Pride and Joy ✓

twelve

TUESDAY. 23. NOVEMBER. 21. (slightly longer than usual)

PRETTY much as soon as they'd gotten to the train station, Nate had convinced Denver to leave, excitedly urging him out of the obnoxiously bright station and back into the city.

A million times, Denver had tried to tell him that they needed to head home and asked where they could possibly be going, but Nate never answered, only continued to lead him, his slender fingers tightly grasped around Denver's wrist.

"I was thinking—"

Denver threw his head back and groaned. "Again!?"

"Shut up!" Nate called, rolling his eyes and pulling him forwards. "I was thinking about what I said before, about how you can't see any stars out here."

"Yeah?" He asked, falling in step alongside Nate. "And?"

The amber in his eyes glinted like sparks of a flame, spreading wilder through the green and consuming it. November's kiss was freezing cold but Nate's touch was beginning to burn. He was no longer leading, but his hand was still gently wrapped around Denver's wrist, paint brush fingers grazing canvas skin.

"And I know where to find them."

✦ ✦ ✦

VIBRANCY raged and chaos unfolded before their eyes.

For the inhabitants roaming the core of the city, time meant nothing; it was nothing. Even when those around them were kicking up their feet, snuggling into bed, kissing their children goodnight, they kept dancing, exploring, running, climbing, falling, kissing, punching, fighting, loving. It was a movie that never ended, a light that never went out, a song that never stopped playing, a bird that never stopped flying, a war that was never won.

But Denver wasn't a soldier and the war that seethed in the city was not his. It wasn't even Nate's.

Their war was won privately, alone in the darkness where, for the first time all night, the stars burned brighter than the streetlights. Their war was won quietly, in the safety of a silence that belonged only to them. Their war was won when Nate climbed up the outside staircase, protected by tight rails wrapped around it, and reached out for Denver when he noticed the hesitation in his step.

Frankly, Denver didn't know where they were and, usually, that made him feel uneasy, but Nate knew where they were and he would always understand this life, these places, better anyway. He knew literally that they were on top of a building, lying flat on the roof of a crumbling brick building, on top of a picnic blanket that Nate had purchased in a twenty-four hour superstore on the way, but he didn't know what the building was.

It was far enough away from the madness that the stars gleamed like a secret that was only theirs, like a promise so young it did not understand that, one day, it may be broken.

"I'm sorry about that fight earlier," Nate murmured.

He was lying flat on his back, fingers interlaced on his chest and elbows jutting out at his sides, legs crossed at his ankles. His eyes were glassy and bright, like rays of sunlight streaming through an abyss, seeping through the darkness, and his dark waves of hair were dishevelled and fluffy. His cupid's bow curved gently underneath a slender nose and the slopes of his petal lips were surprisingly poised and cautious.