oh my god, they were neighbors

brawley

tw - another slur, this time in spanish (sorry) it means the same as the 'f' slur

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It had been a long time since Ezra had been in a car, let alone on a road trip. For the time he'd been in Santa Monica, he'd always found it much easier to walk everywhere, given most places he'd wanted to go were within walking-distance of the apartments. But there was a sense of fun and adventure that came with cramming his shit into a suitcase, stuffing it in the trunk of a beat up rental van, and getting the hell away from Santa Monica, at least for a little while.

The ride itself, though a decently long one, was far from boring. Mateo wasn't much of a musical enthusiast, and Ezra was disinterested in choosing a specific playlist, so they just listened to the radio with the windows down and watched the city fade into the desert. California could be beautiful. Beyond the smog of LA, which Ezra had seen a long time ago, and the looming, intensely concrete infrastructures of every major city in the state, there was desert expanse and golden skies. There were few things that made Ezra miss Kansas. Seeing genuine grass in the sand was one of them.

Mateo being himself, of course, spent a lot of the ride nervous, and Ezra, being as doting to Mateo as he was, of course, spent a lot of the ride reassuring him. He didn't find Mateo's anxiety funny, but there was a bit of humor in the way Mateo could become so brash and confident, only to regret it later. After all, it was Mateo who insisted Ezra should come, even dismissing the idea that his father would cause problems. Now it was the very thing he worried about.

"If he calls you a maricón..." Mateo trailed off, shaking his head at the thought.

"What's that mean?" Ezra asked.

"It's like that one word. You said...you said your father called you it."

Ezra clenched his fists. "Oh. The one that starts with 'F'?"

"Mmhmm." Mateo rolled his shoulders, having driven for two hours straight and being a bit stiff about it. "He's said it to me before. I won't let him say it about you."

Ezra never clung tightly onto the idea of being defended, not one to be obsessed with being 'saved' or 'protected', or any other fifty-cent word one might scrap up. Even if he enjoyed it when Mateo held him or comforted him or helped him, he was not, by any means, a damsel-in-distress. That being said, there was something about the way Mateo said it that made Ezra's heart flutter. There was genuine anger there. Mateo wasn't one to sound threatening, usually seemingly incapable of hurting a fly, but the certainty and diction of his voice reminded Ezra that Mateo wasn't a weak man. Timid, sure. Cowardly, maybe. But beneath the surface, always strong.

The 7-Eleven worker did not mention his thoughts aloud, and instead allowed conversation to drift away into other topics for the remaining two hours of the drive. This kept the two entertained until they arrived in Brawley.

Brawley was a very similar place, by basic principles, to Atchison. Like the Kansas town, it was a smaller, seemingly well-knit together community, though it was certainly a bit larger and possessed a higher population. Their downtown was observably small and compact, but nonetheless at least mildly lively with the bustle of people. Mateo's home was rather unimposing, an almost-beige hue of tan and adorned with few flowers out front.

On the front porch stood Alana and Daniela, who seemed ecstatic to see Mateo and Ezra again. They helped the pair bring their suitcases to Mateo's room and roll in a rollaway bed for Ezra, not that he'd be using it. Regardless, Mateo's family was not yet aware that Ezra and Mateo had something going on, and if the presence of a rollaway bed could keep up that facade, Ezra could respect that.