#anyway. this is such an unoriginal idea but the ✨angst✨

[theabyssgazesalsointoyou]

If you would still like any more prompts, 45 with rich and jake?

Rich didn't mean to eavesdrop.

He didn't mean to. He really didn't.

But no matter how much he swore it, it was all in vain when Jake was staring at him from across the living room, eyes wide and glassy, whatever it was he wanted to say dying in his throat and coming out in a broken gasp instead.

Rich should've seen it coming. Not Jake. Jake couldn't have, how could he have when there was nothing he'd done wrong? There had been nothing out of the ordinary to warn him, nothing that would've stood out to this boy who was already preoccupied with trying to balance the world on his shoulders.

To Rich, however- Rich, who had a supercomputer feeding him predictions via quantum computing; who had the tendency to assume and prepare for the worst, no matter how improbable it seemed; who practically had tunnel vision for Jake- every sign flashed before his eyes.

It was his fault he hadn't taken them seriously. He'd made the mistake of believing Jake was indestructible, that nothing could hurt him- that nothing like that would happen to him at all.

He had been so, so unbelievably selfish to let his mind wander from Jake. He never questioned Jake's claims about his parents being away on business trips, what was important to him was that he had a place to stay if things inevitably went up in flames at home. (It was so easy to get lost in that exhilarating feeling, knowing that he was welcomed and in safe hands. Rich still remembered how Jake had pulled him aside after school one day, worry evident in his eyes as he pressed a spare key into Rich's open palm, his other hand brushing over the bruise high on Rich's cheekbone.)

It was another one of those days, when he could barely keep it together and the key in his pocket was his last resort. Rich was sitting in his brother's old jeep, feet kicked up on the steering wheel in a careless manner that completely mismatched the storm raging in his brain. His limbs twitched against his will from the shocks traversing along his spinal cord, though he was almost numb to the pain by then. The squip was screaming at him, too, over what he hadn't the faintest idea. A migraine was looming over the horizon of his loose consciousness, but Rich would take this over facing his father on his own any day.

Under no circumstances should you go to Jake Dillinger's today, his squip warned. Rich scoffed and focused on drowning its voice out. Shutdown, shutdown, shutdown.

Everything went quiet and the tautness of his muscles drained from him- a marionette whose strings had been cut.

The way to Jake's was easy, it came naturally to him, a second instinct. But a premonition settled over him when he slid in the key and turned the doorknob, the metal too cold against his skin for the weather, the door eerily silent as it swung open on its hinges.

The house seemed to be holding its breath, but Rich could hear Jake's voice coming from the kitchen- distressed, harsher than he'd ever heard, yet muffled by the squip buzzing back to life, making its presence known with a sharp jolt to the back of his skull. Leave. You don't want to get caught up in this mess.

It was a miracle Rich managed to get his squip to shut up again- shutdown usually only worked once or twice a week if he was lucky. Maybe it was how tired of everything he was, or the pang of resentment he always felt when the squip tried to govern his interactions with Jake, or the sharp wave of concern for Jake taking over his system. Whichever it was, the squip's droning died down and made way for Jake's voice to settle clearly in his mind.

Whether that was a gift or a curse, Rich would never know.

"- leaving? What are you talking about? When are you coming back? No, wait, mom, you can't just- don't hang up, don't hang up, please. Mom? Hello?"

Rich's lungs collapsed in on itself. He couldn't believe he was thinking this, but maybe, just maybe, his squip had been right- just this once. He wasn't supposed to be hearing this. He wasn't supposed to be here. He was intruding upon a moment that wasn't meant to be seen.

This had to be some cruel joke. None of it made any sense. It had to be a test, a simple misunderstanding, even. The world as he knew it crumbled beneath his feet, even for Rich, a mere bystander, a speck of dust revolving around the star that was Jake- how would Jake feel?

He could've run, shut the door behind him as surreptitiously as he'd entered, never found the answer to that question unless Jake chose to reveal it. It should've been that way, the choice should've been Jake's to make. But Rich was selfish. He was selfish and he couldn't stand the thought of Jake burdened with yet another secret, one that could be the final straw to break his back.

"Jake?"

And there he was at the far end of the room. He looked, even in the very moment his life was crashing into a thousand pieces, more composed than anyone could hope to be- but Rich saw past the façade the tears threatening to fall and the way he desperately grasped for his voice.

"How much of that did you hear?"

Only a few sentences. Too much. More than I had the right to. Enough to understand.

The squip was disconnected, which meant the nagging voice in the back of Rich's head urging him to say nothing, to lie, to spare Jake what little dignity he had left, was his.

The spare key was heavy in his hand. A physical manifestation of Jake's trust and affection, and here Rich was thinking of lying to him on the precious occasion he was allowed to be just as vulnerable in return. The metal burned as hot as his shame.

"I'm sorry," he decided on saying. Both an apology for eavesdropping and an expression of sympathy, and something he didn't get to say as much as he wanted to. It probably wasn't what Jake wanted to hear, but really, what answer would he have been happy with?

"Yeah, well, I'm fine," Jake said. Rich would've believed it if he didn't know Jake better. "Sorry you had to hear that."

God. He never wanted to hear the word 'sorry' from Jake. If anything, Rich was the one who should've been on his knees for forgiveness a long time ago, for all the shit he made Jake put up with- and Jake was apologizing for Rich walking in on his parents fucking ditching him. It was beyond fucked up. Oh, Rich was so, so fucking mad- at Jake's parents, at the world, at himself- and for the first time, he understood the reason behind Jake's clenched jaw and dark eyes whenever Rich showed up with bruises and cuts from home.

It was unfair, how many times Rich had broken down in Jake's arms like that and Jake couldn't even let himself admit he wasn't okay in front of Rich.

Rich knew that he was to blame. It hurt, as the truth often does, and it was the sting that spurred him to make a long-overdue decision that very moment.

He was going to get Jake to open up. He was going to be someone Jake could rely on. He was going to get rid of this goddamn bitch of a computer and set things right.

How he would manage to do that, he had no fucking idea, but he could start somewhere: without hesitating, Rich strode over to Jake and pulled him down into a tight hug.