#xw

“I don’t wanna have this argument with you, man.”

“It’s not an ar-argument, because I’m right.”

Xavier’s sighs with exaggerated defeat, hands thrown in the air, hip cocked against the kitchen counter. He gathers the energy to argue with Benny—a man who is very good at arguing—and says, “Look, I just don’t think armpits are hot.”

Benny makes an affronted noise, finally dog earing a page in his book and tossing it down on the pub style table. It was a stolen piece of furniture they’d hauled as a unit up to the apartment a year and a half ago, with knife marks and graffiti covering it. It was home to the three of them, more than the apartment, because they so often gather there—as they are right then. Lark sits across from Benny, early morning scruffy hair messy and eyes bleary with sleep. Despite being the youngest of the three friends, he seems a great deal more mature, bowing out of the conversation with his nose in his phone. His eyes still blink as if in slow motion, though, the night prior clinging to him in every way.

 “You are denying a f-fundamental part of yourself, Xavier,” Benny protests, folding thick arms over his chest. He’s arguably the most awake of them all; but it’s also likely he’s just not slept yet, either. Benny kept strange habits and one of those habits was not having a habit involving sleep at all. “Lark, help me out.”

“No,” the runner answers quickly and simply. His slim, pale thumb flicks his phone screen—if someone were to peer over his shoulder, they would see a social media feed. A loop of people’s various complaints and diary entries interspersed with the very pretty pictures of his girlfriend. Pictures he was trying not to linger on, else he start checking who is interacting with them and putting himself in a sour mood all before breakfast. “Don’t start a queer culture lecture, it ended badly last time.”

At that, all of them turn to look at a crack in the kitchen wall; an indent made by Benny’s shoulder from a collision. Xavier having shoved far harder than he probably meant to, during a nasty spat that could have stopped before it started if Benny was any better about not pressing a point when he felt he was in the right.

Which was most of the time.

“I’m not lecturing,” Benny says, in a tone that suggests otherwise. He tucks fists in front of his head, then wiggles fingers outward. His blue eyes are so wide, the pale irises are full circles. “I’m expanding y-your mind.”

“I feel like expanding your mind shouldn’t happen before ten thirty in the morning,” Xavier complains.

“Okay, imagine a h-hot guy.”

Unbidden—and quite simply, immediately—images of Benji swim into Xavier’s conscious. Benji after rugby practice, using the edge of his shirt to wipe sweat from his face. Benji taking cautious sips from a pint of beer, wincing at the pale ale foam that he doesn’t really enjoy. Benji glancing up at him from under thick lashes, smiling at a stupid joke Xavier had made in an attempt to see that smile. Benji. Crouching on the sidewalk to pet an alley cat that hated everyone but chirruped to see him. Benji. Benji. With his rich, brown skin and his defined, curving nose. Benji. Broad palmed and thick legged, his deep voice and Benji—Benji, standing in Xavier’s room, asking what he wanted to do today, with the simple implication that it would be done together.

“Uh,” Xavier mumbles, scratching a shy finger down the bridge of his long, thin nose. “Okay.”

“Now picture,” Benny continues, in a whispering voice, standing from the table and moving his hands in front of Xavier’s eyes like a hypnotist. “Picture th-that hot guy laying in bed.” Oh no. “And he’s shirtless.” Oh. Fuck. Oh no. “And h-he’s got his arms up, hands tucked behind h-his head.”

Benny slaps both hands on Xavier’s shoulders, his face deadly serious.

“Where do you look first?”

“Not his fucking armpits!”

“You f-fucking suck, Xavier, you know that?”

“Please,” Lark groans, smacking his phone face down onto the sacred breakfast table. Benny’s half filled mug of coffee that he doesn’t need jumps with the force. Lark pinches the bridge of his nose, expression twisted with annoyance. “Please. Til broke up with me last night, can you guys shut the fuck up?”

Xavier and Benny share a glance between them then—a unifying look, that bonds them despite their differing opinions on mens armpits. It’s one of pity and also understanding that both of them should probably leave the apartment, or they’ll be there for the entirety of the couples fight and reconciliation.

—

Xavier’s still thinking about it hours later, though.

Doesn’t help that hours later, he’s laying on Benji’s bed, staring at Benji’s ceiling, while Benji sits at a meager desk and taps angrily at a nearly broken laptop. His hair falls messily in several directions, a hand continually scruffing through it in frustration. He sits there, grunting stormily, mumbling under his breath, a knee bouncing. Sits there in sweatpants that are cotton soft and thin, charcoal gray and flimsy. In an oversized band t-shirt that’s had the arms all but ripped off.

The rubik’s cube he’s been slowly solving slips from his hands and smacks into his brow bone, making Xavier yelp.

“Good?” Benji asks, looking over his shoulder. His wild hair nearly obscures that single, dark eye. That look pierces through Xavier’s stomach, filling him with heat and butterflies and also pain and agony and a horniness that feels nearly illegal.

“Good!” Xavier grins widely, flashing two thumbs up. Benji snorts, shakes his head and turns back to his work. Xavier doesn’t resume the cube; he would have solved it by now if he were taking it seriously. Benji always had a random one in his room, for whenever Xavier needed to sit and think and move his hands. Only Xavier can’t sit and think and move his hands right now. It’s only making it worse. He tosses the cube to the end of the bed and tucks his hands behind his head. That pose suddenly makes it much worse, so he folds them over his stomach instead.

It simmers hotly, a feeling that overtakes his legs and up through his chest. Xavier feels as though he is suffering a terrible curse that Benny has explicitly put him under for crimes of being…not gay enough. Which feels contradictory to the thoughts he’s having about the man just a foot away from him—foot, Xavier thinks, snickering to himself. There’s a joke at Benny’s expense somewhere in there…

“Sure you’re good? Quiet.” Benji leans with an arm slung around the back of his chair. It creaks as he rocks back, tilting until it’s on two legs.

“I got a question for you.”

“’Aven’t got an answer.”

“Fuck off,” Xavier swings a leg off the bed, kicking at Benji, who snickers to himself. He swats at the socked foot that threatens a chair leg. “It’s Benny’s fault.”

“Pfft. Even less of an answer for that one, mate.”

“When you figured out you liked guys—” Xavier pauses, swinging his attention to the ceiling, his cheeks pink. “What did you notice first?”

The stretch of silence cools the warm, syrupy feeling that had replaced his blood. Nervous, he glances Benji’s way, to see him hunched back over his anatomy textbook. The muscles in his arm look sculpted, his tattoos black on his dark brown skin. So many of them, so many hinting at more he can’t see. His shirt, hanging open, revealing the curve of his pectoral. The slight peek of dark underarm hair. Maybe it was sexy. Was it sexy? He liked the hair on Benji’s forearms and his stomach—the heat returns, pleasant until he realizes his friend still hasn’t spoken.

When he sits up, thinking something might be wrong, Benji shrugs his shoulders. A curl of black hair falls messily into his face. Benji flips a page in his text book.

“Always been partial to arms.”

Xavier pauses, sitting there, staring at the back of Benji’s head, as if he’s going to memorize all those messy strands.

—

“Eighteen—nineteen—twenty—”

“Is he asleep?”

Xavier lowers the weight in his hand until its resting on his thigh, though his arm trembles at the movement. Lark—one leg bent, sneakered foot in hand for a hamstring stretch—points at a figure laying on the ground beside them both. Benny’s chest moves in a soft, even rhythm. A sweatshirt lays over his face, hands folded across his stomach. His shirt has slid up slightly to reveal his pale tattooed stomach, the legs of a spider and the hint of a handgun. There’s no snoring, but it’s sort of obvious that he’s asleep.

“Yeah.”

“Dude, gross. These floors have every version of bacteria a place can have. It’s a fucking gym.”

Xavier hefts the weight in his hand up, curling his arm and breathing out through his mouth. Beads of sweat linger at his hairline. He’s lost his rep count, but maybe he should just go until his biceps hurt. More than they already do. He switches the weight into his other hand and then hefts, curling his arm, muscle bunching in protest. Benny shifts on the ground beside him, groaning and flopping arms above his head. The way they bend stretches the fabric of his short sleeve shirt, tightening around considerably thick muscled arms.

“Why,” Xavier says, huffing through his mouth, curling his arm once more. “Does Benny have—any muscle mass—when he does nothing?” Lark switches legs, looking like a bleached flamingo. The stretch is so easy for him, he barely needs to move; just pops a foot up and balances. A duo of girls wanders by, flirtatious in their staring, but he pretends not to notice them. The public gym was always a gamble for Lark, on who would recognize him.

“White trash strength,” he explains with a sneer.

“Fuck you,” comes huffily from underneath the sweatshirt draped over Benny’s face. Xavier tilts his head like a curious dog, examining the tattoos that disappear underneath the edge of Benny’s shirt at his torso, at the middle of his biceps. Unlike Benji, he has seen everything Benny has to offer in terms of body art—and most of it was rather pretty, even if he’d gotten it to make himself look scary. Xavier puts the toe of his sneaker to Benny’s arm, slowly pressing down.

“I can see your pit hair.”

“Pretty h-hot, right?”

“I wish I was dead,” Lark comments, slouching himself to the ground as well, upper body stretching out between his legs, elbows resting on the ground. “Matilda wants me to come with her to Pennsylvania on break and—” Lark cuts off, hands wrapping around the bottoms of his sneakers, stretching forward. He stares at Xavier in annoyed pause, then frowns.

“Is that Benji’s shirt?”

Xavier’s face flushes and he quickly sets the weights down. He hadn’t forgotten that his was Benji’s—he’s never even heard of whatever band it is—but he didn’t realize how obviously not his it would be. It just fits nice; oversized and comfortable and familiar. Benny tears the sweatshirt from his face, sitting up and laughing like an electrified hyena.

“Oh,” Benny snatches at Xavier’s calf, yanking him closer, eliciting yelps. “Y-You’re s-so fucking gay, man.”

It’s maybe a little early in the spring for a bonfire, but unless it served her well to do so, Matilda didn’t like to make a habit of swaying to the breeze of social decorum.

“You’re been staring at Benji down there for, like, forty seconds.” 

At the sound of her classmate’s voice, Matilda wobbles wher she stands. She turns (and Christ she really should not have had that last shot because it has gotten to the the point where the world’s started to turn with her) to face Claire. Or, slightly to the right of Claire. One tiny, totally unnoticeable adjustment to her posture fixes that mistake.

