Chapter Text
“Wake up.”
Michael shuts his eyes tighter. It’s snowing outside. The motel room smells like dust and old carpets. He doesn’t have to wake up. Not yet. It’s snowing. The job will have to wait another day.
“Hey. Wake up.”
He let’s out a protesting groan. They can shut up who ever they are. He doesn’t have to wake up. The roads won’t be right for it today, there’s plenty of time to sleep.
Someone’s rolling over in the motel bed next to him, lifting up on two bony young elbows.
”WAKE UP!” Trevor screams in his face.
Michael opens his eyes. Trevor blinks back at him.
He just manages not to scream bloody murder and throw himself off of the bed in sheer terror. All things considered, the very minimal scream of surprise is actually a pretty tame response.
“Christ, dramatic much?” Trevor says.
“WHAT THE FUCK, TREVOR?!” Michael yells right back.
“Well you weren’t waking up? What the hell else am I suppose to do?”
“DON’T FUCKING WAKE ME UP!”
“Oh please, who the fuck are you, the queen?”
“What the fuck does that even mean? People wake the queen up for fuck’s sake!”
“So you’re better than the queen now? Christ Mikey, just keep working on that ego, you’ll reach greek god status any day now.”
Michael takes a deep breath, actually sitting up properly in the bed. He runs a heavy hand down his face. Trevor stands next to it impatiently. He’s wearing another one of those flannels. This one’s a shade of purple so damn noisy it’s burning his retinas.
“What are you doing here? I thought you left after that damn movie.”
“Medically Blonde,” Trevor corrects, “and if you managed to keep your damn eyes open for the whole thing you might have learned an important message about the solidarity of female bonds in the face of patriarchal systems.”
“Lucky fucking me.”
“Anyways,” Trevor continues. “I did leave. After. And now I’m back. Get up.”
“What’s wrong with you? Christ, what time is it even?” Michael groans.
“A about fucking time to get out of bed,” Trevor grumbles, taking out his energy by crossing the room and ripping the curtains back, kicking the door open so all the light and heat and city sound pours right in.
“Why am I getting out of bed?” Michael squints.
“Cause,” Trevor turns suddenly, staring at him with sharp narrow eyes. “You said we could do something fun. Unless that was bullshit too? Wouldn’t be surprised. You’re in the habit.”
Michael stares back. “Uh. No. Not bullshit.”
“Great. So get the fuck up. I’ve got plans.”
That sentence really shouldn’t feel as ominous as it does. “Plans?”
“Should I throw a bucket of water on you or what, huh?”
“Do these plans involve, I don’t know… mass murder?”
Trevor heads for the door. “Get the fuck up and see for yourself.” The door slams behind him.
Michael stares at the wall across from the bed. Well. He fucking asked for it.
It doesn’t take him long to make it downstairs. The front door’s open and outside someone’s honking their horn. Michael sighs as he heads out, letting the door shut behind him. Trevor’s waiting impatiently in his truck, pulled nice and close to the door. Michael’s sedan is still half way on the lawn. Should probably do something about that. Trevor honks again. Fuck it. Later then.
Michael climbs into the passenger side of the truck, feeling an interesting mix of gut-clenching anxiety and mild excitement in between the lingering exhaustion. “Alright, so let’s go.”
Trevor gives him a look before rolling his eyes. “Exactly how many pairs of cargo shorts do you fucking own?”
“Hey, it’s hot out, the fuck do you want?”
“Nothin’,” Trevor rips the truck backwards, knocking down a few plants on the way. “You know I think they’re shooting Youth Chasers monthly two blocks over, you could just make the casting call.”
“Fuck you. Anyways, I didn’t even dress like this when I was younger.”
“Yeah,” Trevor turns the truck back out onto the road again. “I remember.”
Michael leans back in the worn leather seat as the truck picks up speed against the traffic. The sun’s beating down on the road - maybe it isn’t as early as he’d thought. He adjusts his sunglasses on his nose. Well. He might as well try. “You seem, uh, calmer.”
