Chapter Text
It starts when he’s fourteen and already so miserable that he tries to eat a whole bunch of expired pills he finds in the first aid kit in the bathroom cabinet, washing them down with the vodka his father keeps in the kitchen. Bob has high hopes that he’s gonna die, and it makes him feel at peace for the first time since… well, since he remembers himself, actually. All the pills leave him unconscious on the kitchen floor for some time until he wakes up because of strong nausea, throwing up violently just a moment later. He’s not lucky enough to die, but his skin looks yellowish pale, hands shaking and stomach aching for days. His father notices the alcohol’s disappearance and throws his key ring at Bob’s face, leaving a bruise with scratches on his cheekbone. He grabs him by the hair, dragging him into his bedroom and then locking him there for three days so no one would see – no school, just him and his gnawing thoughts.
The car accident happens a couple of months later, and Bob spirals into his addiction embarrassingly fast.
At first it’s just to help with his crushed leg – he’s lucky it’s still with him, for the doctor told him they had to reassemble bones from fragments – but the further he takes them, the better he understands that not only his leg pain but his internal pain, the one in his heart, or soul if he has any, dulls too. It makes him wonder how he never tried before, but then again, he’s so scared of his father that any thoughts about drugs before the incident left him trembling under his blanket. He’s still afraid that Shawn will somehow figure out how the pills make it all just a little bit more tolerable, so he tries to be quiet about it. He’s always quiet, desperate to make himself as unnoticeable to his father as possible. The little mouse, like his mama called him when he was younger and she made him crawl under his bed and lie there, making no sounds, every time his father came home drunk as hell. He lay there, cheek pressed to the cold floorboards, heart thrashing like a trapped bird as the house filled with the brutal symphony of rage: shouts cracked the air, tangled with the groan of splintering wood and the low, guttural thud of furniture overturned – each creak, each snap, each sharp, sickening smack as his father’s fists found their mark sent fresh jolts of horror skittering beneath his skin. His mother’s choked cries bled through the walls, and all he could do was listen – frozen, small, useless.
“My little mouse,” she said, stroking his hair gently later, when his father finally passed out on the couch and she came to pull him from under the bed, her palm soft where she touched his cheek, pinched it – her own face carried violet marks, eyes warm, cornflower blue as his own. Bob loved her. Annie loved him too, sometimes, and sometimes she couldn’t look him in the face, couldn’t stand his presence around, and Bob stayed in his room, painted the life he dreamed of with poisonous watercolors. He drew himself as a mouse, wished he could turn into one, the tiniest thing, and hide somewhere between the walls and never be hurt again, never be found.
Painkiller pills.
Then there’s that first blunt he shares with a girl from his art class. She tells him her boyfriend is older than her and can get anything for her – he could do that for Bob too – and Bob agrees when she offers to introduce them. The boyfriend is, like, twenty-something. He looks dangerous with his shaved head, lots of poorly done tattoos, and deep shadows encompassing his face. He eyes Bob suspiciously, then scowls and says, “Get out.”
“C’mon, Buzz, sell to him,” the girl, Lindsey, pleads. “He’s a nice guy, he won’t talk.”
She leans into him, and Bob feels nauseous. He knows – feels, maybe unconsciously – how wrong it all is: that guy, that man, and her. They’re children. Broken, clothes dusty and ripped here and there but still, and Bob feels like a kid, helpless and desperate, shifting from foot to foot in front of this… drug dealer or whoever the fuck he is. Unfortunately, he needs that blunt.
So he hands him a crumpled ten-dollar bill he managed to get, his hand trembling.
He gets that blunt.
It’s shitty, and he coughs as he smokes it, and he feels dizzy after; every little thing makes him giggle. But the pain inside remains, the weed doesn’t dull it like the pills do. So he comes back, alone, looking for Vicodin.
“Vikes gonna cost you more than ten bucks,” Buzz says lazily, flicking the ash from his cigarette right on the floor, and Bob watches as it floats slowly, not sure if it’s okay to look him in the pale eyes.
“I…” he stutters a little, too nervous to fuck this up. “I only have ten…”
“Not my probs.” Buzz doesn’t even look at him when Bob forces his gaze up, too busy tapping something on his phone. Bob nods, mumbles his little “okay,” and turns to go when he hears-
“You can suck me off, and I’ll give you one. This one time.”
He stops for a moment – not because he considers the idea but out of shock. It sounds… disgusting, and Bob leaves without looking back.
He meets Nicky just a week later when he drops his tray on the table Bob’s sitting alone at and starts to eat nonchalantly, mac ’n’ cheese sticky on his fork.
“M’ not sure I ever ate anything worse than that.” He looks at Bob; Bob stares, eyes wide, not used to company.
“What is it?” he asks, raising his eyebrows. They’re lighter than his pitch-black hair, so Bob assumes that he dyes it. “Hellooo? You look like you’ve seen a ghost, man.”
