𝒎𝒂𝒚𝒃𝒆 • 𝒓𝒆𝒅𝒅𝒊𝒆

* collide *

Inspiration was a funny little thing. It came from the strangest of places: a song on the radio; an snippet of an overheard conversation; the gleam of sunlight on newly fallen snow. Rose petals. Fireworks. Starlight. Smiles in the dark and whispers floating away on the wind.

Nearly kissing a beautiful boy on the roof of a ten storey building.

It was this that gave Richie inspiration, this particular night, to finally write his stupid play. He had precisely three days to finish (he was meant to have it submitted by the first of January, but he'd practically begged his professor for an extension. It was only because Richie had a reputation as one of the top students that it had been allowed). He still hadn't written anything of any worth. He'd been working on a half-assed thriller, but it was riddled with clichés and more plot holes than he could count. Still, it was better than nothing, and Richie had been starting to think he would just have to accept it.

Now, however, all thoughts of his thriller were gone from his mind as he flipped open his notebook to the first blank page. As he scrambled around for a pen, he wondered absently why he hadn't thought of this sooner. It was so glaringly obvious. While he had sat and struggled for weeks on end, the perfect plot had been right in front of him the entire time.

Act I, Scene I, he scrawled. Nighttime. A young man sits at his window, looking out upon the street below. Another man stands waiting outside, smoking a cigarette...

Time seemed to blur as he wrote, his chicken scratch growing less legible by the second. His hand ached. His eyes burned. On and on he went, writing until his exhausted eyes drooped shut.

***

"And then I almost kissed him, Bill. Kissed him!" Eddie dropped his head in his hands and let out a long groan of embarrassment. "Do you know how awful that would have been? He would hate me forever."

Bill smiled sympathetically. They were sitting side by side on his bed, their backs against the headboard and a bowl of popcorn between them. Eddie had called him the instant he'd gotten home the night before. He and Richie had spent a couple of hours after the fireworks meandering around and watching people make fools of themselves in the street. They'd ended up at the playground around two in the morning, where they had sat on the swings and counted the stars until they couldn't feel their toes anymore. Well, Eddie sat. Richie had swung as high as he could and jumped off over and over again, ignoring Eddie's repeated warnings that he was bound to break an arm.

Bill hadn't answered Eddie's four in the morning phone call, of course. Not because he was sleeping (did anyone sleep on New Year's Eve?) but because he'd spent the night at his boyfriend's apartment halfway across town. He had called Eddie back as soon as he'd gotten home that afternoon and listened to his semi-hysteric voicemail.

"He wouldn't hate you," Bill assured him now. "He reacted fine when you t-t-told him you're gay, didn't he?"

Eddie shrugged impatiently. "Yeah, but that was different. It's easy to accept it in theory, but this makes it real. What if it freaks him out and he doesn't want to be around me anymore?"

"Then he's not the sort of p-person you want to be around anyway, is he?"

Eddie said nothing; merely stuffed more popcorn in his mouth and chewed it harder than Bill thought was necessary. Bill waited. Years of experience had made him an expert on dealing with a moody Eddie.