“Couple of late-night romantic comedies will do that to a guy.”
“Yeah, Tracey has pretty specific tastes there.”
“Least I didn’t complain the whole damn time.”
“I did not fucking complain.”
“Eyerolling, Michael, though non-verbal, counts as a fucking complaint.”
“Bullshit.”
“It represents a ’derisive attitude’. And that’s no damn fun for anyone.”
“Yeah well maybe I have a genetically derisive attitude, alright?”
Trevor gives half a grumble in reply.
There’s a red-light up ahead. Trevor drags the truck right around all the cars waiting, diving smoothly into the oncoming traffic to head back into the right lane as horns and a few sounds of crunching metal echo behind them.
“So… where’re we going anyways?” Michael asks peering out, trying to get a sense of the direction.
“You tell me,” Trevor says.
“Yeah. That’s why I asked. Because I obviously know exactly where the hell we’re going.”
“We’re going somewhere. To do something.”
“Great. Real descriptive. Very reassuring.”
Trevor’s quiet for a long moment, then, finally, “Does that make this another whatever the hell you said.”
Michael squints. “Another what? What’d I say?”
“You know, another…”
Michael glares back. “Another no I don’t fucking know? What?”
Trevor grimaces. “Another ’date’ or whatever bullshit you were spewing last night?”
Michael groans letting his head fall back against the headrest. “Bullshit. Right. Well hey, at least I know how you fucking feel about it. Honestly I’m still considering myself lucky you didn’t make me into fucking sausage after massacring the whole damn place.”
“Right,” Trevor suddenly snaps, “I see, so I’m not allowed you call you on your bullshit, but you’re allowed to throw accusations at me whenever the hell you feel like it?”
“It wasn’t bullshit? Alright. I’m fucking sick of you saying that.”
“It was bullshit,” Trevor emphasizes. “What the hell was with that place and the fucking people and christ, that’s not… that’s not what we do, right? That’s what other people do.”
“Yeah. People who fucking date. We’ve been through this, christ T, are you really going to push my buttons until I scream humiliating shit in your face again?”
“Humiliating. Right. Nice.”
“Fuck me, christ,” Michael groans, “I didn’t mean… I tried. Okay. I thought… shit it’s fucking stupid. I thought you’d realize it was a date, okay?”
“Yeah well, since I’ve never actually been on a date, excuse me for not recognizing the fucking markers.”
Michael blinks. “You’ve… you’ve never been on a date? What the hell does that mean?”
“It means: I’ve never been on a fucking date.”
“… Seriously?”
“Yes seriously. Alright? Happy?”
“Nah, nah,” Michael shakes his head, “I’ve seen you, with girls, hell with guys - dozens of times. Hundreds of time!”
“Fucking,” Trevor enunciates, “is not dating.”
Michael stares back at the road. “Yeah… right. Shit. I’m sorry.”
“What for? If last night was an example, seems like a fucking blessing I’ve ‘missed out’ on it so far.”
“Fine,” Michael snaps, “so you fucking hated it. I get it. Know what? Fuck you. So it wasn’t a fucking date. I take it back. Just me being a goddamn moron as usual, alright?”
He leans back hard in the passenger seat, crossing his arms tight over his chest and glaring at the oncoming traffic through the chipper tint of his sunglasses. Great start to the day. Fucking perfect. Exactly what he was after.
Trevor’s hands seem tighter on the steering wheel than they should be. “You. Right,” Trevor growls. “You’re the moron. It’s always about you, isn’t it? Always on your damn terms.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s all you. Your fucking feelings. Your fucking confessions. Your fucking ’date’ or whatever the fuck that was. Did you even think about what I would want to do? Huh? Did that fucking cross your mind?”
Michael frowns. He can feel the familiar sense of guilt starting to seep in around the rage. He tightens his crossed arms to fend it off. “Oh yeah, and that would have made this better? You wouldn’t still be screaming ‘bullshit’ at me?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
Trevor stares hard at the road. “Maybe we can find out.”
Michael looks back at him. Trevor keeps his eyes firm on the traffic.
