Leaf

Kyle steps out of Hatchetfield High, ready to go home, have dinner with his grandma, play a board game — it’s family game night, he always looks forward to spending more time with his grandma, especially with his busy schedule — and go to bed. It’s dark already, practice went on a bit longer today.

As he’s walking to his car he spots Max alone, pacing back-and-forth and overall looking very un-Max-like.

Kyle stops walking, considering if he should go up to Max. They are friends… to an extent. But Kyle doesn’t want Max to get the wrong idea and beat his ass.

Fuck it, he thinks, and walks towards Max who immediately whips his head around when he hears the heavy footsteps coming towards him.

“Uh, Max! You alright?”

Kyle immediately regrets the words as they come out of his mouth. Max will definitely kick his ass for asking that, he doesn’t do feelings and shit.

But to his surprise, Max just responds with a gruff, “I’m fine”

The energy immediately goes awkward as neither boy speaks. Kyle averts his eyes and looks off to the parking lot. He notices that Max’s white pickup truck isn't anywhere to be seen.

“Do you need a ride?” He asks, looking back towards Max.

After a few seconds, Max nods and Kyle walks off to his – well technically his grandma’s – car. Max follows behind, weirdly subdued. It’s odd seeing the school’s ‘Monster’ acting like this but Kyle doesn't dare bring it up.

*beep beep*

Kyle unlocks the car as they step closer. He walks over to the driver’s side door as Max opens the passenger’s side door and gets in, buckling up his seatbelt. Kyle gets into his seat a second later and after buckling himself in, he sets off. He knows the way to Max’s house despite only having gone there once, he can be very observant sometimes, so he doesn’t have to ask Max for the address.

The drive is quiet but surprisingly comfortable as Kyle hums along to the song which is softly playing on the radio and Max stares out the window.

After a short drive – Hatchetfield is a very small town so it doesn't take long to get anywhere – they pull up to Max’s house. It’s not what one would expect, a fairly quaint, quiet looking house, on the outskirts of Hatchetfield. But anyone who heard the rumours about Max’s dad would know that it isn't as nice as it might seem. Just seeing the house gives Kyle a weird feeling of dread.

Max steps out of Kyle’s car without a word and walks off towards his house. Kyle doesn’t leave yet, he learned from his grandma to not drive off until the person is safely inside their house. At 18, the rule is probably not necessary anymore but he can’t help but continue the habit.

And he’s glad he did when Max walks up to the door and turns the knob to no avail. He tries a bit harder, roughly shoving the door, but it doesn’t open.

Kyle rolls the passenger side door’s window down and can hear Max cussing under his breath. The boy sucks in a breath, mentally preparing himself, before pressing the doorbell. He waits a few seconds but no noise comes from inside the house. Max tries again but still nothing happens.

Kyle decides it’s time to speak up. “You can stay over at my house if you want.”

Max turns around sharply. “What?” He asks, but it doesn’t sound as mad as Kyle had expected, instead he just sounds confused.

“Uh, I asked if you wanted to stay over at mine for the night? I’m sure my grandma would be fine with it.” Kyle gets more nervous as he repeats himself.

“I heard you the first time dumbass, it’s just… why the fuck would you ask?”

Kyle immediately starts sweating bullets. He didn’t know how what he said was wrong but around Max he can never be too careful, the wrong thing at the wrong time can set him off, and no one wants that.

But before Kyle can say anything Max continues, “I’ve been a total asshole to you, why the hell would you want me to stay at your house?”

Kyle blinks. That’s not what he expected.

“Well… fuck, I don’t know.”

“… you don’t know.”

Kyle laughs nervously. “I mean, I don’t want you to sleep outside or something. It would be shitty of me to just leave you.”

“I’d do it”

Kyle doesn’t know how to respond to that, but luckily he doesn’t have to as Max starts walking back towards his car.

He stops infront of the door. “You really want me to stay over?”

“Yeah”

Max nods and opens the door, sitting back down on the seat.

Kyle starts the engine up again and begins the drive to his house. It’s awkward for the first few minutes before Kyle decides to break the silence.

“Uh, me and my grandma are gonna have a family game night tonight, it’s kinda a tradition for us each Friday. I’m sure she’d love for you to join in.”

