They're fifteen and fifteen-and-a-half, lying in the dark, the TV on flashing blues and greens against the black. They're curled up under the duvet, not touching. James watches Miles' chest rise and fall, his face relaxing in sleep in a way it doesn't in wake. He's beautiful, like those old Greek statues, the ones carved out of marble. Michelangelo's David has nothing on Miles, though, his soft wavy hair perfectly coiling over his forehead, cheek bones impossibly sharp and strong.
It will take James a year to reach across the space between them, to brush his hand over Miles' cheek. It will be in the intervening weeks before Miles' dad's decline. Miles will start awake, stare at James wide-eyed, hopeful in a way he only is before his dad's last days. He will stare, hope and fear being pulled together in the black hole of his chest. He will nod once and James will lean over, the pull between them as undeniable as gravity.
They will continue like that for months – between doctor's appointments, video games, poetry nights with Bill and Davy - they will wrap their legs together under the blanket, hold each other close. As his dad gets worse, Miles clings tighter, kisses harder, but turns away when the tears start to slip out. James knows – he knows – there's an ocean of them, but he can't make Miles talk about it, no matter how bad he wants to. They are continents being pushed apart by forces kilometers below the surface, forces beyond their control.
Then Miles' dad dies, and James isn't surprised when Miles breaks up with him, but it guts him anyway. Miles stands sheepish in front of him, his hands jammed into his pockets. He doesn't look at James when he says, I can't – I can't do this any more.
He doesn't say this – you – aren't what he would want for me, or I need to make him proud, but James hears it anyway.
They don't speak for three months. It feels like years.
When Miles starts coming by again, he's different. James isn't sure how, at first, but eventually he catches him watching Chloe as she crosses from the living room up to her bedroom, his eyes tracking, the same soft, hungry look in his eyes that was until so recently reserved for James.
One day, James catches his eye, and he grimaces and looks away.
They don't talk about it.
Miles gets a girlfriend for all two months, until he tells her something a bit too honest about her friends and she dumps him. The night they break up, James sneaks in through Miles' window and they sit out on the roof for an hour, both with teeth chattering but refusing to be the first one to admit it.
"Sorry about Sarah," James says after long stretches of silence.
"Eh," Miles shrugs, looking down as a car passes by below them, "She was way too into her guinea pigs anyway, it was weird."
James huffs a laugh, and nudges Miles' ankle with his foot. Miles turns and looks at him, eyes crinkling with a smile, watching him a moment too long.
"You were right, you know. About her friends."
"I know."
"Not your fault she couldn't handle it."
It's Miles' turn to huff a laugh.
"Thanks."
He leans back, tucking his hands behind his head and looking up at the stars. James watches him for a moment, as long as plausible deniability will allow. His mouth is parted in wonder, eyes tracking invisible movements across the firmament. Then he turns to look at him, one side of his mouth creasing into a smile, softer and more open than James has seen in a while.
"Well, come on," He says, cocking his head. James blinks at him a moment, then realizes.
Oh.
He crawls over, closing the foot or so of space between them that's existed for so many months now. He tucks himself under Miles' arm, shoving his ear into his armpit and laughing when Miles yelps and tries to squirm away from the cold organ.
He settles in and wraps an arm around Miles' waist. After a moment, Miles starts running a hand up and down his back, humming some song or another. James can hear his heart thundering in his chest, even more so when he shifts and grabs him tighter.
They blink off to sleep, waking and going back inside when they both start shivering violently. They spend the night in Miles' bed, tucked up together like how they used to be.
They graduate and get drunk off of Miles' mom's wine.
They go to separate uni's but wind up spending practically every weekend hanging out, getting high and watching crap TV together. They cop off together, once, on James' twentieth birthday, tipsy and a little high with kilometers of skin between them.
They don't talk about it.
Life gets in the way. They move, change jobs, date horrid people. Then Miles shows up to his apartment one night with a bottle of Glayva in one hand and a 50p copy of Jaws in the other. They aren't even fifteen minutes into the movie when Miles kisses him, his mouth liqueur-cold but still the same spicy-warm that James has been dreaming about for the last decade.
Miles takes him apart, that night on the deflated charity shop couch, his warm hands running all over James' body. James manages to hold out until Miles gets his mouth around him, a little sloppy with too many teeth, but earnest, sure of himself. James returns the favor as best he can until his wrist starts to hurt.
Afterwards, they lie together, panting, with shirts undone and sweat clinging to hair.
"We can't do this again," Miles says, after he's caught his breath.
It stings like the Glayva even though he's expecting it.
"I know," He says. He wraps his arm tighter around Miles' neck anyway, kisses his forehead.
