Archive of Our Own

“—and it is 3:26pm local time. Thank you for flying with us today, if you’re coming to visit, we wish you the best of experiences, and if you’re coming home, welcome back.”

Stephon didn’t move after the intercom clicked off. He watched the stewardess; a pretty woman, blonde, with accented English, put the speaker-phone back on the rack at the end of the plane. He was sitting in the same window seat that he had been for the last however many hours. The snotty kid next to him had left. Dragged out by his mother the moment that bodies began rising. Steph didn’t move. He watched the baggage grabbers raise their mighty hands and tear down their belongings from the overhead. He watched the stewardesses smile and hand off what they could as they, too, crowded the narrow passageways between seat rows. Steph took his time. Time was something he had a lot of.

It was his abundance of time that had brought him to Paris in the first place. All his life, he’d never quite had so much empty time. He had a bank account with college money in it and no college to go to anymore. Steph had not told his parents that he was leaving Connecticut for Paris, France. He was sure that even if he had told them, they’d assume his whereabouts to be Paris, Texas sooner than they’d assume he was off to Europe. Stephon needed a new SIM card. That much was abundantly on his mind. He hadn’t texted since he boarded the flight. He wasn’t sure how long he was going to go before he made his location known, but he was sure that it wouldn’t be long until he was found out one way or another besides.

Time. Steph was still very young. He made a conscious effort to remind himself of that. He had to, because for most of his life, time seemed to come at him very quickly. An individual only had one junior career. One high school career. One time in one’s life to fill out a college application. One period of time to be scouted. There never seemed to be enough time, once.

And at present Steph was in France and getting up from his plane seat. He didn’t have anything in the overhead. He took his bag from between his feet and walked aimlessly through the back of the plane and off onto into the glass-lined connecting passage that crossed the no-man’s land that was the tarmac. His feet followed the line in front of him. It was bumpy and crowded and messy. There was a constant hum of noise. Steph kept himself shuffling along. He moved in a manner more like a liquid than a firm, decisive human being. More shuffling. Security. Shuffling. More security.

Eventually, the crowd spat him out.

The airport outside of the well-structured and secure international gateways was a like a rabbit hole. Escalators whirred up and down and Steph hadn’t bothered to learn even the first lick of French so he relied on whatever signs had multiple languages printed on them and it served him well enough to finding the bagging area and the exit. Steph took the wrong exit somewhere. He was spat out of the endless menagerie of tall and twisting corridors onto the front step of a by-side airport-connected hotel called Novotel.

By that time it was 5:30pm. Steph had been lucky to not have to wait long in baggage. Still, it was nearly dark. Steph didn’t have transportation sorted. He’d thought about it, and summarily decided against planning anything whatsoever. How hard could it be to find the centre of Paris? Quite hard, he surmised as he used the airport’s free WiFi to book himself an uber. He sat, meanwhile, atop one of the round-topped rectangular white bumps that braced around the front of the hotel’s automatic glass door like wide-gap teeth.

And most crucially, Steph did not think about basketball. He hadn’t gone to France to think about basketball. He’d gone because he had time to. It was nothing to do with basketball. The uber arrived around 6:00pm.

“To the city centre,” Steph said to the uber driver.

“American?” the woman driving asked. There was an air to her voice that Steph didn’t find appealing. The way she rolled her mouth around the ‘r’ in the word. The way her lips pursed up into a thin smile. The way her syllables came from the back of her throat.

It was unfamiliar. Steph read it as hostile.

‘Of course I’m American,’ he nearly found himself saying, ‘you’re picking me up from a fuckin’ airport.’

He simply nodded. Steph had time for a lot of things, but he did not have time to get into a fight with his snotty Parisian uber driver.

It was nearly sunset by the time Steph was free of the uber. The highways, so far, had not impressed him. But the streets did. At once, wider and narrower than he expected. The river cut through the city like a vein. Trees were somewhat bare, but the greenery that they retained did the job well enough. Steph hadn’t been entirely sure of where exactly he wanted to be, but he found himself on a bridge that his phone told him was ‘pont neuf’. That was where he sent his first text back to his family of his trip.

The foreignness of Paris sunk in as Steph began to walk. There were, as he could count it, people like him. Many, many. It was, substantively, not that different of a city than any other that Steph had ever been in. Still, there was a lingering discomfort to all of it. The language buzzing around him was a patchwork quilt of a thousand things, but nine-hundred and ninety-nine of those were things that Stephon was entirely unable to understand. It put him in the most bizarre state of mind. He floated through the streets. He floated, a mile high, on a plastic sheet.

His feet beneath him moved mechanically. He relied on them. He’d relied on his body for a lot of things in his life. He’d put a lot into it. And all he was getting in return was the time he’d turned in during his youth, turned back out to him. The stones that made up the streets were older than his existence and the existence of anyone in the city. Steph couldn’t feel the history to it. He was walking through a plastic-wrapped Paris. As far as he was concerned, he wasn’t touching the real thing.

Eventually, Stephon stopped face-first in front of a bar. It was entirely nondescript. There was nothing in particular that made the bar stand out. It was one of a hundred ruddy establishments that cloaking down the streets surrounding a hill with a bulbous-shaped church placed at the tip like a star on a Christmas tree. Old stone staircases crowded said hill. Rows and rows of people three thick and infinitely deep all creeping like vines and winding up toward the bulbous church.

It was the crowd that made Steph decide to slip away. In he went; to the nearest warm place he could. It was alight. When he sat, even the wood of the bar was warm to the touch. It took him a few minutes to transfer money onto his travel card.

Then, he drank. And drank. And drank more than he cared to admit. The liquor went down easy and it tasted good. Steph realised, somewhere between the second drink and the fourth, that he wasn’t usually able to buy alcohol. He wondered why the hesitation hadn’t come to him before he began to drink. It was the environment. It was the dizzying swirl of people. It was the unreal-reality that was humming and buzzing around him. The foreignness, and the mental blockade that his mind was imposing on him.

The alcohol did not let him pass it.

Steph slowed his pace when he felt like his hands were beginning to tilt every time he reached for his card. He had always had an acute sense of when he was on the edge of drunkenness. Every colour seemed to last slightly longer. Every light stretched just a half-inch further. And he felt warm in the gut. Warm in the sides of his head. It was not a comforting warmth, rather, it was like an itch that couldn’t be reached. It was the warm flush of humiliation and it hung around; anticipatory.

It was in his belief that every athlete had a weak point in regard to humiliation. Without embarrassment, there was no possibility for pride. Without the hound at one’s heels, nipping, biting, giving endless chase, one was not pushed to prove themselves over and over and over again. It clung to Steph’s soul like a parasitic husk. It wasn’t needed anymore. It reactivated itself with just the slightest push.

‘Don’t go down there,’ his mind reminded him. He may have even said it aloud. Stephon wasn’t sure.

‘Don’t go down there, you won’t like what you find.’

Steph snorted, running, his finger around the rim of his shot glass.

“Why not?” he mumbled to himself. “What’s down there?”

‘Nothing. Nothing at all. Emptiness. A hollow stretching a million miles. A tempest and mentions of your body. There’s a million things down there that you won’t like at all.’

Stephon decided, wisely, in his opinion, to listen to the foreboding, screeching voice of his limbic system.

It was that redirection that led Steph across the bar. It drew his attention out from himself and to the burning ball of human beings that danced around him; from the doorway to the counter and beyond. To the game room in the back. There, Steph saw a very pretty woman sitting alone.

It took him five steps to cross the room. It was very easy for him to count the steps because each one was such an effort. His face stung with the heat that the alcohol had brought to it. Steph could hardly see the woman’s face. He sat down next to her.

“M’ Stephon, nice to meet you,” he blabbed out.

It was important for his mind to note that he was so gone that he could not even remember that he was not in a country that spoke English; and that he was not able to speak the language of said nation.

The woman politely tried to curb him. Steph’s brain knew that, even sloppy drunk and sad. But he kept talking. It distracted him from the nothingness that he didn’t want to follow and the mentions of his body. He somehow, in his feverishness, came to understand that the woman’s name was Claire. She spoke some English. Not enough. That aside, Steph was not easy to understand. He was halfway through quite emphatically telling her about his fondness for his hometown when he was halted.

The force that halted him, at first, felt like a shining light in an art gallery. It felt like it didn’t exist. It felt like a punch through plastic wrap. It was a very, very large hand on his shoulder. It was the root of an ancient tree latching onto him.

‘It’s the hand of God touching Adam,’ the screeching little voice inside of him said, ‘look back and see.’

So, Stephon did.

“I think that’s enough from you, my friend, let the lady go home. She doesn’t really understand you,” the hand of God said.

Even in his dizzy confusion, he could make out the person that was grabbing (holding upright, more truthfully) him. The sheer size of the guy was enough to force Steph to make conscious contact with the idea of him. The man’s big eyes hit him first. The depth of them was incredible. Hidden behind an elegant brow ridge and fiery flared eyelashes. Then the man’s height hit. The length of his arms. They were bent at the elbow and resembled a war bow more than a human limb. The expanse of his shoulders.

“Fuck, man,” Stephon slurred, “you should fuckin’ go pro.”

The man laughed. His laugh came from somewhere deep in his chest. Through the connection he had to Steph; the arm on his shoulder; Steph could feel the laugh like a physical thing. Like a bell, tolling high and loud. It rung him right through.

“You should’ve been cut off ages ago, you’re out of your mind,” the man said.

Stephon was only vaguely aware that he was being dragged outside. The streets weren’t much quieter than the bar. He could see well above the crowds of people, and he could see that everyone was staring at him and the guy dragging him as they wormed through the cobblestone down to a staircase that was slightly more guarded than the rest of the square.

There was a water bottle being pressed to Steph’s lips. Mindlessly, he drank from it. His eyes met the large stranger’s again. It was then that he realised something that should’ve been blindingly obvious from the very start.

“You speak English?” Steph asked, and the man laughed at him.

“I came over to help because I heard you talking on and on,” he said. “I thought I’d rescue you and that poor girl.”

Steph looked away rather forcefully. His head was spinning, but he was cognisant enough to realise that he, perhaps, ought to feel some shame in his behaviour.

“I’m Victor,” the man offered. He held out his hand.

Stephon could barely work up enough function to grasp it. But Victor’s hand was warm. It wrapped around his own like a honeyed blanket. Steph wasn’t, at least in normal life and not on the basketball court, used to being outsized. But to call Victor tall would’ve been a dire understatement. He lifted above the rest of the people that Steph had seen that day like the tips of the buildings that lined the streets. His skin was smooth to the touch. Steph found himself holding the handshake for perhaps a moment longer than was normal.

“Steph,” Steph said. “I’m from Georgia,” he added.

“Georgia?” Victor responded. “You don’t look Georgian.”

He said it with a teasing smile, as if the quip were some kind of obvious joke. Steph, for a moment, was paralysed with confusion. He ran it back in his mind a few times. What the hell did Victor mean?

“I meant the country. You don’t look like you’re from the Caucasus,” Victor added after the long, puzzled silence that echoed from Steph like a gunshot. “Bad joke for a drunk person. Do you know how to get back to your hotel?”

