chronicle. steve and andrew. spoilers for the film. AU. slash. PG-13. characters belong to josh trank & max landis. inspired by the smashing pumpkins' appels + oranjes.

if the clocks would hesitate

If he focuses on the thunder, he can almost block out the sound of his own pitiful sobbing. He hates himself so much, he hates his life—

"Hey, asshole! What are you doing up here?"

It's a shock as much as the lightning; nobody should've been able to track him here. He doesn't even know where he is.

Andrew stares at Steve in the darkness. Scant moonlight cuts through the clouds, just enough to see, and it'll be obvious what happened once the distance between them is closed. Fuck.

"Just leave me alone, Steve!" He doesn't want him to go, but he wants the comfort of his perpetual isolation. It's what he's fucking used to.

"You can't be up here, dude. It isn't safe!"

"I don't want to talk to anyone!" The camera trails along beside him. Nobody's ever filmed like this, in person—Casey's vlog has nothing on this literal Eye of the Storm. "How did you find me?"

Steve glances around as if the weather will give him answers. "I don't know, man. My nose was bleeding, and I heard your voice or something, like—" He stops, narrowing his eyes, appraising the situation. "What the hell happened to your face?"

Steve is incredulous and clearly scared. By all rights, he ought to be. Andrew chokes back a sob and tries to glare at him, but his heart's not in it, and they both know it.

"Nothing, man, just leave me alone."

Steve's relentless, and pushes forward anyway, trying to get a better look. "No, dude, that's not 'nothing'! That's your dad. Your dad fucking beat the shit out of you! He can't do that to you!"

Andrew's voice nearly cracks. "Will you stop acting like you give a shit?"

"Dude." A pause. Stunned silence. "Why are you talking to me like this? I'm your best friend!"

Agonized, he throws it back. "I don't have any friends!" It's irrational, and he knows it, but fuck, he just wants everyone to hurt like he's hurt. "You were never my friend before any of this!"

And Steve's furious, insulted, betrayed. "I hang out with you and Matt like, every day! We're supposed to fly around the world together! Don't you—do you remember that?" His gaze never leaves Andrew's face, despite the camera lurking nearby. He's shouting, against his better judgement. "You think I talk to anyone else about my parents? About my feelings? My shit!?"

There's a long moment of absolute stillness, save for the rage of the thunderstorm around them. Andrew stares back at him, intensely, his breathing ragged. He's grinding his molars together without realizing it.

"Drew," Steve says, as soft as he can be while still audible over the wind. "Andrew. Hey." He reaches out with a gloved hand and touches Andrew's shoulder, carefully, as one would a stray dog.

At last, that's all it takes; Andrew recants, repeating frenzied apologies throughout his redoubled crying.

"I'm sorry," he says, brokenly. "I'm an idiot. I'm sorry, Steve, oh god, I'm so sorry—"

Steve puts an arm around him and squeezes, sideways. "Dude, it's okay. You just need help, okay?"

"I don't know what I'm doing. I don't..." Andrew seems to shrink into himself, his hunched shoulders turning inward towards Steve. "I don't know anymore." It's freezing up here, and all he's got to shelter him are regular clothes, the thin layer of that ratty grey shirt and threadbare jeans. He's shivering.

With infinite patience, Steve gives him a smile that Andrew can't see and begins their descent. "It'll be fine. Let's go to my house, okay? Get you fixed up."

Andrew nods, miserable.

When they finally land, it's a relief. Andrew has lost all track of time, but the clock on the Montgomery stove assures him it's past midnight. Steve wastes no time; he immediately opens the freezer, procures an ice pack, and wraps it in a kitchen towel.

"Here."

He presses it to Andrew's cheek, where the bruise is already purple-green and ugly. It's difficult to look Steve in the eyes, and he refuses to think what could've happened if he'd lost control up there.

"Thanks," he mumbles, instead, and keeps his gaze downcast. The pattern of the tile is not particularly interesting, but he examines it with a scrutiny he'd normally save for sifting through raw footage, frame by frame.

The camera came with them, of course, but it's sitting on the table, completely off and abandoned for the first time in weeks. Andrew explained it away as the battery going dead, but he's frankly tired of lugging it around.

Steve pulls up a barstool and sits next to Andrew at the kitchen island. Sighing, he leans his elbows on the counter and gives him a sidelong look.

"You don't have to go back, you know."

"What?" He's not really listening, and Steve knows it.

"I said, you don't have to go back."

At that, he does look up. Skeptical, he laughs it off. "Right, where am I supposed to go? I can't afford an apartment."

Steve shrugs. "We got plenty of space. I can ask my dad in the morning."

Andrew hesitates, unused to this level of compassion. "But..."

"No buts." Steve shakes his head vehemently. "These are what you'd call extenuating circumstances, Drew. Nobody's gonna blame you for blowing up at your dad."

He can't help but smile, just a little. "As long as I don't actually blow him up, right?"

Steve laughs the type of quiet laugh you do when it's the middle of the night and your parents are asleep and you're supposed to be, too. "That's right. We keep that in check, and you're golden."

"Okay. I can do that much." Andrew rotates the ice pack, squishes the parts that are melting, and presses a colder section back against his cheek. It still hurts, but not anywhere close to as badly as it had before. When he speaks again, it's sincere. "Thank you."

Grinning, Steve reaches out and claps him on the shoulder. "Hey, what are friends for?"

Andrew tries to ignore the streak of disappointment that hits him along with the endearment. Time to change the subject.

"Can we watch Netflix or something?"

Another shrug. "You got it."

