The worst thing was, it wasn't as though Rich had some kind of excuse for coming back here.
More the opposite. People had gone out of their way to stop him. The topic of Jake's house was studiously avoided in conversation, as though an entire fucking building could go up in smoke and no one would notice.
Jake was awkwardly sandwiched into a studio apartment nowadays thanks to the money his folks wired him, and if you went by what he told you, he was over the moon about it. "Way better than the youth shelter," he'd say with a laugh and the million-volt smile that used to make Rich weak in the knees back before he knew better. In the groupchat, he'd post that gif from Parks and Rec-"It's a chance to start over, fire is cleansing, and true wealth is measured by the amount of love in your life!"
Brooke thought it was "awww :'( xox" worthy, whatever that meant, though Jenna heartily agreed. Chloe said Jake was "Hilaaarious." Jeremy only said, "holy shit, that's the bad guy from wayne's world," and literally nobody but Rich seemed to think that Jake's deflection rang more hollow than Rich's victory over his SQUIP.
It sure felt like he was the only sane guy in their friend group most of the time, though his long list of psych meds probably said otherwise. Maybe Rich was the one who was out of touch. He was never willing to buy into bullshit-or, well, pre-SQUIP, he was pretty sure he was a no-nonsense kind of kid. It was hard to remember. During the SQUIP years, he had nothing to his name except the bullshit he kept piling on top of itself into a precarious heap of self-aggrandizing, heteronormative male bully.
If he called Jake out for playing off his most recent massive trauma, Rich would be a fucking hypocrite, so he kept his mouth shut and his fingers away from the touchscreen.
But Rich never functioned on the same level as his classmates. He didn't shy away from the stuff that freaked him out-he got entranced by it, forcing his way closer and holding the uncomfortable feeling close to his chest as though that could make him understand it. Maybe it wasn't wisdom. Might be idiocy. It's not like you could ask the kid who set Jake's house on fire why he liked to play with matches.
Jake gave him every excuse in the book to stay away-"they already dug through it to find anything that survived," "there's still some support beams and stuff so it's a safety hazard to go in," "my parents sold the land so technically it'd be trespassing now, anyway." Rich called bullshit, though not to Jake's face; God knew Rich had already put the guy through enough horror without rubbing Jake's nose in it. Rich had his own issues to work through without pretending like he knew enough about mental health to counsel Jake.
And he did have to work through 'em. Alone.
Rich almost expected someone to meet him at the threshold of the house and guide him away by the shoulders, coughing into a napkin and poo-pooing his investigative efforts, but the area was creepily empty. The firefighters and investigative reporters and cops and rubberneckers had all come and gone, bored with the sheriff's department's prognosis of wiring errors that caused a flashover, whatever the hell that nonsense meant.
Rich didn't know why he'd gotten away with his crime so cleanly. He'd confessed to the nurses in the hospital back when he was doped up, but no one took him seriously.
Rich stooped, picking up a piece of the wreckage. A chunk of concrete. Nothing important or meaningful… except that it used to be a piece of Jake's house until Rich happened.
Rich's scarred-up face crumpled, animalistic and furious, and he hurled the blackened concrete at the skeletal house in front of him. He wanted to knock the whole thing down, shatter the evidence that Jake had a home to begin with. The guilt for even having that impulse was choking him. As the debris soared through the air, Rich was surrounded by smoke, his nerves lit up as digitized warnings screeched in his ears even louder than the fire alarm. He was going to pass out and he was going to die and he was more triumphant than he'd ever been.
The concrete thudded against a charred wooden support beam and bounced off, dropping and seamlessly blending into the rubble. It didn't even make a satisfying clatter. Rich's fear and fury disappeared into a careless ether.
Rich's laughter was louder than the rock had been, echoing down the quiet street and resonating until he thought he was somehow getting high off the remnant fumes of charcoal and burnt meat and gasoline.
Then he was gone.
Rich was gone.
He wasn't in his body anymore, at least. He was rocketing into that same glorious headspace that he thought he'd never reach again. It was that thrill of blood and adrenaline that he only ever used to reach when Heere was at his breaking point, crumpled up and protecting his face with scrawny arms and giving up on pleading for Rich to back off. This natural high, in Rich's opinion, was even better than cumming-satisfying and transcendent and totally artificial. He'd figured in hindsight that the SQUIP was injecting some kinda drug into his bloodstream or tampering with his neurochemistry, but maybe the fucked-up-ness of it all was Richard Goranski au naturale and the SQUIP had only ever clamped down on his public displays of freakishness until Rich morphed into something socially acceptable.
