I just can't escape, it's like you're here with me now.

But the words you say, they always seem to fade out.

Since you've been away, I'm just a face in the crowd.

Someday, someday, I know you're coming back down.

- Hollywood Undead, Coming Back Down

"I can talk about it."

"No need."

"No, seriously, dude. I'm cool. I can talk."

I continued to use a great deal of effort to ignore Alfred as I stood awkwardly outside of the auto shop, arms coiled tightly around my sides as I shivered near painfully. Alfred mirrored my image to my right, frowning petulantly at me for the past thirty minutes. Stupid car breaking on the stupid freeway off-ramp. Practically gave me a heart attack.

"It's fine," I muttered offhandedly, peering into the greasy shop at my car being tinkered with, much like a surgeon toying around a chest cavity as if to say, "Well, we'll never know what's wrong till we plunge inside."

Alfred didn't seem to like my constant refusal to his assurances. "Arthur," he said, and the emphasis on my name made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I couldn't help but spare him a glance. "I want to talk about it," he insisted.

I snorted.

Alfred bristled.

"What the fuck was that? I'm tryin' to tell you about Matt's dinner drama and you don't wanna hear it. What happened to the whole 'listening ear' shit you claimed to be so good at?"

I sighed heavily and adjusted my coat collar against the chilly air. He really was obnoxiously persistent. "I don't do it when you're lying."

It was Alfred's turn to snort in disbelief. "How am I lying?"

God, it was getting harder and harder to humor him nowadays. Regardless, being the astounding friend that I was, I smiled tightly at him as he raised his eyebrows at me. "Oh, I don't know, how about the tenseness in your shoulders for starters – ah, ah. I can already see it in your neck and jaw," I chided apathetically as Alfred self-consciously went to hide his throat behind one of his hands. It dropped before it even got halfway up and I grinned. "What else…? Oh, yes. The tone of your voice could give you away, or even that nervous tick you seemed to have developed that keeps you glancing away every thirty bloody seconds. It could possibly also be the rings of purple under your eyes because you haven't been sleeping well over this and maybe even that you keep chewing at your fingernails like you're a fucking beaver. Or – I don't know – the fact that you avoid the subject of suicide like the God damn plague. Sound about right? These ringing any bells, Alfred?"

Alfred flinched as my tone grew louder and colder, an auto shop technician behind him looking up curiously before going back inside the garage. My scowl tugged at my lips as I wrapped my arms around my body tighter to prevent my shivers from turning violent.

It was quiet a long moment, enough for me to gain my bearings and realize that I unintentionally let loose the cap to my own personal jar of issues. I felt somewhat humiliated at allowing Alfred to hear some personal demons of mine that I never wanted him to know about.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to say that. I went too far," I muttered after Alfred refused to retort, my voice coated with remnants of shame.

Alfred shifted beside me and fought to keep a steady expression of indifference. I could tell what was underneath, though; he was trembling slightly with what was most certainly anger or any emotion of the like. The dreaded s-word tended to do that to him.

Whoopsie daisy, that one was my bad, wasn't it?

"If you want to talk about it, do so," I relinquished with a sigh.

"No, no. I don't have to," he said all too quickly.

I promptly rolled my eyes and looked full-on at my friend, mentally coaxing him to look back at me. To my surprise, he did. I hoped it didn't show on my face and continued on. "Please, I want to know. Go on and say it."

"No thanks."

I frowned at him with a shrug of my shoulders, my attention going back to the work being done on my car. "Suit yourself, then," I responded stubbornly.

I knew Alfred would break, it was just a matter of when. He had never been very good at staying silent for too long. Apparently it was something comforting to Alfred for him to discuss recent events plaguing his house, but I just didn't like talking about the topic of self-inflicted injuries. Reasonably so, considering last year. It was just odd about Alfred's sudden openness to the whole thing.

I frowned. Sort of made me wonder what I had missed when he left me here and took off to school.

"Jeez, Arthur, fine. If you really need to know I'll tell you. You're so nosy sometimes!" Alfred blurted with false aggravation after ten minutes. I halted the quirking of my lips at the corners.

"I apologize. I don't mean to pry."

Alfred snorted. "You liar." His faux irritation dissipated as he spun on me, all wide-eyed and energized. He had my full attention with a look like that. "Okay, okay, so it's been stupid, right? I thought going away to school was going to be easier. You know, easier than, uh, than what happened in… than high school and…"

"Yes, continue," I goaded, understanding that it was still hard for Alfred to vocal exactly what he had done to himself nearly a year ago.

