Archive of Our Own ^beta

There’s a moment- before he says his name, before his vocal chords catch up to his brain- where Antonio thinks he might be hallucinating. Too long alone at sea, too much time spent in his head with wishful thinking.

He’s imagined things before, his grasp on reality slips, dreams seeping into the waking world. Sometimes it’s faces, graffitied symbols, a word out of place. He’s clung to imaginary shapes, screamed lost names. He always wakes up alone. He thinks that maybe he likes being alone.

But he’s really there, sun bronzed skin, muscles straining against the weight of the cargo he’s lifting on to the boat. His hair is buzz-cut short and he’s bearded, more than Antonio could have ever imagined he could be. He looks rougher, older. He is. They both are.

“Jayden?” It’s a question to a man he barely recognises, not the boy he devoted his life to.

The man tenses, drops the cargo box a little too heavily. His eyes are colder than Antonio remembers them, but his heart leaps in his chest all the same.

He worries, for a second, that Jayden won’t recognise him, or that maybe he’s forgotten him, as so many have. His expression changes so minutely, but Antonio spent years learning those subtle differences, so long trying to understand what was going on behind the practiced impassive. He probably remembers each and every inflection.

People aren’t drawn to him anymore. Their eyes catch, drag, stare. They bore new holes in his skull, but none are deeper than the first. Scarred skin, a clouded eye. Any reason to stay away. It used to hurt, his heart once sank. The sea is endless. His hope was not.

“Antonio.” There’s a lilt to his voice, the barest ghost of a past smile. Someone shouts an indistinguishable command and Jayden’s face twitches into a momentary frown. “Corner of the harbour, in an hour.” Antonio wonders if it was supposed to be a question, because Jayden’s still looking at him, so he nods, watching as the man he barely recognises goes back to shifting boxes.

He can’t afford uncertainty. It makes his hands tremor and his skin burn. His stomach rolls with acid and his head cries out to break. He doesn’t understand it, this fear, this paralysis that clutches at his limbs and swims in his veins. There’s something inside him that they couldn’t remove. It entered him with the shrapnel, dug deeper than his bones. It’s never coming out.

There’s a cigarette between Jayden’s lips and the burning cherry matches the horizon, red and orange, embers flickering, too bright. It’s unexpected, the Jayden he knew would never have smoked- but time has twisted and changed them, he supposes it’s not that strange. Antonio wonders what else is different, if this man is recognisable by anything but his face.

“Want to a grab a beer?”

Jayden’s not so different. He’s more ragged, frayed at the edges, but that’s not uncommon in this new world. They talk, but they never say anything of value. They don’t speak what’s in their heads, won’t or can’t, Antonio can’t tell the difference anymore.

The beer is cold and distracting and Antonio knows he’s had more than one too many but it’s easier to hide the ache the more he drinks. It slackens the taught, overworked muscles of his face and loosens the pain in his joints. It makes Jayden’s eyes fix on his lips, hand low on his hip.

His mouth is brutal and crushing but the force is just enough for Antonio to actually feel it, to absorb his frustration and lust, returning it in kind.

Antonio tries not to think about how empty Jayden’s apartment is, how it’s a shell where a ghost lives, how the only things he recognises are a broken guitar and a wooden stick. Jayden makes it easy for him, runs his hands through his hair, tugs his head back and mouths at his throat. His fingers skirt over the spaces where stitches have long dissolved and he wonders if Jayden feels how they broke him, can tell how they weren’t enough to pull him back together.

Jayden’s on his knees, mouth hot and dirty against Antonio’s skin, surprisingly skillful, taking him apart all too quickly. Antonio finds himself almost instantly pushing his fingers into the short, unfamiliar strands of Jayden’s hair, desperate to touch. There are scars, smooth, strange to feel. He presses harder. Jayden doesn’t speak- doesn’t stop- and that’s fine, because Antonio’s doing enough for the both of them, babbling in Spanish, the odd word in English, yes, please, oh good god. His free hand pounds the wall and Jayden looks up, pupils blow, lips red and parted and wet. Antonio can’t keep himself in check, digs his fingers in, holds too tight. There’s no complaint, no resistance, no response but for the low rumble in Jayden’s throat when Antonio’s head smacks back against the wall and the darkness is white and his world is fire.

