Chapter Text
We were drinking. Liquor and Coke by a campfire with Dante really wasn’t too bad of a way to end the night. The cold bit at us, but we didn’t really care, because it wasn’t too much of a bother when you didn’t really focus on it. We poured into plastic cups and laughed about Dante stealing the stuff, and waited for our heads to get fuzzy before noticing the growing storm, and we leaned into each other, savoring the last of the calm and then Dante leaned in and kissed me and I kissed him back and he tasted like liquor and soda and I loved to taste him, feel him, because here, it was possible. My heart was beating out of my chest already as if it was the first time all over again because Dante just did that to me. We were breathing into each other’s mouths and I think I was shaking until we both finally noticed the weather, feeling the rain on our faces before it picked up and we ran to the tent, grinning and zipping the flaps quickly like the lightning was chasing us, listening to the weather around us, the wind and the rain.
I turned to Dante, and his hair was already damp and he was smiling at me and I couldn’t stop myself from kissing him and we didn’t stop, tossing our clothes in a corner of the tent and everything I wanted to do was right here, right now as all this hunger was driving me forward, with the thunder and the lightning and with each breath, each heavy pulse of my heart, he was here, here, here with me and it couldn’t have been any other way. He was the world and the sky and the storm inside the both of us and it lit me on fire.
I nearly didn’t recognize myself in the moment, as I clung to him when my body took over and I gasped for breath because it was something different, an energy inside of me, pleasure, desire that made my heart skip and I could hear Dante saying my name over and over–feel him holding me, and I would have responded, but it took a moment for my breath to come back to me just enough to whisper his name and fall back in his arms.
We held each other as we fell asleep to the sound of rain.
I woke up still intertwined with Dante, the beginnings of sunlight reaching the edge of the sky, the scent of damp woods hanging over us. It was cold, but not where Dante was still holding me, and I studied his still face as he slept, chest rising and falling in the steady rhythm of rest. I’d seen him so many times before, but every time it was as if I fell for him all over again, and I’d get this feeling in my chest like warmth, like a tightness that I wasn’t too sure what to really call. Maybe it was a part of growing up, because I hadn’t felt it before, not really. I didn’t feel like a boy anymore, it felt like a moment where I wasn’t where I started but I didn’t know where I was going. Maybe I didn’t have to.
Maybe that was what my mom meant by my own map of the world.
I decided to carefully leave the tent to not wake Dante, breathing in the fresh morning air and shivering at the cold, but it was nice on my bare skin and it was nice to have nobody else around because it felt a little bit like it was ours. The sun began to climb the horizon, and I could feel a smile tugging at my lips and I couldn’t stop it. I heard the tent flap unzip and I heard Dante climb out, and I turned to face him and he was just like the view, as if he was the earth and everything around it. In my map of the world, I would keep this place, this moment, name it after him just to remember this for as long as I could. He walked up to me, took my hand and our fingers laced together. We watched the sun until it turned the sky orange.
“What are you thinking?” he asked after a while. And for once, I wasn’t sure how to answer him.
“About the sun. You.”
He squeezed my hand, and I squeezed back. We stayed standing there for a long time, and that warmth in my chest grew. I had been asleep for fifteen years of my life and this would be my first memory of this new, scary, amazing, huge world. I liked this new Ari, this new world, this new life I was growing into.
Thanks for waking me up, I wanted to say, but I must’ve said it out loud because Dante turned to look at me confusedly.
“What?”
I just smiled.
When the sky was blue and bright and clear, we decided to wander around the area, letting our feet take us wherever they wanted to go. I could hear the stream and birds and the light rustle of the breeze weaving its way through the trees.
“I like it here,” Dante said as he took my hand. “It’s so people-less.”
“I don’t think that’s a word.” But I liked his words. He let his thoughts come out their own way, even if it meant making up his own language for them. Maybe that’s what I should do. That way anything I say can be an Ari thing to say. Maybe it’d get some of the words out of my head.
“I don’t think so either. But you get the message.”
“Yeah.”
It was as if we were just existing, as if we were letting our bodies memorize the ground beneath us instead of our minds, we followed each other without really needing to know where to go. Dante closed his eyes and took a breath, and I wondered how he seemed to belong to the world no matter where he went, how he looked in the sun and in the rain and how he was very much like the world because of it. I admired that about him.
Then I briefly thought about how long we’d been walking and the path would probably go on forever if we followed it, and I wondered what he thought of it, so I asked him.
“Are you afraid of getting lost?”
“No.”
“Because I don’t know where the hell we’ve headed.”
“Do you care?”
“Not really.”
“Me either. And besides, we’re together, so we can’t be lost.”
I guess I agreed with him. He could speak for both of us that way.
“See, we shouldn’t be afraid of getting lost because it isn’t possible to be lost, because we’re holding hands.”
Yeah, we were. Here, we could. Here, the only people to judge us were us. Here, I could pull him in and kiss him and I did, soft and sure because we just could. He smiled at me when I pulled back and I smiled at him and then we just kept walking because neither of us really had anything to say then. I liked this; our silences weren’t awkward or uncomfortable, we could just be with each other and that would be fine. It reminded me of when we’d sit in his room listening to his music and just enjoy it because we were together and that’s what we really liked about it.
