rattle the stars !

“You don’t know me!” he spits out, a hand slamming on the glass wall, anger and ice filling the gaps in his soul that their friendship left behind when he’d tried to drain himself of it. His voice seems to shake as well, and it’s because there’s truth in his statement too. It may not be the same lie he’s trying to sell now, but Cole can’t in good conscious say he’d ever really been the man Owen had known, and the pain of that is what drives him. “Everything I ever gave you was a lie. Every conversation, every laugh, every moment you shared with me, none of it was real. It’s an act, one I’m very good at. It’s not your fault I fooled you, but you have no else to blame if you keep trying to fool yourself,” Cole snaps, his demeanor fully changed. He holds the grief, the drowning at bay, not allowing his throat to close or his eyes to sting and willing those feelings instead to feed the burning ache in his chest, to morph them into the cold venom in his voice. If he can just get through this, if he can just break Owen before he breaks himself, they’ll be able to go their separate ways. But it’s not easy to stand there and break the best man he’s ever known. It’s a mistake, but Cole thinks briefly of London, of the way he’d foolishly hoped one day he’d be walking the streets of his hometown with Owen at his side, finding a way to finally heal from all the mess of the last two years, to find peace and forgiveness and a new beginning. Now he stands trapped, maybe for good, Owen on the other side where he’d never be able to reach again. The thought threatens awful tears, so instead he quickly turns, lowering his gaze from the other boy. “I’m telling this for your own good, Musa. That’s the last thing I can do for you.”

“Really?” Monique didn’t think that at all, ni saw more as a fuck you to the board. Why? Ni will never know or care to find out. A beat, as they allowed the question to really sit with nim before answering. “Somewhat,” Monique answered. “Did you?” 

“I guess that’s fair.” Without Beyonce there, Monique didn’t see a purpose of staying anymore. All of their friends were with dates or their other groups, the same with Trinity and Martina. Ni had no one else. “Surprised that President Sutton got her to come.” 

LOCATION && WITH WHOM : : OUTSIDE THE BALLROOM W / @musaox​

Monique was growing tired and didn’t see a reason to stay any longer. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, from their friends to their cousins, each person with their respective group or partner. It made them feel sick and jealous. Though, they’ll never tell someone that. At first, they could only hear the sounds of their own heels clicking across the floor of the hallway. The sound pleasing in the beginning until it mixed and mingled with the sounds of another from behind them. Turning around with curiosity in their eyes, Monique was met with the face of the one person they didn’t want to see. “Oh,” they said. “It’s you. Leaving already?”

A part of him thinks he should have fought harder to keep Owen at an arm’s length in the last couple months. Maybe it would have spared him. But he’s played this cruel game with him before, and with every other person in his life, and Cole knows that he’ll always end up losing. He can’t, shouldn’t protect people from the truth. “Then I just wish you knew you have me, too,” Cole says, eyes gently looking up to his. It’s just not enough for the other, is it? It’s quiet in the room and in his mind, every other thought vanishing in perfect stillness. The water quiets, waits for him to make a decision, but Cole doesn’t get the chance before Owen closes the distance between the two of them and roaring waves crash against every part of him when their lips meet, knocking any last bit of air he had left. It catches him so much by surprise, he loses grip of the cane in his left hand. Stumbling for only a moment under his own weight, and the weight of this between them, he has no other choice but to reach with desperate hands, clinging onto the fabric of Owen’s shirt, grasping onto him for life, breath hitching against him. If he lets go, he’ll fall, but Cole wonders if he’ll drown if he continues to hold on, too.

He can’t explain it. He knows with certainty this is not the person he’s in love with. But love isn’t limited to just in love. The walls of this place are suffocating in so many ways, but he can’t ever hope to hate them, because in their safety was where he learned all the different ways love could open him, break him, return him to life. It doesn’t exist just in Val, and her hopeful peace that had made him human. It exists in Mary, and her bright, all-encompassing friendship. Kass’ care that beckons like family. Rizo’s laughter, so natural and freeing. Luna’s kind, forgiving wisdom. The camaraderie of Eva, Christian, Carmichael, Cecilia. The words of his favorite book. The faces of Harry and Grace Dahl preserved in his memory, and the beach they used to take their son to. And it exists in the man with him right now. He loves him. It’s not the way Owen hopes for, the way he deserves, but Cole loves him, and he can’t ever hope to deny it. Maybe he doesn’t know anything, but he believes with such fervor that a love between friends is just as precious, just as holy as anything else. It still blossoms within him, still saves him, still makes him burn with longing to return any bit of that salvation he had given him. And maybe that’s why, with quiet tears falling down from his closed eyes, the warmth of Owen’s skin under the violent touch of his hopeless hands, Cole kisses him back. And even as much as his love for his friend fills him from the deepest parts of his heart, with his lips against Owen’s, feeling a new kind of bottomless despair, he knows it. They’re both sinking.

