Ah London. You ran away from that city a long time ago, but there are things you can't escape forever. Feelings, for one. So you come back, tracing the fading footsteps of your past, hoping to see the boy you left behind.
“Take care. I cared.
More than I think you know.”
White bulbs bled into the skylight above the center of the mall. The gentle hum of escalators, mothers tugging snotty children through waves of giggles and shrieks, friends and lovers shopping idly. It hadn’t changed much, not in a way that mattered. Heels clacked against reflective white tiles. Neon signs screamed for your wallet’s attention, every storefront a trapdoor to somewhere more expensive than the last. Anything to get you to spend more money.
It felt bigger in your memory. Or maybe you were just smaller then. Either way, it felt like too much now. A churn of noise and clashing music, all bleeding from the open doors of competing shops. The endless swirl of bodies, running like they all had somewhere better to be. There were the teen girls again. Always in packs, arms linked, moving like an entity of melting limbs, synchronized and self-assured. You used to think they were laughing at you, whispering behind manicured hands about your hair, your clothes, the unraveling straps of your bag. But now? They looked harmless. Just kids, same as you were. Maybe they had always been harmless. Maybe they’d have invited you to sit with them if you’d been braver, if you hadn’t pre-decided they were enemies for wearing glitter gloss.
Then again, some people were cruel. You’d learned that the hard way. Over and over until flinching first and trusting second became muscle memory. Now, standing there with years between you and them, it was impossible to say how much of that cruelty was real and how much was all in your head, trying to protect yourself from potential hurt.
The mall still pulsed with life, but it was different now, less magical. Still, the part that hurt the most was the gaping, empty space where the internet café used to be.
Gone, like the skatepark.
Some soulless fast food chain stood in its place, fluorescent-lit and reeking of fryer oil. It felt like someone had gone over your memories with a fat neon highlighter, crossing them out like mistakes. No constructive criticism, just erasure. It felt like that one evil teacher nobody liked, the one that threw assignments in the bin.
It seemed like the corner next to the fast-food had never been cleaned properly, the kind of spot everyone walks past without seeing. Dust clung thick over layers of torn flyers and sun-faded stickers, behind a pipe and an indent in the walls. But you knew that one, small, peeling at the edges, a crumpled band logo Hobie used to scrawl across every surface he could reach. You hesitated to peel it away to keep for yourself.
You remembered watching him slap it up there, years ago, both of you high off nothing but cheap soda and the thrill of getting away with existing. It was so stupidly, stubbornly him. And unlike your tags under the ramps, his marks seemed to stay.
Maybe that was your punishment for leaving: the city swallowing every trace of you. Your footsteps in the mud, your writing, even the tears you shed on concrete. Camden had turned its face away from you, but somehow, it remembered him.
You leaned against the same column as when you were waiting for Hobie. In many ways, you still were. You hoped he’d come and greet you, ask you about your day before you could find some flash games to play.
You remembered the internet café clear as day: the purr of outdated PCs, the click of greasy keyboards, the pale glow of monitors reflecting in Hobie’s eyes, a thin veil of blue over his dark iris, made them really look like the window of the soul. You’d sit there for hours, pretending the air conditioning was the only reason you stayed, but really, it was the games, the custom Myspace pages you coded side by side, the secret thrill of having a place that belonged to both of you.
Hobie was terrible at coding. Not because he couldn’t learn, as he could probably teach a toaster to play bass, but because he liked watching you explain it. You’d lean over, fingers flying over the keys, talking fast about divs and balises and inline styles, and Hobie would pretend to follow along, nodding like a student trying to impress his teacher.
“It’s easy, mate. I literally sent you the cheat sheet with all the tags!” you’d groan, dragging the mouse out of his hand like a parent confiscating a toy.
“Yeah, yeah, ‘easy,’ you say that ‘bout everything,” Hobie would huff, leaning back so far in his chair it creaked dangerously. “Easy for you, Einstein. I’m not out here romancin’ the bloody HTTP.”
“Oh my god, you don’t romance HTML, you just—” your hands would fly up, exasperated, “—you just tell it what to do! It’s rules. It’s logic. Even you could follow that.”
“Could, yeah. Don’t want to.” He’d grin, wide and lazy, like he was proud of being impossible. “Why would I do it myself when you’re so good at it, huh? Like watchin’ a magician pull a rabbit out their hat.”
“That’s not— I’m not—" you’d splutter, and Hobie would tilt his head, all mock-serious.
“What? Not a magician? Could’ve fooled me, mate. Look at all this.” He’d gesture wildly at the screen, which was usually some half-finished page covered in clashing fonts and colors because Hobie insisted that lime green text on a red background was “punk as fuck.” Which, according to your burning retinas, was a lie.
“Okay, fine,” you’d sigh, already scooting closer, already typing over his mess. “But only if you stop making everything look like a migraine.”
“Oi! I’ve got taste, thank you very much.”
“Doubt it.”
“You’re the tasteless one.” He’d flash that grin again, sharp and full of trouble, and somehow you always forgave him. Sat there for hours, breathing the same recycled air, your knees knocking under the desk, and neither of you ever mentioned that you could’ve been anywhere else, but you stayed there, together.