“What?” Michael asks. “Like… try it again? Take fucking two?”
Trevor hardly budges. It doesn’t seem like he can manage to look back at him. “Whatever. Sure. Maybe. I guess. If you wanted. Doesn’t fucking matter anyways.”
God. Did he really think this was going to be easy? Anything with Trevor was like pulling goddamn teeth, that is if the teeth were secured by fucking platinum, and sitting in the mouth of some prehistoric crocodile. How the hell did he think that if everything else was hard this going to be any different? And hell, all he can really do now is brace his foot on the jaws and just keep tugging.
“Yeah,” Michael swallows. “I’ll take that. Sure. Take two.”
“Good. Fine,” Trevor snaps.
“Fine.” Michael leans back. After a minute he knits his hands behind his head. “So it’s up to you, okay? Whatever you want to do today, we’ll do it…”
“That’s right.”
“…As if that wasn’t exactly what we were gonna do anyways.”
“Great fucking start.”
Michael grins. “Ah, bite me.”
Trevor snorts back. Michael let’s himself crack a glance at him under his sunglasses. He can’t be positive from this angle but he thinks he might be smiling.
After the first hour, he decides it’s probably best to stop trying to guess or ask where they’re heading. It’s a decent drive, at first winding around the coastline then cutting back through the desert and finally up into the hills. Michael lets himself lean back and simply watch the scenery float past. Funny. He never really took much time before to look scenery. It almost irritated him if he’s being honest. He always felt like he was supposed to be getting something from it that he wasn’t, that idiots or old men could look at a view and get this deep sense of solace and contentment and since he didn’t they could fuck off. And look at this, here he is now, probably qualifying as both an idiot and an old man, perfectly happy to stare out a window like a dog for hours on end, just taking in whatever flashes past.
The company helps too. It’s weird, but now that he’s paying attention simple shit seems so much more, hell just good, when you’ve got someone who really knows you right along for the ride. It kind feels like he doesn’t even have to think, or try, or any of the shit he’s used to doing too damn much, he can just kinda… be. He gazes out at the tower pines. Maybe that’s how trees feel all the time. Just being. And shit he really has gone right off the deep end hasn’t he?
The truck takes a sudden sharp turn onto a barely there dirt road and Michael jolts back to himself in the passenger seat.
“Yo, easy!”
“’Yo, easy,’” Trevor mocks back in a high-pitched voice.
The truck manages to keep on two wheels over a few more rough corners and boulder-laden stretches before finally popping out of the tree cover, and suddenly there’s quite a bit of view to stare at.
“Holy shit,” Michael swears.
“Not bad, huh?” Trevor grins.
“Holy shit!”
“Well aren’t you eloquent today.”
Michael narrows his eyes at the opposite hillside. “What the fuck is— are those choppers? And cruisers?”
“What? Oh yeah. A couple.”
“A fucking dozen! At least!”
“Yeah. A couple.”
The truck comes to a stop at the top of the hill, or rather at the top of the damn mountain. Michael pops open his door, stumbling out to take a better look while Trevor moves around the back.
They’re up high. Higher than he realized. Looking off to the south-west he can even see Los Santos glimmering against the edge of the ocean. Pine trees line the hills but up here, where they are, there’s a clearing at the top of the knoll which makes the view fantastic and easy enough to see across the way to another knoll hundreds of meters off. On that knoll there’s an erratic shiny line of vehicles that this far away look like little toys someone chucked down on a hillside. He can see police cruisers, helicopters, an ambulance, a fucking firetruck.
“How,” Michael starts dumbly, “how the hell did you—?”
“Couldn’t sleep. Made the most of it.”
“Yeah. No shit.”
Trevor turns back around the front of the truck. Michael glances over. “Holy shit.”
“Liking that one today, huh?”
“How are you… standing?”
Trevor grins back. He’s covered in guns. Big fucking guns.
“Eh,” Trevor shrugs, “not as heavy than it looks.” He eases them off one at a time onto the hood of the truck.
