Title: Leave Home
Author: sneaqui 
Team: ANGST!
Prompt: Horizon
Word Count: 930
Rating: PG
Warnings: None. Except that this has a suuuuper ambiguous ending.

A/N: An angsty little high school au. I wrote this in two hours and honestly have no idea where it came from. I just got stuck on the prompt "horizon" and listened to Bon Iver's "Holocene" over and over... and over again. Unbeta-ed.


A layer of oppressive gray hangs in the air above the small town, a fog that Arthur is convinced will never lift. It feels like summer is far more than just two months away. He shakes his bangs out of his eyes and looks around at the concrete parking structures, the asphalt street, the chain link fences caging in trees hundreds of years old. The cloud cover reduces the contrast in the surrounding landscape, destroys shadow, makes everything feel two dimensional and too close.

A bus hisses and opens its doors a few yards behind him. Arthur hazards a quick glance back at it. It’s the Green Line Shuttle. He turns his head forward and keeps walking, not allowing himself to hope. But he hears it anyway.

“Arthur!”

His heart jumps up into his throat, and he stops, turns around slowly.

Eames runs towards him, hands tucked into his armpits, his shoulders hunched against the chilly air and the sad New England drizzle. The rain creates glittering beads of moisture in his shaggy blonde hair and translucent spots on his threadbare t-shirt. He must have thrown his outfit together in a hurry. There are orange flip flops on his feet, and his jeans are falling off his hips. His varsity football jacket is tucked into the crook of his elbow.

Arthur scuffs the sidewalk with the toe of his green Converse, digs his hands into the pockets of his hoodie and waits for Eames to start screaming at him.

But once he and Eames are face to face, the other boy simply whispers, “Christ, I almost missed you,” and slides his fingers into Arthur’s hair. Kisses him open-mouthed, his tongue slipping in to run gently along Arthur’s.

Arthur drops the black backpack that’s hanging off his shoulder in order to wrap his arms around Eames’s waist and pull him closer. He commits the moment to memory. The feel of Eames’s plush mouth pressed against his own. The way the other boy pulls the breathe out of his lungs.

Eames tastes like Pringles and cigarettes and Coca Cola, and it’s then that it hits him. That Arthur might never see him again. A tiny sob hiccups out of his lungs, and Eames, always so good at reading him, wraps his arms around Arthur’s neck, presses their foreheads together.

Eames swallows and lets out a frustrated sigh. “Arthur... as much as I appreciate the romanticism of pen and paper, a letter might not have been the quickest way to get a hold of me.” He huffs out a sad attempt at a laugh.

Arthur smiles and looks up, attempting to catch his eyes. “Have you ever noticed that your upper-class accent comes out when you’re mad at me?”

Eames continues to look down, eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks, rain running down his face. “I’m not mad at you.”

“It’s okay if you are. I’d be mad it you if you were the one leaving.”

“Just... next time,” Eames gets stuck on the words. Next time. “Just call me or text me the next time you have something important to tell me, yeah?”

Arthur’s lips twitch in thought. “Texts get erased. I lose stuff all the time when I empty my inbox. And phones die. Letters last a lot longer.”

His words have an unexpected effect on Eames. His fingers grip Arthur’s hair, and his features tighten as if he’s in physical pain. “Fuck,” he breathes.

Arthur twists his hands in the soft cotton that clings to Eames’s lower back. He presses his face into Eames shoulder and whispers, “Please don’t hate me.”

Eames lifts his head up to look into Arthur eyes. “Of course I don’t hate you.” He wipes dark, wet strands of hair off of Arthur’s face and tucks them behind his ear. “I could never hate you,” he promises, his words low and weighted with multiple meanings. His eyes travel briefly down Arthur body and he asks, his voice deep, “Did he hit you?”

Arthur shakes his head. “I tried to stay out of his way the past few days. I didn’t want to sit on the bus for five hours with bruises on my back.” One corner of his mouth turns up in a slight smile. “I did leave him with a nice parting gift though.”

Eames breathes heavily. Fury causing the muscles under Arthur’s fingers to twitch. “Oh yeah?” he manages to ask.

Arthur grins. “Yeah. I keyed his Mustang.”

That earns Arthur a smile and a kiss on the forehead. “Good boy,” Eames says into his skin.

Arthur sighs and pulls away reluctantly. “Walk me to my stop?"

Eames nods and closes the distance between them once again to drape his jacket over Arthur’s shoulders. Arthur smiles and pushes him arms through the sleeves. He takes his backpack in one hand and Eames’s hand in the other.

They stand under an old wooden awning and wait for Arthur’s train. Eames pressed against Arthur’s back, his arms wrapped around him, his chin digging into Arthur’s boney shoulder.

“You taking the Fung Wah bus?” Eames asks him at some point.

“Yeah.”

“Your sister know you’re coming?”

“Yeah.”

Eames pauses for a beat before continuing. He speaks into Arthur’s hair. “Did you really think I’d just let you leave without saying goodbye?”

A lump forms in Arthur’s throat, and it takes a considerable amount of effort for him to speak past it. “I don't know how to say goodbye to you.”

“Neither do I." Eames admits. "So let’s not say it.”

Arthur exhales heavily. “Alright.”

In the distance, a train approaches.