Looking back, it was obvious. He didn’t want to learn. He just wanted to hear your voice, watch your hands move, let you be the expert at something. You didn’t get it back then. It felt like a weird blind spot in his otherwise sharp brain, like, how could someone who could rewire a speaker with a lighter and a paperclip, could break through zone restriction to play cheap games on your console, not understand basic HTML?
But you got it now.
Some other afternoons, when the heat was too much and neither of you had the energy to go anywhere cooler, you’d wander into the other shops, just to mess around, trying on clothes you could never afford. Ridiculous stuff. Feather and sequined hats. Oversized trench coats and evening dresses. You thought you looked ridiculous in them. But Hobie didn’t look ridiculous. He wore them the same way he wore everything, like a dare. A middle finger to anyone who gave him side-eye or called him names under their breath. You envied that. The way he could make anything look cool, from secondhand blazers missing buttons to ripped tights as sleeves. He could’ve walked into any room wearing a wedding dress and somehow made it look punk.
“How do I look?” he asked, twirling dramatically in a sequined minidress that probably belonged to a girl band’s backup dancer.
You squinted. “Like you’re about to drop the worst pop album of the decade.”
“Nah, mate. It’s post-ironic,” he said, striking a pose. “It’s anti-fashion.”
“It’s anti-my-eyesight, yeah.”
You swore he could’ve been a model if he wanted, the way he carried himself, that loose, effortless confidence. Afterall, he made school uniforms look cool, which you thought was physically impossible.
Once, in some cheap accessory shop full of knockoff sunglasses and plastic chokers, Hobie pocketed a studded bracelet, the tiniest, stupidest thing. He turned to you right there in the middle of the aisle, flashing it like he’d just pulled off the heist of the century.
“For you,” he said, sliding it onto your wrist with a kind of exaggerated care, and you thought it might’ve as well been a ring. His fingers lingered, adjusting the strap beyond necessary, his touch warm against your skin.
“You’re actually so bad at stealing,” you whispered, shoving your hand into your sleeve like that would somehow make the evidence disappear.
“Rude.”
“You literally made eye contact with the cashier while doing it.”
“Yeah, and she blinked first.”
You barely swallowed your laugh. At this point, you were pretty sure the cashier was flirting with him. And you hated it. Not out of jealousy, though. Definitely not jealousy. Just… it was annoying, that’s all. So unprofessional.
You twisted the bracelet around your wrist, testing the weight of it. “What if they call security?”
Hobie scoffed. “What, for a bracelet? Be serious.”
“You could at least pretend to be subtle—”
“I am subtle.”
“You’re wearing neons.”
“Yeah, and?” He wiggled his fingers. “Distraction tactics, mate.”
You sighed but you were already looking down, already pressing your fingers over the bracelet like it was something precious.
Hobie just grinned. “To match,” he said, flashing his own wrist where his own battered bracelet hung loose.
You still wore yours. Even now. Your fingers found it out of habit, twisting it around your wrist like a worry stone. It was now just as battered as his own back then. You wondered if he still had his.
Standing there, in the middle of the overstimulating buzzing lights, looking over the many floors linked by escalators, surrounded by the latest fashion and hip fast food place… You thought it wasn’t the places you missed, as much as the version of yourselves that lived in them.
The kids you were when you could spend time fighting over fonts (the one he wanted wasn’t even legible!) and hexadecimals (you wondered why he was obsessed with the title between that ugly orange until you realized it spelled EA7A55…). The kids that still haunted this place, before you knew better, before you realized it was temporary. Or maybe you did know back then, but you didn’t know how much it mattered.
Most of all, you missed the you who thought staying was maybe an option still.
And that stupid, cheap bracelet, you remembered the way his fingers lingered when he slid it onto your wrist. Like a promise neither of you could put words to back then. Something about staying. Something about belonging.
Most of the time, you felt something that was close to sadness. Sometimes, though, your thoughts went dark. Intrusive.
You’d stand at the top of the escalator, looking down at the shining floors, the rows of shops, the glossy posters advertising perfume and phones and shoes no one actually needed, and you’d imagine the whole place catching fire. Just orange flames eating at the walls, glass cracking, mannequins melting into plastic sludge.
You imagined Hobie standing in the middle of it all, smoke dancing around his boots, face streaked with soot, grinning like the world was finally ending the way it always should have. He wouldn’t run. You knew that. He’d be the last one standing over the ashes, and you’d find him there, the metal studs on his jacket reflecting the flames.
You thought about that more often than you’d admit.
Just another story you told yourself when you couldn’t fall asleep.
You hoped you wouldn’t actually need to burn down London to find him. You hoped that if you turned a corner fast enough, you’d see him grinning, waiting. Maybe he always knew you’d come back. Maybe he would’ve stopped looking and you could surprise him.
You’d see his back, come up to him, and say something stupid, like “Hey, long time no see.”
heyyyyyyyyyyy long time no see,, haha so funny, ghosting you halfway through a story about ghosting... ahem... anywayyy... hope whoever still reading this enjoyed it after like seven months,,... thankfully my draft were thicc enough for me to remember what the hell i was planning,,..
