troubled waters (FierroChase AU)

twenty-three

The wet streets lining the park were illuminated by the warm, yellowy glow of rather ancient lanterns, giving a very specific brilliance to the drenched, shiny asphalt. The light was reflected by shallow puddles, appeared from time to time at places, where the roots of the nearby birches or the constant pressure by the daily passing of cars had created delves in the road surface. Little currents were lively streaming all across the street, passing through the coarse surface irregularities, coalescing to broader ones, slowing down to finally join the vastness of a puddle, being ruffled and agitated just in the next moment, by a giant step into the mass of troubled waters...

The rain had begun and stopped almost unnoticed, a phenomenon too common, too neglected to attract any attention, and only as the street air had already been transformed, a fresh note of rain, purity and fallen leaves anticipating the long months of autumn, Alex and Magnus left the restaurant whose bright walls and curious plants had been witnessing their conversation; they silently stepped outside, smiling at the scenery that emerged from the closed door. It was the absolute calmness of a sleeping neighbourhood, far away from highway noises or the downtown chaos, pushing down on the streets and their inhabitants, suffocating every sound and every thought that did not belong underneath that familiar roof, made of tree shades and starlight, painted yellow by the nostalgic rays of the streetlights.

The road was empty, fully void of any human presence, when the two students made their way home. It was too late for the birds, rabbits and squirrels that usually inhabited the parks, it was also too late for the doves migrating from the heated concrete surface of the downtown squares, and only the occasional cry of an owl, rare in this big city, interrupted the monotonous yet calming sound of boots on hard, wet ground, sometimes splashing into a puddle, irritating the perfect harmony of water, to turn it into a violent storm, soon to be calmed again under the shine of the stars... For a while, Magnus and Alex just walked like this, with a common moderate pace, strolling merrily as fast as their fatigued feet let them, looking from right to left, noticing the smell and the taste of fresh air, and the sparkling asphalt, a promise of hope and beauty carved into a municipal monument of quotidian sadness. Light, seemingly transparent clouds screened only some parts of the star-bound nocturnal sky; apparently, the clean, rainy air, free from the smoke and dust of communal transportation structures, allowed the willing observer the discovery of more luminaries than usually visible. Was it an over-romanticising imagination that steered Magnus' glances and deceived him into perceiving sallow reflections of these northern stars in the dampness of the pavement debris?

This was not the night for philosophical consideration, nor for literary self-reflection on man and society, Magnus had realised soon enough, notwithstanding this was quite an excellent framework for serene meditation and keen dedication to the two things that had mattered most to him during the past few years: aesthetics and cognition. There was no moon, but somehow it was the absence of the watery star and the eye of day that created a downright Aristotelian sense of balance and equivalence de rigueur for a true journey of the mind, illuminated solely by the sagacious star-shine of knowledge and serenity.

Magnus knew well how easily he could be distracted by linking his soul to an overriding principle, to some kind of deistic nature or universal soul he encountered in two spheres only, in literature and in nature, and sometimes in music, he could get lost in inebriations of thought, momentarily cutting all ties keeping him in this material world; he knew himself.

Now, there was another kind of inebriation, an intoxicating pull issued by the person walking next to him, seemingly caught deep in his own thoughts. It was an inebriation not of thought and of aesthetical philosophy, but of feeling, of genuine, directly experienced feeling, some mental and corporal phenomenon utterly unknown and strange to him, overcharging his capacity of understanding while overflowing his mind with positive emotions hard to analyse or arrange, a flood deluging the dykes carefully constructed a long time ago. He understood the vulnerability he offered, the danger he agreed to confront by acting the way he had, by speaking the words he had said, and he was not even able to decide whether he was going to regret this evening or not. This question was not relevant, it had disappeared in the depths of his mind, incarcerated for the time being, with a drunk guard having forgotten the keys' location. There were only approaches of consideration, soon swallowed by an overwhelmingly close Alex, whose pure presence whirled everything that made up Magnus' character, creating a loosely connected puzzle of excited infatuation that threatened to break asunder any moment.

The words he had spoken hunted him, infusing his mind, taking over his thoughts, again and again... "Alex...", "Alex...", "Alex...", his voice repeated over and over again, restraining from letting him go peacefully, keeping him close, both in a physical and in a mental way. The way he had pronounced the name, the grammatical construction, the essence of what he had said, all this was too overwhelming to be processed by that perfectly unravelled mind of Magnus', and yet processing was exactly what he was trying to do in each and every moment. Why had he said Alex the way he had said it? What did he mean by "falling in love", when and how had he fallen in love? When and how did had he understood it and when and how and, even more importantly, why had his mind subconsciously established the link between falling, understanding and confessing the love, whatever this little word actually meant? And what on earth did he think when he said that he "might have fallen in love"?

Passing tree after tree, he came no nearer to any solution, why the silence between the two got deeper and deeper; as if two travellers who had joined their efforts to build a bridge had suddenly become blind and could not find the result of their work anymore. A confusing and sad scene, if one imagines it. However, there were more than one facets to the image of two teenagers walking an empty, dark street underneath a mixture of birches and lanterns, walking one to another, neither close nor distant, and listening to the sound of cracking branches and shoes stepping on wet asphalt, the park's cicadas playing a peaceful theme of tension and pressure, some contradictory, agitated melody that fit too well to the two's feelings... like they had been meant to witness this spectacle of sound, adding to the game of light and shadow illuminating their hearts; and they kept walking.

There was no appearance of a particular reason when Alex took Magnus' hand just as they passed the second-last street before their home. Maybe he had started freezing, or he felt like he might stumble if he kept walking on his own. But the way he reached out slowly, lightly turning his head to the right, watching Magnus' reaction form the corner of his eye, equally afraid and liberated to take this step, could just as well lead to the hypothesis that, in fact, there was no rational reason at all for this gesture of Alex' and that in the contrary, it was an action initiated by a pure, uncontrolled impulse of the heart. This seemed probable, judging also from Magnus' reaction; his swift turn of the head resulted in a split second of rather deep eye contact, an expression of warmth leaving Alex' face to transfer this shy sign of affection to Magnus' hesitating core.

Yet this regard, during only the blink of an eye made him embrace the connection manually proposed by Alex. He enclosed Alex' fingers with his own, in this moment, in this deliberate, much less spontaneous act really intertwining not only two body parts, but potentially, two destinies. They walked the last few hundred meters like this, hands linked, mouths closed, minds aiming high into a cloudless sky... As they reached the front door, they had lost interest for what surrounded them; observing each other in a silent but intense manner, they stood on the verge for some moments, until Alex reached towards the other boy, holding his cheeks and placing a soft, short kiss on his lips, before quickly retracting his face, remaining close for only some seconds, enjoying the closeness, before totally withdrawing. "We will have to talk", he said to a breathless Magnus, before making his way past him upstairs. The latter turned, gazed after him, and slowly made his way to his own door. Aftershocks of the violent goose bumps Alex had provoked were still running down his spine. He smiled at his door, just the way Alex smiled at hers upstairs.