Archive of Our Own ^beta

Ian had decided the skyline looked much better when it was grey with snow clouds instead of smoke clouds. Today’s clouds seemed a mix of both, and it wasn’t like the constant smell of gasoline and smog in the air had gone away with the change in season — it just became marginally more bearable. 

That being said, he couldn’t spend any more time with that thought because it’d already distracted him once on his way to the grocery store, and he did not have the patience to let it happen again. Wandering in a city you’ve only lived in for six months, long enough that you know the crime rate and hear sirens every night but not long enough to know much else was likely a bad idea, after all. 

 It was best to stay close to the buildings so the cars rushing through the slush didn’t splash his coat. The last thing Ian needed to add to his day was a trip to the dry cleaners, especially since the last time he washed his jacket, it came back faded, and the water came back purple. He sighed and instantly received a mouth full of dark hair from the wind. He had to get into the habit of tying it up — he loved the length, sure, but his hair was far too long now to let it fly free. 

 As he maneuvered through the crowds of people on the sidewalk, the grocery store finally came into view. So Ian pulled out his list, sped up, and entered the store.  

  The best thing about being broke is that his grocery list fits perfectly on the back of the receipt he got the last time he grabbed groceries. Ian was only in there for about ten minutes before he’d collected almost everything on his list in a small, plastic basket — bread, eggs, canned fruit, milk, a chocolate bar for Jeff — and made his way to the grains.

It had also been ten minutes of nothing weird happening, which might’ve been a new record. It wasn’t meant to last. 

As Ian turned the corner, the only other person in the aisle, a guy in a snapback that had to have been over 6’5”,  taller than him by more than a few inches, snatched a box of crackers off the shelf. Then he shoved it into his denim jacket, stepped away from the shelf, and made direct eye contact. 

“Huh,” Ian said, walking closer and watching the guy freak at the sight of him. The box was visibly poking out from the lapel. “You’re not very good at this, are you?”

“My friends dared me,” replied the guy — kid? Who went along with that kind of shit past seventeen? — grey eyes wide. Frantic. “Don’t tell anybody. Please.”

Ian raised an eyebrow, picked a small pack of macaroni off the shelf, and put the kid to memory.  Black denim jacket and snapback with messy stubble, nicely dressed, not-so-nicely groomed. Dark brown hair neatly cropped to the sides, swoopy at the top, hooked nose.

“I won’t snitch.” He shrugged and put the macaroni in his basket. “Someone else might, though, so. Tell your friends to steal their own crackers.”

And since he no longer had business in that aisle, or the store, for that matter, Ian walked away. 

The stash of alcohol buried half beneath and half behind their shoe rack was still there, Ian noted as he put his loafers down, but it had grown in size since he last checked. Two wines, one full and white and the other half-empty and red, one whiskey, and a bottle of rum. Jeff hadn’t informed him of it yet, but he figured putting it somewhere Ian checked daily meant it was an open secret. 

He sighed, set the grocery bag down, and put his keys on the counter.  

Winding down without a cigarette had become impossible, so Ian hardly thought twice as he pulled the red-and-white box out of his coat’s pocket and walked onto the balcony. The winter weather was better when he was high above the ground, far from cars that splashed slush and people whose giant, expensive coats took up half the sidewalk. 

He couldn’t remember how long he’d been standing there when, all of a sudden, a familiar voice chimed in behind him.

"Oh, hey. Not dead yet?"

Ian cast a skeptical look over his shoulder, exhaling smoke. His third cigarette, if the new spaces in his box told him anything. He must’ve zoned out. "Okay, first of all, warn a guy before you sneak up all quiet like that. Second of all, what are you referring to, exactly?"

"Aren’t you cold?" Jeff asked, a familiar head of fluffy brown hair and light blue eyes poking out the sliding door. They’d been lucky in getting an apartment with a balcony. It kept the house smelling nice and decidedly not like tobacco. "I mean, I just got home, but you’ve probably been standing out here for, like, ever. Gotta make sure I won’t be paying rent by myself, you know?"