Tags (sorry if you're tagged and not interested/forgot about this, thought i'd still just... ping you... or something...) : @myassisasolarsystem @planetaryfire @wittysidecharacter @ellisspiderman (hello you)
i have a difficult situation at home with daily verbal/physical abuse. I can't leave the house, get medical help and medication because my mum forbids me and throws them away. you can support me by donating and i will draw you your request!!! (in dm) pls reblog if you can
https://boosty.to/ahouuu/donate
I'm diagnosed with depression/autism/adhd/c-ptsd/hypermobility and chronic migraines. I can't get any help, so I'm actually surviving :(
hi hello!! quick question, did you try to make like some type of connection throughout the chapters in handpicked or however you phrase it
because hobie attempted to steal those flowers for a funeral and then he said someone in roberts life had passed away🤔 or am i genuinely going crazy
Hi!! This might be disappointing, but to be honest, I didn't plan it that well!
In my first first draft, Handpicked was only 5 chapters long, and was more focused on Hobie's grief. Robert didn't exist there.
Then, I kinda scraped that because it just didn't fit in like I wanted it to. And when I introduced Robert, I didn't have a plan with it, I kinda improvised everything from there 😭
I did think about it though, but I wasn't sure myself, my timeline for the story started to blur a little. I really liked this idea because Hobie's grief would be more complex, with feelings of guilt deep in there, despite his lack of acknowledgement.
The fact that you clocked this makes me think it does make sense for it to be the same person, even if I didn't push for it!
I plan to rework Handpicked to really polish it, maybe some times during the summer vacations, and if so post a polished/reworked version on like ao3 or idk, just something I've been thinking about. If I do, this might be implied in a better way in it.
Sorry this isn't a clear answer about master foreshadowing, I wish it was! Thank you for your question too, allowed be to ramble for a bit lol
Ah London. You ran away from that city a long time ago, but there are things you can't escape forever. Feelings, for one. So you come back, tracing the fading footsteps of your past, hoping to see the boy you left behind.
Warnings: general teenage angst, self indulging Im14andthisisdeep
“But it’s okay that you’re going.
You need to. And I want you to have everything.”
You wanted to believe you were mistaken. After all, you had been gone for a long time, the kind of time that blurs edges and rewrites maps in your head. But no matter how many turns you took, how hard you tried to remember, you couldn’t find it.
You were sure it was there. Between the Fish & Chips place and the launderette, yes, that had to be it.
There was only a warehouse now. Ugly and blocky, the kind of building made for forklifts and fluorescent lights, not for kids with scraped knees and too much time. At most, the stairs railings could still be skated on. It stood exactly where the skatepark should’ve been, like some architectural act of erasure.
Your heart swelled with grief, or disbelief, or some explosive cocktail of both. You didn’t want to believe it, but what else could you believe? They’d paved over the place like it was nothing, built a coffin of corrugated metal right on top of all those memories.
It felt blasphemous. To bury a place like that under concrete and storage racks, as if the skatepark hadn’t been a church, a holy ground for the kids around. A sanctuary built of asphalt and splintered plywood and the smell of melting rubber. They covered it like a grave, face down, no headstone.
Anger prickled at the edges of your sadness.
It only slightly eased at the sight of the graffitis splashed across the iron sheets. Layers on layers, some fresh, some sun-faded, some half-scrubbed away. Proof that not everyone had forgotten. You jumped over the pitiful attempt at a fence, easily trespassing to look at the art closer. It was colorful and lively on top of the rusting plates. Your fingers traced the outline of a large ‘S’ spelling spider or something, and you were close enough to almost smell the fumes of spray paint. Maybe it was just your memories catching up to you.
It reminded you of your own tags under the ramps, shaky lines sprayed in the shadows, hands trembling with cold or adrenaline, you were never sure which. You remembered crawling under there on rainy days, when the park was empty, the air thick with wet concrete. You had to step over the shaky metal armatures like webs, sitting in between them. You left your trace, your symbols, small claims staked in fluorescent blues and cracked black. You wanted to leave something behind. A reminder that you were here, too.
That summer, Hobie invited you to hang out at the park as well. The breeze was light with laughter and asphalt dust. It was different than when you went alone. It was the kind of evening that stretched and stretched, long past sunset, until time felt liquid and endless. The heat clung to everything; the rails, the ramps, the black-painted ground, like the whole world had been wrapped in sweat and sunshine.
You spent most of your time standing, the ground too hot to sit, pacing, watching him. Kind of ignoring his other friends, but it was okay. He wasn’t the same with you and with them anyway. You were briefly introduced to some of them, maybe Rob, and Riri, and a happy bunch you didn’t bother to get to know, not wanting to get attached to any more people.
You didn’t know how to skate, not really, and you were too proud to fall on your butt in front of Hobie.
Hobie, of course, couldn’t stand that.
Once or twice, he shoved his board toward you. It was decorated with stickers and drawings, the edges were rugged and chewed up, taped back, held together by the power of sheer will and spite, and his voice almost made you want to try. “C’mon mate. Give it a try. Worst thing that can happen is you break something you don’t need. Like a tooth. Or your dignity.”