“Uh, sorry,” Bob mumbles, shaking his head. He drops his gaze, continuing to scribble that essay he has to pass in a couple of days. Like he cares if he gets a good grade, sure.
“I’m Nick,” says Nicky, leaning forward a bit, and Bob’s hand flies to cover his ugly handwriting. Nicky smirks at that, tilts his head, and Bob can feel his cheeks getting warm.
“Hi, Nick,” he murmurs, sliding the notebook off the table and tossing it into his worn bag quickly.
“Do you have a name?” Nicky asks, amusement so clear in his eyes – it makes Bob feel like an alien being dissected or something. Still, he nods, licks his dry lips, and answers, “Yeah, I’m… I’m Bob.”
“Bob,” Nicky repeats his name like he’s tasting it on his tongue, and smiles, and the smile – it outlines dimples on his cheeks, and he looks pretty – that’s what Bob thinks, watching him, all confident and effortlessly cool while Bob’s hands are trembling a little where he hides them in the pockets of his hoodie.
Nick sits at his lonely table the next day and the day after that, and Bob doesn’t notice how they end up hiding under the bleachers together, sitting close, Nicky’s earphones shared between them. They love the same music, and Nicky’s favorite movie becomes Bob’s, too, and it’s the closest he ever had to having a friend. And then they kiss for the first time. It’s the night Nicky sneaks to his bedroom window after not seeing him for days because Bob’s father beat him again and then forbade him from going to school to not show those bruises on his face. His knock on the bedroom window startles Bob, and he can’t believe his eyes when he sees Nicky, hurrying up to slide the window up.
“What are you doing here?” he whisper-shouts, glancing back paranoically. “If my father sees you-“
“Don’t care.” Nicky sounds breathless, like he ran here; his face is pink too, so Bob thinks that maybe he did. His heart starts beating so fast he’s afraid he’s going to have a heart attack.
“You idiot…” he mumbles but can’t really stop his lips from stretching into a smile. His split lip protests; he hisses in pain, and Nicky raises a hand to touch it with his fingertips, and… time kinda freezes for Bob. If he thinks about it hard enough, he can remember his breath stuttering, the feeling of the wind in his hair, the warmth of Nicky’s skin. It’s extremely stupid, but Bob still leans out halfway through the window. And Nicky still steps forward and kisses him. It’s Bob’s first kiss. And the most real one, even after years that pass after it.
Nicky smells of weed and shampoo, sweet and a little dizzying; his lips are dry and warm, his fingers gentle as they tangle in Bob’s hair.
Nicky’s mom doesn’t care about Bob hanging out at their place half the time; the other half she’s not even there for days.
“Fucking one of her buddies, probably,” Nick explains when Bob asks, and he feels terrible for asking. Nicky sees it in his face, cradles it in his palms with a soft chuckle. “I don’t care, Bobby. Relax.”
“I’m sorry,” Bob mumbles anyway, eyes dropping, because looking into Nicky’s honey-brown gaze feels like fireworks in his stomach. It doesn’t stop Nicky from kissing him, pressing in close, wrapping ever-cold Bob in his warmth like the sun he is – and Bob melts, softer than he ever has before. And it’s nice.
Better than any pills when Nicky pushes him onto the bed and follows immediately, and drowns all his pain in the taste of his mouth and the smell of his skin, the gentle hold of his hands on Bob’s body even though he shakes with nerves too, afraid to hurt. It hurts anyway but in the best way ever – no pain was ever so welcomed in his body before. Bob’s glad that he never did anything stupid before meeting Nicky because he makes him feel so right Bob actually cries – ugly, whole body trembling – and Nicky holds him through his breakdown like he means something. Like he’s a person. Like he deserves to be held.
They try meth for the first time together too.
“Got it from Mom’s bag when she was drunk as hell,” he says with a chuckle when Bob comes to hang out a little. It’s the start of the ninth grade; Nick’s hair is longer now, and he wears his favorite Pierce the Veil T-shirt, looking like he just won the lottery. The crystals are dirty white and even beautiful, but it melts into something ugly in the glass pipe Nick uses to burn it. The high is stronger than pills, way stronger than weed; the world sharpens around him – every breath, and sound, and color brutally bright, burning behind his eyelids as he tries to blink it away. Dust sparkles in the air like stars and makes that low buzzing sound, vibrating through his very bones. It doesn’t hold him with aching tenderness like Nick did – it grabs, bruises where he claws his way out of the brightness of it. Bob finds himself even more twitchy, laughing at nonsense until his stomach hurts as Nick talks non-stop, his eyes – the darkest voids of dilated pupils, sweat sliding down his throat and making his hair damp, the ends curling over his shoulders.
“I love you more than anything,” he whispers into Bob’s ear, sounding way louder than he thinks; his warm breath tickles Bob’s skin and Bob snickers.
“What? I’m serious, Bobby, I’m gonna take you away.”
“Take me away?” Bob laughs, looking him in the eyes, their limbs tangling on the bed they’re curling in.
