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“Why the hell does summer have to be so annoying?”
Tyler glances over to him. Draped on top of him, head buried in the crook of his neck, is Aiden. It’s late at night, and the two of them are laying on Aiden’s bed - well, to be more specific, Tyler is laying on the bed, and Aiden is laying on top of him, one leg hanging off the side of the bed, arms wrapped around his waist. Previously, his head was laying on Tyler’s chest, gazing at the laptop they were using to watch some old action movie that Aiden had picked out for them. It wasn’t even a good movie, at least in Tyler’s opinion - the camera work had been shoddy at best, the acting was terrible, and several scenes that might have been intended to be intense and/or deep just came across as superficial and awkward. Even the fighting scenes had that air about them. Even Aiden regularly made comments criticising the movie at various points, and when it finally ended (on a very anticlimactic note,) there was a distinct air of disappointment about Aiden, one that told Tyler that he hadn’t expected the movie to be quite so - well, dull.
Neither of them had really wanted to get up to put something else on after the credits stopped rolling, too comfortable and drowsy to move, so they’d just continued to lay there peacefully on the bed in silence. At some point, Aiden had buried his head into the crook of Tyler’s neck.
“What do you mean?” Tyler raises an eyebrow.
“I mean, it’s so-” Aiden raises one of his arms into the air, waving his hand around avidly. “Hot.”
Tyler rolls his eyes. “No shit. What did you expect?”
“Yeah, I know that summer is supposed to be hot.” Aiden sighs. “What I mean is that it’s always sticky, and the nights are humid as hell, and the heat stops being fun very fast. Oh, and the bugs are annoying as well.”
“We get to go to the pool a lot more though,” Tyler points out. “You spent all day there yesterday. The only reason you got out is because Ashlyn threatened to leave you behind.”
“Yeah, because I wanted to avoid dying of heat,” Aiden deadpans. “Did you not feel how hot it was?”
“Obviously I did,” Tyler shrugs. “But it wasn’t as hot as what you’re saying it was.”
“To me it was.”
If he’s being honest, Tyler can kind of understand some of Aiden’s points. He could certainly do without his shirt sticking to his back and his hair flopping into his eyes constantly, the humid nights that made it near impossible to sleep comfortably without a fan blasting cold air directly into his face, and he could certainly do without the bugs.
But apart from that? It’s not so bad.
And besides, if the heat means that he can get more nights like this, where Aiden randomly messages him in the dead of night, claiming that he was bored and just wanted to hang out, and asking if Tyler wanted to come over…
Well, he certainly won’t mind it so much.
He doesn’t say this, though.
“I’m going to put something else on,” Aiden says eventually, untangling himself from Tyler and into a sitting position, reaching across to the chair they’d propped the laptop on to turn the screen back on again. “The silence is killing me.”
“Everything is killing you, apparently.” Tyler rolls his eyes, propping himself up onto his elbows to get a better look at what Aiden’s choosing. “And you’ve been fine for… well, however long we were just laying there.”
“Half an hour,” Aiden responds swiftly. “It was roughly 1:39am when the movie ended, and now it’s 2:10am, so…”
It suddenly occurs to Tyler just how thirsty he is - and hot, too, his hair sticking to his head with sweat. He’s relieved that he had the foresight to at least take his shirt off before Aiden decided to lay on top of him, effectively imprisoning him for the past few hours.
“I’ll go get us some water or something,” he tells Aiden, swinging his legs off of the bed and getting up. “Unless you want something else?”
“A popsicle?” Aiden says hopefully. “We have some in the freezer.”
“It’s 2am.”
“And?”
Tyler rolls his eyes, not saying anything. Instead, he just leaves the room, heading down to the kitchen.
The freezer door clicks open softly as he opens it, and it’s a relief to feel the cold air on his skin as he begins to look for the aforementioned popsicles. Thankfully, it doesn’t take too long for him to find the frost-dusted blue box near the front, and he takes two of them out - one strawberry one, which he knows Aiden likes, and a blackcurrant one for himself.