Well, no, the air wasn't exactly warm. A few select parts of Ian's body — namely his prickled cheeks and the tips of his fingers, slowly going numb after half an hour of exposure — had begun to feel it. But watching the snowflakes fall as he smoked had made it worthwhile.

 Ian shrugged, smudging his cigarette out. "Sorta. Care to join me?"

"Yeah, and freeze to death with only you for company?"

Behind him, Jeff paused, slowly tapping the glass in consideration. A cold wind blew past them, rustling the pieces of Ian’s hair that escaped his loosely-done ponytail and making Jeff shudder in his thin white shirt.  

  "...You know what? Sure, but I gotta put my jacket back on first. Be right out."

Satisfied, Ian rolled his eyes and turned back around. "Honored to have you in my final moments on Earth, but I was really in my zen there, man. You totally interrupted it."

"Hey, you like it when I interrupt your zen!" Jeff called, far enough inside the apartment that every word was a muffled shout. The sound of his stumbling into the furniture, however, rang loud and clear. "Besides, you — shit, ugh, Ian, why’d we put that bookshelf there?"

"It looked good. And I’m still running the tally of how many times you’ll walk into it before you give up and move it."

There was a long pause. For a moment, Ian figured Jeff got distracted by something. That he forgot he was waiting outside, as he was incredibly prone to doing despite all his concern about Ian dying in the snow earlier.

 "You’re such an asshole," Jeff scoffed, finally pushing through the door into the crisp winter air. He’d pulled a long, blue coat over his shoulders, the last nice thing he’d bought before dedicating himself to a life of budgeting and number-crunching. There was a single cigarette in his hand. "And for the record, it is an honor to be dying beside me." He grinned and sidled up next to Ian, crossing his arms on the railing. "Make the most of it and light me, please?"

"Whatever you wish, your majesty," Ian deadpanned as he flicked his lighter on, tipping it towards Jeff’s outstretched hand without further complaint. "Hang out and watch the snow with me. It’s so nice that you’ll forget we’re gonna die of hypothermia or whatever you said."

"Eh. I wasn’t specific about what we would freeze to death of, just that it would happen. Could be anything.” 

Ian hummed as Jeff took his first hit, watching the snow as it peacefully fell to the ground far beneath their balcony. "I guess I’ll take my chances, then.”

“Mhm. Tell me about work.”

So Ian started talking about work. 

Work ended, and because he had no errands to run, Ian went straight home.

"Hey," he called into the silence, setting his keys on the counter with a metallic jingle. "I’m back."

No response. Not that he was expecting one, given that his job went from eight to four and Jeff’s nine to five, meaning Jeff was likely still at work and would be for at least another hour. He frowned, walked toward the closet, and started pulling his loafers off — 

—Then the door slammed behind him. Startled, Ian whipped his head around before glaring over his shoulder. He set his shoes down without a second look. The hinges weren’t strong enough to let the door hit them at full strength. He would have to warn Jeff about doing that, too. They might not get their security deposit back if they break the front door. 

First on the agenda: food and water. When they'd both gotten jobs a few months ago, they had agreed it was either lunch or dinner for them, not both, and Ian had been feeling hunger pangs since eleven that morning. It wasn’t as though dinner was ever that substantial, so going without any food but the bare minimum for over twenty-four hours was a lot for his already thin body to take. He walked into the kitchen, got his glass from the cupboard, and filled it with tap water before grabbing a piece of white bread to gnaw.

He stopped as he entered the living room. Sat on the couch and hunched over the coffee table, bent in half at the middle with the sleeves of his white collared shirt rolled up, was —

"Jeff?" Ian furrowed his eyebrows. Never mind how hard his heart had jumped at the sight of him — as it tended to, actually, but not like this — the fact Jeff had never responded to him when he called into the house was odd. That, and... "Aren't you supposed to be at the store, still?"

Jeff didn't reply. He barely moved, aside from his left hand frantically scribbling something down on a receipt, which sat next to multiple other receipts and a small, empty glass. 

Glancing down at the receipts, Ian pursed his lips. He'd spent years reading Jeff’s handwriting, decrypting the little notes he’d pass him like they were ancient runes and him, a scholar, but this? 