You snorted, shaking your head. “Pass. I’d rather not bite the curb.”
“That’s quitter talk,” he grinned. “C’mon,” his syllable dragged, “I’ll even teach you how to bail properly. Y’know, roll out, land like a stuntman. Real graceful.”
“I’m not interested in dying gracefully,” you shot back. “I’d rather not die at all.”
“Coward.” He shook his head dramatically. “Next you’ll tell me you wear knee pads.”
“You’re literally wearing knee pads.”
“That’s different. I’m stylish.”
He gave the board another push toward you, the wheels rattling over the cracks, but you didn’t take the bait.
“I’ll pass,” you said. “I’d rather keep my teeth.”
He squinted at you like he was calculating something, then raised his finger dramatically, like the world’s dumbest philosopher about to unveil some universal truth.
“Okay, but what if… you got on board and I held your hands, like some cheesy romance montage?” He waggled his eyebrows. “We could fall in love or fall on our arses, fifty fifty odds.”
“You’re daft.” You chuckled.
“But you’re laughing, so you’re daft-adjacent.”
“Laughing at you.”
“That still counts!”
You tried to glare at him, but the laughter made it impossible. It was the kind of ridiculous, pointless jokes, the ones that weren’t even funny. It was just enjoying each other’s company.
“Alright, alright,” he said, still grinning. “But seriously, you sure you don’t wanna try? Just once?”
“Nah.” You kicked a loose pebble across the pavement. “I just wanna watch you.” The words slipped out too easily, like a truth you forgot to keep locked up.
He stilled for a second, like maybe he heard the weight behind it, but if he did, he let it go.
And shit, he looked so cool out of uniform. Ripped-sleeve punk band tee, arms all awkward and too-long like a lot of teenage boys, but somehow it worked on him. You tried not to look too hard at the way the sun caught the sharp lines of his biceps, or the flash of skin peeking above his belts when his shirt rode up.
The way he moved though, that you couldn’t look away from. The way he carved smooth lines into the world like it was the easiest thing. You wanted to memorize it. To trap his motion in your brain, hold onto it like it might mean something later (it did) (it meant everything).
Your eyes followed him, the flicker of muscle under his skin, the way his arms floated almost gracefully as he balanced, the effortless way his wheels kissed the edges of ramps. He moved like gravity was more of a suggestion than a rule. Like he trusted the air to catch him if the ground didn’t.
And the worst part? It wasn’t even for show. He wasn’t trying to impress anyone. He was just in it, loving the rhythm of it, the challenge, the feeling of cutting through time and space like it belonged to him.
You swore in some other world, he found a way to fly.
And now, standing here, years later, you feel like the biggest idiot in the world. He never cared about looking stupid. Not once. You could’ve let him hold your hands, let him teach you how to wobble across the concrete. Could’ve made an excuse to fall straight into his arms and laugh about it after. He wouldn’t have judged you. He probably would’ve found it hilarious. You rested your forehead against the cold wall.
At some point, when the sun was too high for any kind of exercise, even in London, you both had crawled under the ramp for a break. He flopped down beside you, his head tilted back to look up at the underside of the ramp. Tags, shitty drawings, great drawings. Names, whispers, all the people there before you.
He pointed a finger at one tag in particular, a messy, half-legible scrawl in dripping blue. “That one’s sick,” he said, tracing over the edges of the letters like they might spell something if you squinted hard enough. “Feels real, y’know? And I really like the style. See that curve there? The energy?”
Your heart swelled in your throat. It was yours. You knew that. But you didn’t say anything. Pride and embarrassment collided in your throat, making your words thick and heavy like tar. You wanted to claim it, to hear what he’d say if he knew, but you were scared, too. Scared he’d laugh, or think it was stupid. Scared to want his approval that badly.
“You think so?” was all you managed.
“Yeah. It’s got… I dunno. It’s just neat.” He grinned, and the glint off his lip ring caught the sun, a tiny spark you’ll never forget.
“Yeah, yeah. I think it’s… Cool. I guess.” You shrugged like you hadn’t been quietly living off that comment for the following years. Hell, you wouldn’t have kept up with the hobby if it wasn't for that one moment.
You wished you told him, now. It could’ve been one more thing you had in common, one more thing to bond over, alongside modding consoles and swapping burned CDs.
There was this one time — maybe that same day, maybe another, memory made a mess of time — when the air caught wrong.
It wasn’t even a dramatic trick. It was merely a turn taken too sharp, a wheel clipping the edge of a crack, and suddenly Hobie was eating pavement, the sound of skin scraping concrete sharp enough to make you wince.
He grunted, hissed through his teeth, and before you could think, you were already kneeling beside him, half your bag spilled across the ground, your markers, your electronics, your tickets. Your hands shook as you unscrewed your water bottle, pouring too much too fast over his palms, water running pink where it hit raw skin.
Your heart was loud, louder than the train rumbling somewhere in the distance, all adrenaline and something else you didn’t have a name for yet.
“Shit—” he tried to hide his wince, “fuck, I’m gonna sue the wind. Proper betrayal.”