Stephon cleared his throat. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and gave Victor back his water bottle. He missed his hand and ended up putting it onto his hip. His head refused to clear. It remained stubbornly thick.

“I don’t— I don’t have one,” Steph murmured.

Victor blinked at him a few times.

“You don’t have a hotel?”

“I landed today.”

“Is there someone I can call for you? You can use my phone.”

Stephon licked his lips. His drunk brain locked onto the sensation of his dry skin under the wet heat of his tongue. The cold bit at him relentlessly. He looked down the long, straight staircase at which they were standing at the top of. A group of people walked by them, chattering like birds. Steph found himself momentarily entranced by the way the city’s lights reflected on the city.

“I’m here alone,” he said eventually.

Victor took a moment to respond as well. He fumbled in his pocket for a moment and took out a cigarette box. The thin-rolled stick looked comically small between his fingers when it was removed from its casket. Victor lit it. Then he offered the box to Steph.

“Alone isn’t a good thing to be when you’re drunk in a foreign city without a place to say, my friend.”

Stephon would’ve rejected the cigarette if Victor had held it to him three weeks ago. He would’ve rejected it madly, almost, with the passionate fever and dedication that had once gobbled his body up like it gobbled up the time in his youth. Steph reached forward and took a cigarette from the box.

“Are you calling me stupid? You’re alone too,” Stephon grumbled. Victor gave him a lighter, but Steph found himself fumbling with it repeatedly. His fingers were shaky. Nothing between his mind and his body seemed to be churning right.

Idly, Victor leaned toward him. Steph pulled himself backward out of habit, but the railing at his hip prevented much escape. The glowing tip of Victor’s cigarette met his own, and orange-yellow sparks lit up between them. The bitterness of the smoke flooded Steph’s mouth shortly after. He breathed it out slowly, his eyes never peeling from Victor’s. ‘That’s the closest you’ve ever been to another man,’ his limbic system screeched. ‘At least, off the court. Are you on a court right now?’

The nonsense was muted rather decisively by the resounding deepness of Victor’s voice.

“Yes, I am alone too,” he said, “but my friend, I was born and raised…” he lifted his hand and pointed left of where they stood, “about forty minutes that way. And, I currently live,” he changed the direction of his outstretched arm to down ahead of them, “about the same distance that way. And I’m not drunk.”

Stephon scoffed, sucking deep on his cigarette and letting his lungs puff out the residue with immense otiosity.

“Whatever,” he mumbled.

“What brings you to France, Steph?” Victor asked.

There was a silence that followed that Stephon couldn’t find himself filling. It was the million dollar question. Why was he in France? Why had he bought plane tickets? Why had he hid his trip? Why had he felt the need to completely un-enroll from college before taking said trip?

“I had time,” Steph croaked. It did not fill the quiet to an adequate degree. It did not feel honest. “I had plenty time, so… I decided to come here.”

“You look young,” Victor pointed out.

Stephon squinted at him.

“So do you.”

Victor shrugged.

“Man, how tall are you, anyway?” Steph insisted, suddenly. There was an anger that flooded him at the mere thought of the question. He felt immense fury. Undirected fury. Confused, perhaps. Was it toward Victor, whom he barely knew? Toward himself and his body? Toward bodies in general? Victor was as gangling and overhanging as an oak tree. Stephon had to know.

“228 centimetres? Somewhere there,” Victor said. He did not seem to register the anger in Stephon’s jerky movements and sharp tone. “7 foot 5,” he added when Steph did not immediately react to the number.

Stephon watched Victor throw his cigarette butt into a disposal container on the side of a street pole. Steph did the same.

“…Do you play basketball?” he asked. It came out as a deflated, hideous question. Steph’s mind was reeling at him for bringing such a thing up. His mind was reeling at him for remembering that sport in the slightest. His mind was reeling, because he knew he would not like the answer either way.

Victor, however, smiled. A genuinely bright smile; with a passionate glint in the eye. A long, warm smile. A smile that Steph himself had seen in his own mirror for years. The type of smile that once had the privilege of dancing across Steph’s face when he lay in his bed, facing the darkness of night, and dreamed whilst still awake.

“Yes,” Victor said.

A white headboard. A spinning overhead fan. The dim glow of late morning light and the rancid sound of chatter coming in through the windows.

At some point, Stephon had gotten himself a hotel room. He was waking slowly; half coming into consciousness and half trapped in an abject state of lethargy that cared not for the material features of the world that was imposing itself on him. The light didn’t appeal to him. His head was being split in two by an axe. He recalled little. He recalled the tall man that must’ve brought him to his newfound hotel. He recalled the conversation on the staircase. He recalled the drinking.

The rest did not come to him. The tall man’s name started with ‘V’. He played basketball. That fact swung rough and heavy in Steph’s brain like a mallet.

‘Long and dark… long… long and empty.’

“Fucking hell.”

Steph sat up. The hotel wasn’t particularly nice. He found his phone on charge next to him. Magically, there too was his bag, which he had completely forgotten about upon entering the bar wherein he’d got himself majestically drunk.

He scraped his hand down his face. The roughness of his palms was a bad awakening to his frazzled mind and he took lumbering, aching strides to the adjacent bathroom.

The mirror was not friendly to him. His hair, which he had spent years taking so much pride in, was a mess. He managed to use his hands to push his locs back into a position that made him look halfway like himself. Hanging like caterpillars beneath his eyes were dark, obnoxious circles. He couldn’t meet his own gaze head on.

Steph showered. The water was hot. The shower head pressure was bad. He did not let it touch his hair.

He obeyed the voice inside him that seemed to groan directly from his nerves, and he did not allow his mind to wander. So what if the tall man played basketball? If he was that tall and on no one’s professional radar, he couldn’t have been much good. It was not worth Steph’s agony.

That internal line of reasoning failed.

Precisely because Steph had too much time. Perhaps it would not have been worth Steph’s agony when he had other purposes with which to fill the time of agonising. Steph had effectively found himself hounded down by the very thing he had sought to disappear from; a body that was better and more worthy than his own. It was impossible not to think on. The envy that ensued within him could not be fought with simple and incidental insistence of carelessness. Stephon cared about basketball. He always had.

Upon leaving the shower, he picked up his phone. He had notifications, and he did not open them. He, instead, opened the maps app and found that he was situated quite a long way from where he last remembered being; in a hotel on a street in what was labelled the 14th arrondissement.

Steph got himself dressed. He then had the nerve to open the myriad texts that he’d received from his family. He send back a few brief words about being safe, as well as a cobbled few pictures that he’d taken during his walking. It was in his best interest to let his family think he was taking an exciting, if eclectic, holiday to fill his mind. The worry would be staved that way. That aside, there was nothing to worry about.

It was with an almost mindless motion that Stephon stretched out his ankle. He rubbed the joint a few times as he returned to the maps app. There was a nearby university and adjacent gymnasium/basketball stadium. Steph licked his lips. He tapped his fingers against the stiff mattress of his hotel bed.

‘It isn’t worth it,’ the little voice inside him said. ‘You don’t want to do that.’

Steph had never been very rational or reasonable about the call that the court pressed upon him. Was it painful? Certainly. He was on a trip to Paris, and he couldn’t keep himself from a basketball court. He may as well have never left Connecticut. At least there, he’d not have to stroll into an unfamiliar place acting as if he owned it.

That was to say, Steph organised in his mind that he had about three things to do that day. Buy a basketball. Buy a more adequate pair of shoes. Enter the university stadium.

It was only when he was leaving his hotel room for the reception that he realised he did not know how many nights he’d paid for.

“Your friend paid, mister,” the accented young man at the desk said when Steph inquired.

“Oh,” Steph responded, momentarily dumbfounded. What kind of benevolent fool had he come across? The tall man’s eyes came into his head again. How close they’d been when they lit Steph’s cigarette (it had just come into Stephon’s mind that he still smelled like smoke). And he couldn’t remember the damn guy’s name. Crude, downright.

“For one night,” the receptionist continued. “Would you like to buy another? Otherwise checkout is in… fifteen minutes.”

“Yeah, yes. Another night,” Steph said hurriedly, fishing his phone out and transferring his travel card a few thousand dollars from his college fund account as quickly as he could. He watched the numbers exchange into euros, and then put the device back into his pocket. His mother had texted again. He didn’t read it. He slid his card to the receptionist and anxiously drummed his fingers against the counter.

“Thank you, sir,” the receptionist said blankly. “Do you need anything else?”

“Nah, you’re cool,” Steph said, taking his card back when it was offered.

The streets of Paris were not hard to navigate. The efficiency of the metro was such that Steph was able to find a sports store before long. There was another thing. He found out rapidly that the people of inner city Paris were much more likely to be adept English speakers than he’d assumed. He had little trouble communicating. From the assistant who helped him find where they stocked their basketballs to the cashier that he spoke with whilst paying, there was an almost casual ease to the way that the people he was surrounded by accustomed themselves to his foreign tongue.

There was a lingering feeling under it, though.

The efficiency did not pay off in feelings of comfort. Steph was constantly aware, deeply, that he was indeed foreign to the city; that the walls, the roads, the buildings, had all been designed in a world that he had no knowledge of. His own language dripped like a thick, melted substance over the plastic-wrapped experience he was already having and made it all the more impenetrable. Stephon didn’t feel like he was anywhere else. He felt, partially, like he was dreaming it. Like the reality; the raw grit of the city; it was leaving him behind. Or, it wasn’t letting him enter. One or the other.

‘Except that guy,’ his limbic system whispered. ‘Except the guy you don’t want to think about.’

It was illogical for Steph to be so hung up on one stranger. The man had been kind, helpful, and very tall. He played basketball. He had a body that Steph could’ve gone to the fucking stars with. He played basketball. That didn’t matter, Steph deduced. He didn’t ask the tall man for his help as such he owed the tall man nothing. Someone could be kind without being owed, Steph reasoned to himself. And he didn’t owe that man shit. He’d never even see him again, probably. Never. One person in a city of millions. A bizarre guy that lit a cigarette for him and bought him a hotel. Steph wouldn’t see him again.

But the tall man played basketball.

If Stephon had kept to the promise he’d made himself and kept away from any and all basketball courts, he would’ve in fact, never seen that man again. But it was his own magnetic insides; pulling and tugging and ordering him to the hardwood that betrayed him. Steph couldn’t stay away.

The university gym had been free entry. At least, Steph assumed it was free. Nobody stopped him. The ball in his hands felt familiar. The leather, by the time Steph arrived to the court, was already warm to the touch. He tested the spring that his shoes gave him. It felt normal. He laced his left shoe up slightly tighter than the right. He looked across the court.

And there, standing like an archaic oak tree, was the tall man from the prior night. V-something, Stephon recalled uselessly.

The pit it put in Stephon’s gut immediately was nauseating. His heart smashed directly into his intestines and he felt as if everything inside him were so loose that he was going to melt into the floor. The irrational, angry churning. The envy came back full force. It was not just the fact that he was seeing the man on a court; standing full height and healthy among a couple of what looked to be his teammates. It was merely not the sight of a university logo emblazoned on his practice jersey; emblazoned in the belonging fashion of all colleges, schools, clubs, and universities; emblazoned in the manner that Stephon had had his own UConn logo emblazoned on the kit he’d left back home.

