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The sea was young and small. At its start, it seeped from tan earth just outside the rust-orange metal of where the city began, then wound its way into the gaping maw of the ocean. It slithered along, wide and following the motion of the tide, crossed by metal and concrete bridges. Near an edge, at one such bridge, two men stood at the apex. With their legs over the side, they gripped the heated, sweaty steel at their backs. Underneath them, the water of the sea lay dark and deep, gray and feathered by the waves.
The sun had risen only a few hours ago, the curtain call to their long night of revelry, but it was oddly hot even for late June. Felix let his arms loosen and leaned out, testing the height. His muscles showed ropey and long over his shoulders and down his back. Tryce stayed still, resting his rear lightly on the steel of the railing, shying from its heat. Felix turned his head to look at him, and for a moment almost thought the air around him seemed to waver. He smiled, the side of his mouth curving into a fishhook — Tryce seemed sweatier than normal in the heat, Felix noted with amusement.
“You two gonna jump, or what?” They heard Bel call out to them, who gladly stayed out of their getting-wet shenanigans (a celebratory tradition among younger people to leap into the cold waters when accomplishing some milestone in life, that she wanted no part in — she’d gladly cheer them on from the side and hold their phones, watch their stuff, she insisted).
Felix squinted at Tryce and moved in closer. He slid a hand along the length of Tryce’s forearm, bare as both of them had shed their jackets, and gently grabbed a patch of soft skin there, the muscle underneath pillowed by a nice layer of fat. His stomach roiled with a combination of beer and anxiety, but he was as ready as he was ever going to be to jump. He stared down into the water below; heights before had seldom bothered him, and even before everything that had transpired, he always remembered feeling unbothered by them as he conquered skyscrapers without relying on the safety of a boostpack with ease. Now, with memory flooding back to him, staring up in fear and betrayal while wind hit hard against his back as he fell into the heavy fan blades, he felt uneasy standing at the edge of a bridge and simply looking down.
“Well,” Felix began, despite himself, “Can we do this so we can go back and chill already?”
Tryce grabbed Felix by the arm and pulled as he jumped out into space. Felix let go of the railing and lept into Tryce. He hugged him around his chest, feeling him burning and sweaty in his arms. They seemed to hang in the air for a moment, as if held in place by the heavy, humid blue sky. Felix heard Tryce inhale deeply, felt the hard expansion of his ribs, heard the sound of his heart in his ear and felt its steady thump. The moment quickly passed and they began to fall. They dropped and hit the ocean, and an eruption of cold water burned their noses.
They let go of each other and swam upwards. When they surfaced, the day exploded into color and light around them. They blew snot and water from their nostrils. Felix tossed his head back and laughed, while Tryce screwed a pinky finger into his ear.
All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. They had climbed out of the water and wrung out their tank tops and pants together, laughing. Felix saw Tryce’s hand reach towards his face, and his body briefly jolted; warmth seemed to radiate from his hand as it neared him — and Tryce plucked a piece of waterlogged debris, limp as a shoestring from his wet hair with a snort.
Felix felt the back of his neck burn. There was a confusing pressure at the base of his skull, pulsing a rhythm not unlike the sound and speed of riot police striking their shields with their batons — a sound that thought and memory seemed to find threatening.
Smoke hung thick in the air, almost motionless like a shadow, burning with his breath and body. Tryce held the blunt out to Felix lying next to him, who took it with a clumsy brush of their fingers together. He inhaled, tasting the familiar flavor of fire and weed. He held his breath, letting it burn in his chest, burn in his brain, before sighing and handing it back to Tryce. He watched his smoke dance some alien waltz as he heard him take another hit beside him.
Bel had returned to the hideout. Felix wanted to chill on a roof high up somewhere, and Tryce wanted to join him. Well — Felix wanted him to join him, too.
Felix ran a hand through curled locks — he ditched the beanie way earlier, tired of how sweat felt so trapped beneath it — displeased at how matty his hair felt from the ocean water. He glanced over at Tryce, who also held an unkempt look about him after diving into the gray waters, but one that was more… free. Like how someone of this lifestyle should look.
Handsome, in fact.
Felix swallowed, averting gaze back to the sky above them, feeling his cheeks beginning to sting.
He knew what this feeling was — he wasn’t totally oblivious, nor was it at all foreign. What bugged him was whether or not it would be a good idea to nurse a crush on the guy he currently considered his closest friend.
“So,” Tryce started, holding the blunt back out to Felix — who waved a hand in polite rejection, so he snubbed it against the concrete of the roof, “You used to just go up to high places like this and just lay here?”
Felix made a short, relaxed sound in affirmation.
“Don’t tell me it’s some freaky shit like Solace,” He continued, turning his head toward him with a cocked brow.
Felix laughed. “No, nothing like that!” He assured, then shot him a sharp look, “Though you should really stop kinkshaming him, dude.”
“Stop… what? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Y’know, kinkshaming,” Felix repeated with an amused drawl.
Tryce’s voice became as flat as his gaze right then. “No, I don’t know, actually.”
