#dds au

People couldn’t fly, they told him, which made no sense whatsoever, because he could. Not while he was awake, perhaps. Later, he’d decide ‘not while he was in this shape’, but not be able to explain what he meant, to himself or anyone else.

The wing tattoos he gets across his shoulders aren’t quite right. He’s never been the feathery type, but the suggestion of bat wings instead makes him feel sick for a full minute. So, bright macaw feathers, across his back and down his shoulders.

The other design, the one on his thigh, he drew while higher than he ever wanted to be again with his feet still on the ground. He’d explained it to everyone else there, but none of them remembered what he’d said either. The redhead he'd met at that party said at the time that the design Cielo had come up with on the spot for him was ‘a true reflection of his inner soul’. Later, Heat would say instead, “it's a fuckin comet with teeth, what the fuck d’you want?”, which is a much closer reflection of his soul in Cielo’s opinion.

He meets Serph while working in an accessories store. He’d be fired two weeks later, but they’d let him get away with too much already, just because his hair was like blue cotton candy and his smile was bright and wide, and children liked him. He meets Serph, who’s looking to get his ears pierced, or something, and for a moment, he thinks he sees something on his face. Trick of the light, perhaps?

Cielo hasn’t got any piercing qualifications yet, so he offers to do Serph’s ears for free after hours, if he comes back. Most people think he's joking when he says that. Serph shrugs in a way that some part of Cielo recognises as acquiescence, and leaves.

His eyes linger on Cielo’s thighs before he turns and goes. Anyone else and he'd’ve assumed they were checking him out or astounded by how short his shorts were - but this guy with the strange pale eyes was definitely just looking at his tattoo. He doesn’t say anything, though.

Cielo thinks he might understand this guy anyway.

Serph doesn't make a noise when the needle goes through his cartilage, either. The familiarity of how quiet he is is what surprises Cielo, not the quietness.

He doesn’t see him again until he’s working at the cute little goth boutique and his hair's in big bouncy braids, and Heat tells Cielo that his ‘friend or whatever’ is looking for housemates. When he and Heat show up at the place to see if it's any good, Cielo finds the strangest sense of safety besides Heat’s friend (or whatever), Gale, and he can't not grin when Serph slouches into the kitchen ten minutes later, only to stop with one hand in a cereal box to stare at the new possible renters.

“Serph,” Heat chokes out.

Apparently they’d gone to the same school.

Later, Heat would tell him about the kids Serph had brutalised out of nowhere when they were 14; how Heat heard about it secondhand, and seeing the scabs on Serph’s knuckles and the bruise on his face had resulted in an instant, but fleeting crush. Cielo would point out that he was blushing, and suggest that it wasn't so fleeting, and Heat would punch him.

Later still, Serph would mention that he'd always felt drawn to Heat, but even when they got summer jobs at the same shitty game store, the year Heat dyed his hair black, he'd never felt like he would notice him  and had given up. Cielo would open his mouth to ask if he'd really given up, only to be interrupted by Heat insisting that that was bullshit: there was no way he’d forget Serph working in the same place as him. Serph would roll his eyes and the two would tussle off the sofa and onto the floor and Cielo would call Heat’s dogs over to break it up with fur and slobber.

Their final housemate is a girl from Serph and Gale’s old student house, still working on her medical degree, and Cielo is only surprised that her hair’s just dip-dyed pink, instead of all the way. She says she’s a vegetarian, and when he catches her with KFC after a nasty breakup he promises not to tell. She shares her meat and cries more about it than about the girl. He tries to sympathise, and reassures her she’ll find someone better. Two weeks later, she’s happily pining for the punk girl who works at the health food shop she likes. Cielo wonders if she has green hair, like another time he still can’t quite pin down.

Sometimes, he worries about the things that don’t surprise him. Gnaws his lip to shreds thinking about where these thoughts come from - about what’s right and real, and what’s not. Sometimes he forgets about all that and he’s just an ordinary kid with too much hair and weird friends. That scares him more.

He dreams of flying, still. Darting between lightning flashes and feeling beautiful and free.

But now he knows Serph and Heat’s dreams are just as strong and twice as violent, full of cold rain and hot blood - now he knows Argilla goes into the garden to get dirt under her nails when she’s stressed - now he knows Gale’s thoughts on reincarnation, and that the colour of the skies he remembers are the same as in Cielo’s dreams.

One time when Serph was really out of it, exhausted and not really all there, he called Cielo ‘Dyaus’, and Cielo burst into tears