The first time you meet, for all your wariness, you don't even see him coming.
Strong fingers wrap almost all the way around your forearm, and you almost jump out of your skin. They belong to a young man over a head taller than you, but you barely see his face before he moves around you. Letting go of your wrist, he slides your backpack off your shoulder with his other hand. Your thoughts freeze with your blood, and you can only stare as he casually makes his way to the counter. You think he'll turn you in, and prepare to run.
He doesn't. Instead, he buys your things.
You can't stand waiting for him to change his mind, so you dart outside, just in case. Part of you debates leaving, but you need those supplies just badly enough that you hesitate. When he finally walks out with your spoils, you don't—can't—look at him for long. You just snatch back your bag and stride away before he can lecture you on right and wrong.
But even though you try to forget him, he torments you, the boy who showed you what he thought was kindness.
No more than a few restless days pass before you decide to find him, for your own peace of mind. You already have one lead: the convenience store where you met. Since he made sure you didn't steal anything, you can go there again freely.
To your surprise, you catch a glimpse of him through the shop window. He must have been eating on that day, too, if he's come here at the same time. But you neither approach nor say anything, remaining on the other side of the glass. Your purpose is only to put a face to a nameless stranger.
No one who eats dinner alone in a place like this is well-off, but his features are admittedly handsome, almost proud. He is tall and slim, though his baggy clothes conceal his physique. His skin is clean and smooth and pale, and his eyes and nose are both large. His hair looks soft, black roots beginning to overtake tawny dye, and is long enough to hide his eyebrows.
Once you've memorized his appearance, you leave, but walking away takes more willpower than it should. It feels like you've left something unfinished.
In an attempt to finish it, you visit to study him twice more within the next week. He must know something of hardship from the way he wolfs down his meals as though each might be his last, from his dull eyes focusing on nothing, from the exhausted slump of his broad shoulders. Though you notice all this, you can't put your finger on why it intrigues you. You've known several people in similar circumstances, yourself included.
Is this inexplicable fixation what it means to want to get closer to someone?
The third time, you lose your nerve as soon as you see him. By now, you've spent enough time staring that it's only a matter of time before he catches you, and you don't want to have to explain, because you can't do that much even to yourself. You flee to the abandoned lot at the back of the store and lean against the wall, will wavering. Your instincts scream at you to run or hide, but you can't bring yourself to do either. You're not in any real danger, and too much of you wants to see him again.
It isn't long before you notice movement in the corner of your eye, and you realize it's him a split second before you duck behind the dumpster on an impulse. All you've stolen have been glances, but even those give you a rush. Being pursued means that someone has seen you, and cares about your existence enough to give chase. This fear, even if it's irrational in this case, is a reminder that you still want to live.
Your heart pounds, and you wonder if he'll say anything, but he only chuckles to himself and starts walking. After a brief hesitation, you follow at a distance. You don't have anything better to do, and you don't like hanging around the same place too often. You'd rather find other places to see him.
For a long time, you simply walk. Although he doesn't seem to be going much of anywhere, he isn't trying to shake you off. His pace is so leisurely, so unhurried, so calm that you can almost imagine you're walking side by side. Maybe he thinks that way too, because even though he doesn't glance behind him, you get the feeling that he knows you're there. (Maybe that's why you like him. He actually notices you.)
It isn't long before night falls. Sunset wasn't far away when you started, but you hadn't realized how close at hand the darkness really was. Misgivings flood your mind, and you debate turning back. This isn't the best part of town, and you are tailing an unfamiliar and perceptive boy. Taking a deep breath, you remind yourself that it is easier to hide now. Besides that, you know your way around this city, and you know how to deal with danger. You can always run.
He seems to be moving with more purpose now, turning down an alley. You don't mean to show yourself, but you're better at speed than stealth, and you forgot about the angle of the light. As your shadows meet, he calls out to you, and you freeze. This is the first time you've heard his voice. It's a little deeper and huskier than you thought, and gentler too, but still teasing. It wraps around you like something you've never felt before: a homecoming.
You find that you don't want to run anymore. Instead, you come closer to share in his guarded smile, and giggle at his half-mocking laugh.
Such is your introduction, during which you exchange neither names nor ages. They mean little to you, and he must not care for them either, because he doesn't ask. The only thing that matters to you is survival, so only those who have felt what it means to be alone can earn your respect. He has already found a place among those few, but you don't like using honorifics, and he doesn't care.