She clears her throat to lie: “I am not staring at Benji.”

“You totally are.” Claire laughs. “I mean, I thought everybody knew—“

Okay. Maybe her lie was not as smooth as she wanted it.

“Ew! God.” Matilda shakes both hands out, then giggles because she thinks: gross, cooties! “Claire, like. I’m drunk, not stupid? Or blind. I know. I’m — I’m not staring. I am chaperoning him.” 

Matilda spells out the word in the air with her index finger in prim, pretty cursive like a Disney star. Claire watches patiently although the p might get written twice and there seems to be some confusion whether the n isn’t two or three m’s instead.

“For what?”

Matilda scoffs. 

“He needs to talk to people more. And I really thought helping him get his little friend over here would help, or whatever.” 

Matilda fishes in her jacket pocket for her vape. Now that she knows it’s close, her stomach bubbles a bit and her words become clipped and sharp. Fuck, she needs to quit. 

She takes a longer hit than usual, fist closed around the familiar shape. The rhinestones encapsulating it rub against the pad of her thumb, a pleasantly grounding sensation. She squeezes until it starts to hurt a bit, and the night comes quickly back into focus. Claire watches, then its her turn to attempt subtlety and fail. 

“The cute one?” She asks. 

Matilda rolls her eyes. It is a sure-fire signal of Matilda’s depleted patience and slash or good will. 

“Oh my God, just go ask him out. He’s such a social butterfly it’s disgusting. You’ll get along.” Her eyes narrow. “Claire, were you just trying to sneak in a way to talk about him? You don’t care that I was staring — it wasn’t really like, even that much staring — you just were fishing for information on Maran.” 

“No.” Claire says, too quick to be honest. Her lips stay parted. Clearly, she has something further to add. But Matilda only turns that alleged stare on her, pulling at the vape again before primly crossing her arms. “What?”

“He was inside,” Matilda says, pointing with her eyes to the A-frame cabin she’d rented to host. Stupid fucking investment banker owner, trying to gouge the price threefold on one of those short-term rental websites. He had been so generous and given her night for free. And all it had taken was an emailed picture of her, face girlish and horrified, holding up a hidden camera she’d totally found tucked on a shelf in the bathroom. 

“Wh-what?” 

“He’s inside,” Matilda says again, voice rising snappy and high before she lets out a sigh. “By the drinks. Since you are literally frothing to talk to him.” She hooks a thumb over her shoulder past the throng of partygoers dancing on the raised deck, down towards the lawn. “I’m gonna go see if mama bird’s doing okay.” 

Out on the grass below, people have begun to pull chairs and blankets to encircle the crackling fire. Benji sits a few paces away from the rest of the crowd, just outside a socially acceptable distance. He’s found a massive log, preferring not to use it as a seat but rather as a reclining feature. He sits on the ground, no barrier between his jeans and the damp grass. Even to her, who boasts his rare and coveted label of friend, Benji looks difficult to approach. 

She does it anyway.

Matilda marches down the steps, ignoring several prompts for pause and conversation. Instead off being lulled into a few chatting groups, she beelines towards Benji. 

His dramatic little spot isn’t far enough out that the night air has completely soaked the fire’s warmth, but it’s certainly chillier than she’d prefer. She tucks arms around herself as she drapes over the top of the log behind him, one leg knee-bent to nudge between his shoulders. Benji snorts.

She turns to look at him side-long, and gets caught out. His profile half-lit. Benji’s pretty anyway, but there’s something about where he hovers. The glowing circle of the fire doesn’t quite reach all the way, creating a few centimeters of liminal space where orange flickering dies into purple twilight. Benji’s sat right in that spot, and the lighting makes him downright, jealousy-inducing, disturbingly gorgeous. 

Matilda could tell him as much, but he’d scowl at her. Maybe even get up and leave. She doesn’t want Benji to leave. She wants Benji attached to her, clearly with her, her cool friend, her invitee, her guest. 

Fuck. She really shouldn’t have had that last one.

“Sorry to disappoint.” Matilda monotones. “Just me. I’m sure you were waiting for some other sad, lonely homosexual to wander over and like, My Chemical Romance meet-cute woo you to bed.” 

Benji doesn’t twitch, even though she thought that one was particularly good. Instead, he has what looks like a nasty smile pulling at his mouth. 

“When I opened the mixer cooler, all the ice was melted and lukewarm.”

Matilda sits bolt upright, her heart snagging in her chest. “You’re lying.”

“There was a fly in there, too.” Benji pouts. “Didn’t make it.”

“You’re lying.” 

“Yep.” He pops the p in a frustratingly charming mockery of her, vocal fry and all. “Don’t dish and you won’t have to take.” 

She could check him with her knee, pulled up to nudge right at the sensitive spot between shoulder and neck. She could pluck a hair from the top of his scalp and do a lie herself, marvel at it being gray. But Benji’s a youngest too; he’s anticipating all this. 

She takes what some might call the high road, but she prefers to call a strategic and temporary retreat. Matilda lies back down, lacing her fingers over her stomach. 

“You’re such an asshole. I was going to warn you that your Cabbage Patch Kid was getting slobbered on in there.” 

Benji twitches, then. 

Aha, she thinks. There’s the gap in the armor. 

The movement is just a slight kick of his foot out. A few fingers tightening on his own knee. But he softens it as quick as the tells had come: Matilda recognized that shuttering and admired it, the first time they met. 

Benji was so careful of himself, so in-control but charmingly messy with his demeanor. She wished she could pull it all together, pack it up, hide it away like he could, sometimes. She’s too proud to admit she takes mental notes every time they speak. She’s too honest with herself to deny that she knows she’ll never replicate that easy mystery, because with people like Benji it was natural. Unduplicable— undupli—

Matilda scrunches her nose, the word falling to bits in her head. Fuck, she should not have had that last drink. 

“He’ll live.” 

“Maybe not. Did you leave him with pedialyte? Not even a water bottle?” She pouts.

“He’s a big boy,” Benji says, although now he’s got just a tiny little note of worried guilt to him. Matilda beams evilly up at the sky. 

“I’m just kidding. I sent him off with my friend from class. She’s safe. And, like, I think celibate by choice, so if you’re worried—”

Benji groans and rubs fists into his eyes. “C’mon.”

“I’m just saying. We should be fine, but like—”

“Til.” 

“—he’s very cute, so anything could happen really, but I’m just trying to assure you I do have the money to cover a Plan B for him if he needs it in the morning, because you should probably expect—”

Benji reaches around deftly to pinch the sensitive skin behind her knee. Matilda yelps and rubs at it, eyes narrowed to slits just like his. 

Fucking youngest sibling behavior. She tells him as much. 

“I warned you.” Benji laughs.

It’s a nice enough sound she largely forgives him.

“He’s gonna have so much fun. We’ll give him,” she spreads her fingers against the night sky and tries her very best to emulate their accent. “The proper American experience, mate.” 

“You’re off it.”

Matilda nods and the whole expanse of the galaxy, the universe, starry gorgeous planetary system they rotate around spins even harder and faster than it usually is. She leans over the log to press her forehead to Benji’s cool, leather-clad shoulder.

“Do you want to hear the drag idea I had.”

Benji snorts again. His hand reaches up to brush back hair from her face. Just a moment before she was cognitively aware the curtain of it in her eyes was bothering. 

“Why’re you askin’ me? Your token poof, hey? Think I give a fuck about drag?” 

“You do.” Matilda says. She rubs her forehead on his shoulder. “If you’re not transphobic, you’ll let me speak my truth.”

“Oi! Don’t you think assumin’ I wanna hear your dogshit idea means you’re working a bit of the other ‘phobia there, mate?” 

“Mate.” Matilda parrots childishly. Youngest sibling behavior. “Well. Do you?”

A pause. Then:

“Yeah, a’right. Lay it on me.” 

“Blo.” Matilda intones seriously. She palms the side of his head, pressing her cheek to his temple at a strange perpendicular and tilting his face up to the stars. “Like, blow. Obviously. But Blo from Regressive. The insurance lady.” She gestures a circle around her head. “I’ll do the whole wig.”

“From those bloody stupid commercials?”

Matilda sights. “God, of course you wouldn’t get the vision. It’s too tastefully referential to everyday American media culture—”

“I’d rather hear about Maran’s’ night unfiltered than listen to you chat shit on your own genius.” Benji teases meanly, gesturing a fist at his hip. “I’d rather listen to Maran talk about his figurines—“

“Bioncles.”

“Til, what? He’s already got you sucked in?”

“I’m going to be worse than you.” Matilda admits suddenly. She has only had one single conversation with Maran. In her car, which they had picked him up from the airport in, there’d be no time to chat. He had been entirely engrossed in his catch-up with Benji. She had watched his face light up in the rear view mirror as they talked non-stop for the drive back to Benji’s apartment, where an air mattress and touch light courtesy of her online shopping return pile were waiting. 

But when Benji went to the bathroom at lunch — McDonald’s, because Maran insisted on trying the superior version of fries — he’d turned to her and beamed. Thanks her for the ride, her hospitality, her favor to Benji. Matilda had never met a friend-of-a-friend without it being slightly awkward, but Maran had something about him. He gestured to the toy display on the mustard yellow wall and had jumped into a regaling tale about McDonald’s toys from his childhood, and the little robot he had sat on his windowsill at home. 

And Matilda, who did not give a single fuck about Legos or building blocks or robot action figures or whatever the hell exposition he was explaining about the larger universe, had sat there and listened.

“What do you mean, you’re going to be worse than me?” Benji asks, yanking her from the reverie. 

But, prompted to explain, Matilda’s mouth dries. 

She didn’t really have words to describe Benji’s childhood friend just yet. He was probably one of the most charming people she’d ever met. And yet he had this flighty aura about him. Almost shy, but not quite. Not scatterbrained, either, because he seemed to be totally present in the moment. Maybe sort of sad. Sort of lonely, even surrounded by people. Even beaming, the way he did. 

It had always been sort of obvious to Matilda when a person had either no friends or a single person they held close. Maran had been looking at Benji in her reareview mirror as they chatted with the grateful reverence someone who had expecting to be on their own for awhile longer. 