“From your shitty father, from this shit of a town, somewhere so much… bigger,” Nick continues, bumping their noses together.
“I don’t care where we are,” Bob tells him, hand touching his jaw, “just… don’t ever leave me.”
Nicky drops out of the ninth grade a couple of months in, and Bob drops right after, too fucked up all the time to care about it. His father throws him out of the house when he finds out about the school, and it was bound to happen so Bob doesn’t really get upset. He grabs as much as he owns, which is not a lot, and stays at Nicky’s, telling him and himself that it’s just temporary, that he’ll find a way to make it better.
“It’s okay, Bobby,” Nicky murmurs sleepily into his hair, holding him against his chest like a treasure, “we’ll make it out of here together, just need some time, okay?”
“I don’t wanna burden you,” Bob admits quietly, intertwining their fingers on his stomach, and Nick huffs, annoyed at him for being dumb, and kisses him to sleep, and lets him stay. And all they care about is to get a shitty job, to make some money, to buy another hour in the crystal white Heaven. The best two fucking years of Bob’s life.
They get their first tattoos from the guy Nicky deals weed with – each other’s birth dates inked small and crooked behind their ears – and for a while, Bob lets himself believe it means forever, them. The beach, the sleepless nights, the long-ass days when there’s no money for drugs, only the occasional blunt – but they’ve still got each other, so it’s fine.
That last evening, Bob gathers his things for his shift at the twenty-four-hour diner. Freshly showered, he tears through his stuff but can’t find a clean shirt no matter how much he looks. Nicky sprawls on the bed, propped on pillows, watching him with half-lidded eyes, a cigarette burning slow between his fingers.
“Take mine,” he says, nodding at the chair where his favorite T-shirt hangs; he hand-washes it every time to make it last longer.
“You sure?” Bob asks nervously, hands on his hips, his hair still a little damp.
Nicky looks him over with a smirk and hums in agreement, and Bob tugs the shirt on – it’s slightly damp too – and walks over to give Nicky a soft lingering kiss.
“I love you,” he whispers, smiling. Nicky raises his hand to give him a drag from his cigarette and whispers back, “Love you more, Bobby.”
Bob glances back at him once more before stepping out of the room – and the sight of him steals his breath.
The night passes. Bob works, bleary-eyed, counting tips, wiping down tables that feel sticky no matter how much he cleans. He keeps tugging at the shirt, breathing it in, trying to hold onto Nicky’s warmth, the faint scent of him. And when the shift ends, and the sky is soft pink at the edges, Bob walks back toward Nicky’s house. His legs ache, but he’s thinking about slipping into bed beside Nicky, about waking him with a kiss. About maybe the two of them splitting a blunt before crashing for the day. But when he turns the corner onto the street, his breath catches. The ambulance. The police cars. The neighbor lady in her slippers clutching a mug like she’s watching some stupid soap opera out here.
For a second, everything in him goes cold. His first thought is about Nick’s mom, that she finally drank herself to death or fell down the stairs or something else.
But then he hears it.
A raw, breaking scream – Nick’s mother’s voice, high and jagged, spilling out the open door.
“No-no-no, my baby, my boy, no-“
And Bob’s heart starts pounding, his legs moving before his brain catches up. He tries to run for the house, pushes past a cop standing on the walkway.
“Hey, kid, back the fuck up.”
But Bob doesn’t stop. “That’s my- he’s- Nick!”
The cop grabs him hard, rough fingers digging into his arm, yanking him back like Bob’s some kind of threat. “You’re not going in. Stay where you are.”
“I have to- he needs me, let me go!” Bob’s voice cracks, high and wild, but the cop’s grip only tightens, and his face stays blank, like Bob’s nothing but a nuisance, just another kid making trouble.
“Cut the shit. You’re not helping anyone. He’s gone.”
Gone.
And that’s when Bob sees them – the paramedics coming out, wheeling the stretcher, and the sheet – God, the sheet is over Nicky’s face.
Bob goes still. Like everything inside him just… stops.
One of Nicky’s bare arms slips out from under the sheet, limp, fingers slack. Bob stares at that hand – the same one that held his last night, the same fingers that offered him a drag just hours earlier, that cupped his cheek so soft it made him believe in forever, that traced the rough sketch of the shitty little beach house they swore they’d buy one day, somewhere far from this place, just the two of them, maybe a petty cat or two.
He can’t breathe.
“No,” Bob says, voice small at first, then louder. “No. That’s not him. That’s not Nick. Let me see him, p-please, he’s okay – I know he’s okay-“
He fights to break free, panic clawing at his throat, but the cop just shoves him back a step like he’s trash getting in the way.
“Jesus. Get a grip, kid. He’s dead. You can’t change that.”
The world tilts, spins, and all Bob can do is stand there in Nicky’s shirt, too big in the shoulders, his hands shaking so bad they feel numb, watching them take him away.