaks the kiss as Collie tightens his grip and strokes his hand faster over their cocks. He quickly buries his face in Collie's shoulder to muffle his sounds as they become more desperate. He keeps one hand tangled in Collie's hair, the other around his back with his nails digging into Collie's back like he needs it to stay grounded. The sharp sting pulls a groan from Collie, he can feel Gary panting heavily against his bare skin. 

"Good boy." Collie mumbles into Gary's ear. The sharp, guttural sound that comes from Gary shocks Collie. He can't help the smirk on his lips as he keeps his strokes steady and firm.

"You like that, huh?" Collie asks raggedly. Gary doesn't speak, but Collie feels him give a frantic nod. "Like hearing that you're being good for me, huh? You're usually such a fucking brat, but right now you're perfect." Collie pants out. He has no idea where the hell that came from. He can feel the knot in his stomach tightening and knows he's close. 

"You gonna come for me?" Collie asks, earning himself another low moan and a nod. Gary is clutching onto Collie like he'll drown without him. It only takes a few more strokes and Gary is tensing underneath him, and Collie knows he's about to come too.

"Good boy, such a good fucking boy, come for me." He growls, and a split second later Gary is spilling his seed onto Collie's hand and his bare stomach. Collie follows him seconds later, barely even realizing he's coming on Gary's sweater. 

His mind is blissed out, floating somewhere warm and weightless, and once the high ebbs, the sharp, shuddering crescendo tapering off, exhaustion slips in behind it. It’s a heavy, contented sort of fatigue, like someone laying a warm blanket over every nerve.

Collie finally peels himself away, their limbs reluctant to separate after being tangled so tightly for so long. He collapses onto the mattress beside Gary, chest rising and falling in uneven bursts. He stares up at the ceiling for a few seconds, letting the room steady around him. When he finally forces his body to move, it’s slow, almost clumsy. He pushes himself upright, zips his jeans, buckles his belt with fingers that still feel slightly numb.

He grabs the towel draped over the back of Gary’s chair and wipes down his hand and stomach. His pulse is still thudding in his ears. A shirt lies crumpled on the desk and Collie snatches it up, tossing it onto the bed toward him.

“You should get out of that sweater,” he says, breathless, his voice roughened and lower than usual. His heart is still hammering.

Gary mumbles something unintelligible, a ruined little noise. It takes him a long moment to rally, to force his body upright. When he finally manages it, he looks absolutely wrecked. His cheeks are flushed a soft pink, eyes hazy and half-lidded, lips glistening and swollen from kissing. It sends a sharp spark of heat through Collie all over again.

“Turn around,” Gary mutters.

Collie almost laughs. Considering what they just did, the request feels absurd, but he relents without complaint. He turns his back, staring at the wall. Behind him, he hears Gary struggling out of the sweater. The soft rustle of fabric. The faint, tired huff under his breath. Out of the corner of Collie’s eye, he sees the sweater get tossed into the hamper.

The bed creaks as Gary flops back down. When Collie turns around, Gary is sprawled comfortably across the mattress now, finally using the pillow. His eyes are closed, posture completely unguarded, the exhaustion softening every line of his face.

Collie steps closer and sits on the edge of the bed. “Do you want me to head out? It’s getting late,” he says quietly. He’s not sure if he wants the answer to be yes or no.

Gary doesn’t answer. Instead, he surges upright just enough to latch onto Collie’s waist with one arm, tugging him insistently toward the bed. The move is clumsy and borderline desperate. Collie can’t help the smirk that pulls at his mouth.

“Alright, alright,” he murmurs, kicking his boots off. He swings his legs up and settles beside Gary. It’s a small bed, and with both of them on it, there’s barely any room. They’re forced close out of necessity, but Gary presses in even closer, making it clear it’s not necessity driving him at all.

He loops an arm around Collie’s waist, buries his face against Collie’s bare chest, and lets out a slow breath that melts his whole body into him. His legs tangle with Collie’s, anchoring himself there as though refusing to risk any distance. He’s half-asleep already, barely conscious as he molds himself to Collie like instinct.

Collie feels something in his chest loosen. He brings a hand up to Gary’s blond hair, sliding his fingers gently into it. The effect is immediate. Gary goes limp, boneless, melting into a warm, heavy puddle against him. His breathing deepens, turns steady, and Collie knows from the rhythm alone that he’s slipping under fast.

