Archive of Our Own

He hated the bus, to be honest, and he hated it even more when it was this busy.

Oh, the suffocating smell of piss. And when it wasn’t piss, it was that nauseating smell cars have when they’ve been closed too long, and if it wasn’t that because someone had opened a window, then it was the smell of rain—not the nice, fresh kind from the grass of his kindergarten friend’s backyard but the old, rotten smell of water that had seeped beneath the cushions. That wasn’t even counting the squeaky sounds from the seats around him, obviously, or the way it always felt either too hot or too cold, and most importantly—the people.

Pressing into him and around him. Circling him like hawks—no, a little more insidious, like centipedes crawling up his arms. Sometimes it even felt like they were looking at him and staring, finding just the right way to—

“Long day?”

The voice made him jump even if his brain had already caught up to it and he felt a little dumb: it was relaxed, high but sweet, a little raspy. Certainly nothing that would scare anybody. God, what a loser—anyway, the girl, he guessed, she’d asked a question—

“Huh?”

Ohh, so articulate. His eyes finally found the source of the voice—a woman, sat down (wow, leech) right in front of where he was standing, their hands both holding onto the same pole. His legs almost brushed hers, and he noted that the bus was full enough that putting more space between them was impossible.

A picture of normalcy, painfully average. She had dark hair; not as thin or as dark as his, a little dull maybe, reaching down to just below her shoulders, full and voluminous. Dark, large eyes, her face was sort of round, memorable if only for the way she was paying attention to him, specifically. Completely free of makeup or any type of jewellery, dressed in neat, neutral colours, slacks and a button-up and a jacket; her posture had this stiffness, sort of hunched over the backpack clutched to her chest, legs closed.

But she was looking up at him. “I said, it looks like you had a long day.”

For some reason, he heard her loud and clear—maybe because of the time of night, people being tired and not prone to speaking a lot, maybe because of their rather forced proximity he still didn’t want to focus on too much on. There was a guy right beside him pressing his back into his naked shoulder. “Uh,” he tried to bring his attention back to her—sluggish to get out of his own head as usual. “Just got off work. You could say that.”

“Eh, don’t I get that...” her mouth twisted in a casual smile. Her eyes were adorned by evident dark circles. “Sorry if that was- weird, by the way, you just looked a little, you know-”

“It’s fine,” he rushed, not as kindly as he wanted, and the girl went quiet. Obviously, because you were an asshole, asshole. God, why do you do this? Ugh. “Uh,” he forces out, “a little what?”

The girl looked back up, a little spooked. Ughhh just bury me. “Alienated?”

Oh. “Alienated.”

“Yeah, I mean, overwhelmed, you know?”, her words came out faster, barely audible over the sound of the bus. He could hear her perfectly.

This was... not a normal thing to happen on public transport, right? He could drop it. Random person talking to him on a bus? Any other day? No thanks. But... “Uh, I, I get it. Yeah. I guess.”

What was he doing. He couldn’t stop looking back at her. What a weirdo.

The woman’s eyes stayed on him, too—narrowed slightly, determined, in a weird way. “And public transport, god. People are so close all the time.”

“God, I swear, it’s a torture chamber.” The words tumbled out of him like an avalanche.

She actually chuckled, her voice loosening suddenly like a cut piece of thread. And that was something. Now, his ears were also entirely focused on her. “I could tell.”

“Pshht, what?”

“Well, you... you looked like you wanted to-” her shoulders suddenly dropped some tension, her body relaxing the slightest bit, and her voice dropped to a loud whisper—her hand cupping her mouth and her torso leaning forward in a show of fabricated understanding. “To kill the guy next to you, dude.”

He blinked at that last word—got over it in a fraction of a second, because she’d chuckled as she talked, a little unsure, and for some reason it made the corner of his mouth twitch up. He found himself leaning down, mirroring her, and it helped because his shoulder was not touching the guy anymore. “I kind of do.”

The corner of her mouth pulled up as if forced by an external force, and she turned a little timid. “So I was right?”

He didn’t know why it happened, but suddenly her tone, and how her voice lowered, her hint of nervousness, or something else entirely convinced him he had to talk to her more. He had to. “He smells like a wet dog.”

She covered her mouth, huffed a laugh through her nose, and he felt immediately vindicated. Her hair smelled like... lavender? Was that what that was? He remembered her mum having a perfume, once—“There’s no way he can’t hear us.”

“He’s got headphones in. Not that I’d care. It’s public transport, I will literally never see him aga-” the bus stopped abruptly—he swinged on his feet a little and pushed right against said man, then immediately retracted. Oh, he bet he’d stumbled like an idiot—but when he looked down, the girl had just instinctively held out a hand that she was now retracting.

The bus had come to one of those stops that felt like a breath of fresh air, literally: most people got off, and the smell of rain—the good one, the cold one—rushed into the space around him. He indulged in it for a moment, chills running up his scarce arm hair.

“Yo,” the girl said. “Sit down.”

The spot at her left had been freed and after a second of hesitation, he did, and his body relaxed against the seat. He didn’t think about how badly he needed this. How did everything instantly feel so much better when you sat down on public transport?

“You literally don’t know what he could do, by the way,” she said. “If you insult someone on the bus, who says they’re not gonna punch you, y’know?”

“Uhh,” he murmured, his muscles growing heavy. It felt nice, comforting in a weird way, to have only the back of his seat behind him and only this girl next to him. “I’d punch him harder and knock him out.”

“Hmm, confident,” she said, in a teasing tone he’d have carefully analysed in a different situation. “You a boxer or something?”

Any other day, he’d have made a joke, boasted, gone along with painting a very specific picture of himself; maybe he’d have been sarcastic, or maybe even defensive. He hated that, at times, it would greatly depend on how he was feeling on a given day what side of himself he’d offer the world. Tonight, he could hear it in the right side of his head: that little feeling in his stomach that needed to be sure he’d never be seen as weak or weird or small or scared. Because, well, what was she getting at, that part of him asked? That he didn’t look like a boxer, that he was supposed to? That he looked too delicate? Too thin? Too— No, you idiot, another part interjected. She’s just making a joke, and you like jokes. It’s okay.And a quieter voice: you don’t even want to look like that, silly. You know that. It’s okay. Don’t be an ass. Get over yourself.

