DALLAS BELTWAY TOGGLE DARK MODE BACK TO NEXUS Five minutes into the fifteen minutes Micky would sit in their car and stare at their phone after their nine-almost-ten hour shift, right at 11:47 PM and a whole forty seven minutes after they were supposed to clock out, they got a call. First came the irritation- just a moment to themself, that’s all they wanted in those fifteen minutes, and of course they had to get a goddamn call- and then, when the name on the caller ID chugged through their overworked brain, the anxiety. Kelly Hartley was a night owl, but he also had what seemed at times to be an overwhelming fear of phone calls. Would rather send eight texts in a row, all full of stilted sentences and abrupt stops, than make a two minute call. That, and his father went to sleep early. Talking ran the risk of waking him up and pissing him off. Micky knew the extent Kelly went to avoiding that. So they took just a moment, just a tiny, self contained moment that would never leave the car, to curse and wonder why this had to be happening now, and then they answered the call. (They were not upset over the fact that Kelly was calling, not really. They had told him they were there for him over and over, and they meant it every single time, but work had sucked and they were tired. Graduation might’ve meant they didn’t have to scribble through homework during their break, didn’t have to wake up at five in the morning and run about on three hours of sleep, but it meant a hell of a lot more stress about the future. College and all sorts of other shit that gave them a headache the instant they tried to think about it, the sort of stress that made them feel justified in being just a tiny bit selfish in the moment between when they’d pressed the button to answer the call and when they raised the phone on up to their ear- but then Micky pushed it down and locked it away because they knew they were being a stupid asshole. A stupid asshole that loved their friend, but still. He didn’t need to deal with their shit on top of everything else.) “Hey Kelly, what’s up?” Micky smiled alone in their car- Kelly was bad with expressions and worse with words, but they hadn’t ever met someone so sensitive to tone before. Wanted to make sure he heard their smile through the call and the two-point-three miles between his house and the fast food place they were parked outside of. Quiet for a moment. Then, the hiss of a breath sucked in through clenched teeth. Hiss of a breath let out between them. A low croak, a word cut off in the back of the throat. A sharper breath, one that stuttered at the end, and Micky felt like even more of a stupid asshole before he got a single word out. “Micky?” Of course they knew it was going to be bad. Kelly never called. Just didn’t know it would be this bad. “Yeah, it's me.” They listened to him breath for a few more seconds. Wondered what questions would be good ones. “You doing alright?” He wasn’t, but it was a starting point. “No.” Kelly’s voice was flat, quiet. Like he was pressing the phone right up to his face and trying to crawl inside it. Like he wanted to hide, worried about being overheard- filtered through a layer of apathy, though. It's how he got when he didn’t know how else to feel. Just shut down and refused to move without help. Micky hated hearing him sound like that, but it was familiar enough that they knew what to do. “Alright. Alright. You’re going to be fi-” “Something bad happened.” Kelly’s voice cut through their own, even more quiet than before. A pause, one which stretched out for an uncomfortable time before Micky realized he wasn’t planning on saying anything else. Just more breathing into the receiver, shallower than before. That was less familiar. He hated interrupting people. “I’m sorry, man. Sucks.” Micky lifted their free hand up to their mouth, stuck a nail in there and chewed for a moment. Something in the air between them felt delicate. Fragile. A lot less bullheaded than Kelly normally was. “You get kicked out for the night?” “No.” “That’s good-” A whine, low and belly-deep, cut them off. Took them a moment to realize that sound had come from Kelly, that it wasn’t some weird interference with the call, and they felt something like the start of fear bubble up. Kelly didn’t sound like that. Not when he called to ask if he could crash with Micky and their aunt for the night, not after the shitty nights which bled into shitty days and shitty evenings and right back to the same sort of shitty night, when the cycle of argument and tension that was his father’s speciality went on for weeks at a time. The breathing through the phone stopped for a moment, as if Kelly had heard himself and froze up in mortification. Then he spoke up again, voice strangled. “You don’t- Mick, something really bad happened.” Micky’d been friends with Kelly for three years by that point, which meant they had a good bit of time to get to know the way he spoke. Always a little too flat for most to get a read