* * *
The spring sunshine gave way to rain that afternoon. Hard, pelting rain that soaked Dante to the skin. He didn’t mind, though. He stood beneath it, face tilted to the sky, and let fat drops splat him as goosebumps spread across his exposed skin.
“You’re going to catch a cold.”
Dante jumped, though his heart knew it was Sid before his soft northern brogue registered. “That’s a myth. You can’t catch a virus from the rain.”
“Good job, too.” Sid grinned and gestured between them. He was as wet as Dante, though his golden skin was smooth and goosebump free like it had been that first night when he’d come up on Dante shirtless with his pockets stuffed full of spinach.
Right, it’s the spinach you’re thinking of when you’re alone at night.
“You look freezing,” Sid said, pulling Dante from the haze of thelongnights he’d spent in his new bed, thinking of Sid, his weed stash, and his swathes and swathes of perfect skin.
“I am,” Dante said. “But I like it.”
“Why?”
“I can’t remember the last time I was this wet.”
“You never got rained on in the prison garden?”
“Not really. They made us go inside, like school kids.”
Sid’s face scrunched up, making him look far younger than the twenty-eight years Dante knew him to be. “That’s shit.”
“Yeah, well. We weren’t school kids, so...”
“So come and have dinner with me tonight.”
Dante blinked. “What?”
“Dinner,” Sid repeated.
“I got that, but why?”
Sid stared. The rain hammered harder and he shivered, which seemed to surprise him. Maybe he wasn’t immune to the cold after all.
Or maybe it was Dante making him shiver for all the wrong reasons. It struck him abruptly how close they were standing. Despite the rain and cool evening breeze, Sid’s body heat seeped out of him and into Dante, and—
I don’t deserve how he makes me feel.
Dante stepped back.
Sid didn’t move. His stare deepened, hooking into Dante’s soul with the piercing blue that made the sky seem dull. Raindrops rolled down his face. Dante tracked one as it hit his lips and pooled there before it fizzled out. “I—”
“What?” Sid twitched, as if not narrowing the distance between them was killing him.
Or, more likely, that hanging out in the rain was getting to him more than he cared to admit.
Or, most likely, that his body was misbehaving. Since their lunchtime confession session, Dante had found himself watching Sid more than usual, analysing every movement that seemed off. Some were obvious—he’d seen them before—but others were subtle enough that Dante couldn’t be sure they’d even happened.
“Dante.”
“You know, it’s weird,” Dante said. “Almost everyone I’ve been with since... fuck, since childhood, has called me Pope. It’s only you and my probation officer who call me Dante.”
“What do you prefer?”
Dante shrugged. “Either. Both.”