He shrugged it all off—not because of any actual real introspection: he’d think about this interaction for days, berate himself for having looked this pathetic, fight with himself and overthink himself into nausea. Why would he think those things, and why would he hate it? Why did he always fight himself in the first place? Was it normal to think about himself this much? Truthfully, today he was just a little too tired. “I deliver shit.”

There was a small pause. “Like,” the comedic lift in her tone continued, her voice sounding more melodic, “literal shit? You know that’s an actual thing, right?”

He turned to her—she also seemed to have relaxed, less closed off now, hand off the pole. She was wearing a windbreaker. It felt like they could both breathe a little better now; it felt like he could see her a little clearer, the frizz of her fringe, the mole on her cheek. “Yeah, a friend of mine had one delivered to a guy.”

A blink. “You’re kidding.”

“Swear to god. Not like we ever knew anything about it, dude never replied or anything... It was the idea of it, I guess.” He stretches an elbow on the edge of the seat, body turned towards her, soothing cold metal pressing into his skin. “No, I deliver boring, normal things. But people order a lot of TVs.”

“Mhh. I’m sure that’ll help in the event of a stranger attacking you,” the girl’s tone sounded less tense and friendlier by the minute. It made him feel more at ease, like he was welcomed into her voice—god, what a creep he was. “You can throw a boxed Alexa at them.”

He tilted his head at her, fake-offended, surprised to find how much fun this was getting him—a smirk on his face that wanted to figure her out despite himself. This stranger he didn’t know the name of. “How could you, I don’t deliver Alexas. That’s Amazon. Also, acting all high and mighty, what do you do?”

Her smile twitched. “I’m an accountant.”

“...an accountant.”

“Yyyyep,” she emphasised, nodding slowly.

He blinked, very deliberately. “Wow.”

The girl shrugged, tucked some hair behind her ear and leaned back into her seat, eyes never leaving him. “What can ya do. It pays the bills.”

“They couldn’t pay me all the money in the world to look at numbers for eight hours a day.”

“It’s not that bad!”

“It’s okay, you’re off the clock, they’re not gonna get you here. Unless they got a hidden mic on you. Hope you got a close look at that contract.”

The girl laughed—she snorted, actually, hand on her mouth, eyes thinning. “Oh, no, the mics are standard accountant procedure. Rumour is if you can’t multiply by fours in under two seconds, they just take you out.”

“Ohh, so that’s what happened to Doug...”

She laughed louder—he found himself bashing in it as the recorded, repetitive voice announced a stop he knew was close to where he was headed. He’d have noticed earlier, to be honest, if he were looking out—but he’d been distracted. The girl seemed to notice that he’d bent forward to look at what stop they were at. “You headed home?”

Eyes back to her again, he probably stared for a fraction too long—and a part of his mind was already way ahead of him, excogitating something as a wordless idea without his consent, instinctual in a way he never was, socially. He thought, I don’t know, she looks a little tired. He thought, it’d sound so weird. Isn’t it weird that I’m even thinking about it? He thought I don’t even know her—

“Do you like bars?” Oh, he needed to kill himself. “Uh,” ohh, he needed to dissolve into the earth. To be squished under the wheels of the bus. “I- I’m headed to, to a friend’s bar.”

“Oh. Cool,” she sounded just slightly taken aback. God, he was sure she could smell how dumb and awkward he sounded, but—she was gracefully ignoring it. Or not noticing it. Or just didn’t care—yeah, okay, dude. “They’re a barista, or?”

“Owner. They like that s-sort of stuff. I guess.” Ah, well. That was fun while it lasted. While he could still pretend he was at all capable of—

“I do like bars, yeah.” The brunette was just smiling up at him.

He forced himself to refocus on her. “Um, I mean,” shut up. Shut up. “I’m, you know, if you.”

There was not a hint of mirth of ridicule on her face. She shrugged a little in the windbreaker that was just slightly too large on her shoulders. “Yeah, sure.”

“Oh,” he said, deflated, felt a rush of embarrassment at what he might have implied and rushed again, waving a hand back and forth between them, “this isn’t, uh, you know. I just, you-”

“I know,” she smiled, small and genuine. “I’m- enjoying this too.”

God, say you’re not, you fucking idiot. Are you just going to let her think you’re this pathetic, hanging onto this conversation, that you can’t just as easily turn around and leave, that you need this? That you’re not in control of this— “Cool,” he said, swiftly turned around, looked at his feet, at the little screen flashing the name of his stop. “It’s the next one.”

“You don’t even know my name.”

He fully turned back to her at that, while she got up and swinged her backpack on one shoulder—half a head shorter than himself—she still looked amused, like she was in on a joke he wasn’t getting, but that she knew would make him laugh when he got there. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t bring himself to find a hint of ill intention in this woman’s mannerisms. “Oh, but you’ll follow a stranger you met on the bus to a bar?”

“No offence, but you don’t seem like the dangerous type.”

The childish, disgusting instinct to prove her wrong got washed over by the distinct giddiness fluttering in his stomach, enough to knock on yet another one of his closed doors. “So...?”

“Abigail. Er, Abbi is better.”

“Hmm. Doesn’t fit. Abigail belongs to someone blonder.”

“Usually, the proper response is ‘nice to meet you, my name is’,” she stepped beside him in front of the doors, bus coming to a stop. His head was split in two, feeling every sensation—her voice at his left, the shift of the bus beneath his feet, the cold air hitting his shoulders again, his shirt pressing into his skin, his hair down his neck.

They stopped on the sidewalk, quiet as the last warm lights of the day warmed them. “Maybe I don’t want to go for the proper response?”

“Well,” she straightened up, “I wanna know your name.”

Eh, it had to happen, eventually. He tried not to make a face. “...Leeroy.”

Abigail—ehh, he’d get used to it—squinted at him. “That sounded like a question.”

“It wasn’t. I just, uh,” he scrambled for anything, literally anything that would make more sense than it feels weird to say my name ok, I don’t know why, “guess I never really loved it.”