Michael picks up the closest. It feels solid and almost ridiculously good fitting into his hands. He’s probably grinning like an idiot. And even worse, he doesn’t even care.
Trevor clanks the last gun on the pile and turns back towards the truck, leaning over the passenger side to grab a jingly cardboard box that he lets fall on the sparse mountain grass between them. He grabs a bottle of very nice looking whiskey off the top, pulls the stopper out with his teeth and takes a good long gulp.
“Us. Drunk on a mountain. With giant fucking guns. This is your great idea?” Michael stares as Trevor wipes his mouth against the sleeve of that obnoxious flannel.
“Don’t be fucking baby,” Trevor sneers, snatching a selection off the top of the pile. “Anyways, you know only pistols and shotguns are really dangerous when you’re drunk.”
“Oh yeah, that’s what they put on the box, right? ‘Grenade Launcher - use moderately with alcohol’.”
Trevor raises an eyebrow at him, smirking like he knows exactly what’s going on in his head. He wiggles the bottle. “Want some?”
Michael narrows his eyes. “Maybe.”
Trevor shoves the bottle into his hand, adjusting the gun under his arm. “Alright! So. Rules.”
“Rules?”
“Rules, Michael, control the fun.”
Michael smiles into the whiskey. It’s strong as hell and he can practically see the hedge fund managers sobbing at the thought of it going to waste on fucks like them.
Trevor lifts his gun, snuggling the base into the meat of his shoulder and adjusting his stance as easy as breathing. “Ten points for every boom. And when I say boom I mean fucking boom. Fire doesn’t count.”
“Big ones should be more,” Michael notes, turning to evaluate the options.
“Mmm, fine fine, firetruck can be fifteen.”
“Twenty.”
“Sure. Fucking twenty.”
Michael turns back just as Trevor fires. He chucks his hands over his ears half a second too late and the rocket peels across the distance between the hills, a neat while trail of smoke slashing across the blue sky. It tears just in front of the firetruck, shattering into the chopper behind with an immensely satisfying explosion.
“Ten,” Trevor shrugs.
Michael lifts his own weapon. The weight feel’s just right against the muscle of his hands. He slips one eye shut, one foot back, and squeezes the trigger.
Across the canyon the front of the firetruck bursts into a flaming wreck.
Michael lowers the gun with a smug expression. “Twenty.”
The sun’s been down for hours before he finally decides he might be too drunk to keep shooting high-powered rifles at a wrecked hillside.
Up above, the moon is bright enough to see the hills on all sides, clean, clear white light bouncing off of shattered glass that glitters amongst the embers still glowing on the crisp smoldering turf.
Trevor gives the empty liquor bottle a good chuck. “FOUR!”
Michael just manages to make the shot, destroying the bottle with a satisfying glassy burst.
“Alright, alright,” he mutters, “s’ enough. Too drunk.”
Trevor snorts. “Just cause you’re loosin’—“
“Hey - I’ve got double your points. Call that loosin’?”
“Sore loosing,” Trevor grumbles. He kicks at the case as his feet, clumsily leaning the gun against the truck again where most of the guns are by now. “Gotta be the best of everything huh?”
“No, not everything… Something’s? Absolutely,” Michael leans back onto the hood of the truck. The stars blink back at him. Nice to see them. In the city it’s always too bright to make them out.
Trevor’s rummaging around in the box at their feet. Sounds like he’s grabbing a beer.
“Hey,” Michael starts, gazing up at the sky. “Lemme ask you somethin’…”
“Mm?” Trevor hums around the beer.
“Did you know, that everyone, every-one thought we were, sort of, at least kind of… ‘together’?”
“You mean everyone thought we were fucking? Yeah no shit.”
“Jesus Christ,” Michael laughs aloud, surprising himself.
“What? You didn’t get that?”
“No,” Michael groans. “No I didn’t ‘get that’.”
“Hell, shit-stain Devin and Steve-cousin-fucker-Haines had a whole damn bet going. Which Devin would have won by the way if there was anything to bet about.”
