Chapter Text
Ellery hasn’t seen many things in his life that he would consider “strange.” There’s the Lewis Avenue incident from about sixteen or so years ago, which he only ever saw the aftermath to. And maybe the time his brother came home from college with a tattoo of his girlfriend’s vagina on his thigh could be considered strange. But other than that, his life has been fairly normal.
But this is probably the first time he’s ever seen a man wearing an eyepatch standing in line at Tim Horton’s. That could definitely be considered strange.
Not that he’s one to judge others. It’s super tragic that this dude lost his eye, and Ellery would be lying if he said he didn’t think it was kinda hot. It’s just not something you see every day.
“It’s a long story, you know.”
Eyepatch man speaks, and Ellery jumps. “Wh-what?”
“The eyepatch,” he says. “It’s a long story.”
Oh. Shit. Ellery’s face starts to heat up. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to stare.”
Eyepatch man laughs. “It’s okay. I get it a lot.” His eyes (er...eye) travel down to the Pride bracelet on Ellery’s wrist. “Besides, I don’t necessarily mind cute guys staring at me.”
Face flushing, Ellery bites his lip. “Yeah?”
“Haha. Yeah.” He holds out a hand. “I’m Sean.”
Ellery takes the man’s hand and shakes it. “Ellery.”
Eyepatch man tilts his head to the side. “I went to school with an Ellery.”
Ellery squints. And somehow, he can’t believe he didn’t recognize him sooner. Still, it has been over a decade and a half… “No way...Sean Diaz?”
“Dude, holy crap!” Eyepatch man’s—Sean’s—face brightens up at the realization. Without warning, he tackles Ellery with a hug, nearly causing him to stumble backwards into the person in line behind him. “Oh my god, I can’t believe it!”
Ellery almost doesn’t know what to do. A strange man is hugging him in the middle of a coffee shop. Except it’s not just any strange man, it’s Sean Diaz, his oldest friend, who disappeared off the face of the planet when they were sixteen. Despite his reservations, old feelings take hold, and he can’t resist hugging his friend back.
There’s a stinging, burning sensation behind Ellery’s eyes. It’s Sean. Sean. “I thought you were dead,” he gasps.
“Not dead,” Sean says, a hitch in his voice indicating a similar state of teariness. He pulls back, and the smile on his face is so genuine, it’s almost heartwarming. Ellery gets the impression that he doesn’t smile like this very much these days.
“Are you guys gonna order?” The person in line behind them shuffles awkwardly.
“Oh, um...go ahead,” Ellery says, letting them cut in front of them. He turns back to Sean. “Sorry, I guess I should have asked you.”
“It’s fine,” Sean says. “Hey, are you busy right now? I’d love to buy you a drink, and we can catch up.”
When Ellery used to picture Sean saying those words, he never imagined it would be this shaggy-haired pirate saying them. He almost laughs at the idea. “Yeah. No, yeah, that sounds awesome.”
One coffee order later, Ellery finds himself—and he still can’t quite believe this—sitting across the table from his childhood best friend Sean Diaz, someone he never ever thought he would see again.
“Okay, I just...I have to ask,” Ellery says. “What happened to you? You dont...you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but…”
“No, it’s okay. It...it is hard to talk about, but I guess the gist of it is...after my dad died, and that cop was killed, I was scared of what would happen, so I...I just sorta took Daniel and ran away. After a little under a year, we finally got caught.”
“And the...the eye?”
“Oh. Right.” He lifts the eyepatch, and Ellery instinctively flinches at the sight, but when he opens his eyes again, it’s not exactly what he was expecting. Ellery thought there’d be some kind of hollow space where his eye should be, but instead there’s a pure, snow white ball in the socket. Clearly, it’s not his actual eye, but some kind of prosthetic. “I technically don’t need the eyepatch. But some people find the glass eye disconcerting, so I tend to wear it out in public.” He flips the patch back down and smiles. “Plus, I think it looks cool.”
“It does,” Ellery mumbles.