“I mean.” She starts, and stops. 

Benji simply quirks a brow.

“Ugh! I don’t know, okay. I had like. Two franken-lemon drops.” She circles a wrist in the air. “Whatever replaced the vodka assault and batteried my sobriety.”

“Way to put it.” Benji chuckles. 

Matilda slouches to the side, nearly draping herself across his shoulders. There’s a lull in conversation from the other side of the bonfire as she rolls herself bodily into his lap. It is partially to find a softer recline than the log under her back. Partially to converse with him better,. Partially because she knows that nearly every person is looking at them, wondering about their quiet and intimate conversation, wondering what they could be talking about, wondering at the hidden aspects of their friendship and hoping it could be made public — or, maybe, have that feeling shared. 

Matilda swings her eyes around the circle of partygoers. They double and triple and bob and swim in her vision. She smiles. 

“You’re going to have to keep an eye on him.” 

“What?” Benji asks, elongating that vowel like a motherfucker. 

Matilda pushes up with a palm in the grass between his knees. He scowls at her, their noses almost touching. “Benji, I know you are totally dense about some things. I love that for you, really. I do. It adds to the whole —“ she waves her fingers in a circle chest-level. “That.” 

He glares at her.

Matilda sighs. “But honestly, it gets old sometimes! I’m just trying to be a good friend, okay? Maran seems like a sweetie.”

“He’s a nice lad, Til, I swear. Told y’we got up to it as kids, but we’ve mostly leveled—“

“I don’t care!” Matilda laughs. Her hands raise as if she’ll cup his cheeks and squeeze, but the warning glare on his face is enough to deter that drunken thought. “Benji. That’s not what I’m saying. Look, Maran is basically this little offshoot of you, right? And everybody here wants something to do with you.”

Benji scoffs again. This time, it’s ‘genuinely incredulous’ rather than his usual ‘moderately humored’. 

Matilda’s lip curls. “You’re so joking right now. Benji — oh my God, I’m not therapying you. I’m too drunk to even bother, okay, because that is a well to the center of the earth full of content to pick through and even the most seasoned psych would—“

“You’re full of fuckin’—“

Someone shouts his name. They both turn to look up towards the deck, where the voice’s owner stands backlit by the golden patio light. Whatever Maran calls down to him is lost over the thrum of a dozen conversations and the crackle of the fire. But he sports such a sweet, eagerly excited smile…

“Maran makes me feel like when you see a mortally wounded fawn on the side of the road and you know it’s going to just croak right there but you’re like, oh my God, I can help.” Matilda muses. “You know?”

Benji is silent for a moment before gingerly lifting her by the biceps to her feet, rising with her. He tucks a hand behind her neck and pulls her down for a kiss to the forehead, which Matilda tilts into despite the spinny nausea of being made to stand so fast. It’s the most affectionate Benji’s ever been with her, and she wonders if that is what Maran does — softens him. 

“And I need therapy?”

“I’m going to hate, like, every single girl he dates.” Matilda promises, voice hushed. “Not in a creepy way. In a cute roadkill way.” She holds up both hands, fingers spread like claws. “Stay away from my little fawn and his broken femur.” 

“Therapy.” Benji suggests. He holds a finger up. “Ah, water. Carbs. Sleep. Then therapy.” 

Matilda watches him jog across the lawn towards the deck stairs, which he takes impressively quick and two at a time.

And, a few weeks later at the sequel to that wildly successful totally illegal bonfire at a blackmailed rental, Matilda watches him descend the same steps.

The log has become their spot, of sorts. With every face Benji passes, she feels the thick rise of tension in the air like ozone; lightning on spiking her hair before a storm. It is so, so delicious — she turns her head and catches no less than three people staring at them as Benji lowers to an artfully lazy slump beside her. 

He’s so fucking blind.

But right now, he has the energy of someone who wants to gossip, so Matilda turns to lay her cheek on his shoulder. She maintains a sweep of the partying crowd. 

“Can I be honest with you?” 

Benji, who certainly knows what this is about, offers her a noise that is half grunt, half laugh. “G’wed.”

“I really cannot stand this new one.” Matilda admits. “In a way that makes me concerned about my own internalized shit. You know when you hate someone that bad?” 

Benji is silent for a long, working moment. Whatever goes on between his ears is lost to everyone but him. Then: “She’s sound, I guess.” 

It is way more diplomatic than Matilda was expecting. It’s way more sly than she thinks he means to slip. So she throws her head back and laughs.

Up on the deck, the sleight blonde tucked against Maran’s side —short enough to dodge his waving arm — moves closer. 

And although it would tickle her fucking pink to hear, Matilda isn’t close enough to catch what Fiadh whispers, anxious, in his ear: 

Why do I get the feeling Benji’s friend hates me? 

*

Years prior:

The step stool scrapes across nonna’s hardwood floor. Maran snaps into guilty shape before she turns to him, attention pulled from the kitchen’s ancient stone sink.

“Have I told you once or twice?” Nonna asks. 

Maran holds up two fingers. 

Nonna laughs, then catches herself. She wags her own wrinkled digit before wiping both hands on the faded floral apron tied at her waist. 

“Maybe even three, eh? Maran. Pick it up, care for papa’s hard work.”

“Sorry,” Maran says.

He does as requested, then walks himself up the steps beside her at the counter; in a year, he won’t need the stool. In four, he’ll dwarf his grandmother, even though she stands tall for a woman of her age. 

The spite, his mum’s disembodied voice whispers impishly in his head. That’s the ingredient. Maran isn’t sure what exactly spite is — he’s a bit behind the rest of his classmates, and tries not to let them see him trailing behind in the vocabulary workbook — but he figures that he shouldn’t ask Nonna. 

“Maran,” Nonna admonishes his apology. “Ah-ah. Per favore.” 

“Scusa, nonna.” Maran responds dutifully, but it’s not quite enough. Nonna narrows her eyes. He sighs, propping his chin on the cool countertop, and can barely hide the attitude when he corrects: “Mi dispiace. Molto, molto, molto.”

“Ah, marrona! Smart ass.” 

But Nonna laughs. She has a wrinkled and sun-dotted brown hand pressed to her chest in a youthfully ladylike gesture.

Maran has helped her in the garden, both of their knees and fingernails black from the soil; has helped her chop firewood for the stone oven on the patio; has watched her pluck a horrible, scary splinter from her finger after an afternoon of patching and waxing their old boat, made reliable from decades of unselfconscious and hearty care. She’s a woman that has worked nearly every day of her life — still, with that dainty hand accompanying the look of reproach, Maran has never felt more that she ought to be the queen of something, somewhere. 

“Tantissimo.” Maran chirps. He’s smiling, mischievous; genetics clear in their reflected, crooked mouths. And now he means it, really. He’s sorry a hundred times for not listening, for maybe scratching the floor. And he peers up at her with thick-lashed eyes, hoping that comes across. He’s never meant anything more (except for maybe later that evening when they’re sitting on the rocky beach with their feet in the lapping waves, watching the sun descend the water, when he’ll turn and see her cast orange and tell her if there’s ever a summer he doesn’t get to visit, he’ll die). 

“Oh, tantissimo, really?” Nonna flattens her queenly hand against her forehead now. “He is too above us. Mannaggia la miseria, he won’t eat at our humble table. Best we save all of this food for the common folk —“

Maran casts a quick glance into the sink. Fresh picked cherries, stems already plucked free, bob in the water. The original goal of his step stool. His mouth waters. 

“I said sorry,” he pouts, sneaking a finger to swirl the water. He debates on plucking a cherry, but none of them have been pitted yet. And also, he’d get a slap to the hand for it. But maybe…Maran perks up. 

“Can I have some if I help?”

And suddenly he’s scooped up in her warm, soft arms, feet dangling just an inch or so above the top step of her stool. Nonna smells like sun and salt and her coconut lotion as she lays kisses across his face. He’d be embarrassed, if any of his school friends were watching. But they’re not — it’s summer, they’re stuck home in rainy, boring Liverpool, and Maran gets to be here, with her, so he allows the attack. Giggles through it, even. He loves her so, so much. 

“Can he have some if he helps! What a good boy, my Maran. Here,” Nonna gestures. She hands him a tool he’s seen in the drawer, but never used. It’s made of two equal sized pieces of smooth, sanded wood. The stain has worn off in places, the grain light underneath. Maran puts his hand to those impressions. Although they’re much larger than his own palm, the use-worn nooks make obvious how to handle the thing. 

Nonna fishes a handful of cherries from the water. With careful instruction, Maran learns to nestle them one at a time into the hammered metal cup wedged between two bits of wood. With wrinkled fingers curled around his, he squeezes the device — 

Out pops the cherry pit, spit into the sink. The pulpy fruit still clings to the outside, feathering out in the clear water. It slowly begins to spiral pink. “Oh! Mum does this with a knife.”

Nonna tsks. “And I bet she has cut a finger. I told that girl to find her one.”

Maran picks up another cherry, proudly pitting it on his own. He examines the tool. “One of these?” 

At that moment, the back door swings open. Nonno barges in — loud and brash and heavy feet, as usual. He swings the parchment from the butcher onto the counter and pulls nonna into a barrage of kisses to the face, not unlike the ones Maran had just received. 

“No, Maran, one of these—” and then she’s laughing girlishly. Her husband’s big form crosses the kitchen to sweep her into a crushing hug.

Nonna says something to him that Maran isn’t yet able to translate — the words are too fast, too big, too messy and noisy and adult in their dialect for his beginner Italian to catch. 

“Maran!” Nonno barks, startling him out of his thoughts. Maran pits another cherry and lifts it up to show him. Nonno opens his jaw wide, snapping his teeth and pretending to bite at Maran’s fingers before the cherry disappears. 

“I think that they taste better when you do them!” Nonno whispers (although he’s never been capable, it’s still a yell in his booming, clear voice). 

“Chi si duci,” Nonna deadpans. She plucks the other pitted cherry from the water and tests it, eyes widening. “Wait, it is true. Maran has the touch.” 

And he’s old enough to know they’re being silly with him, making him feel good about being new at a task. Still, he beams as he pits the rest of the cherries and listens to their lilting conversation. He picks up what he can, here and there, but even though most of the words are lost to him he doesn’t feel lost. He feels right at home. Involved. 