The guy could play. He could play like a fucking superstar. Stephon was frozen in time as he sat there on the sidelines. He traced the movements of that inhuman body as it drifted back and forth inside the half-court he was working in. He didn’t even look particularly serious; it was a shoot-around, nothing formal. But there was an elegance to his movements that was incalculable. No motion was wasted. No angle of his body went out of place. He played basketball. His immense physical gifts were not squandered on a waste of talent and a mental inability. Rather, it was something that was, to Stephon, even more offensive.

The man moved like water. He had a gift that could only be bought in the lottery of life. Every time he released the ball it looked like a shot from a ballista. He was squandering it all on nothing in particular.

Steph got up. He walked through the stadium to the change-rooms tucked away in the corner and located the first toilet he could.

He threw up.

‘Why are you in France?’ his limbic system asked him. ‘Why? The bodies are still here. The play is still here. And you’re still the same type of beast you’ve always been. It’s not happy, is it?’

Wiping the back of his mouth on his hand, Steph fumbled to find the flush. Paris no longer felt wrapped it plastic. It felt violently, horribly, like the real world. Steph suddenly recalled that he had a distaste for the real world that went much deeper than his distaste for plastic. Cold water from the toilet sink brought him back to himself. If he had half a brain, Steph knew that the best course of action would be to leave the stadium. Find another, if he was still magnetised to the court.

Steph did not have a brain.

‘What do I care, anyway?’ he thought to himself. He picked up his ball from where he’d left it and took a spot on his own half-court. No stragglers and free shooters in the gym came near him. None breached the white lines that caged him. Everywhere else, there were groups of people. Steph was a drop of poison on the court. ‘What do I care? It’s one guy. One guy playing. I don’t fucking care.’

‘You shouldn’t care,’ the littler part of his mind croaked. ‘But you do. You do because you still think you’re a player.’

Steph continued to shoot. He worked as he always did. Three around the charge circle. First hash on the keyway. Block. Third hash. Fourth. Elbow. Two free throws. Two from the top of the key. Then as many threes as he could make before missing. Then again from the start.

The routine did its job insofar as it calmed him some. The repetitive nature of the movements soothed something in him. There was an appeal to being no more than a body that Steph had spent the last few weeks forcefully forgetting. Motion went through his veins like ice water and brought back to him the precise nature of his addiction. The time that said addiction had taken away and the time it had granted back felt, in those flushed moments, entirely incidental.

The world went away for a little when Steph was on the court. Leather, wood slats, and a hard metal rim. Steph could taste sweat on his lips as it dripped down from his skin. He could feel the night-old cigarette smoke smell pushing itself out of him.

“It’s good to see you here.”

Stephon was in the process of shooting a free throw when the voice cut into his routine like a dagger. It hooked him through the cheek and pulled him right back to the stadium that he was inside of. The roof was a roof once more. The deep, chesty voice that was speaking to him was the one he’d made efforts to ignore.

Slowly, Steph turned. The tall man was standing there. He was smiling. He had a warm smile that stretched across the entire lower third of his face. He didn’t hesitate to look Steph in the eye, either. He had a ball on his hip and a water bottle in his free hand. Perspiration gave his skin a glittering tint.

“What do you mean?” Steph asked, turning back to the rim and firing again. The shot clanged poorly off the back left of the hoop. Steph paced after it to pick it up. When the man spoke again, he stopped.

“We talked about basketball. Last night. We did the entire time that I helped you get to your hotel,” the man said.

“Thanks for that,” Steph responded, “but I don’t remember it. Did I pay you back?”

The tall man set down his water bottle and then shook his free hand absentmindedly.

“You don’t have to, Steph. It’s cool. You needed a friend, hm?” he said.

Stephon licked his lips. They felt rough. Chipped edges of skin flaked against his tongue as he dragged it over. He fidgeted, crossing one foot over the other, grazing his left shin with the heel of his shoe as it went down.

“…I’d like to pay you back. Uh…” he fumbled through his mind for the man’s name.

“Victor.”

“Right. Victor,” nodded Steph.

Victor looked around for a moment, pointing to the high-hanging banner at the wall opposite where they were standing.

“I told you I play for my university,” he said.

Steph blinked a couple times. He tried with great effort to recall the conversation. Victor has said that he played basketball; Steph was sure of it. Specifics left him behind.

‘Another thing you don’t want to do,’ his nerves chimed in suddenly. ‘There’s lots to remember there. Lots was said.’

“Did you?” Steph retorted, attempting to keep his voice still and flat as he spoke. It squeaked just an inch higher than he’d have liked it to. His voice had a tendency to climb when he was in moments of intense emotion. Steph had heard himself back on game tape enough times to be aware of that. Feeling the flush climbing up his neck, he turned and threw a lazy layup in off the backboard.

“Do you want to shoot around?" Victor asked.

Steph paused. He took another shot around the charge circle. It wasn’t that he felt any particular or specific vitriol toward Victor. The man had saved his ass. Yet, there was that insurmountable mountain inside of him. The un-described typhoon. The imminent, burning, blood-green envy that he had to the idea of Victor. To the shape of him. To his existence. To the fact that he had the audacity to play basketball and be good at it. The audacity to not be pro.

“No,” Steph said.

Victor, if he was shocked at the bluntness, did a good job of hiding it. His sharp shoulders gave little more than a half-assed shrug.

“Okay,” he said.

He proceeded to gather his ball in his hands and invade Stephon’s space. His body and limbs swallowed the keyway so quickly that Steph had to jump backward in an effort to avoid getting full-force clobbered. Victor continued. He shot around in all the spots Steph had just shot from. Every time he threw the ball at the rim it touched nothing on the way down.

Steph watched him become his body. He watched every inch of flesh and bone and muscle put to the court and the ring in front of him. It played on his rib bones like fingers on a guitar. It wrenched from him the dirtiest, ugliest feelings he’d had since arriving in Paris.

It wrenched from him more than he’d felt since the incident.

The world was in his face again. His plastic-wrapped universe was burnt away. The mythology of emptiness that he’d filled himself with was no longer sufficient. It was a moment; it was that moment, and it was as confronting as it had been. The hardwood. The pounds he’d given it. The screams that had torn from him in the moment and the tears after. Watching Victor was a nightmare. An inhuman nightmare. After the fifth made three in a row Stephon couldn’t help himself.

In three stout steps, he gathered Victor’s ball from the ground; snatching it before those claw-like hands could encase it once more.

Victor walked right into him in an effort to retrieve his rebound. Steph put an elbow into Victor’s gut and shoved him back. It happened as quickly as it might have in game.

“What are you doing, man?” Steph snapped.

Victor was still smiling. The curve of his lips was like a half-moon. It glowed twice as much.

‘Sparkled with arrogance, Steph,’ Steph’s tense muscles told him.

“Using the ring,” Victor said. The air that had been exerted from his lungs made his voice all the deeper.

Steph slowly, with Victor’s ball still tucked under his arm, pointed down the other end of the court where a few stragglers were throwing up jump shots.

“There’s a ring over there.”

Victor bent down and picked up Steph’s ball from where it had been at his feet. He put it under his arm in a position mirroring Steph.

“I want to use this one,” Victor said.

“Jesus fucking—”

Stephon threw down Victor’s ball and turned away. He ran a hand down his forehead and yanked his tied locs a little tighter. His feet squeaked against the floor as they went. The heaving drum of Victor following him to the baseline rang in Steph’s throat like a heartbeat. He could feel his entire face heating up. He could feel his vision starting to blur at the edges. Every breath he took was manual and forceful. And with that, getting shallower and shallower every step.

‘He’s following you, Stephie,’ his guts taunted him.

“I know,” Steph whispered to himself, continuing on. The door to the front office of the gym was not far. His legs moved automatically. His guts were still talking. “Shut the fuck up, I fucking know.”

Victor grabbed his shoulder again, flinging him around to face him. He was no longer smiling. His eyes, under the harsh coldness of the stadium, seemed black as the night. The furrow of his eyebrows, so pinched and cautious, only heated Steph’s face more. He didn’t need to be taken care of. He didn’t need another man looking out for him. It was disgusting, anyhow. How pathetic Victor was. How he was acting like a child. Hounding Steph like Steph wanted something to do with him.

“Calm down, Steph. It’s not a big deal, no? We just can talk, maybe. You were much friendlier last night,” Victor said.

Steph threw his arm down, knocking Victor’s hand with bellicose force and delivering his own ball to the ground as Victor took a step back to recuperate, a shocked flash searing across his features.

“I was drunk last night!” Steph yelled. He was conscious of the scene that they were making. He was conscious that with every rushed word he said, he was drawing another set of eyes. He was conscious that he stood out; that the mere sound of his voice and his language made him stand out. And he was conscious that he stood out by virtue of being across from Victor; who stood out regardless. Steph hung his head for a moment. He would’ve vomited again, had he not been standing a few feet from a baseline and on stage for a group of 30 onlookers to witness. When he spoke again, he lowered his voice,

“Look, man. It’s nothing against you. You’re great, I’m sure. Fuckin’— helped me out real good last night. But right now I just wanna shoot some hoops and you’re pissing me off so if you don’t fucking get out of my way we’re gonna have some real problems.”

Victor put his hands up casually and stepped backward.

“Cool,” he said.

‘Cool?’ Steph thought. ‘He says fucking cool? The fuck is wrong with him?’

It was the pridelessness and understanding that got to him most of all.

“Fuck this,” Steph hissed, leaning down to snatch up his ball. He jabbed a finger toward Victor’s head. “Fuck paying you back, too. Stupid ass.”

There was a magnet underneath the floorboards of that university gym. Stephon had spent a day and night in tepid, muted agony. It mulled quietly inside of him. It was enough to drag him back to his hotel bed where he forced himself to lie still and endure until it erased itself. It was humiliating, he decided. It was humiliating to be so quickly provoked to emotion.

It was not so long ago that Steph had decided summarily that he had nothing left to feel such emotion for. The incident had robbed him of the ability to play in his own life. He was relegated to the bench with an excess of time on his hands. With that time, he had chosen to come to Paris. He had since discovered that there was unfairness in Paris, too.

Steph had come to understand that Paris was also the world; and that it was the world he’d known and been spat out by. His bed sheets in his hotel in the 14th arrondissement could’ve been the sheets he pulled over his head in an attempt to suffocate himself to sleep with in the burning nights that followed the incident. There was a globe hanging over Steph. It was an ice ball and he had a pick that he took to it in a repetitive striking motion. It spat on him like rain. It cooled inches of him first. He had cracked it down all the way to college level basketball. He’d chipped and fought and dodged his way to the University of Connecticut. Then all at once all the residue froze him over and yet the fire in his belly refused to accept it.

‘You still think yourself a player,’ his limbic system roared from beneath the darkness. ‘You think yourself a player of basketball. Where is your team, player of basketball? Where are your accolades, player of basketball? Where is your uniform?’

It was a cruelty.