Rich eventually realized dizzily that he was lying on his back, staring at the holes in the ceiling where the setting sun threw sharp beams of beautiful sunlight directly into his eye sockets. Rich wondered if he'd get blinded and laughed again, dropping his arm over his face. The fresh scar tissue was rough as sandpaper and it was only the tiny shred of sanity in the back of his brain that kept Rich from following through on his weird, savage impulse to rip the skin grafts off with his teeth.
Maybe he should be crying. He was already freaking out alone in the blackened ruins of his best friend's house that he'd destroyed trying to set himself on fire-not to mention how he'd destroyed said best friend's body in the process. (The lower half, at least. Jake wouldn't get the chance to play any high school sport again.) Was he weird if he wasn't crying?
Shouldn't he feel guilty?
He thought he'd felt guilty just a few minutes ago, but all Rich had now was a blissful, numb nothingness.
He could stay here forever, actually, watching the sun set and the first twinkle of the evening star. A pile of springs and a couple dark hunks of fire-resistant cushion made up the couch he lay on. He remembered fucking Brooke on it once when they were both drunk as shit. It wasn't a good memory-the SQUIP had put him up to it, like how it put Rich up to any other number of godawful things that should all have gotten him jailed for life, or maybe, ideally, the death penalty-but it was old and a kind of horror that settled around Rich's shoulders, comfortable and warm, almost friendly.
He let the feeling of not-feeling wash over him. The mania that possessed him when he saw Jake's house was gone. He propped his legs up and imagined tossing back a beer with Jake across the room from him, muting the voice in his head for a good hour until the alcohol churned out of his system, and talking about girls, guys, sports, school, and any other subject that didn't matter at all.
He really couldn't blame Jake for pretending that life was fine. He didn't understand it, but Jake was always so effortlessly functional through his abandonment issues and depression. Rich should be jealous.
He wasn't. He had lived through his own personal hell with the SQUIP already, and even with the fucking thing offline, Rich was still hanging out in the lake of fire for shits and giggles. At least Rich had scars. Nobody could ignore Rich's out-and-proud damage.
Was it getting to be twilight? He thought it was twilight. His phone was in his hands, mindlessly scrolling up and down the groupchat. Rich thumbed away from the app, throwing a few texts together.
Chilling in your living room.
Thinking of the good ol days. A winking emoji that blew Jake a kiss.
You want a souvenir?
I can see a gas can from here. lmfao
Jake's response was almost immediate. Rich could tell he'd been lurking on his phone for a while. Maybe he'd already sent a few texts asking Rich where he went; too late now to answer.
Yeah, grab me a beer from the fridge. Getting thirsty.
Say hi to my mom while you're home.
Rich sent a thumbs-up and heaved himself onto his forearms, not caring how painfully the metal coils of the couch dug into his raw skin.
Jake got it. He knew how Rich dealt with problems by reveling in the negativity-just like Rich saw through Jake's fire-is-cleansing bullshit.
They were both still in hell, Rich figured. Different hells, somehow connected just enough to let them reach for each other across the fiery gap.
Rich was on his feet again, meandering towards a hole in the wall that used to have a door in it.
Yo Jake.
Love you man.
It came out of nowhere, but Rich didn't want to keep himself from saying it.
Jake sent back, homo?
Rich grinned. He sent back a few hearts, a blue one, a purple, and a fucking pair of pink ones because none of the Japanese Unicode programmers seemed to know that bi flags existed. Sure, whatever.
Jake's answer took longer this time. i ever mention that i like the real richard goranski?
i feel like that's relevant rn
Rich leaned against the precarious wall. One more kick at the concrete rubble. Then he was out of there, texting and walking (with his fingers instead of his mind, like some kind of SQUIPless loser. It was thrilling).
He likes you too.
Didn't see your mom but your family was there.
PSYCH it was just me, i've been your fam all along.
Was that too real? Rich would usually call something like that "gay," probably loud as hell from across the cafeteria no less.
If Jake was laughing at Rich, he kept it to himself. All he said was bros 4 LYFE which was honestly more affirming than it had any right to be.
Rich slipped his phone into his pocket and stepped into rings of light made by streetlights as they flickered on at his approach, the charred house at his back.
Rich flipped it off and kept walking.