Broken People | Dylan O'Brien

𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖊𝖗 𝕾𝖎𝖝

They circled the gallery a total of three times before they bravely faced the LA heat again. Inside, it had been cool. The airconditioning of the gallery saved them from sweat dripping down their backs, pants sticking to thighs, a moist upperlip.

Now they wereleaving through the front door again which Dylan closed behind himself immediately.

It felt as though a wall of heat hit them the moment they stepped outside. Despite the moon greeting them, it still felt like 1 pm on the beach.

Michelle sighed and tilted her head back, slowly getting used to the extremities of The United States again. Her eyes were closed, trusting of Dylan behind her making sure she wouldn't get robbed. Why she trusted him, she didn't know. It was illogical. Meeting him in general had been illogical. Perhaps life itself was just a little illogical. Perhaps you should let life run its course and accept the illogicalness of the world around you. Perhaps that is how you became truly happy.

"Gotta get back to yo' friends?" Dylan asked, but that wasn't what he was really asking.

"No, they can sort themselves out," Michelle answered but that wasn't what she was really saying.

"Good," Dylan grinned and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. The longer they hung out, the more comfortable he became with touching her, especially after the minor... discussion they had about not treating her like she is made of glass.

Michelle loved it, Michelle loved being touched, Michelle loved being touched by Dylan.

"Where do you wanna go?" she asked, promptly ignoring how good it felt to be so close to him with his scent in her nose and his arm warm and heavy around her shoulders.

Dylan thought about it for a moment. "Mine isn't a good plan. Sorry, doll. Think ma own friends 're there to wreck the place down. Maybe we can go to yours?"

Michelle had never invited someone back to her place. Not when they weren't friends or partners. This didn't feel like either. This felt like something in between. Something new she hadn't experienced before. And yet she wasn't afraid. She felt for her hotel room key in the back pocket of her jeans, relieved that it was still there and led the way.

"It's not much," Michelle told Dylan as they stood side by side in the elevator. Michelle had her hands clamped in front of her nervously. Dylan leaned back against the mirror casually. Two vastly different people from the outside yet on the inside they were the same. They had the same needs, the same dreams, the same thoughts. They were polar opposites and scarily similar. They were ying and yang and two halves of the same broken vase. They were each other and everyone else.

Dylan shrugged. Michelle didn't have to hear him say that he didn't care about that, about what her hotel room looked like. That he didn't care that it wasn't the same luxury he was used to. She knew him, he knew her. Dylan understood her anxiety, her fear that she is not good enough for him, and he matched it in tandem with this relaxed nonchalance that made her shoulders drop and her chest expand as she breathed out for the first time since getting in the damn elevator.

"Here it is," Michelle said as they arrived in front of her room. It took her a few tries to get the card to work but the door finally lit green and then they were inside.

Michelle stuck the card into the little compartment above the light switch and the airconditioning blissfully whirred back to life.

With sigh, Michelle landed next to Dylan on the comfortably cool hotel bed with its creaky springs and too soft mattress. "Can't imagine what your hotelbed feels like. Probably a whole lot better than this one."

The right edge of Dylan's lips tilted upwards.

"Don't."

"Didn't even say 'nything," Dylan smirked, throwing his hands up besides his head. "It's you who's been having the dirty thoughts, babygirl."

Michelle rolled her eyes and didn't answer, though she felt amused and it showed on her face. Shining brown eyes, lips pursed together as though she was holding in a laugh (she was), hands folded over her quivering tummy. Dylan knew. Michelle let him know. There was no reason to feel ashamed. Not with Dylan. Out of everyone Michelle had encountered in her short, quite miserable life, Dylan felt the most like home.

The silence stretched. Only the soft breathing of Michelle and short puffs Dylan took of his cigarette were audible in the otherwise quiet hotel room. There was nothing to say so they didn't force it. Michelle was grateful for it. If there is one thing she hated, among many other things, it was forced conversations that only felt awkward. But they left no room for awkwardness, only comfortable silence.

It gave Michelle time to think, it gave Dylan time to think as well. Their thoughts mingled in their air, connecting, agreeing. They had found the person who was most like themselves, who was not like themselves at all. They had found the person who understood, who wanted to understand. They had found the person who came closer to the word home than they had encountered in their time on earth.

They had both found the one they could not let go.

And yet...

"When are you leaving?" Dylan asked suddenly.

The once content, almost happy mood

immediately flipped on it's head.

"Tomorrow evening."

Michelle whispered the words, wishing she didn't have to utter them. The flight ticket back was already stored safely in the inside flap of the bag she would bring to the airport as carry-on luggage. Her passport surrounded the ticket, already open on the right page.

She would fly home and leave the broken boy alone in Los Angeles. Suddenly, she couldn't bear it.

"Stay," Dylan whispered, begging her almost. "Stay here. I can pay for another ticket, I can get you a hotel, I-"

"I can't," Michelle rasped. Tears shone in her eyes as she looked at Dylan, his features cast in shadows from the shitty hotel lights.

He was baring his soul. His accent changed, morphed until it sounded like the old Dylan O'Brien again from the interviews she had watched for Teen Wolf and the Maze Runner, before he went off the tracks. Dylan gave up on the pretense around her, dropped it in lieu of baring his soul to her in a poor attempt to keep her with him.

Michelle hadn't felt it before but she did now. The hotel air conditioning was cold, blazing onto her skin. She wrapped her arms around herself but it made her feel sickly all the same. Every hotel room did.

Dylan stood from the bed, his footsteps loud against the carpeted floor. For a moment, she thought he left but he returned with the jacket he had ditched in the corner when he arrived. He wrapped it around her when Michelle sat up to look at him, his hands lingering on her arms.

"Why?" he asked, the single syllable enough to make Michelle come undone. The desperation was back. Everything between them felt intense, overwhelmingly so but not enough to make Michelle panic. It made her unravel, though, until nothing but her own blind need was uncovered for Dylan to see.

"I have a job," Michelle admitted. "I have work to do and responsibilities at home. I already took all of my vacation time, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Dylan didn't speak but wrapped his arms around her instead. He held her, tightly against his chest, and they swayed until their heartbeats slowed in tandem.