summer stained blue

chapter one - home

"Finn." He still looked at him the same way, still said his name with the same thick accent. It was so out of place in their little piece of middle-of-nowhere USA, but Finn felt an unfamiliar sense of relief crash through his tense shoulders.

Even in his new, sparkly-adult life, Dylan made room for him. He always made room.

"Dylan," Finn echoed finally, biting the bullet and starting to climb up toward the door. There was a hint of a smile in his voice, but not a trace of one on his face.

"Hey, babes," Dylan greeted him. The sympathy in his friend's voice made Finn want to hurl himself straight back down the porch steps.

"Hey." The strap on his large duffel bag slipped off of his shoulder, and he heaved it back into place. "You alright?"

The Irish boy nodded. "How are you doing?"

"Fine." It felt like a stereotypical lie, the most cliche deflection. Anyone who took a peek into his life would be able to tell that "fine" shouldn't even be in his vocabulary. "Fine" was a word in a completely different dictionary.

He really was fine, though. Kind of, sort of. If anything, Finn wasn't fine about the fact that he was fine.

Thankfully, Dylan didn't push him. Instead, the Irish boy took another step out onto the dimly-lit porch, propping the door open with his heel as he opened his arms and offered Finn a familiar, lopsided grin.

"Come here, stupid. It's been a while."

Finn smiled wearily, but he let his friend wrap him up in a hug. It was awkward with his small duffel bag bumping up against their sides, but it was good. It was something.

Dylan pulled back first, patting his arm. "Come in. First sleepover we've had since high school!"

The house was exactly what Finn would have expected. It struck the difficult balance between sophisticated adult and proud Irish frat boy, a sturdy shoe rack in the entryway and an Irish flag hanging over the empty beer bottles on the counter. Even the living room was very Dylan-esque: the couch looked new but well-worn, and the room was comfortably cluttered.

"I like the decor changes," he commented as he beelined for the couch, stepping over the back and curling up in the corner like he had always done. "Very you."

Dylan moved around the counter, grabbing them each a beer from the fridge. "Well, I was a bit surprised when my parents decided to move out of the Midwest and leave me in this one, but I've lived my whole life on hand-me-downs, so it's fitting."

Dylan's parents were professional chefs. They had run a fancy restaurant downtown for as long as Finn could remember, but last year, they had both taken jobs at high-end spots in New York.

"Did they even offer it to Greg?" Greg, Dylan's brother, was three years ahead of them in school. He had a high-paying consulting job in New York City now, probably just down the street from Dylan's parents, and he could also probably buy half of downtown Toledo on one year's salary.

"No, no. Probably not. There's no chance he's leaving his fancy apartment, not even for a chance to redecorate his childhood home. And besides, he loves showing Ma and Dad around the city."

There was a bitterness in Dylan's tone that Finn recognized immediately: the subtle disapproval of someone abandoning his family. He tried not to take it personally.

"Anyway. Like you want to know about Greg's social life. Did you have dinner already?"

"Yeah," Finn lied. "Got something at the airport."