“Ah, makes sense.” Their feet almost matched paces as they started walking down the street. It wasn’t an isolated corner of town by any means, but it felt peaceful, the sun setting and their voices carrying easily in the air.

This girl—Abigail—there was something about her he couldn’t put his finger on.

Maybe it was the way she talked, firm, but human, sweet in the right places that didn’t make it feel like she thought he was stupid, a vocal fry at the end of longer sentences. A little tired. Maybe it was how she looked: it wasn’t that she wasn’t expressive, but the expressions she did make looked crafted, as if carefully picked out for each one of his words. She paid attention to the smallest, stupidest things; how he didn’t work for Amazon, how he stuttered over his own name, how he was about to trip when the bus abruptly stopped. How did that make him feel the safest and yet the most uneasy he could feel when talking to a stranger? He was not the type to do this. He owed her nothing, had nothing to prove—so how did he get to walking to a bar together, where they’d presumably keep talking? Why was that feeling—of being, in the most simple of ways, paid attention to—so alien and alluring?

“You look like you’re on another planet again,” she teased again, with the smallest aftertaste of apprehension, and again, his attention was completely pulled in her direction. Just like that.

He wasn’t sure he liked it. “Sorry,” he found himself murmuring, “happens sometimes. I guess.”

“I get in my head too,” Abbi’s voice sounded smaller, “sometimes.”

“It’s not-” the reply was automatic, but he didn’t actually know how to defend himself, or why he was trying to. “Y-yeah. I don’t know. It’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” she sounded kinder than she had so far. “It’s not like it’s a choice. It’s not stupid.”

“I know, no, yeah, I know, it’s just-” it’s just that whenever I’d feel like this my dad would tell me to stop acting like a fucking pussy, he thought, but, well, he couldn’t say that. “Nothing. I know it’s not.” And thankfully, they stopped in front of the bar.

The pink and green and yellow lights were strong enough to bounce off of her skin as she stared at the sign. The bar definitely wasn’t... subtle about what its purpose was and what type of person it was for, and that was okay, but—bringing someone else there did imply a few things. He pointedly stared at the rainbow stickers-plastered window as her eyes widened slightly, a question in them when she turned back to him and frankly asked, “any reason in particular you come here, or...?”

Whenever people found out Leeroy frequented a queer bar, it was, honestly, a little weird to find himself in the situation—how anyone’s mind, even friends of his who were definitely cool with shit like this, jumped to the question of what do you like first and foremost, even if they weren’t obvious about it. His time spent passively obtaining information—from the people chatting around him, about prescriptions being late and what size should I start with and the best ways to gather the courage to buy from the women’s section; from his own friends, Leah’s girlfriend and Jacob’s crush on Steve Buscemi—he’d wished it to be nothing. He’d wanted it to be just something around him, like everything else, like the people touching him on the bus and the smell of rain; something that was there and never really affected him.

It never was like that. No: it felt intense, a pressure, built up a bundle of something in his chest he hadn’t been aware of until it was too big to ignore; the shirt on his skin and his hair tickling his neck. Some part of him always knew. And yet—and yet, still, having a real answer felt outside the realm of possibility: no, I don’t have a reason, because I don’t even know what the “reason” would be. Or maybe—the reason is I found myself here at the worst moment of my life, somehow. The reason is I don’t like to see pictures of myself as a kid—pictures of me at all, really, and I don’t like listening to my voice that much and I feel too tall, all the time, and I think I have some sort of obsession with how your pants suit you but not in a weird way, no, worse: in a selfish, envious way. The reason is I should have never said a word to my mother because what I told her feels wasted, and fake, and like a scorching red stove now. It feels too ruined to try and make something out of it. I don’t know what to do with all of this.

Leeroy did not say any of that. “My friend, they’re, you know.”

Abbi’s face turned teasing again, that hint of being in a joke and waiting for him to get in too. “...gay?”

“Pfff,” when she saw him snorting, her smile widened, “sorry, just, they’d kill me if they knew I laughed at that. Uhm, I don’t know if that’s the word they’d use, but, yeah. Pretty much.”

“Cool.”

“You...” he could not believe he was going to do this. He kinda owed it to Riley, though. “You are gonna be cool about... this, right?”

Abbi huffed out a little snort, slightly awkward, mostly confident, just like he was learning she usually felt. “I feel like it’d be very hypocritical if I weren’t?”

Oh. “Oh, are, are you-”

“Ehh,” she gestured casually, “Little bit of everything,” she shrugged, and took a step in, and that was that. He could only follow and pretend he wasn’t touched that she didn’t pry into him, and what he liked, and what he was, and why he was here in the first place.

—

When they got in—subdued music from the 80s and 90s he always judged and occasionally approved of, walls full of graffiti and layers upon layers of ripped up posters, faded stickers, flags, frames; mismatched tables and chairs dragged around from corner to poorly-lit corner, lights painting the patrons’ skins with soft magentas, reds, blues—she went to get a drink and he walked straight towards the table he always hogged to himself when he came here alone: in a corner close to the exit, next to a dark window with tall, heavy, wine red curtains, patched with love and random scraps of fabric. It felt surreal to walk in here with someone who was less familiar with this place than himself—to realise he was familiar with it.

When Abigail caught up to him, she put her drink down on a coaster, handed him a glass of water, and got herself a small red armchair from a nearby table, pushed it next to his own. “This is really nice. You come here often?”

Leeroy shot her a look and a smirk—“Feels like you should’ve shot your shot earlier, Abigail. I brought you here, remember?”

She snorted back at him. “Seriously, I’m curious. If you come alone, too, y’know. Maybe you’re the one who picks up people in here.”

He wasn’t sure what face he was making when he looked back at her. “You think I’m the type to pick people up at bars?”

“I don’t know yet,” she perched her chin on her closed fist, “that’s why I’m asking.”

“And if I were?”

“See, the fact you’re asking tells me you’re not,” Abbi kissed her teeth, moonlight hitting her hair from the gap in the curtains, “but if you were, good for you.”

Huh. “Nah, I’m really not. It’s just- I come here with some friends, usually, but sometimes, it’s... I dunno.”

“Too much?” Abigail’s voice was warm, like the air around them, as if part of it. “I get that. I need to do some relaxing alone too, sometimes. Well,” she made a funny face, “depends on what you consider relaxing, I guess...”

