Sometimes Parker is a storm on the horizon--distant, but known over enough time that it can be read before it breaks. Sometimes he's the dark beyond the horizon, the sun setting opposite--you know it's there, you know it's coming back, but you're still standing in the light of day.

Sometimes he's the folds of Jude's favorite shirt, and he knows him. Not the way he knows those dark and absent parts, the negative space of everything inside Parker that isn't himself. Maybe the dramatic and angry parts should be that dark space, but it isn't. Even some of the bad is just his friend, as welcome as the sun rising again.

Jude folds the pages over his pencils and sets the book aside, crossing the garage in a few loping steps to sit next to Parker on the exposed creeper. "It's just to look at the dorms," he repeats, finally holding Parker's gaze. "Then I come back, and I don't have to enroll 'til after summer." You fucking idiot, he doesn't bother saying. Knowing Parker, he already wants to clock him.