Chapter Text
We became as free as butterflies
Skybound, we returned home, he and I, but
it felt as though we disappeared for a season
as if we were a pair of migrating monarchs who–
__________
SEVERAL WEEKS LATER:
Marc absolutely hates writer’s block.
That brain-dead head and the sore muscles in that neck of his are knotted. His creative juices are shot and as tangled as bundled balls of yarn. He groans as another sentence vehemently refuses to flow correctly and drad his newly-painted nailed fingers down his face till the ends of his eyelids are pulled along with them.
With a disgruntled noise of frustration, he randomly scribbles another sentence or two in a flurry of movements. But then he proceeds to cross out his messy handwriting in large patches of blue ink a second afterward. Marc scrunches his nose as if a horrible odor caused the writer to flare his nostrils.
Fixing the crumpled sheets of lined paper in front of him, he scowls unkindly at his desk. He glares daggers at the paper as if willing the paper to burst into flames at will.
Sighing, Marc loosens his iron-clad grip on the pin and lets it thud lightly on the piling stacks of stored unfinished projects. His pen is warm from the excessive heat from his sweaty and calloused hands, a clear sign of nonstop writing. He knows it’s unhealthy, but he doesn’t want to leave the comforts of his childhood quite yet. Stomach growling, the writer stretches his stiff limbs and groans as his aching muscles tighten and relax.
He takes a quick glance at his new phone to check the time and balks at the bright 7 o’clock logo. He’d accidentally skipped dinner, which explains the stomachache. Being holed up in his room for several weeks other than the occasional breaks for coffee runs and meals, the writer was dedicating his time on his newest novel, an auto-biography of their desert stranding.
Prior to their rescue, Marc believed he was in the clear after escaping the wasteland, but he could not have been more wrong.
It started off normal enough. It was standard procedure for the boys to be admitted to the nearest hospital upon landing at the nearest rest stop. There, the boys’ families were contacted as Marc and Nathaniel were expertly checked head-to-toe by doctors who reset their dislocated limbs and bandaging their wounds with enough plastified linen to mummify the boys.
As the medical specialists handled their exterior wounds, the boys were assigned psychologists, who were in charge of their mental stability and diagnosing their mental health. Marc genuinely liked the doctors. The doctors were fussy, but Marc saw their passion for their work. More than that, the psychologists were honest with the two. Their words of comfort did not seem rehearsed but sincere. Although Marc knew the tragedy would follow him for the rest of his life.
Dozens of articles, digitized and in newspapers, as well as social media pages, and television programs did little to shed light on the incident. Young as the two were, Marc and Nathaniel agreed to be interviewed by myriads of reporters and journalists. At a private conference, their interrogative questions were fired as fast as swarms of bullets and never seemed to cease for a second.
To Marc, escaping the desert with his and Nathaniel’s lives was worth it to see the relieved and tear-streaked faces of his family who crushed his body in a lung-suffocating hug. He was too happy to care anyways.
He intended to have his parents meet Nathaniel properly, but the redhead was crowded by his own emotional family and friends. And in that moment, he was untouchable, far from Marc’s reach. Marc then realized, shared near-death experiences or not, there was no room for someone like Marc in his inner circle of friends.
Heartbroken as he was, Marc understood he would never recover from this suffering. But it was over and done with, and Marc couldn’t bring himself to stop smiling.
As for the goddamn competition who was responsible for the catastrophe, the organizers were blamed and nearly sued by the families who lost loved ones. The competition heads owned up to the accident by paying for damages and reparations, giving a public apology, and paid the required expenses as well as attended the funerals of the deceased.
The heads even sent the respective first and second place prizes to Marc and Nathaniel in-person and insisted the families take an even larger package of cash to demonstrate their sincerity, to which the duo reluctantly accepted to avoid trouble. Once the headmen from the competition took their leave, the pair silently agreed to never go on an overseas trip for the rest of their life.
Sick of the reporters breaching his privacy for a taste of another hit magazine cover story, Marc publicly declared he would write an auto-biography about the events that transpired in the valley of death to satisfy their vulturous needs for the latest scoops.
Other than the bonus of driving the reporters away, using all of his spare time to write made everything easier to handle.
It leaves no time for his mind to wander, to daydream. To get lost in a web of emotions he isn’t ready to face. The raw emotions following his survival and his close encounters with death; it is too much for Marc to describe in mere words.
He squashes his latest draft into a crumpled paper ball and nonchalantly chucks it over his shoulder into his bedroom’s wastebasket only for it to miss. It bounces off the rim of the bucket and spins onto the floor next to the other scraps of trash he couldn’t be bothered to pick up, which serves to fuel his annoyance. .
Normally, Marc would be able to easily power through his drained supply of creativity with the simple but effective magic of his earbuds and a three hour long playlist of his favorite instrumental albums. But at the snail’s pace he is writing, approximately two sentences every half hour, anyone would be able to tell he is stuck in a slump for real this time.