"But then I stopped getting letters from my mom and Matt and stuff so I knew something was kinda strange. I didn't really know about Matt's teacher until I got home, myself. If I knew, Arthur, really, I honestly would have–" Alfred looked at me in a way as if hoping for me to understand around his ineloquent words.

"I don't blame you for that. It might've made the awkward moment more bearable, but I don't think that could've been avoided. Matthew obviously never had enough time to get over what happened to- what happened."

Alfred caught the slip-up, much to my chagrin. We both weren't fools to the fact that Alfred's one selfish mistake could possibly have broken his family beyond complete repair. And how much this affected his brother without Alfred noticing, well, that was the crap cherry on top of Alfred's shit cake.

His eyebrows furrowed a little and his frown deepened. He broke eye-contact and stared intently at the mechanics before running his hands roughly up his face and through his hair, pivoting his feet slightly and facing the traffic on the road behind us.

"Fuck – I really messed up with this!"

I watched awkwardly as Alfred rubbed the heel of his palms deeply in his eye-sockets and silently continued his self-loathing.

Really, now. What was a person to say in a situation like this? Despite my previous relations with Alfred I was really lacking in experience in the whole 'suicide recovery' thing.

After a long moment I finally managed to swallow the heavy ball in the back of my throat and take a step forward, reaching out to place an unsure hand on Alfred's shoulder. He glanced up at me just then and I recoiled mid-reach as if shocked. He blinked at me curiously under the haze of some emotion I couldn't quite place my finger on. It made my mouth go dry.

"Alfred, I… Alfred-"

"Yo, boys! Which one of you's Kirkland?"

We both jumped and turned to see an oily looking man sticking his head out of the garage, thick accent dripping with more than just grammar inaccuracies. He removed the dew rag from his balding head and wiped his beefy hands with it. I hesitantly shared a glance with Alfred before turning my attention to him.

"Yeah, that's me."

He grinned a cocky half-smirk before gesturing his head back into the dimmed archway with gutted cars. My stomach coiled uncomfortably.

"We got a problem."

"Five thousand dollars?" Alfred blurted out in surprise, eyes wide and mouth agape as he held my receipt in his hand. He looked back at my horror-struck expression as if needing confirmation. I was near catatonic, it wasn't like he was going to get anything from me. "Five? Like five of these babies?" he motioned with a wide open palm, fingers dancing as he wiggled them.

I nodded mechanically.

He whistled and pulled the paper further from his face, like that would really change the outcome of my bill. "Look at all those zeros, man."

Oh, I knew how many zeros there were.

"How the hell are you gonna pay for this, dude? Your car's already a piece of shit. You're seriously gonna dump five grand in there?" Alfred asked, kneeling down carefully in front of me, my motionless body sitting in a cheap plastic chair in the automotive office. He looked sincerely at me behind his glasses and pursed his lips.

I opened my mouth once with no sound coming out before I finally managed my voice. "Work the corner, I suppose," came the vague, hollow reply that sounded so distant, like I was underwater.

Alfred snorted with only a small amount of real humor. "Then you either have to work every night till you're thirty or be one helluva good lay."

I might've attempted a chuckle but I couldn't be too sure at the moment.

Engine troubles or something. Completely shot. Nothing salvageable. I couldn't quite remember his exact words under the ocean of no no no covering my brain.

I couldn't pay for this.

"Can you pay for this?"

I balked at Alfred's face. He merely rocked back on his heels with an uncomfortable shrug. "Guess not…" Alfred clucked his tongue against his teeth and patted at his thighs before standing up, knees groaning at the sudden movement. "What're you gonna do, Arthur?" he asked me seriously.

Even in my daze I had to utter a realistic response, though it really didn't sink in until we left the shop and I collapsed ass-first on the sidewalk curb.

"Public transportation's always good."

Public transportation was very much not good. The buses never ran on time, the driver was an irritable man who I had a large suspicion was under the influence seventy percent of the time (and I was being generous and low-balling it), the seats were dirty and covered with questionable substances, and the vehicle contained no small amount of perves, weirdos, and possible convicted - or soon to be - felons.

Needless to say, I was immeasurably grateful when Alfred offered to be my ride until I paid off my money shredder on wheels, regardless of the week he watched me drown in horrified misery on the city buses, much to his amusement.

"Someone really tried to pee on you?" I recalled him saying as he nearly broke a rib in his merriment.

Ha ha, public urination combined with indecent exposure at eleven o'clock at night was hilarious. I was positively laughing all the way to my door even as the taste of bile on the back of my tongue and the smell of old asparagus reached my nose.