When he gets back to the room, Aiden is sprawled out on the bed once again, his shirt pushed up and exposing his abdomen. Tyler can see the faint scar that Aiden claims is from an old injury he got a few years prior and had to get stitches for. When Tyler first asked how he’d got it, Aiden had mentioned something about trying to climb over a wall, not realising that there was glass on top of it until he’d got half of his body over it and felt something slice his skin.
Tyler hasn’t questioned this. It sounds very much like something his impulsive, crazy boyfriend would do, after all.
“Hey,” Tyler calls. “I got what you asked me for.”
Aiden sits up abruptly, pulling his shirt down and grinning as Tyler hands him the treat, unwrapping it quickly. “Thanks.”
“Budge up then.”
Aiden shuffles along the bed, giving Tyler enough room to sit on it as well. Almost instinctively, Tyler reaches out an arm to drape around Aiden’s shoulder, pulling the blonde into him, which elicits a small laugh out of him.
“So, what are we watching now?” Tyler asks, temporarily removing his arm from around Aiden’s shoulder to unwrap his own popsicle, before putting it right back.
“Just some horror movie I found,” Aiden shrugs, leaning across to the laptop to select the movie. Tyler glances at the title. Final Destination 5, it reads. “Heard from Ash it was pretty good.”
Tyler raises an eyebrow. “Didn’t know Ash was into horror.”
“Honestly, I was pretty surprised too,” Aiden says, leaning more into Tyler. “But hey. Some people are just surprising like that.” He bites off a chunk of his popsicle. “And besides, according to her, this is the best one in the franchise.”
Tyler stares at him. “How the hell did you do that without getting brain freeze?”
Aiden smirks. “I’m built differently, what can I say?”
Tyler rolls his eyes, but otherwise doesn’t rise to the bait.
“Have you seen the other movies in this franchise?” He asks instead. “Judging as this is the fifth one, according to the title.”
“Yeah,” Aiden nods. “Watched them with Ash.”
“Verdict? In case I want to watch them myself?”
Aiden shrugs. “Mixed. Don’t go into them if you’re expecting, like… great character development or special effects. The first one is decent, the second one is as well, the third one is the best one in my opinion, and the fourth one is a bit rubbish.”
Tyler snorts. “So basically the movies just rely on the shock factor to do well?”
“Pretty much.”
“Press play, then.”
There’s not much about that Tyler can say about the movie, really. He was correct, at least, in his assumption that the movie would mostly just rely on shock value - at one point he starts complaining about one of the more awkward scenes, to which Aiden responds by telling him to shut up and slapping a hand across his mouth - but he has to admit, the deaths were pretty brutal.
When two of the last remaining characters board a plane, and the camera pans to a shot of another two characters fighting, Aiden lets out a shout of what seems to be surprise and excitement, grabbing Tyler’s arm and shaking it.
Tyler (who had pretty much fallen into a silent reverie at this point) jumps slightly.
“Sorry,” Aiden grins. He’s looking particularly excited, Tyler notices. “God, when Ash told me there was a twist ending to this one, I didn’t expect…”
He tails off, and goes back to watching the small screen, his grip on Tyler’s arm slowly tightening with each second.
“Get off,” Tyler mutters eventually with a wince, shaking his arm. “Your nails are starting to dig in.”
“Whoops.”
Tyler watches as the plane explodes, and there’s several shots of the passengers getting butchered, incinerated or both by the resulting chaos.
He turns to Aiden. “I’m going to have to watch the other movies to understand why this is such a big twist, isn’t it?”
“Huh?” Aiden blinks, turning to look at him. “Well, not really. Just the first one. And only the introductory scene.”
Tyler rolls his eyes. “I’m not going to watch the entire thing if all I need to do is just watch the first bit of the first movie. Mind telling me-”
“Basically, the introduction to the first film is the plane - flight 180, you saw the number - crashing. So basically, this one we’ve just watched is like, a kind of prologue? It happened before the events of the first one. And the two characters we saw fighting on the plane are prominent characters in the first film,” Aiden explains.