You snorted despite yourself, but you saw the way his eyebrows pulled together, his breath catching around the edges. A lot of things you’ve forgotten, but not the look of pain in his eyes.
“Shut up. Stop moving.” You scolded him, voice trembling slightly, which made it a lot less intimidating than you hoped.
“Oi oi, don’t start panickin’.” He wiggled his fingers at you, water dripping from them onto his jeans. “I’ve had much worse — see that one?” He jerked his chin toward a scar along his forearm, grinning like it was a badge of honor. “Got that from a fight with a bin, believe it or not.”
You frowned, not at the story, but at the mental image of him bleeding any more than he already was.
“Hobie.” His name came out softer than you meant, and you weren’t even sure what you were asking for. Just needed him to stop, to sit still, to let you take care of him.
He didn’t say anything, but you swore for a moment, he couldn’t look you in the eyes, his gaze fleeting and nebulous, hovering somewhere near your hands, your knees, anywhere but your face.
You remembered the sun burning down the side of your face. The scuff of your shoes against the hot pavement. The distant sound of a train, calling for you, passing behind the fence. The way his smile shrank, softened, not gone, just quieter, like maybe this meant something to him too. How even then, you couldn’t fully enjoy the moment, knowing you had already decided to leave.
You tried to play it cool, but your hand stayed where it was, wrapped around his wrist. His hand stayed too, resting easy on your knee. Neither of you moved first.
You don’t remember how it ended. That part’s gone, eaten by the wispy statics filling the gaps in your memory. Maybe one of his friends shouted his name from across the park. Maybe you cracked a joke and stood up too fast. Maybe you both just got scared. You chose to imagine that you never let go, your silhouettes still holding each other, like nuclear shadows now tucked somewhere between a shelf and a cardboard box.
But tonight, the ramp was gone. The tags were gone. The whole skatepark was gone, and you were left standing in front of a warehouse, heart too full of ghosts, wondering how a place that once held so much could vanish without a trace.
You pulled a marker from your pocket and pressed the tip to the wall, shaking it till ink flowed. First, just a moniker. A familiar claim, something simple. Muscle memory. You had gotten better over the years, left your nickname in cities that barely knew you, carved proof of your existence into brick and metal, under bridges and on top of buildings. But as you kept going, the words came faster, sentences spilling out like threats, like prayers, like something owed. A message to the pulsing center of Camden, to the past, to your inner child.
It was time to take London back in broad daylight.
You hated this city, but worse than hating it was the thought that it might forget you.
That he might’ve forgotten you.
Tags: @hoe-bie (assuming you still want to be tagged?)
Trust the process, they said, as it got progressively worse.
(the middle one is okay but I wanted my lighter value be pure red, and then it went south) (i just wanted to play around with gouache, but i'll try with acrylics some day, I find it easier)
Ah London. You ran away from that city a long time ago, but there are things you can't escape forever. Feelings, for one. So you come back, tracing the fading footsteps of your past, hoping to see the boy you left behind.
Warnings: general teenage angst, self indulging Im14andthisisdeep
“And I don’t want to hold you back,
even if I wished you could’ve stayed.”
The sight of your old school wasn’t one you were particularly attached to, and you weren't sure why you walked here first. Maybe it was the road you knew best, from following it everyday. They repainted the walls, changed the name, but it was still the same walls that held your anxiety all those years. You weren’t sure how you felt about it now, bittersweetness curling in your chest. It smelled like youth, innocence, something you lost. It smelled like alienation too, the solitude of your teen years lingering in the corridors.
You watched the kids smoke and laugh in front of the fences, and you wondered if a single person in there still remembered you. Maybe the janitor, the one who pretended not to notice when you snuck up to the roof, if he was still working there. If you got to see him again, you’d thank him.
It didn’t feel the same, standing there now. Back then, your heart used to pound before stepping through those gates. Today? Underwhelming. The teenagers seemed baby-faced, small, not so scary after all.
You walked around the school, following the wire fence that once made you feel trapped. You crooked your neck to gaze up at the roof, a grey cloud peeking from behind it. It smelled like rain was about to come. You wondered if any of it remembered you. The wall where you sat. Did it remember the shape of your back? Or did memory only work one way?
School never got easy. Being different in a system that demanded uniformity, right down to the way you tied your damn tie, was a social death sentence, and you had been condemned long before you even understood the charges.
Maybe you had been too quiet, too weird, too difficult to categorize. You hoped it was something simple like that. Something fixable. You hoped it was just that children were cruel and teenagers crueler. That it wasn’t something wrong with you, something broken, beyond repair.
When you switched school at the start of that year, you hoped it would’ve changed. New people. New buildings. A fresh start. This time, you told yourself, you’d get it right; talk to people, make friends, live the high school memories they promised in American movies. But if life were a stage, you were the kid in the back pulling the ropes to close the curtains.
The first trimester was the hardest. You practiced introductions in bathroom mirrors, rehearsed your way into conversations, only to sit alone anyway. At best, you reintroduced yourself to the same people who forgot you from the week before. Some weren’t even mean. They just forgot. In some ways, that hurt worse. You couldn’t blame anyone but yourself.