There was no better way to put it: this was utterly illegible. 

Before meeting Jeff, he never knew cursive could be done so inelegantly. It was one of few things that Jeff's parents — or rather, some private tutor they'd hired him, so one of many — ever taught him. Like everything else they'd tried to drill into his head, Jeff had found a way to screw it up. Each letter stabbed into another, stiff and rigid, indented into the page with the force of the blue pen that seemed two seconds from bursting ink everywhere whenever one of them used it. The numbers written down (and there were more numbers than letters on this page, he realized) looked almost neat by comparison, if only because they could exist independently. 

It was almost impressive. He cast another look at Jeff's fast-moving hand. Just as expected, the underside of his hand was spattered in smeared blue, and Ian could see a bit smeared on his cheek and into his stubble, too. 

He still hadn't gotten a response, verbal or otherwise, and it was starting to worry him. 

Gently, Ian sat next to him, the couch cushions contorting beneath the added weight. "Hey. What’s up, huh?"  Idly, he put a hand on the shoulder opposite him, looking at Jeff’s notes spread across the table with a passive eye. Sure, they were marginally easier to read from this angle, but Ian could still hardly understand any of what was written. "What are you writing ab—?"

Jeff’s entire body shot up, instantly knocking Ian’s hand off. His neck almost snapped as he turned, staring back at Ian with wide, red-rimmed eyes.

 "How long have you been here?" He asked quickly, and maybe he had sustained some sort of injury, maybe you could mess up your vocal cords if you pulled something in your neck because his voice came out uncharacteristically, starkly strangled.

Ian’s breath caught. His hand hovered idly above where it’d been launched from Jeff’s shoulder. "About ten minutes or so. Why?”

"Fuck," Jeff said unceremoniously, more to himself than Ian. His face crumpled, and his body slumped even further at the news. "Okay then."

 Slowly, now, like his head was on a swivel, he turned away and swatted the receipts into a pile on the table. Then he stood in rough, ragged motions and took them all with him. He crushed the paper in his fist before shoving them into the pocket of his slacks as though he hadn’t poured over them so diligently that Ian hadn’t existed to him for ten minutes.

"Why did you do that?" 

Jeff’s back remained to him, silent and still, before he started to walk away. "Doesn’t matter," and before Ian could refute how obviously it seemed to matter, he was still covered in ballpoint ink and logically couldn’t have gotten home from work all too long ago, "I’m going out. I’ll talk to you later, okay?"

"Wait, Jeff — "

Then the door slammed behind him, and just like that, he was gone. No coat or anything. 

…I forgot to tell him about the hinges, Ian thought, swallowing hard. He didn’t care about the hinges much at all. 

A job at a gas station was the best Ian could get. Given that his identity was half missing person and half fabricated documents, it was a shock that he landed anything in the first place. Neither of them could tell if Jeff got off better with his gig at the liquor store down on Bluebell Avenue, which was a lovely name to give the most crime-ridden street corner in the city. 

Regardless, it paid cash, and the interviewer —if the guy who owned the place asking his name and when he could start counted as an interview —didn’t care to know his life story if he could manage a self-serve gas pump and stocking a few shelves. It was great for them.

(Being surrounded by snacks and potential ingredients all day, things he could make a decent meal out of, was probably the worst part if Ian was thinking with his appetite. Knowing full well and good that they did not have the budget for fancy frozen pizzas or homemade apple pie, he’d be coming home to plain macaroni and crushed hopes.)

He’d already done his stocking for the day, and the place was hardly that busy at 2:30 PM, as a cursory glance at his watch informed him, so he kept walking back and forth between the front and the back to look busy. Not that anyone else was on shift with him. He just wanted to put off talking to potential customers as long as possible.

After a glance around the room, Ian returned to the back. It was a small place, wall-to-wall with shelves, but there was just enough free space to sit and stand when he needed a minute. 

Ian couldn’t put off talking to customers forever, though, and his luck was bad enough that the doorbell chimed only a moment after he walked in. 

For the next five minutes, there went his paid, unscheduled break.  He sighed, kneaded his nose bridge, then returned to the counter. "Hi there." 

