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Cans rattle as they’re tossed into a duffle bag and thrown over Tenko’s shoulder. His feet are shoved into shoes that are missing their laces and he zips up a hoodie that’s missing it’s strings. Loud music in his ears, a mint between his teeth, and long hair done up in a frazzled knot, he checks the time then curses the clock. He’s out the door in seconds.
The cold city air whips him across the face as he bolts down the block, worn soles thundering on the pavement. Street lamps light the path to his objective, the cross walks serving as check points, allowing a moment for him to catch his breath and marvel at the number of people out and about at one in the morning on a Tuesday.
A few minutes later, the townhouses are business buildings, the street lamps are drowned out by Jumbotrons, and checkpoints become more like obstacles as traffic begins to increase. By the time the objective is in sight, his patience is running thin, and his time is running out. Two blocks, two minutes.
He isn’t sure how, but he makes it. The subway hasn’t left the station.
His lungs are on fire and his feet throb in protest as he stumbles towards an empty row of seats. He drops his bag on one seat, and flops down to sprawl over the rest in the row. There’s a woman glaring at him from the opposite end of the car, so he flips her the bird before draping his arm over his face. 15 minutes was plenty of time to rest his eyes before they reached his stop, right?
There’s a buzz in his pocket. He groans and pulls out his phone to glance at it. Of course the universe wouldn’t allow him even a moment of rest.
DumpsterFire: r u on the subway yet
Mophead: no bitch i missed it
DumpsterFire: fr???
DumpsterFire: shit, sorry man, i hope ur not mad
Mophead: jk i am on the subway
Mophead: but i am mad tho
DumpsterFire: ???
Mophead: i had to fucking run the whole way here
Mophead: do u kno how hard it is to sprint with a bag full of spray cans
DumpsterFire: aww did u rlly run the whole way just for me?
Tenko looked at the screen for a moment, not sure how to respond.
Truthfully? The answer was yes. He had indeed hopped off his couch and gathered his supplies the moment he read Touya’s text, asking if Tenko was up for an adventure.
Mophead: maybe
DumpsterFire: I knew you would ;)
Three subway stops, and a ten minute hike later, they arrived at the side of a tall bridge that overlapped a highway.
“This, is what I wanted to show you.” Touya said with a grin. “That ledge, there on the bridge. I figured out how to get up there.”
Tenko followed Touya’s finger to the ledge in question, gawking at what he found.
Right in the middle of the bridge, nearly twenty meters above the ground, was an outward facing ledge, wide enough for the both of them to comfortably sprawl across it’s surface and set up their little art project. But the best part, was that unlike the grafitti covered underside of the bridge, the ledge and the rest of the concrete around it was completely untouched, a perfectly blank canvas.
“Wait, so you decided to ask me out on a last minute date, at one in the morning, so we could tag an untouched heaven spot.”
“Correct.”
Tenko felt a tugging at the corners of his lips. “Forget everything I complained about earlier and ask me out on tagging dates more often.”
Touya laughed, following the clattering of cans as Tenko took off towards the bridge.
Every graffiti artist knows at least one heaven spot. Usually found on bridges, a heaven spot is any concrete canvas fifteen meters or more above the ground. High enough for a single misstep to snip your life span in half.
In Tenko’s opinion, heaven spots are like two-in-one deals. A graffiti canvas and a guaranteed adventure, all in one structure. He’s not one for cliche quotes, but Tenko has to agree that when it comes to tagging heaven spots, the journey is just as important as the destination.
Practically every bridge has a catwalk underneath. It’s meant for city workers and maintenance keeping, but Tenko’s been doing this long enough to know that these precarious paths have seen far more sneakers and baseball caps than work boots and hard hats.
The two artists don’t bother with conversation, knowing the noise of the highway would drown out any attempt to do so. Instead Tenko drags his nails along the railing, feeling the metal around him thrum with the engine of a car. He ducks under a support beam and follows Touya through a small door leading to the next section of the catwalk. It’s a tight fit, and they have to crawl through, but it feels like routine for them.
The city truly is a concrete jungle. People populate the forest floor, skyscrapers stuffed with cubicles crowd the canopy, and the birds squawk in the sky above.
Between the canopy and the forest floor sits the understory. Made up of metal tightropes, hidden fire escapes, and unused maintenance ladders, the understory is overflowing with heaven spots.