“God,” Michael uncovers his eyes with another laugh. The stars are still there. “I’m fucking clueless, aren’t I?”
Trevor makes a short sound that is more than likely agreement. Michael can feel him leaning back against the hood next to him. He wonders his far away he is. If he nudged his knee over would he touch him or not? He feels far away somehow, even still.
“‘M sorry,” Michael mumbles.
Trevor’s quiet for a moment. “Bout what?”
“That this took me so long.”
Michael stares up at the stars. The stars stare back. Trevor doesn’t answer.
There’s so many of them up there, god, when did he forget there were so damn many of them? It had been such a constant part of his life, their lives, back then: the cold and the stars spread thick and sharp across that big fat northern sky.
“Hey,” Michael rolls his head with a cock-eyed smile. He can’t see Trevor’s face from this angle, just the stern line of his shoulders as he looks out across the hills. “Better late than never, huh?” Michael nudges at him with his knee. Trevor flinches away. His limbs feel like fucking stone.
His voice sounds strained when he finally opens his mouth. “What the hell is this?”
Michael rolls his eyes. He’s too drunk to deal with him being even more of an exceptional pain in the ass. “This was fun. Hell, you were fucking right. Much more fun than my lame shit.”
“This,” Trevor pronounces. His eyes are still hard on the horizon. “What’s—” He sighs suddenly with a grating growl, twisting his hands in his lap. “So what? This is like… a thing now?”
“‘A thing’?” Michael repeats.
“Yeah. A fucking thing.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I don’t fucking know, alright? I’ve never… whatever the fuck it means! Calling and texting and dinner and fucking holidays and just, whatever the hell.”
“What? You mean, are we… dating?”
“Right. A thing. Dating. Whatever.”
Michael props himself up on his elbows. “Do you, uh, want to be?”
“Do you?” Trevor snaps back without turning, like he’s exactly six and a half fucking years old.
Michael groans. “Look, it doesn’t have to be ’a thing’, alright just… well, a thing.” Trevor snorts out half a laugh and Michael can’t help joining in. “Fuck I’m too drunk for this type of shit man.”
“What the hell happened to you?” Trevor snaps suddenly. “I mean did you get hit by a fucking bus or—“
“Abducted by aliens?”
“Sucked off by the Dalai Lama?”
Michael chuckles into the collar of his shirt. “Yeah that’s it.”
“Seriously…” Trevor asks, voice oddly quiet.
“Seriously,” Michael starts. He looks out over the hills. Los Santos is sparkling against the coastline, like fireflies in a jar sitting on a kid’s bedside table. “I just… fuck, I opened my eyes and realized that somewhere between wanting to shoot you in the face and watch you look at the damn ocean like everything’s going to be okay, and all the other mountains of shit, there’s this.”
“This?”
“You. And me. And, yeah. This.”
“The thing?”
Michael can’t help smiling. “Yeah, T. The thing.”
“And you,” Trevor’s voice trails off for a moment. Michael glances over. He’s still looking out over the hills. Exactly as he was. “You want that?”
Michael stares at the line of his neck, where it slopes down into his shoulders and the curve of his arms resting in his lap. He swallows. “Yeah. I do.”
Trevor says nothing. Hell, if he didn’t know better he’d think he’d turned to fucking stone.
“Do uh,” Michael tries to keep his voice even. “Do you?”
Trevor takes another swig of his beer. His voice is lower, uneven. “That’s not the fucking point.”
“What the hell does that mean? Of course that’s the point—”
“It means,” Trevor snaps suddenly, “I don’t get what I fucking want. Alright? That’s not how it works.”
Michael stares at the line of his shoulders, frown suddenly deeper than it has been. “How what works?”
“How I work. How my entire fucking existence works. Haven’t you fucking noticed yet? Anything that makes me happy, not artificial dopamine injection happy, actually fucking honestly damn happy, develops a pretty critical fucking shelf-life.”
Michael frowns. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Trevor’s shoulders tense even more and suddenly he feels further away than ever. “It’s not you, alright. Fuck, it’s not just you. It’s everyone. I’m the constant. I’m the undeniable factor. Like poison in the fucking well.”
