Work Text:
Your anger seethes, but his indifference freezes so much it burns you from the inside out. You choke on the cold, grasp your shaking edges, and try to brand the taste of the frost on your tongue. You know that you will never remember it, but you try anyway.
(It’s no use. He doesn’t even finish his stilted, awkward, stupidly fucking endearing apology before you’re turning to him like a flower towards the sun, thawing so quickly that you can’t believe yourself.)
(If a part of you is still frostbitten, you push it aside. It doesn’t matter what he said about Gabi, what he implied about you. His friendship burns with sunlight, draws you into its orbit, and you know that you will burn and crash even as you tilt your face to soak in its rays.)
***
“Jesus,” Gabi groans, burying her head in her hands. “I know a relationship with two emotionally stunted jerks isn’t the easiest for communication, but you guys do know that you should probably both be in therapy, right? Just, like, in general.”
Losing Netflix stings. More than that; it’s like taking a hammer to a mirror. You can still remember the joy radiating off of both of you the day of season two’s premiere, and the knowledge that you will never have that again fucking cuts you apart from the inside out. You’re hurt and angry. You know that. He’s hurt and angry. You know that. But it doesn’t change what just happened.
You open your mouth to retort something, but, for once, you don’t have anything to say. As much as you hate to admit it, she… might have a point, actually.
***
You’re not a workaholic the way that he is, but as much as you joke, the series means the world to you; there’s no way you’re going to let him suffer to complete it alone. Not when it’s shaped your life so much over the past few years; not when it’s the thing you’re most proud of in the world; not when it’s so terribly important to him. Season two is going to be great, it’s going to be perfect, it’s going to make Netflix offer to keep you two employed for the next decade at least, and if that means sacrificing your sleep to edit crammed next to the boy you’re in love with on a horrifically expensive loveseat in Chloe’s house at five thirty in the morning, then so be it.
(Selfishly, there’s another reason why you’re so desperate for American Vandal to keep going. You can’t lose this. You can’t lose him. You can’t bear the idea of losing these trips, these brainstorming sessions, the rush of your minds working in tandem in front of a corkboard covered in string. American Vandal is a promise, a contract, that you two are a team, and you can’t lose that.)
***
There’s only two double rooms in the motel you all stay at one night in your trip to meet with Netflix, and you can hardly tell the actual employees, with their real jobs and proper paycheques, that they need to double up so that the three dickhead teenagers running on hyperfocus and Red Bull can sleep in comfort.
“It’s not like that,” Ming tries to explain to the perturbed front desk employee, “it’s for a documentary on— oh, never mind.”
Peter snorts next to you, and you hear yourself laugh, but your heart isn’t fully in it. Ming doesn’t even bother faux-offering to share with one of you, just dumps his equipment and flops onto one of the double beds with a groan.
(Sure, it would have probably ended with you or Peter offering to share, but something about the way that Ming treats it like a given makes you want to scream, for reasons you can’t entirely explain.)
“It’s gonna go fine,” you whisper, later, when both of you are lying on top of the coarse duvet, staring at the ceiling. He hadn’t said anything, but you know him better than you know yourself, and you can read the anxiety in every part of his body. “We’re gonna fucking kill it, dude.”
“What if it’s not good enough?”
It’s said softly, but you can’t help yourself from turning to face him, not even registering how close—how terribly close—you two are now, because that’s maybe the stupidest fucking thing you’ve ever heard.
“Are you shitting me?” You ask, and hold up a hand to stop him before he asks if the shit pun was intentional. “Dude. Vandal is great. You’re great. Netflix is gonna eat that shit up.”
“Just like Mr. Fernandez?” He says, and his voice is still hesitant, but there’s a hint of a smile there.
“Hey, don’t steal my bits.”
He turns to face you too, and your faces are so close together that you can almost feel the flutter of his weirdly long eyelashes when he blinks. You can all but see the thoughts clouding his stupid pretty eyes, but when he opens his mouth, all he says is: “Thanks, Sammy.”
You’re so close that his lips brush against yours when he says it, and his eyes are so far away, and you don’t think he’s even noticed, and nothing about it counts at all, but by God you wish it did. You almost say something—a you’re welcome, or I’m sorry, or any time, or Sammy, huh?, or I love you, or anything really — but the moment is broken with bulldozer-like delicacy when Ming groans out a “hey, can you two shut the fuck up? Thanks,” and you jerk away from each other like he had been pointing a camera at you again.
***
He didn’t expect his success, but you always knew better. Even when you called his old films shit (which, to be clear, they are), you always knew that it was temporary. Beneath the glasses and the sweaters and the stupid pretty eyelashes, he’s always had this ineffable quality to him that promised greatness. It’s wonderful; no, it’s fucking beautiful to see it come to light, to see him create something up to the standard you both know he’s always been capable of.
“Are you mad about it?” A classmate asks you, after season one is out for the world to see. “That everyone’s just talking about Peter?”
You look at them like they’ve grown another head. How could you feel anything other than terribly proud?
(And terribly lovesick, but nobody needs to know that but you and the myriad of Twitter gifmakers who are quickly popping up.)
(You wonder, briefly, how far that will go. You don’t think you’re ready to see fake social media accounts of yourself like some fans make for K-pop people.)
