He keeps calling his older brother, it's probably passed 20 calls by now. He's the only one that takes care of Wes. The only one that cares. Because their Mom and Dad are out getting drunk with their rich Yacht friends and signing big music deals. Soul and Wes bonded in the cold of night when their parents weren't there, on birthday's where they had to ask one of the cooks to make a cake for the other one because their parents had forgotten, when either would have a nightmare and the other would come to the rescue and hum calming tunes until calm came.

In their adolescence, the boy would fight nonstop, and more frequently than not, Wes would blame Soul for their parent's absence in both of their lives. The nanny's did their jobs and the boys would only be caught together in the dead of night when the played video games and thought no one could see them.

When they were finishing middle school, they'd go out and steal from gas stations even though their allowance was 50 dollars every week. It was nothing they needed, a pack of gum or a lighter. It soon grew into something much more devious. They'd cause so much trouble in the town over, rode their bikes for 10 minutes to go to the skate park and hang out with the wrong crowd, steal whole picnic sets worth of food and booze.

Soul guesses that's how Wes got started, when they were teens walking to their dumb "friends" house to get high or drunk again. They're a year apart and were actually getting along in public for the first time in 10 years. Soul keeps going even though he has a bad feeling about it. They go to the wrong places with sketchy people and get drunk and smoke too much.

Getting high wasn't too bad, but definitely not something Soul would want to do recreationally. His mind gets fuzzy and he feels like he wants to kiss the girl in front of him, but she's not pretty to him and kind of mean. People laugh at him when he's stoned and it makes me even more insecure than normal. His brother is as charismatic as ever though, everyone flocks to him at parties and Soul dissolves and watches everyone from afar. Wes was always gut laughing back then, saying he wanted to go make snow angels in the middle of summer.

Now, when Soul is nineteen and Wes is damn near twenty one, Soul is stuck going from their friends old houses asking everyone and anyone "Have you seen my brother?" Because he's been gone all night and has been getting into some bad drugs. Soul keeps thinking of finding him in a ditch and dead. Regret drowns him because he should have stopped him sooner.

Terror prickles the hair on the back of his neck and Soul ends up calling the police to put in a missing persons, but get's declined because it hasn't been 24 hours yet. Soul rides around town on his harley for 3 hours and drops by everywhere they used to go when they were freshmen and sophomores in high school.

Wes turns up, alive. He's at Soul's Girlfriends place. Naked, with her. Soul remains calm because he kind of expected she was cheating, he felt that she never loved him. This is proved by the way she just stands with the sheet wrapped around her in the doorway, unphased by the fact that Soul just saw her with someone else. Soul leaves with a hard blow to his ego and his brother wrapped around his shoulder. It's cold out now, so Wes could make a snow angel if he wasn't high on coke.

Wes looks like hell, his eyes are sunken in and he's a lot more skinny than he should be. His hair is all knotted in places, his hair looks more like it was bleached than the natural, smooth white-blonde he's supposed to have. He sways with the winter wind, knees buckling and unbuckling as he tried to walk in a straight line with the help of his younger brother.

"Wes, can you hold a convo?"

He moans but it's an audible 'sure'

"I'm gonna leave. Like move towns."

Wes stiffens and tries to walk by himself but to no avail "Why?"

"I don't want to be here, I don't want to take care of you or feel like shit when you're gone for days on end out getting high somewhere. You know?"

"Uh. But what about me? What about us?"

"You mean your shitty fucking pill bottle vision quests? Not for me. You can visit when you're clean, though." Soul near smiles but stops it because this is too sad.

"I understand."

Soul hadn't expect Wes to be level headed about this.

"Wes, I want my kids to be able to call you Uncle. So get sober before they're born or you won't be a part of their lives, okay?" Soul bristles at the thought of Wes not living to then, "I love you, Bro. Don't do this to yourself, please."

The walk for a couple minutes in silence before Soul realizes Wes is crying and his shaking isn't due to the cold weather outside.

"I'm sorry, Soul." He whimpers out, Souls thinks he's coming off his high.

"It's okay, man." Soul tells the white lie to keep Wes from falling apart in his arms before they get home.

"It's not!" Suddenly Soul isn't carrying Wes anymore, "I slept with your girlfriend! I'm such a shitty fucking brother! I-I left you alone in our giant house for too long! I don't want you to hurt like me, Soul!" He looks like a leaf blowing around in the wind and then falls straight on his ass in a snow pile. The guy's only in his boxers and a girls zip up hoodie, he looks like a fool.

Soul crouches down, they're eye to eye, "Are you going to quit?"

"Yes." Wes buries his face in his hands and sobs, "Oh god yes."

After they manage to finish the trek home, Soul gets Wes in real clothes and starts an actual warm meal for the two of them..

"I'm still gonna leave. I don't want to be here anymore. I have college and stuff." Soul sighs.

Wes says something Inaudible and lays his face in the table to look at Soul.

"Say that again?"

"Take me with you."

That night they packed their bags and moved to a city that had one of their families vacation houses.

The road trip was nice.