Felix laughed, rolling over onto his side to face Tryce. “Well, just look it up later. Don’t think I’d do it any justice if I tried to explain it.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Tryce said in a way that clearly meant he would not be doing any sort of research on that topic. He too rolled onto his side to face Felix, drawing them closer in the process, “So why do you do this?”
Felix hummed, closing his eyes. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t remember the reason why — even before he regained his identity, his memories, he had found himself with the desire to lay on a building in Mataan one night as Red, almost like some innate pull, like the one that pulls the birds south as the seasons change. He stared up into the night, watching the nonstop city rave drown out the light of the stars. It was admittedly a depressing thought, yet not a cut, but a culmination — not a gash, but a growth.
After a long moment, he opened his eyes, greeted with a rather bewildered look from Tryce.
“It makes me feel alone,” he finally said.
“... Alone?” Tryce echoed.
Felix hummed.
“Uh, if you like to be alone, I can go —”
“No,” Felix cut in, nearly panicking, “You can stay. I like to be alone with you.”
The words left his mouth before he had any time to think about how they would sound, before he had the chance to rework him in his brain to reshape them into literally anything else that did not sound like that. It was such an odd, awkward thing to say, wasn’t it? Tryce seemed momentarily taken aback, eyes rapidly blinking as he appeared to register what had just been said.
Tryce had such long, pretty eyelashes, Felix thought miserably.
But, then Tryce smiled. A bit dopey, Felix noted, and he brought a hand up to hide the quiver of his lips with the back of his hand — bashful, he realized, and he felt his heart barrel in his chest.
“Yeah, I can see that, actually,” Tryce said after a short lingering silence between them, removing his hand from his mouth, “I do feel alone.”
Then suddenly, he pushed himself up with his hands. He shifted his weight and loomed over Felix, his hand finding its place palm-flat against the hot concrete at the side of his head. His eyes sparkled with mischief, brows furrowed in what was supposed to be anger, but immediately given away as something feigned, forced, playful by the wicked smile stretching on his lips.
“Alone with you,” he continued, “Up here, sweating my ass off, for you.”
Felix laughed, nearly hysterical, both in genuine humor and in flushed shock from being almost pinned beneath Tryce. He felt his body burn, brain already fogged from weed now even more in a haze. Tryce shook above him with his own laughter. He lowered himself to lean against his forearms, bringing their bodies close enough to touch chest-to-chest, close enough to lean head into head.
Felix was touch-deficient — or more like starved. Like an inverted flame, eating any warmth down to its studs. It was ravenous, takes and takes, and his stomach was never satisfied. He wrapped his arms around the back of Tryce’s neck, whose laughter ceased like the mere movement of Felix had managed to strangle all breath from him.
He actually wasn’t sure who kissed who right then. He didn’t recall pushing Tryce’s head down so their lips would meet. He also found it unbelievable right then that Tryce would have moved on his own accord.
Or maybe he did, Felix thought when it became clear he wasn’t about to move away.
Tryce still smelled heavily of ocean salt. Somehow enough to overpower the lingering musk of weed between them.
He felt Tryce move over him. His legs straddled his abdomen and he felt pleasant pressure lean into him as he began to sit back on him — though clearly careful to not crush him beneath his full weight. The force of their lips against each other tightened, as if equal pushes of desperation from both of them kept them together, like tides crashing into each other.
When they finally separated, they both panted like they had both been running a marathon. Tryce hovered over him, the sun beating against his back and casting harsh shadows over his figure. Felix thought he looked beautiful like that — a warm, hazy-gold kind of beautiful, like early dawn light spilling into a window.
“... Sorry,” Felix mumbled.
Tryce stared down at him, perplexed. “Wh — No, that’s… okay.”
He leaned back down, moving his arms so his hands rested behind Felix’s head, and held him into the space between his neck and shoulder in an embrace. Felix closed his eyes, thinking with soft amusement that Tryce was cradling his skull like it was the most precious thing in the world to him.
… Amusement that quickly turned to embarrassment. He let out a shaky breath, then inhaled against Tryce’s skin, the smell of salt like a siren. He was softer than he looked, and warmer; a surprisingly tender thing. The thin skin of his neck was no thicker than the flesh of a plum, and probably would be just as easy to sink his teeth into. He won’t — yet, at least.
This was a moment far too soft to consider violence as desire.
He moved his own arms. His hands slid beneath the tank top sleeves to feel Tryce’s bare back against the flat of his palms. Also warm, also smooth, save for the bumps of a few blemishes that lived there.
“Y’know,” Tryce started quietly, practically mumbling, but still loud and clear with his lips so close to Felix’s ear, “When that cyberhead cop shot you. And when Faux snapped your head off like a doll. Both times, I thought, damn so is this it? Is this where it ends with him?”
Felix made a confused sound, idly tracing random shapes into Tryces back with his fingertips.
“I feel like… I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I actually lost you either of those times,” he continued, “... I dunno what I’m trying to say, actually. I’m just glad I met you, Felix.”
Felix closed his eyes, tightening his arms around Tryce like a coil. On his eyelids, he saw himself standing on that ladder leaning against the billboard.
“Well, you didn’t lose me. We have today, and tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that,” Felix replied, pushing his nose into Tryce’s neck. “I’m glad you met me, too.”