prince vanburnen / one. fin

Summer is this: sitting on the rooftop of a house not even finished being built yet, mouth pressed against the edge of a cheap beer, laughter deep in your chest. You're the kid who likes it when all eyes are on you, when then entire room is laughing at whatever shit you pull, which is why you think it's a good idea to do a backflip off the edge of the roof and try to land on the deck. You're teetering right there on the edge, heels off, only held to the world by the balls of your feet. You friends are shouting at you, telling you that you're an idiot. Why do you always do this, Prince? they huff, but it's through a laugh and there are crinkles at the corners of your eyes when the local wanna-Peacekeeper turned rent-a-cop shows up.

You all are on a first name basis, and when you and your friends scramble down from the roof, clumsy and a little tipsy—well, maybe you intentionally slow down just so that you can taunt him a little bit. Just for a laugh.

"Jerry, is that you?" you shout at him, jogging sideways, darting through the unfinished house you and your friends were trespassing on.

"You know it's me you little shit!"

"Jerry!!!! Good to see ya my guy!!" you shout back, voice bright, and and you're laughing and laughing and laughing and running and running and running and riding away on your bike while Jerry runs after the lot of you. "C'mon Jerry, you're so close!" shouted over your shoulder as you ride away and he starts to huff, out of breath. "They don't pay you enough for this, dude!"

And then you're all gone, riding your bikes into the sun.

You're always sleeping where you shouldn't.

It infuriates your father to no end, you know, but your house has never felt like a home. Everything you do pisses him off though, and every best friend you have ever loved the most has been the one that your father hated the most, the kids with no money, the kids whose parents were the people doing the serving in your big, beautiful house. It's not that you never blend in with the rich kids, because you do—you go to school with them, train with them at the academy when you have to, but they're never the one's that you love, never the one's who love you back the same way.

You can't help it that sleeping on your friends couch has always felt so much more like where you belong than your big four poster bed in a house that holds no warmth. You're a human fucking space heater so you just sprawl out on on of their beat up couches with the beer spill from six years ago and the rip in it from when you were children and thought surely his dad was hiding a secret treasure inside of the cushions. Shirt off, cap askew but still atop your head—it's the best way to sleep.

You worry about... everyone.

It's not exactly that you're nosy, not really, because you don't get a particular pleasure in knowing everyone's business, but—you can't explain it. Not in a way that you think would make any real sense. You know that you've never been the smartest person in any given room, but you're good at remembering things about others, good at caring, and sometimes you think that's better.

It's: "sure hope the storm didn't wreck the lines on garth's house," you'll say as you and your friends ride your bikes past the old man's home for the millionth time. "Took him years to get the money to get em installed." silence from his friends, unsurprised prince remembered.

It's: "hey there, Miss Caroline! You guys doin' okay?" shouted over your handlebars, riding through the aftermath of the very same storm. "Made it through" she'd shout after and when you're a hundred meters away—"dude, did you see her lookin' at me—"

It's caring about every single person you have met more than you're ever going to be able to care about yourself. It's needing every single person you have ever met to like you so much that it actually physically hurts. It's having a dad who told you he loved you by telling you that you could be better, that you could be so much more.

It's having a brother you love, and not knowing how to tell him.

You have, well, a complex regarding Pierce.

You don't really like to think about it a lot, because it does funny things to the space inside your chest, but sometimes you can't help it. You'll lay awake on the couch, hand on your stomach, staring at the ceiling, and think about two boys who think that the other deserves the whole fucking world, two boys who somehow think both the absolute worst and absolute best of each other. You know that he thinks you are both perfect and completely undeserving of the word, that you get it easy, that the whole fucking world just lays itself down at your feet when it should be laying itself at his.

Your elder brother (by minutes! mere minutes!) is everything that you are not: careful, curated, responsible for everything that's been given to him. And it's not exactly that everything you are is completely different, but you're... something else. Because it's not that you haven't worked for your reputation, you do—you slave day in and day out to make people like you, to make people pay attention to you, to trust you, to confide in you—to, well, everything.

You like being everything to people.

But you're not smart like pierce is, and your dad likes to pit that against the pair of you over and over and over again. Rub in Pierce's face that he will never shine the same, and that you're never going to measure up.

You'll never be king.