Collie exhales slowly, settling into the small space they share. He shifts just enough to get comfortable, then wraps his other arm around Gary, pulling him closer, letting the boy’s steady breathing anchor him.

He closes his eyes. He breathes in. The room is quiet. Warm.

And from somewhere deep in the back of his mind comes that familiar, unwelcome whisper telling him this was a terrible idea, that he should’ve walked out the door instead of crawling into this tiny bed. Telling him he knows better, and that he's basically playing with a live grenade. 

He shoves it down, buries it under the weight of exhaustion and the warmth of Gary pressed so trustingly against him.

He’ll deal with all of it in the morning. For now, he lets the darkness take him.

Chapter 8

Notes:

I can't believe it's over 900 views! Thank you so so much for everyone who reads and comments. Writing this has brought so much excitement back.

The daylight creeps in slowly, soft and golden. It slips through the thin curtains and stretches across the room. It lands on Gary’s face in warm tendrils, insistent enough to drag him toward consciousness. He stirs with a groan, scrunches his nose, and tries to burrow deeper into his pillow. But something feels off.

The first thing he fully registers is the wall pressed uncomfortably against his shoulders. He’s wedged into the corner of the mattress up against the wall. He winces at the pain in his shoulder. Gary likes to sprawl, to starfish and claim every inch of space he can. So why the hell is he crammed up against the wall?

The next thing he becomes aware of is heat. A lot of heat, warm, solid, alive, and close.

His eyes pry themselves open, still blurry and gritty with sleep, and then his breath catches in his throat.

He is curled around Collie Parker. Very shirtless, very asleep, Collie Parker.

So last night wasn’t a dream. It comes back to him all at once, sharp and vivid: the way Collie had tugged his hair, the scrape of teeth on his shoulder, the desperate sounds they dragged out of each other. His scalp tingles at the memory, and his shoulder throbs faintly where Collie’s mouth had left its mark.

Fuck.

His heart spikes, thudding unevenly. His arm is slung over Collie’s torso, across his abs. Gary’s suddenly grateful he’s still wearing a shirt. His lanky frame feels pathetic in comparison. And he can’t blame even alcohol for any of this; he remembers every second with humiliating clarity. 

His dick gives a traitorous twitch in his sweatpants, and he clamps down on the thoughts immediately.

He looks up again slowly, trying not to disturb him. Collie is still dead asleep. His face is soft, relaxed, framed by the wild tangle of his dark black hair. His lashes are stupidly long. One of his arms is looped around Gary’s shoulder like it belongs there, his cheek pressed against Gary's messy blond hair.

Fuckin’ faggot. His dad’s voice sharp, cold, cruel, slices through him like a blade. His stomach turns. He swallows hard, suddenly nauseous. His mind starts racing. What’s Collie going to say when he wakes up? Is he going to freak out? Pretend none of it happened? Never talk to him again? And fuck, Gary told him he’d never gotten laid before. He wants to crawl under the house and die.

He hadn’t been expecting any of this. He figured they’d have a couple beers, talk about useless shit, sit through a painfully awkward evening like normal guys hanging out. That was what guys did, right? But then Collie had grabbed his hair, and everything in Gary’s brain had short-circuited at the touch.

Next to him, Collie’s breathing shifts, responding to the change in Gary’s. His chest rises a little deeper, then he stirs. He brings a hand up to rub his eyes, groaning.

“Fuck… what time is it?” he mumbles, voice thick with sleep.

Gary jerks away as if he’s been burned, his shoulder slamming into the wall behind him with a thud. Vulnerability hits him like a punch to the stomach; he hates it, hates being seen. He scrambles off the foot of the bed and begins to pace because he needs to do something, anything.

“Six forty-five,” Gary snaps, sharper than he means to. Collie props himself up on his elbows, blinking sleep from his black eyes. He fishes his phone out of his pocket, squints at the screen. Gary runs a hand through his tangled hair, pulling at the frayed ends. Panic buzzes under his skin. He needs this over with, needs distance, needs the room to feel normal again.

“I have a thing with my meemaw today,” he mutters. “Some yard sale thing, I don’t fuckin’ know.”

