#sliding in just under the wire. merry kleinsen to all and to all a good night

[nothingunrealistic]

and what of 15 for kleinsen...

15. things you said with too many miles between us

“Nothing but hiking and yoga and kayaking and having to wear a dress shirt to eat inside.” The background of Jared’s end of the video call shifts from a rapidly receding doorway to a bedspread and pillows. “And I don’t even get my own room. It’s fucking ridiculous.”

“Hiking’s not so bad.”

“That’s just, like, your opinion, man. If I’m gonna be stuck in the Catskills with my parents for a week, the least they could do is get Patrick Swayze to show up.”

“Why Patrick Swayze?” Evan sits down at his desk and rifles through his memory. “I thought he died.”

“Because otherwise it’s not a Dirty Dancing homage. And yes.”

“It’s a what homage?”

“The movie. Dirty Dancing. ‘Nobody puts Baby in a corner’? ‘I’ve had the time of my life’?” Evan’s confusion must show on his face as clearly as frustration shows on Jared’s. “Do you watch anything other than nature documentaries?”

“I watch documentaries about other things.”

“Typical,” Jared mutters, as if he’s genuinely disappointed in Evan and not at all excited to add a new title to his mental list of Movies To Make Evan Watch When We Hang Out. (Well, he claims it’s a mental list. Evan suspects he has a spreadsheet.) “Are your finals done yet?”

“No. I still have two left.” And as he discovered last semester, finals for three college classes somehow require as much studying as eight high school finals. Especially when he’s studying by himself while Jared, whose semester ended a month ago, is on the other side of the state complaining about a vacation that’s rewarding him for making the dean’s list. That’s what Mom said Jared’s mom said it was for, anyway. Jared insists it’s because going away to college made his parents realize they missed having someone to order around.

“That sucks.”

“Yeah.” Evan shuffles through the papers on his desk one-handed. “Um. My mom looked up the place where you’re staying, and she said they had, you can throw tomahawks, as an activity.” He had the printouts about it just yesterday, where did they go? “That sounds cool.”

“Yeah, but they only have it twice a week, and we missed the Monday session, so Friday’s my last shot. And that’s if my mom doesn’t convince herself that I’m gonna cut my own head off throwing an axe.”

“Tomahawk.”

“Whichever. Besides, they have, like, safety precautions and training. But if we were here in the winter, she’d say we have to check out the ski trails. That shit isn’t supervised, and statistically…”

Connor hated skiing.

It pops into Evan’s head and stays lodged in there as Jared goes on about all the ways you can be horribly maimed while skiing. It reminds him that a year ago he was counting the days until graduation and wondering which of his classmates he’d ever see again, and a year and a half ago he was literally sick with dread waiting for either Jared or the Murphys to turn his world upside down by going public, and two years ago —

“…are you even listening to me right now?”

“No,” Evan says, then cringes. “I kind of zoned out. Sorry.”

“I kind of figured.”

“I was just thinking that, um.” That if a thousand things hadn’t happened just right, they wouldn’t be having this conversation. “I’m glad we’re friends again. Or still, or, however you think of it.”

“Uh, okay. Same here, I guess.” Jared rubs his eyes with the heel of his hand. For a while. They look pretty red.

“Jared, are you —”

“My contacts are probably expired,” Jared says quickly. “And the pollen here is insane. How am I supposed to see straight with a thousand trees jizzing in my eyes?”

“Gross.”

“But accurate.”

“I mean, not exactly —”

“If I wanted a botany lesson, I’d go on the nature tour again. And I wouldn’t learn anything this time.”

(send me a ship and a prompt and i’ll write a mini fic)