Coming Undone by purplesunsets

6

"You want to plant some tomatoes with me?"

"What?" Nick sets down his phone. "Tomatoes?"

George grins. "Clay has this planter out back that he never uses. I've never planted anything since the weather in England is ass, so why not? It's going to be fun."

"Why tomatoes, though? They're fucking nasty." Nick wrinkles his nose, but stands from the couch.

"I like them."

"Well, you would." Nick mutters.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing." Nick laughs and follows George out the back door. "Okay, where the hell is this shit?"

Set carefully on a tarp in front of the planter are two pairs of gardening gloves and some gardening supplies. Small tomato plants sit cheerfully in their plastic cartons.

George hands Nick the red gloves and keeps the blue gloves for himself.

"Hey, why do you get the blue gloves?" Nick complains.

"I literally cannot see the other ones." George deadpans.

"It's not like being colorblind makes them invisible." Nick mutters but pulls on the gloves anyway.

"Okay, so I read a WikiHow on this. Here, loosen up the soil or something." George says and passes Nick a tool.

"Huh? What even is this thing?"

"It's a hoe." George says dryly.

"Like, from Minecraft?"

"Oh my god. You did not just say that."

"What?"

"Hoes are real things, Nick. They exist outside of a fucking video game." George guffaws.

"I knew that." Nick grumbles.

"Sure." George is still bent over laughing. "Stab the dirt or something with it."

"Asshat." Nick says, but complies.

George kneels down beside Nick and they get to work, pulling weeds, preparing the soil, and making little holes that they nestle the tomato plants into. They work in amicable silence, with Nick humming under his breath. Even though Nick misses every note, George still loves it. Nick is easy to be around in all the ways that Clay isn't.

The thought settles uncomfortably in the back of George's mind, because part of him knows that Clay isn't good for him. And even just as friends, that Nick could give him so much more.

"Hey, you got something there." Nick says, snapping George out of his thoughts.

"Where?"

"There." Nick repeats and smears a clump of mud across George's forehead. Immediately, he gets up and sprints toward the woods.

"You're so, ugh!" George groans, but can't help to smile. It's the most alive he's felt in a long time.

(If George had been looking, he would've seen Clay lurking beneath the shade of a willow tree. He would've seen the cruel smile on his face, and the seething jealousy in his eyes. Because Clay is always watching, and always has been.)

—

"George, what's that room at the end of the hall?"

"The one with the passcode lock?" George asks Nick.

"Yeah. What's Clay hiding in there?"

"He has his security system set-up in there, it's really not that exciting." George shrugs, repressing the image of bloodied walls.