He keeps pacing the cramped room, jittery, wired, chewing at a hangnail until it starts to bleed. He can feel Collie watching him. Collie reaches for his tank top, dragging it over his head with the slow heaviness of someone who hasn’t fully woken up.

“Yeah, no problem,” Collie says around a yawn. He bends over and grabs his flannel off the floor. “I’ve got some stuff to take care of today anyway.” Gary stiffens. Does he actually have stuff to do? Or is that just an excuse to bail out and get the hell away from Gary? The thoughts and insecurities sink their claws in deep. Not that it matters, Gary wants him to leave anyway. He wants this whole morning to be over. So why does it feel like every nerve in his body is on fire with dread? Collie slips a boot on, voice gentler now. “Look, about last night…” he starts carefully.

Gary freezes. His head snaps up so fast it’s a wonder he doesn’t sprain something. His eyes are wide, and he feels that familiar tightness of dread and anxiety in his chest.

“Don’t.” His voice is thick, heavy, shaky. Collie pauses, gaze steady, slicing through every flimsy barrier Gary throws up.

“Just, don’t.” Gary’s throat is tight, and he hates how obvious it is. His voice wavers like he’s a kid again. He wants to yell, punch something, blow up the whole damn room before admitting anything real. But his body won’t cooperate. His limbs feel frozen.

Collie studies him for a long moment, jaw clenching. Then he looks back down and laces his boot.

“Alright.” His tone is short, clipped. Irritated. Gary flinches at the sound. Collie pulls on his other boot, laces it up, then stands. “I’ll see you around, Barkovitch.”

He doesn’t look at Gary when he says it. Doesn’t look back even once as he brushes past him and walks out. The bedroom door clicks shut, and silence floods in behind him.

Gary expected the quiet to feel like relief, safety. Instead, he feels stranded a million miles away from his own body, stuck in a room that suddenly feels both too small and too empty. He tries to grapple with the memories of what happened last night, what the hell it all meant. He drags a hand down his face and turns toward his desk, ready to collapse into the chair and just breathe for a second, but the moment his eyes land on it, he freezes.

Collie’s jacket is draped over the back of his chair. Gary’s stomach drops straight through the floor.

“Fuck!” he explodes, the word ricocheting off the walls. He grabs at his hair with both hands, pacing in a tight frantic circle. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, of course,” he spits under his breath. His heart is hammering so loud he can hear it in his ears. He snatches the jacket off the chair, nearly knocking over a stack of textbooks. It smells like Collie: pine, juniper and something warm he can’t put his finger on. The scent hits him in the chest hard enough to make his knees go weak. He smacks himself hard against the cheek once, twice, three times.

Snap out of it, you fuckin' queer.

“God dammit,” he mutters, shaking the jacket as if that’ll somehow break whatever spell it has on him. He doesn’t know what to do with it. Throw it across the room? Shove it in a drawer? Burn it? He stands there for a moment, jacket clenched in his fists, breath coming too fast. The room suddenly feels too small, too warm, too full of last night.

He storms to the door, yanks it open, ready to chase Collie down and shove the stupid jacket into his hands just to end this weird limbo, but the hallway is empty. Collie’s already gone.

Gary stands there in the doorway, jacket hanging from his hand, pulse still spiking. The quiet presses in around him like a weight.

Now he’s stuck with the damn thing.

 

-

Collie knows he should go home and shower. His clothes are rumbled and smell like Gary, but the last thing he wants is to walk into the house and have his sisters swarm him. They’d sniff him out like bloodhounds. Who were you with? Where were you? Why were you out all night?

He can already hear them, overlapping questions stacked like dominoes. He doesn't have the mental bandwidth to fend that off right now, not with his brain still buzzing, not with his stomach tied up in knots, certainly not after the way Gary looked at him before bolting across his room like he’d been burned just by being close to Collie.

So instead, he drives to Ray’s place. The front door isn’t ever locked, so Collie lets himself in like he’s lived there his whole life.

Ray and Ginnie are at the kitchen table, eating breakfast under the warm yellow glow of the old light fixture. There’s steam rising from two mugs on the table. The radio plays quietly from the counter, some soft country song that Ray pretends to hate but always leaves on.

Ginnie looks up and beams, bright as sunrise.

“Collie, honey!” she chirps, already up and wrapping her arms around him before he even steps fully into the kitchen. She smells like vanilla creamer and coffee, and her hug makes something deep in Collie’s chest unclench. She’s always like this, gentle, chatty, soft around the edges. She's been like a second mother to all the boys since they first became friends.