on, always picking and choosing his words carefully. Might be easy to miss in how much he swore and the stilted, short sentences that were his norm, but there were patterns which only he abided by. Micky liked those patterns. He spoke less when stressed out, turned to sentence fragments and one word answers. Spoke more quietly, too, and things were either okay, shitty, or bad. They didn’t really get the ranking there, but it was consistent. Kelly didn’t call things really bad and he didn’t sound like that. Micky shifted their phone from left hand to right hand, dug a hand into their pocket, and pulled out their keys. Realized the sharp breathing in their ears was their own, the sweat on their palms actually there. “Where are you?” A rising anxiety in their chest, a too tight grip on the wheel after they’d gotten the car started up. “What?” Bad. Really bad. Micky bit off the urge to swear under their breath, shifted the car into reverse. “Are you at your house, Kelly?” “Yeah.” “Are you outside?” Back up, turn, stop. Shift back into gear, pull out to one of two exits. Wait for a gap in traffic to make a left. They forced themself to let up the stranglehold on the steering wheel, tried tapping their fingers instead. “Yeah.” “Okay.” A deep breath, a turn out onto the road. “Okay, okay, okay. Is your dad there?” Nothing but breathing. “Kelly, man, I know shit sucks right now but I really need to know if your dad is there.” (Micky’d never interacted much with mister Hartley. Sure, they talked a lot about how they’d take the man on if he kept up his shit, but those were just empty words, attempts at reassurance when Kelly came knocking at their door looking like a scared dog. Kelly liked keeping the good in his life separate from the bad, even if he was shit at it. All they had were secondhand accounts and little moments in too polite a setting for anything to happen. Micky stood at his friend’s side and did their best to keep the glaring subtle. Thought, in those moments, that even the smallest chance to express their hate of the man was worth the nausea of looking at him and realizing there was a face to be put to Kelly’s abuse- that it was real in a way that it never really felt outside of those moments, even as Kelly gave him the censored play by plays of the latest argument- and that it might’ve even be worth it to stomp up to the man and say something to him. Consequences for themself or Kelly be damned, Micky had wanted so goddamn badly for the father to know just how hated he was. They never did anything.) Still nothing, and Micky lets the anxiety break into frustration in a way that they typically fought hard to stop. “Goddamnit Kelly, you need to tell me if he’s there or not. You’re gonna be in hot shit if he sees me pull up through a window or something.” “No.” “No to which part?” Micky pressed on the gas, shot through a yellow light. “Because if he walks out while I’m there, I am going to kill him.” Kelly’d forgotten a metal baseball bat he’d bought for five dollars from a thrift store Micky’s aunt had taken them to a couple months ago in the trunk and it was still there. He hadn’t given any real reason for it when asked- Micky privately thought that he was going to use it to smash bottles in his backyard or some other stupid thing- and hadn’t asked for it a single time since he left it. Micky hadn’t ever gotten into a fight. Every time they’d hurt someone had been on accident. All their talk to Kelly about giving back twice as bad what his father gave him was just that. Talk. Put the man in the middle of the road as they squinted through dim headlights and they’d sooner swerve into a tree than hit him. Still felt good to try and sound tough. Something crackled down the phone line. A rough sound, almost lost between the ambient waves and the anger barking up in Micky’s own head. A soft sound, a crack which split it into neat halves. A breath in and Micky realized that Kelly was laughing. Under his breath and crunched up with how close the phone was pressed to his face, he swallowed and let out another low laugh. Not the usual scoff when he was angry, nor the uncertain, two syllable dismissal when he didn’t understand something said to him yet didn’t want to ask for it to be repeated, but a genuine break of humor among all of his terror. It stretched out four seconds more before he stopped, let the rest of his breath out in a sigh, and spoke, tone strangled and thin. “You can’t do that.” Quiet. Kelly takes the moment to catch his breath. “I need to hang up.” Micky felt the wheel under their hands. The cold of the night through the rolled down windows. The earth still spinning away on the same axis. “You better be out there when I pull up, Kelly.” Nothing but the click of a call ended. Might not’ve even heard them. The first time Kelly spent the night with Micky and their aunt had been a sleepover. Him fourteen, them fifteen, he’d slept on the couch and seethed over Micky killing him over and over in the private CoD lobby