Paris was the world and it went right on spinning. Sport would not stop it. Stephon’s absence from sport would not stop it. And there existed people in the world like Victor who squandered it. For seemingly no reason. Paris was the world and Victor was the reminder of it. Stephon wanted, all at once, to kill him and to live in his skin. Steph could’ve done brilliant things in Victor’s skin. He wouldn’t be in Paris if he was in Victor’s skin. He’d be the best version of himself; himself being entirely different. His memories would be measured in rings and not smoke.

That was all to say, there was a magnet under that university stadium.

Stephon found himself back on the campus come the following afternoon. He was reluctant to enter. Steph knew that he ought not work his body too hard. He also knew that the moment he entered the stadium, his day would evaporate. Time would, as it had the habit of doing, glide right on by like a stone through a river.

And it was such a good day. The weather was pleasant. Leaves wafted over Steph’s head in a manner that was reminiscent of his home. He sent his folks another text. Flowers lined the pathway that led into the stadium. They were a smattering of bright paint across an otherwise monotonously beige and grey canvas. Steph took a moment to look around the university. The architecture was detailed in areas Steph had never considered to be worthy of detail. Edges on the tops of buildings; engravings on door handles. It was an old world appreciation for slowness.

Floating around in that old world was Victor. Steph wasn’t particularly shocked that he saw him. It was Victor’s university. Steph was near the basketball stadium.

Victor came across Steph’s eye line after a ten-minute loiter that had him seated on a stone bench by the side of a bubbling water feature. Steph watched him from a frank hundred feet away. Victor hovered above the crowds like a bird. There were people that surrounded him and he was smiling. It was the same smile that had driven Steph to nauseous crescendo the previous day.

Steph pulled out his phone and continued to talk back and forward with his family. As one might expect, they were full of questions; what he had eaten, what he was doing, where he was staying, when he was returning, and if he felt any better. Steph answered all. Once he had finished with that, he dedicated himself to thumbing down the endless loop of social media. The information barely registered in his mind, but it passed the time and gave him a place to look that wasn’t at the footsteps approaching.

The footsteps stopped right in front of him. They divided him and the water feature. The shadow that was cast on him made it impossible to feign ignorance.

“What,” Steph said flatly, looking up at Victor.

Victor looked sheepish. He had dropped the smile and committed to an expression that was much tighter and solemn. Steph could read it as facetious. He retained a distinct glimmer of arrogance no matter what was on his face. And why wouldn’t he? Steph would’ve been arrogant if he was Victor. Steph would’ve been a lot if he could wear Victor’s skin. More than what Victor was content with making himself.

“I think we got off on the wrong foot,” Victor said. “I think I upset you yesterday.”

Steph turned his phone off. He let it hang limply in his hand as he glared upward. Victor’s hands were stuffed in the pockets of his boxy pants. There was motion inside them that gave Steph the impression that he was messing with something underneath the fabric. Or just fidgeting.

“You didn’t upset me,” Steph said, “but we don’t know each other, man. Shit’s weird."

He was careful with his words. Stephon at once did not want to give the impression that he was devoted to detailed conversation or that he harboured a depth of negativity within him for the man in front of him (regardless of the fact that he most definitely did; but that was too complicated to altogether explain in a single conversation, if at all).

Nevertheless, Victor sat down on the bench next to Steph. His knee grazed the edge of Steph’s thigh as he made his way in. Steph shuffled a few inches to his right and brushed his leg off with his hand.

“I think I’m just happy to practise my English with someone,” Victor said, “…and that besides, you’re interesting, Steph.”

That comment gave Stephon pause. He very nearly recoiled. There was nothing about himself that he found particularly mystical, the hypothetical reason that Victor would be intrigued by him was as beyond him as the concept of himself as a captivating spirit in the first place.

‘Isn’t there something off about him?’ Steph’s nerves put in. ‘Something… unfriendly? Gauche? Put-together—and-too-forward?’ Stephon wiped it away in his brain.

He’d had those thoughts about Victor since he first saw him. It was a cultural difference. It was the warm look in his eyes and the moon-crescent of his smile. It wasn’t anything like that.

“Interesting, huh?” Stephon echoed weakly.

Victor shrugged,

“You meet a lot of Americans in Paris. Yet, I don’t think I’ve ever met an American like you,” he said.

“What does that mean?” Steph asked, this time unable to hide the way that his nose scrunched in half.

A smile broke onto Victor’s face. It creased its way across his skin like a river through a mountain. The solemnity he’d put on to approach Steph melted quick and sharp.

“It’s a compliment,” he said.

“I’m sure,” Steph mumbled following. He let in the silence that followed.

Victor fidgeted again. He laced his fingers in front of him and then undid them. Then he put his palms on the bench. Then he sighed. Steph kept his eyes on all of his movements as though he were on the verge of lashing out in some bizarre and unpredictable way. He watched Victor lick his lips. He watched his brown eyes swirl around their environment and search for something to comment on. He watched them lock onto the stadium across the courtyard and brighten up. Then, Victor turned to Steph once more.

“Are you going to shoot around again today?” he asked, smiling that putrid, warm smile yet again.

Steph stretched back over the bench. His back cracked as he went and air was punched out of him. He let that fall from his lips in a deep sigh.

“…Maybe. Nah. I don’t know,” he said. Steph glanced at Victor for a moment, then immediately looked away when their eyes fell directly in line. The closeness of the contact was disquieting. Steph cleared his throat and looked back to the stadium. “I think you can tell me and basketball have a complicated thing going.”

“I can tell,” Victor echoed.

“Sure,” Steph said. His mind was begging him to ask. There was a thump inside him that refused to be put away until it was brought to air. The envy within him made his skin crawl; made him itch all over. Steph tapped his foot against the ground a few times. “What about you then?”

Victor pointed at himself and blinked.

“What about me?” he asked.

Steph cleared his throat again. It was insisting, rather keenly, on being scratchy. He forced the words out as clear and emotionless as he could stomach.

“I seen you play. I watched. You’re good. Why you here and not going pro?”

Victor mimicked Steph’s posture. His elbows caged the edge of the bench and he tilted his head to the side while he considered his answer. After about twenty seconds, his lips parted.

“I don’t want to play basketball professionally,” he said.

“Bullshit. Your size you could be the greatest in the world. And you’re what? Stuck here?” Steph scoffed.

‘He’s mocking you,’ Steph’s gut said. ‘He’s standing there mocking you. His existence mocks you. You can’t do anything about it.’

But Victor's demeanour did not read as mocking. He was pensive, to be sure. There was in his motions a very calm, considerate, and measured air; he moved slowly, he traced every single one of his motions before it was made. He looked between Steph’s eyes. His eyelashes fluttered with every blink. Steph all at once felt as though he was the one that had had his skin peeled from his bones. Victor was intelligent. That thought, at once, entered Stephon’s mind. Victor was intelligent and he was endlessly curious about Steph; for whatever reason. Stephon knew that if he were in his world, he’d punish Victor for staring. At least, he would feel a compelled force to go down fighting his arrogant gleam and his steady intelligence. But Steph had been and still was very aware of his foreignness. Paris was the world, but it was not Steph’s world. No world had ever been his.

Victor had it all. Steph couldn’t wipe the envy from his heart. Yet, Victor was kind and measured. Yet, it was Victor that was interested in Steph.

“I want to study,” Victor said.

“That can’t be all,” Steph responded.

Victor shrugged. A smile passed his lips again.

“That’s all,” he nodded.

Steph let out a bereft chuckle. It left his diaphragm like the aftermath of a punch.

“I don’t believe you,” he said.

Victor shook his head. He leaned slightly closer to Steph and his hand paused on the stone between them. His fingers curled under his palm. Steph looked down at it, and then back up to Victor’s face.

“Steph, I’m a very passionate person. I like things a lot and being good at things means a lot to me,” he began, slow and ardent, “when I was younger there would’ve been nothing in the world I would’ve liked more than to play professional basketball. There’s a lure to it. There is an addicting sense of being on the court. I can see in your eyes that you know only too well how it feels as well. I can tell it physically pains you to be away from it,” Victor paused for a moment.

‘Boy-o, he’s right, you know. Look at you. Sourpuss. Deflated storm cloud, you.’

Steph could’ve cut in there.

There was a tight second in the air that would’ve permitted such an interjection. But Steph had not heard anyone speak so thickly and honestly, maybe ever. He lived a life where emotion and complexity played its way out on a court between painted lines. It was the only emotion Steph had ever known. Victor was speaking as if speaking where something that was easy.

He was speaking like such speech was simple, or common. He was addressing the pain in Steph’s heart with such magnificent ease that it was all at once seductive and disarming. Steph could’ve laughed it away. He could’ve cut in. But Victor was not done speaking. Steph could see the echo of words yet unsaid lingering in promised future air on Victor’s lips. So he did not interpose.

He let Victor continue.

“But I’ve had the fortune of learning that the world is much bigger. Or misfortune, rather. You could be right and I could be sitting stuck in some glue waiting for the world to provide me a better opportunity than that which I was born with. But must we be what our bodies command? Is that all there is to life? I have to be honest to myself, Steph. And I’ve come to the conclusion that my life is more needed here than on the court.”

Steph blinked at the ground for a moment. The anger had come back and it had come back like a fire. ‘Must we be what out bodies command?’ Bullshit. It was talk from a head that was filled with much more than Steph had ever had. Victor had so much more than Steph had. He had choice. He had loves and he had multiple of them to discard and fiddle around as he pleased. Steph had one thing. And it had been taken from him.

“I haven’t had that fortune,” he said hoarsely, glaring at the cobble beneath them. The rush of the water feature was suddenly thumping, relentless, and irritating.

“You know what I mean,” Victor put in lightly. He reached a hand and squeezed Steph’s knee. Steph’s eyes darted back to Victor, flinching out of his momentary trance.

He yanked himself away.

“We have to be what our bodies command, or whatever you said. Sometimes we have to,” Steph mumbled.

“I know,” Victor added.

Steph inhaled thickly through his nose and shook his head. He stood in a hurry, two hands carving through his hair as he went, stepping backward toward the water feature. The base of it grazed the heel of his shoe.

“You don’t know. I should, uh, go. It’s lunch time. I ain’t eaten,” Steph said quickly.

Victor rose to meet him. There was an expression on his face again. A twisted look of pity and apprehension. He lifted a hand toward Steph as if Steph were a skittish animal. Then he lowered it, back into his pocket. There, it twisted around a few more times.

‘Your dreamboat prophet is nervous, Stephie,’ Stephon’s limbic system spoke. ‘Isn’t that nauseating? Are you scared?’

“Can I come with you?” Victor asked.

Steph took another step.

“…Nah. Nah, man. Thanks for the talk though. And uh, the rest.”

Victor moved, too; equal and pressing in Steph’s direction.

“You already thanked me for that; you don’t need to thank me again,” he said.

“Yeah but I followed it up with being a dick last time,” Steph said with a tight chuckle.

Victor, with a sharp movement, reached into his pocket and grabbed out his phone. He put his free hand on Steph’s shoulder and tugged him forward. Steph stumbled a little. Victor held him upright. He gestured for Steph to do the same with his own phone, and Steph did so absentmindedly.