She pulls back just long enough to look him over, and before he knows it, she’s fluttering around him, mothering on autopilot.

“Did you eat? How’re classes? Your mama doing alright? The girls giving you trouble? Sit down, you look tired!”

Before he knows it, she's nudging him to sit at the table. She piles eggs, sausage links, and toast onto a plate for him. He barely manages to sit down before she’s setting a glass of orange juice and his plate in front of him like he’s a stray she’s brought in from the cold.

Ray watches with an amused smirk. Ginnie kisses the top of Ray’s head, pats Collie’s shoulder, and tells them both to “behave, please” before heading out for her shift at the diner.

Collie scarfs down the food like he hasn’t eaten in days. Ray launches into a winding monologue about the movie he watched with Pete last night, something about allegory, climate change, and moral rot. Collie barely listens but appreciates the background noise. Anything to drown out the thoughts of Gary’s voice cracking in the early hours of the morning.

He tries not to think about how Gary practically shoved him out the door. How quickly he’d shut down. How fast the comfortable warmth of the morning had turned into panic.

He shakes himself and focuses on helping Ray clean up the dishes from breakfast. Today is Art’s grandmother’s church bake sale, a big enough event that Ray volunteered. Collie, having nothing better to do, decides to tag along.

Soon after arriving, he gets stuck doing the heavy lifting. The church is running a donation drive alongside the bake sale, so he hauls bags and boxes of donated clothes, toys, and books from the front room to a sorting area where Ray and Pete are organizing piles. Art’s grandma beams every time Collie walks past, pinches his cheek, calls him “sweet boy,” and promises him “a proper lunch, not that garbage boys your age eat.” She gives off the same bossy warmth as Ginnie.

Hank and Stebbins show up around noon, mostly to loiter and provide commentary, but at least Collie isn’t alone in carrying bags.

At one PM, they finally break for lunch, gathering around a folding table to devour baked lemon garlic chicken thighs, broccoli salad, mashed potatoes, and soft fluffy yeast rolls with butter.

“So, what’d you all get up to last night?” Hank asks, already talking with his mouth full. “Clem and I spent the night finalizing the playlist for the reception. Real edge of your seat shit.” he quips sarcastically.

“Gym.” Stebbins says without looking up from his plate. Ray and Pete talk about their movie, Pete diving into a speech about metaphors. Art looks half asleep, having stayed up nearly all night helping his grandma bake pies, he tells them.

Ray turns to Collie with a knowing little scoff. “Well, it’s not like we have to ask what you were doing.” Collie shoots him a glare. It bounces right off Ray's cheery disposition.

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” Collie growls.

Ray gestures at him with his fork, giving him a once-over. “It means you showed up at my place at early-as-fuck o'clock on a Saturday morning wearing the same clothes you had on yesterday, and you sure as hell didn't stay over at any of our places last night.” Collie bristles. Pete’s grinning. Hank perks up on hearing this, always the nosy little fucker.

“What’s her name?” Hank asks eagerly. Collie scoffs, rolls his eyes.

“No one you know. Back off. It wasn’t a big deal.”

“Please don’t tell me it was Amelia,” Hank groans dramatically. “I can’t survive you being my brother-in-law.”

“Fuck no,” Collie retorts immediately. “Amelia does not have a thing for me.”

“Uh-huh, sure.” Ray mutters sarcastically.

“We're in statistics together. Hung out last night. That’s it.” Collie stabs at a piece of chicken, hoping that ends the conversation.

It doesn’t. Hank sighs. “You’re no fun, man. What’s the point of hookups if you’re not even gonna share the details?”

“I’m perfectly fine without the details, personally.” Stebbins mutters, hunched over his plate.

Before Collie can come up with a way to steer the conversation away from what exactly he got up to last night, and with who, Art’s grandmother calls for them from across the room. Art jolts up from his dozing, tapping Ray, Hank, and Pete. They gather their empty plates and scatter quickly, back to work. Collie sends a mental thank you to whatever god was up there for getting him out of that conversation.

Collie and Stebbins settle into silence as they finish eating. At least until someone clears their throat behind them. Collie turns. Gary is standing there. He's tense, shoulders stiff, eyes narrowed. Wearing a grey sweater that brings out the pale in his cheeks. He's clutching something in both hands.

