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It’s so hot, Fabian feels like his skin is going to sweat off of his body.
They’re packed in here like a pile of kippers fresh from the boat, layered on top of each other so that when anyone shifts an elbow or, Cass forbid, tries to move, the red solo cup that the person behind them or to the sides of them or in front of them or all four sloshes some of their gross, piss-tasting alcohol out and onto someone else, who spills some of theirs, who spills some of theirs, and so on.
Fabian isn’t quite sure whose house they’re at. There’s a pool, which he knows because he’d just spent the last forty blurred minutes floating with a hand over his eyes and the pounding thump of a drum machine in his ears. He’s still holding the float now, actually, which probably isn’t helping this over crowded feeling. It’s yellow and covered with green tropical leaf patterns and there used to be little plastic handles on it but Kristen had drunkenly stumbled up to him earlier, mumbled out a, “Watch this,” and ripped them off somehow before stumbling away still drunkenly.
There’s lights, too. Red and pink, mostly. Some blues. They dance and drag through the air and through the figures packed in around Fabian and Fabian tries not to sway too much where he’s standing. He can’t help but follow the lights, though, shifting from side to side with them, tracing their patterns in the air.
Someone screams, and Fabian’s heart jumps, and then the screams turn into laughter and Fabian’s hands relax on the float.
The lights keep dancing.
Fabian isn’t sure why they’re here.
He remembers, vaguely, piling into Gorgug’s van in clothes-meant-for-partying, sometime that could be minutes or could be days or is probably hours ago. Adaine had her hair curled more purposely than usual, with big hoop earrings that looked like little moons, and Fig was wearing her battle jacket and her steel-toed boots, and Kristen had her good jean shorts on which meant it was really special, and Gorgug was wearing some weird little vest thing and a t-shirt that made Fabian have to stare purposefully out the window when he noticed how his for once bare forearms flexed on the steering wheel. And Riz. Riz…
Kristen had helped Riz get dressed, obviously. Because there was no way he would’ve picked anything but his “party suit, no, I can’t wear that on a case, Fabian, that’s the party suit not the work suit.” But he’s wearing something else, so he must’ve had an outside influence. The striped, short-sleeved button up was done nearly all the way up under his chin, but the thin charcoal stripes made Riz’s eyes look huge, the blacks and greys standing out against the yellow of his sclera, and the sleeves were that perfect length that Fabian had never been able to find for himself. He was wearing pants that he definitely hadn’t bought on his own because they were way too fucking cool, and cuffed at the bottom to show off his weird old man shoes that even Kristen couldn’t get him out of.
Fabian had tried not to stare, so he’d just looked harder out the window.
Swaying and drunk and holding onto the pool float like it’s his lifeline or his baby or something equally as stupid and non-pool-floaty, he can’t help but look around for him, though.
He’s talked with Ragh about it, last year after he’d come out but before he’d kissed Ragh for the first time and way before he’d kissed Ragh for the last time, about how it feels to lo—like your best friend. About how bad it feels. How it feels like a betrayal, to both yourself and him.
Fabian’s talked about it. It doesn’t make it any easier.
So, he’s drunk and he’s maudlin because he gets either maudlin or absolutely unhinged when he drinks and one means he’s thinking about Riz and the other means he’s with Riz, and right now he has no clue where Riz is so he’s stuck in the sad, swaying contemplations that dance in time with the music and the lights and squeeze his heart tighter than the vice of people around him.
“Fabian!” Ayda yells, from right next to his ear, and he jumps about ten feet into the air, holding up the pool float in defense.
“What the hell?!” He shouts back, but it sounds like normal talking over the music and people.
His head is starting to hurt if he thinks too hard about it, so he doesn’t think about it, focuses on how Ayda’s fire hair and eyes are so beautiful in the dark and how she’s looking to the side of his head all intense in the way that means she’s really looking at him all intense.
“It is very loud in here!”
“Yeah!”
“Have you seen Fig!”
“No!” He debates for all of 0.1 seconds before the drunk brain wins, “Have you seen Riz?!”
“He was supervising Kristen’s body shots!” Ayda is leaning so close to him that when he inevitably sways towards her, his shoulder bumps into her arm—which should be her shoulder too but she’s so tall and Fabian is so not short but not tall like she is that he’s just glad he can reach her bicep.
“Where?!”
Ayda yells something, but there’s a swell in the music and then a swell in the party and it’s completely drowned out.
“Come again?!”