“Let me give you my number, Steph,” Victor insisted, meeting Steph’s eyes.

“Huh?” Steph blabbed. Victor took no stock of it. He grabbed Steph’s phone once it was unlocked and engraved himself a profile in Steph’s contacts app.

“In case you need something while in Paris,” Victor clarified. “I told you before, it’s not good to be alone.”

“…Thanks, I guess,” Steph mumbled, still mired by the quickness of it all.

Victor released him. Steph retreated again, tucking his phone back into his pocket.

“I’ll see you around?” Vic put out, somewhat awkwardly. It made Steph laugh. It had only been brief time ago that Victor had prattled so artfully that it drove Steph to a fit of necessary distancing.

“Maybe. See you, Vic,” he said.

Steph walked slowly as he left the university. The streets fell before him as if they were only just forming with every step he took.

Must we be what our bodies command?

Unequivocally, Steph’s answer was yes. It was unfair. Victor had an autonomous destiny. He had the mind and spirit to make out of life something truly self-shaped. He had room for creativity and brilliance. Victor had room for kindness and curiosity. Steph had never seen one person cover so much space. Steph had known him all of two days. Victor had claimed Steph’s mind as another space which he could extend in to.

Steph did not have the luxury of autonomy. It was not himself that had ended his dream; it was the apathy of the incident. It was a lurking evil that called itself natural bad luck. What beauty was there in that? What beauty was there in the world caring so little for Steph that it left him not even agonising tragedy? The world gave him a life and it gave him an end to that life. Then it gave him the image of someone as utterly coated in life as a dew-soaked leaf by morning light.

‘You’re getting your boy’s air for poetry, are you?’ Stephon’s nerves said. ‘It doesn’t suit you. He doesn’t suit you. You shoulda just gone home.’

“He’s not my boy,” Steph mumbled to himself. “That’s—” he paused. He knew what he wanted to say. He knew what he would’ve said if he were at home. But he was not at home. He was far, far from home. Paris hid itself from him at first, but it showed its apathy; and it showed its life. And if it was apathetic, what did Steph have to hide away from?

‘You won’t leave it in Paris, Steph. You’ll look them all in the eye back home and you’ll have to live with it then, too.’

Stephon already lived with a lot.

Days passed. Stephon’s once voluptuous bank account dwindled with every night he put himself in one hotel or another, and he made routine purchases of useless items with the intent to bring them back to his family when he returned; but return seemed like a more and more distant idea the more time he spent in Paris. Still, Steph never booked for more than one night at a time. There was a pleasance to the freedom he felt and so long as he was away from Victor, Steph felt as though the city and the world hid itself from him once more.

Since the conversation they’d had those days back, Stephon had not gone back to Victor’s university, or his stadium. He’d found a smattering of outdoor courts that were trapped away by linings of hedge and unmaintained stone walls. He rotated through them accordingly, when the pull to be between the white lines was all too much.

Stephon was in the process of processing the world; or coming to some understanding of how he could prevent its gooey apathy from biting at his heels and dragging him down further than he’d already been drug. The working theory was escape; the city was not real unless Steph dug his heels in. If it worked in Paris, it should too work when he (eventually; he was in no hurry to depart from the land that enabled his experimentation) touched back upon soil in the US of A. It would work because Paris, too, was the world. That was what Steph’s nerves told him.

And so, he danced. He danced around pillars and parks and learned whatever French made its way past his artificially dragged plastic veil and into his ears. It remained false and he remained with Victor out of his mind. It was coming up on a week and Steph had been touring as if he were truly in France for no reason beyond happy tourism. His parents were happy with his exploration. It was good, they said, to see the old world. They did not say as much in so many words (or even in those words at all), but Steph had never needed such precision and floweriness to get their meaning. People from where Steph was from did not talk like Victor. They did not lean close like Victor. They did not look into Steph’s eyes when they spoke to him and find him interesting like Victor did and they certainly did not bring with them that gutsy and unfriendly air that Victor had at, ironically, his friendliest.

Unfriendly. Un-friendly. Distinctly in a manner which was not the manner of a friend. Friends did not speak or move the way Victor did. Two meetings; three if the drunk instance was counted, and Steph had read something about Victor’s intentions. He did not want to put the direct phrasing to it. It felt ugly and uncomfortable to him. It was tacky.

‘Gay, gay, gay, gay. He’s gay, Stephie! And he wants you. Carnally,’ Steph’s limbic system filled in without his consent.

It was very, very tacky.

‘But that isn’t the part you’re worried about, is it?’

It was the only thing that Stephon was concerned about. Woe be him if he were to be the one to carelessly flit through assigning motives onto a man; he’d not want the same done to him so he, with full lucidity, made the choice to ignore the hubbub stemming from the tender edges of his lymph nodes. He could rub the thoughts away with his thumbs. He could calm his mind as he calmed his body.

‘So scared, Steph. You’re not usually scared. You’re scared of him? No. This is Paris, Steph! What do you have to lose here, anyway? Your dignity? You have none.’

Paris by night had become a comfort for Stephon. His myriad outdoor basketball courts were soothing in the night due to their relative emptiness. The odd straggling teenagers did not hasten to bother him. In all, Steph could get some shots up and he could do it without air being breathed down his neck. The ring of an indoor ball wearing out against rough, brittle concrete eased him.

The particular court he’d found for himself on a Friday night had chips all over the surface. Mud pooled in the edges of cracks and divots; brought in by the perennial rainfall that had soaked the surface of the city earlier that evening. Steph was doing his usual. The clang of the rim against his ball as it broke its way in again and again drifted him, happily, into the place he was most at home.

Being a body was a joy. Victor was wrong. Being one’s body was the greatest joy that a human could have. The trappings of the mind meant nothing to the warm ache of a muscle or the drumming, lulling, suffocating slam of a heart. Steph could’ve died happy if it meant he was able to die in his body; in the best version of himself that was not himself. If he could, for a moment, have back the ability that was promised to him. The issue with being a body was such; when there was wind in his lungs and his guts were flipping over each other with every jostled, sharp, practised movement he took, Steph remembered the incident. He remembered before that, too. His high school days. Brilliant sunsets over outdoor courts much like the ones he had chosen as his haunts in the present but ones that existed a thousand million miles away and would never be seen by the vast majority of the people he passed by on the street in this strange, cur-like city he’d chosen to waste time inside of.

Steph wanted to reach for the sky. He had inside him a fire that grew with him; one he had spent weeks and months attempting to tamper, but it would not die. Steph was critically aware that he was not unique in the slightest sense. There were a million people with a fire in their belly. But Steph had had it and had used it and it had been glorious and would’ve been glorious and tranquillising if he’d been able to tender it to a larger stage. It would’ve breathed life into a whole team. It could’ve done a lot more than shoot around alone on a broken up court.

Alas, such was not the route of Steph’s life. The world did not care about fires. Not for starting them nor putting them out. Fires occurred naturally; as any phenomenon of the planet. They were an unremarkable fact. Those hurt by them and consumed by them could not blame the fire. Those that self-immolated could not blame the fire. If one chose to bring the purest form of the globe’s apathy to one’s lips to kiss it, one forfeited the right to not be engulfed by it. Steph self-immolated every time he stepped onto a court. He was a lack of kindling. He was a burnt up rod.

The world would always remind him how little it cared for him, his body, or his fire.

Steph had only wanted to reach for the sky.

When Stephon was fifteen, he had dunked a basketball for the first time. Frivolous, perhaps, but it was the first time Steph had ever successfully felt the air between his feet and the ground in slow-motion. He’d swung on the ring longer than necessary. He’d screamed in joy with an expression of pure joy he’d not held upon his face or in his stomach since he was too small to remember precision in moments. That memory, eventually, blurred to more of a symbol than a moment, too.

Stephon was nearly twenty-one; and he’d landed badly again.

The incident was not a singular incident. It was a recurrent, episodic truth. It was a conception of Stephon’s dwindling dreams. Steph would have an incident; the sun would rise; the tides would shift. The fingernail cracks in Steph’s ankles would not hold him up long enough to touch the sky; and trying to dunk had been a stupid decision anyway.

“Fuck.” Steph’s vision was shaken and blurry. The moonless sky above him, dappled with stars, smiled down on him.

Multiple stress fractures. Chronic stress fractures. Immensely injury-prone.

“Fuck,” Steph repeated as the moonless sky began to cover itself with water. Salt rivers ran down his cheeks, burying themselves in his ears.

The concrete had not been as pleasant against his body as it had been on his ball. The ball lay one of those mud-laden potholes ten feet from him. Steph lifted his fingers to his forehead and they came away bloody. His body had let him down, again. He had hit the ground hard after attempting to reach something that had not been his for a long time. The slow-motion glide of the time spent in the air was and would be, always and forever, the only time that Stephon was forbidden from.

‘But must we be what our bodies command?’

The body was the only thing that could command Steph. He commanded it hard and fast and he had broken it. His frailness; hidden under muscle and conditioning, had worn through. The body was the means by which one touched the earth. The earth and Steph’s fire were too large to exist both at once. One had to be tampered out.

Sitting up, Stephon looked down at his hands and legs to appraise the extent of the damage done to himself. His knees, palms, and the side of one calf were grazed and bleeding. His forehead, too. Steph could not feel his left ankle below the first joint. The last time he’d had a severe flare it had been during a game; his third or fourth game back after an extended break also due to a similar stress fracture issue in his other foot. He’d lost it then. Weeks, inconsolable. And a trip to France. Stephon was in France because the world did not care about him; and his body refused vehemently his commands.

Steph’s head was ringing.

It was the middle of the night and his only company was the soft, cold glow of a streetlamp that spotlighted his position on the baseline in a mocking fashion. Alone truly was a horrible thing to be. It took Steph minutes to crawl to his bag. He hadn’t had to leave the ground for it; and he didn’t want to.

The burning light that emanated from Stephon’s phone scorched his dazed eyes. He was cognisant of the fact that his thumb was shaking as he leafed through the endless screen and to one blue underlined number tucked away in an app full of empties that could not help Steph in the moment he was in.

Three rings. Three brittle rings. Steph had heard the first, but he could scarcely remember hearing the second or the one after. He slumped over, his elbow bracketing his head from the ground. He smacked the speaker button with his thumb when the call screen blossomed over the surface of his device and he stared at the side of it.

“Steph? Are you there?”

Victor’s voice through the phone was cautious and as shaky as Steph’s vision felt. He’d clearly been repeating himself for a moment.

“Mhm,” Steph managed. “M’ here.”

“Why’d you call?” Victor asked. Stephon could sense the apprehension from him, even through his misty half-consciousness. Had he hit his head on the way down? He must’ve. The blood on his forehead said as much.

Yet still, Steph knew it was not the damage to his cranium that was the cause of his fog. It was something crueller. He could feel the bubbling and boiling inside him. The fire in him lighting his blood to intense heat maximums. The blood coming out in tears. Steph tried to take a breath in. It was wet. It came with a clogged nose and an ugly sound in his throat.

“Because I’m right fucked up,” he croaked, “fucked up to the max. Real bad shit.”

“…Are you drunk?”

Steph managed a chuckle.

