#but making dough is soooooooo messy :

[stardustspeedwayzoneact2]

second pizza tastes better but still feels like the dough needs to cook more seperately. i feel like maybe i should just intentionally burn it like i do everything else i eat

[sincerelyreidburke]

17 for bencole

“Wow, Mel, this is soooooooo late!” First: I know. Second: I’m profusely sorry. My semester was awful, and I have outstanding sappy prompts. This is the first of me finally finishing them off. Also, here’s the list, and if you want to request one no matter when you’re reading this, I will fill it!

Anyway. I’m so sorry. Both for my lateness, and for what I’m about to do to you. This isn’t really angst so much as it’s hurt/comfort, but I’m just warning you: Cole is in a bad place. There’s nothing more serious than depressive language, but it’s definitely hard to write him being so sad.

Read at your own risk, depending on how much you want to see Sad Cole Kolinsky!

17. “Because I love you.”

four years after graduation | november

 It’s getting dark again.

Cole hates this time of year. If he had the energy for it, he would honestly be down to personally fight the inventor of daylight savings. He really doesn’t understand the reason for setting the clocks back, and causing sunset to take place at 4 PM. Cole is pretty sure the only thing ever accomplished by daylight savings in the history of ever is making people feel dark, gray, and gloomy.

Case in point: out the apartment window, the sky is quickly and steadily darkening over a wintry Providence skyline. He hates how you can be facing away from a window in the winter, lose track of time, and turn around to find it’s pitch black out there. The city lights give him a little glow, cast across the floor of his studio, but that glimmer of light doesn’t stand a chance against the overwhelming night.

What time is it? Cole has no idea. He’s been on the floor in the studio for a couple of hours, at least, working away at the bridge of a song he’s been trying to finish for the past three days to no avail. He hasn’t eaten since breakfast, but he isn’t hungry. His guitar has been in his lap so long that his legs, crossed beneath it, are starting to fall asleep. The sweatshirt he’s wearing— one of Ben’s, baggy on him the way he likes it— needs to be washed. He knows it needs to be washed, because it smells. He’s known this for at least a week. Putting it in the laundry is a small, stupid hill he can’t seem to climb, so he’s wearing a smelly sweatshirt. He hasn’t showered in two days.

The studio is dark. He’s been trying to work for hours, and hasn’t made any progress. It feels like every small task, right now, is that kind of hill.

He blinks into the dark, and leans forward on the rug for his phone, which is buried under a steadily growing layer of crumpled papers, broken pencils, and random trash. When he finds it, he turns it over to look at the time.

It’s 4:31 in the afternoon.

He looks, blankly, at his phone screen for a second, aware of some stacked notifications but not really reading them. It’s been a couple of hours since he even unlocked it. The glow of the screen, bright in the dark studio, hurts his head a little, and when it auto-sleeps, he sets his phone back down and exhales.

4:31, and the only thing he wants to do is go to bed.

And, honestly, what’s stopping him from that? Because bed is one room over, and if he just gets under the covers, he won’t have to think about how impossible it’s been to finish this bridge, or how behind he is on literally all of his music work, or how he has a shift tomorrow at the café, which, no matter how soul-sucking, is real work, and will be, until he makes something of himself, which is probably never going to happen, because he’s worthless and useless and can’t even write a bridge when he has a completely free Friday afternoon with nothing else to do—

Or, come to think of it, the dark. Most of all the dark. Because when the world is dark for so much of the day, it leaves a free place for Cole’s own darkness to occupy in his mind. It makes everything worse. It always has.

If he gets in bed, hides under the covers, he doesn’t have to think about any of that.

So that’s what he’ll do, he decides. That’s all he has the energy to do. It’s not like he has anything to do for the rest of the day anyway. Ben will be home from work in half an hour or so, but Ben won’t mind if he’s asleep.

It’ll just be easier. He doesn’t want to be alone in the dark with his thoughts anymore.

*

It’s getting dark again.

Ben is over it already, honestly. Summer is his favorite season, for a variety of reasons, and pretty much the only things that make winter tolerable are hockey (a significant benefit) and the holiday season (sort of). He hates daylight savings, because it’s so dark when he leaves work it might as well be eight PM. Today is no exception; he leaves his office building to a black city sky and a certifiably nasty winter wind. There might be snow coming, which would be a hate crime, since it isn’t even Thanksgiving yet.

At least it’s Friday. He catches a good stretch of music on the radio during his short ride home, and he’s still nodding to the beat on the elevator ride up to his floor in the apartment building. It’ll be a good night in; they can order from that good pizza place down the block, and maybe watch a movie. Cole has to work tomorrow, but it’s an afternoon shift. They have the next twenty or so hours all to themselves.

Ben is looking forward to it.

“I’m home, Coley!” he sings, as he pushes open the apartment door. There aren’t any lights on when he walks in. This isn’t concerning, until it is— because Cole doesn’t really hang out in the kitchen, but a quick glance tells him that the lights aren’t on in his studio, either. The door is open, and it’s dark behind it.