Michael’s brow furrows. He knows there’s a hundred damn things he should be saying so why the hell can’t be find a single one of them?
“Hell maybe…” Trevor’s voice trails, “maybe if I let myself get anymore damn happy, the universe will remember I’m fucking made to be alone.”
Michael stares over his shoulder. In the distance the city is blinking back at him, silvery and from this far away, so still.
“Bullshit,” Michael says.
That get’s his attention.
Trevor turns, glaring at him. “Excuse me?”
Michael glares right back. “That’s bullshit. You’re not the universe’s fucking pissing pot, alright, so stop acting like it.”
Trevor’s anger flares. “So what, I’m just your fucking pissing pot?”
“You’re no one’s, alright. Hell, except maybe your own. God Trevor, so what? You think there a damn fucking magical curse that makes you some fairytale bullshit troll destined to wander the earth alone forever!?”
“A troll?” Trevor pronounces.
“For fuck’s sake, T,” Michael shoves on, “that’s as bad as the crap I’ve been telling myself for the past ten years. Look,” he sits up straighter, staring right back at him. “You’re a pain in the ass, but people leave you because they are the shits, alright. Trust me. I have some fucking experience in that department.”
Something flickers behind Trevor’s eyes and Michael thinks it might almost be a smile. Not quite. Almost.
“And,” Michael rolls right on, chasing after it, “this, the thing, is not just your fucking call by the way. It’s mine too. So, if I say I’m not going anywhere and I want to go to damn uppity restaurants once in a while, or sit on the hood of a car and drink beer with big fucking guns, or yell every damn emotionally crippling revelation I have right in your face whenever I want because we’re A Thing, then I’m going to fucking do it! And any imaginary Trevor-Philips-alone-forever plans the Universe most definitely does not have can take a fucking hike.” He leans back hard against the roof again, glaring up at the stars. “Alright?”
Trevor turns back to the horizon, grip tight on his beer. He stares for a long while. “Fine.”
Michael blinks. “Fine?”
“Yes. Fucking fine. So, we’re ‘a thing’, or whatever.”
Michael risks half a smile. “Dating?”
“Sure. Fine. Dating.” Trevor sniffs, shifting his shoulders uneasily. “If you fucking say so.”
Michael narrows his eyes, smile still hanging around his lips. “Yeah. That’s right. I fucking say so.”
“Good.”
“Good.”
Silence falls back around them almost comfortably. After a moment Michael leans forward with a short groan, reaching down into the box and pulling out a beer. He sits back up, cracking it open and taking a deep sip.
“So,” Trevor starts, “are we going to start fucking now or what?”
Michael chokes on the beer, foam spewing up his nose.
Trevor’s smirking next to him with an all too contented air, as if he knew exactly what that fucking sentence would elicit.
“Fucking hell,” Michael swears, wiping off his face, “out of fucking left field.”
“Not really.”
“Yeah,” Michael admits. “Guess not. Uh, that’s not, honestly… I haven’t even thought about that…”
“Oh yeah?”
“No, I just—” Michael manages to wrangle the heat in his cheeks back a few degrees. “I like you, alright? I like spending time with you. I like the idea of… fuck, I like the idea of just, hell, being with you, alright? The other… stuff, that doesn’t have to come into it.”
“Mmm,” Trevor hums, he takes another long drag off his beer.
Michael glances over. “Does it?”
Trevor shrugs. “Doesn’t have to.”
“Right. Okay then.”
Trevor takes another sip, considering the distant flickering lights of the city. “Can I still fuck something?”
“What?” Michael snaps, and hell there’s the fucking blush again.
“Well,” Trevor continues, “I like fucking things. You might have noticed. If I’m not fucking you I’d like to be fucking something.”
“Christ, yes hell, okay, whatever you want. Fuck whatever you want,” Michael hurries, trying to drink the damn blush away before it completely takes over his head.
“Alright,” Trevor notes. “But we’re… ‘dating’?”
“Yes.”