Collie’s jacket. Gary’s grandma is talking animatedly with Art’s across the hall, oblivious as she looks at the pies spread out on the table.

Gary thrusts the jacket out like it’s radioactive, gaze fixed somewhere near Collie’s elbow, anywhere but his face.

“You forgot your jacket,” he mutters.

Collie’s chest tightens. He reaches out slowly, taking the jacket and folding it over his lap. “Thanks,” he manages, though his voice sounds too rough, too low.

His brain betrays him, because looking at Gary standing there stiff as a board, all Collie can think about is last night. Gary melting under his hands. The moans, the bite of his nails in his skin, the heat between the two of them. Collie swallows hard.

Gary runs a hand through his mussed blond hair. “I’ll see you in statistics, I guess.” He turns and walks off so fast it’s practically a sprint.

Collie suppresses the urge to call after him. Or grab his arm. Or do something that would only make this worse.

He turns back to the table, and finds Stebbins staring straight at him. Expression blank. Eyes sharp.

“Hung out with a girl from statistics last night, huh?” Stebbins says, one brow arched. He's the picture-perfect portrait of calm accusation.

Collie knows a trap when he sees one. Knows he's backed into a corner. Fucking Barkovitch. Didn't Gary realize that returning the jacket like a kicked puppy would blow his cover? A cover Gary seemed to want to keep considering his reaction this morning.

“Stebbins,” Collie says, voice low and dangerous. “Don’t say a goddamn word.”

Stebbins’ lips twitch into a slow smirk, far too amused at the situation playing out in front of him.

“Remember how Marissa keyed your truck after you broke up with her because she was moving to California for school? Followed you around campus, called your house a million fucking times?” Stebbins asks casually.

Collie groans, rubbing his eyes. Of course, he remembers. He had shelled out nearly eleven hundred dollars to fix up the paint.

“Well,” Stebbins continues, tossing his empty plate in the trash can next to their table, “Barkovitch is gonna make her look like a walk in the park. You're a bigger idiot than I thought you were.” He chuckles, shaking his head. Collie flips him off.

“Don’t say a damn word,” he warns again. Stebbins waves him off.

“Don’t worry, Parker. I plan on keeping my distance from the atomic bomb you’re fucking with.”

And then he walks away, leaving Collie alone with his jacket, his lunch, and the familiar sinking realization that he’s really really might have fucked things up this time around.

Chapter 9

Notes:

Oof, managed to finally get the editing done on this between working 50 hours this week LOLOL. Hope you guys like it, as always thank you soso much for reading!

I have a new fic in the works alongside this one as well so please go check it out on my profile, I will do my best to keep updating semi regularly but we are short staffed rn so I am working overtime until further notice so I sincerely apologize for any delays!

Gary is somewhat successful in tamping down the memories. During the day, he can almost convince himself that everything is fine. That nothing happened. That Collie’s mouth on his neck, his weight across Gary’s body, his breath against Gary’s ear, none of it meant anything.

He throws himself into his classes with a kind of desperation. He sits in the front row, takes obsessive notes, rereads chapters he already knows. He keeps his eyes fixed on the board, not letting himself glance at look at Collie’s long black hair spilling down his back two rows ahead of him. Not on the way Collie’s knee bounces when he’s bored. Not on the way Collie sometimes glances back and then quickly away when Gary shifts in his seat.

And when Gary gets home, he forces himself into another project.

He’s been cleaning out the attic and his dad’s old bedroom, a place Gary has avoided since him and Meemaw moved in because the air still smells faintly like his Pa's aftershave and stale beer. He hauls down boxes of his pa's old clothes from the closet. He works until sweat soaks through his shirt and dust coats his arms, until every muscle burns.

He loads everything into his truck with mechanical efficiency: one stack for Goodwill, one for the dump. He makes the drive back and forth until he's exhausted and his head pounds and he feels certain that he has absolutely no room left in his mind to think about Collie Parker.

But then night comes, and when he’s lying in bed alone, with the house settling and the cicadas humming, when silence creeps in like fog there’s no stopping it.

Collie comes back to him. The weight of him, heavy, grounding. The warmth of his breath on Gary’s neck. The hungry grip on his hips. The way Collie's voice was low and frayed like he was unraveling.