they set up. Said it wasn’t fair because he never got a chance to practice at his own house. He’d been angry for most of the night, but not in the same way he was at school. Less of a dog with the lips peeled back and more of a shithead kid. Micky had recognized the difference, even then, and started inviting him over more often. Their aunt liked to say they were a sensitive kid. Also liked having someone else around, especially when she figured out Kelly thought her rock collections were cool instead of lame. First weeknight he stayed the night had been a Tuesday. He begged for Micky to let him come over at school without giving away a single detail and was silent the entire bus ride home. Kept his mouth shut for the twelve minutes it took their aunt to get a grasp on the situation, ducking behind Micky and leaving them to scramble for answers to every question. Does he have permission to stay over? Yeah, totally. Can I call his father? Kelly didn’t have his number memorized. Did anything happen? No, not at all. Are you sure? Yeah, aunt Mia. Micky, can I talk to Kelly for a moment? Nope. He had a cold and it hurt to speak. Micky. Mia. She’d dropped the questions after that. It took four more impromptu nights for her to try anything more- Micky’d left the living room in the middle of a commercial cutting their cable movie in two to grab something from their room and heard her talking to Kelly when they trotted back up the hall. Kelly. Miss Mia. You know you can tell me if anything is wrong, right? Yeah. I mean it. Nothing’s too bad for me to hear. Okay. Okay. Two minutes away from Kelly’s house and Micky wanted to call her. Aunt Mia, Kelly says that something really bad happened at his house. No, I don’t know what happened. That’s all he said. Yeah. I think he might’ve gotten kicked out for good. No. I don’t know. They could play out the entire conversation in their head, beat for beat. The confusion that would bleed into the concern, then the anger. She was better at keeping a lid on it, but Micky thought she might hate Kelly’s father just as much as them. The end, the hum of a dead line. She wouldn’t be able to do anything- couldn’t show up because Micky was already driving the one car they had, couldn’t help until they already got a grasp on whatever had happened. It’d just worry her more than she needed. Would be stupid to call her just because they wanted a selfish bit of comfort for themself. One minute, then the final turn. The Hartleys lived in an empty neighborhood. Backside was full of empty lots, frontside with neighbors who didn’t talk much. Pressure on the brakes, a slow stop. Micky left the car idling when they hopped out, the headlights a splash of white across the street and just enough light to see the figure hunched over on the steps up to the front door. Kelly didn’t look up until Micky was seven steps away. Had his knees drawn close to his body and his arms wrapped around them, fingers dug into bare arms and mouth set into a thin line. Not a single bit of motion beyond the squint in the light. A rubber band drawn to its limit and his ratty backpack leant up against his side. He moved again before Micky, a hand in a weak wave, and spoke before they could manage anything. “Can I stay the night?” (His voice was thin, pressed into quietude by the lack of air, but he wasn’t whining. No sign of his father, but he wasn’t wearing the same jacket he’d worn for as long as Micky could remember. Washed out green, shitty zipper, a hole worn through one of the pockets that he was constantly losing pencils to. He went through every single second in that thing- slept in it when things were shit enough- but it was nowhere in sight.) “Yeah.” Micky wanted to press close to him. Grab at him and turn him all around to see if a single thing beyond the most glaringly obvious had changed, herd him into the car before they stood around long enough to get stupid ideas about knocking at the front door. “Of course you can. My home’s your home, man. Can stay as long as you need it.” He didn’t leave for two weeks. Barely spoke, either. Three days out of the house to walk his home with realtors, another spent trawling through the scum of it alone to grab whatever he wanted to keep, one more at the police station to file a missing person’s report, and then he was right back with them. Nobody came knocking at the door for him. Nothing but phone calls from behind closed doors. The house sold the next week, a real quick turnkey affair to some wealthy folk looking to buff it up into a rental in the middle of nowhere, and Kelly left four days after. Took the money, his two bags, and nothing else. A goodbye for Micky, a thank you for aunt Mia, and then he was gone. The shine of the sun in front of him as he walked down the street to the bus stop, a light which ate every single distinguishing feature. Nothing but a dark shadow and unspoken words, and then nothing at all. He had said sorry before he said goodbye. Micky didn’t ask what for.