Chapter Text
He found himself somewhere in Kaua’i where he could disappear from the rest of the world, and he held nothing but his own camera for the most part. Sometimes he found himself enveloped in the caress of cold every so often, but there was an escape, however, one that came with the sweetness of the tropics. He could still hear the chatter and the buzz of the press back on the mainland within the back of his memory, a memory of which he had no desire to feel again which came after the fall. It was the only memory he had had of the mainland as well: it was as if he had woken up on the ocean one day, as if his parents had sailed him out of there, far away from Virginia.
But now he was in a peaceful place, under the palm fronds and against the waves with the black volcanic sands underneath his feet. And Ilia had nothing more than a camera tucked under his arm.
He strode along the walkway separated from the rest of the sand by nothing more than a long, low wall of pale, weather-worm brick: his silken blond curls twirled in the breeze, and he had nothing more than the stroke of the late morning sun on his head and shoulders. Today was going to be a hot one, especially if Yuzuru’s insistence on meeting at the tiki bar was anything to go by.
Far across the warm royal blue waters, he could see the low green mounds of O’ahu, a sign that he wasn’t completely isolated on the Garden Isle.
Though he lived there for a few months, it was still quite the adjustment from living in Virginia his whole life, and he had about fifteen minutes before the bar opened as well.
Ilia checked his wristwatch to make sure of it: he had chucked his phone prior to leaving Fairfax as the attention from the media proved to be too much to even think about. All he and Liza had were burner phones on their person, and even there under the veil of Mount Wai’ale’ale, they scarcely had that much of a signal.
He may as well have been out in the middle of nowhere. Peace and quiet. Far removed from the world.
In the corner of his eye, he spotted the bar doors opening for the morning; once he turned his head, he spotted the short, lanky Japanese boy dressed in white lace and little black shorts as if he was about to go for a swim out there in the royal blue waters. Ilia nodded his head: right on time. He ducked around the low wall to gather the attention of his friend.
“Yuzu!” he called out with a break in his voice. The boy turned his head right before he reached the edge of the doorway, and he showed Ilia a little smile.
“Hey!” he called out, and he opened his arms to embrace him and kiss their hellos. They ambled inside just to feel the whoosh of air from the palm frond ceiling fans overhead.
The first ones at the warmly lit bar, and thus, they had the place all to themselves for the time being: there was a small spindly table on the side of the room looking out to the ocean waters, and they took it right as the baristas fired up the coffee machines.
“Timing really is everything,” Ilia remarked, out of breath. Even with the kiss of cool air upon his forehead, he could still feel the beads of sweat collecting on his skin, and yet he let them park themselves on his skin: the last thing on his mind was to gripe about as something as beyond his control as the torrid nature of the tropics. He was there for a reason.
“One of these days, we should go to Maui,” Yuzu suggested with a gesture out to the waters. “We should build huts in the sugarcane and just stay there.”
“Go and live off the grid,” Ilia followed along with a smirk; although the Garden Isle was stunning and had been kind to him up to this point, there was still that temptation to disappear all the way.
“One of these days, I’m going to go down to Mexico,” Ilia confessed as he mindlessly fingered the shutter button on the camera; “you know, just go down there and keep finding ways to disappear. Mexico, and maybe Thailand, too.”
“You should come to Japan,” Yuzu suggested; “we will care for you and your family there.”
“Only problem with Japan is I don’t speak the language,” Ilia pointed out, and Yuzu shrugged his shoulders.
“Shoma, Yuma, and I could always act as your tour guides,” he suggested. “I am sure that if you have stepping stones, you can find your way through.”
“Just like here,” Ilia followed along in a soft voice. He then turned his attention to the black chalkboards on the far wall of the room: there was a special on locally grown Kona coffee, and although the place warranted the shades of pink and orange they both had grown familiar with over the span of the few months, it was still morning. It was a strange combination of that fresh coffee and the brackish scent of the ocean around them: the idyllic feeling of living away from the world.
“Want some iced coffee?” Ilia offered him.
“Please.” Yuzu raised a hand to his brow to rid of the sheen of sweat gathering on his skin. Even with the lightweight white lace ensconced on his svelte body, it was still a warm morning in Hawai’i, and the humidity only added to it. The heat gathered as the sun reached the zenith of the sky, even with the ceiling fans overhead, and it felt personal to boot.
“Some iced coffee and some fresh fruit, too,” Ilia added. “When in Rome, after all.” He padded up to the counter for a round of iced cappuccinos as well as some of the freshly sliced mango on the white china plate there next to the cash register. As he took a couple of pieces for himself and Yuzu, he glimpsed in the face of the lead barista behind the counter, with her olive skin and large brown eyes which seemed to seduce him without even thinking twice about it. Ilia nodded his head at her, and he couldn’t resist the playful smile on his face, either. Before he returned to the side of the room, he noticed the way her scarlet red camisole hugged her hourglass-shaped body as well as her full breasts.
A gust of wind made his blond curls sweep over his forehead, and her long dark ponytail float over the crest of her toned shoulder as well.
“She sure is sexy, isn’t she,” Ilia muttered over the warm tropical breeze, to which Yuzu raised his eyebrows at him. “What’s that look for?”
“She is lovely, but I do not know about that,” Yuzu said in a low voice.
“What, you don’t think she’s cute?”
Yuzu blushed, and Ilia shook his head as he handed him a slice of mango. Such bliss against the heat! And he never realized as to how hungry he was, either, and Ilia was more than eager to have the whole thing before a round of coffee and some breakfast as a result. Once he popped the rest of the slice into his mouth, he glanced back at the bar again, at the lead barista saying something to her Filipino coworker in a low voice.