“What does that mean?”

Her fingers were tracing the ridge of her tall glass, a syrupy pink-red liquid inside it. She stared at it—it had been rare for her not to look him in the eye, since the moment she first talked to him. “Promise you won’t make fun of me.”

“You cannot ask me that.”

“Aaand that’s another thing I know about you now,” she smirked, no real heat behind the words, then sighed. “But I guess that’s on me for mentioning it. Well, s-sometimes, I... check out abandoned buildings.”

Doing a sort of double take into his glass of water, he leaned back into his chair, eyes wide and eyebrows raised. “You’re serious?”

Her eyes kept on the table as Abigail nodded slowly, sipped from her drink, played with her hands. For the first time in the evening she looked sheepish. “It’s just something I- I don’t know. It started as, like, thrill seeking, but at the same time... is it crazy that I find it soothing? I’m, y’know, alone in these huge, empty places, and I mostly just walk around and talk to myself.”

This whole situation was weird. Impossibly, almost: this person he’d first talked to an hour ago, barely, was now somehow telling him all this? It felt weird. Always took him by surprise—he never found himself to be much of a comforting shoulder to cry on; he was jagged edges, sharp rebuttals, changes of subject, a smile that looked forced and a body “too pointy to give good hugs”. He was shit at offering advice, too. People didn’t normally feel like they could talk about things to him, and he supposed it was because of his usual reactions; he’d try to be supportive, he did, but there was no way around his most deeply rooted fear: that the reason someone was opening up to him was to have him say something in exchange. That it would be nothing but a transaction: giving away something someone could hold over his head, use against him, hurt him with.

Another thing about tonight that felt completely out of the ordinary—he somehow knew this girl wouldn’t do that. It was there, the sinking feeling in his gut, but for some reason—for some reason he kept it going, and instead of a quip or a joke or a poor attempt at changing the subject, he replied with a question. “You ever get caught? Hurt?”

It was the right answer, or at the very least the one she wanted: it made her smile, a little wickedly, playful, and finally look back at him again. “Actually, no. Never. Guess that’s why I still do it. Nothing happened, yet.”

“Thrill seeker, yeesh...” he leaned forward again—the lights were a little too low to really see her face properly. “Not a good life, eh.”

“Hey, I told you not to make fun of me!”

“Pff, I’m not. If I were, I’d tell you you’d be better off bungee-jumping, at this point.” She made a face at him and he snorted. “No, it’s just... I’m guessing excitement is hard to find, if you’re an accountant,” his teasing smile turned sheepish, “or a deliveryman.”

“Hmm.” Abigail’s only point of focus seemed to be him, and the way she kept looking at him sneaked under his skin and tickled at his nerves. “And how would a deliveryman go about it, uh?”

“They don’t,” the words slipping out of him, Leeroy felt observed, pried into, and yet couldn’t stop talking. “Or, I dunno. Maybe they invite a stranger they met on the bus to come to a bar with them.”

“That’s your idea of danger?”

He shrugs. “It’s my idea of recklessness,” god, shut up, shut up, “so, is it yours, then?” Against all odds, he gave into it—the pull dragging his eyes on her, focused, too curious and honest. “Am I a thrill?”

When she raised her glass to her lips, Abigail still didn’t stop looking at him. Her hands were short more than they were small, nails chewed and bare. “I guess you could be. I hope you’re not.”

Leeroy could only blink, eyes fixed on her face, unsure how to respond, and she just looked earnest. “Oh, really,” he lamely breathed out.

“Well, yeah, I hope you’re not dangerous to me,” her smile was tight lipped, and she looked at a point close to his head, fidgeting with her glass. Then her mouth opened, closed, and opened again. “And I hope you’re not, y’know. Temporary.”

Oh, wow.

When she said that, so candidly, so openly, it dawned on Leeroy that this in front of him was a person: not a magic little spell from a fairy that decided to offer him the weirdest and most interesting night in years and then put everything back in its place at midnight; him alone in his room, her in a cubicle where she earned enough to get by and thought about real things and wasn’t interested in messy, undefined things like him. Up until now, to him, this was never meant to be more: severed from the world in a little, temporary bubble, just him and this girl and her questions and her eyes. Abigail was a person with a life, and a job, and hobbies and people she loved; he’d assumed she felt the same—a single night of chats and back and forth and then gone forever.

Because in the end, why would it even matter? Meet again to... what, keep going? Try and recreate this something outside of a rainy bus and inside jokes about sweaty men? What was always so off-putting about relationships, to Leeroy, was how uncomfortable they’d become by nature. Stay with someone long enough and you’ll experience it all; the awkward silence, the fighting, the irritation that came from that one thing they did that you just couldn’t stand. He’d never been crazy for it all. It all made him feel like Abbi’s looks: pried into, peeled open, analysed like a lab mouse, and the thought that she could keep doing that indefinitely, that she’d eventually find something—she could just be using some sweet-talking to learn about him, lead him into a trap, to find his hidden thoughts and play them back over and over to scorn him. It was hard not to think about it.

And despite that—he couldn’t help the small spark brightening his chest. Abigail had a life, he knew, but this was the one moment he’d realised she might want him to be, in some way, part of it, and that maybe—maybe he wanted that too. “I-”, he scrambled for anything—anything that might let him escape this, the hint to something real, or deeper in any sense of the word—

She beat him to it, narrowing her eyes. “Why, am I a thrill for you?”

He had to give her that, she was something. There was something about her that almost forced his defences down—no matter how much he tried, Leeroy could not bring himself to feel threatened by this person figuring him out with a couple little sentences. Maybe it really was something out of their control—maybe this was the work of a fairy after all, a witch in disguise sent to find out his deepest, darkest secrets, to force him to repent, his sins finally catching up to him. Maybe there was no bubble at all—the crisp, rainy air and the murmur of people being themselves all around. Or maybe it was just him that had changed, today. All he could reply with was honesty. “I don’t know, Abbi,” he held her gaze, “I have no idea what you are.”

Before she even could reply, Leeroy felt a hand on his shoulder and jumped.

“Mateo,” Riley said, placating, as always. “Good to see you. Who’s your friend?”