The moment that Cole clings onto Owen, he reaches out his free hand to catch him. It is an instinct, one that has formed both through spending plenty of time with him as well as one that comes from a part of him that he still can’t explain. One that he would have liked to be given the opportunity to explore but it was being cut short through no one’s fault but his own. None of this is real to him, it’s a fleeting moment that someday he’ll be able to will away from his memory, that perhaps will become a funny story about two college roommates and not a story about two boys desperately trying to learn how to swim. When he realizes that Cole has kissed him back, he pulls away. “Don’t.” The word comes out before he can think it through and for a second he thinks it’s someone else who has spoken. A third person that’s intruded on the most tender moment of his life. Owen looks at Cole and there’s no sign of anything besides the absolute adoration he’s always had for him, in whatever form his feelings might have taken. He believed in him as a friend and he cared for him as a little bit more. “You and I both know this isn’t anything so don’t.” The room seems to be engulfing them, he has to get out or it’s going to suffocate him, he has to go back to the door. 

“I tried… I tried to protect you,” Cole starts, voice wavering. It’s all just a reminder again that as much as he’s tried to protect the people he cares about, he’s dragged them down with him, all of it seemingly for nothing, and it’s all on him. It’s crushing and it’s familiar, and he hates most of all that it’s weighing on the both of them. He’d been such a fool to think Owen was a solace, that they could walk through their lives after all that hell like things were okay. Had he been living another lie for the past month? Clinging to some desperate sense of normalcy while the both of them continued to suffer beneath smiles? “I didn’t want any of this for you, Owen. I didn’t want to let you in to the point where you couldn’t turn back. I knew how I might end up, and I tried so hard to keep you free of me,” he says. It’s hard to accept, but Cole feels that familiar sentiment again, that here is another person he’d do anything for, and in the end, they’d have been better off never knowing him. Was all he could ever give them pain?

The confession Owen offers him feels like an answer to that question. He’s stunned into a lonely silence, and Cole isn’t sure what to say, or what to even think. His mind tries to map it, to pull at memories and conversations and try to point to the places where he might have recognized it and it all might make sense with perfect clarity, as if love is always that easy. He tries to understand how someone so observant could miss that, but Cole has always been out of his depth when it comes to this. Before Gallagher, it had been so long since he’d even felt it, not real love. He’d grown through his adolescence wondering if it was all made up, if it was just a dream people clung to in order to get by and eventually grow out of. And even with Val, he’d been so blind to the way her love would change him, unprepared not only for himself to feel it, but to accept hers as well. Of course he wouldn’t be able to recognize it staring back at him again in a way far crueler to the boy in front of him. And, god, he feels like he’s let him down all over again. All that care he feels for Owen, all that longing to protect him, and every step he’d taken had only strengthened this blow to his friend, only dug the dagger in deeper. But despite it all, when Owen turns to go, a hand reaches out to grab him by the wrist, to hold him in place. “Don’t— Owen, don’t go,” he pleads, voice much smaller now, eyes looking back to him with unbearable sadness, and he has no clue where to go from here, but he can’t let him walk away if he thinks that even for a moment he’s holding on to a similar despair. “I don’t know what to do,” Cole whispers truthfully, throat tightening. “Owen, I… I’m sorry.”

He looks down at his hands because there’s nowhere else that feels safe to lay his eyes upon. Wishing that they belonged to someone else, someone that Cole would feel proud to call his. “I know that you care about me. Please, if I didn’t know that I wouldn’t have gone back for you after what you said to me in the cell.” Despite the fact that the words replayed over and over again in his mind. Though the way that Cole cared for Owen wasn’t the same, it wasn’t what he needed at the moment and even if the other boy thought him selfish for it, he knew what was best for him was to leave now. They could try to pick up where they left off further in the future but right now the sting of it all was too much for him. “Clearly you have me.” Wasn’t he the only one who had gone out to save him, not once but twice, anyway? Again, he almost wants to laugh at the entire situation though it’s more of a bitter feeling. He’s not asking for anything in return from Cole, that isn’t the type of person he is, he has never had to demand anything from him in order to know how he feels. But he does know if he doesn’t get space in this moment, he’s going to go insane. Even if it isn’t fair to compare the feeling of losing friends like Ria or losing Monique to what was happening with Cole, it felt the same. It hurt as much as hearing everything Monique had said to him in the library. 

