Closer To The Sun [Poly] [Bi]

15 - Trey

Q.O.T.D – What's your favorite type of weather? Sun, rain, clouds, snow? :)

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🍁 . 🦊 . 🍁

Trey and Joey were laying on the ground outside Galaxy Truck Stop. Joey was high. Trey was not.

They lounged on the small slice of under-watered grass between slabs of concrete parking blocks. A row of trucks were parked against the corner of the lot as their drivers shopped or slept. I-70 buzzed in the distance, a straight cut through the endless alpine desert.

Trey worked away at his GED study sheet – a precondition of his parents allowing him to accompany his friends on the backpacking trip this weekend. Trey had scoffed at the word allowing. There was nothing his parents had ever been able to convince him to do or stop him from doing; that was part of "the problem."

He couldn't imagine what he would do with a GED – there was a reason he hadn't bothered to finish high school in the first place – but Campbell had ensured his folks he'd keep him on the straight and narrow.

Trey hated the way his parents talked over him to his college friends, as if Trey wasn't capable of carrying a conversation on his own. Just because he'd spent as much time in juvie as he had in English class didn't mean his language comprehension had suffered. He could grapple with the words responsibility and upstanding citizen and disappointment to your family as well as anyone who'd taken the SAT. 

He just had a deficiency in his ability to care.

But he did care about Campbell, who abhorred conflict of any nature and, for whatever reason, had a vested interest in him. So he'd do it.

Joey, lanky and long, was spread across the full width of the grassy median. He stretched his arms above his head and flexed his fingers at the new spring growth on the clump of aspen trees overhead. He exhaled a long, contented sigh and grinned, pupils like wide black abyssal trenches.

"Having a good trip?" Trey asked, aggravated.

"Look at this," Joey said. With a few tries, Joey snatched a tiny fallen aspen leaf from the grass and held it out to Trey.

Trey cocked an eyebrow. "What about it?"

A slow, easy smile spread over Joey's cheeks. He twirled his fingers and the leaf spun; flipping sides between dark and light green. Joey rolled back over and laughed.

"How do they do that?" He asked.

In spite of himself, Trey grinned. He wasn't a stranger to playing babysitter when Joey felt like spending the afternoon on another plane of existence.

He stood and brushed dirt off his jeans. 

"C'mon," Trey said. "It's been, like, an hour. Let's go get our boy."

Joey looked a him with dilated eyes and nodded. Trey gave him a hand to help him up and Joey just stared at it.

"Come on, druggie," Trey growled. He hoisted the boy up. Joey was lanky, like a baby giraffe, and – unlike when he was sober – he appeared to find Trey's aggravation extremely enjoyable. He dragged Joey into the Galaxy Stop, the tall boy fluttering his aspen leaf behind him.

The automatic doors swish-ed shut behind them in a flush of AC. Galaxy Stop trafficked in contradictions. A rack of local beef jerky stood next to a line of cheap electric nail polish. A box of Zippo lighters sat askew above a crate of loose-leaf teas. A spring-loaded refrigerator of every energy drink you could imagine had one row reserved for pre-hardboiled eggs in little plastic baggies. Atop the soft-serve ice cream dispenser twirled a rack of hats screen-printed with wolves or Camo print or Let Freedom Ring. Probably one of them had all three.