When he places the bowl of cherries in front of them at the kitchen table, pitting tool in hand, Nonno beams. 

“You!” He says, and plucks Nonna’s sun-kissed hand from where it curls under her chin. “Every time it is used it, I am loved more.” 

Maran glances down at the pieces of wood, his thumb brushing the light spots again and again. He remembers the knife and chisel Nonno carries in his pocket, the spare in his work apron, the stark white raised scars on his dark brown knuckles. 

Oh, Maran realizes, but can’t name the realization. Oh, Maran feels something click into place, but can’t name what or where. 

“Maran,” Nonna says, snapping him from his thoughts. She’s not looking at him, but smiling gently at Nonno across the table. “You have permission to go find Giuliano and play until dinner. When you come back, we’ll have crostata ready to eat.” 

Maran loves crostata. He loves it so much he can almost smell it cooking right then. His posture straightens and he puts the tool on the table beside his grandparents’ twined hands, and then offers them a little salute and sprints out the door. 

*

Just the other month:

Maran has never traveled anywhere on his own, besides those annual trips to his grandparents’ home. That flight has barely changed in the decade and some years he’d been flying it. Even then, it’s quick — he always slept.

 On the international charter he takes to the States, Maran doesn’t sleep at all. 

He isn’t sure why he’s so nervous. Why, despite the anticipation and excitement months in the making, he suddenly feels a pang of something worryingly similar to guilt. 

It will be the first summer he doesn’t visit his nonna. Coincidentally, it will be her second year without nonno. 

When Benji had first invited him for a holiday stateside, nonna was the first person he told. He supposes now it was more asking permission. 

Live your life! It’s for you, anyway. 

Maran settles back in his seat, legs tucked. They’ll start to ache soon, give him pins and needle — but he’s too wrapped in his own thoughts to mind. He barely notices when the plane ascends. 

He wonders how she knows exactly what to say, nonna. Because lately, all he’s been able to think about is that he’s only been living life for himself. And even then, just barely. He worried that this decision to holiday was just another impulse-driven tick of the box. Doing things because someone asked, because it was offered, because the opportunity presented itself. If he was thinking critically, he’d spend the summer with nonna because potentially — it might be — she was getting up there, was all, and —

Maran swallows hard. When his eyes crack open, they scan not a beautiful seaside sky touched gold by sundown, but the dull grey cabin interior. The seatbelt light’s gone off, so Maran unbuckles himself. He pretends that the nasty, dramatic thoughts of nonna and the wiggle of guilt escape him. Like they’d been held in by the seatbelt and he had no choice but to think them. 

Except the anxiety lingers. It turns to other things: what if the plan went down, and what if it Benji was extending a pity invitation? What if the way he lived — impulsive, thoughtless — worried his friend. Was he living at all, really? No prospects, when he eventually returned to Liverpool. No school or certificates or job offers or apprenticeships. 

Nothing but a day and the next, aimless and unable to focus on anytihng but the scroll of a feed beneath his thumb. For fuck’s sake, last year he’d nearly enlisted.

He imagines Benji’s voice, dreamlike and mean, amongst his own thoughts: what would he do if he were alone? What would Maran do, left to his own devices? Look at all his choices so far. Barely choices, innit? Wouldn’t be anything responsible. 

The voice is meaner than Benji would ever really be, but he’s in such a fucking state that the anxiety rockets up another notch anyway. When the flight attendant next passes by, Maran gently reaches to touch her elbow. He hopes his smile is just that, not the grimace he worries betrays his mood. 

“I know this is so inappropriate.” He starts, already apologetic. “I promise I’m not bein’ difficult—“

Her dark eyes narrow in that service industry way Maran recognizes. Anticipatory. He tries not to wince and barely manages to keep sheepish smile plastered on his face.

“I’m getting a bit nervy,” Maran admits, as if it embarrasses him. It does embarrass him. There’s no reason he should be in it like this. He’s flown before “Haven’t flown before. D’you think I can get a little—“ he clicks his tongue, gestures with thumb and forefinger. 

“I’ll need to see identification.” The flight attendant says.

Maran stares up at her. “Wait, what? I look that young?” He beams. “Swear.”

She seems to be fighting a smile of her own. “Do you have it, or not?”  

He fights it from his pocket, blushing hot when she watches him pull it from a bright pink wallet. The top sleeve sports his big eyes, the iris color rubbed off by use. The bottom unfolds into his gaping mouth, and its from there Maran fights his card out. 

The flight attendant watches silently until its placed in her palm. 

“This isn’t a fake, is it?” She teases, gesturing to the wallet. “I think my nephew has that.” 

And then Maran has a little plastic cup half-filled with a mixture of Coke and rum — he didn’t particularly like rum, but he also didn’t particularly know anytihng about drinks, and this was the thing his girlfriends always ordered at a bar while Maran was stuck sipping at a pint he didn’t actually like. Might as well enjoy if he was also going to kill the nerves.

When he thanks the flight attendant (very sincerely, mind) she blushes. Maran doesn’t sleep even after he finishes his drink, but something about making her blush settles him more than the alcohol. 

He isn’t sure why.

*

A bit after that:

Maran whistles, low and impressed.

Benji’s only been at the flat for a few months, or so he claims. The incredible array of fucking mess could be attribute to a shut-in of several years. And diagnoses. 

For saying as much during their tight hug, Maran gets a solid thump to the back of his shoulder.

“Dickhead,” Benji says, but his sneer is missing. When they pull away, his eyes seem brighter than Maran’s ever seen them — especially in all the blurry, silly, nose-up selfies they’ve sent each other during Benji’s first year abroad. He looks…he looks happy, Maran thinks, and privately defends that as a regular show of emotiona for his friend. People tend to assume otherwise.

He has a bit of a hard time piecing together the fact that Benji’s happiness in that moment is a result of his presence. They’re best mates, sure, and that’s how it ought to be — but lingering on it makes little pricks of tears gather at the corners of his eyes.

“Don’t pop off.”

Maran huffs and socks him back. He’s hoping for that nasty look, maybe a fond and laughingly delivered insult. But instead Benji’s brow pulls. It’s that knowingly empathetic scrunch. He reaches for Maran again, tossing aside the duffel he’d slung about his shoulder to carry in. 

Nice of him, that walk up was four flights, Maran thinks as he’s pulled into another crushing hug. And then he starts properly crying.

He won’t pretend Benji’s own sniffle is quiet. Or that he doesn’t feel the eye-spaced wet spots growing on his shirt. They’re being babies, sure, clutching at each other and sniffling like its been a decade, not a year. Maran is incapable of pretending that doesn’t mean something. They’ve known each other since birth, after all. Earlier, if he’s keen to get philosophical. 

He can’t really piece together the fact that Benji’s happiness and his own presence might be related; lingering on that thought makes tears prick at his eyes.

“I missed you, mate.” 

“You’re my favorite,” Maran replies immediately. The words don’t pass through his brain on the way out his mouth, but he means them. Really, really means them.

Benji thumps him again. Naturally Maran socks him back. He’s hoping for a bit of a sneer, a laughingly delivered insult. But instead Benji’s brow pulls.

Nice of him, that walk up was four flights. Maran thinks as he’s squeezed tight. 

He even allows Maran to squeeze him back, and then they’re moving in a clumsy sort-of waltz circle in the center of what could be a spacious living area if the bastard could pick up after himself. 

Maran says that, too. Benji gives him another thump for it, but he’s also still sniffling.

“Mate.” Maran starts. 

“Fuck off.” Benji mumbles warningly, but it’s no use. 

“Missed you so fuckin’ much.” 

Another half-hearted swat to his back. “Oh, fuck yourself.”  

Benji does another soft little noise, one that gets Maran actually worried for the state of his shirt. But he gives a fuck, he gives a fuck, he can’t pretend not to — so he pulls Benji in for another hug when he backs off, stiff with embarrassment. 

I’m glad I wasn’t the only one lonely, Maran thinks. Benji, sometime I’m gonna ask you about that: do you get lonely? Is that normal? I think I care too much. And when I’ve got nothing to care over — 

Benji’s next noise isn’t a cry or a sniffle, but a wheeze. 

“Oi!” He snaps, laughing through their shared emotion. “M’fuckin’ lungs, man. Keep bein’ mean to me and I won’t invite you—“

Maran perks immediately. “Where? S’cool place, though. Say it’s cool. Oh, mate, are you taking me somewhere cool for my first night?”

Benji’s cheeks look warm beneath the yellowy light. He needs more lamps; they would make the place less sad and stuffy. Maran’s just opening his mouth to say as much when Benji pulls him in for their most crushing hug yet.

“What!” He wheeze-laughs, arms stuck to his sides.”Fuckin’ hell.”

“I missed you. Oh, fuck, Maran, I missed you.”

Maran warms a bit, too. In the hall mirror, over Benji’s shoulder, he realizes that tears and emotion have painted his nose a cherry-red.

Clown, Maran thinks fondly at his reflection. Worrying over what?

*

A couple weeks?:

Looking back, Maran isn’t sure if it was a romantic one-after-another of chance encounters moonlighting as capital S signs, or if the universe had been offering him him string after string of warnings. 

Everyone had urged him to have fun on this summer trip; Benji might be busy, sure, but that didn’t mean Maran couldn’t dive the deep end. How many opportunities would he have, anyway? Realistically, when would he ever be able to travel the world again? He hadn’t, unlike his best friend, had the foresight to set himself up a future. An educated or well-paying one, anyway. Hadn’t been smart to save or invest or open — what did Saha call it? high yield? — or get a bank. 

And, unlike Benji (yet again), he didn’t have a responsible and welcoming older sibling in whose footsteps he could follow. 

What he had was the money saved from a summer job (he’d planned on putting it towards driving lessons, towards a car). Maran had a friend on the precipice of a massive life change. Maran had — 

Maran had more things, for sure. He just couldn’t think of them at the moment.

But.

No prospects, really. No motivation. No path ahead. No job lined up. No dreams — at least, not for the nebulous, adult ‘future’. 

So although he was tagging along (as Maran did, he always tagged along, that was Maran, following), he was being a bit of a cunt about it all.

“Nah, it’ll be good for you. I feel a bit like a shit dog owner, yeah? Leavin’ you alone when I’m in class half the week.” Benji insists on Maran’s phone screen. In the little boxed background, Maran can make out a shelf and the telltale orange stained wood of public space furniture.