Since you can't decide where to wait for him anymore, you follow him instead. He tells you that it's annoying, but if he really meant that, you both know he could lose you easily. Besides that, you don't want to leave yet, because he's helped you remember how to smile.
Both of you have had to grow up too quickly, but the way you play together is as though you're children again. Sometimes, you run from each other instead of the police, trying to capture one another in a glorified game of tag or hide-and-seek, a remnant of the recent days when you hid and he sought. Or when you were hiding and seeking at the same time. He never hides, but you can never seem to catch him. He has an elusive sort of aura, an invisible wall deflecting any outside attempt to get closer.
You don't know why, but you can't resist trying anyway.
As the days pass, sometimes too fast and sometimes too slowly, you find yourself spending more time with him—too much. Staying with the same people makes you almost as nervous as loitering around the same place, and in a way, this is a combination of both. But you can't bring yourself to leave. Not yet. After all, even at its brightest, something in his square grin still seems so sad.
Of course, there are many moments when he doesn't look as lonely. Once, he steals your stolen bread and laughs so happily that even though you glare at him, you cannot tell him you will go hungry tonight as a result. Besides, you laugh at him, too, when he hits his head on the railroad tracks later, trying to show you how easy it is to die. (You know. You've thought about it before.)
He also teaches you how to draw, even if only with spray paint on concrete. He demonstrates his talents first on an overpass column, persistent smile ebbing into a look of intent focus. It seems to you as though he is channeling a force that is not quite a part of himself. It might be his past, judging by the occasional flicker in his eyes, like he's trying to paint over something in his mind. Or like he's transforming an innate destructiveness into creativity.
Placing his rough hand over yours, he helps hold and guide the spray can as you paint your very first work beside it. All the while, your heart pounds, but this isn't the same feeling as when you break the laws of society. This is the thrill of breaking the laws inside yourself. You're afraid of the way he touches you, and you're also afraid he'll stop. However hopeful you may feel on your sunnier days, you've lost too much to believe something like this can last.
No matter how solid his hand is over yours, you can't shake the feeling that he is an illusion. He reminds you of characters in some old folktales you used to like, telling of anywhere but here and anytime but now. In another world, he might have been a spirit or a prince. In this one, he is bruised and smudged and beaten down, and his finely shaped features are too often distorted in worry or frustration. But like him, his beauty is defiant and terrible.
You realize it most acutely the day he rests his head unexpectedly in your lap, his gaze as faraway as the clouds he watches. You see everything: the ripple of his throat as he swallows, the cracks in his lips before he moistens them, the breath of wind stirring his hair, the reflection of the summer sky in his autumn eyes. But he cannot, or otherwise does not, see you.
Part of you wonders whether he ever really noticed you after all, but the rest of you knows it doesn't matter. You're used to it by now.
Even when he glances in your direction, it is as though his eyes are focused on something farther away than you can imagine: distant memories of people and a past he does not explain. Part of it is because you are not the kind of person from whom he seeks recognition. Even so, you can't help but smile at him, and hope that will be enough to bring him back.
And sometimes, it is. Sometimes, you feel his dark eyes lingering on your face, soft and sharp in the same glance, and realize that he can see straight through you. His is a gaze perfected through years of suffering, forcibly hollowed, all inclination toward gentleness tempered by a profound sense of caution. Such is the wisdom of the streets.
That seems to be the only kind of wisdom he has. He obeys strange, almost frightening impulses sometimes, like he's possessed by a past you don't understand. If he's anything like you, then all he wants now is to break free of it. But since he won't confide in you the way he's asked you to confide in him, you can't help him do so. You can only regret things on his behalf, and complain that if he was just going to ruin his phone like that, you should have pocketed it first. (His only response is an enigmatic laugh.)
Soon, a restless tension arises between you, seething just beneath the surface. You can't remember the first time you noticed it, but it seems it's always been there. You feel it most keenly when it's dark and you're too close together, hiding from something or someone or maybe each other. Normally, you prefer keeping your distance, but he's so irresistibly warm. That heat scares you like nothing else.
Especially since he smells so good.
Most others would not agree. It isn't that he has neglected his personal hygiene; more often than not, he is cleaner than you are. Still, you recognize the stale scent of secondhand clothes—the kind that never comes out, no matter how many times you wash them—and he wears no cologne but cheap deodorant. It's slightly sweet, but has a musky tang that means it has mingled with sweat. Yet you cannot help but think of it as a good smell, if only because it is uniquely his.
All this flashes past you in the moment. At first, you realize only that you are close enough to breathe him in, and that you like it more than you should. It is only later that you commit his scent to memory, trying to reconstruct it in your resentful fantasies. And the sheen of his eyes finds its way into them, too, as he tells you he's no stranger to trouble.