“Pool!” Ayda yells, and then her fire-hair flares up bright and burning as she looks out over his head across the crowd. “I have spotted my paramour! Thank you, Fabian Seacaster, I hope our exchange of information was acceptable!”
And she blinks out of existence again.
Fabian hugs the pool float to himself and blinks. Pool. Right. Riz. He needs to find Riz. He doesn’t know why he needs to find Riz but he does, it’s urgent, it’s… it’s… if Fabian doesn’t find him right now something bad is going to happen. Like with another mirror dimension or, or, or another Chungledown Bim thing or someone will be mean to Riz and Fabian won’t be there to protect him or someone will be mean to Fabian and Riz won’t be there to shove them away and hiss out something mean and rude and cutting that Fabian’s too stunned to say.
So, Fabian starts for the pool.
He feels like a human ping pong. Elbows and shoulders and hips push him to and fro and he probably travels at least double the distance to wind up at the pool than he would have if he could make it there in a straight line, but even if there wasn’t anyone else here he would probably be doing the same zig-zag walk.
Shit, he’s going to feel awful tomorrow.
At least they all will, probably.
The ping pong game continues when he finds Adaine at the pool and not Riz, who points him further out into the backyard where he finds Kristen dancing right on top of both Tracker and a seemingly amused but unaffected Aelwyn. Kristen sends him back to the pool, which sends him back to Adaine, who passes him along to Fig this time, and then Ayda is flying up above the crowd to get a better view because of an unsatisfactory meeting of the deal on her end or something and she finally points to the roof.
Fabian has to leave his pool float with Fig and Ayda, who immediately flop onto it right there in the middle of the trampled grass. He feels oddly bare, then, even though he lost his shirt before going in the pool and has been walking around without it since.
His shoes are untied and not in the cool way, but he grabs ahold of the top of the first window he sees at ground level and pulls himself up, climbing up the white-sided house and probably scuffing the paint in between blinks and dips of his head.
Even inebriated, it isn’t hard to scale, and he grabs onto the lip of the roof before and after and in between when he expects to get there.
“Riz?” He asks, and tries to force a yawn because he feels like he needs to pop his ears, but it doesn’t do anything because it’s just quieter up here.
A little blob moves on the top of the roof, and then moves closer, and a black-clawed, green hand wraps around his wrist and hauls him up.
“Hey,” Riz looks windswept and wine-drunk, although Fabian’s pretty sure there isn’t any wine at this party.
His hat’s jammed down over his head, but his hair is still sticking up in pretty little curls around it that Fabian knows Riz hates when he’s sober but doesn’t even think about when he’s drunk. There are red solo cups lined up along the gutter, that either Riz has been drinking from or trying to stack, and there’s a gentle breeze that tickles its fingers over Fabian’s cheeks.
“Hey,” Fabian says, and, realizing they’re just sitting there looking at each other, takes that moment to sprawl out across the roof.
It’s hot outside in general. But the heat up here is different. There’s a nice breeze and the roof is sun-baked and comfortable, unlike the sticky heat of the party down on the ground.
“How’d you find me?”
“Ayda,” Fabian says, and sinks onto the roof tiles with a sigh.
“Shit,” Riz mutters. “I thought I’d hid myself from aerial attacks.”
“Expecting to get attacked, The Ball?” Fabian asks, sleepily, before he jerks back up into a sitting position. Stupid. He’d come up here because he had to talk to Riz and now Riz is here and he isn’t even looking at him, what did he have to talk to him about?
“No,” Riz says, in that grumpy way which means he’s still thinking about something else and isn’t putting his full attention into how his words come across to others.
“Okay, uh…” Fabian says, trailing off and rubbing a hand over his mouth in thought before realizing that that hand has touched how many other people’s hands today and the pool water and the side of the house and the roof. “I have something to tell you.”
“Oh. What is it?”
The lights of the party don’t reach all the way up here, so Riz is only illuminated by stars—white and glittering down from above them, casting him in the dimmest of colors. Fabian squints to see him anyway, zeroing in on the pattern of freckles over the bridge of his nose, “Uh, I forgot.”
“Oh.”
“Can I stay up here with you?” Fabian asks, and his eyes fall to Riz’s throat when he swallows. “While I try to remember?”
“Yeah, of course, dude.”
“Sweet, thank you.” He puts too much emphasis on the ‘you’ with his fancy boy voice and Riz snorts, leaning back again to lay down on the rooftop, his arms folded behind his head.