“Oh, hey,” he tried, the emotional whiplash still throwing him for a loop. He was having some issues with finding a response that wouldn’t make him look like an idiot, and this was Riley, and he wasn't ready to see them, and he was dressed like this—

“I’m- Abbi,” she beat him again, and his eyes flew to her, ripped out of his own head. She sounded sheepish, like those very first sentences she’d said to him in the bus. “Are you, um, Leeroy’s friend?”

“Riley,” they offered a hand, leaning over him and shaking Abbi’s. Their voice was gentle, deep, and they were wearing black nail polish. Typical—as was the little pang of something resembling envy in his chest. “You look overdressed for a place like this.”

Abbi was looking pleasant and almost fascinated, a look Leeroy had seen in many people’s eyes when meeting the bartender for the first time. Not his type, not really—but sure, he could see it. Abbi cleared her throat and looked down at her slacks. “I was, uh, just done with work. And then he, sorta-” her mouth twitched, and she looked even more embarrassed—not awkward, but self conscious, maybe. “I mean, we- just met. On the way here. He invited me.”

Riley’s reaction certainly wasn’t the most subtle, but he could understand—eyebrows raised, they turned to him, made a half surprised, half questioning noise from their throat.

“Don’t make it weird, yeesh,” he looked away immediately; at the ceiling, the light flickering in the corner. “don’t worry. She’s cool.”

“That’s not what-” Riley did a double take, that familiar look they always offered him, and muscle memory kicked in; how much fun it was, regardless of all the feelings and complicated emotions, to always try and say the thing that would piss them off the most, or at the very least make them tick. “You wouldn’t bring in someone not cool, Mateo, I know. That wasn’t my question.”

“Whaat,” his voice slipped, easily, into a teasing sort of drag that he knew was annoying to them, “did you want her number instead? Cause I think I know someone who’d be reaaaally sad if-”

And before he could finish Riley pinched his nose hard.

“Ow!”

“Maybe you try getting her number first, eh?”, they teased, interrupting his subsequent sputtering, “See you later, ass. Nice to meet you, Abbi.”

The girl sat beside him waved at them as they left, and made a small, appreciative sound. “They seem so...”

“Nosy?”

“Cool,” she smiled, then tilted her head at him, those eyes shiny and back on him. “Why, are they nosy?”

“All the time. Too much. And they pretend like it’s not even a big deal. Annoying as shit. I wish they were dead.”

She chuckled, low, and somehow Leeroy’s mind circled back to Riley’s last comment. “Sounds like a real friend.”

“Oh, wow,” now that Riley had entered their little altered reality for the night, he was feeling on edge, unwanted thoughts flooding into their bubble, and the lighthearted tilt to his voice suddenly felt safer to fall back on—made it all feel controlled, relaxed and unchanged, and he stuck with it. “You just gonna take my word for it?”

What he wasn’t expecting was for Abbi to lean forward again and perch her chin on her fist, her playful tone like a challenge to his, and he realised—his friends usually tried to mellow him and slow him down and play into his antics as a contrast to him. He liked them, he really did, and it wasn’t like they didn’t care for him, but that was how it worked between them: he was the teasing asshole, and they were the complementary part of the dynamic, lighthearted scolding, hot and cold, spice and sugar. Little boxes he’d always felt comforting: being able to just be this and not think about wanting much else.

And, suddenly, he thought—there was a small piece to the puzzle, there was the start of figuring out what felt so different about this person: nobody ever matched him. Nobody had ever acted less like a tranquillizer and more like a mirror, like they just saw him, whatever he presented himself as, and adapted around it. Enjoyed it. “Well, I’ve known you for, what, an hour and a half? Still beats three minutes. I’ll take my chances.”

Leeroy needed a couple minutes, to be honest. “Do you... wanna go out? Porch is nice.”

—

“Sooo,” Abbi raised her voice the slightest bit as they walked out—a weekday, late enough for it to be dark and cool but early enough that they were surrounded by maybe three or four people max. The fairy lights gave the porch a warmth that felt encompassing and soothing, familiar, and seeing her, so new, in this context felt weird. “...Mateo?”

An uncaring noise, waving it off. “That’s my last name. Don’t worry about it.”

When he leaned against the wooden railing and she followed, mirroring him, he could tell she was staring hard at him again, figuring something out, or trying to. She hesitated—something she did rarely enough that he’d already started noticing it. “Do you like it... more than your name?”

“I dunno,” he said, too fast, then snorted, “what’s all this talk about my name?”

“Oh, you know, I like prying into things people are clearly trying to avoid.” She shrugged, and the tension in his shoulders immediately lessened.

“Somehow, I could tell.”

“Is that a backhanded insult I hear?”

“No, it’s not- I don’t-” He immediately reacted, actually finding himself scared of offending her somehow, but instead, Abbi was smiling. Teasing him. There she was, matching him, not stepping back but pushing against him. It felt like a shock to his entire system, everywhere, right into his fingers, an elated little thing in his chest. “pshht. You’re so...”

“...I’m so what?” Abbi stared, right into him, lights reflecting into her gaze, and he could not take his eyes off of her.

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” he muttered. His face was warm and his tongue felt loose. “I don’t know what I’m talking about. I don’t know how you haven’t—” Leeroy looked anywhere else, anywhere, as he gestured helplessly between them, “I don’t... do this, ever. Ever.”

“...Me neither.”

His eyes snapped back to her, looking shy once again. “Well, you seem more of a natural than me, for sure.”

“I’m serious,” she drawled, almost bitterly. “I... hah, I don’t remember the last person I told about my... hobbies, I guess.”

“Hobbies, plural?”

“Oh, the other ones are boring. Average millennial stuff,” a weird chuckle in her words, a dark little thing. “I play story-driven games in easy mode and the lowest graphic settings. I watch video essays while I eat dinner. Even play guitar for three minutes every two months. You-” it turned mellow, her voice—more vulnerable. He recognised it: frustration. “You don’t know why I’m here? Talking to you? Hell, I don’t either. There’s not a lot to share.”

You’re not boring, his mind told him, uselessly. You’re the furthest thing from boring. I don’t know why. “What’s your favourite game.”