***
Jenna texts you the title of a book out of the blue shortly after you and him leave Bellevue. It’s during the horrible new adjustment period where you realise you’ve grown heart-wrenchingly used to knowing that he was nearby, and your home feels empty without him. Of course, it’s not available in any of the libraries you have access to, so you need to specifically order a copy from the Barnes and Noble website, something that you can practically hear Peter and Christa Carlyle scolding you for. As if it’s your fault that Jenna’s book tastes are just as elusive and swanky as she is. She probably read the damn book in its original French, bound in pure gold and gifted from the—Jesus, incredibly overqualified author. You snap her a photo of your order confirmation page, and she sends back a photo of her giving you a thumbs up, her smile more genuine than you’d ever seen from her, save the photos that got leaked.
Your sister sees the package when it arrives, and you tell her to fuck off a little more sharply than you usually would as you snatch the cardboard covered novel out of her hands. You wouldn’t call Jenna a friend, not really, but for whatever reason, her sharing something with you feels a bit like something you shouldn’t joke about.
The book isn’t something that you’d pick out for yourself; in fact, you’re not even entirely sure that you like it. It’s something that not even the most pretentious literature fans at your school would probably enjoy; there’s not even a real storyline, and there’s far too much of both horse metaphors and cannibalism for your tastes (heh). For such a short book, it feels like you’re reading it forever, slowly sinking underwater, drowned in the waves of the all-encompassing love the protagonist describes. You almost put it down a few times, but then a line shakes you to your bones, like some truth you’ve never been ready to admit to yourself has been branded on the page for everyone to see. It feels like a confession penned by a hand that will never give a shit about Sam Ecklund, and the love that you’ve carried around for so long that it has become a part of you.
The next day, Peter comes over, and as you make dick jokes, you watch the sunset dance along his sharp jawline. Disjointed phrases of the book come to your mind; snippets of the sea, and hope, and God, and death, and a singular truth that can never be truly expressed.
***
In the end, you do what you’ve always done: you think up a thousand different ways to say something (at least somewhat) eloquently, decide that hey, actually all of these ideas are dogshit and I should feel bad, and then throw both options out the window in favour of doing something impulsive.
“Holy shit, Pete,” you say, and he shifts in front of you in order to get a better look at your fingerprint-covered MacBook screen. Your hands are trembling from a mix of joy and giddy nervousness, and while he’s shock-still, you can see the hesitant joy blooming across his face. “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.”
“Holy shit!” You say again, the last syllable dissolving into a bubbling laugh. “And you were scared that season two—”
“—Wouldn’t be as well-received,” he finishes for you, the way he always has, and oh, there’s the smile. “Holy—oh my God, Sam. Oh my fucking god.”
“We need to buy Dylan flowers,” you say, only half-joking, “and Kevin too, and Chloe, and Gabi, and Ming, and—”
“Filmmaker,” he says, soft in a way that makes something your chest collapse into a ball of light as he gestures at the email. “That’s what my nomination says. Filmmaker.”
“Fuck yeah, it does! Peter Maldonado, filmmaker,” you read out with a flourish, partly because in so many ways you’re still a theatre kid, and partly because you would do literally anything to make him laugh.
(Well, maybe not literally anything, since you did make him poke through mystery poop in an alley by himself. You’d do literally almost anything to make him laugh. Whatever.)
It works — he’s laughing, high on disbelief and jubilation, and so much happiness radiating from him that you don’t think, you just act. With the same rush of exhilaration you felt when you cracked any of the cases, when you had a sleepover for the first time, when you got when you found out you had gotten a Netflix deal, with the same rush of happiness and fear you’ve always learned to associate with Peter, you and him turn to face each other like a compass swinging towards its true north. You’re not sure which one of you is the compass. You’re not sure if it matters. But you are sure that you really, really want to kiss him, and for the first time, you can’t think of a good reason not to.
(“Holy shit,” Peter says when you pull away. His eyes are wide and his glasses are crooked, and it’s basically the cutest fucking thing you’ve ever seen.)
(“Dude,” you reply, and neither of you mention that you’re out of breath, “stop stealing my fucking lines.”)
***
“You’re such a jackass,” you bite out at him, over some fight that had spiralled from something utterly fucking petty. You’re waiting for him to bite back, to turn that wall of ice on you, but he doesn’t. Maybe you’ve both changed more than you thought, because he knows that neither of you mean any of it, and so do you. When it settles, and you hold out your hand, he takes it the same way he did when you first met at recess, pulling you along into his next adventure. He knows just as well as you that your mercurial temper is fleeting, but nothing else that you share is.
***
“Bro, you gotta make a wish,” Dylan yells out, audible over the off-key cacophony of drunk young adults singing happy birthday to you. You can only barely hear Gabi and Chloe’s melodic voices — the Wayback Boys are all but screaming, and Ganj has made herself an impromptu megaphone out of a paper plate—but there’s only one voice you’re searching for anyway. (Based on the smug look on Jenna Hawthorne’s face, she knows it too.)
While you can’t see his face from behind you, you know that he’s grinning, the same smile that you’ve felt against your lips, against your skin. For as long as you remember, you’ve always had the exact same wish, exhaled against cheap candles again and again and again.
You blow out the candles, but you do it with a smile in place of a wish, as your hodgepodge group of friends cheer and an arm wraps around your waist.