The second was easier. You had stopped trying. You put your energy into passing class, ripping movies and burning CDs, and finding quiet corners to rest your mind.
By the third, you found the rooftop.
The only place in the whole school where the world didn’t feel like it was pressing in on you. No echoes of laughter that didn’t include you, no side-eyes in the hallway, just you, your thoughts, and your music playing on your old discman.
There were moments, fleeting, fragile, where you didn’t feel like a complete failure. Where you didn’t feel the weight of profound inadequacy crawling under your skin. Where the problem wasn’t you, just the fact that you existed in the wrong place. Maybe, somewhere else, you’d fit. But not here. You had accepted that like the way the sun set whether you wanted it or not.
So you made do. You carved out spaces in the cracks—empty classrooms, abandoned stairwells—the spaces between where people gathered. Until you found people to call your own, you spoke to the trees, the clouds, the broken bricks. It wasn’t pathetic, at least, not to you. And if the only voices that answered came from half-faded graffiti in the school bathroom, so be it. Someone, once, had scrawled I see you between a crude drawing and a smudged phone number. Maybe it was meant to be profound. Maybe it was just the bathroom walls talking back. You weren’t sure which one felt more like a joke.
The rooftop wasn’t freedom, not really, but it was height. And sometimes, being above it all was the next best thing.
That day, (the day you met him), you set out to fix your PS1 controller. Summer was coming, and you needed it working before the holidays hit.
You found a wall to lean against, shielding you from the midday sun. Your jacket made a great seat, and you took a deep breath as you rummaged through your bag for the precious controller. The air smelled of honeysuckle, hot pavement, and hose water. Distant laughter drifted up and birds sang somewhere overhead. You almost stopped to bask in the quiet. You didn’t. Now, you wish you had. The sun never hit you quite the same after that summer.
The controller fit your hands perfectly. Grey plastic molded for this. You laid out your makeshift toolbox on the asphalt, fingers curling around a screwdriver. Its orange handle caught the light.
Soon, the guts of the thing lay before you, and you realized you had no idea what was wrong. The circuit board seemed fine, its metallic veins gleaming as you rolled it between your fingers. The sun made it hard to see, blinding you with each angle reflecting it.
When the bell rang, you didn’t care. Most tests were over, and who gave a shit about attendance in June? You could afford to skip. Fixing your controller was far more important than another mind-numbing hour of maths.
You tried to check if the cable was damaged, but it seemed alright. You eventually realized graphite from the rubber had worn off the circuit board, and that it didn’t quite connect anymore. It made sense, considering you mainly had issues with your controls not controlling much of anything. That hit a bit too close to home.
At least now you knew what was wrong. That was something. The next step? Well, that was a problem for future you. And future you loved a good challenge.
The quiet footsteps took you by surprise, and you didn’t have time to hide all of your stuff. Fuck—if this was someone from the school staff, you were done for. Skipping class and breaking onto the roof?
You weren’t sure if you felt relieved or terrified when you saw him.
Hobart ‘Hobie’ Brown.
You wished there was a subtle way to introduce him, but the truth was, everyone knew his name. He didn’t fit in, but not like you. You faded into the background. He made noise. A sore thumb against authority, against the posh kids and the mean kids. Either admired or feared, but never ignored.
The first time you saw him from afar at school, you thought he was just another cocky bastard. That was a lie actually, you thought he was beautiful, but it was easier to remember it the first way.
The sun shone from behind him, backlighting his silhouette. You couldn’t see his face, but the glint off his piercings caught your eye. Fuck. Even the school uniform bent to his will; tie undone, blazer slung on like an afterthought, sleeves pushed up just enough to look rebellious but not careless. The pins on his lapel should’ve broken some rule. Maybe they did. Did the dress code even apply to him?
You don’t remember what he said when he first saw you, not exactly. You remember the shape of his grin, the sound of his boots on the gravel, the way your chest clenched like you were bracing for a punch. But the words? Lost. Or maybe you just played the scene in your head so many times since you didn’t know which iteration was true.
“Oi, that’s my spot—hold on. What the fuck are you doing to that poor controller?!”
You glared. No way you were giving up your hiding place. “Roof’s big enough. Leave me alone.”
“Don’t get all huffy, I was just messing with ya. How’d you even get here anyway? It’s supposed to be locked.”
“...Picked the lock. You?”
“Nicked a master key. Can go anywhere.”
You stared at him. He said it like it was the most natural thing ever. How can someone even get a master key—what was the school security doing?
“That still doesn’t explain why you’re committing a war crime against that innocent controller.” He started again.
You shifted uncomfortably. “It’s… Well, the controls don’t work anymore. I was trying to fix it…”
He hummed, crouching in front of you. His eyes flicked between the circuit board and your face, like he was trying to decide which was more interesting.
“Mate, you got graphite all over the board.” He snorted, reaching for it before hesitating. “Can I?”
You blinked at him. People didn’t usually ask you things. Let alone excitedly hover over your dismantled controller.
“Uh. Sure. I figured the graphite had something to do with it.” You just said, although you frowned. You’d spent ages trying to figure that out, and he got it in a single glance? That was annoying. And impressive. But mostly annoying.