He doesn’t know to wish that Owen could understand he’d die for him in return. It may feel like so long ago, but Cole had given himself up for the man in front of him. He’s told anyone else who’d asked that he’d done it because it was the the right thing, and that’s true as well, but Cole knows it wouldn’t have been so easy to make that choice if it hadn’t been him trying to take the fall, if it hadn’t broken his resolve to think of Owen being charged with his crimes. He hadn’t known what would become of himself when the truth was finally revealed, and there had been a part of him that knew it could have ended his life. But he’d spoken up anyway, made the choice to damn himself and save his friend because it had been him. But he doesn’t know Owen doubts that, and can’t know to remind him.

“Regain my life?” he repeats, the words breathy and incredulous, beginning to take on frustration and hurt to hear what his friend throws in his face. It’s a good thing they’re alone in this room now as Cole’s voice starts to pick up in volume, as he starts to give in to the pain he’s been carrying with him for everyone else, that was supposed to not exist around Owen. “You think I’ve just fallen back into what I used to have? You don’t think every day has been a test since then? That I’m not doing my best to not let it be hell? I don’t have my life back, Owen, and I never will. Outside of the other agents, I can count on one hand the people who can still look at me like I’m not forever changed in their eyes. I don’t have half of what I used to, but I have you,” he shouts, voice straining, eyes burning with fire and the human sting of threatening tears. “Or at least I thought I did.” Cole doesn’t look away when Owen does, and he keeps his eyes trained on him, willing him to just tell him the truth and let him know he has one less person that he’d thought.

But then he looks back to him finally; his eyes wear that expression again, something Cole can’t name, and the fact that it’s unreadable and unreachable to him only makes him want to yell at him more, to beg him to tell him what it is. Then Owen speaks again, and all that fire, all that fight leaves him in an instant, feeling the world around him still into one moment. I’m in love with you. “You…” he breathes, suddenly weaponless in what he thought had been a confrontation, and had turned out to be a confession. Cole had become so accustomed to the feeling of drowning, and of coming up for air, and the way a shoreline or horizon can look so distant. This is different— or a moment he’d missed somehow, that feeling before any of the others, of floating weightless underneath the water, unsure whether you would sink or swim. He doesn’t even know which direction the surface is. “Owen—…”

“I don’t think that any of this has been easy for you.” Owen states simply. “....but you had to have at least guessed that this was one of the outcomes. You had the preparation of knowing. I didn’t have to know anything to believe in you.” Which only made every time that someone questioned him all that much more difficult to navigate. If he’d been in on his big secret from the beginning as so many assumed then it would’ve been logical. Maybe he would have feared that they’d think he was also involved but he was willing to lie and take not only partial blame but all of the blame for the boy standing in front of him. For someone who had never afforded him the truth in return until it was the last resort. “I don’t regret any of it either, I’m not trying to tell you I....” Well, there’s nothing else he’s trying to tell him aside from what he already has. Hoping that that will make him understand it all better or at least understand the past month better despite the fact that Owen himself can barely wrap his mind around what any of it truly means. 

“What do you mean a couple hours?” Cole asks, bewilderment in his features. He’d assumed he’d take the next couple of days to gather his things, that he’d be there tomorrow at graduation like almost everyone else. “Why are you leaving tonight, why aren’t you staying for graduation, why—” he stops for a moment, words catching in his throat as he tries to stumble through his thoughts. “Why didn’t you tell me?” For a moment, he wonders if the question is selfish, if he still deserves to be a part of Owen’s life so closely that he might know how long he had until they would say goodbye. Maybe that’s it, Cole thinks, maybe despite what they’d been through, despite how much he’d thought this was the one person who was always going to stick by him, Owen had closed off a part of their friendship. A piece of Cole’s heart breaks to think of it, but he knows with solemn certainty that he couldn’t blame him for it. But he’d hoped, foolishly now he realizes, that when they left the walls of Gallagher for the summer, they might be heading to the same place. Together. Owen’s eyes finally meet his, and Cole searches for some deeper answer in him, feeling some weightless failure to fall so short when it’s what he’s supposed to be good at. He’s supposed to be able to read people, find true sentiment beneath their words, but as he looks at his best friend, he doesn’t know what to make of the look his eyes. It reminds him of the one he’d seen when he’d been dragged out of this very room a month ago. “I need you,” he says without thought, not through carelessness, but because it’s instinct. Maybe they’ll all be gone by the end of the week, maybe Owen’s right in some way that there would be nothing wrong with starting the summer early, but that’s not what this is. Not when he prefaces it with the heartbreaking sentiment that he doesn’t want to spend another night here, that he thinks there’s nothing him holding him there anyway. “Owen,” he starts, eyes earnest. “If— If it’s everyone else getting to you, just ignore them. Who gives a hell what anyone else thinks if they won’t bother to understand you?” Cole says, but even he doesn’t believe his own words, still held down in despair by all the friendships he’d ruined, and can he really ask Owen to ignore the backlash he’s gotten when he’s the reason for it? “Look, whatever it is, just talk to me. Let me help you through it, you can’t just— You can’t just leave like this.” You can’t just leave me.