You like that spark of mischief all the more when he lets you come with him. His excursions are usually little self-assigned night missions to paint or repaint whatever strikes his fancy. Given that he doesn't notice or care how close to a police station he lives, you think he's braver than you are, or maybe stupider. It barely seems to occur to him that what he's doing could land him in serious trouble. Not because it's a severe crime, but because of all his repeat offenses.
You come with him anyway. You're in this together now.
Since his favorite hobby is vandalization, it isn't just the police who come after you. This time, it's a middle-aged shop owner who stayed later than either of you thought. She's harmless on her own, even if her yell is abrasive, but she's still coming after you, and she'll still call the police if she catches you. So you run, and you wonder—not for the first time—whether this deadly exhilaration is what keeps him going, too.
But even as the thought crosses your mind, he stumbles and pushes you ahead as he falls.
Unbalanced from his shove, you skid to a halt. The adrenaline has given you such strength that in the moment, you feel you can do anything. Instead of using it to fly away, you turn back and extend your hand, and he hesitates for only a split second before he grins and grasps it. There's no time for you to feel weak at his touch; you can't let go now. You can only pull him up and keep running, your heart even lighter than your feet.
Another few moments, and he pulls you into an alley so abruptly it hurts. The two of you lean against the wall to catch your breath, though your heart is still racing in a way that has nothing to do with the running and everything to do with him. His sweatpants are torn, and his knee scraped, but the relief is as overwhelming as the anxiety of a moment before.
Maybe that's why you feel so much bolder. Once the danger has passed, you slip your hands suddenly beneath his sweatshirt to warm them, and he half chokes on an inhalation, caught between cursing and laughing. He grasps your wrists and pulls you closer in the same fluid motion, probably trying to keep you from glimpsing his mottled skin. You laugh too, pretending you didn't see, but your breath hitches as you collide.
He doesn't let go of your wrists or move away. He just gazes down at you as if considering something, eyes skimming over your face to settle on your mouth. Finding it suddenly difficult to look at him, you try to keep still, but can't help but fidget nervously all the same. This is a moment you have dreamed of and feared, wished for and feared, sought after and feared.
Slowly, he leans down to put his lips on yours, and seems to wait. You think he's holding his breath.
There is a peculiar, almost childlike innocence about him, calling to something still pure within you, that tells you he has not done even this much before. In a way, you're reluctant to lead him any farther down this path. It winds through your body, but a branch of it passes too near your heart. And the heart is an ugly thing once bared: best keep it caged, no matter how much it aches and shakes to be let out. As long as you close it off…
You part your lips to let him in, and the two of you breathe into one another. His tongue is clumsy after so long spent holding it, and his grip is tight to hide the trembling, but he does not break away. He feels as sheepish as he is insistent, pushing too close and pulling too far. You can feel in his pulse the struggle between selfish passion and selfless desperation to please. He drinks you in as much out of thirst to do the good thing, the right thing, as out of natural desire.
His heart is strong. That, more clearly than anything else, marks the difference between the two of you.
As you separate, dazed, a part of you is ecstatic; another part is apprehensive, almost furious. You know full well that every step to come will mean nothing after the novelty wears off, until even the most you can offer will become another pleasurable distraction—nothing more. But then, perhaps it's better this way, turning the senses into a game that shouldn't be so simple. A game you can quit before you lose.
So you play it awhile longer. Yours is an unspoken agreement, but a binding one. It feels like if either of you mention the moments you share, your shadows meeting and melting into one another, they'll stop. You sense that this dalliance is sudden, impulsive, too much too soon, more likely to extinguish this fragile spark than to fan it into a more enduring kind of fire. And for the very first time, you're afraid of that… but you can't stop it now.
Even if he has said little of his home life, you can tell that it has left him hungry for love. Forceful and trepidatious, bold and shy in turns, he does not know how he should touch you. He guesses and second-guesses, experiments, learns. This time, you steal kisses instead of glances, and you teach him to do the same, to pull himself out of his mind, to seize you by the shoulders and press a lie to your lips.
Except that with him, it's always the truth. Once, he trips and falls on purpose, and pulls you laughingly down on top of him. His eyes glisten in the instant before he closes them, and his smile is full and bright and playful until he brings your mouth down to cover it. You give in, but your heart beats in your throat, your body remembering the next few steps that have not yet happened. Not with him.