“Uh?”

“Favourite game. Come on.”

Abbi’s face did a weird little twist—shock, unexpected emotions all muddled together. “Uh... Ace attorney?”

Three full seconds of silence between them, and, “...Ace attorney?”

“What!”, she sounded brighter again, and a thread of tension snapped, suddenly. “Listen—listen, I’m 26, I have every right to like a DS classic!”

“That’s not the problem. The problem is that your favourite game is the lawyer themed visual novel, Abigail.”

“Ace Attorney is like, so good-”, she argued, laughing, “and also, see, I told you! Boring.”

“That’s-” he’d wanted to take her off of that line of thought. “listen, you didn’t say Undertale, is what I meant to say. So you’re automatically not boring.”

“Wh- Undertale is good!”

Bingo. When he said that, she turned to him with an almost affronted expression— and it felt nice to see her have that reaction because of him. He’d always enjoyed it, getting people to their limits, but with her—well, he kind of just wanted to make her laugh so hard she couldn’t breathe, but that would take a while, probably. “Not the point I’m making at all.”

Surprisingly, there it was: she laughed, high and bright, a giggle. He didn’t care if she saw him smile back. And once she stopped: “It’s a nice night. I’m- um, I’m glad I came here.”

“It can get a little boring, with time,” he shrugged. “I just end up playing the arcade games or, I dunno. Staying up with a couple friends.”

“Any reason why you were coming here alone?” Abbi was on him again, interested. “And why you obviously avoided your friend Riley?”

“I’m not avoiding them—”

“You kind of were.”

“Listen, it’s just—” A knot in his throat—sudden, blocking his airflow.

It always felt like this. God, this was going so well.

Suddenly their precious, comfortable space was invaded by all of his stupid feelings and thoughts and sensations—how he looked and what he was thinking and his hair and god, his shirt. The shirt he’d thought about wearing for way too long, sitting in his closet for months and only ever worn under his uniform, and today he’d just taken that off and went out before he could talk himself out of it. Haunting rather than euphoric, three dollars spent in a thrift store like he’d been stealing, hoping, praying nobody would see which section of the store he’d got it from; the simplest, barest little tank top, stretchy and decently tight over his chest, a pale yellow. The fear hitting him every second it brushed against his skin. The mere idea of Riley seeing him and really looking, like they always did, and they’d know, they’d see right through him—

“Sometimes it’s just a lot,” he didn’t know how he got that out.

“To... be with other people? I get that.”

“No, not that. Well, yeah, but, like... being... here,” he felt so, so small. “being here. With them.”

Abbi hummed. “Are your friends all queer?”

He almost winced at the word being used so casually—so close to being associated with him. And god, what a loser, what exactly was he expecting? That it would never happen if he ever even just considered—whatever. “Y-yeah. That’s not why it’s a lot. Uh.” He didn’t know how she looked. “It’s. I guess, sometimes, it all makes me f-feel...”

Fear was slowly overtaking his whole brain, all of its functions, and as always, it started planning: strategizing, analysing the fastest way out of there, the most efficient escape route. This was him. But when he tried looking—Abbi was looking back, patiently and quietly.

“Confused,” he whispered. “I guess it’s... c-confusing.”

“It’s fine if things are confusing, sometimes.”

“I know, I-” as soon as one was gone, there it came, the next defence mechanism in his endless list: the irritation, the anger rising in his throat. “I know. They... Riley, they tell me, like, constantly. L-like they think something about me, kn-know something, and- and I hate that. I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because, fuck that. I’m not an experiment or something, because what if they-” his voice was raised. He was skinning himself alive. “why the fuck am I telling you this?”

“I don’t know.” Nothing he’d said had even phased her. “But I don’t mind.”

In the following quiet, Leeroy’s brain was so loud he could hear it wheezing. The feelings were almost too many to process; the idea of this person seeing him like this, that it was too late at this point to even deny what he’d so obviously alluded to, and fuck, she was definitely waiting for him to answer, and—

“You know, I had a bad day, last year, and I decided to, y’know, do one of my excursions.” Her voice cut through his train of thought. She sounded quieter, more subdued than she had all evening, a side of her he still hadn’t seen. “And, well, usually it’s comforting, but... that time, it turned the bad day into an even worse day. The place was terrifying, actually dangerous. Dark. There were all these, like, tech things, which was cool, and some of them looked like those, y’know, VR headsets? So I put one on. Just to laugh about it. For a moment I even thought the thing had turned on or something. But that was probably just me being scared... Point is—” she gestures around, a little wild, uncharacteristically messy, “point is, when I did that, I don’t know why, but I realised I was, like... really alone. Nobody was there to laugh with me. If anything freaky had happened to me, hell, if anything cool had happened to me, I would have had nobody to call.” She stopped for a moment—not looking at him. The words had to settle between them both. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this, either. I’m not trying to like, give you a life lesson or anything, but, um. I guess sometimes it’s better to have someone be annoying and still be there, than not be there at all.”

He liked how her voice sounded, like this—different, so different from how their conversation had gone so far; like she’d known he needed to feel grounded and she crafted her timbre specifically for that purpose. Like she’d done it for him. Maybe he was going insane. Feeling this type of comfort from someone he barely knew? Deluding himself he was—what, special?

What really fucked with him, though, was the fact that her story rang way too familiar for comfort. He’d been in an almost identical spot, down to the details, and it felt eerie to realise they’d been in the same place—that when offered the chance they’d both had the same dumb idea, no matter how different their circumstances had been. Went to show just how alike they were, he supposed. The words she’d chosen were rattling in his mind: like now that she’d put a name to it he was really recognising what he’d felt, in the eye of the hurricane of the worst day of his life. That he’d felt so lonely that the mere idea of any sort of escape, ever for a moment, even just to laugh at himself, felt like heaven. He remembered the darkness of the isolated building, the makeshift bed using a couple of blankets, the guilt, the weight of the headset in his hands, the light going off for just a moment, scaring him, but also—leaving him with a weird sense of disappointment when it just turned off, and nothing else happened.

Just like that, he knew: that Abbi really was just like him. That he’d been scared and alone, that he’d desperately wished for anything to happen in his miserable, hollow life, that she’d felt exactly the same. And once again, he spoke, and the words just rolled out of his mouth. “I ran away from home, like... a little over three years ago.”

