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He found that watching was painful, or something like painful, stings up and down his skin, traces his veins and melts fire right into them. Worse than the raised welts already burning him. Seeing people happy, or at least as close as you can get with the threat of a merciless god leering around corners, it made him angry, he was man enough to admit that. At the same time it made him feel good, it was just an inch closer to elation, to see even the parts of him that were jaded could be snagged along her edges. But it was unfair, made his stomach turn, like chewed up butterflies watching them. Maybe because of the hypocrisy, battling emotions took up too much room in his body , it threatened to rip him apart.
His face was warm but his fingers were cold, he blamed the makeshift campfire and not - them always them - huddled together.
He was fucking sick, sick of losing, sick of crying, sick of fighting, sick of being alone together, but he wasn’t alone, he knew that even sitting opposite them, with no hand to hold and nobody to lean into. They’d seen him broken, and they weren’t scared of the pieces.
But still, they’d made it out of that field, he’d taken them with him, he’d won, he’d made it out alive but it didn’t matter because everytime he closed his eyes, he saw his best friend stick a knife in his chest. He was so in his head these days, he was starting to forget where the dreams ended and he began. Where reality touched, when everything had become superpowers and voodoo and gods and zombie brothers and feelings he had no place for.
Feelings he had no name for.
He takes a swig of the wine.
Fuck it.
Victor and Luisa stare at him oddly as he stands gazing at the water, he pulls off his top, the way the cold air stings his raised skin feels horrible, he loves it.
“What are you doing?”
“Can’t you tell?”
He shucks off his shoes, stomps himself out of his pants, he suddenly feels very free. The smile on his face won’t rest, not like this, when they won’t ask for anything from him, when it’s simple, when it’s only explanation is love.
The water is bright and cold, shocks him down to his toes, but he doesn’t stop for a second, couldn’t even if he tried, the weightless drop in his stomach is almost like standing on the edge of cliff, something beautiful and poetic like that, something that people knew to compare it too unlike the first thought that passed his mind which is the slide of his knuckles against Victor’s.
They dance and jump and slide and scream and dive and swim, nearly drowning from horsing around. Their hands slip across his skin and it’s almost intoxicating, so much contact. He touches them too, it’s almost as if their skin glimmers in the moonlight, brightens the pitch black water around them, it’s them, always them.
Luisa is on his back, laughing in his ear and Victor is creating ripples in the water with his power, Sofiane's stomach twists a little with the release of his powers.
“I love his hair this way.” Her head rests against his. “I think I cut it too short last time.”
“I thought it looked good both ways.” He mentions mildly, couldn’t find a reasonable way to comment on a guy's looks without sounding weird, and yet, “It makes him look younger.”
“Hm.” Her arms are warm and weighty against his chest and her boobs are pressed against his back and he tries not to pay attention to them, not her legs crossed around his waist or her breath against the shell of his ear.
Victor turns finally, watches with a mild smile as he swims toward them.
“What are you guys whispering about?” He says smiling. He circles them like an affable shark.
“You.” Luisa hums.
He does that face, that almost smile, something secret behind his eyes.
“Right Sofiane?” She says peering further over his shoulder to look him somewhere close into his eyes.
“Yeah, all bad things.” He can’t keep the smirk off his face.
Victor nods a small secretive thing, trying not to encourage them but not being able to keep the humor off his face. “Yeah, okay.”
“Cmere.” Luisa murmurs and for a genuinely stupid moment Sofiane was sure she was talking to him, was encouraging him closer than he already was. Instead Sofiane catches her line of sight, watches her make googly eyes at Victor who does come closer, who doesn’t hesitate.
Then Victor is right up on him, practically breathing his air, Luisa hasn’t moved because he can’t seem to let go of her legs, doesn’t want to. It’s as if they don’t notice how close they are, or maybe Sofiane is overly conscious of it, and can't even think of anything beside the slippery wet slide of all them together, so close together.
