Work Text:
The hottest summer Robert can remember was in LA, not Sydney, when he was nine. He spent most of those months in the sun with his mother and her friend, another Aussie-American.
Robert forgot her name, but not that of her son. St. John was also nine but left Melbourne as a baby. He liked Robert’s mixed accent. It was the first time Robert had heard that and believed it.
They quickly became “Rob” and “John” to each other and occasionally “Robert Michael Fischer” and “St. John Thomas Allerdyce” to their unamused mothers.
Their warm friendship abruptly ended in August, a month before Rob’s tenth birthday. John’s mother finally left his father. They moved to snowy New York.
Sometimes Rob dreamed that he and his mother had a new life together, away from his father. Then, a summer and a half after turning ten, his mother died. Robert woke up.