Deadline≫hemmings a.u

4.8

"It's very pretty," I said in awe as I looked up from the Chicago River to see the tall buildings that rose around us.

"Yeah," Michael nodded next to me, his hands in his pockets as he gazed around, his eyes sad with nostalgia. "Didn't you say you've been here before?"

I shrugged, glancing at him before latching my eyes onto the boat that passed on the river below, carrying tourists. "Yeah, but that was a long time ago. I was eleven."

We had finally arrived in Chicago after travelling across the states at a snail's pace. The drive from LA would have definitely taken under a week, but Michael and I meandered quite a bit. Our reasoning was that even though we had been on the road a lot, we never really had time to see what was around us. And now that we were free, we wanted to actually experience really being in the places we visited, physically, and mentally. If you ask me, it might have been one of our ways to cope. Since Luke's death, we had suddenly been faced with a freedom we didn't have recently, as well as the startling reality that we weren't really living.

When we started travelling, I expected Michael to want to haul ass towards Chicago to see Ashton, but after a week had passed and we were barely out of California, I finally asked him why we were taking so long.

"I don't know," he shrugged, looking down at the mug of hot chocolate in his hands. He had yet to take a single sip from it, and the steam had long since faded. "What's the rush?"

"I don't know," I mirrored him, raising and dropping my shoulders. "I had just figured you'd want to see Ashton as soon as possible."

Michael winced and he looked away, fixing his eyes on something outside of the window of the Denny's we were sitting in for breakfast. His eyes glassed over and I could see the sorrow that filled them. That was all I needed to understand. Michael wasn't ready to go back. He wasn't ready to see Ashton.

"He doesn't know yet..." Michael had murmured. "We were supposed to keep each other safe..."

So we took our time driving to Chicago. We went up through Yellowstone National Park and even saw Mount Rushmore. Without really realizing it, we were searching for a place to honor? - no, remember Luke. Considering we were pretty much his only family left, everyone else he knew presumed him gone a long time ago, there was no one else to have a funeral or anything like that for him. We didn't even have a body or ashes to spread. We passed a lot of places we figured Luke would have liked, but nothing was good enough.

"Michael?" After a long while, I broke our silence, tearing my gaze away from the city around us to look at him.

"Hm?" he hummed distantly, his eyes sweeping over the very tops of the buildings, but based on his expression, I knew he wasn't really seeing what was there.

"Michael, we can't keep putting it off forever," I said gently, grabbing his hand and pulling him back down to Earth. Despite our greatest efforts, Michael still slipped away every now and then. In the few days that lead up to our arrival in Chicago, Michael would disappear on me, not physically, but he was somewhere else in his head, and sometimes I couldn't reach him. We were better than before, we were able to talk about Luke instead of avoiding the subject entirely and we had already reached acceptance of what had happened. But coping with life after death was never that easy.

Michael's lips twisted into a frown and I knew he heard me. He looked down from the rooftops and briefly at the river before he closed his eyes and let out a heavy breath. "I know," he sighed, squeezing my hand as he opened his eyes again. "It's just..."

I put my other hand on his arm to stop him as he furrowed his brows and chewed his lip while he tried to string his thoughts together. I already knew what he was going to say. Michael had yet to phone Ashton and tell him about Luke. He wanted to do it in person, but he still didn't know how. He, Luke, and Ashton were like brothers, how was he going to come back to Ashton and tell him he had lost Luke?