and today begins what may be the last real adventure of my life to a continent where life began. i am afraid and excited in a way i havent been in years.

Somewhere it’s raining. But not here. Not now.

*

She waves them off from the terminal. Pete lingers perhaps a moment too long and Patrick pointedly doesn’t notice. Her last words are wistful, breathlessly soft: Be safe...

*

He’d wanted her to come, of course. To share in the adventure with them, with him. No one had told him it was a bad idea, or that it should be sacred, for the four of them. But no one had been enthusiastic, either. Joe and Andy had been politely mute. Patrick was just mute.

*

She’d said no anyway. Pete was relived without knowing why. Patrick was just relieved.

*

On the plane, Pete feels more transient than usual. He’s more than used to flying: it’s become routine to them, and it feels like a familiar part of their lives now. This time it’s different. He feels like he’s flying through a vacuum, completely devoid of sound or feeling.

Leaving her had been hard, there would be no denying that. Whatever problems they’d had, or whatever fire they’d come under seemed to matter less and less with every mile that grew between them.

This is the in-between, he knows that somehow. The pregnant pause between lightning and thunder, weighty with expectation. Flash followed by crash, but only after silence, tense waiting. These situations usually leave the average person terrified or exhilarated.

Pete is both.

But the waiting...

*

The scenery below is bland and terse, washing greys and greens punctuated only by thin, watery lights that soon bleed away as they fly over the sea. The place they are heading to is vibrant and solid, and the thought of arriving there, walking strange yet homely earth, it fills him with stinging desire low in his solar plexus. It belongs to him and him alone. He holds onto it.

Movies flash across screens, drink after drink slips down his throat and glossy hostesses swish up and down; all fleeting and distracting. There’s only the distance, and the people travelling it, dividing it. He grips onto whatever he can.

It’s not much.

i am convinced people can go bad, just like food.

Before, a lifetime ago, possibly only the day before yesterday, they were closer than physicality. They were the same skin, and he still remembers how it felt to slide into the space between their individualities, that place where they were PeteandPatrick.

*

Today.

Patrick has been stilted, unsure. Always as if he’d rather be somewhere else. Anywhere but near Pete. The fact that this began around the time she became a permanent fixture in his life does not go unnoticed by Pete. The fact that they’ve never mentioned it is more disturbing than anything. Suddenly they’re all edges and spikes.

They brush hands, hips, shoulders, and apologise. It could be worse, Pete reminds himself. The touch is at least still there. But each progressively nervous giggle smothers not only the unspoken feelings, but also his denial that this is anything other than sleep-deprivation or just another bad day.

*

Onboard, Patrick is cool. They take seats on separate sides of the plane, and although Pete manages to catch his eye once or twice, the gaze that is returned is empty.

The miles clock up and the sky outside grows darker.

*

Patrick sleeps through date lines and time zones and dreams that Pete is sat beside him, writing on his skin, wet black lines that are reassuringly measured and frank.

He wakes just before they land, an empty seat between the sky and him. Pete is awake and his hands are empty and lifeless in his lap. Their plane bumps down, and Patrick shudders.

i am intrigued by places that trade 4 seasons (not the one with roomservice) for a rainy season and a dry season. scratch what i said earlier at night it seems to be hot no matter what and in some occurences too hot to move or care. not sure of where i fit in this world.

The first thing he feels is alone. Distant and spaced out from the friends who have accompanied him, and the ones he’s left behind, Pete acutely feels out of place. Too short, too pale, too clumsy. His own skin feels itchy.

The sky is blue and the earth rolls on forever, simple and... It’s not what he expected. Not better, not worse, just... not.

He wants to sleep. Thick lethargy has seeped into his every bone, and even potholes and terrifying speed cannot keep his eyelids from dragging. Every time he reaches the verge a hand claws at his shoulder, knee, arm. His eyes lock onto an open-mouthed Patrick every time, feeling that crackling expectancy again, waiting for the words to crash from his friend’s mouth as he’s sure they will. But the road smoothes and the jeep straightens and the space is back between them.

*

The first night brings no sleep, only trickling slow heat and claustrophobic air. Joe snores from somewhere in the building, a dull blade sawing across Pete’s mind for hour after hour until the sun finally blooms from the barren earth. Aching limbs and fuzzy eyes and he doesn’t feel any different to waking up in LA.

*

He tries to write while he’s away, tries to untangle the knots of feelings from around his chest and lay them out in measured lines and curls. There are words, but they aren’t enough. He is clogged and messy and inarticulate.