But no one was at the door or in the aisle in front of him. Was it a false alarm? Ian scrunched his face together, quickly leaning over the counter and scanning the other three aisles. 

After a moment, he saw the guy squatting in aisle four. Ian squinted to get a better look at him. Super tall, a few inches taller than Ian himself, which you didn’t often find when you were 6’2". Nicely dressed, not-so-nicely groomed, black denim jacket and snapback with messy stubble, stalking the aisles in an almost constant crouch to make himself as small as possible. Dark brown hair neatly cropped to the sides of his head, swoopy at the top, and that same hooked nose—

…Wait a minute.

"Hey," Ian said, and the kid suddenly snapped to look at him like a deer in headlights, pale gray eyes rounded wide at the edges. "Did you just swipe that box of crackers into your jacket?"    

Somehow, though it seemed impossible just a few seconds ago, the kid’s face grew paler. He’d been caught in the act — Ian could pinpoint exactly where in his jacket he’d stuffed the box, a sharp ridge poking out of the fabric just beneath his armpit — and yeah, Ian had been there. That shit was scary. 

"I’m — I’m sorry," replied the kid, gasping for air, and it was awfully strange and strangely awful to watch someone so big shake at the mere sight of him. "Uh, I’ll—" Then he moved too quickly, put his hand on the floor to balance himself, and the box came pathetically tumbling out of his jacket. "Shit. Shit, I didn’t mean it, I just—"

Oh, Christ.

 "No, wait," Ian said quickly, rounding the counter as fast as possible and walking toward him. The same kid from the grocery store, stealing the same thing he did last time.  "Dude, it’s fine. It’s just crackers. Your friends dare you to snatch some again?" 

“What?” The kid scrambled back from him. Then he paused, and his face filled with recognition. “Wait… you’re the guy from the grocery store.”

“That I am.” Ian leaned down and picked up the crackers. “You get points for wearing all black, but you lose some for wearing the exact same clothes you wore last time I saw you steal something. Seriously, you can’t keep staking a clean criminal record on Ritz. It’s just not worth it.”

Then the kid went quiet, his mouth twisting at the corners. “I — uh…”

“They outside? If you can tell them to knock it off, I’ll give you this. On me.” Not that Ian would tell the kid that he’d be stealing it for him, in that case. That would be poor etiquette. 

“They… my friends,” the kid whispered. “They don’t…exist?”

“What?”

He swallowed. “I told you that because it’s not,” he fidgeted with his snapback, waiting for the words to come. He stared sadly at the floor. “You shouldn’t tell people that you’re…”

Ian blinked. “Oh.” 

Suddenly, it all made sense: why the kid was dressed in the same nice clothing he was last time but remained poorly groomed, why he’d lied about the friends daring him when Ian caught him the first time, and now, why he was risking his security on a box of Ritz Crackers with a crumpled corner.

…It was hard to risk your security when you had none, wasn’t it? “What’s your name?” 

  “Luke,” the kid said, offering his hand for a handshake. He — Luke — still looked uncomfortable, hiding it behind a grin that warbled at the corners. “What’s yours?”

“Ian,” he replied as he took the hand and helped him off the ground. Ian tilted his head up and gave Luke a small smile in turn. Yep. Just as freakishly tall as last time. “Like I said, on me. Come on, I’ll ring you up.”

As soon as Ian opened the closet, he paused. Something seemed off.

Frowning, he set his shoes down on the rack. Then he leaned further, squinting into the closet's darkness through the grids. 

After a few seconds, Ian realized a bottle was missing from the stash. He couldn’t remember what kind or brand before something else grabbed his attention. He glanced back down, and sure enough, a pair of boots was sitting beside his loafers. 

"Hey," Jeff called from the kitchen, tinny and light, "how was work?"

"You’re home early again," Ian pointed out as he walked in, and sure enough, Jeff was standing at the stove, still in his work clothes, surrounded by spices he must’ve bought that day and a bowl holding two broken eggshells. A pot lodged in the sink, and something glinting in the garbage can past Jeff’s body. 

