Cobb sits in the husk of his father’s life work, the gentle hum of empty freezers infecting the spaces between his thoughts, a couple of cans of petrol rusting next to his legs, and he lifts up another smoke, breathing in the ash without tasting it.

“One helluva fresh start,” Cobb murmurs, tipping his head back to the neon sign above the counter. The pink light washes over the planes of his face and it isn’t a sunrise, not even the benediction of stained glass, but it’s something all the same.

⁂

The delivery is running late.

Haemorrhaging across the sky is a wash of pinks and oranges, competing with the lurid neon tones of the sign washing over every crack and kicked stone in the parking lot. Cobb hadn’t bothered paving it, tamping down the ground enough that it wouldn’t shift easily and spending an agonising week every winter remarking the bays where the bigger trucks can spend the night. The earth is flat here, sky and earth blurring at the horizon until Cobb fancies he could just walk far enough that he’d reach the distant uncaring stars and get to cut his knuckles on their edges.

It’s that self-same horizon he’s watching while lying to himself that he isn’t.

The cloth wrapped around his fingers is damp, a few drops of cleaning solution falling onto the toe of his boot and darkening the leather. Chewing the flat of his tongue, Cobb lifts the cloth, a tributary beginning to slide down his arm before he throws it into the bucket. It slaps against the side dully, the scent of lemon disinfectant beginning to seep into the stitches of his clothes along with the everpresent aroma of sugar that had been an unexpected side effect of his decision.

There’s a chill in the air, the night just beginning to put out questioning fingers and the final freezer door propped open behind him. The hair on the back of his neck prickles, the sensation crawling down his spine and the slope of his arms. He should have closed the shop by now, called it all a lost cause and have himself two drinks deep in a radio show by now, but something keeps him tethered to this spot. If Cobb had any shades of a religious man left in him, he would have called it blind faith in some higher power, but he doesn’t anymore. Living had a way of grinding down some parts of a man into powder that blows away with a breeze, hollowing out others until something new can put down roots and grow in the space left behind.

It’s not a crush.

Cobb’s a man grown and gone silver several times over by now. Crushes are for the sweet young things that make the trip out on the weekends to sit, knees knocking together, giggling over a shared cone then swapping strawberry flavoured kisses in the small pool of shade in the back corner of the parking lot. Crushes are for better men than he could ever be with bright futures laid out in front of them instead of already ground into the dirt. Cobb isn’t ashamed of his past, proud of what he’s accomplished despite the deck being balanced against him, but it still stains him in some indescribable way.

He doesn’t have a crush on his missing delivery man. Instead, Cobb is hopelessly and completely in love with him.

“Now, this ain’t no way to behave,” Cobb murmurs, trying to convince the universe just as much as himself. He scrubs the flat of his palm, still damp from the cloth, over the stubble just beginning to itch along his jaw, and turns away from his vigil. His gaze lands squarely on the bowl sitting just inside the humming freezer.

It’s nothing special, one scoop of regular chocolate, another of strawberry, and one randomly selected blueberry cheesecake scoop. Then, on top, hot fudge sauce, chocolate chips, and peanuts. Specific but not at the same time, technically forgettable amongst the steady stream of others an oddity like Vanth’s Parlour coaxes in through the doors, but Cobb remembers. He remembers because he can’t do anything but. He had made it up a few hours ago, his normal delivery time, and moved it to the freezer when the spoon had begun to sag against the side of the bowl. Stupid treacherous heart.

He can’t even bring himself to eat it, sweetness turned sickly in his nose, the cloying congealed mess of flavours running together turning his stomach. He should throw it away, but he doesn’t dare move away from the horizon to do so. If he does, he’ll have to admit the dull smudge in the distance might be nothing more than his imagination, just his mind playing tricks on him to prolong his instance of agony.