Max looks over at Kyle, and he continues.

“Do you do that? Uh, game night.” He mentally facepalms, of course Max doesn’t.

“No.”

Kyle nods awkwardly, eyes on the road.

“I used to, when my mom was around…”

That causes Kyle to look over at Max before quickly looking back at the road. Even from the split-second of him looking over, Kyle can tell Max regrets saying that with how he grips his knees and stares down at the dashboard.

“Well, uh.. you could always start doing it with us. If you want, obviously. Ya know, the more the merrier and all that stuff and it’s hard playing some games with just 2 people.”

Max nods just as they pass by the High school.

“Wait, why’re we going by the high school?”

“Oh, my grandma’s house is close to the school.”

“Then why’d you offer to take me home if it’s out of the way?”

“I… fuck man I already told you, I don’t know. I guess you just looked kinda sad? Well, I don’t mean that but like you looked just not yourself. And I noticed your car wasn’t there-“ Kyle rambles on, his words getting faster, before Max cuts him off.

“Alright man I get it, you don’t need to keep going, you’re just making yourself sound stupider.”

Kyle bits his lip and nods.

After a minute more he pulls up to the house, a fairly small one in the center of Hatchetfield. Just big enough for Kyle and his grandma to live comfortably, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. He loves this house, he has had so many good memories here, and he’d like to eventually inherit the house and continue living here in the future.

But now’s not the time to think about that, now he’s bringing Max to his house for the first time and he’s extremely nervous. He doesn’t know why, it’s not like he’s bringing a date home — as much as he might secretly wish that — Max is his friend, but also it’s Max. It would be different if he were bringing, say, Jason back. Or even Stacy.

Kyle turns the car off and steps out, walking over to the curb where Max is already stood outside, looking over at the house. Max looks almost nervous, which is not something Kyle would ever think he’d say but Max has been acting weird the whole evening.

Kyle walks over to the door and takes a breath before unlocking it and pushing it open.

-Sore loser

-Was always the dog when playing family as a kid

-He tilts his head slightly when focusing on something, he knows it’s useless for humans to do it as it doesn’t help vision or hearing at all, but it’s a habit

-No matter how much he tries to stop it he continues to instinctively do it

-Frequently plays Just Dance on his way to Erid

-Post-Coma, remembers the big picture but has a hard time remembering small details

-He can picture what his childhood room looked like but he cannot for the life of him remember what pattern he had on his bed sheets

-He remembers that there was a specific type of bird that would always chirp outside of his classroom window before class, but he can’t remember what type of bird it was

-It doesn’t seem like too big of a deal, but it often sends Grace spiraling

-When he got to erid he asked Rocky if he could specifically program that specific bird chirp right outside the bedroom of his house.

-At some point in middle or high school, he went through every type and classification of animal and picked a specific favorite breed or type

-It does change occasionally if he has specific positive interactions with an animal, or somewhat fixates on a breed, but a shocking majority have stayed his favorite to date

-Has, on multiple occasions, caught his kids playing or looking at something on the school computers and has looked into it later only to get genuinely interested

-Found a kid playing Run 3 and ended up playing it for hours once he got home (Thinks that it’s stupid that the website is called Cool Math Gams when no one actually plays any of the math-related games on there)

-Found out about AO3 because of a kid and was flabbergasted when he saw all the smut on the website

-He was glad that it wasn’t all smut, but he was still worried about what type of fic his student was reading, at school no less

-Ended up reading a few fics from shows he likes and eventually made his own account but doesn’t post (yet. Maybe eventually he’ll get the courage to post the short fic that’s been rotting in his notes app for months)

-Likes watching Sci Fi movies and criticizing everything they did wrong

-At some point on the Hail Mary, Grace listens to Space Oddity and it makes him start loudly sobbing

-Rocky forbids him to listen to the song again because Grace’s reaction scared the shit out of him

-Grace does notice when people flirt with him but he just continuously tells himself he’s reading too far into it until the person straight up tells him they like him

Rocky lets out a melodic tune which Ryland has learned is basically the Eridian equivalent of a hum.

“Can we talk?”