Jeff shrugged, moving whatever was in the pan around with stylish flicks of his wrist. Ian couldn’t see it over the broken toaster they hadn’t bothered to move yet, but it smelt pretty good. Poached eggs and a sauce of some kind? Maybe if he pestered Jeff enough, they could share a dinner better than a slice of white bread. Speaking of which, their bread bag looked emptier than before. 

Ian raised his eyebrow, leaning against the wall. They still hadn’t talked about the last time Jeff came home early, almost a week ago now. "...Any particular reason for that?"

"Well, yeah," Jeff said. "I mean, okay, I guess I did forget to tell you when it happened, but the boss moved my shift over. I’m working six to two now."

"Christ. What kind of liquor store needs to be open that early?" 

"Liquor stores on Bluebell Avenue," Jeff sighed, leaning far back from the stove and holding the counter for balance. Immediately, his hair became a halo around his head of messy, brown hair, and Ian idly wondered when it had gotten so long, once neatly cropped to the sides of his head and swoopy at the top. "There are a toooooon of day drinkers over there, and the bar nearby doesn’t open ‘till around eight or so. Closes at two. So from three to seven, people are trying to get their fix, and Mike figured we were losing business by refusing to give it to them."

He pulled himself up, eyes narrowing in displeasure. "And he knows I’ll take any hours he gives me, the prick, so I don’t think he bothered asking anybody else to do it. I go to work at five-thirty in the morning for the same money I made at nine. Lucky me, right?"

"Hm." Ian wasn’t sure he believed that, but he had no reason to doubt Jeff. Yet. "That does suck." 

"Anyway," Jeff said, swiftly moving past that. "Since I have so much time after work now —"

"An extra three hours. That’s a dramatic change in hours, don’t you think?"

"—Sure, just interrupt me, whatever," he scoffed, shaking his head. "Anyway, since I have so much time after work now, I decided to make dinner tonight, as you can see. And smell."

"Mhm."

Jeff grinned, a prideful twinkle in his eyes. As always, his smile pulled nicely on his high cheekbones, especially now that they were extra pronounced for reasons that were, admittedly, not as nice. Then he reached over, turned off the stove, and grabbed the handle of his frying pan.

God, growled Ian’s stomach. I love him. 

(He thought about Luke, and his stomach twisted. Was he eating those crackers for dinner?)

The greatest thing that ever came out of their childhood together — aside from their current relationship and the promise of companionship for at least another decade of Ian’s life — was teaching Jeff how to cook, if only for this moment.      

"Poached eggs, your majesty," he said cheekily, presenting his creation with a dramatic bow. "Oh, and red wine sauce. We had a sale at work today."

…Wait. 

Ian stopped dead in his tracks, mind going blank. "...You mean the red wine you buried beneath the shoe rack?" 

Jeff’s head snapped up.

“What?” He asked, blue eyes wide. Frantic. Familiar. “Ian, hey. What are you talking about?”

 Ian stared at him, then at the food, the garbage can, and back at him. He’d known Jeff for a long time, stared at his face, and heard him speak, lie, and laugh even longer. 

And nothing at that moment could convince him otherwise: Jeff was bullshitting him.

“You have got to be kidding me,” he replied, before promptly exiting the kitchen.

“Wait —” The frying pan clattered behind him as Ian kneeled in front of the open closet. That’s what that thing in the garbage can was — the bottle of wine that had gone missing. He couldn’t have gotten that today if Ian had seen it yesterday, the day before yesterday, and the week before that. “Ian, come on, the food is gonna get cold.”

Suddenly, it all made sense: why Jeff had, presumably, been coming home early since that day in the living room, why the stash had stopped growing, and what he’d been writing on those receipts — crunching the numbers — so out of it that Ian practically had to shake him awake. 

“You stole these,” Ian said simply, pulling out bottle after bottle and setting them aside.“Did you get caught?”

He waited and waited and waited. There was a long silence on the other end, then finally — 

“...I’m sorry,” Jeff murmured, and that was that. A confession. “I’m so sorry, Ian.”

Well then, Ian thought. There goes our security blanket.