"I'm sorry."
"I know you are."
They do do it again, though. Every couple of weekends for the next couple of years, Miles shows up with a movie and some kind of substance – usually liqueur, sometimes weed, and one memorable time vodka with no chaser since James had just run out of orange juice. They fuck on the couch, soft but with an edge of desperation to it.
"It's not fair, you know," James says one night, tucked under Miles' arm like he was made to fit there.
Miles swallows audibly. "What?"
"This. It's not fair. You coming by whenever you're lonely or in need of a fuck, but you can't be arsed to take me out to dinner beforehand."
Miles frowns.
"You want to order a pizza?"
He sighs, "That's not the point, Milo."
Miles looks away.
"No. No, I know it's not."
A beat.
"So take me to dinner, damn it."
He sighs.
"James-"
"What, Miles? What are you so afraid of?"
He doesn't have an answer to that. He turns away.
They don't talk for a few months, after that.
Then James gets sick, and Miles comes back with the force of a hurricane. There's a desperate, clingy edge to it, even more than before. But there's also a softness there, something gentle that James didn't realize Miles had been holding back. He takes his time now, looks James in the eye as he pulls an orgasm out of him, traces a finger around his hipbones like he's trying to carve a river out with the continuous motion of his thumb.
Then he stops coming by all together. James calls, it goes to voicemail. He calls, it goes to voicemail.
James stops calling.
It's getting harder to push the phone buttons, anyway.
James makes plans to go to Barafundle. He invites Miles, fully sure he isn't going to make it.
But he does.
They're twenty-nine and twenty-nine-and-a-half, standing across from one another on Barafundle Bay, and Miles finally tells him, "I'm fucking your sister."
It's a blow James hadn't expected, but at the same time it makes perfect sense. Because she's him – creative, sarcastic, with a little bit of a mean streak - but socially-acceptable. Someone Miles could bring home for Christmas. Because she's not him - not nearly as pretentious or aggressive. Not sick.
James, ever the masochist, with his heart in his stomach asks, "Why?"
Miles, his eyes blue as the bay, tells him, "You know why." and stares at him with all the emotion he's been holding back for fifteen fucking years.
Because I love you, his Barafundle eyes say, But I can't have you, James. You're right, it's not fair that I'm sick to my stomach at the thought of losing you, even though I never really let myself have you. Because it's too late for that, and I'm going to need an anchor in the crazy, fucked up, backwards world when you're not longer in it, and she's it.
"I'm sorry," He murmurs.
James wants to be angry. He does. But he's spent this whole walk being angry, and frankly, he's tired. He glances over his shoulder, where Bill and Davy have occupied themselves with rolling up the sleeping bags, or tending the fire, or otherwise doing inane shit just to give the two of them some privacy.
"I know you are," He says, all the fight gone out of him, "Just..."
Miles steps closer, not in his space but closer than he's been this whole trip.
"What?"
He sighs. "Nevermind."
Miles huffs, and goes back to camp.
They're sitting together on the beach, the sunset sinking into the horizon. Miles, lost in thought, is lit by the red-orange light.
"Miles..." James murmurs, his voice hoarse from exertion.
"Mm?" He murmurs back, leaning in to hear him.
"Kiss me. Please, just one last time."
Miles closes his eyes, and for a moment James thinks he's going to say no, but then he opens them and they're red, brimming with wet.
"Okay," He says, and his voice cracks.
There's a beat, and he moves in. He takes his hand and slides it up James' arm, resting at the curve of his wrist. Touching with purpose.
He takes a deep breath, and kisses him on the exhale.
It's soft and impossibly gentle. It's like so many of their other kisses, the dry-hot like when you stand too close to a fire for too long. It's like coming home. It's like leaving: a kiss in a train station, in a doorway, a goodbye-for-now, see-you-later kind of kiss.
His other hand lingering at the spot behind James' ear like he's committing it to memory. Maybe he is.
After a few moments, he pulls away.
When they were kids and they would stop kissing, Miles would often chase him for a few more, and that would evolve into a few more, and eventually they would tumble back into the bed or the couch and wrap up in each other for a few minutes longer.
But this kiss is just once, and there's a finality to it as he pulls his mouth away. He presses their foreheads together but doesn't move closer again.
"James..." Miles whispers.
"You don't – you don't have to say it."
He laughs, because of course James can read his mind even now.
"I do, though," He insists, because this is really and truly the last chance to.
"Fine," He huffs, weakly.
"I love you. I have for fifteen years."
James takes a shaky breath.
"I know."
"Always will."
"I know."
He laughs, and the wind carries it out to sea.