Gary closes his eyes and drags the tips of his fingers across his lips, and Jesus Christ. He can still feel the ghost of Collie’s mouth. That slow, careful kiss that had felt like a warning and a promise at the same time. He tries to pretend it meant nothing, that his body is reacting out of confusion, some misguided reflex. But his body betrays him every damn time.

His skin buzzes, his chest tightens, and before he can stop himself he’s shoving his hand under the sheets, wrapping it around his cock, already hard and aching. His breath stutters, embarrassingly loud in the quiet room. He tries so fucking hard not to think about Collie’s hands on his skin, Collie’s teeth scraping his jaw, Collie’s voice breaking on a moan. The more he tries not to think about him, the worse it gets.

By the time he cums, gasping, Collie’s name is a ghostly whisper on his lips, barely a whisper, shame burning up his throat.

He cleans up and covers his face with his arm, disgust and shame curling low in his stomach.

He’s not gay, he tells himself. He’s not. Gary doesn’t know what the hell he is, but he knows he’s never wanted a boyfriend or girlfriend. He's never wanted anyone in his space, never wanted anyone touching him. He’s spent years building walls around himself that are thick, high, impossible to scale.

Letting someone close means letting them see inside him, and Gary knows there’s nothing inside but rot, something mean and broken.

What he doesn’t understand is why Collie came over that night. Why Collie had gone out of his way to show up, knowing damn well Gary would drive him insane in under five minutes. Why Collie had touched him like that. Why he’d kissed him like he meant it.

But now? Collie keeps his distance. It shouldn’t bother Gary, but it does.

-

Then suddenly, things shift.

Gary is in the lunch hall, grabbing a sandwich. He keeps his head down as he walks past Parker and Garraty’s table, the one that seems to belong to them now by sheer force of personality. He doesn’t look up. He doesn’t acknowledge anyone.

It's jst business as usual.

“Hey, Barkovitch.”

Gary freezes mid-step, like someone yanked his spine taut. It’s Garraty. He glances over. Ray nudges an empty chair out with his foot towards him.

Gary stares at the chair. Then at Ray. Then at Collie. Collie looks at him for a long, agonizing second, his expression unreadable, before he looks back down at his lunch.

Ray gestures again towards the chair. Gary’s heartbeat thrums at the base of his throat. His first instinct is to assume it’s a trap, some joke. Some humiliating gotcha moment where they yank the chair away and laugh when he hits the floor.

But nothing about Ray's face says cruelty. Against every ounce of better judgment he possesses, Gary sits. He unwraps his sandwich slowly, like he expects someone to slap it out of his hands.

Conversation resumes around him, casual, easy, the way they always are with each other. Gary feels like he’s sixteen again: present, but not included. He's adjacent, but not part of it. Gary is still tethered to them by the same fucked-up, tangled thread as he was when he was in high school.

“Hi boys!” A bright voice cuts in. Gary glances up to see Clementine, practically launching herself at Hank and wrapping her arms around his neck. “Gary, good to see you,” she says warmly.

Her older sister Amelia stands beside her, smiling politely. Gary recognizes her from the photoshoot day.

He nods stiffly. “Hey.”

Clementine doesn’t seem bothered by his complete lack of enthusiasm. She beams at him like they’re best friends.

“Did Hank tell you about the party?” she asks. Gary flicks a look at Olson, who quickly shakes his head. There's a vaguely pained expression on his face.

“I didn’t get a chance,” Hank mutters.

“It’s at our parents’ lakehouse,” Clementine explains cheerfully. “Since the wedding is next week, we thought it’d be fun to blow off some steam. You should come, as my little thank you for doing such a wonderful job with the pictures." She chips.

"Nothing wild, just drinks, music, hot tub…” Amelia jumps in, smiling sweetly. “Bring your girlfriend if you want.” Her eyes flick toward Collie when she says hot tub, and something in Gary’s stomach twists into something ugly and sharp.

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Gary replies flatly.

As soon as the words leave his mouth, he realizes that’s not what she meant. He clears his throat. “I mean, I might be able to come by. I don’t know.” His tone comes out too harsh, too defensive. He hates that everyone is looking at him now.

Clementine, however, doesn’t miss a beat. She snatches Hank’s notebook, scribbles something in looping handwriting, rips the page out, and pushes it toward him.