But it isn't long before he stumbles upon them, too. Only a few more days pass before your goodbye lasts long enough to become a new kind of hello. He bends his head to brush kisses along your forehead, your cheek… your neck. As he does so, he pulls your shirt aside gently, almost as if trying not to wake you. A tickle, a flutter, his eyelashes on your skin, and he leans into you as if trying to become a part of you.
Thoughtlessly, you ask if that's what he really wants. To be inside you.
You swallow just after you say it, maybe trying to take back your words, but it's too late. He blushes and says nothing, but looks at you sideways with newfound curiosity in his gaze. Even he has recognized that you are not talking about his heart or yours, but your bodies, and the space remaining between them. He stands, very still and silent, on an edge he does not understand.
This inconclusive motionlessness frustrates you, so you move to test him, sliding a hand between his thighs. He catches your wrist reflexively, but hesitates even as he does so, and again does not let go. Your fingers brush against his belt through his shirt, and he shivers. He feels it too, this possibility, shimmering like the summer heat. You move your other hand to the back of his neck, drawing him down, and he finally surrenders.
You try to speak through your kiss, to tell him you hardly have a home, to ask if his place is free. He doesn't let you, and that's an answer unto itself. You asked for this here; you wanted it now. His wandering hands remind you that you are no better than the streets he walks. Neither of you are. This abandoned alley, the same place you first introduced yourselves, is a worthier bed for the two of you than the most luxurious mattress.
You're used to it, anyway. You've done this before with other boys and men, sometimes voluntarily, sometimes not. Either way, it was easier when you didn't care. Your lips didn't tremble and your face didn't flush. Your hands didn't shake as they started to unbuckle and unbutton and unzip.
He stops you before you can touch him. Taking your chin in one hand, he searches your face, desperately enough that you can tell just from his expression that he doesn't want you to look down. His hair is falling into his eyes, another veil in the darkness. You've never felt so beautiful as when he can barely see you. It must be the same for him, so you incline your head and fix your gaze on his face.
You soon feel for yourself that he has no reason to be shy, as your fingers curl and tighten around him. His hand falls back to his side, and he lets out a short breath. There is a softening of his expression—a flicker like the shadow of a butterfly—and a hardening elsewhere.
As you establish a slow pace, up and down, his whole being responds to your touch. His kisses start spilling over the edges, needier, rougher like his breathing. Caught up in his ardor, you trail your other hand up and down his chest, and he lets out a barely-voiced whine. His lean muscles are not a mark of vanity, but of necessity, and you can feel that they are knotted from daily stress. Is it the pain etched into his body that draws you in?
It doesn't matter; this pattern cannot continue much longer. To keep him from losing himself too soon, you tell him he has to do something for you in exchange. It doesn't have to be much, you think, guiding his hand between your legs. Just enough to make this work.
You realize only as you do so how much, and how quickly, you've come to trust this boy. It isn't often that you're comfortable with receiving as much as you give. His fingers are clumsy, and the friction through layers of fabric makes you wince at times, but he is trying. That fact alone sends a pleasant shudder through your body, and you remember to smile. You have one another in the palms of your hands, and there is no time or place for fear.
It would be easy to end this where it begins, at least for him, but you promised to let him in. As you let go, he sways in place, gazing at you like he's trying to remember a dream, mouth slightly open and eyes half-shut. You take his hand again, and this time lead him down to kneel. It would be best if he lay on his back, but he shakes his head as if guessing your thoughts. (You should have known. He's never content to do things the simple way.)
Taking off his jacket and then his shirt, he gestures for you to move aside, then lays them down where you knelt a moment before. Grabbing your shoulders to move you back, he pushes you down onto his clothing and arranges himself over you. His outline, obstinate and awkward and all you can see, dares you to tell him no.
You don't.
He works down your shorts and then the layer beneath, but does not look at you any more than you looked at him, keeping his eyes fixed on nothing at all. It seems less like he is restraining himself out of a sense of misguided chivalry, and more like the idea of glancing down doesn't even enter his head. But he is not indifferent: his eyes gleam in anticipation, reflecting the dim streetlight, as he feels his way into you.
Your heart skips a beat as he slides to a halt with a brief exhalation, half a breathy laugh, victorious and relieved. This is a side of him you have not seen, starved and eager and more vulnerable than you thought, somewhere between beast and boy. By some standards, you're transforming him into a man, but you know it's not that simple. If it were, you'd have been a woman for years.
You only realize you've seized up when he murmurs a question. You nod, and your troubled thoughts scatter as he starts moving—gradual, experimental, almost apologetic. But even now, for all his intensity of concentration, a part of him is elsewhere.