Fabian scoots up so he can lie down next to him, also putting his arms behind his head and folding his legs up so he takes up the same space length-wise as Riz. This is extremely important to Fabian’s brain, the amount of space he’s taking up and having that space equal Riz’s space. He doesn’t know why, but it’s just as important as why he needed to be up here in the first place and why he needed to see Riz.
“Nice party,” Fabian says, once it’s been so long he isn’t sure if he’s fallen asleep—he doesn’t think he has, but there’s still a possibility. He’s definitely dreamed of falling asleep on a roof like this before, with Riz.
“Do you know whose it is?” Riz asks, up into the night air.
“Not a clue.”
They snort together, although Fabian’s is more of a sensible chuckle, thank you very much, and Riz’s is full-bodied and from his lungs and beautiful.
“Cool,” Riz says, still giggling a little. Fabian’s not entirely sure what’s so funny but he wants to bottle that sound and get drunk on it, he’s pretty sure he’s getting even more drunk on it right now.
“Yep,” Fabian says, popping the ‘p’ and making them fall into more laughter.
The stars twinkle and seem to laugh with them.
“Shh,” Riz hushes, quickly, and Fabian immediately falls quiet. “You’ll miss it.”
There’s a lull in the party downstairs, and then a loud crash and then some shrieks and then laughter—the kind of laughter that can only be heard from a large group of very drunk teenagers.
Riz smirks like he’s done something.
“Did you do something?” Fabian asks, and Riz smirks even more.
“I set traps. It’s an assignment for rogue class,” Riz says, and that’s when Fabian sees how his tail is swishing out right next to where one of the cups in the gutter had been stationed.
“You’re just dumping water on them?”
“What? No. I’m dumping beer.”
“Oh… Okay?”
“Yeah,” Riz says, and full grins now.
“Why’re you thinking about class right now?”
“I got bored.”
“Then why didn’t you come down and find me?” Fabian asks, because he’s obviously not thinking right now.
“Because I didn’t think you’d want me to. Which is, like, cool, you know. That’s fine. But, yeah,” Riz says, and even with the filler words he sounds so sure of himself that Fabian believes him for a second before he realizes what he said.
“What? Wait, wait, no. I would want you to. I do want you to.”
“It’s whatever, man,” Riz says with a shrug and Fabian turns himself onto his side, propped on one of his arms so he can look at him better.
“No, it’s not. I came up here to find you, The Ball.”
“I thought you had something to tell me.”
“I did. I do.”
“Do you remember it yet?”
“No, not yet.”
Fabian is very aware that he is leaning over Riz a little bit, propped up like he is on his arm, and that Riz looks beautiful like this, comfortable on the roof despite the something in this conversation that feels more serious than it should. He is also very aware that they are both drunk, and he is even more aware that any leaning he does will always, always be strictly in a bro way. Always. Because Riz doesn’t like him like that and Fabian wouldn’t know how to lean in a not bro way even if he did. But he wouldn’t, because he doesn’t. Riz doesn’t like him like that.
And that’s fine. That’s good. Their relationship isn’t any worse or less fulfilling or anything because of that. But it’s still something he has to remember.
Fabian flops onto his back again.
“We’re going to be fucked up tomorrow,” Riz says, finally, once the seconds have dragged on and Fabian has enough time to question whether he’s fallen asleep or not.
“Definitely.”
“Kristen’s gonna be the worst, though,” Riz says around a snort. “She did, like, so many shots.”
“Ayda said,” Fabian says, because “Since when does she not,” sounds a bit too harsh and a bit too on the nose all in one.
“I only had a few,” Riz keeps going. “And, oh, shit, sorry, do you want something to drink?”
“Something, what something?” Fabian asks, and Riz reaches behind him to grab a carton of boxed wine—the absolutely shitty stuff, not the okay stuff. “Ew. Absolutely not.”
“Your loss,” Riz says and shrugs, lifting it up before frowning and putting it down again. “Wait, if I’m going to be doing my traps assignment I should probably be less drunk not more drunk.”
“We probably shouldn’t be drinking on a roof,” Fabian says.
“That bridge has already been crossed, I like my reason better.”
“Fine, fine,” Fabian lifts one of his hands to wave it around in the air. “Do what keeps you sane, The Ball.”
He can feel Riz’s eyes heavy on him, but Fabian refuses to turn his head, too fascinated by the way his hand catches the stars’ light as it glides through the air.
“Here,” Riz says, and plops the boxed wine onto his chest.
“I don’t want this,” Fabian says, going to take a drink from it anyway.
Riz puts a hand on the carton as he’s raising it up. “No, throw it.”
“Why?”
“Because it’ll be fun. Trust me.”
