Barefoot on the Beach | {griffin}

The plethora of classes end at five but the hour after, is an unholy time of rigorous exercise—and coercing his fingers to grow kindred to the steel of a blade, the silver of a spear, and the feather of an arrowhead.

A ritual, composed by his parents, to channel a tacit yet breathing weapon. But, a swan such as himself doesn’t metamorphose to beast; the stars forbid the violence.

Beau isn’t very big on bloodshed. The preposterous twist is, the two of his parents are. They don’t condone in senseless carnage, no, only the kind which either kills or wins, such as the Games. Saturday nights are mandated for watching reruns, and those dust-caked clips aren’t very harmonious with popcorn or a friend’s company.

Maybe that’s why the mouths of the students in class are sewed shut whenever he’s around, maybe that’s why he eats lunch alone. A wave of loneliness doesn’t drown you, but a riptide just might.

Beads of sweat on forehead, aching muscles, he’s been trying to make a spear embed itself onto a target since evening. He wears the colors of the horizon inside his bruises—lilac, purple, magenta. The air is pregnant with a turbulent opera, composed by the evening’s receding waves, each note singing an escape.

A new moon wears silver, glistening wickedly, and the training center with its array of steel and shadows, appears ghoulish below it.

“Hey,” A voice ring; it is instantly recognizable. Those thick, heavily emphasized syllables belong to only one man.

He turns towards Kaiser, with an enigma for a last name, offering him a towel. Short hair, powerful build, an x-shaped scar zigzagging across his face—he’s been Beau’s mentor for decades. Some sort of a serendipity, he supposes. Scabbed fingers take the towel, smearing it across his face as he whispers a muffled “Hey.”

“Ye’ are done for the day. Take yer’ equipment, we’re going to close the venue up soon.” A finger jabs at his duffel bag perched upon a rack, bloated with a fresh change of garments and a small dagger he was gifted long ago. “What—I thought Mr. and Mrs. Douche wanted me to take extra time today.” That’s an exquisite play on words for his father and mother. Kaiser looks, and then makes a mystery of a smile.

“Ye, but they aren’t here now. Now go on, do some reckless teenage shit, get yourself into trouble.”

He returns a grin, pearly whites flashing before a flurry of activity takes place—which consists of briskly changing garments from a second skin to sheer drapery, tossing the spear he’s been middling with all day aside, and heading out, onward, towards the escape.

Even at the end of a day, when sun’s been devoured by a ravenous skyline, the sea breathes out. It’s an expanse of gleaming shells and ivoried sand disguised as stars, both dispersed across shore. A breaking tide rushes past his feet, and Beau can’t help but wince, salt waters rousing agony out of the blisters on his feet. The healing’s meant to hurt as much as the violence.

Duffel bag set safely at the bottom of a tree, he begins his routine—something wrapped delicately in elegance and panache, something fluid. The dance awakes from the limbs, a slow sway of arms, and cascades down to his legs where it pools.

Then, suddenly, there’s an outbreak of movement, toes rising on themselves as body becomes a torrent of motion, flowing in sync with tides and waves and zephyrs.

He feels alive, brimmed with a greater energy.

Only when eyes catch a lone shadow nearby, they abruptly halt, though the tides proceed to ebb and flow. “Oh— I— I am sorry.” Beau doesn’t know the source of this apology, but he’s always been taught that mistakes sprout from soft boys who try to rebel.

“Didn’t see you there. Sorry.”

His voice’s always been stripped of power and influence, never able to form a coherent retort or persuade. In class, the questions never pierced through others’ chitchat, never reached the teacher’s ears, which is why he personally sets up a mandatory schedule at dark hours for studies.

But, these syllables seemed to have roared in the guise of distant thunder to this boy, jolting his bones awake, plucking him out of reveries. Beau’s chest swells tenderly with pride at that.

It’s the first he’s beheld this phenomenon.

“It’s- It’s fine.” Standing barefoot on the evening’s sands, toes anxiously doodling shapes; he doesn’t know what to do, or say.

At school, no one’s bothered for even a nanosecond’s worth of conversation; this boy’s giving praise.

So, downcast eyes make an effort to rake the stranger: from his crown of dirtied threads to torso. It would be a violation to voyage lower down, but glimpses are taken—for scientific purposes.

“That was, uh, something. I mean, good something.”

“Thank you.”

“I liked it. I-I’m Bubby.”