@musaox​

“Look who it is!” Vida beams, sidling up next to Owen, two flutes of champagne in her hands, one of which she tries to pass on to him. “Happy to see me, or what?” she winks before drinking out of one.

Monique wasn’t sure what they were expecting, actually no, they were expecting something. A response to their confession, for Owen to take it all back, to hear him say that he liked them back. Anything but– “Monique, I’m sorry,” Monique repeated in a mocking manner. They said it just like him, matching his accent, speech pattern, how he said each syllable. They’ve listened to him so many times already that Monique could sound exactly like him. From their talks about literature, about school, about their family, about nothing of importance. They studied Owen as if he was their favorite novel, a special one that needed extreme care. They couldn’t handle him like the others, they had to be gentle and loving with each touch, with each turn of the page, with each glance. Owen Musa was their favorite book that they couldn’t put down. Until now apparently. “Is that all you can say right now?” 

“No, you take it. Unless you think it’s poisoned or something… In which case I’ll take the whole thing.” Poison was dramatic and most of them didn’t leave you looking haggard, her dream post-mortem look - still hot. “Uh, I didn’t expect you to come.” Yes she did. Would Owen pass up a chance to dress up?

His confusion doesn’t subside as Cole walks in hesitantly and Owen only states the obvious without offering any insight into what’s really going on. He can sense something charging the air in the room but he doesn’t know what it is. It might put him on edge if it were anyone else, if he wasn’t standing before the person he might trust the most in this world right now. But he’s not a fool, and he can tell something’s wrong, and that’s why instead of unease, it’s concern on his features, wishing Owen would look at him so he could get a better read on what’s happening to him right now. “I can see that. Why are you packing?” Cole tries, voice even, though as he takes a step closer it’s harder to act like things are normal. It almost makes his heart ache, because one of the only things he’s been able to hold on to in these last weeks are normal moments with Owen. Everything has been so tumultuous and uncomfortable since coming back to Gallagher, but his best friend had been by his side, brought him back into the world and made him believe like things might actually be okay. It makes Cole want to be sure he’s okay, too. “It’s nearly midnight, it can wait until tomorrow, Owen,” he says softly. Is he restless? Homesick? He still can’t get a proper gauge on what’s going through his friend’s mind, but he hopes he’s not overstepping when he takes a step closer to the clothes laid out on his bed. Cole places a gentle hand on top of a folded sweater before Owen can pick it up, daring him to actually meet his gaze. “What’s going on?”

@musaox ; location: room 309, berkshire floor

The party’s over and Cole feels different. But somehow more hopeful, and that lightness is able to carry him through the rest of the night. There’s a faint smile on his lips even as he says goodbye to some of his friends that are, thankfully, still his friends— something he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep since he’d gotten back to Gallagher. But in all the goodbyes of the party, Cole had missed one face, and he’s been searching in the aftermath trying to look for him. Nowhere to be found, he assumes Owen had left early back to the dorm, and his guess is right. But when he opens the door to room 309, his suit jacket gone and the sleeves of his white button up pulled to his elbows, he doesn’t expect to see Owen’s belongings organized neatly on his bed, a suitcase half-packed at the foot of it. “…What are you doing?” Cole asks, a hesitant, confused smile on his face— smiling still, because it’s Owen. “You know you have all week to pack,” he says, and tries to hold on to his smile, but Cole is smart, and he knows full well that Owen is smart, too. He knows he has all week, and an empty sort of dread starts to rise from his feet as he looks at him, wondering why he would be packing now.

Gallagher events had one major flaw for the blonde: there was nowhere to hide. The whole school in one place, it was almost impossible to avoid anyone. So when she saw a familiar face by the dessert table, she hesitated. “You can have that one.” They were about to restock one of the pastry trays, only one left for now.

closed @musaox​