Rocky pauses what he’s doing and shifts his carapace over to ‘look’ at Ryland—despite him being able to sense Ryland no matter which of his sides is facing Ryland, he’s picked up on the human movement of ‘looking’ at a person.

“Yes?” Rocky says, urging Ryland to continue.

“Uh, it’s about my nightmare from yesterday…” Ryland says, fidgeting with a pen—a bad habit he’d managed to break because of his students, he doesn’t want to be seen fidgeting by a bunch of middle schoolers, but that has come back while on the Hail Mary.

“Yes?” Rocky repeats, putting down the items he was tinkering with and getting closer to the xenonite barrier between them.

“Well, uh, it was about my sisters…” Ryland says sheepishly.

Rocky pauses before exclaiming, “Sisters! You have sisters?! Why didn’t you tell me before??”

“I- it slipped my mind,” Ryland says, shaking his head and shrugging.

Rocky gives him the closest thing and Eridian can give to a deadpan stare.

“It just never came up,” Ryland tries again.

“Grace. Not stupid.”

“I know you’re not stupid it’s just…”

Ryland lets out a sigh.

“Yeah that was a dumb thing to say,” he concedes.

Rocky nods,—moves his carapace slightly—another human gesture he’s picked up from Ryland.

“I just… honestly my explanation is total bullpucky.”

Rocky doesn’t question the word, knowing it’s one of Ryland’s weird, faux, swears by its placement in the sentence.

“It’s barely even an explanation, it really makes no sense-“

“Tell. Explain.” Rocky cuts in, not wanting Ryland to ramble any further.

“Yep, yeah you’re right,” Ryland takes a breath.

“Well, my sisters. They’re both younger than me by 10 years. They’re twins, Mel and Becca, well Mel’s actual name is Melissa but we all call her Mel as a nickname,” Ryland pauses momentarily, he knows he’s rambling.

“Since they’re younger than me I’ve always felt this need to protect them… and I know they’re grown women… actually they’re almost my age now,” he mumbles, more to himself than anything. “But they’ll always be my baby sisters.”

“And I felt like I was betraying them by leaving them behind to fend for themselves on our dying earth… Mel was a doctor, actually, still probably is. So she’s probably still helping people,” Ryland smiles. “But, what I meant by that is that Mel is fully capable of caring for herself and others, Becca is too.”

Rocky takes Ryland’s pause as a time to cut in, “then what is the problem?” He asks.

“Like I said, it’s dumb. I felt like I was damning them by leaving, and that saying it out loud would, like, curse it to actually happen.”

“… Human brain dumb.”

Ryland lets out a huff, smiling.

“Really dumb. Really really dumb-“

“I get it, Rocky,” Grace cuts in.

“Why would saying it out loud make it happen?”

“It’s just… a human superstition.”

“Stupid.”

“Yeah.”

Rocky pauses for a second before continuing, “Grace’s sisters are still alive, they are adults, like Grace said, and can do things for themselves.”

Ryland nods.

“Grace didn’t damn them by coming here, Grace saved them.”

Ryland begins to tear up slightly. Damn you overly emotional brain, he thinks.

“Grace Rocky save stars. Grace come here so sisters can live. If not they all die.”

Grace nods, wiping at his eyes

“Grace sisters still alive because of Grace.”

“You know you don’t have to talk to me like that buddy, I can understand you when you speak normally. Most of the time,” Ryland mumbles while trying to calm himself so he doesn’t start fully sobbing again.

“I know. But human brain cannot be trusted when leaky like this.”

Ryland lets out a laugh.

“Yeah. Alright, that’s fair,” he says.

“Grace brave,” Rocky says firmly.

He pushes his carapace against the xenonite barrier and Ryland leans against it. He lets out a shaky sigh, still trying to contain his tears.

“Thanks, Rock,” he says. “That helped, really.”

Rocky lets out another melodic hum.

“I know. Rocky is good at comforting.”

Ryland lets out a loud laugh, “okay, now you’re just getting cocky.”

Rocky chitters.

Grace smiles warmly.

“Thank you, for everything. I don’t know what I would have done without you. You saved me.”

“No, Rocky Grace save each other," Rocky emphasizes the final word.

Grace nods, a tear rolls down his cheek.