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It didn’t even occur to him that anything was wrong here, that things weren’t what they were really meant to be.
Basking in the days that was a teenaged Stone, happy and bouncy and playful, Tre was happy to laugh and smile with him. Even if he didn’t recognize their surroundings, it didn’t matter, because they were together again, they were close, they didn’t have the vitriolic poison between them.
They walked the streets of Ramshackle town that hadn’t updated itself for the century, hand in hand as Stone told him jokes that even he thought were corny. A giggle left the other boy, who grinned at him in a way that really showed off that mouth that he was so in love with. Something about it was so perfect, so ripe with a feeling deep within Tre’s gut that he couldn’t help himself.
He stopped them, tugging Stone back by his wrist, then his arm as he pulled him in for a hug. It quickly turned desperate, and he gripped Stone in a frenzied embrace, trying to stop what he knew was inevitable, now. There was no denying it anymore.
“Tre .....? You uh, you okay?” Stone sounded so genuinely confused, but Tre didn’t have any words, no answer coming to mind. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn’t, Tre knew less than Stone did, at this point. He lurched forward suddenly, crashing their lips together without a single thought in his head other than need.
What he hadn’t quite expected was to suddenly be shoved back hard to the ground, Stone wiping at his mouth with a cold glare. Abruptly, the landscape swirled and distorted around them, and Tre seemed to age like he was in a high school to now montage, sitting there on his ass with his knees tented and spread, arms behind him. Stone changed with him, becoming the proud (but not hot!), half- dirty scumbag he was, now.
“What the fuck are you doing, Tre?” Stone laughed cruelly, a sneer on his lips as he mocked his ex-best friend, “Everyone left you. Even the people who loved you couldn’t wait to get away from you. Can you not see how you’re the problem?”
“Shut the fuck up. You don’t know shit!” But Tre’s voice quivered and Stone seemed to take that as an admittance of defeat.
“Ah, so you do know that you’re a failure! You hurt everyone in your life when they don’t compare to your picture-perfect expectations!” The other boy laughed again, deep and guttural as his voice warped into some disfigured, too breathy bubbly of words, like talking underwater, “Nobody loves you, nobody will ever love you because you can’t stand being confi–”
—
Shooting up on the couch, Tre let out a loud, broken shriek only for it to turn to a groan of pain when his head connected with Maroon’s with a loud crack.
“OW! WHAT THE FUCK TRE!” Maroon howled, reeling back with her hand on her nose; the eye closest to the injury closed tightly. Tre was busy rubbing his own forehead, glancing up at her with tears still in his eyes, “What the fuck!?”
“...S-Sorry, Maroon.” He murmured, voice quiet and cracking in the middle. Maroon sighed; she shook her head.
“You were crying in your sleep again.” She offered softly, almost somber, and he hated it. He hated that she saw him like this, he hated that he was a goddamn mess lately, and he hated that he wanted to lash out, to make her leave. He didn’t want to prove that nightmare bastard right.
Nobody will ever love you because you can’t stand being what? Confident? Configured? Confi-gruent? He couldn’t put his finger on the word that he must have meant, and he hated that he’d cut it off there.
Maroon sighed again when he didn’t respond, setting up a bottle of water and a box of tissues on the floor next to the couch. Pulling the blanket, she’d brought out of one of the storage rooms in the police station. That both were currently in, due to the fact they had to stay behind in order to do some paperwork there or something like that.
Off the back of the couch, she moved to tuck the boy into ‘bed,’ hoping to help soothe him. Much as she didn’t like his overwhelming attention most times, she did care for him.
“Do you want to read a book or something?” She asked, trying on her usual voice. Tre, thoroughly swaddled into the soft blanket off of his bed, just nodded wordlessly, scooting into a sitting position with his knees up. He looked rather like an odd caterpillar scooching around like that, and she smirked as she grabbed a book off her desk and turned it on a page where there a good action chapter happening in it.
She had to change the chapter as it contained a flashback illustration on two characters that oddly resemble Stone and Tre where they were both on good terms. and he flinched so hard she felt it beside her. Scooting over again and leaning into her, Tre stopped her on a chapter that was a different one, one about something else in it.
He closed his eyes as he listened to Maroon reading out the chapter for him. He felt vaguely safe hiding in a book he read as a kid, even if more memories of Stone filled his mind. It didn’t take long for him to fall back asleep, and she was glad to hold him through some easier dreams.
Despite this, when he woke up, he was resolute. He wouldn’t push Maroon away, he needed her, and he hoped that she would need him, too.