Cobb blinks once more, opening his eyes wide enough for the night to peek inside to his soul. The smudge might have gotten bigger, might even be considered a haze now, some wavering formless thing springing into life along the winding black asphalt that tears through the landscape like a sewn wound. Cobb’s teeth catch against the jagged edge of his nail and he tears himself free, blood beading dark and insistent. Not just a haze, but a figure. On foot and pushing the husk of his motorbike next to him, occasionally skipping a step or two to keep up with the gentle decline.

Moving deeper into the parlour, Cobb picks up the bowl from the freezer, shoving the door closed. The spoon knocks against the edge as he turns, catching the front door before the bell overhead can chime, and he holds the bowl up once he’s sure Din is close enough to make it out.

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s rude to keep a lady waiting?” Cobb calls, unable to keep the grin from his face. It aches, pulling at the corners of his mouth, his nose crinkling beneath the sheer weight of it.

Din looks up at the sound of Cobb’s voice. He’s still wearing his helmet, the visor pushed back to reveal deeply mournful eyes that brighten when he focuses on Cobb standing in the doorway. His curls would be flattened to his head with sweat, several shades darker than they would be in half an hour, and his leathers are pale with dust and grime. It strikes a strange chord in Cobb’s mind, almost as if in another life he’d be standing in the doorway of their shared home, watching Din make his way up the garden path, white picket fence just behind him, Cobb in pink pinstripes with rollers in his hair, the seam of his stockings straight enough to make up for the fact he isn’t.

“Sorry ma’am,” Din answers, closer now, gentler. He blinks up at Cobb from beneath a sweep of dark lashes. “I’ll try to break down in your parking lot in future.”

“See that you do,” Cobb answers, his grin cracking through the facade of prim and proper he’s fighting to keep balanced on his face. “Now, come on in, you can rest your bike in the little shed round back once you’ve sat a stretch. Can’t imagine there’d be anyone wandering past who’d steal it but better safe than sorry.”

He can taste the ghost of his parent’s when he speaks sometimes but can’t string the memory together well enough to know if it’s the petrol-ash of his daddy’s words or the lemon cut with sugar of his mother’s. Cobb steps back on legs that feel like they’re going to buckle beneath him, unsteady in the familiar territory he’s been haunting all these years, and Din moves in tandem with him, settling his bike onto the ground and hefting a holdall further up onto his back. He catches the door that slips from Cobb’s fingers, his hand leaving a heavy smudge against the paler wood inside.

Din colours at the sight of it, the door dropping from numb fingers. The flush settles high over the bridge of his nose, descending low over the stripe of skin Cobb can make out at the junction of his helmet and shirt. Din doesn’t fidget, making to pull his helmet off and strip his gloves at the same time, but Cobb stops him with a wave of his hand, herding Din towards one of the booths. “Sit, eat. I’ll sort the rest, don’t you worry.”

Cobb presses his hand into the small of Din’s back, sliding the bowl of ice cream in front of him. After a moment of consideration, he heads back to the counter, leaning over the top to grab one of the clean glasses from behind. The drink machines had been disconnected and cleaned, the nozzles bobbing about in a bowl of solution, but water would be better after a trek halfway through the desert. The pipes rattle, a heavy distant sound that echoes in the empty space of his bones, some fragment of memory putting down a handful more of thread-wide white roots, and he turns back to Din before he can stumble after it.

On the table, facing away to stare out of the window, Din’s helmet sits. There’s a faded sticker over the nape of its neck, something that had once been green before time got to it. Some of Din’s curls are still askew from his long walk and Cobb reaches for them as he slides into the seat opposite Din. His feet knock against Din’s boots, sand gritty beneath his soles, but it doesn’t matter as Din leans into his touch.

There’s sweat, the everpresent tang of sugar in the air, and Cobb’s heart stutters into a delicate start. This could be something, something he could have. Din grins up at him, a smudge of ice cream on his lower lip, and he nudges the bowl towards Cobb. “Share with me?”