“...Oh.”

“Yeah. We- our experiences weren’t that different. Actually.”

“Can I ask why?”

Her tone was patient, without expectation. The answer was too complicated, and yet, somehow, not that far off from what she already knew about Leeroy, and it scared him. He just tried to shrug away the ice in his chest. “Let’s say I did one too many things I shouldn’t have done.”

“I’m sorry,” she tilted her head towards him, as if to try and slide back into his field of vision. “That must have been really rough. You- you don’t look older than me.”

“‘M 25,” he muttered. “This was one of the first places I felt familiar during that time. That’s why I keep coming here. Riley was... good to me. Really good. I should be more grateful, I should be- it’s not right, but they r-remind me of something, I guess?” The icy feeling inside him grew and grew, familiar and sticky, for once free to burst out of him. “And it’s- I can’t. I just can’t do that again.”

“...Do what, again?”

“Be honest,” he kept talking, “think about it. I don’t wanna- I can’t know what would happen,” he could hear his voice waver, his hands fidget and tremble, “or- or, fuck, I do not want them to, to look at me and tell me I told you so. I don’t wanna fucking hear that.”

“But it... upsets you. Clearly. Not talking or thinking about it. No?”

“Pshht,” suddenly there it was. It all flooded from his head to his heart, uncontrolled: all the things he kept in a locked room, memories or pictures or possible futures; his height and how it looked in the mirror, his mum asking if he needed a haircut, how his pants fit him, how he really, really wanted different ones. All of the sorrow when he thought about things he’d never get to have. How the sorrow turned into envy, and how it got so overwhelming all he could do was ignore it, and hope it’d go away—day after day, every waking moment and every restless dream. “You can’t imagine how much worse it is if I think about it.”

A moment of silence during which Abigail was presumably thinking over how to answer and he could now be bothered to make it easier for her. “Okay, well,” she eventually said, “I’m not Riley, or one of your friends. I don’t know you. So I won’t-”

“You really do like to pry, huh?” He snapped his head back in her direction, and she looked slightly taken aback; a little too harsh. He regret it, immediately. Abbi didn’t insist: she just turned back to look outwards at the darkened sky, the sidewalk and the surrounding few trees, arms leaned on the porch.

She wouldn’t press him, and he knew, because this was clear about her from the start. Abigail wasn’t someone who pressed, just someone who listened, and listened carefully. Leeroy sighed and thought about her smile, how nice it felt to make someone smile like that and ways to make her do it again. Thought about how her voice sounded when she’d offered a piece of her, how she’d looked at him when way too many words had started rolling off his tongue, as if nothing had changed at all. How wrong she’d proved him in the span of an evening, how she’d probably keep doing that. How he didn’t even know her last name or what her favourite food was and how badly, terrifyingly, he wanted to know.

He thought about his mum. He thought about touch and what motivates a person to stubbornly resist it, to thrash around and shake it away like it burned. He thought about how real men didn’t need any in the first place. He thought: this can go two ways. I know that.

Fine.

It still felt like the hardest, most disgusting, humiliating choice he’d ever make. He was begrudgingly aware that it was the right one. “I... I really, really don’t like my name.”

Another silence, and then, as if nothing had happened at all, “Well, that’s an easy fix.”

“Hah,” there it was: his voice lightened, a weight lifted, there his essence gave up on any pretence. The words trembled through the gap between his teeth. “I hate my- my height, my hair. My voice. My fucking hands. I shouldn’t- I shouldn’t, but—” the anger built up, up, up like a shaking flame in his chest and then slid off him like a silk dress, leaving him bare and burned. “I do. So much so that sometimes I wish I were anything else—anything else, instead of this. But I’m stuck with it. How is it supposed to be better if I think about it?”

He wasn’t brave enough to look back, but he knew how Abbi was looking at him. “You know,” she said after a pause, “there’s like, five people who I told, explicitly, that I like women. Um, too.” The quiet, calming tone again; Leeroy wondered whether she used it to manage clients, to talk to people at bars, to soothe her best friend as they cried. “Six, now, I guess, eh? I used to tell myself it wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t even relevant, cause I’m single anyway. Then, one of those five people, she- she came out to me right back? And we started, like... shit talking straight people, and, and how bad Blue is the warmest colour is. We’re not even, like, super close or anything, it kinda just happened. But I realised... I didn’t have to be alone, at least.”

This all started to feel like a weird dream—how casually he’d admitted to it, how she hadn’t batted an eye. “Well,” he murmured, unable to stop himself and resigned to it, “that’s two, for me.”

“Is the second one going better than the first one?”

He chuckled, mirthlessly. Oh, if only she knew. The idea didn’t terrify him. “Don’t flatter yourself. The bar was, like, six feet underground.”

Abbi’s eyes were still serious, but she squinted at him. “Hmm, dark. Specific.”

“Oh, you know it.” He looked away, and couldn’t exactly gather enough energy to mask how miserable he sounded.

It was easy to notice; Abbi was clearly trying to figure out what to say next. Or rather how to say it. “You know you’re not... actually stuck with everything, right?”

“It’s-”, he despised how he ended up sounding, so small, so quiet, completely out of his control. “It’s complicated, Abigail.”

“I know.” They weren’t looking at each other. He felt immensely grateful that she was willing to drop it, but that sort of relaxed, yet charged silence fell on them again, until, “...Roy?”

He felt the tension being sliced through. “I will literally kill myself in front of you if you call me Roy again.”

At his left, Abbi snorted, and again he couldn’t help but smile, despite everything. The sound pulled him out of his spiralling thoughts, out of himself, as if she were dragging him—uprooting him from somewhere deep and dark and lonely.

Now that was a thought. His dad would say—“Hey, c’mon, where’s that positive mindset?”

He came back to her, pulled again. “Dude, I deliver kitchen scales for a living. What do you expect from me?”

“A little more creative thinking wouldn’t hurt.” She was smiling, now, like when the laughter lingered on your mouth, and she was looking at him just like that, like there was something to look at. “...Lee?”

...Huh.