*

He feels more. It isn’t that there is more to feel, but what he feels, it feels more. Fuller, thicker. Wrapped around his throat and creeping into his eyes. The sky is so huge, he wants to stretch upwards forever and smooth his hands along it, glassy and perfect. He wants to hold it up.

He laughs every day, and though he has no mirror, he knows that the laughter is in his eyes too, not just his mouth. He smiles at his friends, old and new, and they smile back. As soon as he is alone, all noise dies in his throat.

4.

i dont cry because the walls are too thin and i dont want anyone to hear me being human.

The shade in the lee of the hut is still and stifling. Even without the direct heat of the sun, the air around them flows heavily through Pete’s nose and mouth, bumping lazily along his airways, trickling with full heat. Pete feels like he’s suffocating, but the sensation is heavy and comforting. He wouldn’t mind drowning, he thinks, if he could drown in sunshine.

The sun is on its slow way down the arc of the sky and the light begins to slant, highlighting motes of dust and spiralling insects as they trace patterns in air on glittering wings.

Pete watches Patrick lazing in the company of their hosts, curled against the gnarled roots of a tree. He’s casually tossing a ragged ball back and forth with a boy of about five. He pretends to be a lousy aim and directs his underarm swings first wide left, then sharp right, making the boy dash from one side of the compact earth yard to the other, yelling and grinning with every catch.

A small girl, no more than three or four, looks on in awe, open-mouthed and wide-eyed. Patrick has been watching her watching him, smiling lightly . After a while he aims a low curling shot in her direction, and it skitters to the floor and along to her feet. She looks down, looks back at Patrick, and breaks out in squeals of laughter.

Pete watches all of this as if through someone else’s eyes. The sky seems too far away, his skin too baggy around his thoughts to be his own. When Patrick looks over at him though, all laughing eyes and unguarded smile, something inside of him breaks. Something bubbles up from below and fills him up, seeping into every space that’s ever existed inside of him.

Low metallic thunder rolls around the horizon as Pete turns and goes indoors.

i love times when everyone is asleep. the world seems to spin differently.

He doesn’t sleep. Despite the yielding, lulling embrace of the warm, oppressive air around him, he merely masks his eyes in darkness and focuses on breathing in and out.

In and out, and he stays alive.

*

The room ticks and whirrs as it slowly winds down, and Pete recognises the air of a home falling asleep. Feet had shuffled their way indoors some time after the sun went down. Some passed his room, some didn’t. One pair had stopped by his door, hovered momentarily then knocked, almost as if afraid to be heard. His body had remained still, and the moments slid away. Feet shuffled once again and he heard no more movement.

*

The temperature dipped slightly during the night, and Pete worms his way under a thin sheet. He shivers violently, but he still does not cry. The storm is right on top of him now, he can feel it. He doesn’t know what it will take for it break, or how long it will take. He doesn’t think on it too much, because he doubts he’ll be alive to ever feel it lift. It will suffocate him first.

For now he closes his eyes and stares into the dark of the inside of his head. This darkness could be anywhere, anytime, so he paints pictures on the insides of his eyelids in ink and charcoal, sable and ebony. He displaces himself to Chicago, LA, Japan. He watches grainy memory-film footage of his bleak fifteen year old self, fast fowards to twenty-two, skips back to seventeen. The world ceases to exist beyond what he chooses to see. He forces himself to watch.

*

In and out. In and out. In....

An inevitable flash precedes the slight creak of the opening door, and he truly thinks he’s forgotten to breathe. It takes far longer than it should for the mattress to dip and the thunder to roll down.

They don’t speak.

i awoke to a rainstorm that has never been heard in america. the kind that washes the sadness off the backs and out of the eyes of the tired and forgotten.

Somewhere the sun is shining. But not here, not now.

Above the room where PeteandPatrick lie tangled in sheets and words, swollen clouds block out the sun. Rain falls and brings Pete back from the deepest sleep he can remember for years.

He steps outside without waking the other man, and stands perfectly still until every part of him is drenched. The sun may be just about to rise, or it may have already.

and they never looked so goddamned bright anywhere on this planet as they do tonight in gulu. im gone.

Nothing is familiar. Not the smog-free sky, the sounds of miles away fresh and clicking in his ears. Not the rise and fall of the boy tucked tight next to him.

Somehow, everything seems right.

*

He calls her from the airport when they land. Her voice is heavy and curling with smog and neon across the miles, but Pete’s head is still full of the sound of rain.