He plucked it from your hands without hesitation, tilting toward the sun. “Yeah, look at that. Smudged to hell.”
“Do you know how to fix it?”
He grinned, like you’d just given him a challenge, carefully placing the board down. “Course I do.”
You waited for him to just tell you, but with each second of silence felt heavier on your shoulders. You knew a price was coming. Your fingers tensed around the fabric of your pants.
Hobie grinned like he knew exactly what you were thinking. “Ah, but nothing in life’s free, mate.”
Your stomach twisted. Here it was. The catch. A cruel joke, a mockery, something to make you regret asking in the first place. You were used to that game. Already bracing for impact, already waiting for the smirk to sharpen into something mean.
“What do you want?” You asked, defensive. You were ready to put your stuff back in your backpack and leave him and his fucked-up plans there. At the time, you thought you were being strong but really you were just terrified.
He stretched, rolling his shoulders like he was warming up for something grand.
“Tunes.”
You stared. “...What?”
“Music, mate. I need some burned CDs.” He flopped onto the ground beside you, arms behind his head, looking at the sky like this was the most normal trade agreement in the world. “I could do it myself, but it’s a pain, innit?” He vaguely gestured to the discman poking from your backpack. “You prolly got some dodgy sites yeah? I can’t seem to manage without inviting every virus ever made and all the lonely ladies in a 5km radius onto my computer.” He ranted.
You couldn’t help but laugh at that, your chortle almost startling you. “I mean… Yeah. I can do that.” You rubbed the back of your neck.
His grin widened. “Deal, then.”
You weren’t sure what you’d just signed up for. But looking back, that was the moment everything shifted. Hobie had already sprawled out beside you, hands behind his head, muttering about bands like you’d been having this conversation for years. Like you were already friends. Like this was normal.
He was like chaos personified, bubbling with energy, completely unbothered by the walls you’d built, that were crumbling so fast you wondered if he realized they were ever even there at all.
You pulled out a random notebook, your math one, you think, and scrawled band names in the margins like a grocery list, right alongside unfinished equations.
You wished you could say you remembered every word you said that day. You didn’t. You remembered the sun burning the back of your neck, the sound of his voice, low and half-laughing, and the way your hand shook when you passed him the circuit board.
You thought it was fear, but maybe it was hope. Hope that someone like him would talk to someone like you. Hope was a dangerous thing to give a kid like you.
That rooftop should’ve been just another hiding spot, but he turned it into something else. And once you knew what it felt like to belong somewhere, running stopped being the easy option.
Now looking at the building, reminiscing everything, it felt strange. Like no time had passed at all, like you could walk into it and greet him behind some lockers.
Ah London. You ran away from that city a long time ago, but there are things you can't escape forever. Feelings, for one. So you come back, tracing the fading footsteps of your past, hoping to see the boy you left behind.
Warnings: general teenage angst, self indulging Im14andthisisdeep
“I didn’t want to make it hard,
I think we both hate goodbyes.”
You stepped off the train at its last stop, London. You had only put foot in this railway station once before, and it was the day you left. The wind whipped your face, cold and unforgiving, dragging you out of the wagon’s borrowed warmth. London had never been kind to you, and today was no exception. It welcomed you like a slap. The smell of wet asphalt made your nose curl, and you swore it smelled worse here than anywhere else in Great Britain, than anywhere else in the world. It smelled of metal and pollution and blood. Of something foul that assaulted your nostrils and made shivers run down your spine.
It hadn’t changed. London was still London. Bigger and smaller all at once. The same tall red bricks, the same industrial bones, columns and metal arms clutching the glass ceiling like Atlas holding the world, while the grey clouds pressed down, heavy enough to fall. People rustled everywhere, carrying their heavy luggage, running against time while you walked right back into it.
Destinations written in orange letters, buzzing, dizzying you with choices, so many places better than here, maybe because they weren’t tainted by your presence. It was like a list of possibilities, many you had checked off during your journey.
If it had been hard to leave, it was harder to come back. It felt like crawling back into the mouth that chewed you up and spat you out. Like climbing up to the sharp teeth with the dial tower that still stood as the metronome in your sleep.
You gazed at every face, hoping to find his. Hoping that he might still be here, like he’d never left this station, like he’d been waiting all along.
The deafening bells rang for the doors of the departing trains, rang for another chance to run the way you did before. You didn’t feel like you were coming back home to your hometown. It never felt like home. That was why you left. Better to be a stranger anywhere else than here, where you were supposed to belong.
Every whiff of leather made your head turn, eyes lingering over strangers who didn’t even look like him — just in case. Just in case time had changed him far beyond recognition, the way it changed you. Still, you focused on wicks and lanky silhouettes, similar to the one that stayed on the platform that fateful day.
You couldn’t picture his expression when you left for good, probably because you never gave him one. But you remembered the bench you both sat on, the tile he stood on.
You didn’t say you were going, though you meant to at first. You had been too scared. You couldn’t handle the disappointment, or worse, the apathy.
If he had asked you to stay, you would have, and it would have killed you. If he didn’t care at all, you could’ve left, but it would’ve killed you just the same.
