"Well, love is insanity. The ancient Greeks knew that. It is the taking over of a rational and lucid mind by delusion and self-destruction. You lose yourself, you have no power over yourself, you can't even think straight."
-Marilyn French
Dawson dialed again, trying to focus on not hitting anyone in the ridiculous amount of traffic for ten o'clock on a Thursday night. He cursed when the cell went to voice-mail again, and threw it against the passenger-door, speeding up and driving too close to the car in front of him - his headlights glaring against their brake-lights. He was angry and tired. He turned up the radio to an unholy volume to drown out his thoughts. He'd worked a four-hour shift directly after school, and spent three of them under a forest-green mini-van, only to get a call half-way home that he couldn't ignore. His day had been utter shit.
He pulled off the boulevard and parked in a lot adjacent to an old building that used to be a bowling-alley with an upstairs diner.
He grabbed his cell from the floorboard and got out of his truck, slamming the door and looking up at the building exterior which was gray and run-down. It was a shock in itself that it was still standing. He walked towards the back entrance and nudged away the little rock that propped the door open. He pushed through and kicked a piece of plywood across the dust-covered floor, making it clatter loudly into the opposite wall. He took the stairs to the diner two-at-a-time. The lay-out of it had been a retro theme, and under a layer of dust and dirt you could still see the faded checkered pattern.
He ambled over to the large window, which was also propped open by a piece of a glass cup and threw his foot over the ledge, feeling for the bars of the fire escape. He jumped out and began to climb the ladder against the cold bricks of the building, not looking down. When he reached the ledge of the roof he pulled himself up over the side, rolling away from the edge. All the normal routine.
Standing and wiping his clothes off - his work clothes which entailed grease-stained jeans, boots, and a long-sleeve gray shirt that had Ottos Auto Repair on the left pocket along with the insignia of a wrench and a crowbar crossing like an X. He hated the grimy feeling he had after getting off work. The oil-stains on his hands and in his hair which were visible in his light-auburn tangle. He hated feeling out of order - not put together. He needed a brush and a shower and a shave.
"Dawson?"
Familiarity. The voice as given to him as his very own. Dawson gravitated towards it.
"Yeah it's me." he walked over to where Cole lay on his back, near the opposite ledge. His legs were bent at the knee and his hands were behind his head. He was only a shadow from the moon and the streetlights, but it was enough to make out features. Cole didn't look at him until he was standing directly over him, his face in the other boys line of view, upward.
"What're you doing here?" he tilted his head only slightly and Dawson could see in his eyes the same shadows that had haunted him for all the years and years he'd known him.
"Like you thought for one second I wouldn't be." he sat down beside Cole, a foot away, looking up at the sky that was nothing but opaque darkness.
"Holly?" Cole asked. These little spells always began that way, unvarnished. No emotion. Dawson shoved his away, deep into a place where he couldn't reach them, while Cole would cut himself open, and let it all bleed out. It wasn't a bad thing - but still - it was difficult.
"Holly." he affirmed, "She phoned." he rubbed a circle in the dirt on the roof. It was silent for a while, just the whir of life far below and the wind far above. It was going to rain tomorrow - at least that's what Dawson had heard the weather-man say on the radio.
