It was another suffocatingly hot afternoon, the kind of stifling weather that pressed against the skin like a physical weight. Felix stood in the center of his bedroom, taking whatever his run-down, oscillating electric fan could blow his way. It wasn't nearly enough. He had just stepped out of the cold shower, yet a fresh layer of sweat was already beading along his collarbones, slicking his skin in the humid air.
With a faded towel wrapped precariously around his waist, he stepped up to the dresser. He stared at his reflection in the mirror, his drenched hair leaving heavy, dark droplets on the faux-wood counter as he dragged a comb through the tangled strands.
But as he tried to focus on drying his hair, his mind betrayed him. He kept looking back into his own eyes and seeing Matthew's face instead.
He remembered the exact look Matthew had worn earlier that day. He had looked like someone had just reached into his chest and crushed something vital. Well, mostly, it looked like he was deeply confused—which he certainly was—but the raw, unguarded shift in his expression felt like it told a vastly different, far more complicated story.
Felix shrugged at his reflection and chuckled, a rough, breathy sound. The idiot was actually cute when he looked so hopelessly lost.
Felix froze. The comb halted mid-stroke.
Wait. What?
"No... god, no," he mumbled to himself, violently shaking his head to dislodge the thought.
He IS cute, a traitorous voice in the back of his mind supplied, but it absolutely shouldn't have come to THAT point. They were practically sworn frenemies—two men existing on opposing principles who clashed more often than they breathed. But then came that moment. That brief, suspended second in time when Matthew had been so inexplicably close. Felix could still vividly recall the faint scent of cedarwood on Matthew's skin, the sharp intake of his breath, the sudden, terrifying realization that there was a very fine line between wanting to punch someone and wanting to...
"Ok... Felix, stop. Stop, and stop—" he groaned out loud. He tossed the comb blindly onto the dresser, completely forgetting about his wet hair, and let himself fall backward onto the unmade bed. He stared up at the ceiling, waiting for the frantic thrumming in his chest to quiet down.
By the time he finally pulled himself together, it was somewhere around four in the afternoon. He decided to walk it off.
The house was eerily quiet. Amor hadn't called him, hadn't bombarded him with texts, and hadn't come barging through the front door uninvited like he usually did. It was a rare, bizarrely calm day.
It was the perfect day to visit that place.
After throwing on a loose, worn-out t-shirt and a pair of shorts, Felix headed out. The heat had mellowed into a thick, golden warmth by the time he arrived near the edge of the abandoned dragon fruit farm. It was a melancholic stretch of land—the kind that entirely trusted the creeping weeds and thick vines to keep its rotting wooden trellises standing. It was a quiet graveyard of agriculture that carried the faded memories of the old, distant couple with no children who used to tend it.
Beyond the farm laid the hidden gateway to his personal paradise. Felix slipped through the overgrown foliage, his feet moving on muscle memory alone as he swung around different bends, navigating narrow, winding paths that only he was familiar with.
Through the canopy, he could see the sky bruising into shades of violet and deep orange. If he wanted to chase the sunset and see the water catch the light, he'd have to move faster.
And faster.
And... faster? His pulse quickened with an unexplainable urgency as the sound of rushing water grew louder.
Once he finally broke through the tree line and stepped into the clearing, he froze.
He wasn't alone.
He heard a distinct splash. Then, a low voice humming a tune that drifted over the water. Felix held his breath. Only Gray would... is he? There was a silhouette of a man moving in the shallows, the water dancing around his waist, his figure flagged in stark black by the blinding light of the setting sun.
He was still too far out for Felix to make out any distinct features, but Felix's heart hammered against his ribs in a desperate, foolish rhythm. He hoped—he wildly, agonizingly wished—that it was him. That after all this time, it was finally the guy he had been endlessly searching for.
Felix stood there, rooted to the damp earth, silently praying to a god he rarely spoke to.
But as the man finished his swim and began wading toward the shore, the brilliant backlight of the sunset shifted. The shadows fell away from the man's face, revealing the sharp cut of his jaw, the familiar broad shoulders, and the dark, wet hair pushed back from his forehead.
The air left Felix's lungs all at once. It wasn't the ghost he was chasing.
It was...
The man stopped waist-deep in the water, his eyes locking onto Felix on the shore. The same startled, unguarded expression from earlier that afternoon flashed across his wet face.