Inhabited by graffiti artists, adrenaline junkies, runaways and the occasional convict, the understory isn’t liked much by those who don’t call it home. The people below gawk and grimace while the businessmen above like to play Where’s Waldo with his tag, then spend thousands in an attempt to erase every mark he’s ever made. The birds will just keep shitting everywhere like usual. Tenko isn’t the biggest fan of birds, or businessmen.
The next section of the catwalk is wider than the last, allowing enough room for Touya to fall into step beside Tenko, and for Tenko to clasp Touya’s hand in his. Touya leans closer to tell him something he doesn’t hear, too focused on the brush of lips against his ear.
“What- what was that?”
“The place we can climb up to get to the heaven spot is just a bit further.”
“Oh.”
A soft laugh slips from the lips still too close to his ear, before they plant themselves briefly on his cheek. They’re turned up in a soft smile when Touya quietly informs him “You’re cute.”
Tenko still isn’t sure what to do with this information, so he scuffs the toe of his shoe on the edge of the walkway and swings their hands between them. They duck under the next support beam together.
Tenko likes old bridges. Older bridges tend to have rusty spots on their beams, and rusty beams are much easier to grip than shiny new ones. The down side of old bridges is that all the good graffiti spots have usually already been taken.
He wipes his palms on his jeans and cracks his knuckles, preparing himself to hop over the catwalk rail and drop down onto the beam bellow. He grips the railing and and pushes off with his feet. A moment later he’s on the beam next to Touya.
Tenko’s duffel bag used to be a nuisance while traversing under bridges, but it was the only bag either of them owned that was large enough to fit all their spray paints inside. Luckily, problem solving was a specialty of Tenko’s, and they had a system now, tag teaming with the duffle bag until they were close enough to toss it to whichever spot they’d decided to leave their mark.
Tenko now stood on a ledge barley big enough for him to fit his feet on, with his back pressed against the big concrete support that jutted out a few meters above his head to provide the much larger ledge they were trying to get to. Touya had already managed to throw the bag of spray cans up there, though he forgot to warn Tenko before doing so, nearly giving him a heart attack when all of a suddenly he spotted Touya leaning so far forward he looked about a second away from falling, only for Touya to then throw the duffle up and out of sight before regaining his balance. Sure staining public property with Touya was one of his favorite pastimes, and blood red was one of his favorite shades, but he preferred when the color came from mixed paint in an aerosol bottle, not his boyfriend’s actual blood.
He squeezed his eyes shut and blinked away the image. Now was not the time to be thinking about that.
“You made it up there yet Touya?”
“Almost there! I’ll tell you when to come up!”
Tenko took a deep breath and shut his eyes again. When it came to self preservation, neither of their stats were very high, but they were uncharacteristically skilled at caring for each other, so when they’d suddenly realized this a few months back, they’d indirectly addressed it by making each other promise to never visit a heaven spot without the other. Someone else might’ve taken it to mean they just didn’t want the other to beat them to any good graffiti spots, when really it meant “You don’t want me dead, and I don’t want to break your heart. So if we’re together we can make sure that neither of us do something dumb and get ourselves killed.”
A shout from Touya interrupted his thoughts. “Come on up, Tenko!”
He looked up and saw Touya peeking over the edge, extending his hand out to him. Slowly, he reached up and grasped it, thankful for the cool night air drying any sweat from their hands. He turned carefully around to face the support, then steadied himself. Now for the hard part. They’d never failed to do this yet, but their perfect streak couldn’t last forever, could it?
Grasping tightly onto Touya’s hand as he jumped off the support, he decided that was something they could worry about another night. Tenko trusted Touya, and Touya trusted him in return. Trapezing high above roadways with nothing but each other to save them from a fatal fall might not be the sanest way of proving that trust, but that was simply how they worked. Jumping from one adrenaline rush to the next was how they thrived, teasing death as they painted their victories where everyone could see.
So for now, he let himself enjoy the feeling of wind whipping through his hair as his feet left the ledge, his heart pounding in his ears and arms burning in protest as Touya’s hands kept him tethered to the living. He let himself enjoy the harsh rainbow of colors that were soon dripping down the concrete, and the paint stained fingers that tugged at his wrist once more, this time pulling him back to admire their finished work, lit up by the headlights of the cars beneath them.