“Right,” Tyler nods. “Got it.”
He suspects the plot twist would have hit him harder if he had actually watched the movies himself. Or maybe they wouldn’t. He can’t tell.
“What time is it?” he asks, as the credits of the movie begin to roll.
Aiden grabs his phone, flicking the screen to turn it on. “4am now. Nearly.”
Tyler yawns, stretching his arms out. “Not the first all-nighter I’ve pulled, definitely not the last.”
“Yep,” Aiden agrees, grinning. “And hey. Watching movies together was way better than spending the night being awake and bored.”
“Knowing you, you would have probably just gone outside in the middle of the night regardless,” Tyler remarks, raising an eyebrow.
“Well, I probably would have done that if you’d been asleep or something when I texted you,” Aiden admits. “I was bored as hell.”
Tyler rolls his eyes. “You’re crazy.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I’m going to go now,” Tyler says, after a beat of silence. “To try and get some sleep, you know.”
“Alright,” Aiden nods, grinning. “See you.”
______
It’s been a while since he last went to Atlanta.
Admittedly, Tyler hasn’t been having the best time since arriving back in his hometown, mostly too tangled up in his own regrets and nostalgia since he got here, and besides, apart from Taylor, none of his other old friends are here presently, still at their various colleges and schools. Taylor says she thinks that most of them will start coming back the following week.
And then there’s Aiden, who isn’t there anymore at all.
Tyler’s been avoiding looking at his old house since he got there.
He isn’t sure what’s pulled him to go to Atlanta, honestly. Maybe it’s just his boredom, and his need to do something that doesn’t involve wandering around places he already knows by heart. Or maybe he just knows that something’s going to happen.
Whatever it is, there’s a certain knot of what seems like anticipation in his gut as he drives, one that makes his heart beat a bit faster, filling him with a sense of muted excitement that he can’t quite explain or describe.
Annoyingly, the majority of the parking spaces are filled up with cars already, leaving Tyler to drive around for ages, eventually just parking down a side street. It’s out of the sun, at least, so hopefully, his car won’t be boiling hot inside by the time he gets back.
And then he just starts walking around, mostly around the shops, though not actually buying anything. He repeats the same process over and over - walking into a store, gazing blankly at the stock without actually looking at it, and leaving again.
He ends up in a small cafe around midday, ordering a basic sandwich, just for something to do. He’s not even that hungry.
But the cafe is air conditioned and relatively empty at least, so Tyler just decides to sit there for a while, scrolling through his phone and mentally wondering what he could do next.
He could go to Piedmont park, he supposes - but he doesn’t feel like wandering around in the blazing sunshine for a while. He’d get annoyed and tired of it after five minutes.
Then there’s the aquarium… while it would definitely be cooler, and he does honestly like it, it would probably be filled up with like-minded people trying to escape the heat, and Tyler doesn’t think he could deal with it if he spent most of the experience bumping into people.
He’s still mulling the possibilities over in his head when the door opens, and Tyler, instinctively, glances up.
He catches a glimpse of a tanned man with curly blonde hair wearing a black tank top before his attention wanes, and he goes back to scrolling absently through his phone.
Then, over the quiet pop music playing, Tyler hears the man speak, and instantly does a double take, his heartbeat quickening.
He knows that voice.
(Or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe his mind is just playing tricks on him, filling him with false hope because this stranger just happens to sound like Aiden.)
The man - Aiden? - says something to the cashier, and she laughs, turning away. He turns away from the till, grinning, and Tyler’s heart just about stops.
It is him. It has to be.
For one, the smiley face on the man’s tank top is a pretty blunt and obvious sign - Tyler can’t really remember a time where Aiden wasn’t wearing a smiley face motif somewhere on his clothing, whether it be on his shirt, jacket, or even his socks. Then there’s the maroon eyes, the stupid silver earring that Aiden had insisted on getting when he turned eighteen, and just the way the man carries himself in general - purposeful, energetic.