“I only trust you as far as I can throw you,” Fabian grumbles and Riz smiles.
“That’s pretty far. But I bet you can throw that carton further.”
“Oh yeah? Wanna bet?”
“I just said I did.”
“Oh. Right.” Fabian grabs the carton, sits up a little more to get some leverage, and then hurls with all his might.
There’s a loud splash from the pool and few screams. Riz fist pumps in the air.
“My grandpapa was right,” Fabian says, laughing. “You’re such a little dick.”
“Yep,” Riz says, and now he’s the one popping the ‘p.’
“You’re brilliant,” Fabian says, and his tongue goes heavy with the words but they’re true and right and he has to say them right now, maybe this is what he came up here to tell him.
Riz blinks. “Um, thanks.”
“You are,” Fabian says. “You are, Riz.”
“Is this like a drunk girls in the bathroom hyping each other up thing or—”
“Well, for one, neither of us is a girl and we’re not in a bathroom, we're on the roof,” Fabian says, feeling a little vindictive. Because Riz isn’t hearing him yet. “You’re brilliant.”
“Thanks,” Riz says, and it’s too dark to tell if he’s blushing from the wine or from something else. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Fabes.”
“‘Thanks’ is fine,” Fabian replies magnanimously and then stretches out. “Just wanted to make sure you knew.”
“Okay. Uh, thank you.”
“No problem,” he says with a yawn, shutting his eyes.
Riz is still watching him. Fabian pretends he doesn’t like the attention but he probably does a poor job of it because Riz snorts and pokes his forehead with one finger.
“What’s that for?” Fabian asks, eyes still closed.
“You’re dumb,” Riz says.
“Rude,” Fabian says, but there isn’t any kick to it.
Riz mumbles something else that sounds like it maybe has stars and handsome and warm in it, but Fabian can’t piece the fragments together in a way that makes sense so he lets them escape from his mind like sand through his fingers.
“Your hair’s wet.”
“I went in the pool.”
“Right, obviously,” Riz says. “But it’s still wet, I thought it would’ve dried by now.”
Fabian shrugs with as little energy as possible.
“Huh.” And then Riz’s hand is running over the shaved sides of his undercut, gently and lightly, like he’s afraid it will make Fabian jump.
“Uh, what’re you doing?” Fabian asks, instead, because it feels nice and he wants Riz to keep doing it but he’s also not sure what ‘it’ is.
“Sorry, I can stop. I should’ve asked.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“You need to get this trimmed again,” Riz says, his fingers running over the too-long hair on Fabian’s scalp, and Fabian shrugs.
He’s been thinking about growing it out, getting a different style than the locs he’s had since freshman year, maybe some braids. It would take a while, more than a while, to grow out, but they’re seniors-almost-freshmen-again. He’s got time.
He likes the way Riz’s fingers feel on the skin above his ear, and he stretches out like a cat on the roof. Riz is usually the cat-like one, with his big eyes and slitted pupils and tail and ears that swivel and twirl around. Fabian’s drunk, though, and he forgets for a second that he’s a boy, and he turns into the most liquid puddle to ever have a solid form and that’s one of the most cat-like things ever, in his opinion.
“We’re not going to the same school next year,” Riz says, softly.
Fabian opens his eyes and stares up at the stars. “No, we’re not.” His eyes track constellations—the ones his papa taught him like the Great Beast with her tentacles wrapped around the Sinking Ship, the Compass and the Hand beside each other, always separated but never far apart. The ones Cathilda taught him: Cassiopeia, the Big Dipper, and Orion forever standing watch in the sky. The ones his mama taught him, each of them in Elvish words whispered against the side of his head as she traced them with a finger glowing with a Light spell: Cidar’d’ohta with his sword and magic in his fist, the Ónoni joined at the hip and the shoulder as if reflections in a mirror, and Dínan, whose whispers filled the spaces between the stars and made the biggest constellation of all.
“That’s going to suck,” Riz says, and Fabian fights desperately to keep looking at the stars and avoid this conversation altogether.
“We can’t talk about this, we’re drunk.” The Bad Kids have a rule about the Next Year Talks, when Kristen is leaving to spend time in Sylvaire, and Adaine and Riz are both going to the same school, and Gorgug and Fig are taking a gap year to tour, and Fabian is going to an entirely different school that specializes in adventuring, on the opposite side of Solace from where Riz and Adaine will be. They don’t talk about it unless they’re all in their right minds, and so far that hasn’t happened yet, so they just haven’t talked about it. Fabian doesn’t want to start now.
