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Jabberwock was a tiny crumb of land swaddled by the sea, a communal jail cell of the tropics that baked the sand by day and lullabied its prisoners with cicada song by night in a milksop glow. Two rows of cottages stood like wooden ruins, their shingled rooftops groaning with a warm night wind. Some of their windows were pitch dark, panes cracked open for a breeze, but many were not. They lit up the rows like personal sun drops, happy facades for sleepless guilt.
Look there, in one. To the right, with the curtains blowing in and the mosquito netting trembling.
Waves crashed, the sound a gentle metronome to Nagito’s ears as Hajime held his cheek in a calloused palm that smelled like tilled loam. He pressed their foreheads together.
They laid in bed, bodies tangled together under a scratchy cotton sheet. How strange it was, Nagito thought, for karma to let two ex-killers have these snatches of bliss.
Hajime stared at him, bi-colored eyes glittering and panther-like.
“Can I kiss you?” he asked. His voice cracked. It cracked a lot nowadays, breaking to dip into hints of what it would become before cresting back to a familiar contralto. Nagito felt a hand slide over and down the knobs of his spine to settle at the small of his back.
Nagito tightened his hold, his one hand resting at the back of Hajime’s roasting neck, slick with dewy sweat as the bump of his left arm curled itself about his chubby waist. “I don’t know, can you?” he whispered back, capping off with a low giggle. Hajime’s sleep shirt bunched up under his arm, the fabric wrinkling and turning hard as plaster against mutual perspiration.
Even at night, it was far too sweltering to be wearing more than the bare minimum. Hajime didn’t have a choice in the matter, Nagito knew. He didn’t understand, but he knew.
Hajime snorted. “Can I? I dunno, you’d be the better judge there.” He hadn’t brushed his teeth, and his breath had an oily smell to it, but Nagito didn’t mind. “One time, this girl in middle school told me a dead fish could have kissed her better.” He laughed softly. “I don’t even remember her name now, but that, like, really ate me up for a while, hah.”
“Probably because you didn’t kiss back.” Nagito smiled and rubbed their temples together, the tip of his nose brushing against Hajime’s. “Lucky for me, you kiss fine nowadays. Don’t fret. Worrying will only put more lines on your forehead.” Snickering, he drew back to plant a kiss to the banded scar that zigzagged over Hajime’s brow.
Breath hitching, Hajime’s arms tightened. The bumpy swell hidden under his sleep shirt squished tightly against Nagito’s naked chest. “You never answered my question,” he muttered, and his voice crackled and dove into a grizzly rumble that filled up the cottage with a hot electric spark. “May I kiss you, Nags?”
Nagito shivered, an excited laugh tumbling from him as Hajime brushed a couple strands of flossy hair from his face. “Yes, silly.” He kissed the tip of Hajime’s nose, teeth grazing over the skin. “You don’t have to ask every time.”
“I do.” Hajime kissed him, lips dry and just as warm as the rest of him. He murmured into Nagito’s mouth. “For you, I want to… I don’t know if that makes sense, but I do.”
He was growing facial hair now, the bristles still soft and downy as Nagito felt them prick his skin. It was exciting, tantalizing, and he pressed the end of his left arm to Hajime’s cheek as he kissed him back, a strangled cry squeaking from the back of his throat.
“People haven’t asked before,” Nagito said, finally, in-between kisses as Hajime caressed his face in those wonderfully heated palms of his. “Never.”
“That’s why.” Hajime smiled. “That’s why, bud.”
Later, in that sleepless spell, they would get up and leave the cottage. They would walk to the shore, hands nested together, with gangly feet stomping through dusky sand that seeped between their toes. They wouldn’t talk. They wouldn’t even look at each other, really.
They would walk. They would sidestep dead jellyfish and watch as ghostly crabs careened away from the arm of the tide. They would walk in that laborious way that all people walk in wet sand until they circled their paradise prison once. Maybe twice.
Grainy sand would glue to their ankles on the trek home. They would try to brush it away from each other in annoyed little huffs, but it would be a lost cause.
The beach would always find a way back into their bed.