“You at the library again, mate?” Thanks to his mood, Maran sounds a bit nastier than he intends. Benji doesn’t seem to notice. Or, in his patiently diplomatic way, doesn’t care. 

Benji turns to look at the array of books behind him. “Bit obvious.” 

“You are a proper fucking loser,” Maran says sweetly. He pretends to be offended at the finger Benji raises.

“Who’s dropping an application off to deliver pizza—“

“You just said you approved and it’ll be good for me.”

“The exercise will. How much that piece of absolute shit cost you, man?”

“Couple quid.” Maran chirps, automatic. Then he frowns. “No. Uh. Dollars. Like, two hundred.”

“Scammed!” Benji hisses. “You been here a week and you got scammed by some fuck on Facebook. I told you to be careful.”

Maran sours even further. He doesn’t want Benji to seem his childish slouch, the moody tuck of his arms, the severe pout his mouth draws.

What are you doing, Maran? What are your plans? Have we just fucked off, no prospects, to spend a summer — what? Faffing about, doing fuck-all, being nobody, spending money you shouldn’t be spending?

It felt — it sounded— familiar. It sounded like—

Bastard. 

Maran silences the little voice with that, just to be wily. He musters up his own. He finds nonna’s, his mother’s, Kay and Saha all assuring him it would be good for them both. That Maran could have fun.

Have fun. Have fun. Have fun.

And what else? 

What else? 

Maran hopes the moment has stretched too long, too awkward; judging from the blank look on Benji’s face, it hasn’t. Or…he hasn’t noticed, bless him. 

“S’fine. Got the bike. And I’ll be careful,” Maran says. He beams into the camera. It isn’t fake, his smile. It’s sincere. It’s —

What else? 

They chat as Benji packs up his studying material. When he hangs up to enjoy his walk home in solitude (but not silence, he always has that fucking noise too high in his earbuds), Maran simply lays on the air mattress and counts the minutes. It usually takes ten and a half, traffic considering, for Benji to meaner across campus towards his flat. At nine minutes thirty, Maran abruptly stands. He drags himself from the bedroom, fixing his mattress-flattened hair. With a sneaky glance out the curtains, he confirms Benji’s making the final trek up the sidewalk towards the building. 

Then Maran positions himself on the couch, a book he’s never read opened halfway through and flat over his knee. He pulls his phone from his pocket, places it screen-up on the coffee table and open to a group chat that looks active from a distance but hasn’t been touched in two months minimum.

Look, Benji. I have a life outside you, Maran thinks, and lifts his head just as the front door rattles and swings open.  

*

Maybe a week after that: 

Maran doesn’t have a license, but he doesn’t need one to ride the bike. So he signs up to as many of the delivery apps as he can as a rider. Money he’ll need, if he wants to enjoy the stay at all and not loaf about on Benji’s dime. And something to do, because if he spends another Thursday afternoon by himself he’s liable to do something desperate. Like, join in on the mid morning pickleball matches that the complex’s elderly folk enjoy out on the lawn. Maran doesn’t even fucking know what pickleball is.

What he does know is that the hill is a fucking riot to shoot down on his bike, but a bitch to pedal back up at the end of a working day. He tries to go for the dinner rush only, and keep the trips short. But the tips roll in meager — cagey, stingy suburban fucks and poor college students make up the majority of his clientele.

Maran prefers his skateboard to the bike, which makes him use muscles in his legs but also his core, which he didn’t even know you needed to ride a bloody fucking bike in the first place. But he can’t ride the road on his skateboard, and the tips roll in faster the quicker he is between deliveries, and so he resigns himself to the hard work between parties and bowling and filthy underground shows Benji drags him along to as a plus-one. 

Occasionally, the good tip rolls in. Maran is quick to nab them up.

This latest one is a sizeable amount — shockingly good, considering the upscale neighborhood the app directs his delivery towards. 

Shockingly, considering the shiny copper roofs of the gated apartment community. Shockingly, despite the curling script font of the welcome mat: soooo happy you’re here! 

Maran sighs and braces himself to knock. The instructions hadn’t said leave at door, so he’s anticipating someone who wants to chat. Or be strange. He’d had a fellow open the door just last week, shirtless but for a comically large bib around his neck and a pacifier in his mouth. 

The girl that opens the door has neither of those things. But frankly, she’s pretty enough Maran wouldn’t blink twice otherwise.

“Hi.” He says, and stands there like a numb fucking idiot before he remembers the food in his bag. He slings it off his shoulder and to the ground, holding the girl’s eye as long as he can before slippery fingers on the zipper make him break it. 

“Um.” He straightens. Pauses again, because their eyes meet. She is pretty. Gorgeous, even. Springy strawberry-blonde curls that are long enough to frame a trim waist, eyes that are just a size too big that seem to twinkle up at him. Even the little wrinkle between her brows is pretty — oh, fucking hell. She’s frowning.

Maran swallows. “Name?”

“Isn’t it on there?” The girl asks, gesturing at the phone loose in his free hand. He’d been close to dropping it.

“Yeah, but—“ he fumbles the white paper satchel containing her food, barely managing to catch it mid air before it spills all over her sequin butterfly top. “Oh, fuck. Woulda fumbled that tip, huh?”

The girl laughs. He brightens too, even if it’s just a little giggle. Her eyes crinkle when she does it, but she hides what her mouth does behind her hand. 

“You’re nothin’ local,” she says as she takes the bag from him. Their fingers brush. 

“Sorry?” 

She flaps her hand, laughing again. Now she doens’t have one free to hide her smile. She’s got a gorgeous one of that, too. Teeth straight and white and just a bit too big for her mouth in as endearing a magnification as her honey-colored eyes. 

“Not local.” She says. She taps at her phone, bag propped on the swell of a hip for better motor control. Maran’s phone, still slightly slack in his hand, pings. She’s added another five to the tip. 

Maran tries to come back down to earth a bit, and process. “Uh. No. M’from—“

“Can I guess?” 

For the first time in their interaction, he notices her accent.

“Wait a second.” He laughs. “Hold on, ‘fore we go further with this.”

“Oh, further, are we?”

“Irish.” Maran says confidently. “North?”

“How dare.”

Maran laughs harder, his smile widening at her tone. She’s nice to talk to. “So sorry! I’ll guess.”

“I asked first.”

“Uh, Dublin.” 

“Easy cheat, that. Nearly everybody is. No, Cork.”

He pouts, watching a spot of color rise to each of her cheek. “Aw. I was guessin’.” 

“Let me take over for you, then?” The girl switches the bag to her other hip, and Maran tries not to let his focus drift there too long. “Um. Oh, I’m so shite at this. Ah, can I get a hint?”

Maran stares at her, perplexed. “What, me talkin’ s’not enough for you?” 

She blinks owlishly, then flushes even pinker. “Alright then, yeah. Liverpool.”

“Bit obvious!” Maran laughs. He hadn’t been aware until just then that he’s leaned against her doorway. He jumps back from it, sheepish. “Aw, fuckin’ hell. I’ve got to get to others— you were on the way—“

“You make me feel very special,” the girl cheeks. She hefts the food up, because the bag is rather full and she’s nearly a foot shorter and proportionate in musculature. That is, to say, not owning much at all. Her straining bicep flashes a bit of ink below the sleeve. 

Maran glances down at his phone screen. Then back up at her, smiling. “Fiadh. Nice to meet you.”

Fiadh giggles when he tips a fake hat, bowing low. She peeks at her phone, then sets a storm of butterflies in his gut: “Maran. Let’s run into each other again.” 

He’s stunned from words by the easy, sweet confidence of her tone. Maran stares at the flat orange color of her shut door for a moment long after it’s been shut in his face. Then he lets go of a deep breath, turning from the door before slipping both hands over his wild, smiling face. 

It isn’t until he’s back at his bike that Maran realizes he’s left the cherry milkshake from her order to melt in the drink holder. 

*

Day or two, maybe: 

The three of them stumble into the on-campus diner far too late in the evening. It’s university affiliated, which stateside Maran has begun to understand means massively inflated money-wise, but the food’s the best they’ve found so far. And by best, of course, the greasiest and fattiest most disgusting post-bar hop food available. 

Maran is picking at the remainder of their wings when Benji abruptly stands, teetering slightly on his feet. He spreads both palms on the laminate table, prompting Maran and Naima to look up.

“You okay, chief?” Naima asks. She sounds (and looks) the least sloshed of them. Her handmade crochet top, loops tastefully open to show skin, doesn’t have a single smudge of wing sauce. 

Maran pouts down at his own shirt, wishing Matilda were there — she always carries one of those handy little stain pens with her. He wipes at his mouth, uncomfortably anxious that he’s got stains at the corners like a child.

“Yeah, Benj. You good?” 

Benji, who has stood there silent for a long moment, shakes himself. His eyes swim somewhere halfway between the pair, then swing towards the corner of the diner.

“Ah. Needta piss.” 

Several heads turn their direction; alcohol always fucks with Benji’s volume controls. But thankfully, all the other patrons seem either too eclipsed in their own business or alcohol levels to care.

“G’wed, then.” Maran prompts. He flaps a hand at Benji. “Well. ‘Fore we gotta give you a new nickname, Benj.” 

“Piss King Supreme.” Naima intones. 

“PeePee Palanivel.” 

“Fuck yourself,” Benji says, pointing at Naima. He sways as he turns to Maran with the same finger. “Fuck yourself extra.” 

“Don’t get lost!” Maran calls, equally at odds with his volume controls, as Benji teeters towards the door marked with a stick figure in a top hat. 

The second he’s up and out of earshot, Maran spreads both arms across the booth towards her. 

“Yes?”

Naima sips her Coke, knuckle pressed to the deep sleepless circle under her left eye. It’s Thursday night, which means tomorrow (today, if it’s past midnight?) is Friday, which means she’s got an early morning lecture, which means she’ll hit totally Benji-like levels of cranky if they stay up much later. He mentally strikes off the idea to ask her if she’d like to go see a late movie.

“M’gonna die alone.”

She wrinkles her nose at him. It looks a mix of humored, intrigued as to where this conversation will go and why Benji couldn’t be around to partake, and exhausted with his antics.