You resented him for making you consider staying in the first place. If you had never met him, then maybe it would’ve been easier, then maybe every new joy wouldn’t have been tinted by his absence.
Or maybe you resented him for only meeting you in June. For allowing you a single summer before you were gone. Three poor months, nothing in the human lifespan, engraved in your soul like a cigarette burn that refused to heal. Maybe if you had met earlier, you would’ve never felt the need to leave in the first place. Or maybe he would’ve followed you.
You’d planned to go early in the morning, before the first thin rays of daylight. Your departure was to be like your presence had been: quiet, discreet, unremarkable, as if you'd never even been there at all. But somehow, he found you anyway.
“So you’re really leaving?”
He plopped down on the bench next to you, awkwardly fidgeting with his bracelet. It caught the low blue lights, a frayed thing wrapped around his wrist, like something holding him together. Yours matched, still on your wrist, then and now.
You nodded, staring straight ahead. You couldn’t look at his face, at his eyes and see what feelings collided in a sea of golds and honeys and browns, sweet enough to pull you in, too thick to swim in, and deep enough to drown.
You braced yourself for something sharp, for him to mock you for even trying in the first place, to jab at your cowardice for running away. He didn’t, not this time. Did he, ever? Did you just hope he would, so you could find a reason to miss him less?
“You know where you’re going?” he asked. “Got somewhere to stay?”
Another nod. He sighed. You couldn’t tell if it was relief that you weren’t completely reckless, or disappointment that he’d lost an excuse to tell you to stay.
Your train wasn't due for fifteen minutes. He waited with you. Until the last second and maybe the hours that followed, in case you took the train back. You wouldn’t know. You didn’t come back.
“You okay?”
You nodded again, though it wasn’t exactly true. You felt strangely light, weightless, numb maybe. All your fears, all your hopes, culminating into that one moment. Your whole life packed into one backpack and a vague destination, maybe by the sea, maybe overseas. Maybe just anywhere that wasn’t here.
But it gnawed at you. Leaving Hobie behind. The only thing about this place you didn’t hate. The one tie that made running away feel like a betrayal instead of an escape.
“Can you talk to me, please?” His voice cracked a little, not quite a plea but close. “I need to hear your voice.”
“Sorry,” you murmured. “Wasn’t sure what to say.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Just… yeah.”
“Yeah.”
Silence wrapped around you both, thick and suffocating. Your heart was a mess with excitement, fear, grief all tangled up in the same beat.
“I hope you find it,” he said eventually, so soft you almost missed it.
“Find what?”
“Whatever you’re looking for.”
You nodded, your best and only language that morning. It soothed something in you, hearing that. The kindness in it. He was letting you go without making you feel guilty for leaving him behind. No bitterness. Just understanding. More than you deserved, maybe.
“Be safe, yeah?”
“Promise.”
The only promise you made out loud was the one you broke first. You had been reckless, and you collected scars and marks like souvenirs. But it shaped you into who you are. Like a coward high on adrenaline, finding a fix only through running away, you were doomed to danger once the fear was left behind. The scars were parts of what you were looking for. You were wearing them like badges of honor, like Hobie wore his.
When there was one minute left before your train, Hobie hugged you tight, and for a second, you thought he wouldn’t let you go (and for a second, you were okay with that).
The train was delayed by a few minutes, so that hug lasted longer than either of you planned. You don’t know how you both held it together, didn’t crack into sobs right there on the platform. Maybe because you both knew that one single tear, one wobble in your voice, would’ve made you stay, and you needed to leave more than words could say.
The train doors opened with a sigh, like the city itself was telling you to go. You didn’t hesitate. You couldn’t afford to. One second of doubt and the whole thing would crumble.
You weren’t sure if you regretted it or not, even now.
You kept your back to him. You didn’t dare to look at him directly, preferring to meet his gaze in the distorted reflection of the curved metal inside the wagon.
Neither of you said goodbye. It would’ve sounded too final, too much like forever. And with how long it took you to come back, it might as well has been.
It was only when you sat in the train and reached for some water in your bag that you found his note. It was something simple, genuine, like him. You still had it in the pocket of your jacket, crumbled, the ink almost completely vanished.
You held onto it all that time, like a lucky charm, the last piece of him you allowed yourself because reaching out would've too painful. Tucked inside your bracelet, ruined by sweat, tears and rain. It was barely legible, but you knew the words by heart, that’s how many times you reread it.
He stayed on the platform that morning, and so did a part of your heart, but neither of you knew that yet.
And now, you needed it back. Standing here again, you knew exactly why you returned.
What you left in this forsaken city — the city that forsake you first — was mostly gone, scattered in the wind like ashes. Still, as you made your way out of the station and into the restless pulse of London, it all came rushing back.
The memories you wished to forget, and the ones you ached to remember better.
The streets that saw you grow up, the concrete that caught your tears, the soil that molded your spine, the hands that still held pieces of your soul preciously.
You needed to scrap whatever had subsisted back, teeth and nails if you had to.
annaxmalina
snowghoul
discoholicmusic
jbbartram-illu
areudirty
stormborns