“So what have you been up to all these years?”
And Ellery has to laugh. It just sounds so casual, like two old friends just catching up. And that’s what they are, when you think about it. But it’s so much more. They’re not just old high school friends who lost touch in college. No, Sean straight up vanished from his life without a trace, without warning, and was never heard from again. It’s no wonder this whole thing feels strange.
“What?” Sean asks.
“It’s just...You’ve been gone for over sixteen years, Sean. You just left. And for years, I had no idea why. I had an inkling, but I never knew for sure. And I never heard from you again, so I just assumed that...that something bad had happened to you after…”
Sean nods. “Right, yeah. I guess this is a little weird.”
“Understatement of the year.”
Sean stares down at his coffee cup, holds it in his hands like he’s cradling a baby chick. “It’s just that...what I’ve been up to since then is...It’s going to take more than one afternoon cup of coffee to explain the whole thing. And I’m not sure I’m...ready...yet.”
“No, I get that,” Ellery says. “It’s just...kind of strange, is all.” Hatching an idea, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. “Here, why don’t we trade numbers? We can meet up again sometime this week, maybe? And, whenever you’re ready...I’m here to listen.”
Sean smiles. He reaches across the table and puts a hand over Ellery’s, sending heat flooding to his cheeks. “Thanks, man. I’d love to.”
They exchange numbers, and sit there for a while, sipping their coffee in a state of half-awkwardness. Like, it’s strange and slightly uncomfortable, but at the same time, it’s nice. Like nothing has changed between them.
“So, where are you living nowadays?” Ellery asks. “You still in the Seattle area or just passing through?”
“Umm?” Sean coughs. “Well, I’m not exactly living...anywhere...at the moment.”
“Wait, what? You’re homeless?”
“Not exactly. I’m living out of my car. Been traveling around the country since I got out of...um—for the past six months or so now.”
Ellery notices Sean’s hesitation. If he knows his old friend, he’s holding back on something. Not hiding it necessarily, just trying to avoid mentioning it. Normally, back in the day, Ellery would press him on it, and would usually end up getting him to talk about it. But Ellery hasn’t seen Sean in seventeen years, more than half of their lives. They’ve just reconnected; he doesn’t want to risk saying something to lose him all over again.
“How is that?”
“Good,” Sean says, with rehearsed enthusiasm. Ellery expects him to try and elaborate, maybe tell some tales of his adventures, but he doesn’t, instead opting to sit in silence and sip his drink. And then, a subject change. “So what do you do for a living?”
“I’m a therapist,” Ellery says. He suppresses the urge to psychoanalyse his friend—he can tell something is bothering him, he just doesn’t know what. But it’s not his place. Sean isn’t a client; he doesn’t have the right to press him on his issues.
“Oh shit, that’s awesome.”
“Yeah, I like it,” Ellery says. “It makes me feel...like I’m making a difference.”
“You always did like helping people, El,” Sean says.
Ellery smiles at the affectionate nickname. It may have been a lifetime since they’ve last seen each other, but some things, like the way Sean can always get Ellery to smile, never change.
“How do you make your living?” Ellery asks. “I mean, even without a home, you’ve gotta eat, put gas in the tank.”
“I’m an artist,” Sean says. “I take commissions and have a Patreon page. It’s not a bunch, but it makes me enough to get by. It’s not like I need a lot of stuff anyway. Just gas and food. And usually it’s gas that’s the problem.” He laughs. “But whenever that’s the case, I typically just find a place to camp out until gas prices go down.”
Ellery can’t lie, it sounds like kind of a miserable existence. He’s so used to modern conveniences like heat and air conditioning, indoor plumbing, a damn bed, that he can’t even imagine living without them. But Sean seems...not happy, but not unhappy, either. Like maybe it’s not the way he wants to be living, but it’s not the worst place he could end up. Ellery wonders what led him to this life. He gets the impression that this life, however miserable it may be, is better than the alternative. What caused Sean Diaz to become content with being content?