It’s like there’s no one home at all.

“Babe?” He flicks on the main kitchen light, as he shuts the door behind himself. There’s no response. Ben hesitates, just a second, as he hangs his jacket and keys, and then adds, “You in here?”

Which is a stupid question, because Cole has to be in here somewhere. He doesn’t drive, and even past that, isn’t the kind of person to randomly go out without saying where he’s going. Ben knows he’ll find him, somewhere in the apartment— he just doesn’t know where, or in what headspace, he might find him.

He can’t help but get just a little nervous, when he comes home to a dark apartment.

Because nine months into this relationship, Ben knows what dark means. Cole shuts lights off, habitually, when he’s in a bad place. He blocks out the light on purpose, like it’ll hurt him if he sees too much of it. Ben has come home to this before. And he knows, on top of everything, that the onset of winter doesn’t do anything good for Cole’s mental health.

So he treads carefully, across the kitchen, and speaks gently as he goes. “Cole?” He peeks into the studio, and flicks on the light. Cole isn’t in here— but evidence of him is. His working area is a disaster scene, with his guitar left on the ground, surrounded by writing utensils, crumpled notebook pages, and trash. His phone is in here, too, near his guitar.

It’s… a mess. But messes can be cleaned up. What’s worse than it being messy is the fact that it’s a clear sign of Cole being unwell.

Ben steps back from the studio, and glances down the hall. Their bedroom is the last room, and its doorway is just as dark as any other door in the apartment. He tries to be quiet, as he walks there, and when he glances inside, finds his hunch was accurate— Cole is a lump under the covers, on the far side of the bed.

“Cole?” he tries, again, but keeps his voice low. If he’s asleep, he doesn’t want to wake him up. At least not right this second. “I’m home, baby.”

The lump doesn’t move.

Ben hesitates, a second, as he hangs on the doorway. Cole is obviously asleep— his body, huddled almost completely under the comforter except for the hood of his sweatshirt and top of his head, is rising and falling, steady breathing. The problem isn’t exactly that he’s sleeping, but that he’s sleeping in the dark at 5:15 PM. That fact, combined with his mess in the studio, can only mean one thing.

Cole didn’t have a good day today.

It pains Ben to think of what must have led to this— because he knows this boy, knows him well enough to understand these signs, knows his brain never takes it easy on him, least of all on days when it gets dark in the middle of the afternoon. He must have been in the studio, at some point— that’s what he said he was doing today, when Ben left for work this morning. Last he saw him, he was sitting on the counter, eating Trix out of a mug, and he said, I really have to finish that bridge today.

That’s a good idea, babe, he’d replied, putting the lid on his travel mug of coffee. You’ll have to play it for me, when I get home.

Cole had smiled— thinly, like it took a lot of energy, but still, he smiled. I will, if I finish.

Ben doesn’t know what filled the hours between his leaving for work and right now. But he knows Cole wound up here, instead of in the studio— where he would be, if it’d gone well— and that that can’t mean much good.

But he can’t change any of that. What he can do is try to make the rest of the night better for him. And if nothing else, that is something he knows how to do.

So he turns on the lamp on their bedside table, the lowest light in the bedroom, and lets him sleep, as he changes out of his work clothes and into sweats. He turns other lights on as he backtracks through the apartment— the hall light, the dimmer in the living room, the fixture over the kitchen island. Each makes the place feel a little warmer, a better place to be on a cold, wintry, maybe snowy night. He looks into the fridge, then the freezer.

Yeah, screw ordering. He’ll make pizza, tonight. He’ll do Cole’s favorite— barbecue chicken, green peppers. He has enough in the fridge, and something home-cooked could probably do him some good.

It takes ten minutes to roll out the dough, another ten to do the toppings. He preheats the oven, and while he waits, he cleans up the trash in the studio. He zips Cole’s beloved guitar back into its case, and brings out his phone, leaves it on the charger in the kitchen. He doesn’t really want to throw away any of the notebook pages, just in case Cole decides, later, in a songwriting frenzy, that something he crumpled up previously might be important. So he leaves those, flattens them all and puts them into a pile on the studio desk. When he’s satisfied, he shuts the studio light off, and closes the door as he leaves it.

Next, he grabs a fresh change of clothes for Cole from the dresser, and sets them on the sink in the bathroom with a clean towel. He highly doubts that Cole showered today, and he hasn’t seen evidence of him doing so in at least a few days. Cole won’t like that, but it’ll do him some good.

He’s back in the kitchen, taking the pizza out of the oven, when he gets company. He doesn’t notice, at first— Cole is in socked feet, and moves quietly, so much so that Ben starts a little when he turns and sees him coming in. “Hey,” he breathes, keeping his voice mostly quiet, as he sets down the pizza stone on a potholder to cool. “How was your nap, babe?”