“It’s going to happen one way or another, Fabes,” Riz says, anyway, because he’s always pushing.
Fabian loves that about him.
“You have to call me, when you’re away,” Riz keeps going.
“I will, The Ball. Don’t get so worked up about it,” Fabian scoffs, and tries not to lean too desperately into the hand that’s still resting on his head.
“Things are going to be different.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want… It would be really shitty of you to drop me, the second you leave.”
“You’re leaving too,” Fabian says, and Riz falls silent at that. “We’re too drunk for this,” Fabian says again.
“Maybe.”
“I’m going to miss you,” because Fabian’s brain doesn’t know when enough is enough, or when he’s already won his battles.
“I’m going to miss you too.”
Riz removes his hand and Fabian gnaws on his lip to make sure he doesn’t say anything, giving Riz enough time to flop back onto the roof next to him. They aren’t touching, but Fabian can feel the space between their arms like it’s burning, but that doesn’t make sense because it’s the roof that’s burning not them.
The breeze skates over Fabian’s cheeks, and the sky looks like it’s swirling closer and closer.
It feels kind of like being a star, up here with him.
The bass of the party pounds below, and Fabian can hear faint strands of conversations, “She did what?”, “In the car!”, “Hold up, I’ll prestidigitate it.”, “Yes, exactly what I said!” He lets them wash over him, feeling crowded again on the roof by all the noise and life below, and all the quiet and life next to him.
Riz hooks his fingers around the bracelet on Fabian’s wrist—a thin chord of leather, worn with age and battle, made from the remains of his father’s eyepatch after the rest of it got destroyed junior year.
“Senior year is dumb,” Riz grumbles.
Fabian huffs. “At least it’s almost over.”
“That’s why it’s dumb,” and Riz is starting to cry a little bit, because he gets like this when he’s drunk.
Fabian isn’t quite sure what to do. He doesn’t want to keep looking up at the stars, but he also doesn’t want to look at Riz, so he twists his hand in Riz’s grasp so that their fingers are tangled together, his thumb rubbing across the back of Riz’s hand.
“Everything’s going to change,” Riz says, watery.
“Some things won’t.”
“No, everything.”
“That’s not true.”
“Then what?”
“I’ll always follow you up to the rooftop, Riz,” Fabian says softly.
He can feel that part of himself that floated around in a pool for nearly an hour just to see if it made him easier to spot, and the part of himself that then walked all around a party in order to find the person he’d wanted to be spotted by, begin to get teary too. What’ll he do when he doesn’t have a roof to climb up to and a Riz to find at the top? What’ll he do when Riz is so far away he can’t throw his shitty wine for him or look at the stars next to his side?
Fabian blinks and the stars swirl and Riz’s hand is heavy and warm in his own, and Fabian’s mind is slogging along, not quite caught up yet but weighed down by so many emotions. He lifts Riz’s hand up, the one he’s holding, and brushes a kiss to the knuckles. He doesn’t even register that that’s one of the things he’s not supposed to ever do.
He can feel Riz turn his head to look at him, both of them lying there on the roof, but Fabian just holds the back of Riz’s hand against his cheek, the skin warm and soft in the areas around his calluses and scars.
“I’ll always be here. Or go to you. I’ll always… You don’t have to worry about that, The Ball. I’m not leaving you.” His mouth is so close to the back of Riz’s hand that his lips brush the skin every time he speaks and he can feel Riz go very still.
He can hear Riz take a breath, and then, “I’m not leaving you either. I don’t know if I could if I tried.”
“It’s okay,” Fabian says, he’s not sure what is okay, just that it is.
Riz is crying again.
Fabian swallows his tears back. They can’t both be crying, that’s just sad.
“It’s really okay, Riz.”
The first peachy hint of sunrise pokes its head above the horizon. Fabian’s free hand smooths out across the rough tile of the roof, and his other holds Riz’s. Anchoring himself, both here and to him.
“We should probably get down,” Riz says, after a bit. He’s not crying anymore.
“Not yet. I still don’t know what I wanted to tell you.”
“Will you remember soon?”
“Maybe,” Fabian says.
The roof is so warm. The breeze is cool and comfortable. The stars are getting dimmer as the sky gets brighter. And he watches the sky with Riz, as people talk and scream and live below them.
Riz squeezes his hand. Fabian squeezes back.
The stars laugh at them. Or maybe they’re crying now, too. It’s hard to tell, when they’re so far away.
It’s okay, I won’t leave you.
They can stay up here for a little while longer.