Damn homeless swarms.

In the meantime I was just content enough to have flexible mobility once more.

I opened Alfred's red truck door and clambered inside, muscles easily melting when I felt the warm air of the heater on my face. Alfred grinned over at me, eyebrow raised at my pink nose and cheeks. I could tell he withheld the urge to make a joke about it and I appreciated it greatly. He had already been fifteen minutes late picking me up from my closing shift and I had been forced to wait outside in the cold, I didn't want to have to deal with good-natured taunting.

Thank heaven for small mercies.

"Bringin' home that bacon?" Alfred mused as he started the car up again and rotated his wheel to lead us back out onto the nearly empty streets. The city never seemed to have that many people out at one in the morning, the holidays upon us or not.

I huddled deep into myself and placed my nearly frostbitten fingers right against the heater vent. "Something like that."

Alfred clicked his blinker on at a stop sign, almost indiscernibly bobbing his head to the soft lull of "Rocking Around the Christmas Tree" playing from the radio. I was surprised he could manage to keep up with the tune when I could hardly hear the sound coming out at all.

"What took you so long?" I asked conversationally. It was better than the hum of his engine and the silence of the night around us.

Alfred didn't bother taking his eyes from the dark road, a flash of headlights passing us reflecting off his glasses. "Fell asleep."

I cocked my head to the side curiously at him. "You were asleep?"

Alfred fidgeted uncomfortably under my incredulous gaze. "Yeah. Is that a crime? It is the middle of the night, genius."

"No. It's just surprising. You used to stay out all night long when we were in high school, I recall."

Alfred scrunched his nose up with a stunted laugh deep down in his chest, pulling up to a stop at an intersection, fingers flexing over the steering wheel as he looked at me from the corner of his eyes. "I can't really stay in those habits anymore when my grades are my money... Well, my dad's money. Doesn't mean that I don't go out and do stuff late at night anymore. I'm picking you up, aren't I?" he asked, finishing with a deep belly yawn.

"Yes, and you lead a very exciting life because of it," I mused sarcastically.

The light switched to green and yet we still idled behind the limit line. I chanced a peek over my shoulder to see no other vehicles in the vicinity before looking back up at the green stop light. "It's green."

The truck continued to purr in the same place, no movement being beckoned whatsoever as Alfred kept his gaze steady and refused to move his foot from the brake. I shifted and looked at him, gesturing with a wave of my hand at the light."Alfred, it's green. Go."

"I don't do anything exciting anymore? You think I'm not 'spur of the moment' anymore?" he asked, though it was more of a verbal ponder. He pulled the shifter protruding from the steering wheel down, placing his arm behind my headrest and looking behind us as we backed up quickly. I jolted in my seat under the pull of the seatbelt, eyes darting in confusion towards my friend. "Fuck that."

In that instant we shot forward, doing a very much illegal u-turn as Alfred made his way back down the street we had just come from. I bolted upright and braced my hands on the dashboard, eyes zipping to Alfred's grinning face with a sense of dread.

"What are you doing?"

"Something fun, like you wanted."

"I didn't mean right now. I just want to go home."

"And you will," he said, laughing as we jostled over a pothole and I gripped at the seat. "Just after we do something spontaneous."

"Alfred, there's ice on the road- Slow down," I ordered, the unease spreading like an infection in an open wound when Alfred's truck turned off on a backroad, dirt ghosting around the vehicle as we drifted further and further away from city life and ever deeper into unknown darkness of the countryside surrounding us. I vaguely wondered if Alfred knew where he was going the father out we got, the only lights truly visible being his headlights over the shrubbery and grass.

"Alfred, I'm serious. This is-"

"Fun? Exciting?" he prompted.

Crazy and juvenile were more like it. I hadn't meant anything personal when I said that Alfred wasn't as impulsive as he had been in high school. I actually preferred him not calling me in the middle of the night just to chat or crawling in my window half-drunk from a friend's party.

I shook my head stiffly and took a few steadying breaths when we had been driving up a steep hill for close to ten minutes. I had no idea where we were or if this cheap little dirt road could support a truck this large, what with Alfred's side wheels almost drifting over the side of the road with every turn.

"It's-"

And then something caught my eye in the glint of his headlights, something sparkling and like a diamond. I blinked and leaned forward when another glinted off to the side. My head tilted up in awe as I looked towards the starry night sky and saw the small sparkles multiply, catching in the shine of Alfred's car. He seemed to slow his pace when he noticed what had gotten me suddenly silent, his blue eyes widening somewhat at the sight.