“Nah,” he said, “I’m not drunk.”

Even through the phone, Stephon could hear Victor sit up. He was quiet on the other end for what must’ve been around five seconds.

“Do you need something?” he questioned gently.

Steph licked his lips, fidgeting where he lay. He could feel his ankle again. Already, it was pushing against the confines of his shoe in a furious display of hatred. The bone inside ached; all the way to the deepest core of whatever Stephon was made of. Flesh, or something less tangible than flesh.

“I hurt myself,” he said, “playing basketball.”

The phrase wasn’t easy to pull out. Steph almost wished to bite his tongue out the moment after it had slipped from him. Thankfully, Victor spoke again, and quick. This time, in a rushed, nearly frantic voice.

“Hurt? What’d you do? Are you at the university?”

“No,” replied Steph.

“Where are you?”

Steph shrugged to himself before speaking again.

“Dunno.” Following a silence of confusion, he followed that with, “it’s your city, man. Ain’t mine.”

“Send me your location, I’ll come pick you up,” Victor hurried. Steph could already hear him rising from wherever he was. Bed, likely. There was an echo from Victor’s private life through the phone. The sound of shoes scraping against the floor and keys being handled. Steph could close his eyes and see the keys in those palms. How the cold metal gadgets must’ve disappeared like they were zapped into a pocket dimension.

Steph laughed to himself. He managed to rise up onto an elbow and navigated his phone just enough to fire off his map location to Victor. It pinged through a second later. His ankle hurt more and more with every passing minute. The pain was the most familiar thing that Steph had felt since landing in Paris. That, and conversation with Victor. His connections to his world; or things that made him feel as though he was still in his world.

‘Going to call that tacky too, Steph? It’s tacky. It’s the same tacky,’ his limbic system put in.

Overriding the thought, Steph cleared his throat and spoke again.

“Thanks, man,” he said hoarsely.

Victor’s voice was closer. He must’ve moved to holding his phone to his face. Steph closed his eyes and lifted the base of his phone to sit in front of his mouth.

“It’s okay,” Victor replied.

His voice; deep as it was, seemed to be able to transmit its physical qualities through the phone line just as it transmitted its audible ones. Steph could hear how it came out of Victor’s chest. He could feel the rumble of it.

“I’m serious. Thank you,” he repeated.

“Steph, shut up. I’ll be there in a minute,” Victor finished. The phone beeped off.

By the time Victor arrived, it was some gauzy hour past midnight.

“Steph,” his low voice carried over the waves of darkness that were lurking like rats around Stephon’s head. “You alright?”

“I look alright?” Steph responded. He lifted his head. Squinted his eyes.

Victor loomed above him like a mountain and an enigmatic smile pressed itself upon Steph at the sight of him. He floated, like Steph himself was unable to. And he floated without his feet so much as moving an inch from the ground. He looked warm under the glowy light. His skin was smooth and bright, and his dampened, endless dark eyes were locked on Steph like a spectre. Victor looked impossible.

“You look like shit.” Victor walked to him. He knelt down next to him and looped one of Steph’s arms over his shoulders. When it became clear that Victor was entirely too tall to support Steph in that manner, he opted instead to holding him upright by the waist against the mesh wire face. “You’re lucky you didn’t get mugged alone out here.”

“I know,” Steph muttered. “But aren’t European cities beyond that bullshit, or whatever?”

Victor laughed,

“Don’t be an idiot. No cities are beyond any bullshit. We all in live bullshit. Lots of bullshit everywhere. People die and are hurt by bullshit no matter where they live. Besides, Paris is infamous for its pickpockets.”

“Yeah, in the city centre. Not here,” said Steph.

“Anywhere,” Victor reiterated. “Things aren’t safe for foreigners in general. You don’t know the lay.”

Steph was put in Victor’s car. Steph had not known that Victor had a car at all. There seemed to be little use for a car in Paris. Steph had found the metro almost offensively efficient. But, Victor had a car. And they did not talk during the ride. It seemed almost pedestrian to break the silence that fell.

The sight of Victor made the pain in Steph’s foot just a little lesser.

‘Do you want him, Stephie?’ his ugly reptilian brain asked. ‘Do you want him carnally? Like he wants you carnally? All that talk about his skin and peeling it was pretty carnal. Are you envious or hungry?’

“Neither,” Steph mumbled (it was both).

“What?” Vic blinked.

“Nothing.”

“You said something.”

“I was talking to my brain.”

“…your brain?” Victor reached over the middle console and brushed some blood from Steph’s forehead. “Are you concussed?”

“No,” Steph said blandly, “I just do that sometimes, alright, man? I talk to my brain. Fuckin’ weird, tell me about it. Fuck.”

They didn’t speak again until they arrived at Victor’s apartment. He had some parking underneath his building and it was a broad, clean place with a face of pale stone and faux-marble interior floor. The elevator was small and shaky. Steph was forced to press himself right against Victor’s body to avoid putting pressure on his ankle.

Victor’s body temperature ran shockingly warm. Steph had assumed, based on his lankiness, that he wouldn’t hold much heat underneath his bones. His tight proximity to him, the narrow walls of the jittering elevator pressing around the two of them like a coffin, made that hypothesis untenable. The thinness of his body furthermore did not inhibit how comforting his presence was; he did not feel bony to the touch. Rather, he was sturdy and solid as if his bones were made of iron. Steph could feel Victor’s heartbeat thrumming right at his ear level. It was a steady, quick-paced thump. Victor’s arm, draped over Steph’s shoulders, made it so that Steph couldn’t pull away from his chest even if he were to try. Having nothing else to do, Steph tapped the rhythm of Victor’s heartbeat against the elevator wall behind them with two fingertips. It felt like he was drumming the pattern of rainfall. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.

When the bell dinged it was with some reluctance that Steph had to peel away. Victor helped him hobble down the liminal hallway and into a heated, low-lit apartment. Orange-ish gold was the dominant colour and it bled off the walls to the carpet and out the window into the silky night.

“Easy,” Victor muttered as he helped Steph to a couch of brown leather that dipped with his weight. Victor put Steph’s bag next to him. Following a quick journey to the freezer in the next room over, Victor sat down on the opposite edge of the couch and lifted Steph’s injured foot onto his lap, reaching behind himself to grab a soft, small cloth.

Steph watched Victor with a mystic confusion as he proceeded to unwrap his ankle from his shoe and sock and hold the cloth (with ice wrapped inside) to the blisteringly painful area on the top of his ankle.

“You aren’t going to ask what it is?” Steph frowned.

An esoteric smile inched across Victor’s face. He did not look up from his task. Although his hands did not wander, Steph’s throat felt dry regardless. Disturbingly intimate. Victor was tending to him as if it were the most natural thing in the world. They’d known each other all of a week. The silence felt perfect. Steph trusted him. It was a messy, confusing blur.

“Stress fractures, multiple, severe, and reoccurring for the last three years,” Victor said, snatching the words from between Steph’s lips, up from his tongue, and out of his soul.

Steph choked on his breathing. Victor tossed him a tissue and gestured to his own forehead. Steph lifted it to his head dumbly, wiping away whatever red gunk remained there.

“How did you know?” he blurted.

“You told me,” Victor said, his eyes darting to Steph’s. “You told me you came to France to, and I quote, ‘fuck some real shit up’ about your life. You said you couldn’t think of ‘fuck more that you,” Victor interceded his own speech to gesture toward Steph, “could fuck up after this fuck.’”

Steph was dumbfounded.

“You said fuck a lot,” Victor clarified.

“I’m sure I did,” Steph said slowly. “Shit, when I was drunk? Really?”

“Yes.”

The air was suddenly too thin to breathe. Steph lowered the tissue from his brow and let it drip from his fingers onto the carpeted floor. Victor kept his eyes all the while, still and unblinking. Steph covered his mouth with a hand.

“You’ve known all this time?” he asked tentatively.

It was not particularly esoteric information, Steph was aware of that much. He had gotten drunk and he spilled his guts. More catastrophic things had happened in a lifetime; such as it was with the life Steph had led. Yet, this particular truth was ugly. It was decrepit and gnarly and it was as though Victor had been smugly walking around with a piece of Steph’s soul in his pocket and had not found it at all pertinent that perhaps he ought to have brought it up to the subject of his knowledge. It was somehow crueller that Victor had said all that he had to Steph; that he had done all that he had; with an appreciation for Steph’s history. It was a history Steph could not himself narrate and yet it was fumbling around in the hands of a foreign man he barely knew.

‘Scary, scary,’ Steph’s limbic system said, ‘I told you. Scary.’

“I have.” Victor blinked three times. He let his elbow rest against Steph’s knee as he held the ice pack to his ankle.

Steph couldn’t help the way his face contused into a piteous snarl. He tried to move his injured foot without much success, and he dodged Victor’s eye line.

“You found me interesting because you found me pathetic?” It was more a statement than a question, but Victor laughed nonetheless.

“You truly have a grand tendency toward self-annihilation,” he began, lifting the ice pack and prodding Steph’s foot with his fingertips to get some read on how the ice was assisting the swelling, “I find you interesting because of how convinced you are that you are pathetic, completely oblivious to the fact that you are the least pathetic man I’ve seen in your circumstances.”

“How am I not pathetic, Vic?” Steph coughed out. The air left him in a tight wheeze. Victor was spewing nonsense. He had an aptitude for that. “Look at me. Look at…” Steph gestured downward warily.

Victor’s free hand closed around his ankle and he tugged ever so slightly. Enough to make Steph hiss; enough to make his eyes dart upward despite his mind’s blaring protests.

“You’re still playing. I told you, it was great to see you playing. After you threatened to throw every basketball in Paris in the Seine, I had thought that I’d not get the chance to see,” Victor’s eyes had been deadly serious when he started speaking, but something in them softened all of a sudden. His eyebrows turned from downward and assertive to a gentleness akin to that of an infantile animal. “You said you were really good,” he said, with a childish air of curiosity.

“I’m—” Steph coughed again. There was pressure behind his eyes that he wasn’t brave enough to let release. The heat in his cheeks only caused his heart to sink further. “I ain’t. I ain’t. Playing, that is.”

“Yes, you are,” Victor insisted.

“I left my college,” Steph said.

Victor nodded,

“Yes, you told me that.”

“They told me I’d need surgery,” Steph added hoarsely.

“You told me that, too,” Victor clarified.

“So, I’m not playing anymore. I ain’t a player,” Steph finished, gesturing somewhat emphatically. Hearing more and more of what, exactly, had been spilled to Victor was not pleasing. The unpleasant emotion riveted itself into the most sensitive sections of Steph’s skin and bubbled there.

‘But you are a player, Stephie. And he’s about to tell you so. And besides. You think yourself a player.’

As if on cue, Victor raised his voice once against, pointing down at Steph’s ankle.

“Then how’d you do this?” he asked, almost triumphantly.

“Christ,” Steph groaned, leaning back on the couch arm and rubbing his forehead thrice. “I need to never drink again,” he mumbled, cupping his eyes with his hand and letting the darkness subsume him for a minute.

“Au contraire, my dear Steph,” Victor laughed, reaching over to lift Steph’s hand from his eyes, “we both need to drink quite a bit more.”