“‘Open relationship’?”
“Sure,” Michael grumbles, “whatever.”
“Guess that’s what you’re used to, huh?”
Michael ignores him, suddenly there’s something that feels almost angry flickering under his chest. He pushes it away firmly, leaning back hard on the hood of the truck.
“Did you ever want to?” Trevor starts again, idly. “You know… With me?”
“Nah,” Michael lies instantly and way, way faster than he’s ready for. He’s quiet for a moment. “… Did you?”
“Nah,” Trevor answers back, mocking his exact damn tone, and hell he asked for it didn’t he. His fault. Again. Fucking always.
Michael sighs, stretching an arm up behind his head. The booze wafts around comfortably in his blood. It’s helping. Even if it isn’t by much. He nudges his knee closer to Trevor’s side but he still doesn’t reach him.
“Know what?” Michael asks.
Trevor mumbles some acknowledgement. His shoulders are still tight, posture stiff under the moonlight.
Michael gazes up at the stars. “I really, really like big guns.”
Trevor snorts. Michael can see him start to smile. “Yeah. No shit.”
“I think, maybe, I pretend I don’t. Like I’m too cool for that shit, not looking back at the explosion or whatever. But I really, really just like shooting big fucking guns.”
Trevor lifts his beer back to his lips. “What else do you like?”
Michael hums. “I like… crashing cars. I like smacking people who are asking for it. Smacking them fucking hard. And I like riding motorcycles too fast, and blowing up buildings, and that taste in your mouth when bullets start flying, and I like that look you get.”
“What look?” Trevor asks.
“The look like you like me liking all of that. Too much. More than I fucking should. I like that.”
Trevor doesn’t say anything. He takes another long sip. After a minute he his hand down on the hood of the truck between them. It’s still for a moment, then he moves it, just a few inches, so he’s just touching the side of Michael’s leg and suddenly it’s like the entire damn universe has shuttered off behind his eyes and all that’s left is that. Michael goes still without meaning to.
Trevor’s hand is shaking.
It’s shaking hard enough for Michael easily feel it, or maybe he’s just feeling everything more than usual, but Trevor must feel it too because he tugs his hand away suddenly, swearing under his breath.
Something tightens hard in Michael’s throat and before he realizes it he’s grabbing at the back of his shirt, tugging him backwards. “Shit. C’mer.”
And he does, awkwardly, stiffly, but Michael ignores that. He adjusts, pulling Trevor under his arm, laying back again against the hood of the truck. He tries to swallow the sudden roughness at the back of his throat, wrapping his arm tighter around his bony shoulders, tugging him right into his side while he still has the guts.
It takes a minute. Trevor’s shoulders feel like stone under Michael’s arm, body nothing but rigid sharp edges. But Michael doesn’t let go, and finally, Trevor exhales.
It’s a long breath, half an inaudible sigh, half something else, and Michael feels Trevor’s whole body shift under the feeling of that release. His muscles relax, easing back into Michael, head letting it’s weight fall back onto on his shoulder. It feels like he hasn’t taken a proper breath for a long time. Years. Fucking decades. And Michael breathes too, letting his own grip loosen more naturally.
He hears Trevor take another long inhale. He thinks he might have closed his eyes, even if just for a moment. He’s still shaking, but it’s just barely a tremor. Hell, close like this it’s hard to tell. Maybe Michael’s the one shaking. His heart’s beating hard enough for it.
It’s not cuddling a voice in his head tells himself distantly. Just a hug. With one arm. Lying down. Totally normal.
But does feel good doesn’t it. More than good. Right. Just... right.
Michael let’s his hand trace Trevor’s arm slowly but firmly, back and forth. Trevor’s head feels heavier, more comfortable against the meaty curve of Michael’s shoulder.
“Good stars,” Trevor mutters. The way his quiet voice feels against Michael’s side is interesting. It makes his stomach tighten with a bit of an electric feel that oozes out naturally and spreads in a warm sort of way.
Half of Michael’s mouth tugs towards a smile. “Yeah. Not too bad.”