“Man, what? You sneak another drink when I wasn’t looking?”

Maran shakes his head innocently. The room spins once he’s done, and Naima sucks her teeth.

“Are we doing the late night existential loneliness thing?” She swirls her straw. “Ugh. Why’d you wait for Benji to get up? He’s the expert.”

“Ha.” Maran snorts, momentarily distracted from his own self pity. Then he sobers a bit…just not much. Whatever had been in those drinks at her friend’s house party were strong. 

“Oh shit.” Naima says, slow and sage. “You weren’t joking. That’s only forty percent alcohol talking.” 

Maran peers down into his plate of suddenly unappetizing fried food. He thinks of all the truthful things that he could tell Naima, in this moment. But she hates giving advice. Secretly, he knows, hates being responsible. Hates when people box her into the mom friend category. The perpetual eldest sibling.

Maran doesn’t know what that is like. He does, sort of, considering Saha. But — 

That’s one of the truthful things. And they usually start with: when Benji’s gone, I’ve gotta stand on my own Like, as a person. As an interesting person, with something to say. When Benji’s gone, I feel alone, sometimes. Even sat across you, Naima. I wish I had little siblings to poke at me for more than I can give. I wish I had more friends here, not that you and Benji and acquaintances and the party regulars and stuff aren’t enough. It’s enough. It is enough. 

Why doesn’t it feel like enough?

Maran blinks. It’s sluggish to his brain slurry, but probably normal. Silently, he turns both arms palm-to-ceiling, fingers spread beseechingly.

Naima sighs. But she puts her own hands, warm and dry, on top of his — although there’s a slightly dubious quirk to her brow.

“Hypothetically—” 

Naima sighs and begins to retract her hands. She scowls a bit when Maran encloses her fingers again.

“Motherfucker. You are out of it, Maran. I think we can cross off vodka from your list.” She casts a dramatic, searching look over her shoulder. “How slow does that guy piss?”

“Hypothetically,” Maran insists, whinging for her attention again, shaking her hand. “I mean, am I dataeable?” 

Naima pretends to stand. 

He wails (admittedly too loud) as she tries to pull away.

“Fuckable, at least?Naima. Nai, come on.”

She’s trying to be put-off by the question, but she’s predictable — Naima’s always had a weak spot for the sort of humor that puts her on the spot. So they’re both grinning and giggling as she tries to get away from the booth and he nearly tumbles off the side seat, shoulders shaking.

They’re drawing a bit of attention, but no more than drunk, grease-seeking college kids at a diner. So the blush on Maran’s cheeks isn’t as full-force as it could be. 

“Can’t take you two anywhere.” 

Maran cranes his neck to see Benji stood there, arms crossed. He is clearly, judging from the lifted brow and smile pulling at one side of his mouth, assessing how quickly things have fallen apart in his absence. 

Maran grins up at him. “We’re wallowing. Y’should join, mate.” 

“Don’t look like wallowing.” Benji mumbles, nudging Maran back into the corner of the booth so he can slide in again. 

“It wasn’t wallowing.” Naima announces. The words are mischievous, leading. Maran narrows heavy eyelids at her warningly, but she ignores him. “Mar was just begging me to fuck him. It was real weird.”

His jaw drops and a shocked, embarrassed noise escapes him. “You!” 

“You!” Naima accuses in turn, pointing at him. “You gonna look Benji in the eye and lie to him? To that face? Look at that face, Maran.”

Maran cannot.

“Gotta be careful with this one.” Benji says. His tone is evil, even. “Has a reputation.” 

Maran’s just drunk enough that it stings, a bit. He knows it’s a joke — knows Benji would never lob something like that with an insult intended. But…but the drinks were strong —

“Nice job.” Naima says.

“Huh?” 

“You are so dense.” She insists.

Benji leans over to peek at him, but Maran only tucks his chin down into his palm and turns away. 

“Did you just hmph?” Benji asks, incredulous. Maran’s temper bubbles at that laugh.

“I don’t have a fuckin—“ 

“Excuse me.” 

All three of their heads whip to the side at the introduction of a new, unfamiliar voice. Maran, head swimming and still emotional, sort of likes the sound. And when he sees who it comes from, he likes the sound even more. 

“Oh.” 

“Yeah.” The blonde lifts her fingers just above her hip, which he chooses to interpret as a subtle wave meant just for him.”Um, I’m glad you lot are having fun, but you’re being really loud.” 

Benji and Naima pull faces in unison, staring at the freckled face. It’s familiar to Maran, but not them; they share a quick conversation contained in two twin looks: the audacity, then, wait — are we actually being that loud?

 “We’re really sorry,” Maran says. There’s a quiet, grumbling chorus from the other two that he ignores. He casts a shyly embarrassed glance around the diner; people stare back, some angrily. 

“It’s Waffle House on the outskirts of a college town at —“ Across from him, Naima pauses her grumble to reach out and check Benji’s watch. “One twenty-five in the morning.” 

Fiadh crosses her arms, but it doesn't look intimidating the way it does on Benji. She looks like she’s trying to hug herself, and her mouth is twisted into a strange pout, and her eyes have gone a bit shiny. 

“I’m not trying to cause any issues, alright? My friend just had a rough night — like, a proper rough breakup.”

Maran glances between them. He can see the debate play out on Naima’s face; keep arguing, cause more of a scene, be the bad guy even though it is sort of silly to expect full quiet in a restaurant like this one. Or let it slide. It’s only a matter of tension for Naima because her stubborn streak is wider than Benji’s moodiness.

Maran turns back to the recognizable face. “I didn’t get your full name, last time?”

Beside him, Benji snorts and leans back in the booth so Maran can talk more directly to her. “Last time.” 

Beneath the table, Maran digs his heels into Benji’s ankle until that loftily amused noise becomes pained.

“Why do you need my legal name, Maran?” 

Naima and Benji share another look. He tries very hard to ignore the fact that they’re privy to this interaction. He wishes it was just the two of them, him and this beautiful girl that seems interested in speaking. 

“Um.” 

“So he can look you up on the ‘gram,” Naima fills in. She wiggles her fingers. “See if you’re one of those Bible verse in the bio types.” 

“I was not—“

Beside her, Benji snorts.

Maran stands abruptly. It startles Fiadh, even, who jumps away from the end of their table. Over her shoulder, a gaggle of other girls —her friends, presumably, who are pretending to not pay attention— move as one single-felled unit. They all lean forward, all narrow their eyes, and Maran realizes he s not the only one with an audience.

“D’you want to go for a walk?” Maran blurts. He casts a glance back down at their unfinished food, at the spot in front of Benji’s arm which is staining the laminate diner table a buffalo chicken orange. He’s embarrassed, all of a sudden. He isn’t sure why.

Fiadh, in a fluffy neon furred coat that matches the color of the glitter carefully applied to her eyelids, smiles at him. He’s a bit stunned by it — not just at the wattage, or hypnotizingly shy coax to it, but that she gives it to him at all. Him.

“Yeah, sure.” 

*

Twenty minutes, ish: 

“It’s a bit rough, I hear.” 

Maran tilts his head a bit. She looks very pretty, even under the ebb of harsh street lights — he’s not sure what that means, really, only that Saha was always complaining about it growing up.

Fluorescence is a sin.

“What? Liverpool?”

Fiadh giggles behind her hand. The balloon in Maran’s chest swells and bursts at the sound. He hopes the grin remains normal, even though it doesn’t feel it.

“The way you say that — great. Yeah, Liverpool. Where else?”

He laughs, a bit shy. “It’s nice. I miss it. Honest, found it impressive that you guessed point-blank. Some people can’t distinguish, y’know? As distinct we think it is. Haven’t been used t’people pickin’ up on it much, over here.” 

“They guess London?” 

He slaps a hand down on the table, eyebrows raised. “Would you believe?  Me, posh. But, yeah. To answer you, yeah, it’s nice. Miss it.” Maran’s stomach twists strangely. He feels a strangely defensive need to give his hometown to credit. “Really though, s’not, like…more rough than anywhere else?” 

Fiadh blinks up at him, honey-brown brows tilted slightly. 

He considers for a moment, then flips his palm ceiling to floor and back. “Right, well. Okay, maybe a bit. Certain places. That’s anywhere, though. You ask the right person and you’ll get a great rant about why that is. Lots of, y’know, industrial exploitation and immigration and —“

Fiadh’s brow is no longer pinched. Her grin more humored than it was a moment before. Maran snaps his mouth shut.

“You the right person, then?”

There’s an unreadable note to her voice Maran can’t place.

“Not for that one, no.” Maran says. He squirms in his seat a bit. “M’best mate, Benji — he goes here, too. Nursing. Oh well. Not, like, same I guess. Nursing’s on main, and you said you were a bit ways up the road, at the STEM campus. Anyway. Benji’s the right one to ask about all that sort of stuff. ‘Bad’ neighborhoods and housin’ and crime and — fuckin’ hell. Talk your ear off on it, you get him going.”

“You have that in common, then. Fiadh says. 

Her demure grin drops at the expression Maran makes at that. “Oh, no! No, oh my God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that—“ She reaches across and tucks her slim, ringed fingers into Maran’s. Her skin is smooth, slightly tacky from the lotion she’d put on when they came inside. Maran feels his grin bounce back, and squeezes her hand.

“Naw, don’t worry. Do that all the time.” He chuckles. “I mean, the rantin’, but also — also saying the wrong thing, yeah? Worry about it always.”

“Always,” Fiadh insists in agreement. Her voice is so pretty and soft, even more attractive with the lilt of her accent. He’d really like her to say his name again. “I’m so glad you get it, Maran.” She blinks at him for a moment, then ducks her head so that a strand of curly gold falls into her eyes. His chest feels loose, all of a sudden. 

“I’m so glad we met.”

“Yes.” Maran breathes back, and then shakes his head a bit. “I mean, yes. Me too, yeah.”  

*

Two hours later, in Benji’s flat, almost sober:

Naima stands at the foot of his air mattress in a pair of Benji’s briefs and an oversized shirt nabbed from Maran’s plastic drawers serving as a dresser. 

“You what.”

“Walked her home?” Maran asks, not sure why he’s asking. That’s what happened. He walked Fiadh home.

“Probably a good thing,” Benji calls from the living room. 

“Stop eavesdroppin’, bastard.”

