Winter Hearts

Two Can Play

Leo got out of the car last, the small street outside the apartment building finally quiet after Ken, Hyuk and Ravi had lead the way upstairs with Min Seok and some baggage in tow. N looked like he was going to hang around but Hongbin linked arms with him and dragged him inside, leaving Kkomae to find a spot for the car.

Leo looked up at the building, shrugging on his coat and pushing the hair out of his eyes.

It looked like Siana was not home yet as there were no lights on at her place in the darkening evening. He didn't see Mikhalis' car parked anywhere so he assumed noone was home and turned towards the town centre, crossing past the Miami junction and slipping into the tiny car park beside it to walk out onto the tiny jetty the boys had been playing at that first morning they had breakfast with Siana.

The weather was mild, a tiny breeze wafting down towards the water, but otherwise clear, and warm for a winter's evening. He picked up a handful of tiny stones from the pebble beach floor and threw them gently into the water, enjoying the tinkly thwump they made as they hit the surface.

He did it again, then went to the end of the jetty and sat at the edge of it, dangling his legs down towards the water. The soles of his shoes were just a few inches from the surface, and he remembered Siana saying that people went swimming in the winter in the bay.

Peering into the clear water, he could suddenly see the attraction. His feet felt overly hot and too-tightly strapped into his shoes, and the calm air held the chill at bay. In the far distance, under the fading sunlight, the surface of the water looked like liquid gold, and he felt an urge to strip and plunge into its depths, the water looked so warm.

On a whim, he folded his legs up onto the jetty and tugged at his laces, taking off his sneakers and socks and placing them behind him. He stretched blissfully free toes down towards the water, then withdrew them as a second thought hit him. He paused to drag off his coat and put his phone and wallet into it as he laid it down on top of his sneakers.

Then he braced himself on the edge of the jetty, leaning back so that he could reach his toe into the water without falling in by accident.

It was dreadfully, dreadfully cold.

Whatever warmth he was feeling up until that moment disappeared as the ice cold water sent a spike of chill up his leg and spine and made him shiver. He laughed dispiritedly at himself, realising that the loose, free feeling he was having after taking off his shoes was rapidly being taken over by the humbling thought that he was barefoot and underdressed on a cement jetty in the dead of winter, shrinking back from the water like some unfortunate cat.

He leaned back on his hands behind him, laughing to himself as he looked up at the clear sky, wiggling his dipped and now icy toe. He let his momentum carry him back until he was laying against the concrete with his feet still dangling over the edge, staring up into the cloudless evening sky, a star or two appearing like diamond studs in the periphery of his vision.

He sighed, the exhalation taking with it some of the tension in his body.

Although he was close to the main road, he was far enough away to not see any buildings in his sight as he lay there, and the sky above him spread out and away from him like a receding mist of darkness, a shaded mirror, a fathomless depth. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness before him he was beginning to see the pinpricks of light from the stars, and in the few moments of his eyes adjusting it suddenly seemed to him as if the sky was full of them, if he looked askance at it.

But when he looked straight at it, he couldn't see the individual lights from the stars. Just... a sort of cloudy brightness.

In that same moment, he became aware of a change in his perception. Rather than a receding darkness, the sky seemed like an approaching blanket of tiny, tiny lights, about to float down and press on him.