Cole stops a few feet from the island. Head to toe, he looks so hollow and tired that it hurts Ben’s heart a little. He still has the hood of his sweatshirt— well, Ben’s own sweatshirt originally, but basically it’s Cole’s now— pulled up over his head, the way he slept, and his hair, longer than usual, hasn’t been brushed in awhile. He’s squinting, not wearing his glasses, and he rubs one of his eyes over and over.

When he speaks, he only has half a voice. “Hi.”

Ben walks to him. For some reason, he feels like he has to hold him up, to keep him steady on his feet. He takes him by his elbows, and Cole falls into his embrace— he’s dead weight, and he exhales, presses his head into his chest. He’s a little shaky. Ben would wonder if he caught a cold, but knows better. He knows this. This is a different kind of sick.

“Hey,” he says again, and squeezes him tight around the waist. “What’s wrong, baby?”

Cole is still shaky, in his arms. He doesn’t speak for a minute, so Ben holds on tight. Cole smells like his clothes haven’t been washed in too long, and his hair is greasy.

“I didn’t—” comes Cole’s voice, small and unsteady, from his head pressed into his chest. “I didn’t get anything done today.”

“That’s okay, babe.” Ben knows his assurance in this category won’t really do much, because Cole is so, so hard on himself when it comes to creative productivity— but the least he can do is try. “You don’t have to get things done every single day.”

Cole groans, and shakes his head. “I had the whole day,” he says, and Ben doesn’t realize until right then that he’s crying. His voice breaks on the end of his sentence, and he sniffles. “I had the whole day,” he repeats.

“Hey— baby.” Ben tugs, very gently, at the hood of his sweatshirt, and eases him up so he can look him in the eye. His eyes are glassy, and he has a pillowcase imprint on his cheek. Ben wipes at a wet spot on his cheek. “That’s okay,” he says. “The writing isn’t important if you’re not okay.”

Cole sniffles again, and his eyes well up further. “Hey,” Ben whispers; his stomach turns at the sight. He pulls him close to hug him again, and pressed close against him, Cole cries a little more openly. “Don’t cry, baby. I’ve got you. I’m home now.”

“I’m so—” Cole stops, to sniffle, before he continues, “I feel so useless.”

“You aren’t useless,” Ben tries. He tightens his grip. He knows he’s the only thing keeping him steady. “It’s a tough time of year.”

Cole groans again, and then nods, and for a minute, they’re quiet. They stand in the middle of the kitchen, and Cole sniffles a few more times against his chest, and to take this away from him is the only thing Ben wants to do.

He can’t do that. But he can do what he can. He can try.

“I made dinner,” he says. “And I took out clean clothes— you should shower, babe.” Cole grumbles a little in protest, so he adds, “I know you don’t want to, but you should. You’ll feel better.”

“I don’t have the energy to shower,” Cole whispers, a little less tearily but just as weakly.

“I can—” Ben bites back his first response, because he doesn’t want to give the wrong impression. “If you want,” he rephrases, gently, “I can help you.”

Cole is quiet, and then lets off a long exhale. When he looks up, his eyes are still full, but he tips forward to rest his forehead against his, and reaches around the back of his head. Ben knows what he’s doing before he does it— he pulls at his elastic, and takes down his hair. When it’s out of the bun, Cole threads his fingers in it, like he’s holding on for dear life. It doesn’t really hurt, but it’s tight.

“Why,” Cole mumbles, and then swallows. He sounds like he’s fighting to keep his voice steady, to keep more tears from coming. “Why are you being so patient with me.”

It’s a question that isn’t phrased like one. Ben knows the answer, would always know the answer. “Because I love you,” he replies, without waiting. “And I would do anything to help you feel better. Even if it’s only a little at a time.”

Cole sniffles again, and Ben can see the exact moment he loses his fight against the tears. When they fall, Ben wipes them away with his sleeve.

“I’m sor—” Cole starts, but he cuts him off.

“No,” he says. “You never— look at me. You never have to be sorry, baby.”

Cole sniffles, again. His voice is strained, but he murmurs, “I love you,” and Ben doesn’t want to do a single other thing in the world tonight but be here. And hold him. And keep letting the light in.

“I’m right here, babe,” he tells him. “Okay? You can shower while the pizza cools.”

Cole takes a long breath, a shaky one, but his exhale is steadier than the inhale. It’s a good sign. It’s progress. It’s something.

They’ll take the night in steps, and go from there.

“Okay,” Cole says, finally, and he wipes his own face with the sleeve of the oversized sweatshirt. He nods, and repeats himself. “Okay.”

Ben reaches down, and takes his hand. When he squeezes, Cole’s squeeze back is tight. “Good,” he says, and tips his head toward the bathroom. “Come with me, baby.”

Out the window on his way by, Ben notices it’s snowing. It’s early, for sure, for that to happen. But the apartment is warm, and they have each other, and they don’t have anywhere to be.

It’ll be a long winter. But Ben is going to get them both through it.

Because through good and bad, dark and light, through any season, he has Cole— and he’s never letting go.