“Stop fumblin’, bastard!” His best friend shouts.

“Shut up, both of you.” Naima suggests. “It’s almost four in the morning.”

Maran tilts his face up at her, and she gets that sibling look about. Without prompting, Naima rounds the mattress to sit on its edge. Maran rolls dramatically towards her as the air rebalances him, pitching himself into her side She smells like whatever spicy, neutral scent Benji’s body wash has and that he is largely obtuse to. She smells like the lingering drip of too-sweet maple syrup poured from a diner bottle. She smells like the pine out front, as if she and Benji had accidentally tumbled against it on their own drunk walk home.

“What’s up, Marvin?”

Maran smiles slightly, tilting his forehead into her hip. He likes being babied, likes that Naima won’t do this with just anybody, likes that he gets a hint of what her sister mode looks like. She only ever calls him that silly nickname when its jsut the two of them. And despite the thin walls and Benji’s nosiness, he’s gone silent in the living room. 

“Thanks for talking to me.” Maran says earnestly. He’s sobered up in the chilly night air, enough that the words are strong and sincere. 

Except Naima reaches up and pats his hair, warm palm brushing past his hairline to tuck at the crown. With that leverage, she pulls him up to plant a kiss to the center of his forehead. Maran can feel a bit of residue there from her dark lipstick. Dark Cherry Kiss, or something. He’s watched her apply it in the mirror before a night out. 

“Don’t be silly, Mar.” Naima says. Her voice is lilting and quiet. Affectionate, but humored. Maran’s stomach sours. 

Like she’s assuring a child. 

“i’m not being—“

“You are,” she insists, kissing the same spot on his forehead again. Maran resists the urge to wipe it off. “And I’m telling you there’s no reason to do that, okay? Get some sleep. And there’s water on the floor if you need it.”

Thanks, he withholds. He thinks maybe he does that out of spite. 

* 

Twooo…three days later?:

Maran is delivering again. 

The notification for Fiadh’s address is half down the list of orders, and it’s out of the way, but he’s thinking in Benji’s voice, in Naima’s knowing laugh. Before he knows it, he’s tapping the accept order button. 

He waits: sat on the sofa, legs tossed over the arm; slumped until his spine hurt in one of the rickety kitchen stools; starfish spread on the ground, phone screen to his forehead. 

And then finally, there’s a little ping that signals the app is connecting him with the customer. 

Fiadh: Not to be insane, but I was hoping it would be you. Is that stupid? 

Maran: I’m happy to be delivering your order today :thumbs_up: also no, it’s definitely not. I have maybe been thinking about you a bit.

Fiadh: Just a bit? 

Maran: Alright, fine, yeah. A lot. :blushing: 

His phone pings again.The restaurant’s finished her order, and now he’s got to go pick-up. Maran practically skips out the front door, sticking his upper half back in to grab the keys he’d forgotten.

And he nearly trips down the steps. Maran stares at the latest notification at the top of his screen, knuckles white where they clutch the edges.

! Customer [Fiadh] has added items from secondary pickup location. This location is on your route; the amount from this order will be added to their customer total, but delivery specialists do not receive a second payout. !

Customer [Fiadh] has added the following items to the order: 

- 1 pack evergreen mint gum

- 2 BoomBam energy drinks, very berry and lemonade

-  1 pack condoms, medium 

Maran fumbles his keys in the ignition once, twice, three — swear — four times.

*

Ten minutes later:

Maran feels more than a bit awkward waiting for the door to open. He dries his free hand on his thigh. The plastic bags around his wrist dig just shy of painful; he’d doubled bagged them. With how fast he’d taken the stairs up to Fiadh’s floor, they’d spun and wound themselves tight around flesh. 

The door cracks, and Maran abruptly stops fidgeting. 

It’s her cute slippers he notices first. Leopard or cheetah or the markings of some other big cat, the faux fur lining them almost too fluffy.

Then Maran’s eyes drag up the rest of her. 

Maran blinks. She’s wearing a too-big shirt that reads Take me back to Cabo! Richard n’ Karol 2016 in peeling, faded letters. She’s wearing those cute slippers and a soft looking, her silly Cabo too-big shirt —and not much else.

“Uh.” He glances down to the bags around his wrist, then peers back up at her with a sheepish shrug. “I was going to ask if maybe that was a mistake…?” 

Fiadh’s big, pretty eyes pop wider. “You still think —“ She pinches the bridge of her nose. For some reason, the curl of her lips makes something nervous slip into his stomach.  

Is she laughing at me? Maran briefly wonders. But only briefly, because a small fist knots in the front of his own shirt and yanks him across the threshold. 

*

Three weeks later:

“Why—” Maran tries to place it. “Endocrinology.”  

She laughs. “Wrong one. Entomology.”

“Bugs.” Maran offers. The blunder pinks his cheeks, makes his foot tap.”I guess, insects? Use the respectable term, right? S’like,” he laughs, and is the only one of them to do so. Which makes him laugh more, awkward and hard, which dissipates whatever shred of humor remained of the bombed joke because Fiadh’s only silent and staring at him with her big, deep eyes. 

“Well.” Maran breaks off before he carries on — s’like, is bugs a slur? y’think they get offended, prefer insects? wouldn’t that be funny, you get chewed out because you’ve broken some insect social blunder, who’d you think is the most formal of ‘em, if you had to guess, but you don’t because you study ‘em, so ladybugs, for sure, and cockroaches probably —

“Well,” Maran says again. He tips back until the playground horse’s spring groans under him. Somehow, even that sound is embarrassing. “Whatever. Fuckin’ hell, I’ve had a bit much, I think.”

“I chose it because I liked butterflies as a kid.”

He blinks at her. He expected to continue filling the awful void himself, until she tired of it and left. He was always sort of waiting for Fiadh to sigh in that way of hers, stand with her arms pin straight at her sides, and walk off in exasperation. 

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” Fiadh answers from a thousand miles away. Her mouth quirks in one of the softest, most genuine smiles he’s ever seen. “We had this greenhouse — more a conservatory, really, the size of it.” She has the decency to cast a sheepish glance askew, out over the woodchips. “One year da had monarchs shipped in. The caterpillars, I mean. Danaus plexippus.”

She pauses, peeks at him, then beams because Maran frees an impressed whistle as cued. 

“Big words in endocrinology.” 

He laughs. “I’ll bet! Not like either of us know. So — the caterpillars.” 

“Larvae, technically.” Fiadh says. He wrinkles his nose. “The most interesting stage.”

“You’re getting to the part where they’re all pretty n’orange, not squirmy?”

Fiadh huffs a laugh — she always does that, just a little bit of a breath. Barely a noise. Sometimes he wonders if it’s purposeful; if she knows what he wants, a proper laugh, and withholds it; if she can tell that he needs it, in a way. 

“Right. So he’s got them sent in, you follow? Tells me it’s my job as lady of the house to fill it up with plants and butterflies and the like. We’d gone to a butterfly house in Denmark when I was — oh, eight, hell, just a baby.”

“Made an impression, I guess. Lifelong learner out of you.”

Her mouth pulls strangely. “Suppose. Sometimes—”

It’s a perfect night for this sort of conversation. Humid enough that his shirt clings a bit, but not muggy. A breeze gentling across the field, strokes of shifting grass blue in the moonlight. He feels the shift in her tone, in the mood of their discussion, like a change in the wind. 

Maran slips himself from the horse contraption, eyes glued to Fiadh where she sits on her own. She’s sleight against the backdrop of the chain link fence: hair fluttering in picturesque wisps, the soft and pale angle of her upturned nose absurdly perfect as if drawn. 

He tries to be quiet, but shuffling towards her across the woodchips proves the effort’s misplaced. Whatever memory or winding thought has transfixed her nearly breaks, but Fiadh doesn’t move as he approaches. She shifts only slightly, thighs tensing as Maran slips in behind her on the spring-bound creature. Her hand rests on its — a badger? a beaver? — forehead, thumb stroking a circle. The place she touches must have been touched similarly by a thousand other thumbs, because it’s shinier than other parts of the old play attraction.

“Maybe I’m a bit more sloshed than I thought, too.” 

Maran hums, chin tucking to a shoulder, arms around a waist, honey curls touching his nose. It’s humid — with them pressed together precariously balanced on the teeter-totter animal, it’s worse. 

But she draws a breath like she’ll speak more, if he’s just quiet. So he is. 

“Sometimes.”

He can’t help it. “But not often?”

“I think it was nice to have a thing.” Fiadh’s gone again. Her eyes are far off on the dim and foggy horizon. Dragging the rest of her, thoughts first, with them. Maran thinks he might not even exist to her as it unravels:

“It’s like when you tell a family member you like something— or even, they bring it up first and you barely express interest, really, but then that just becomes.” Her wrist stirs the air, fingers splayed like the explanation is tucked between the webs. She’s so pale the moon turns that thin skin purple; blood and night sky. 

“Your thing?”

“Right.” She faces way from him, but Maran can hear that bit of her voice about to break. “Sometimes I don’t even know if I’m into it at all. Or if it’s comfortable. If I’m just doing something I know, just…coasting?”

Maran isn’t sure why he shivers, but goosebumps prick at his arms uncaring of his awareness. He brushes a hand down her arm, tracing the path of a dragonfly’s thorax and wingspan even though he can’t see it well: it was one of her earliest, he remembers, so that’s why it’s faded, and that’s why it’s also his favorite. 

“Y’got all these guys, though.” He points out. “That’s commitment, yeah? Passionate, not coastin’.”

Fiadh slumps into his chest a bit. “I’m not so sure.” Suddenly, she twists at the waist to find his gaze. “If I say something awful, will you judge me?”

“No,” Maran says immediately. Maran responds before processing frequently, but he’s mostly sure he means that ‘no’. Mostly.

“I like telling people.” Fiadh admits. It’s a flurry of words just as quick as his assurance. He wonders (briefly, and guiltily for even that split second) if they might have come out regardless of his answer.

“Telling people?”

“That it’s what I’m studying. I feel like everyone’s got this image of me, yeah? Like,” she spreads both hands, index and thumb ninety degrees, to frame a portion of the sky above. “Real specific but totally inaccurate. I know what I look like, and I think people assume. I use my brain just like anybody else, sometimes better.  So I like when people think I’m smart. I like that they look at my and don’t expect bugs.” 