They set up in the basement, like they had when they came back, crash landing from an afternoon of flying. Never in his life did Andrew think he'd feel so blasé about having the wind coursing through his hands, five thousand feet above the ground, but so it goes.

The air mattress is still mostly inflated from last time, and neither of them care enough to fish the pump out of some closet or another. Steve offers Andrew his choice of the makeshift bed or the trusty cushions of the couch, and he'll take the other, but Andrew rejects the idea entirely.

"Can you just sit with me?"

It's bordering on becoming an odd request, but Steve doesn't mind. Early morning is the perfect time for sleepovers to turn into philosophical conversations, to lead into the exchange of secrets and hopes and dreams and all the sorts of shit that Matt eats up but won't quite admit to pondering while he's stoned. Andrew settles back into the couch, still pressing the ice pack to his injured cheek, and pretends that he's watchingHome Movies more than he's watching Steve.

There's a while that's simply comfortable silence, apart from H. Jon Benjamin and Brendon Small ad libbing on the screen. The ice pack gradually turns to room temperature, and they go through two and a half episodes before Andrew works up the nerve to say something.

"Do you like me?"

Steve purses his lips in the darkness; their faces are lit only by the television's glow, and Andrew remains fixated on the cartoon.

"Yeah, dude. Of course I do. We all—"

"No." Andrew sets down the ice pack at long last, and busies himself folding up the kitchen towel even though it's going to get thrown into the laundry after this, anyway.

"...no," Steve repeats, cautiously. He's seeking out a response, some clue that might indicate which direction this is headed. There's a certain gravity to the words that sets him a bit on edge; the back of his neck is tense, and he's anxious for Andrew's reply.

"Not just like that."

This next silence is not nearly so comfortable. Steve is acutely aware of his own breathing, and just how close Andrew's gotten to him on the couch (what is that, like not even a foot away?) and he lets out a shaky sigh before speaking.

"Andrew, I..."

"You what?" Andrew's snapping, now, vulnerable and frightened.

And the Detmers are not the only ones with struggles. Despite the excitement over the talent show, Samantha's grown distant, still convinced that Steve values his friends over her, and that he's lost interest, and maybe he's cheating on her, and why don't they spend time together anymore? He's hoped it would gradually fizzle out, that maybe she'd break it off first; he doesn't want to do to her what his mother is currently doing to his father.

When she implies that he's seeing someone else, he can't honestly tell himself that he's not.

Steve's frustrated with the otherwise entertaining banter of the voice actors; he snatches the PS3 controller off the floor and pauses the damn episode so he can focus on this. After an agonizing minute of tension between them, he finally turns to look at Andew again.

His pupils are wide in the darkness; the bruise on his cheek is nasty and looks painful, although the swelling's gone down significantly over the past hour. His hair is damp from the rainclouds, and if Steve squints, he can spot pieces of debris and dust that look like they probably came from the Detmer basement, based on the brief snippets he's been able to coax out of Andrew.

He thinks back to the months they've spent together, to the flights and walks, hours spent on various rooftops, to late nights in shitty diners and early mornings in the high school parking lot so no one would ever see them land, even though they never dropped directly onto the campus. He thinks of all the evenings they spent preparing for their talent routine, all the weekends the three of them shot the shit, and how many of those weekends quickly turned into time by themselves when Matt started spending his time with Casey, instead.

He looks at Andrew, and all he can think is that he wants to get him out of that shithole, protect him from all that bullshit, get him somewhere he can be as happy as he is when he's flying.

"C'mere," he says, quietly.

Andrew blinks at him, startled and not sure of what to do. He tentatively scoots closer on the couch, and meets Steve's gaze again with that kind of tormented curiosity that has learned to only expect the worst.

Before he can say anything else, before he can back away, Steve cups his bruised cheek and draws him in for a kiss.

Andrew flinches, constantly on edge, but relaxes when Steve runs his fingers up into his matted hair. It's different than kissing Monica, not least of all because neither of them taste like cheap beer. Perpetually unsure of himself, Andrew moves his lips slightly against Steve's, but quickly loses his nerve and pulls back.

He doesn't go too far away, though, and instead drops his forehead to Steve's shoulder, cinching his arms around his waist and sighing heavily.

"That answer your question?" Steve asks; his heart's racing, but he's still mildly amused by the situation. Andrew nods against his collarbone and remains quiet.

Steve lets his chin rest on the top of Andrew's head, and simply holds him.

Andrew's in no condition, physically or emotionally, to do much else but try to recuperate. Steve unpauses the episode, and Andrew practically sinks into him as they continue to drowsily watch TV. It's heartbreaking, he thinks, that the guy has spent so many lonely years without any simple affection like this. Steve curls his arm around him and idly plays with his hair.

And thank god, Andrew's smiling, if only a little.

There's a sense of peace about him that Steve's never seen before, except maybe in flashes of pride and excitement when the entire school was applauding his performance. He knows that if he can keep him around some semblance of stability, he might just be all right. Even at the worst of times, Steve's never given up on him. He's remembered him for four years for a reason, he thinks, and when Andrew eventually falls asleep leaning against him and cuts off the circulation to his arm, he doesn't have the heart to move him right away.

Somewhen around five in the morning, Andrew wakes up groggily and slowly realizes that they relocated onto the floor, sprawled half on and half off the air mattress, and that Steve's got his arm curled over his stomach, exhaling softly against his shoulder as he sleeps.

Andrew shifts slightly, trying to get comfortable again, and drifts off in a matter of minutes, utterly at ease.

They'll deal with everything else when the sun's up.