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Here isn’t for everyone, but it’s been solid, easy to get lost in, which Ruben has always counted as a pro. It’s why he picked the damn place. There hadn’t been pushback, which was par for the course, because Ruben was not a man who entertained that kind of shit. But he had been ready for a bit of a fight on it and then been surprised when none arrived. Probably what contributed to the fact was that not many had cared.
Ruben is alone every time he goes. The remoteness of the place makes it nice for thinking in and pissing off cliffs and such. Today there’s clouds roiling overhead, ready to hack a fat wad onto the stark green rolling hills. Looks to be about a bit before it’ll even start, so Ruben is in the clear. Whether it rains or not doesn’t matter anyhow, because this is a path he’s got to journey every day, full stop. His feet crunch on the pebbles of the skinny trail that snakes through the hills, the only sound for miles except for the alone-together howling of the wind in Ruben’s ears. It talks to him sometimes, the wind, laughs low in Ruben’s ear. Sometimes he thinks that it is him. Sometimes he talks back, but today he hasn’t opened his mouth once and doesn’t plan to start anytime soon.
At the large craggy rock, Ruben makes a meandering left off the path and up the hill, loam and tussocks of grass enveloping his feet and making the steep climb harder than it needs to be. The rocks around him tower and pile, leaning towards each other but never quite touching. Ruben trudges between them, dwarfed, shoulders hunched inward against the frigid air. Mud’s caked on his boots. Cold sweat beads on his brow and trickles stream-like down his face and neck. In his leather coat, he’s sweltering hot but everything else is frozen. His hands, especially. Ruben tries not to make a habit of freezing them, but it hardly matters now.
Even so, Ruben shoves his hands in his pockets, puffing. The mist billows from his mouth. When he was a wee boy, his da told him it was his soul escaping his body to try and flee the cold. The next time Ruben went outside, he almost passed out from trying not to breathe.
When he grew older still, he would vomit in the toilet and pretend that it was his feelings all fleeing him. It cleansed him. Now, the old bastard is dead and Ruben doesn’t have any excuse for childish pansy shit like that. His stomach is churning though, churlish. Maybe hungry. It’s been a couple hours since Ruben even thought about food. He’s got no one who dares to make him eat, and no one in general.
Ruben powers on, savoring the burn in his legs, the only part of his body that necessitates function. Up, up, up, he goes until the boulders on either side of him fall away, and there he is, alone on a hill. The quilts his mam used to make ages ago, before she lost the will, were always kind of shite—obviously he had never dared to say so or she would’ve boxed him around the ears—always ugly brown and green haphazard patches of scavenged bargain bin fabric with clumps of darker green stitching that was probably supposed to be birds. The highlands don’t look dissimilar to them from above, at least in the winter. No real point to any of it, really. Ruben doesn’t stop to look.
He keeps climbing up the hill, further and further away from the ugly quilt. If he squints, there’s a view of the ocean on the horizon, but it blends with the highlands so well on a cloudy day that he can’t even guess where land ends and sea begins.
The steady incline of green leads him up into the cloud-leaden sky and Ruben submerges himself among them, weighed down by the slate mist. The view is gone now, and the only thing he can see is the mossy ground in front of him, but barely a couple paces ahead. Faintly, he can hear the unceasing roar of the ocean leagues below. Not much longer now.
The fog lets up a little, and Ruben bursts out into the sea-soaked air, the wind clutching at him in gales. Ahead of him, there is a large white stone, polished to a high shine. Mine, it says, simply. Ruben kneels in front of it, lets the bag down from his shoulders and pulls out a fresh bouquet of red roses. Chucks the previous week’s withered ones off the edge. Carefully sets the new ones down.
And then, like every day, he puts his forehead to the rock and breathes in, out. Shakes. The wind wails mournfully in his ears, caresses his hair in sorrowful strokes. Time moves.
When he gets up, his whole body is stiff and aches. He groans, huffs, repositions with his back to the stone and stares out to sea. He’d tried to pick a good spot, the kind of view that would be appreciated. Here, only a few feet away, the very point of the cliff pierces the horizon like a sgian dubh, carving out a view of sky and sea in one fell swoop. On most days, Ruben can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. He would like it, Ruben thinks. Had always talked about the cliffs when they were younger and got no money to visit the seaside.
Out of the corner of his eye, his empty bag starts to blow away back down where Ruben came from. He swears, stumbles after it on pins-and-needles legs. When Ruben turns around, bag clutched in stiffly cold hands, he almost drops it again.
There’s a figure standing on the other side of the cliff and near the edge, kilt blowing in the wind. Ruben squints. No one had followed him here.
Then the figure turns. The bag in Ruben’s hands falls to the breeze.
Ruben stares, mouth agape. “The fuck did you come from?”
Niall smiles, closed-mouth. His eyes crinkle, warm and free of reserve in a way Ruben hasn’t seen from him since they first met as kids.
Ruben drinks the whole of him in, disbelieving.
Niall smooths down his sky-white collared shirt. Readjusts his kilt, a green that blends into the hills. Extends a hand, which Ruben is not going to risk taking. “Fancy a dance?”
Ruben sniffs, nose starting to run. “Fuck no, that’s pussy shit. What do you take me for?” He attempts a derisive laugh, but it falls off the cliff, croaks on the rocks far below.
Niall shrugs, kicks off his shoes and socks. “Be that way.”