“Insects,” Maran corrects gently. 

Fiadh is quiet for a moment. Then she wrenches herself from Maran’s arms, nearly clipping him sensitive with a knee as she heaves off the rocker. 

Backed by a big, sparkling, romantic moon,Maran can only stare up at her. She’s worked up from something,maybe speaking, her eyes bright and wide and —maybe, he worries, terrified?

Maran smiles at her as soft as he can manage: I get it, keep talking, keep explaining, I’ll do my best to understand, I want to know, I can understand, I can make it better if you want, I know what to say—

“What if I’m meant to do something else, you know? Something bigger, or even better or something —something.” 

“Somethingsomething,” Maran sing-songs, humoring himself.

“Somehing not studying wings under a microscope and pinning for display and identifying instars in freshwater populations and egg cycles and living in an apartment that—“

Maran rather likes her apartment; it’s the fanciest one he’s ever been in, all light (vulnerable, stainable) wood and stainless steel and new appliances. 

“—a covered parking space, drinking cup after cup of leftover pours and going-bad mixers and no job prospects besides conservation or preservation and barely a social life and dating —“

Maran blinks at her. She blinks at him. Then Fiadh bends and retches into the woodchips.

“Oh.” Maran says helplessly. He’s standing, suddenly. His stomach feels cold.

She tries to speak between pathetic, sniffling heaves. “I—too much— oh, the worst. I’m —the worst.” 

She’s not, her assures her, she’s not. She’s so far from the worst they’ve got to come up with a new unit of measurement just to find the distance, he assures her. She jdanced a little too hard, but she looked very cute doing it, he assures her, he got a very cute slow-mo of her jumping in a circle, he’ll send it to her. 

Maran orders the car. Maran assures her. Maran shuffles her to the elevator of her building, assures her and the doorman he’s meant to be there. Maran gets her water and a pill,gets himself one of each after he’s done assuring her, tucking her in, pulling the sheet to her chin because she keeps the apartment at a cool sixty-eight even when she’s gone because she’s sensitive to heat—

Maran pulls the sheet back down to her stomach, because she’s sensitive to heat, and she’s just been sick, and she’s laying there staring up at him with the saddest eyes he could possible imagine. He assures her right to sleep. He assures her with a thumb circling the back of her hand, held in his own. He assures her and imagines the spot goes shiny, but that his is the only thumb that polishes it. 

Dating— he’s thinking as he falls asleep on her couch, even though he’s more than welcome in the bed. The couch is comfier, firm where the bed sawllows him, sinks him into uncomfortably expensive depth.s.

Dating—he thinks, eyes shut, memory and its embellishment giving him a vision of the little spindly veins in her hands as she stretched towards the moon. 

*

Sometime later:

It doesn’t take long, after that. He isn’t stupid — he can tell the second it happens. Rain checked brunch. Museum tripped pushed the next week. A phone call unreturned. Hours between texts, when usually he was hard pressed to get her to stop. 

At a party a few days after they decide friends is better, he’s venting. 

“And it was mutual.” Maran tries not to let himself sound bitter or sad ora’s fucking hurt as he is, but it’s difficult with the taste of the mixed drinks still heavy on his tongue, in the back of his throat. “Well.”

“That’s such a lie, dude. Like it’s always a lie. No offense. Someone wanted it, someone didn’t. Or, fuck. Someone wanted it less.” His fresh friend tilts back nearly off the railing they lean against. They’ve meandered a few blocks from the house party towards a public park. It’s more a square of greenery between two criss-crossed streets, but there’s a bench and that is enough of a qualifier for Maran. 

“Been through it recently too, then?” 

“Hah. I guess — not like this. But kinda.”

Maran tilts his chin back, head loose on his neck. “I just don’t get it, y’know?    Like, m’not planning on staying so…all’s fair, right. But I don’t know how she can go from tellin’ me, oh, Mar, I’ve never connected with someone like this, I thought I was going to be alone.

His drinking buddy sits upright beside him on the bench. A massive hand flattens to his chest, nudging him back against the wrought iron perhaps harder than it means to.

“Oh that is —that’s wicked fucking eerie, dude, I had like almost the same thing said to me.” The other man shoves a hand back through his hair. “Almost word for word. Jesus H., it’s probably from some stupid viral top ten ways ways to nicely break up with someone you’re too scared to admit you fell out of love with or were never in love with at all TikTok.” 

“Psychopaths.” Maran blinks at his new, nameless friend. “You sound, man?” 

He shakes his wild mop of red hair. 

“Peachy keen.” His wide-split smiling mouth twists curiously. “Why don’t we say like…cherry keen, or something? Peary keen?”

Maran sticks his hand out with a grin, pumping his new friend’s much larger on. “Banana-y keen.”

The other boy barks a laugh, charming and brash and too loud; nobody says a word about their volume control as they go on and on, until they run out of fruit.

*

At the beginning:

“Whoa.” 

Maran stumbles against the sudden grip tight around his lower arm. He’s two in. Benji cleared out not twenty minutes ago, so he’s alone and skittish but hiding it well, would be hiding it well if he had another—

“Leggo of me, man, fuckin’ hell.” 

Maran wrenches himself away from the grip, his face set in an uncharacteristic frown. He knows he looks angry, looks unapproachable, looks as though he’s not willing to have a conversation when all he really wants is for someone to fucking say something to him, anything, anyone. 

Maran turns to the person he’d bumped into, then pauses.

“Oh.” 

Benny’s forehead wrinkles with his hitching eyebrows. “Christ, Maran. K-Kill a guy with enthusiasm, will you?” 

Maran nudges around his shoulder, peering behind the wide set of Benny’s shoulders towards the drink table behind him. There’s a variety of bottles and mixers set out. Two women with short-cropped hair stand behind the folding table, twin-like in their choice of leather jackets despite the humidity.

Briefly, he remembers Naima’s fluttering dramatic sigh before they departed the flat: Matilda’s butch barmaid bouncers are going to be back.

“I’ll be a bit more enthusiastic once I get at those l’il beauties.” Maran sing-songs, pointing at the table.

Benny turns at the waist. His button-up sleeve strains a bit against his bicep, cutting into skin in a way that looks uncomfortable. Maran reaches out and tucks a finger into the taut fabric, pulling it away. 

“Don’t think Jules n’Stella are your t-type.” Benny quips, turning back to look down at the finger tucked into his shirt and then back at Maran’s face. 

“You’d be wrong about that,” one of the women crows. Maran feels heat sweep into his face when her shrewd, pretty green eyes dip down him. “Come hang out with us for the rest of the party, sweetheart.” 

Benny tucks an arm around Maran’s waist abruptly, tugging him a stumbling step closer. They touch flush from thigh to shoulder, Maran slightly tucked into his chest. He freezes, but Benny doesn’t seem to notice. 

“Ooh, stop it you.” He squeezes a broad palm around Maran’s shoulder. His middle finger, ringed by a band of steel with a silly skull welded to the middle, digs uncomfortable into Maran’s collarbone. He could move away. It hurts, and he could move away, but — but—

“I just want another Cherry Bomb.” 

Benny glances at the list of drinks Matilda had typed up. “Zombie. Cherry Bomb. Rumming up that Hill. One Way or Another…Shot. Oh, fuck. Matilda is a fucking l-loser.”

“I think they’re funny.” Maran mumbles. “They’re all lady band songs.” 

“Lady band songs.” Jules or Stella echoes. “Benson, leave him with us. We can be trusted. You can trust us with the super cute little—”

Benny hisses like a cat, lifting his other arm to tuck around Maran and pull him in even tighter. It’s not like his hug with Benji, or Fiadh tucking herself against his chest and asking if he’s mad, if he’ll quit his job at her father’s pool, if they’ll keep talking, if he’ll leave her alone, if he’ll hug her again.

Maran sways a bit, and Benny readjusts to keep him upright. They stumble together towards the exit. At least, Maran thinks its the exit.

“Wher’we goin’?” He asks, suddenly sleepy with the overwhelming scent of — pine, maybe, the woods, something salty like an ocean spray— “Are you wearin’ cologne? Smells nice.”

Benny pauses briefly. Then, somehow miraculously shouldering the door open, dodging an influx of new partygoers, and keeping them tight together, they stumble out into the cool night air. 

“We,” Benny announces, finally taking space for himself and allowing Maran his own bubble back, “Are going to go load up on ch-ch-chili cheese dogs.” 

Maran’s stomach flips. He puts a hand to it. “I might puke.”

“Maran, baby.” Benny slaps a hand to his back, nudging him a step forward into the night. “Pukin’ the dogs back up is ninety p-percent of the American dream.”

Maran smiles wryly, thinking of Benji’s bitchily pulled brow and mouth open to rant. “I thought that was trickle down economics.”

Beside him, Benny is silent for so long a moment that Maran tilts his face back from the breezy midnight air and opens his eyes. When he does, Benny’s hair rustles in the wind as he turns away. It brushes his cheek, and Maran’s stomach flips again.

“I love those t-two, but I will fight them—“

“I might actually be sick—“

“Sh,” Benny says, cupping the back of his neck. He rubs there a second, and Maran floats off elsewhere on— on the wave of nausea from the drinks. He had too many drinks. He had too many, for sure. “I will fight them.” 

“Don’t gotta fight nobody.” Maran assures. “They’re nice n’all, real flattering. But I like you better, don’t worry mate. You do the magic tricks.”

Benny pauses their sidewalk march and turns Maran towards him with hands on his shoulders. Maran blinks owlishly. 

“You’re goddamn right I do the t-tricks.” Benny intones. His voice is low and earnest, theatrically approving for Maran’s ears and his ears only. “You are goddamn right.” 

Maran isn’t sure what to do, then, other than laugh.

“Cute socks, b-by the way.” Benny points out, once they’re a ways down the street. The dim glow of the downtown district looms at the top of the gentle hill. At one point in the spring, Maran had struggled to peddle up it.

“Thanks,” he says, still beaming for some silly reason. “There’s little cherries on the bottom. Can’t remember where I got ‘em.” 

“Nice, nice.” Benny says. He drops his arm off Maran’s shoulders, but keeps his strange waltzing gait even with Maran’s so the brush every so often. It’s comforting. Maran doesn’t feel alone, in the cool night. “You have a good time?”