They had been lying beside each other in the riverside banks for a while, the tall grass and reeds crawling against their salt-kissed skin. It was still warm out even in the evening, when the sun had begun to set and cast whorls of watercolour pink and gold across the sky. The streetlamps would come on soon and bathe the hot, inky downtown in amberlight. It was pleasantly quiet, the maw of the woods across them exuding grasshoppers chirping and birdsong.

It was an hour since they emerged from playing naked in the river. It wasn't romantic - of course it wasn't. That would be queer. It was only the way things were. The boondocks of Jackson were sacred to their childhood bond, where Roman moved in within a year of Kalei.

_Kalei_. He was stretched luxuriously on his stomach in the brush, his towel draped over his hips. The trace of cool water lingered deliciously on his shoulders and back, which were tanned to a soft brown. His head was a flood of thick, dark locks, slightly sun-dyed at the tips, slumped forward lazily into his arms. Lips, full and parted to reveal imperfect, pearl-white teeth, drew deeply on a cigarette. His eyes fell across Roman behind sunglasses, grinning sleepily as he clutched a half bottle of wine.

"Staring at something?" He blew out smoke.

"Yeah, something funny-looking," Roman gently prised the puff from his friend's fingers. His heart began to beat with the quality of a crescendo, thrilled by Kalei's phantom lips, tasting of wine, upon the cigarette. Boys shouldn't feel this way, not about their friends. Not about other boys. But something agonised his senses when Kalei was around, something that made the hairs on his neck awake - something that vexed him but he did not all resent.

They laid in silence, passing the cigarette between them. The summer eve began to bring a slight squall with its pale cover of night.

"How's the arm?" Roman traced where he had signed his name on Kalei's bandages.

"Don't even," Kalei sighed, chucking the butt of the cigarette into the riverbed. "Pain in the ass. I can barely sleep in it." An expectant look.

"I'll help you change them tonight," Roman smiled, reclining against the burr. He knew their relationship was strange and intimate. He loved it, in a bittersweet way. How he loved _him. _But it was a losing battle thus far, and he wished it were different. Something about the night - maybe the river, the cigarettes, the wine - stirred his hopeful blindness. "What do you make of us?"

Kalei stared sideways at him, a ghost of a smile creasing his beautiful face. "What does that mean?"

Roman barely breathed as he took in the electric warmness of Kalei's skin. "How long have we known each other? You.. You probably know me better than- ah, anyone, really."

"Rome, this better be leading somewhere," Kalei smiled in that devilishly charming way. _His lips, oh._

"I'm serious," Roman sat up suddenly, surprising even himself.

Kalei pushed himself off the ground. "Rome, if you have something to say, you can say it." _Oh, God, his eyes. _

Roman could barely hear Kalei's words his heart pounded so loud, a song of hummingbirds caged and fluttering wildly in his chest. He lost the words, and _his eyes, oh, his face_ could not stop himself when he closes the distance between them with a kiss. It was clumsy and sweet and young. But it wasn't right.

There was a moment when Kalei didn't fight at all. The flowering moonlight washed them in a soft white glow. It would have been breathtaking.

But.

Kalei didn't say a thing. Roman could see his friend had wrested with the instinct to kiss him again, his nature, against the fear that willed him to turn and run. Never had Roman seen a boy so tested, the eyes once confident and playful in so much _pain. _And he ran_._