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The neon sign of the cinema marquee flickered against the damp Dublin pavement, bleeding pink and electric blue into the puddles. For most people, the lights signaled the end of an evening out. For Aran, they were a blinding, relentless assault.
He stood just outside the glass doors, clutching his oversized hoodie tighter around his chest, his seventeen-year-old frame trembling. Next to him stood Mac—eighteen, wearing his usual calm, grounded posture, acting as the human anchor holding the perimeter together.
Inside, the world had been too loud. But the real fracture had happened five minutes ago at the concessions counter.
Aran could still feel the phantom echo of his own voice sticking in his throat, heavy and tangled. He had tried explaining how to ‘break the money ‘ but that was a disaster. The cashier found Aran annoying and so did the line. It was a systemic rejection. A complete breakdown of communication.
The anger hadn't faded; it had pooled in his chest, hot and sharp, turning into a suffocating ball of static.
"She didn't even try," Aran muttered, his voice shaking with a ragged edge. He stared down at his sneakers, watching the rain begin to pepper the asphalt. "I said it clearly. I knew what I said. Why do they always look at you like you're speaking code?"
"They operate on a low-bandwidth heuristic, Aran," Mac said quietly, his hands tucked deep into his pockets so as not to crowd him. His tone was a cool compress against the heat of Aran’s frustration. "They look for shortcuts. They don't process the syntax of how you communicate. It’s an administrative failure on their part, not a data error on yours..well kind of you did explain it rather poorly .
I hate it," Aran choked out. The raw humiliation burned behind his eyes. A hot, frantic impulse surged through his nervous system—a sudden, violent urge to bolt, to outrun the sound of that cashier's laugh, to escape the city entirely.
Before Mac could calculate the trajectory, Aran spun on his heel and bolted.
"Aran—" Mac started, but the boy was already moving.
Aran didn't run far. Just across the narrow, rain-slicked street toward the shelter of a closed 24-hour convenience store. The metal security gate was down, but a small overhang blocked the worst of the downpour.
He slammed his back against the cold brick wall, sliding down until his knees hit the wet concrete. The Dublin rain hammered around him, a chaotic wall of white noise that somehow felt cleaner, more honest than the buzzing fluorescent lights of the theater lobby.
He pulled his knees up to his chest, burying his face in his sleeves. The anger was still there, sharp and jagged, but it was crashing against the overwhelming, freezing reality of the downpour. His teeth began to chatter.
A moment later, the steady, rhythmic crunch of footsteps approached through the puddles. Mac didn't try to pull him up. He didn't offer empty platitudes like calm down or it's not a big deal. Instead, Mac stepped under the overhang, shrugged off his heavy waterproof jacket, and draped it over Aran’s shoulders.
The jacket was warm, still carrying the faint heat of Mac's body.
Mac slid down the brick wall to sit right beside him on the wet concrete, ignoring the water soaking through his trousers. He didn't speak immediately. He just sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Aran, "The variables outside are loud tonight," Mac said softly, his voice vibrating through the space between them. "The cashier's processing speed was inadequate. But we don't let a sub-routine ruin the primary system."
Aran let out a long, shuddering breath, the tension in his shoulders finally beginning to unspool. He pulled Mac’s jacket tighter around his neck.
"I'm seventeen," Aran whispered into the fabric, the anger finally giving way to a bone-deep exhaustion. "And I still can't..talk normally without melting down."
"You're seventeen, and…yeah that was a disaster," Mac replied, his tone absolute, steady as a metronome. "The friction is high because your signal is complex. That isn't a flaw. That's just architecture."
Aran turned his head, resting his forehead against Mac’s shoulder. The rain continued to hammer the pavement just inches away, but inside the small perimeter they had carved out under the storefront, the static finally started to clear.
The headlights of the passing traffic swept back and forth across the wet asphalt, casting long, fractured shadows that danced over Aran’s sneakers. The roar of engines felt like a physical weight pressing against his eardrums.
Without looking left or right, Aran stepped off the curb, weaving straight through the slow-moving stream of cars. Brakes screeched, and a driver leaned heavily on a horn, a sharp, angry blare that cut through the night air. Aran didn't flinch. He just kept walking, his boots splashing through the oil-slicked puddles.
He was running on pure, jagged impulse. He needed distance. He needed to get away from the theater, away from the memory of the cashier's laugh, away from the suffocating feeling of being treated like a fragile child who couldn't handle the basic mechanics of existing in public.
Ahead of him, the bright, greasy yellow-and-red sign of a late-night fried chicken joint buzzed through the drizzle, smelling intensely of rendered fat and salt. It was a shelter. A place to disappear.
He stopped right at the threshold, the heavy glass door fogged from the heat inside.
I'll just get something, he thought, his stomach twisting with a hollow, nervous ache. Just blend in. Be normal.
Then, a sudden, heavy wave of memory hit him. The smell of the grease turned his stomach. He remembered the back roads, the wire fences, the quiet, heavy eyes of creatures that felt pain just as sharply as he did. He was vegetarian. Not just as a casual preference, but for reasons locked deep inside his chest—reasons he had never spoken aloud to anyone, not even Mac. The thought of crossing that threshold made his skin crawl with a deep, moral nausea.
Aran stopped dead in his tracks. The frustration doubled back on him, heavy and suffocating. He couldn't even escape into a meal.
Slowly, heavily, he turned around, retracing his steps through the maze of headlights and exhaust fumes back to the overhang where Mac was waiting.
He dropped down beside Mac on the damp concrete, pulling the borrowed jacket tighter.
"Let's go home," Aran muttered, his voice flat, defeated.
Mac didn't move immediately. He checked the glowing digits of his watch, his posture remaining rigid against the cold brick. "We can't walk back right now. The rain is at peak saturation, and your core temperature is dropping. We have to wait for the pickup. The transport is scheduled for six minutes."
Aran stared down at his wet shoes, the frustration prickling under his skin again, hot and raw. He turned his head to look at Mac—at the steady, unblinking focus of the older boy, always managing him, always handling the system.
"Mac?" Aran asked, his voice barely audible over the hiss of the rain. "Do you... do you ever get mad at me? Sometimes?"
Mac paused. He didn't offer an instant, automatic reassurance. He took a slow breath, letting the question register through his own internal processing before answering.
"Yes ," Mac said, his tone careful and completely honest. "You are very emotional. Your system runs at a higher voltage than mine, and maintaining equilibrium requires a significant amount of calibration. It creates friction." He turned his head to meet Aran's gaze. "It is exhausting sometimes. But frustration with the environment and with you .. like you are 17 but cry over a fucking 50 euro bill after making nonsensical demands. I'm not going to pretend like that shit isn't embarrassing, you have to grow a pair sometimes."
Aran sat with the answer for a long moment, letting the clinical honesty settle the chaotic noise in his chest. It wasn't a sugar-coated lie. It was truth, engineered and delivered without malice.
"Okay," Aran whispered.
Mac wrapped his own hand on Aran's , his risk covered in old scars from the past
A familiar car engine cut through the street noise as headlights pulled up to the curb, signaling the arrival of the transport.
"The variable has arrived," Mac said,