Albeit nervous, rosy brims ineptly mold to a grin that’s bare yet there. “That’s a pleasantly funny name. Bubby.” A huff of laughter is loosened before he remembers manners, “Oh, how rude of me to forget,” He pats the sand on his palm away on wrinkled trousers before raising it at Bubby, only to spontaneously pull it back to his sides ‘cause there’s a fresh wound, possibly by a blade, smeared across it.

“This– It’s nothing, I fell earlier. I am Alistair... Alistair Beau.”

The excuse’s as synthetic as it is preposterous; no one fell and have a deep crimson-edged wound on their palms. Brown circles waver as a turbulence rises in his skull; he doesn’t have anything to talk about, tongue-tied and severely shy.

But, there’s also a part of him which has always been yearning and churning for a companion, someone to share anecdotes and laughter with. He can’t have his teen years be squandered away.

“That wasn’t really a routine or anything, it was just a… poorly crafted warm-up.” Fingers toy excessively with each other: a coping mechanism for the anxiety that threatens to suffocate.

“Do you know– ”

A swallow,
a sharp intake
of breath.

“Do you know how to dance, Bubby?”

The ocean’s beats are, for a moment, softer than his heart’s vehement symphony. Breath rises to throat and stays there, trapped firmly, agitatedly in between pulmonary muscles – Beau has never been so anxious for a dance lesson.

Palms raise, taking Buddy’s for an intertwinement of digits and they’re cool to touch, an essence of saline sea engraved on their coarse vastness.

He leads them to his slender hips because a spontaneous thought whispers:

teach him a foxtrot or nothing. 

It’s an audacious choice he’s never dared to take; a ticklish and nerve-wrecking sensation unbeknownst to Beau until Bubby’s arms snake around his wrist and he dangles from the cage of those arms as if they were a safety net, a harness.

“Okay – I – I have never taught someone before.” Laughter escapes, thick with nervousness. Bubby’s left hand and his right are laced now, an upper-hand clasp near shoulder level. He could feel the pulse beneath skin—as equally feverish as Beau’s.

“So, you,” Between two lungs, there’s a quiver of coronaries. “You start with your left foot, take two walking steps forward …” Words trail off because he’s made the mistake of gazing up at those baby blues, a calmed sea Beau could buoy himself upon.

The noise of cerulean tides unfolding themselves slows down to a mellifluous ballad; they begin to sway, holy hands scorching Beau’s waists to embers whilst his own drapes loosely on Buddy’s broad shoulders.

He doesn’t quit staring into his eyes – and the array of night stars mirrored onto those glassy surfaces.

Mind’s a sea, tamed by
the serenity in his gaze.

“And, you just ... sway.” The distance amidst them is fleeting as if it is smoke.  

How ludicrous they’ll think of Beau—

Dancing with a stranger under the wet silver of a newborn moon, tides ebbing and flowing beneath their little toes. They move to a symphony composed with fervent heartbeat, creaking bones, straying hands.

The space between glacially dies out and it isn’t awkward or rigid as the middle-schoolers swear it to be. He’s tender, with those baby-blues, given cavernous depth by the blue of sea.

“Yeah, you’re pretty good.”

Words resonate a grin and a hex—for, after mere seconds, Bubby loses footing and sends the both tumbling down to saltwater broth and wet sands.

Another peal of laughter drips from roseate brims, as mellifluous as honey. “That move just swept my feet off the ground.”

In the pleasant afterglow of jesting and joy, their gazes brush against each other and it’s just as serene as he’s felt, moments ago.

Beau's never caught feelings before. Dog-eared love letters have only came to him, once, and it was a humiliating mistake which his cheeks redden at the mere reflection of. This girl in kindergarten puppy-kissed his nose over a sophisticated version of spin the bottle.

So, the closeness, the delicateness, and the warmness, it washed over him, like the tides crashing onto them, and Beau’s heart is too leaden with growing tension for buoyancy. The nature of this tension, he doesn’t know, or refuses to know, or craves to know.

Questions and doubts and concerns rise and levitate, materializing as ghosts around the aureate curls, echoing, growing, festering.

Fingers lace with his soft ones—and the noises are drowned out and devoured by the feral rhythm of his heart. He holds that azure gaze, too feeble to steer his eyes elsewhere. “I don’t . . .” A pause, a quick burial of the lump sewed to throat. “God, I could kiss you right now.” Admittance is given; a soft confession.

Bubby’s eyes flare up with reciprocity and shared sentiments but he goes to restraint it with a tap to the lips, and words,

shivering words.

“But no—no, let’s—let’s meet up tomorrow – or today! If you’re free! And aren’t bothered by a boy who either stutters his words or weaves an embarrassingly long sentence for no good reason other than his grave nervousness.”