#burning red

Red.

It was the color of his pain, the color of his fear, his loss. It was the color of the skin that rimmed his eyes, scraped raw from hurt and distress and one too many smokes taken in a desperate, futile attempt to calm himself before he broke completely. The color of his blood as it dripped from a split in his lip, a violent contrast to the dirty tile beneath their feet.

It was Nathan’s color, and it was the sharpest point of everything Warren remembered about him.

It was a color Warren had tried so hard to avoid, despite the fact avoiding a color made no sense at all. It was everywhere; in everything. It plagued Warren's mind every time he thought he had forgotten, filled his brain with flashes of that night over, and over, and over again.

The blood, the pain, the fabric of his jacket Warren had reached out to touch that one last time. The reality that came crashing down around him when he woke the next morning to police swarming the dorms.

Red was Nathan's color.

And Warren could not forget.

-

He had texted the number on the letter almost immediately after finding it, leaving Chloe and Max to tease him as he lunged around the room looking for the phone that had been placed neatly on the counter and then buried underneath the junk mail he had dropped.

His heart had hammered in his throat as he typed out, with shaking fingers,

It's Warren. How did you find me?

Not how did you get my address. Not why did you think to send me a letter when you spent so many years keeping them to yourself. Not why didn't you just come see me yourself.

How did you find me?

And Warren realized: he wasn't only talking about that very moment. Nathan had found him in the bay, had attended his lecture, and that hadn't been a coincidence.

Nathan had found Warren. And Warren had let him go. Again.

Nathan had texted back surprisingly quickly, considering he couldn't have known when the letter would arrive.

Max gave me your address, so don’t break your big brain trying to figure out how I got my hands on it.

Warren had stared at the message when it came in, the entire moment feeling surreal. He thought he'd seen he last of Nathan—hell, hadn't even been totally sure he'd been real when it happened—and yet, here was a text, supposedly from the man himself.

Warren just barely stopped himself from asking Chloe, who was now deep in conversation with Max over the stability of a double-stacked paddle board for extra flotation beneath her feet, to pinch him, knowing she'd probably "mishear" as punch. Instead, he took a shaky breath, and he answered back.

And then they just… continued. Texting, occasionally writing, even if it was redundant. Calling on occasion, sometimes with a movie streaming between them on the nights they couldn't sleep.

And life continued on.

-

Warren found his first excuse to be back in Arcadia Bay in the form of Blackwell, again. Nathan wasn't allowed to ask for permission to leave the state until he'd gone long enough following the terms of his parole, so Warren had contacted the school and offered up his services as an adjunct professor for a term.

They'd rejected him, but allowed him down for another special lecture following the success of his previous one. He'd accepted it without even thinking on it twice.

“You’re smiling,” Max said the evening he'd accepted, leaning over the island counter with a mug of coffee gripped in her fingers. Warren startled like he was holding a dirty secret, the phone nearly slipping right from his grip where his fingers clenched in too tight, and Max’s own smile widened. “Get a good review from one of your students again? I know how those always make your month.”

"Yeah," Warren said, a little too quickly, immediately outing himself.

Max cocked her head, brow furrowing. It took far too little time for that wrinkle to smooth back out. "You're talking to him, aren't you."

It wasn't a question. Warren had never admitted to his continued interactions with Nathan following that first text, both Max and Chloe assuming the first contact had been because Nathan had wanted to apologize for his actions back at Blackwell, but neither of them had ever asked. Apparently, they had also assumed it wouldn't.

Warren sighed and said, again, "Yeah," but with a tone of defeat.

Max watched him for a moment, clearly trying to figure something out.

"Well," she finally said, "you're smiling, so he's not blackmailing you. Are you friends now?"

"Kind of?" He'd never been very good at lying, but he didn't know what they were, and friends was a close enough estimation. "We're still kinda working through what happened back when we were kids."

"That's not really what I was expecting when I agreed to give him your address." She paused, pursing her lips. Likely thinking of Nathan's past, and all the terrible things he had done. "Do I need to worry about this, Warren?"

The urge to immediately tell her she didn't was strong enough that Warren had to audibly choke on the word no as it rushed up his throat. Because he didn't want her to have to worry about this, but the problem was, even if they had been talking for well over two months now, Nathan as he was now was still a stranger to Warren, and the Nathan he had been existed longer in Warren's memory. Nathan might not be that messed up teenager he'd been the last time Warren had seen him, but Warren wasn't exactly sure who he was now.

And he couldn't let his heart do the talking.

"I don't think so," he decided on. He still held the phone tight in his hand, and his knuckles were starting to ache. "I really don't think he's that person anymore." He hesitated, then, remembering the shower stall, said, "I don't think he was that person the last time I saw him, either. He changed that night he turned himself in."

That didn't seem to satisfy her, but she only sighed, took a sip of her coffee, and said, "Just don't fall in love."

"Me?" Warren said, mock-aghast, "Fall in love? Pfft. Never." He rapped his knuckles against his chest. "Steel heart in here."