“In case you’re free.”

Friday. 6 PM. The address in neat curls.

Gary hesitates, then takes the paper, folding it carefully and sliding it into his pocket.

The table returns to its chatter. Gary sits stiffly, staring at his sandwich, wondering why the hell she had invited him, and why Ray had offered him a seat at the table.

-

He finds Ray in the parking lot at the end of the day, the sun low and sky bruised purple and blue, students drifting past in clusters. Ray is unlocking his car, humming to himself, totally unaware that Gary’s been hunting him down across the parking lot. Gary knows the whole stalking angle isn't helping his case.

“Garraty!” he shouts, louder than he means to. His voice cracks through the lot like a snapped branch. Ray startles, turning with a frown already forming, confusion creasing his soft features as Gary stalks toward him.

“What’s the angle here?” Gary snaps, fists clenched so hard his nails bite into his palm and his knuckles turn white. He can feel his pulse thudding in his throat, can hear it in his ears.

Ray blinks. “What are you talking about?” he scoffs, but it’s not mean, just genuinely thrown off. That almost makes it worse. Gary wants to smack that stupid lost puppy look right off his face.

“I’m talking about this shit you’re pullin’. The lunchroom. Hank’s girl invitin’ me to that stupid fuckin’ party.” Gary’s voice is a growl now, low and dangerous. “What’s your deal?”

Ray sighs like he’s already exhausted by this conversation, running his fingers through his brown hair until it stands on end. “Look, Gary, there’s no angle, okay?”

And he sounds truthful, which only pisses Gary off more, because none of this makes sense. Not with their history. Not with Ray’s friends. Not with the way things have always been.

Then a worse thought hits him, sharp as an ice cube down the back of his shirt.

“Did Parker say something to you?” Gary blurts, voice cracking. His horror is right there, impossible to cover up. He saw how close Ray and Pete were at the shoot, the lingering looks, the hand Ray slid under the table at lunch, brushing Pete’s. Gary may be screwed up, but he notices things.

Did Collie run off and tell the two queers? Did he tell anyone what happened that night? That Gary let him jerk him off? That Gary moaned like a girl and came the second Collie called him a good boy? His cheeks flame red, stomach twisting with nausea. Ray’s face doesn’t change except to look even more baffled.

“What are you talking about, man? No. Why would he have?” He asks, puzzled, shaking his head, keys jingling in his hand.

“Then what is it?” Gary bursts out, right at the edge of losing whatever grip on himself he still has.

Ray takes a breath so deep it lifts his shoulders. “I thought about what you said the other day,” he says quietly. “A-and you were right, okay?” His shoulders slump, hands sinking into his pockets. “After it happened… after Rank got killed… you left. And it was easy to make you the bad guy.”

Gary feels the anger drain out of him all at once, leaving his body hollow. He stops breathing. His arms fall slack at his sides. Ray keeps talking, staring down at the pavement.

“You were a dumb, dickheaded teenager. We all were. But I don’t think you meant for anything bad to happen. And you weren’t around. All of us were fucked up by it, and it was easy to just blame it all on you and call it a day since you weren't around anymore.”

The toe of Ray’s sneaker swipes a chalky path through the leaves on the asphalt. Gary watches it because he can’t look at Ray. His mind is blanking. For the second time in his miserable life, Gary Barkovitch has nothing to say.

Ray huffs out a humorless laugh. “Plus, I have three years of school left. Do you really want to spend the next three years at each other’s throats? Because I sure as hell don’t.” He shrugs. “I’m not saying we have to be best friends. Just, maybe it’d be easier if we weren’t all trying to kill each other.”

He steps back toward his car door, hand on the handle, but pauses.

“So come to the party if you want to. Or don’t. But if you want my opinion,”

“I don’t,” Gary snaps automatically.

Ray exhales through his nose, eyes shutting for half a second. “IF you want my opinion,” he repeats, gentler this time, “I think burying the hatchet might not be the most terrible idea in the world.”

Gary doesn’t reply. His jaw flexes; his eyes flick away.

Ray nods once, barely. “Have a good night, Gary.”

He slips into his car, shuts the door, and drives off, leaving Gary standing alone in the emptying lot with the echo of Ray’s words and the hurricane of his own thoughts roaring in the silence.