Eventually, we reached a pond that gave us both the same idea, because we both ripped our clothes off as fast as we could, but Dante was faster and jumped into the water, grinning enthusiastically. He went under briefly before immediately coming back up, shivering.
“Fuck! It’s cold.”
I jumped in after him, and it was cold. Very cold. I came up next to him, and the chilly weather felt warm compared to the water.
“You call this cold?”
We splashed each other and laughed until we tired (which was quick) and soon I held him while he shook with cold, leaning into me.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.” He mumbled.
We climbed out quickly and found a stone big enough for us to lay on until we were dry. After a period of silence, Dante laughed to himself. I liked his laugh.
“Here we are. Two naked boys. I wonder what my mother would say.”
I kissed him, taking him into my arms. He tilted his head to meet me.
“You’re thinking about your mother?” I said against his lips. “That’s not what I was thinking.”
I felt him smile and I did too.
On the way back, Dante was running his hands through his hair trying to comb it through, even though his hair was constantly messy and I thought he looked handsome, he always looked handsome, and then there was that tightness all over again because he looked beautiful in the sun. I wondered what he was thinking at that moment. Eventually, he stopped trying to fix himself and we just walked in silence. Normally my silence was quite loud, but I found myself simply taking in the way the light lit up the trees and the crunch of the dirt under my shoes and how peaceful this was. Dante reached for my hand and I took it, and we weren’t really lost because we were able to find our way back, the truck and the tent were still there, waiting for us. Dante leaned against me for a moment, and I turned to look at him.
“I’m in the mood for a nap.”
“I was thinking the same.”
So we held each other and talked about home, about Legs and our parents, about whatever came to our minds until there was nothing else and we grew tired. Dante had stopped talking first, his head fell on my shoulder and I fell asleep not long after him.
It was the same dream, but I woke to Dante shaking me and I must’ve been screaming because my heart was panicked and loud in my ears and chest and I could hear Dante saying it’s only a dream, Ari, it’s only a dream. It was getting dark, so we must’ve been sleeping for a long while. I sat up, leaning into Dante as he wrapped an arm around me, and I let him even if I didn’t really need him to.
“It was about my brother. It’s the same dream.”
“You wanna talk about it?”
“No. I can’t–I can’t.” We were silent for a moment.
“It’s getting dark.” I noted aloud. I noticed the beginnings of a fire he’d started, and he saw that I saw it, and I turned to look at him.
“I’m a quick study.” He shrugged.
“Fuckin’ Boy Scout.”
“Shut up.”
I buried my face in the crook of his neck and pretended not to notice his smile.
We had a good setup with drinks and hot dogs, and we talked about things like school, which meant there wasn’t really much else to talk about but we talked anyway. I thought a bit about things, too. We answered differently when we asked each other where we were going. We grew quiet after that. I don’t think either of us wanted to think about what would happen to Ari and Dante after “forever” was never an option. Sometimes there were these silences, these moments where the world was sort of laid in front of us and the reality that it wouldn’t want us this way. It was almost like the silences my parents had when they looked at each other and just knew what to say with their eyes like a language. Except it was never a different thought; never anything worth the soft smile from my mother or a lopsided grin from my father. Never anything but the cold shoulder of the society that we knew wouldn’t accept us.
So I swallowed my words until I was probably drunk, and I didn’t think about forever anymore because my mind was too dizzy and we toasted to UT just to get our minds off it anyway and push it to the back of our minds for a little longer. Soon enough, we were running back into the tent because the rain came back. I lit a candle and it glowed softly, softening the edges of Dante’s face and he was looking at me and I looked at him and we stayed that way for a moment until he leaned forward and kissed me. He tasted like soda.
“Do you mind if I undress you?”
I kept close to him as I mumbled, “No, I don’t mind.”
I felt him unbutton my shirt and slip it off my shoulders and I felt his lips on my neck and his fingers and I felt a lot of things bubble up in my stomach, it was joy and desire and his name over and over in my head, Dante, Dante, Dante, and I could only recognize my body as his, wherever he touched me is where I was alive, where energy like lightning flowed through me like the weather outside.
He was the world and everything in it. Everything. It echoed through me as he laid me back and I let myself go.
That night, as the rain continued to hit the tent, I lay there with Dante and listened to the storm outside. If I stayed awake, that meant this could last longer and it’d be a small effort against forever, but I wanted to have this for as long as I could and this was a moment I wanted to keep. I held Dante in my arms as he slept, his head against my neck and I could feel his soft exhales and I liked it because he was alive with me even if he wouldn’t remember this. I wondered if he ever had these moments of his own. I wondered if he saw the world like I did sometimes but I backtracked and actually was glad he didn’t, because sometimes my world wasn’t all like his where he could smile and go with it like he always did. Because he could tell me how his world was and I’d tell him mine and we’d have our own. Because I could always find him again and again as someone new, someone different every day who still carried who he was the day before. He was a kaleidoscope, I thought, of the people he was and who I used to know. And who I held now, peaceful and perfect and complicated. I ran a careful hand through his hair in the way I’ve seen him do, and let my eyes flutter close as I was stolen by sleep.