But again, it’s not his place to ask.
“So how long are you planning on being in the area?” Ellery asks.
“Dunno,” Sean says, flashing Ellery a smile. “Depends on what there is here worth staying for.”
There’s a look in his eyes— eye , damn it—that’s making Ellery’s heart flip. He absolutely was not imagining it earlier; Sean is flirting with him. And just...holy crap. Sean is Ellery’s first friend, and his first crush. And now he’s here, all brooding and handsome and flirting! With him! Stay cool, El, stay cool.
“Anyway,” Sean says, looking back down at his coffee cup, suddenly bashful. “El, there’s...something I should tell you.”
“Yeah?”
“The reason I was gone for so long, the reason you haven’t seen me in...nearly two decades, is because...I went to prison.”
Ellery leans back. “Oh.”
“Yeah. So, um...I’d understand if you don’t want to see me anymore.”
“Why would I not want to see you?”
Sean shrugs. “I don’t know. My criminal record tends to have an effect on people.”
“It’s for that police officer, right? The one they said you killed?”
He doesn’t answer right away. “Among other things, yeah.”
“Well, I never believed you did that,” Ellery says. Though, he feels guilty after saying it, because, for a while, there was a part of him that believed he did it. For a while, it was all anybody could talk about, on the news, at school, even his parents weren’t convinced he was innocent. And it fit the bill—cop shoots Mr. Diaz, Sean kills the cop. Ellery wouldn’t have blamed him if he had done it.
But the more he thought about it, the less that made sense. The entire street was pretty much destroyed. There’s no way Sean could have done that in the heat of the moment, and he definitely wouldn’t have set that up in advance if he hadn’t known the cop would kill his dad. Plus, Ellery got sick of half the school calling him a killer. He had to stand up for his best friend, even if he didn’t totally believe in him. And after a while, he started to believe in him anyway.
“Yeah, but—”
“Sean, you are one of my oldest and dearest friends. I know you, and I know you’re not that kind of person.”
Sean sighs. “You...don’t know much about me then. You don’t know who I am now, the things I’ve had to do to get by.”
“Maybe not. But I know you , Sean.You’re one of the kindest people I know. Criminal record or not, that will never change.”
A sad smile stretches across Sean’s face. “Thanks. You always did know just what to say.”
# # #
Ellery hasn’t spoken to many of his old friends since high school. He and Eric went to the same university, but rarely saw each other. Lyla fell off the radar around the time Sean went missing, and Adam...Well, there’s a reason they don’t talk besides just drifting apart.
And then, of course, he hadn’t spoken to Sean since that day, way back when. Until today, at least. When Ellery gets home to his modest house in the suburbs of Seattle, he’s still reeling from the chance encounter. And he’s excited. Excited, because his best friend from childhood, one whom he thought was dead, or at the very least, gone from his life for ever, is suddenly here again! And he’s hot , still.
Ellery has the urge to share this excitement with somebody. But aside from some lovely people in his internet communities, and a few college buddies, Ellery doesn’t have many friends to tell about this. Nobody who can really share the excitement with him, at least. Nobody who knew Sean, knew the hardships that he and his friends went through when Sean went missing.
Which is why, for the first time in months, Ellery signs back into his Facebook account, and tries to find Lyla.
Now, while it is true that Lyla sort of went MIA around the same time as Sean, it wasn’t like she completely vanished. They still talked, saw each other in school, but it was almost like she had checked out. She started showing up to class less and less, until eventually she stopped coming altogether. They reconnected a couple years down the line, where he found out that Lyla ended up homeschooled for her last semester, due to mental health reasons. After that, they sort of just drifted apart, the way high school friends often do. But, a while back, she’d shown up in Ellery’s People You May Know recommendations, so he added her.
Ellery doesn’t use Facebook very much anymore—mostly because it’s just his friends sharing pictures of their families and friends and their perfect little lives. That’s something Ellery has never had. All things considered, he’s a little lonely. He’s single, regrettably, and spends most of his free time binging Netflix shows or catching up with the latest internet drama. So looking at all of his friends with their happy families just makes him grow more bitter than he usually wants to be.