Victor got up. He walked back to the adjacent kitchen. Steph watched as he turned on the lights. The orange-tinted luminescence spilled out and across the living room corner. Around the corner, Steph could see Victor pouring two glasses of white liquor on a high bench made of light-varnished wood.

He came back into the living room. Steph reached out and accepted the cold glass that he was offered. He took a moment to stare at his own reflection in it. He did not find the look of his eyes appealing. They had a livid quality; blue (though there was none in a literal sense) seemed to be dripping from them and spiralling out into the blown capillaries that surrounded his irises. Said lividity dragged Steph’s entire face down. He looked engorged on misery; swollen and pulsing with it. He looked like the most wretched version of himself he’d ever been.

“You got a smart-ass answer to everything, huh?” he murmured, glancing away from his reflection in the vodka and back up to Victor, who had resumed his seat at the opposite end of the couch, nursing Steph’s injury.

“Most,” Victor said, taking a swig from his glass before setting it down on a nearby low table. “I like having answers.”

“I can tell,” Steph added under his breath. He took a drink as well. It poured tightly down the back of his throat and warmed him to the pit of his stomach in a way he had sorely missed. Quickly, he could feel the dizzying, wafting effects bleeding into his sight and movement. Hearing, too. Victor’s voice sounded huskier when Steph had just the smallest amount inside him.

“So tell me again with a plain mind, Steph, how did you end up in France?” Victor asked, leaning one elbow on the end of the couch, keeping a gentle grip on the ice pack on Steph’s ankle. It had begun to melt against his skin. Long, unhurried rivulets of icy water trickled horizontally across his Achilles tendon.

“Depressed. Not wanting to be depressed no more. Shit happens. I had money left over after I left college,” Steph said mindlessly. He continued to drink.

“And you chose France?”

Steph shrugged,

“I wanted to see if the world was all that big.”

“And your conclusion?”

“It’s massive. And it don’t like me much,” Steph said plainly, “it don’t really like no one. It don’t care like that. That’s what I’ve learned.”

“Intelligent,” Victor murmured.

“You’re fuckin’ with me. Don’t take that tone,” Stephon snorted. He quickly downed the rest of his drink and left the empty glass to the carpet, next to his reddened tissue.

“I’m not taking any tone. You came, I think, because you’re afraid of not playing, and you were running from that fear,” Victor responded.

There was a minute of silence between them and Steph had to bite his tongue to prevent the reaction that came quick and fast from his gut. Fear. It was a cheap shot and an ugly thing to talk about. Steph’s hackles raised instinctively against it. It prickled up his spine and it warned him in a language he had learned to speak in hard ways. He did not listen to what his nerves had to say about that remark. It would be very, very ugly indeed. He kept his voice stable, rather, and lowered his brow.

“Where I’m from, calling another man afraid would earn you a punch in the jaw,” he warned.

To his credit, Victor did not flinch. It was a disturbing challenge. It was mimetic. Victor was not responding to Stephon’s gut, appealing instead to the higher tendencies of his mind. He was looking at him and reflecting him back to him. He was saying, simply: ‘look inside yourself.’

“Well, will you punch me in the jaw, Steph? I’m afraid you can’t quite reach,” he said with a facetiously sarcastic effect and a tilt of his chin that Steph couldn’t help but smile at. It killed the tension in the air in the snap of half a heartbeat.

“I won’t punch you,” Steph smiled.

Victor smiled back,

“I thought not. And Steph, we’re all afraid of something,” he said.

The smile on Stephon’s face stretched wider. Victor’s expression was humorous. Far from any glint of arrogance, each one of his words shone with brilliant wit. It was tasteful.

‘And you like that, don’t you?’

“Oh yeah? What’s Mr Perfect scared of, then?” Steph quipped in return. “Being too good at fuckin’ everything?”

“I’ve been lonely,” Victor said, rather staunchly and abruptly. Steph felt the corners of his lips twitching downward. The plainness of the statement took the air out of the room.

“…Lonely?”

“Lonely.”

“Why?”

Victor finished his glass of vodka, wincing just the slightest as he gulped down the final mouthful. His cheeks were a soft, dusty red in the quiet light. His free hand was rubbing Steph’s uninjured knee. Steph hadn’t noticed; the touch was so light and careful it could’ve been a hallucination. Yet, it was, all the same, familiar. Familiar to an unwarranted extent.

“Because I don’t want to play professional basketball,” Victor said.

“And that’s made you lonely?” Steph asked.

“Yes,” Victor nodded, “because they don’t understand me.”

Steph laughed. The concept itself was laughable. Victor explained himself in meticulous detail and he had no barres in the way that Steph did. He was an open book if one cared to take a fifteen minute conversation. In addition, Steph had found Victor inordinately articulate; more articulate and honest than anyone he’d met.

“Frankly, you ain’t hard to understand. I got your meaning. Ugly as it is,” Steph said, the last part coming out due to his alcohol-induced flush.

“What about it is ugly?” Victor pressed, frowning slightly.

“The fact that you have a choice,” Steph responded.

“Did I? Is that really what I said?”

“Yes. You said you were fortunate to see choice, or whatever.”

“Or unfortunate,” Victor reminded. He pursed his lips for a second before jumping right into another aside. “I don’t really think we get a choice to anything. Sometimes we can see choices, but the ones we take will be the only ones that will ever have been available to us. There’s no walking a choice back. Conscious or unconscious choice. Maybe in another life you’re in art school, Steph,” he chuckled to himself.

“And infinitely less smart or interesting for it,” Steph drawled back with an affective grin.

“Perhaps,” Victor said.

“End point. You ain’t hard to understand, Vic.” Steph waved his hand idly.

“No, you understand me. And it’s something I appreciate,” Victor smiled warmly. The long, even crescent of his smile filled the lower third of his face. Steph’s eyes lingered. On the way the light reflected on his lips. On every movement of his tongue inside his mouth.

“We barely know each other,” he said, throat dry.

“We’re getting there,” Victor whispered.

‘There it goes, Stephie! It’s time! You can’t hide from it anymore!’ Steph’s unhelpful brain blared in. He found himself reeling in his own mind; pulling and tugging at various threads that led to nowhere. He came up short in fifteen directions before he was able to equivocate on what his next sentence ought to be.

“Are you— I mean. On what- fuck. I ain’t good at this shit, man. Stop lookin’ at me,” Steph stammered, putting his face in his palm once more.

“Why?” Victor leaned across the length of the couch and pulled Steph’s wrist away. He tilted his head.

“I feel like I’m going crazy.” Steph could count each of Victor’s eyelashes individually. “You. You’re gay, ain’t you?” he pressed. He disliked himself for how much he forced it out in the tone of an accusation.

“No,” Victor grinned.

Steph yanked himself backward; as far as he could on the narrow couch and with an aggravated, freshly re-injured stress fracture in his foot. His heart rang through his body as though it were primarily beating inside his ears and not his chest.

“What the fuck then, man?” he snapped.

Victor quickly reached across again and pulled Steph back by the shoulders, shushing his outburst.

“I do like men,” he said.

“What the fuck,” Steph repeated. There was nothing to do but blink blankly and repetitively.

“I can tell this isn’t something you’re particularly well versed in,” Victor said calmly.

Steph shook his head slowly.

‘This,’ he thought, ‘men. God. What’s wrong with me? What am I doing?’

‘Ditching that pesky dignity, brother!’ Steph’s limbic system screeched. ‘Finally, finally losing it! Losing it incredibly! Fucking up the last thing!’

“It ain’t. Not at all. I don’t— I’ve never wanted to—” Steph babbled.

Victor eased backward, and the air that gushed between them felt as though it were laced with crystals of ice.

“Do you not want to? That’s fine,” he said gently.

“No, no. Ain’t that,” Steph scrambled, grabbing Victor’s elbow momentarily before nervously releasing it. He put his hand back to his forehead. “I think we drank too much.”

“Did we?” Victor asked. He leaned back fully against the couch back, a heavy sigh leaving his chest.

“Fuck if I know,” Steph winced, looking down, “my ankle hurts.”

“Want some painkiller?” Victor offered in a low mumble.

“‘A’ painkiller,” Steph corrected.

“What?”

Victor looked good. Steph’s mind was not focused at all on the hypothetical painkillers. He was glued to the tracing the shape of Victor with his eyes. The edges of his shoulders as they creased down to his arms. His waist and his hips; propped up against the couch edge. His long, kind fingers and how they had lingered on him. His eyelashes. His smile. The light from the room seemed to bloom across his features. Victor looked like fire itself. Steph had drank too much. The entire world was tilting, ever so slowly. Victor had come close and it had spun Steph out of his own orbit and entrapped him. He was, drifting, dwindling, into Victor’s sphere of gravity.

“You say ‘a painkiller’. Not ‘some painkiller’,” Steph managed.

“Do you want a painkiller?” Victor repeated.

“No,” Steph mumbled, sitting up straighter.

“Then what?” Victor began leaning back. There must’ve been a magnet suddenly placed in Victor’s chest. The pull was incalculably strong.

“C’mere. Vic,” Steph beckoned weakly. Victor obeyed him.

Steph’s hand wrapped around the back of Victor’s neck and he pulled him close. A fragmented drop of hesitation had them meeting about an inch apart, foreheads touching. The darkness that greeted Stephon when he closed his eyes was a rich one. It burst with colours and shapes in the form of a kaleidoscope. When the taste of Victor’s smile against his own registered, all those colours and shapes began to spark like fireworks.

“Aren’t you in pain?” Victor mumbled against Steph’s mouth.

It was maddening. Steph was clawing a hand through the short crop of Victor’s hair and tasting the heat directly from his tongue. He had his other hand wrapped around his waist and the weight of body between his thighs. Bright, radiating lights kept on appearing in his mind; they limited any possible reality in which Stephon was in a place to adequately balance a thought.

“—fuck up,” Stephon said through the intense rhythm of their meeting. “Shut the fuck up.”

Steph had never been touched in the way that Victor was touching him. He’d had the indistinct and self-serving touch of girls his age. The plush tenderness and softness of their bodies as they gained pleasure from the mental image of themselves in submission. Stephon had become acquainted well with the look that came in the eyes of most beautiful people; the seeking of their own flushed and pleasured expression in his gaze. Stephon had been a mirror to all the girls that had sought him. He’d been the means through which they held power and held it inside themselves. Victor was nothing of the sort.

Each one of Victor’s caresses was serving and self-assured. There was no seeking power; he had it all and he was aware he had it all. Fingers that lingered on Steph’s inner knee. The press of lips against his jaw and chin. Victor was exploring Steph with reverence that Steph had never encountered before. There was a purity of motion in Victor. He touched Steph without care for the mind. There was no game and there was no hostility of competition. Steph felt as if he could’ve been entirely disembodied and it wouldn’t have mattered at all for Victor. Victor’s tongue trailing down his sternum and his hands pushing his shirt upward told him that Victor would’ve devoured him whole if it had been feasible. The exploration was personal. It was hungry.

“Vic— Vic,” Steph panted, his hand tightening in the fabric that was sealing Victor’s body from him.

