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Beyond that ugly strip of dirt and tumbleweeds and rocks, the sun sets, the orange still fighting its way through the moon’s blue that’s cascading over it.
Its blue overlay strips through the windows, covering the cushions of the living room—its carpet, the television that aches Boris’s and Theo’s necks with the attention they dedicate to it.
A night coming to them is a night like many before: Boris accompanying Theo, home alone on the living room’s couch—probably(definitely)—out of carelessness from his father and Xandra. Though the difference from first is that Theo’s fingers have built their muscle memory around the beer bottle’s neck. Also, there’s a circular LED light in-front of him, color changing with every click of finger.
“You swim, Potter?” Boris’s voice manages over the dam in Theo’s ears. It always does.
Theo’s eyebrows stitch. A laugh squeezes in his lungs. “You’ve seen me swim.” The response tickles, and the changing colors stay in his sight a little longer than they should: red fading into the orange, orange to yellow, yellow-turquoise-green, green-dark turquoise-blue.
“Drown, maybe, yes,” Boris comments, weight’s absence shifting Theo higher upon the mattress.
His face blocks the lady on the television: screen’s brightness exposing his dark frizzing hairs, the hollow in his cheeks.
A flat of Theo’s lips. “I can swim.” He blinks, attempting to convince the fading purple to leave his vision. Stomach burns. “Why? What is it?”
Boris’s head gestures at the device, now off with a long press of Theo’s finger on the button. “We swim with rainbow.” A smile, and he taps on it, each touch vibrating against Theo’s crossed legs. “Fun, yeah?”
Theo clears his throat, shifting his glasses back to their designated position on his nose bridge. Then, his knees are wobbling against his heel’s pact against the floor, thigh’s muscles turning from sponge to stone—rubber still fills the deepest part of his bones.
Concrete scratches against the bottom Theo’s feet; frigid from the air, same chill laying between his arm’s peach fuzz, though here it’s warm enough to rest in.
With a grasp’s escape, outside’s coldness meets Theo’s upper-arm, heat sucked from from the touch.
“You like swimming in clothes, Potter?” A shirt wafts onto the ground, the fall of Boris’s arm following. The device cascades red from beneath, shadowing the depths of Boris’s glee: smile lines, prominence of his nose, how much his brows lean over his eyes, the bumps of his chest bones and canyons between his collarbones.
With a zip, any red emphasis from Boris dies; a gentle plop heaves a drop of water from its home, the light that has been embracing him now fulfilling the pool’s water.
Then, a few slaps of feet against the cement—a splash, droplets upon Theo’s cheek wrinkling his nose with a flinch. Now the being in the water gazes up to Theo, dark hair curling over his cheeks, breath heaving with each kick of foot, eyes carrying stories that only made their way to the boy on dry land. “Not as brave and strong as me!”
Theo scoffs, his fingers meeting fabric, their lift sending a shiver down his chest in the night’s breeze.
The water twinkles, singing with the movement in it. “No wonder you don’t get any girls, Potter!” What used to be suffocating Boris’s neck and down now only reaches his hips. “You’re nothing like m—“
A twinge bruises upon Theo’s knee, a yowl following before its muffled: currents of flaying limbs whooshing past the water’s clogs in his ears, his glasses swifting off. His legs clench, shoulders shivering at the air, nose cold, laughter hicking with internalized gasps from another—then, across the floating device of red illumination: Boris, blood pooling out his nostrils and pinkening his smile, water’s sharp whoosh announcing his finger’s approach toward the middle.
Red. Nothing but red, the respires hiding in Theo’s lungs escaping as a wail before the pool steals it—black, nothing but black—his pants escape his nostrils as tickling bubbles, Boris’s high-pitched glee managing through the water’s weight. The concrete interior scrapes Theo’s knuckles, arms locking with a push—face chilled, laughter now rings his ears, choking on the rasps his lungs swallow.
Iron cloaks Theo’s tongue, crimson creeping off his chin, swirling into the water stirred by the boys’ affray. His jaw gapes, twitching on the words aching his chest. Everything’s puffy, a blur: Boris nothing but a fluffy patch of black and pale and some rose, the red illumination a tiny toy sun between them. Blood strings from Theo’s lips. “F…” he croaks—a raising smile—words swilling to the back of his throat.
Boris’s eyebrows furrow, raised palms meeting water. “Pot—“
Wind cools over Theo’s knuckles, their bruising sparking the thick sanguine off the flesh it was glossing; Boris’s speech welts: “ahh…” His fingers tremble over his cheekbone, water’s stream hugging around his tumbling body, canines peering under the curve of his lips.
A titter through Boris’s teeth spews the blood condensing between them, posture straightening.
Theo’s inner-cheek gouges into his molars, dizzying head tripping his knees—his elbow clinks against the concrete—pool’s edge, droplets coloring the cement ruby.
Of course, despite the crack that twinged in his nape, and his illegal blindness, and the pulse in his forehead, Theo’s head raises to squint at Boris: body open, shaking his used hand, hopeful for his touch even if it breaks him.
After hydrating the outside enough, Theo’s chest peels from the ground.
Their blood deepens the pool’s lucency, twirling together with each plunge and wail and cry and nails’ dig—the wheezes for air after being held under by another—the thick substance coating their throat’s insides, only emitted if the touch was painful enough. The red sun in the middle embraces the boys only so much, caressing only their edges. Their bodies slick together, pool’s liquid smoothing their skin, so well that their fingers have slipped into a thread, and that their metallic-contaminated gasps meet one-another.
A grasp escapes, and there’s a tug at Theo’s scalp: “Potter—Theo.”
The scarlet they had spent so much time beating out of each other meet at their lips, the simple metal surging into ferrous, their selves slipping against one-another. Boris’s grasp pulls Theo close, Theo’s only gently meeting Boris before it deepens. With each pull away for a huff of air, a string of pinked blood threads from their chest—then from lips to neck, mouth to chest, then lips to the swell that formed beneath his eye.
Theo wants his glasses—to see, to capture this disgusting moment sharper. No, he doesn’t. It would be hard to swallow—would he see through the block of his nose—? Is it better to keep this moment a blur?
(Most of the time, it is).