This bed doesn’t rock with the ocean. There’s no empty space where another person could be. The sheets are too warm and the body beside him is not quite familiar. There are tattoos that hide traumas in a language he never learnt, two wars fighting for space on his skin. Battles they survived but left them marked. Survival has never seemed like enough. He’s forgetting how to be alive.

Thinking about leaving stirs the acid in Antonio’s stomach, but the promise of staying is splitting in his head. He thinks Jayden is asleep, his heart and breathing slow, but when he moves there are words against the back of his neck. Not asking him to stay. Not anything, really. Just his name. A whisper that sounds so young from a boy as broken as him.

He leaves anyway. He throws up at the harbour, bile and beer. His bed is too cold.

Now he knows he’s there- now he knows he’s real- he sees him so much more. He sees the purple and blue around Jayden’s eye socket, the split lip, the jagged, rusty score from his temple to his crown.

Jayden slams him into the door frame, uncontrolled, uncareful. His lips taste like smoke and his skin tastes of metal and when Antonio’s on his knees he almost feels alive again. Gentleness is lost on both of them, no kind touch to lead the way. They are teeth and tongues and pushing too hard, too rough, too fast. There’s electricity in his veins and his heart is beating again. There are few consequences that can stop them from filling this void.

He stops thinking about what he’s doing, who he is, where he’s been. He stops thinking about what he’s lost, about the life that is a patchwork on his skin. He can feel himself losing touch, leaving the walls unguarded and the fire to burn freely. It destroys all it touches, just like he does. He wants it to consume him.

Antonio knows he’s probably making a mistake, that they’re doing this wrong and that it won’t end well- but his life ended long ago, Jayden’s barely started. How can you destroy something you never had.

There’s no place in this world for them. There’s nowhere for their fear to go. They hold it inside because they have to, because it’s the only thing that can anchor them to this point.

Jayden cries out in his sleep, claws at his own skin, louder than he ever is in waking; fighting a war they already won, waging one he can only lose. Antonio never asks. He knows the worst of their scars run deeper than skin.

They open up, slowly. Jayden keeps his thoughts like a flower in spring. The slightest touch of rain, the smallest of breezes, he closes. Lost to Antonio, lost to the world, lost to everything except another fist in his jaw and a knee in his stomach. He doesn’t do it for fun, it’s not sport, he swears there’s no catharsis. Antonio wonders if maybe it helps him- the bloody, beaten exterior matching the carcass of his mind.

He’s tried fighting. He’s tried hiding. He’s tried tearing himself apart to take away the pain. He wonders when it started, if the world caused this, if he did it to himself. In his dreams they are young, there are smiling faces. It feels artificial and foreign. It’s not a world he knows. He wonders if he wants it back.

He has his own tattoos, but they’re just lines. Geometric entities that hide the disfigured flesh beneath. Another defense between him and the world.

Jayden’s are tallies, moments, things he doesn’t want to forget. They lie on him as symbols and words, his fears written to those who can understand.

He translates samurai, on his back, behind his heart. Fire, on his inner forearm, amidst others he won’t tell. Son, on his ankle, weighing him down.

“What’s this one?” Antonio asks, tracing the ink buried beneath Jayden’s skin, faded lines betraying its age.

“Sister.”

Jayden doesn’t speak to him for a month. When he finally sees him again his eyes are cold, lips chapped, knuckles bloodied and swollen. They fuck in the hallway, bruising and painful, too hard and not enough.

Antonio pushes his fingers into the welts on his hips and tries to convince himself this is what love feels like.

In his nightmares he rips at his insides, pulls out the darkness. The flames surround him, singe his body, call to him with their heat. His demons crawl away, into the trees. He feels lonely without them.

“She’s not dead,” Jayden whispers. Antonio knows she’s not alive. None of them are. He says nothing.

Jayden’s gentler when he’s high, when he’s tired, when they’ve pulled apart old wounds and laid their desires plain to see. It’s the most honest he is, these days.