“What?” Victor whispered, looking upward.

The sight of his eyes was remarkable. Steph could hardly breathe. There was an impenetrable depth to them that Steph felt himself sinking into; slowly and uncontrollably, as if he were in some kind of trance. They looked black as the night outside. Light sparked off the edges of them like little snowflakes of moonlight. Inside Victor’s eyes, there seemed to be the entire night. The skyline of the city wasn’t half as lively. Steph slowly lifted a hand and cupped his face. It was only then that he realised he was trembling; trembling all the way from the edges of his fingernails to the deepest and most intimate regions of his spine. His bones shivered inside his flesh. His guts turned over one another and rearranged themselves. Heat pierced through him like an arrow and remained lodged and fragmented inside him like a bullet. Most importantly and most impossibly, Stephon could see his own reflection in Victor’s eyes. His own image was shining back at him in a glow that was ten times the beauty the he had ever seen himself previously possessing. There was a few seconds in which Steph truly believed that he had entered Victor’s skull and was seeing himself through his eyes. There was no wall. Victor was giving himself over.

Steph’s thumb trailed down Victor’s kiss-bitten lower lip.

“Nothing,” Steph said. “Nothing. Keep going.”

“Something’s on your mind,” Victor continued, licking Steph’s neck again. He latched on there for a moment, capturing Steph’s skin between his lips and sucking. The sensation sent pure electricity to every inch of Steph’s body.

“Mm— you’re on my mind,” Stephon whispered. “This feels so… weird.”

Victor chuckled as he lifted himself momentarily to remove his shirt. Steph’s eyes dragged up his bare torso and his hand followed the path. He allowed himself to become intimately familiar with the lines of muscle and vivid-toned skin. He allowed the strength of Victor to become arousing to him. He allowed his head to open and he found, shockingly, that he was not afraid at all.

“Weird?” Vic asked. His hands wrapped underneath Steph’s hips and lifted him. Steph nearly protested against being carried, but he couldn’t bring himself to.

“Weird,” Steph confirmed lightly, kissing up and down Victor’s chest and clavicle as Victor moved him into the bedroom.

The bedroom was the smallest room in Victor’s apartment that Steph had yet seen. The bed was soft when he was placed upon it. He sunk, long and slow, into the sheets, and he pulled Victor back to him. Their skin met before their lips did again. Victor let out soft moans between each and every touch, and Steph lost himself to it. It was a song. It had a pulse and a precise, pointed melody. Steph let himself respond. He usually kept himself to tight, forceful breaths during sex. But Victor’s offering was unselfish, and Steph found himself desiring to become as such.

“You feel as good as I thought you’d feel,” Victor whispered, one hand carding through Steph’s hair and pushing it away from his face. Sweat was already beading at Victor’s hairline. Steph pushed himself up on his elbows and ran his tongue across the dewy skin, sealing the action with a firm kiss.

“Just make me feel something,” Steph whispered.

‘Remind me what being a body can feel like,’ he thought, though he was not brave enough to say it. ‘Remind me how it feels to become something beyond a mind.’

It was, however, as though Victor absorbed Steph’s thoughts into his movements without needing to hear them directly. He pushed Steph’s thighs open with vigorous intensity and rolled their hips together. Steph couldn’t fight the sound that came out from the highest point in his throat. He reciprocated the motion, watching with dazed eyes as the outline of Victor’s cock became more and more obvious. His hands scampered back to find some fabric to grab. His back arched from the base, widening the angle that Victor could move into.

Victor was careful with him. Every time he touched him, no matter how strong his grip or how delirious his hunger, he didn’t move Steph recklessly. He didn’t aggravate his injury. He pushed him into the bed and kissed him blind. His hands hooked into the waistband of his shorts and pulled downward. It was all done with a kind of tenderness that Stephon hadn’t experienced anywhere but dreams.

“I thought I’d be scared of this,” Steph mumbled, running a hand over Victor’s shoulder as Victor, too, stripped himself completely.

“You’re not?” Victor asked, taking Steph’s hand and kissing his fingers.

“No,” Steph said, “I’m not nervous at all.”

“I’m nervous,” Victor confessed quietly.

“I know,” Steph smiled, “I can hear your heart. I could hear it since we were in the elevator.”

Victor chuckled and rolled his eyes. He dived back down, burying his face into the juncture of Steph’s neck and shoulder and murmuring something that sounded like ‘ridiculous’ into the skin there.

Steph took Victor’s wrist and pulled it downward. Victor paused, pulling it back and first pushing his fingers into Steph’s mouth. Steph took them with glee. He ran his tongue around them, holding Victor’s eyes all the while. And Steph’s nerves stayed quiet. The black of Victor’s eyes had that effect. Victor pushed down on his tongue, and Steph tilted his head back, allowing his jaw to fall wider. The observation that Victor could’ve reached down his throat and killed him if he so wanted; Steph would’ve been powerless to it. And it felt incredible. It was a violent unknown; it was being a body; it was being a part of the world. Victor’s bedroom was a part of the world, and the world did not care that they were having sex. It was just for them.

“Shit, fuck—” Steph groaned as Victor’s fingers pushed into him. Victor was slow and methodical and gentle and he kept his eyes firmly on Steph the entire time, but it did not push down the fact of the matter; the sensation burned.

“Okay?”

“Okay,” Steph hissed, “it’s good. It’s good.”

It was good. It burned like a sore muscle. A fiery-ness of pain; familiar to Steph but transformed and delivered as something that brought him closer to, and not further away from, being completely inside himself and lost to the beauty of existence.

Victor continued. There was a long moment between them through which no words were exchanged. Fingers pushing deeper, angling, and curling. Steph’s quiet moans and heavy breaths as he clawed at Victor’s back with one hand and stroked him off with the other. Their eyes remained locked. Steph didn’t want to see a single other thing.

‘Not forever,’ his stomach said, ‘you’d be sick if you saw anything else.’

The colours and shapes swirled up half of Steph’s visual field after a certain point. Pleasure soaked his body like syrup and Victor sucked it out of him in return. Their hands retracted from their fondling and Victor nestled himself inside Steph like he was part of his body; like he was the better version that Stephon had always wanted to be; like he was offering himself up as such.

Steph closed his legs around Victor’s hips and pulled him all the way in. Victor’s eyes were glistening. He’d said he was lonely. Stephon couldn’t imagine it even if he tried; such was the experience that they were having that Steph could hardly imagine himself retracted from Victor at all. But perhaps Victor was not crying for the ease of loneliness. The tears that splattered onto Steph’s cheeks as their bodies thrust together could’ve been any of a million things. Steph could feel it, but he could not speak it. He could not describe in any form adequately what must’ve been inside Victor’s head. All the same, he could feel it. He could taste it. Victor’s saliva in his tongue and his skin beneath his hands and his body inside his own.

“You could fix me, keeping up like this,” Steph said, between hastened gasps that Victor punched out of him.

“And you me,” Victor responded, equally breathless. Steph wiped a tear from the corner of his left eye.

“What’s there to fix?” he asked.

Victor smiled. He leaned down and kissed Steph slowly, all while increasing the speed of his thrusts. Steph had to grip on to Victor to not release then and there. His nails punctured the skin of Victor’s lower back. Some part of him was satisfied by the mere idea of doing such.

“Don’t disappear on me,” Victor whispered into his ear, neglecting his prior question. “Don’t disappear into the world with the night.”

‘I would do whatever you asked me to do,’ Steph thought. He swallowed it.

“This is the world,” Steph responded quietly. “This is the world like any other part.”

“A world worth keeping?” Victor asked, wrapping a hand around Steph’s cock and pulling upward.

The firm, insistent motion sent pure white flame into Steph’s gut, and he choked a few times on his pleasure before he could find a response that he could at all enunciate.

“Ah— fuck— I, mn— fuck you, man, just make me cum,” he begged, his fingernails leaving their puncture marks behind in favour of dragging long and harsh lines up Victor’s back instead.

Victor smiled, and Steph recognised that he could’ve lent him some eloquent quip, but he elected not to. His motions increased in fervour; his hips pushed harder and more demanding than they had yet. Vic’s free hand lifted to Steph’s neck and pressed down. Steph’s right hand snatched Victor’s wrist and kept his eyes all the while. It was as much a tether as the weight of Vic’s cock dragging in and out of him, working his spine into the mattress below until he could’ve melted there in the crazed heat. Steph’s mind was gone from his head. He had only sparkling, brilliant fire in his stomach that wrapped around him like a blanket.

When his body snapped, he felt the most relieving gush of cool break over him that he ever had. It was as if he stepped face-first into a water fall. Steph was vaguely aware of the keening sound that he made. He was vaguely aware of the substance that was presently coating his stomach. He could feel, more deeply than anything, satisfaction that burned itself into his bones. Victor collapsed atop him moments after, and Steph could feel his body shuddering with violent emotion. Steph did nothing, said nothing. But he had the wherewithal to wrap his arms around Victor’s shaking frame. He had the guts to kiss Victor’s temple over and over. He said something to him, too. In the fit of it all he couldn’t remember what. Perhaps it had been nonsense.

“You know,” Victor said slowly. It felt like an eon since either one of them had spoken. “I’ve always been fascinated by America. The kind of people it produces.”

“America can be a violent shit hole,” Stephon mumbled back.

“The world can be a violent shit hole, remember,” Victor nudged Steph’s ribs. “Is it a violent shit hole worth seeing?”

A long smile crossed Steph’s face.

“You want me to take you? Ain’t you got studying to do?”

“That’s the beautiful thing about academics,” Victor pushed himself up on one elbow and stroked Steph’s face. “You can take as long as you want. Your mind expires much more slowly than your body,” he paused and grinned, “and there are long holidays. I’m saying I want to see you again, after you leave.”

Steph blinked a few times.

“I ain’t thought about leaving yet.”

“I feel like I’ve got a butterfly in my net,” Victor continued. “Like I’ll put you in a jar and you’ll be gone by tomorrow.”

Steph’s mouth felt dry. The pain in his ankle that had been overridden during sex returned. It was an unpleasant thing to come so crudely back to reality.

“This ain’t—” Steph opened his mouth and failed to find the words. “I wouldn’t do this with any guy,” he clarified.

“Good,” Victor muttered, lifting his hand and pressing his fingers to Steph’s pulse point. “Because I’m very competitive.”

Steph grinned,

“Me too,” he said.

The night crashed over them like a blanket. Victor helped Steph wrap his ankle until the throbbing was manageable, and then they fell back to bed. A few more touches. A kiss or two. Time seemed irrelevant in that room; there was no surplus and no stolen bites and there was no wrangling fight with autonomy to subsume more inside than was naturally given. Time as a counted object itself felt incredibly unnatural. There were only moments shared. There was only the overarching moment that the bedroom had given and there was the fill that their bodies had responded to that moment with.

The time on the dresser read that it was just something passed 3:00am.

Stephon let his eyes close, and he let his forehead fall into Victor’s chest.

‘Look at you, storm cloud,’ his limbic system whispered, ‘you’ve found lightning again. And something entirely new to hedge your bets and lose on. Aren’t you afraid?’

Steph did not bother rebutting it.