Tyler knows he probably should look away - it would be awkward as hell if Aiden were to see him staring, and even more so if he recognised him - but he can’t. Aiden looks really good. Older. More mature. And yet, there’s the familiar energy in his smile and the way that he carries himself that Tyler remembers all too well, and it fills him with a mixture of nostalgia and regret at the same time.
Then Aiden turns his head, seemingly looking for somewhere to sit - and locks eyes with Tyler.
Shit.
It’s like the air itself freezes, almost, as Tyler stares into Aiden’s eyes, watching them widen slightly with recognition. Then Tyler finally tears his eyes away, staring down at his mostly untouched sandwich instead.
What he doesn’t expect is to hear the sound of a chair being pulled out from across him, and when he does, he honestly isn’t sure what to do, apart from continue staring at it.
“Hey.”
Aiden’s voice is slightly deeper than Tyler remembers, but still so familiar, which doesn’t help Tyler’s feeling of shame in the slightest. What are you supposed to say to someone who you broke up with suddenly and then completely ghosted?
“Hey,” he echoes back awkwardly.
This could be your chance, his brain murmurs to him. You can apologise to him. Like you wanted to.
“So, what are you doing here-”
“I’m sorry.”
It comes out in a blurt, cutting across Aiden’s words, causing him to fall quiet abruptly.
And then things are painfully, painfully silent again.
“If you’re sorry,” Aiden says eventually, and there’s an unfamiliar edge of frustration in his voice that makes Tyler stiffen slightly, “Then why did you do it?”
Tyler doesn’t answer at first, mostly due to the shame burning up his throat, choking him. Then he exhales slowly, and answers. “I was stupid. Stupid, half-witted, impulsive… whatever you want to say.”
“That you were,” Aiden murmurs, and Tyler can’t help but laugh slightly, mostly just due to the sheer awkwardness of it all.
“I wasn’t thinking,” he continues, still determinedly not looking at Aiden (though he can feel that the blonde’s eyes are staring at his head.) “It was just - I was forgetting to speak to people in general, and I felt really bad about it, especially as a key point in a long-distance relationship is typically to keep consistent contact to keep the relationship going, and - yeah.” He tails off. He almost follows it up with I wasn’t feeling like I was being a particularly good partner to you, but doesn’t.
(He wonders why it’s so hard to speak all of a sudden.)
“It hurt a lot, getting that text,” Aiden says quietly, and it throws Tyler off a bit - Aiden, being quiet? - but he doesn’t comment on it. “Yeah, the contact between us wasn’t the greatest, but I just assumed you were just busy with stuff and didn’t have time to talk. And then I just got that text out of nowhere.”
“Sorry,” Tyler mutters, and the word feels hollow, even to him. But it’s all he can think of to say at the moment.
“Look at me.”
Tyler drags his eyes up to meet Aiden’s gaze (trying not to let his own slip off to the side out of sheer instinct.)
“I’m going to be honest, I missed you a lot.” Aiden laughs awkwardly. “Way more than I should have, really, though I kept telling myself to move on. Then I left home and moved away, and I thought that would fix it, if I just put even more distance between us.”
“But it didn’t?”
“It didn’t.”
Tyler knows what he wants to say in response. The words are just stuck in his throat.
Eventually, he manages to force it out. “If I’m being honest - I felt a similar way. It was a mistake, what I did. A really dumb one.”
“Well, you always were a halfwit,” Aiden comments.
“Yeah, I know.”
They laugh, a bit awkwardly. Somehow, though, Tyler swears he can feel the tension in the air lighten.
“It’s part of the reason I’m back here,” he admits. “I wanted to - to apologise. For what I did. Then Taylor told me you’d left ages ago, and didn’t have contact with anyone. So…”
“Well, to be honest - I do have contact with Ash.”
Tyler glances up. “Really?”
“Yeah. Taylor probably wouldn’t have known about it, though. You know Ash - she never really told people things much. And still doesn’t.” Aiden laughs. “Funnily enough, I ran into her in a similar way to this - I just so happened to be in an area she was in at the same time, and we started talking about things, and I gave her my phone number.”