Irritated at his dysfunctional state of mind, Marc shuts his eyes and is welcomed by snapshots of red hair, the color of fire, and cerulean eyes. His eyes shoot open and huffs in disbelief. Weeks have passed since his return to Paris, and there was little communication between the redhead and him. A text, here and there, about the news or a polite, stone cold greeting, to which Marc would reply in the same distant tone.
Perhaps he is petty, but it hurts to think of him, and it hurts to miss him this much. But he wants to get the redhead out of his mind lest it consumes him, mind and body and soul. With his uninjured leg, he pushes himself away from his disorganized desk in mild agitation, and the chair rotates till it makes it the center of the bedroom.
Everything reminds Marc of his stranding and in turn, his nightmares never seem to fade. He would wake up in a cold sweat with salty tears staining his cheeks nearly every other night. And while his parents would try to comfort him with pretty and sweet words, no one around him understood him. No one but him.
Everyone treats him like glass, and Marc thinks that at any moment, he might break.
He can’t help it. The fire, crimson as blood. The noise, explosions. The heat. Him. Everything feels like too little or too much, and Marc can’t control it. He’s scared, and he doesn’t know who to turn to. The one person who’d understand his pain isn’t here.
Marc stands up from his chair, and he sees the flattened cushion, a clear sign he was sitting for ages. He slowly ambles to his bed, wary of his bandaged leg. He rolls onto the clean white sheets, and thinks long and hard on his options. His parents are out. His therapist session isn’t due for another three days. He has no friends. His room is as empty as he left it. Everything but him is the same.
He doesn’t know how long he stays there, blank-eyed and dazed as the answer to his problems is in reach but refuses to come into view.
Finally it comes to him, but he already knows the answer.
“I could just,” he hesitates and trails off, teeth nervously digging into his lower lip, “call him?”
His monologue ends in a question as it always does when he isn’t sure if he should go through with an idea.
It’s completely normal to call someone to hear their voice again, right? Marc reasons to himself and ponders who he is arguing.
But what if he doesn’t want to hear your voice, an imaginary voice in his head replies back.
Marc grouses, burying his head in his hands.
Why do feelings have to be so complicated?
Upon his self-berates, he finally comes to a decision. Marc clicks on the power button of his phone. He swipes to his contacts and scrolls until he reaches Nathaniel’s name. Having cracked his previous phone beyond repair as well as losing the data encrypted, his parents bought him a new one. The only contacts he now possesses are his parents, a few family members, and Nathaniel.
His lips quirk into a bittersweet smile at the memory of awkwardly asking the redhead to exchange their new numbers once everything was over and done with. He promptly laughs at his own tomato red cheeks and Nathaniel’s yearbook-worthy shocked face at his measly request.
He asks aloud, “We’re friends, right?”
The word doesn’t roll off his tongue easily; it doesn’t seem right to his ears, but it’s the closest thing Marc can use to describe whatever it is Marc shares with Nathaniel. It’s not as if he has any other friends to compare to until Nathaniel came his way. Even if their relationship isn’t entirely platonic at the moment.
“We’re not boyfriends though.”
Oh my god. Just thinking of it makes Marc want to have an aneurysm.
The writer groans for the thousandth time. Why does everything have to be so difficult?
He nears the peak of his aggravation and is about to tear his hair out in response to his indecisiveness only for one of his fingers to accidentally slip, pressing the lit-up green call button.
Marc yelps at the sudden ringing sound effects, and his phone slips from his hands, clattering onto the floor with an insistent buzzing. He places a hand over his frantically beating heart, close to fainting from the minor heart attack it almost gave him.
He picks up the phone from its face-down landing position. Securing the piece of technology, he breathes a sigh of relief that it remains crack-free and exteriorally undamaged.
His parents would kill him if he destroyed his phone a second time.
He gulps heavily as the ringing seems to last for an eternity until it stops, signaling someone has answered. Marc doesn’t know he’s holding back from inhaling oxygen until he hears the other boy’s soft breathing on the other end of the phone line.
“Hello?”
Nathaniel’s voice is just as Marc remembers it, but this time it lacks contempt. Impossible to really depict in words, Marc finds his heart warming at the thought. It gives the writer a sense of relief to hear the artist’s voice again after such a long time. Now, he knows the redhead is in the comforts of his home, somewhere in Paris and not in the middle of Death Valley.
“H-hey! Hello! How’s it going?”
Marc wants to hide under his blankets and never come out. Even better, Marc wants to ask someone to sock him in the stomach and knock him out cold. Moving to another city seems very appealing suddenly. Cringing profusely at the finger guns he unconsciously makes at the microphone, phone propped in-between his ear and shoulder.
Thank goodness he isn’t on FaceTime right now. Marc utterly refuses to let the redhead see him in such an ugly state. A big hot mess is an understatement.
He’s grateful to hear a gentle and nearly hysterically breathy laugh echo from the phone’s speaker. And right then and there, Marc’s heart melts into a cesspool of glitter. He was absolutely glad and relieved that Nathaniel hadn’t had half a mind to hang up on him.