"Felix?"
Felix swallowed hard, his voice barely a whisper above the sound of the water.
"Matthew..."
Felix let himself sink onto the cooling sand, his body going slack as he came to rest right beside Matthew's discarded shirt and shoes. His mind was a frantic, spinning mess. How did he even get here? How did he find this place? He already knew the answer.
There was only one way through the dragon fruit farm, only one overgrown path that led to this hidden cove. Matthew must have been wandering aimlessly. The reason didn't matter, but seeing him here—mistaking his silhouette for Gray's—had twisted a cruel, phantom hope into Felix's chest.
The soft crash of the waves pulled him back to reality. Matthew was stepping out of the surf.
As the lingering sting of disappointment began to fade, Felix finally let himself truly look at the man walking toward him. The dying sunlight caught the water trailing down Matthew's chest, tracing the hard lines of his stomach. He was wearing white sport shorts that were suddenly, dangerously sheer in the wet. The damp fabric clung to his thick thighs, leaving entirely too little to the imagination. He looked less like the infuriating guy Felix argued with, and more like a wet, breathless fantasy that made Felix's throat go inexplicably dry.
"How did you get here?" Matthew asked, his voice rough, cutting through the heavy air.
"The same way you did," Felix replied, his voice betraying a slight tremor he prayed Matthew wouldn't notice.
Then, silence.
The kind of heavy, suffocating silence that made the sound of the ocean seem deafening. It stretched on, thick and awkward, wrapping around them both.
"I'm going back," Matthew suddenly announced, breaking the spell. He reached down and snatched up his shirt.
Felix didn't stop him. He didn't even twitch. But he didn't have to—because after three steps up the shoreline, Matthew froze.
"Hey..."
Felix's eyes slowly swung in his direction. Matthew stood rigid, his back still turned, his broad shoulders rising and falling with a deep, shaky breath. Matthew felt the weight of Felix's gaze, but the words seemed caught in his throat. He was fighting a war with himself—whether to walk away, whether to clear the air, whether to ask the questions burning in his chest.
Instead of leaving, Matthew turned around. He walked back with a slow, deliberate pace and sat down in the sand beside Felix.
He left a gap between them—a distance that probably seemed appropriate in his head—but in reality, the space was practically non-existent. They were close enough that the heat radiating from Matthew's damp skin washed over Felix. Close enough that, as they both shifted in the sand, the side of Matthew's hand brushed against Felix's pinky.
A jolt of electricity shot up Felix's arm at the fleeting contact. Neither of them pulled away. They stayed perfectly still, anchored by that single point of touch.
"I can't get you out of my mind lately," Matthew said into the fading light. His voice was low, stripped of its usual armor. "I can't... I don't know why."
Felix's breath hitched, his eyes widening. The confession was so blunt, so painfully honest, that it felt like a punch.
"I-I'm sorry?" Felix stammered, his heart kicking into a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
"I'm not going to repeat myself," Matthew groaned, a familiar edge of frustration creeping back into his voice, though this time it was directed entirely at himself.
"Look... it's just... It's... I don't know." He let out a harsh sigh, staring intently at a broken seashell half-buried in the sand between his knees. He looked completely lost.
And Felix? Even more so.
Drawn by an invisible gravity, they turned to look at each other at the exact same second. The moment their eyes locked, the rest of the world dissolved. Felix swallowed hard, his pulse roaring in his ears.
Matthew's gaze, usually so sharp and guarded, had completely softened. The dark irises were liquid, searching, completely vulnerable. As the shadows of the evening stretched deeper into the ocean behind them, Matthew leaned in.
It wasn't a rush. It was an agonizingly slow, deliberate pull. Matthew's head bobbed closer, his eyes dropping briefly to Felix's mouth before fluttering back up to meet his gaze. The scent of salt water and the faint, warm musk of his skin enveloped Felix entirely.
Matthew stopped when he was just a breath apart from him. Felix could feel the ghost of Matthew's warm exhale dusting across his own parted lips. Every nerve ending in Felix's body was screaming, suspended in the unbearable, electric space between them.
"W-what are we doing..." Felix whispered, his voice trembling, breathless and restless.
Matthew's gaze dropped to Felix's lips one last time, his eyelids heavy.
"I—"