“Right,” Tyler blinks, nodding slightly. “What do you do now, anyway? Do you go to college, or-”
“Cave diving,” Aiden grins. “And other stuff on the side, like rock climbing and diving. But mostly cave diving.”
Tyler has a jolt of memory then - the two of them laying on the floor in the early hours of the morning, talking about the future. “So you actually went ahead and did it, then.”
“Yep!” Aiden grins, seeming pleased (and a little surprised) at Tyler’s recollection. “And it’s amazing. Well, like 95% of the time it is.”
He holds up his arm, and Tyler notices a thin red scar extending from his elbow to the top of his wrist.
Tyler whistles softly. “How’d you manage that?”
“Sea rocks,” Aiden says casually. “Swimming through this really rough, cramped little space, the wetsuit got caught and tore, and then I just remember looking down and seeing red. Literally. Of course, then I had to wriggle all the way back out the way I came, because it wasn’t a small cut and I knew I was at risk of catching something’s attention if I didn’t get it attended to. Almost passed out.”
“You’re insane,” Tyler rolls his eyes, and the words feel so familiar that he can’t help but smile a bit.
“I’ve only been on a few dives so far,” Aiden says. “I’m still technically at a beginner level, see. But I’m working my way up.”
“There’s different levels?”
“Yeah, there has to be.” Aiden nods. “For safety reasons. They can’t risk putting someone who’s only been doing cave diving for only a year or so in somewhere full of tight tunnels and such, in case they panic or get stuck, or have an emergency in general. You should see some of the caves that people who’ve been cave diving for, say, a decade or so, go into. One of them brought back some pictures they’d taken, and I felt claustrophobic just looking at them.”
Tyler grimaces. If even Aiden is saying that they’re bad, they have to be.
“So, what about you?” Aiden asks. “What’ve you been doing?”
Tyler shrugs. “Not much. Finished college. Came back here. Don’t think I’ll stay too long, though. Not much to do, with everyone else still elsewhere.”
Aiden hums in acknowledgement. “Yeah. I’m just here because I want to be. And because my mind was just like ‘you should go to Atlanta today.’ You know the feeling?”
Tyler nods. “That’s what pulled me here as well, honestly.”
“And then you found me.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe it’s fate?”
They fall into silence then. Tyler feels the tension rise.
Is it fate?
He doesn’t really believe in God, or any higher power, but - there has to be some explanation for how he and Aiden both ended up at the very same place, on the very same day, at the very same time. Especially after Tyler had spent the last few days wishing he could just talk to Aiden and apologise.
“So I guess the question is,” Aiden says slowly, “What do we do now?”
“Huh?” Tyler blinks, his mind suddenly blank. He feels his heart rate increase slightly.
“I mean, we both missed each other,” Aiden shrugs. “And you admitted yourself that you regret breaking up with me. So…”
“You want to get back together?” Tyler blinks.
“I mean-” Aiden glances at him, locking gazes with him. “If you want to, then yes.”
“Yeah.” Tyler nods. His mind is blank. “I do.”
“Then I guess we should start working on that, then,” Aiden grins. “First step - want to go to the aquarium?”
Tyler raises an eyebrow. “Won’t it be super busy, though?”
“It’s actually not too packed right now,” Aiden says. “So, want to go?”
Tyler grins, standing up. “Sure.”
The heat hits him like a wave as he steps outside, and from the way Aiden winces, Tyler guesses it’s the same for him. He laughs. “Yeah, I’ll be glad when we’re in the aquarium.”
“Yep.”
Tyler glances ahead of him. Somehow, everything seems more vibrant now. More alive.
Or maybe it’s just the buzzing, giddy relief he feels in his chest causing it.
“Hey, Ty?”
“Huh?”
All of a sudden, Tyler feels a kiss being planted on his cheek, and before he can register it fully, Aiden’s run off ahead, grinning. “Come on!”
Tyler blinks, touching the spot on his face where Aiden kissed him absently. Then he grins, and runs after him, the heat of the day forgotten.
Yeah.
Maybe things will be okay after all.