Honesty is difficult for Antonio, the truth is never easy anymore. So he buries it, he tells himself it’s for Jayden’s sake, he pretends the only emotions he knows are anger and fear. Curiosity is dangerous, sentiment is acrid. He can almost convince himself that it’s better this way, better for both of them. But Jayden’s lips are kind, sometimes, his kisses tender, and it sneaks into his head. Maybe he’s just hiding from himself.

Calloused fingers smooth over damaged skin, smoke clouding the room. Part of Antonio hates how he leans into his touch, how he craves contact, how Jayden’s mouth on his neck sends shivers up his spine and loosens his control. He is useless to fight the fire.

He is a black hole. An endless void. He has a world inside of his head but he still feels empty. There is too much space to fill.

Or maybe he is the sea. Sinking forever, lost to unfathomable depths. For every gap the water rushes in, suffocating, drowning. No light, no air, no hope.

There’s a chance he is neither. That’s what scares him the most.

Jayden opens his door as frequently as he doesn’t. Antonio slams his fists into the wood until there are bloody smears and splinters in his skin. He doesn’t cry, but his body still knows how- gasping breaths from ruined lungs, shakes that roll through him like waves, limbs curling in on themselves. He thought he was past this, past wanting, past feeling. There’s always the thought, a worry, that maybe this time will be the last time, maybe Jayden will never open his door again. Part of him hopes for it. But now he’s had a taste, a touch, he can’t stay away. Jayden never comes to him.

Antonio makes a decision, knowing it’s brash, knowing it’s in anger. He lifts anchor and departs the harbour. He leaves no word to find him by.

Now and then there’s a reflection in the water, a face that isn’t his. It may have been, it could still be, but it holds none of his fury, none of his hate. There is no sign of his desperate longing to be home. It is placid, blank- it rolls on the surface, distorted and rippled. He’s forgotten himself.

Solitude helps. Or, so Antonio keeps telling himself. He regains control, he finds his consciousness, tucked away in a corner of his mind, more fragile than it’s ever been.

He discovers he is not a black hole. He retrieves memories from the darkness.

He is not the sea, either. He floats on the surface, adrift, but no longer drowning.

Time starts to slip away, the taste of salt becoming all he knows, the sun too strong and the hull rusting. He grapples with the idea of return, scared his legs won’t work on land, fearing that he’ll lose what little he’s managed to scrape back from the recesses of sanity.

He’s made port a few times, never the same place, small docks offering water and repair. But Antonio knows he can’t keep this up, his bones bare, his mind recovering while his body falls into disrepair.

It’s a long way back to what he left behind.

Antonio’s mouth is cottoned when he reaches the harbour, stumbling over shouts to sailors, vocal chords retorting in their neglect, the commotion piercingly loud after so long in silence. His fingers are clumsy on his mooring lines, tight from the heat, muscle memory failing him. The alien knots slip through his fingers and he waits for the rope to hit the water, but they are caught tight in another grip. Hands that can be cruel. Hands that can be kind.

The concrete is solid beneath Antonio’s feet, unexpectedly grounded and stable, though his legs still shake.

The man doesn’t raise his head, even after he’s secured the boat his eyes stay down. Antonio wonders if it’s shame or guilt that keeps his head bowed, if he would be the same way.

The stubble at his jaw is rough under Antonio’s fingers, but Jayden lets him tilt his head up, motionless until the press of lips, a soft sigh escaping from his chest.

Speech has been a formality recently, thoughts so hard to get in line. Antonio would much rather communicate through touch, through sight. A slow caress, a hand in his hair, mouths slick on skin.

There’s a lonely boy at the harbour, a boy who looks too old, a boy who was never young. His cigarette hangs from his lips and his eyebrow is severed by a deep gash. The blood is still dripping into his eye. He looks out to the horizon, ever patient, broken, but not alone. His skin is gold in the dying light.

He boards without asking, without saying a word, but his eyes aren’t as cold as they were before, and his fingers trail on every surface. His mouth is still too rough and his touch will always bruise. But he waited, and he came, and the fire burns again.

Sometimes Jayden whispers to him, sweet in his ear, lips on his neck, chest against his back. Other times he grips Antonio’s hips, pins him to the bed, bites promises into his skin that they both know he won’t keep. Sometimes it’s enough. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes, he can pretend.