Ellery isn’t unhappy—far from it. He actually really likes where he’s ended up in life. He has a stable career, a nice home, and a bright future ahead of him. It’s just that he wishes he had somebody to share that future with.
Which is why Sean coming back is such a mondo huge thing! Sean is somebody he fits well with, like two LEGO blocks stuck together. Even if it’s just as a friend, having Sean back in his life makes everything feel just a little bit brighter, more colorful, like he’s turned up the saturation on an Instagram filter.
Not that he uses Instragram much, either.
Ellery finds Lyla’s page and clicks on it. He spends a few moments scrolling through it, seeing what she’s been up to. Not much, as it turns out. She posted a picture of her and her girlfriend at some kind of party a few days ago, but nothing since then. Hopefully she’ll get this message. Ellery really wishes he’d gotten her number the last time they chatted.
Ellery clicks on the Message button and a little box pops up in the corner of his window. He gently raps his fingers on the keyboard, unsure of exactly how to start this. Hey Lyla , he starts, but quickly backspaces to delete it.
How exactly does one even start a message like this?
I know we haven —no, that’s not right. Backspace.
Hey! It’s been a while! No, that’s lame.
Gah! Why is he still so awkward?
Eventually, he decides to just get straight to the point. He knows Lyla, she doesn’t like suspense. Getting a message from somebody she hasn’t spoken to in years trying to be casual is more likely to just make her anxious. She’s kind of a rip the band-aid off kind of person.
So I ran into Sean today.
Ellery hits send, and sighs. Messaging somebody like this shouldn’t be this difficult.
Speaking of messaging, at that exact moment, Ellery’s phone lights up. He’s half-expecting it to be Lyla, even though he’s staring right at her open message where it says she hasn’t even seen it yet, but when he checks the display, it’s actually a text from Sean.
It was good running into you today , it reads. Ellery laughs at the irony of how similar it sounds to the one he just sent Lyla.
And then, a moment later, another pops up: Sorry I’ve been so bad at keeping in touch. I should have hit you up sooner.
Ellery’s heart twists. He slides to unlock his phone and before he can even think about it, he’s typed up a message.
It’s okay, man. You had your own stuff going on. And I assume I wasn’t a top priority for your phone calls in prison.
Sean responds, No, but you should have been.
Ellery’s heart can’t help but flutter at that. Let’s just say I forgive you and move on, okay? Lol. I’m just happy to see you again.
Me too, Sean sends. We should definitely hang out again sometime.
Definitely.
# # #
This should not be as awkward as it is.
Yeah, maybe it’s the first time Ellery has seen Lyla in person since, well, high school, but they’ve talked on Facebook tons of times. Why should getting coffee be any different? Besides, it’s Lyla! He never used to have problems talking to her.
But Ellery never really used to have trouble talking to people in general. It’s only in the last ten years or so that he’s had this issue. Likely a side-effect of being alone most of the time.
So this is good, he tells himself. Get out of the house, see some friends, be normal for once. But his lack of training in the matter has left him out of practice. How come it seemed so easy with Sean, but now with Lyla, it’s like he’s tripping over his own tongue figuring out what to say.
His biggest hurdle is trying not to soft-diagnose her. Ellery’s known about Lyla’s depression and anxiety since they were kids, but now he’s actually studied psychology; he can pick up on the signs, even if they’re not obvious. Ellery knows better than to point them out—she’s probably acutely aware of her ticks—but he can’t help but to notice them.
“Sooooo,” she says, drawing out the syllable as long as possible, like she’s trying to fill the space between them with something , rather than this awkward silence.
Ellery sips his coffee. “So…”
“So tell me about Sean, I guess. How’s he doing?”