In Ruben’s vision, Niall’s face wavers, blurs, settles. He steps onto the bare grey edge of the cliff face, faces the roar, the froth of the waves. Raises his arms and kicks once, twice, swings a bare foot joyfully. Turns back again, eyes bright.
“Take your damn shoes off, Ruben.” This time, his voice brooks no disagreement.
Ruben’s hands are absent of feeling, cold and shaking and no help as he unlaces his boots. Niall seems to be warming up on the rocks, touching his toes, shaking his arms out. Ruben wants to laugh at the sight of it—Niall had always been a hapless cow in PE—but it had never less felt like an occasion where he was able to do such a thing. Finally his shoes tumble off, thud to the ground as he hops from one foot to the other, probably looking like a fucking fool in the process. Niall is turned to look at him and he’s laughing, loud and full. Ruben half-expects the anger to surge up and slash the smile from his face, but it doesn’t. There has been nothing to fill the pit in his chest since, not anger, not anything. Now that Niall’s face is within view again, the pit is only filled with him.
Ruben strips off his socks and flings them into the wind, one by one. Dares to grin back, feels it crack his face open. His jaw aches from disuse, but it’s a good kind of pain.
Niall’s hair leaps in the wind, whirling around his face. “Let’s go, Ruben,” he says, voice carrying on the current.
Ruben approaches the edge carefully. Niall’s in position already, arms up, feet spread. Standing next to him, it’s almost like he’s really there. Ruben is careful not to stand too near, lest Niall disappear in front of his eyes. Niall grins at him. “You can hear it, right? The music?”
“No, you cunt. I can’t hear anything.”
“No,” Niall says, and makes a wild sweeping gesture. He almost wobbles off the cliff, and a wave of alarm sweeps through Ruben’s entire being. More than anything, he wants to catch Niall in his arms, but Niall is fine, recovers fast, says, “The wind.”
And all of a sudden, Ruben can hear it, a chorus of thousands of voices whistling around him, blowing up from the bounding sea. Niall rises up onto one foot, bounces a little, kicks the other out. Ruben follows him, slower and rougher. Closes his eyes to the sound of Niall’s cheerful puffing breaths, in and out, in and out, and lets himself find the beat. He doesn’t know what to say, but maybe he doesn’t have to say anything.
“You never danced with me in school, you know that?” Niall says, out of breath. “Remember PE, with the partner dances and all that?”
He grins, but it’s bittersweet. “You’d always go with some bird.”
Ruben swallows and blinks against the wind stinging his eyes. “I couldn’t.”
He had wanted to, though. Bambi had always looked so miserable, limply leading his partner around. Ruben could’ve made Niall laugh in a heartbeat if they were dancing together. He would’ve clutched his sweaty hand hard and spun him out further than anybody else. Niall would have giggled so loud and so often that the PE teacher would’ve called them out for roughhousing.
Niall sighs. “I know.” Then he extends a hand again. “You lead.”
Ruben stares at his hand. If he does, Niall might disappear. This could be the last time he ever gets to see his face.
“Hey. Trust me.” Niall wiggles his hand enticingly. Ruben stares, dubious. Generally speaking, trusting Niall never goes well.
Niall rolls his eyes, like he knows what Ruben is thinking—which. He very well could.
“Just take it. I’m here.”
Ruben tentatively reaches out, grasps it. Niall’s hand, warm and soft. He strokes it twice, gently, just to make sure that he isn’t dreaming. Socks himself in the jaw, to triple check. Pain explodes through his face.
It’s real. He’s real.
He clenches Niall’s hand in his and yanks Niall towards him all in one great movement. Niall oomphs into his chest, hugs Ruben’s body in his parasitic way.
“Niall. Niall. My Niall. It’s really you.” Ruben murmurs into Niall’s shoulder, clutches him tighter around the waist, rocks him back and forth. The solid warmth of him, the wiry muscle of his stomach and back, the familiar pull of hands clutching at his shoulders. It’s him, it’s him, it’s him. Every inch of Niall is in Ruben’s arms again. He takes a deep breath of Niall’s hair, shoves his nose into the crook of Niall’s neck and gets to the stink of him, the core of him. His Bambi.
It’s been so long.
“I missed you.” Niall whispers into Ruben’s heart. His voice cracks. For once, Ruben can’t bring himself to take the piss.
He arranges them in a slow dance, Niall’s kilt swishing against Ruben’s pants. Steps forward, back, his feet aligning with Niall’s. Pain throbs through his toes. Curiously, Ruben lifts his foot up and there’s blood all over the rocky ground. Must’ve been something sharp. Niall winces too, lifts his to display a long cut almost down the whole of the bottom. “Matching.”
Ruben huffs a laugh, tugs Niall back in. Puts rough hands on Niall’s hips and moves them to the sound of the crashing waves. Niall sighs and puddles his head on Ruben’s shoulder. Ruben is full to bursting, can’t contain it all, so he whoops and spins Niall out. Niall goes, surprised but delighted, rising on tiptoe, twirling, finishing cleanly in Ruben’s arms.
There’s a lull, then, as they slowly move as one. Ruben slows his breath down to sync with Niall’s, grasps at his windswept hair, the back of his head, the nape of his delicate neck. Hums into Niall’s ear, “Come back to finish me off, aye?”
“Always.” Niall sinks into him, and Ruben sways enough for the both of them, gentle and slow, hooks a finger under his jaw and pulls it upwards. Brushes the first raindrop off his nose. Gazes into Niall’s eyes, the infinite depth of them, the endless expanse he now knows to be love.
And he tips them both off the cliff.