Soooooo, this is a little fic that I’ve been stopping and starting for a while now. I have a few more parts lined up but I’ll only post them if people are interested, so let me know if you want to see more :)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The first thing Bill was aware of was a terrible pain. He’d never known anything quite like it; it seared deeper inside than he was aware existed. Everything burned with a strange, cold fire. Something in his head was pounding and pounding, the ache growing constantly, forcing his eyes open.
He wasn’t entirely sure where he had assumed he was, and yet was still surprised to be greeted with a vibrant array of colours. It was like the colours he was used to had suddenly been magnified; he was sure the green of those trees was different, deeper, to the ones at home.
Slowly, he began to become aware of his surroundings. First, he felt warm sand beneath his back, tickling his neck and the palms of his hands. Then, gradually, the wider expanse of the pale blue sky and azure sea. Finally, the blurry mass of black hair and tanned skin directly in front of him.
“Bill? Are you alright?” Simon. Of course it was Simon who would be the first to appear in a time of crisis.
“Yeah, I think so.” He attempted to sit up, wincing slightly, but the pain was lessening every second after the initial shock of collision. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know. I just woke up, over there-” he gestured vaguely to a spot further up the beach. “-and then I saw you lying here. I think the others must be here too, but I haven’t seen anyone else yet.”
“Oh.” His vision had almost stopped swimming, and he could now make out the beauty of their location in full detail. “Wait, we were on a plane, weren’t we? Did it crash?”
He glimpsed a flash of memory, of fire and speed and screams-
“Must have.” Simon replied, pushing his hair off his face. “Gosh, it’s hot here, isn’t it?”
Bill was suddenly aware of the fact that the other boy had discarded his cloak already, and it was lying half buried in the sand a few feet away. Funny, he couldn’t remember a time he’d seen him without his cloak on- unsurprising, he supposed, given that they never saw each other outside of choir. But now, Simon seemed smaller, more fragile, and yet there was a sort of grace to his movements. How odd, that the removal of nothing more than a cloak could lay bare the very essence of a person.
“What’s that in your hand?” Bill queried.
“Oh, nothing.” Simon responded, placing the object on his lap. “Just my watch. I think it must have got broken when we crashed.” Sure enough, the glass was cracked and the hands were stopped, but the leather strap was still intact.
“That’s a shame. It’s nice.”
Simon smiled in response. They sat for a while, letting the sun brush their faces in swathes of light.
“I’ve never been somewhere quite this warm before. I expect there’s all sorts of different creatures, in the jungle over there. We should go exploring.”
The corners of Bill’s mouth tugged slightly at the distant look in Simon’s eyes. It was sweet, really. Peaceful. Almost beautiful.