"Snowing," I muttered, feeling beside myself. I knew that it snowed here occasionally, but I'd never once gotten to actually see it fall. It was always just lining our driveway when I woke up in the mornings. I gazed in wonder out the passenger window at the small slivers of ice falling from the sky, resembling the puffs of dandelions on a summer afternoon. Only it was a thousand times better than that, so much so that it had my complete attention and I didn't notice that we weren't moving anymore.

I looked over at Alfred who was staring out the front of his car, the falling snowflakes making their appearance in the light reflecting off Alfred's glasses. I turned to see what he was looking at and blinked, eyebrows pulling into my hairline when I caught sight of the city below us, all the lights of the houses and businesses dancing and twinkling like some broken Christmas lights. An overlook point.

The only real word that could come to mind to describe such a view with the snow falling around us was "wow."

"I know, right," Alfred said, sounding almost in a daze.

Had I said that aloud? I didn't remember opening my mouth. "How did you find this?" I asked seriously, craning my head to get a better look at Alfred, the back of his hair still sticking up from the nap he had apparently taken before getting me.

Alfred hesitated a moment before shrugging. "Mattie and I used to come up here with our dad when we were little. I didn't really remember it until a few weeks ago so I decided to check it out. I dunno. I thought you might like it. Not really sure why."

I chewed at my lip for a moment, suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling in my chest at Alfred allowing me to breach a secret place only he and his brother really knew about. I don't know why it was a big deal to me - I wasn't even sure it was a big deal to Alfred - but in that moment with the world glowing beneath us and the sky littered with the falling snow, Alfred's stupid grin he was sharing with me was still the most eye-catching display on the hill.

The heater wasn't needed anymore; it was plenty warm already.

It was a week till Christmas with the smell of pine and cinnamon over the roaring fires in the fireplaces when I got the phone call.

My parents were busy with making dinner and wrapping Peter's presents in their bedroom while I finished up watering the Christmas tree stuffed in the corner of the living room. God, I hated that tree. The needles still made my skin itch every time I touched it. But Peter was always a whiny child and missing out on a real tree in the house wouldn't change that fact at all. We had tried one year and the kid nearly blew a gasket.

"Arthur, when you're done can you help me with this?" my father called from the crack in his bedroom door. I raised an eyebrow in amusement at him, already getting a glimpse of tape and paper stuck to his shirt and hands.

"Sure, dad. Give me a sec."

I stepped away from the tree and made to put the watering cup in the sink when my cell phone started to ring. I furrowed my brow, not really expecting any calls today, when I pulled the device from my pocket, the display reading Calvin Jones. Alfred's house?

"Hello?" I replied when opening my phone, leaning my hip against the counter when waiting for a response. To my surprise it was Alfred's mom.

"Arthur? This is Arthur, right? Oh, I didn't dial the wrong number again, did I? Did you give me the wrong number?" she said, her voice pulling away for a moment to speak to someone in the room with her. A muffled reply was met before she talked back through the speaker. "Arthur?"

"Hi, Mrs. Jones. How are you doing?" My voice was as careful and polite as could be. The last time I saw her had been at the dinner and I still didn't know if she was feeling up to talking to people yet. Well, obviously she was (duh) or she wouldn't be calling me.

Her voice immediately turned cheery and I distantly wondered if she should be tested to see if she was bipolar. Her ability to change moods was astounding. "I'm wonderful. Yourself?"

My mother eyed me in confusion from her spot at the stove when I mouthed 'Alfred's mom' at her. She nodded and went back to cooking as I smiled at nothing. "Fine. What can I help you with?"

The randomness of this call had me wondering if she needed help with picking something out for Alfred for Christmas. Although, even though we were close friends I really didn't know what he'd want. Hell, I hadn't gotten anything yet either. Still, that was the only thing I could think of that seemed plausible.

She seemed to pause for a moment, that distant, deep voice saying something in the background before Mrs. Jones's joyful voice came back to me, sounding somewhat fake. Then again, her voice always sounded a tad fake.

She laughed to herself a moment. "Well, you see, Arthur- I'm not entirely sure what he wanted me to tell you. He just shoved his phone at me before I could do anything."

My smile fell from my face. "What? Is Alfred okay?"

Mrs. Jones's paused once more and even when she spoke with a voice all airy and bubbly, I still couldn't keep my imagination at bay when the icy roads came into mind.

"We're at the hospital, sweetie. There's been a bit of a mishap."