If it had been anyone else, Marc knows the other person would have hung up immediately after hearing his embarrassing word vomit and promptly block him.
“Hey, Marc.”
Yup, Marc could die right in this moment and have no regrets.
Nathaniel’s voice is coy as he resists the urge to tease and poke fun at Marc for his greeting. It only spurs the writer’s happiness as he tenderly bites his lower lip in an attempt to prevent a wide, cheeky grin from spreading across his face.
Marc sucks in a breath of air. “I was wondering if,” his eyes lock with his bedroom flooring in his hesitancy to finish his sentence, “you aren’t busy right now . . .”
“Yes?”
His voice only seeks to edge him on even further. The redhead sounds hopeful.
“C-could you,” Marc falters for a moment, losing control of his tongue. “I mean,” he huffs in frustration and lowers the volume of his voice to that of a mere whisper. A whisper so quiet he isn’t sure if Nathaniel can hear him. “Can we meet up? Right now, I mean! If it’s okay with you?”
“Oh. Oh, yeah. I’m free. Any particular reason why?”
Well shit.
There are a dozen reasons Marc can resort to, and it would be enough to satisfy Nathaniel’s query. He could say he needs inspiration for his upcoming novel. A Q&A special from the redhead along with journalist Nadia Chamack as an extra bonus. Maybe he’d say he’s in need of someone to complain to in the midst of the media frenzy surrounding the story of their unlikely survival.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, he replies with a much simpler phrase, a much simpler explanation.
A phrase which spoke more than any love poetry or any art piece.
More than enough to turn the writer’s insides into a pile of mush, a new habitat for butterflies to roam and fly freely in his stomach.
“I miss you,” he admits, that one phrase summing it up.
Marc misses a lot. He misses the other boy’s jutted lips as he pouted if his drawings turned out badly. He misses his tangled red hair and cerulean blue eyes. He misses his laughs, the ones with real smiles. The ones that turn the whole galaxy upside-down, and Marc wouldn’t notice.
He misses his entire existence, heart and soul.
The other end of the lines stays silent for a longer period than expected, and Marc begins to fear he said something terribly wrong and ruined everything. He prays for it to be a malfunction in his cellular device only to hear the redhead release a poorly disguised chuckle as a series of coughs.
Marc really doesn’t understand what the heck is so funny to Nathaniel, but it’s Nathaniel’s next words, albeit a bit straight-forward, that steal his breath away.
“The River Seine. You’ll find me there on that bridge you said you like so much, the Pont des Arts.”
“You remembered,” Marc says with an uplifting tone. He realizes he’s still in his sleepwear and with one hand abruptly yanks his clothing off his back and shoulder to swap it for his favorite, now torn, red hoodie. He then grabs the nearest pair of unfolded, clean jeans and socks. He reaches for his shoes and ties his laces into reasonably adequate bunny ear bows.
“Good enough,” he mutters.
“Of course, I did. I’m slightly offended that you’d believe I’d forget.”
Marc giggles at that. The redhead sounds so sheepish like he was slightly embarrassed that he’d recall that personal fun fact, and Marc tells him as much in a teasing manner. He suddenly feels as light as a feather, his feet skipping and hopping about.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he removes the phone from beneath his ear and tries (but fails) to not trip over the organized chaos that is his bedroom, but he doesn’t miss the redhead’s final sentence.
“You’re kinda hard to forget, Marc. Unforgettable even.”
With a beep, he hangs up, the tangent of dancing emotions brewing in his heart only served to set his cheeks aflame. Which makes Marc believe that he won’t be able to stop smiling ever again, and he keeps smiling even while bolting through those cobblestone pathways
The phone beeps, and Nathaniel hangs up, but the tangent of dancing feelings brews in his heart, setting his cheeks aflame with color. Marc believes he isn’t going to be able to stop smiling ever again. His dorky grin is plastered onto his face as he bolts through cobblestone pathways and crowded corners.
He has the path to his favorite bridge memorized, and once Marc finally arrives at one of the endpoints of the bridge, he spots a patch of crimson hair, not far from where he stands, panting from lack of air and shaking knobby knees from dashing a marathon without rest.
And soon, Marc gains the strength to face Nathaniel’s eyes. That cerulean blue which glows like a pair of gemstones with that notorious sunset behind it. The same sunset that once set upon the two of them in Death Valley.
(Starstruck, Nathaniel takes a moment to take in the scene. Two boys. On a stone, old bridge. By a golden sunset.
But Nathaniel tunnel-visions. He doesn’t see a sunset. Or a bridge. Just a boy he’s hopelessly, irrevocably in love with.
“H-hey.”
“Hey.”
His hand reaches out to gently push back Marc’s bangs, revealing his emerald green eyes.
“Nathaniel?”
Silence.
“Yeah. Still beautiful.”
“Wha-”
He’s silenced by a warm kiss, one as warm as sunsets and as soft as butterfly wings.)