For a time, you watch his expression in fascination, his glazed half-closed eyes still not quite seeing you. Sometimes his lips stir in a distant smile, and other times in the faintest beginnings of speech, but there is neither breath nor voice behind his words. Shuddering out the sudden sadness, you brush his hair uselessly out of his face. He is not addressing you.
Without any experience, it doesn't take long before his instincts begin to override his inhibitions. Neither boy nor man, you think, looking up at him through a haze of heightening pleasure. Animal, panting, with parted lips and bared teeth and mute tongue. Only his thoughts are still human, and he does not share them.
To call him back, you press your fingernails into his bare bruised shoulders. From what you can tell, pain isn't something either of you enjoy, but it's all you know. He flinches, gasping, then lurches back into motion with such raw passion that you can't help but whimper. His only response is a breathless chuckle as he pauses, glancing around what he can see of the alley for unheard intruders.
He must have assumed you drew his attention out of concern that you would be found, but truthfully, you don't care. To anyone else in this part of town, where affronts to decency are more common than decency itself, you'd look like just another pair of young people with nothing better to do, making an approximation of love in the shadows.
After he ensures your privacy, he redoubles the rhythm as if to make up for the moment he stopped. Pounding like heartbeats and headaches, like approaching footsteps, like beating down a door. Neither you nor he is in control anymore, consumed by the tumultuous urging of your blood.
His lightning strikes before yours, its thunder a hissing inhalation through grit teeth as he grinds to a slick halt. Biting his tongue and closing his eyes, he gives half a scowl as if in fierce concentration, but does not say your name. You don't think he remembers it, or maybe you never told him. (Sometimes you can scarcely remember it yourself.)
For all he must be feeling, he does not waste much time catching his breath before he withdraws, a faint sheen of sweat across his skin. Before you can even register the emptiness he left inside you, he fills the space with his fingers without so much as a hesitation, and you swallow your shock. You didn't anticipate that he would acknowledge your needs, let alone insist like this.
It doesn't take long. Inexperienced though he may be, you are ready for surrender. He has made you sensitive, so you guide him until the smoldering becomes a blaze that sweeps through your shivering body. It's not the best you've ever had, but it's enough to drive the darkness from your mind for a few blinding moments, to let out a choked-off cry that could be mistaken for a cough.
You do not exchange any words as you rearrange your clothes, but when you look up at him again, his genuine grin disarms you. His expression is a little bit bashful, but congratulatory and triumphant too, like the two of you won some sort of game. All at once, you remember that's what this was supposed to be, but you force yourself to smile back. It's not his fault you shouldn't be trusted.
The next night, nothing is different at first, and the changelessness is as terrifying as it is reassuring.
You accompany him on another of his late-night escapades, but this time, you've barely started by the time you have to stop. The police show up too quickly for it to be chance, ready to give chase, and the two of you abandon your paint and run faster than you've ever run before. As you duck into another alley, hand in hand and dizzy from elation, you almost believe your fears are all unfounded, that this can work.
Until he tells you to hide, turns his back on you, and steps almost jauntily out of your hiding place to sacrifice himself in your stead.
You don't reach after him. You can't. It scares you, how quickly his heart has swollen, how sincerely he believes that turning himself in is the right thing to do. And even now, he does not see you; he only follows the incomprehensible dictates of his own conscience, as he always has. Is this because he truly wants to shelter you, to save you from some fate he has given up on averting himself, or simply because he longs to face the consequences of his actions?
You realize in that moment that you are holding him back. You are a thief and always will be, but he is driven by a stronger sense of justice than you can ever know. More than that, he seeks a kind of reassurance you can never give, a stability you can never offer. Even as badly hurt as he has been, he still believes in forever. It just can't be with you, because if he really understood you, he'd stay by your side no matter the danger.
You're not in this together anymore.
Taking a deep breath as the voices retreat, along with his footsteps, you turn and walk away. You've suspected from the start that you'd have to leave him before he left you, but it looks like you couldn't do that after all, though he'll certainly see it that way. And you'll deserve every bit of his hatred, if only because you've stolen something he can never buy back.
Of course, it'll hurt you too at first, like cold air stinging an open wound, but it'll heal over soon enough. Maybe the memories will still itch now and again, but as long as you don't scratch at them too much, you'll come away without so much as a scar. Everything will be just as it was before, and he'll be fine too, like the words he painted.
It seems that the last time you've met, for all his earnestness, he can't even see you leaving.