Leeroy felt his life flash before his eyes. Alright, maybe not that dramatic, but—but: gym practice in third grade, his shorts feeling wrong and his name being called. His father screaming it and his mother crying it out. Cutting off a teacher before they could say it, disciplinary notes; the boy is rude, impulsive. Doesn’t respect dress code—please provide him a uniform in a smaller size and remind him not to wear hoodies or sweatshirts. Yes, I’ll book the barber tomorrow. I don’t know, I just think it looks weird. I just like my last name better. He let himself imagine, for a minute, a single second: he pictured this ridiculously small step into self indulgence. A name—merely a variation of his own, sure, but a name—on him that didn’t make his skin crawl, softer, sweeter, how it sounded on her tongue.

It was the first time anyone ever did anything like this for him. And he couldn’t even speak, couldn’t repeat it, because it felt so much, it felt too—

“Um,” she said after a while, “was that-”

“Sorry,” just barely more than air, “I, no, I mean. Yes.”

“...Yesssss, as in, you... like it?”

It was really, really hard. It might have been the hardest thing he’d ever done. “Y- It, it works. It’s. Yeah.”

“Can I call you that in front of other people?”

It was, genuinely, already baffling that this was happening at all, and he was still wrapping his head around it, and then she obviously still managed to surprise him by being this considerate. It has never even occurred to him that anyone could be so considerate. He felt his throat tighten around the words again. “I don’t, uh, know.”

“That’s okay,” Abbi said simply, and blinked, made a face like this was all funny—not him, but the reality of all of this. “This is... a little surreal, right?”

All Lee could do was chuckle, because otherwise it would have come out through tears and sobs. “Yeah, I’m not looking forward to thinking about this tomorrow.”

“Oh, uh,” she hesitated, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, like-”

“No, god, no. I- that was-” come on, he told himself, you know how she is by now. That it’s okay. That you can at least, at least let yourself express this one thing, this one emotion around her. Don’t be an idiot. “I’ve just never, n-never... I don’t know, doesn’t feel real. Random person on the bus follows me to a bar and two hours later I’m- I don’t know, imagine trying to tell anybody.”

“Yeah... But, um. I’m glad. I’m glad you did.” Her voice sort of trembled at the end of words she dragged out, the only hint of something nervous in her resoluteness. “I’m- glad I did, too.”

And isn’t that another thought—that he could ever be happy about having done this. Someone knew, now, maybe not in words but in plenty enough, not as a tangled knot of confused almost-admissions or easily deniable signs like with Riley, but as the closest thing to an unambiguous confession. It scared him immensely. It didn’t feel right. He knew it probably would, eventually, if the way she leaned into him was any indication. “Yeah.”

She was smiling again. “Lee?”

A punch in the stomach would have hurt less. “Yeah.”

“You’re cool,” she breathed, “I live close by, you know.”

“Huh.”

Lee felt their little bubble pop—or maybe he just got out of a dizzying haze and was coming to his senses suddenly. “So,” Abbi was picking up her backpack, “you have specific days you come here, or-”

And there was the clarity, the fear; god, what the fuck had he been thinking? She couldn’t come here again, not when the others were here too. Fuck no. She could do anything, say anything. She could let something spill and he’d be a laughing stock for who knows how long. It’d be out in the open and too honest and real and he was not ready, not ready or strong enough to face everything that came with something like that. Abbi would stop being a magical novelty and a nice temporary relief and become part of his routine and a side of him screamed at him not to let that happen. The boredom and the fighting and the loss of control over whatever this would become. It was always all so much. Did he want this?

“It’s late,” he said, and looked away. “I think I gotta go.”

“Oh. Um. Okay.” He hated that she sounded deflated, a little confused—he hated that he noticed.

Maybe this had all been a dream. Because how could this really happen? Someone patient and nice enough to just, what—listen? To share something back? To welcome his quips, not afraid to look further? To challenge him? To quiet his thoughts and to keep him company when it was dark?

...was this what having her close would mean? Was that even possible for someone like him?

They walked to the exit in a quiet that felt tense and definitely nothing he’d ever felt with someone he’d met a couple of hours prior. Abbi was a relatively small person, something he found amusing, for lack of a better word, and she had to bump up her backpack so it wouldn’t hang painfully from her arm—and fuck, he was getting soft, and let his thoughts wander, and he wanted to ask if he could pick it up for her, if he could do that forever, every day on every bus ride she’d take. It was the best his mind could conjure as a thank you—as a way to know more of her hobbies, to ask which games she’d hated, to see more of her and have her look at him and through him again and again.

And fine, fine, whatever. He’d be brave, and not a—coward, and he’d do one more brave and stupid thing tonight, try and let go, trust it’d work out. Try, at least.

“Well, so, I guess-”

“Abbi,” he said. She looked up.

“I don't know how to-” he cleared his throat and pushed through it. “This is, this was—this was nice, okay, this was good, but, but I’m also-” he just looked at the ground, thought of his hair and his shirt and how he must have looked to her now, “I think I also o-overshared, and-”

“Lee,” she said, and it sounded so nice, and he was so happy she’d been the first person to say it because it’d always remind him of this, now. It would be even easier to use, like this; to have her in the back of his mind every time he’d try to introduce himself as this, one day.

Fuck, he was pathetic. But, but—Abbi had put a warm hand around his forearm, not squeezing or pushing but a firm, nice presence, and for a single mind-numbingly good moment he felt like everything would be fine.

“I know this might sound weird, but...” she shrugged, a little shy again. “But this... I had a really nice time. Way nicer than I ever had with anyone I just met. Okay? Do you get what I mean?”

He could only nod, and she nodded back, a little more confident. And then—

“And... your secret’s safe with me,” she told him, suddenly unflinching, certain. And immediately he felt more at ease. “As long as you want. Okay?”

Lee wasn’t really sure of that, but he couldn’t very well say that. He’d just have to trust her. What a concept. It took a second, but he nodded again, his eyes on hers again.

“Okay,” Abbi said. There was something beyond the relief and the fatigue in her gaze—Lee saw it too late, but he still did. Something like sadness, like gratefulness. A kindred spirit. He saw himself. Her eyes, Lee decided, were beautiful. “Now gimme your phone.”