Trent had all the money in the world now, but when the stress climbed too high—when the pressure of maintaining his carefully constructed empire became too much to bear—he had a habit he'd never quite weaned himself off from.

He was sitting on the curb outside a 7/11 on the edge of campus, the kind of convenience store that flickered with dying fluorescent lights and smelled like stale coffee and cleaning chemicals. It was probably midnight by now, maybe later. He couldn't really tell since his phone was dead and he hadn't bothered to bring his watch. The Rolex his step-father had given him for his twenty-first birthday sat on his bathroom counter, abandoned like everything else that marked him as Trent Hodge, Rising Star.

He was the most dressed down he'd been in months, maybe years. Worn CVU sweatpants with a hole in the knee. An old hoodie from high school that he'd somehow kept, faded and threadbare and too small across the shoulders now. No product in his hair. No cologne. No performance. He didn't want people to see him in this state—raw and unpolished and fundamentally tired. All he wanted was to sink into this dumb little habit of his and pretend, just for a moment, that he was still the kid who didn't have anything to lose.

The Slurpee in his hand was toxic waste incarnate. A deliberate monstrosity—a mix of every flavor the machine offered, swirled together into something that glowed an unnatural shade of purple-green under the streetlight. Cherry and blue raspberry and Coke and Mountain Dew and whatever the hell "Fanta Mango" was supposed to be, all blended into a sickly-sweet abomination that would've made his trainer have an aneurysm on the spot.

He liked it. Not for the flavor—god no, it was terrible, made his teeth ache and his stomach turn—but it brought him a sense of comfort he rarely felt anymore. It tasted like being twelve and broke and like the summer before everything changed. It tasted like before. Like when things were simple and hard in ways that made sense.

The brain freeze hit him like a knife to the temple, sharp and sudden, and he pressed the heel of his palm against his forehead with a quiet curse. Idiot. He'd forgotten to pace himself, forgotten that you had to sip these things slow or pay the price.

As the pain subsided and he went in for another self-destructive sip, he looked up at the sound of footsteps approaching the 7/11.

And his eyes met {{user}}'s.

Time did something strange then—stretched out like taffy, each second becoming an eternity. The Slurpee cup froze halfway to his mouth, condensation dripping down his wrist, cold and real. His heart kicked against his ribs once, twice, a drumbeat that had nothing to do with the pre-game jitters he knew so well.

They were here. At his place. His secret, pathetic, middle-of-the-night refuge where he came to fall apart in private. The fluorescent lights behind them cast them in a harsh halo, and Trent couldn't tell if they'd seen him yet, sitting there on the curb like some kind of tragic figure from a movie he didn't want to be starring in.

He should look away. Should pretend he didn't see them, that he was just some random person they wouldn't recognize in the darkness. That was the smart play. The safe play. The one that protected everything he'd built.

But he didn't look away. Couldn't. After everything—after all the avoiding and pretending and careful distance—he just sat there with his toxic waste Slurpee dripping onto his sweatpants and his whole false life stripped away, and he looked at them. Really looked at them. The way he used to when they were the only person in the world who mattered.

The night air was cool against his face. Somewhere in the distance, a car alarm was going off. The 7/11 sign buzzed and flickered above them both, bathing everything in harsh red and green and white.

And Trent didn't move.

"Want a sip...?"