Ellery could have just told her everything over Facebook, saved himself the trip, but Lyla suggested they meet for coffee, because they’ve been in the same area for years now and had never gotten together to catch up. “He’s doing...fine, I suppose.” Ellery knows there’s more to it than that. He could sense the pain behind Sean’s eye. But saying that would just worry Lyla, and it’s not his place to really say anyway. “Has he contacted you at all?”
“Not since he got out of jail,” Lyla says. “I mean, we kept in touch for a little bit after that, but then he left on his whole journey of self-discovery thing, and I hadn’t really heard from him. I was starting to get kind of worried, but...it’s not my place, y’know? He’s an adult, he doesn’t have to check in with me like I’m his chaperone.”
“Wait, so you knew he was in prison?”
“Yeah, I was there when he was released. We’d kept in touch the best we could. He called me a couple times when he was on the run.”
“Really.” Ellery tries not to feel offended by this; Ellery may be Sean’s oldest friend, but Lyla was always his best friend. Of course he would call her. But he can’t help but feel a little left behind. Did Ellery ever cross Sean’s mind during those seventeen years? Or had he completely forgotten about him?
Lyla must have read his mind. “Sorry,” she says. “I know he missed you. Even if he didn’t say it.”
Ellery shrugs, slumps back in his chair and takes another sip of his coffee. “I was getting some, like...vibes from him, though. When we ran into each other.”
“What kind of vibes?”
“Like... flirty vibes, I dunno. But that’s...I’m looking way too far into that, right? I mean, Sean’s straight.”
Lyla gets a knowing smirk.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing,” Lyla says. “It’s not really my place to say. I just... Are you into him?”
“Um…” Ellery’s stomach swirls. “Yeah. Yeah, I am. I uh...kind of always have been.”
“Aww!” Lyla grins. “El, that’s so cute. I think you two would make an adorable couple.”
“You think?” Ellery says, feeling himself blush. “I mean, I dunno. I’m not sure if I could handle his whole...nomad thing.”
What there is here worth staying for. Sean’s words echo in Ellery’s mind. The way he smiled when he said it, the way he couldn’t meet Ellery’s eyes. Did Sean mean him? Was Ellery worth staying for?
“Can’t hurt to try,” Lyla says. “Like being with him, not the nomad thing,” she adds quickly. “I’m not expecting you to just pick up your life and go on the run with him or anything.”
Ellery snorts. “Yeah, I still have six years left on my mortgage. Can’t just leave now.”
But the thing is, it’s not as easy an answer as that. If Sean asked him, invited him to travel the country with him, Ellery’s not so sure he would say no. Ellery hates the idea of living out of his car. There’s no way he could even pack everything he would want to take with him into his tiny little Taurus. He’d need an RV at the absolute minimum, and even then, he’s not super fond of the idea.
But with Sean by his side...It might not be so bad. Sleeping under the stars, telling each other stories on the road, visiting exciting locations...It just sounds like the road trip of dreams.
He’s getting ahead of himself, though. Sure, he may have known Sean his whole life, but there’s no way he’d pack up his whole life on a whim for a guy. Even if that guy is his childhood crush.
“Do you know how long he’s staying?” Lyla asks.
Ellery shakes his head. “He didn’t say.”
“Ah, okay.” Lyla chews on her lip before taking another sip of coffee. “I can’t believe he’s back in Seattle and he didn’t tell me.”
“Maybe he was planning on surprising you?” Ellery suggests, hopeful. “And I totally just ruined the surprise.”
“Maybe,” Lyla sighs. “I just hope he hasn’t forgotten me.”
“No way. Sean Diaz? Forget Lyla Park? Not on your life.”
The hint of a smile passes her face, but it’s gone before Ellery can pick up on its authenticity. Ellery frantically tries to change the subject, and soon they’re off on a different tangent entirely. He breathes a sigh of relief as he listens to Lyla rant about the socio-political landscape of the current age. This is good, this is what adults do; they have coffee with their friends and discuss politics. It can’t all be about your high school crush coming back from the dead and somehow still having a place in your life despite the years of distance.
But still, what a crazy week this has been.