They kiss, Victor and Luisa, right next to him. Luisa leaned just an inch forward from her position on his back, and Victor swam so close that they’d practically squashed them in the middle, it was like they didn’t notice he was there, or they couldn’t imagine he’d be uncomfortable, a sticky kind that made his hands sweat in water. The hot press of their lips, just at the corner of his eyes, the sound of the wet smack lingers in his ears like the deep rumble of a volcano, like an explosion, like a gunshot.
It’s barely a peck, just a quick connection of lips but his heart rouses in retaliation, yanks around his heart in his rib cage. He drops Luisa’s legs, and can't stop for a second to think of anything else to do. She flusters for a second, her arms awkward around his neck still caught, but she gets the message and unconnects.
Sofiane stalks toward the beach, not upset but with an emotion that he doesn’t want to put a name too, too terrified of what it looks like.
They follow closely behind, running alongside him. They swing open the car doors, trying to escape the cold, piling in after each other, settling under the covers and breathing heavily, rubbing their hands together hoping friction will create warmth.
The car light illuminates their scars, he hasn’t seen them this close up with this much clarity, he finds himself avoiding inspecting them any chance he gets, will shower with the lights off if he can permit it, terrified of his own damage.
Luisa doesn’t say anything when she hands Victor that icky smelling serum, knows the parameters, understands how embarrassing this all is, she understands that it hurts.
Victor slides it against the veins running along his wrist, hisses mildly at the pain. He gathers too much, so he spreads some along the side of Sofiane’s chest, he laughs, swiping more of the excess from the back of his hand across Sofiane’s shoulder. Luisa hums a laugh and chastises Victor for wasting the apparently extremely hard to make stuff.
Sofiane blames the warmth that blooms across his chest on the stuff instead of Victor's hands that seemed to always leave a strip of goosebumps in their wake. He grabs the tin and looks away from where Luisa dips her fingers back into a glob that’s pressed into her hand onto Victor's back. He traces the veins on his arm, it hurts in a way he likes, a vivid control.
Later, when the fire burning outside the car burns less bright and the wind chills just a mite colder, when the covers had been pulled taut around the three of them. Sofiane laid awake, his eyes barely open but his mind loud with trepidation, with fear.
SofianeLuisaVictor
That’s how they laid, cramped in the car.
When they had become so wrapped up in each other, tight with tension, as if they could never become undone, he had no desire to be free of them, but this steady fall into complete submersion, into a meld, into a completion of one another, an answer to their forgotten questions. He was starting to forget what life looked like before they became a trio of kids fighting to save themselves from a darkness that would swallow them all.
He was afraid sometimes, terrified of how much they meant to him, horrified that he’d become someone who needed, who needed and needed and would always be needing, that they would get smart and cut their losses and be happy without all the dead weight.
Then he feels Luisa pull his arm tighter around her, dragging it along her side until he was practically flush with her and his hand was resting on Victor’s stomach. His shirt had ridden up under the covers, Sofiane’s palm spread against the skin instinctively, widening to feel that warm rush he always felt when Victor was this close. He wants to pull his hand away but instead he grips more, lays it flat, tries to stop being fucking weird.
He doesn’t even have time to pay attention to where Luisa is pressed against him, so that he can smell the stuff she puts in her hair.
His eyes dip a little lower, sleeping edging around his brain, he felt warmer somehow.
He wondered how they’d gotten here, tied so close that the knot wrapped around their necks would suffocate them all.
And Sofiane could feel where Victor’s hand laid against his chest, he wanted to drag his hands up, almost desperately to feel that jolt, the one he felt with his knuckles pressed against his. Instead he pulls away, and tucks his arms against his chest, turns away from Luisa where too much of his body is willing to do things he won’t be able to stop in the morning.
The ceiling of the van blinks past his eyes, sleep overcoming him, he tries to think of a place he’d rather be.
He couldn’t imagine that.
That there was anything like this even in heaven.
Three of them. Forever.
What would ever be better.