In the corner of his eye, he spotted a tall, lanky boy with a thick mop of brown curls tucked back in the opposite corner of the room. Despite the heat of the day, he had on a thin white shirt lined with lace and fitted gray jeans. He was barefoot as well. Thin and elegant, and sitting by himself with a book cradled in his hands. Ilia returned to Yuzu, who brought his attention back to the ocean outside the window, and he tapped him on the back of the hand. He gestured over to the boy on the other side of the room.
“Is he new here?”
“I believe he is,” Yuzu replied, albeit somewhat confused. “I have never seen him around here before.” He then shook his head a bit. “I am really hungry.”
“Yeah, I am, too—I’ll do an iced coffee with some cream, a loco moco lunch, and a malassada to finish out,” Ilia declared with a drumming of his hands on the edge of the table. He hesitated for a second as he noticed his friend looking at something behind him.
“Er, Ilia, he just looked at you,” Yuzu said in a hushed voice, to which both froze in their tracks. The boy by himself on the other side of the room, now with a plate before him.
“What should I do?” Ilia asked in a haste.
“Go talk to him. That was how I met Yuma.”
Ilia nibbled on his bottom lip. Out in the middle of the ocean, away from the world, and he could finally relish in the fact that he was pansexual. But then again, he had no idea about this boy over here: a complete stranger who just happened to glimpse in their direction for a singular moment. He sighed through his nose. On one hand, he and Yuzu were hungry, and they had been waiting for the place to open. But then again, this boy made himself known to the two of them from clear across the room.
Gingerly, Ilia padded across the wooden floor, past the bar and that beautiful barista and her friend, towards that thick, dense mop of lush brown curls. He cleared his throat, and the boy gazed up at him with the softest brown eyes Ilia had ever seen in his life; his heart skipped a few beats at the sight of him.
“Um… I couldn’t help but notice you looking over at me,” Ilia began with a break in his voice.
“Oh, er, you ordered the exact same lunch as me,” said the boy in a thick Russian accent. Indeed, Ilia noticed the iced blonde coffee next to his hand and his book as well as the plate of hamburger steak and saimin: a slender, lithe boy eating so heartily was something he never expected to see, much less far away from the rest of the world, away from the ice.
“I’m Ilia,” he introduced himself. “I’m unemployed, I live with my parents and my sister, and I do photography.”
The boy showed him an awkward little smile.
“I’m Mikhail,” he replied in a soft voice. “Call me Misha, though. I live with my parents, too.”
“Would you like to come and sit with us?” Ilia offered him with a gesture back towards Yuzu, who then waved at them. “I dunno, you just look kind of lonely sitting over here by yourself.”
“I… do not want to impose,” Misha assured him with a shake of his head.
“You wouldn’t impose,” Ilia promised him. “I promise. But, if you’d like to be alone, that’s fine. I know the feeling.”
Misha showed him a little smile, and Ilia leaned in closer to the side of his face: all the while, he never lifted his gaze from those tender brown eyes.
“I should probably tell you that I speak Russian,” Ilia assured him in a low voice. “My parents both are from Uzbekistan so I learned the language growing up. So… if you need someone to talk to, YA zdes' dlya tebya.”
Misha showed him a little smile, and a stray lock of dark hair spread over his face as well.
“Oh, er… spasibo,” he said with an awkward chuckle. With nothing more to add, Ilia doubled back to the bar to fetch some lunch and those Portuguese donuts for himself and Yuzu. He sat back down with their food and he tried to think of something else, especially since Yuzu was sitting there across from him as hungry as him. But all the while, he never lifted his attention from Misha. Those soft brown eyes which seemed to comfort him even without even so much as looking at him.
When he finished his malassada, and Yuzu seemed eager to step back outside to the beach, Ilia picked up his coffee and returned to Misha, who had returned to the comfort of his book. Ilia could see the beads of sweat collecting on his brow, underneath those thick lush curls; he sipped on his iced coffee just so his mouth was clear of those fried eggs and hamburger steak.
“What brings you to Hawai’i, by the way?” Ilia asked him. Misha lifted his head and gazed up at him with a slight pout to his bottom lip. Ilia knitted his eyebrows together in thoughtful fashion. “I came here to get away from the pressures of the mainland. Get away and take up photography as well.”
“It is, er… rather complicated,” Misha replied, somewhat crestfallen. “A bit of a long story.”
“Oh! Well. Um… hey, I get that completely. Really, you don’t have to say anything about it if you don’t want to.”
Misha ran his long fingers through his dark hair, which revealed the smooth skin on his forehead. Even with the sweat, there was something very soft about him, about his eyes in particular.
“I think your friend wants to leave,” he pointed out with a gesture over to Yuzu.
“Oh, don’t worry about him,” Ilia said with a wave in his direction. “But do you wanna get together later on? Get some dinner and maybe ‘point and shoot’ some stuff?”
That thoughtful little smile returned once more. “I would love to.”
“And Yuzu and I’ll introduce you to Shoma and Yuma, too. We can check out Old Man Rainer’s shed out in the sugarcane fields and do some stuff on the beach, too.”
“A little sex on the beach?” Misha blurted out, and Ilia laughed out loud, much to his amusement.
“You’re alright, Misha—we’ll see you later.” Ilia gently patted him on the shoulder, and Misha shuddered from the feeling of his hand there. He watched Ilia return to Yuzu again, and the two of them strode out of the coffee bar into the torrid midday sun. Misha sighed through his nose, and he picked up his bookmark and tucked it in between the pages of the book. He picked up his iced coffee and stepped back outside as well, on the other side of the bar, where he was met with a full panoramic view of the Northern Pacific Ocean as well as those high green spires of the volcano.
It wasn’t Kazakhstan, but he wouldn’t give it for the world.
The hot sun caressed his skin to the point that it made his arms and shoulders itch. He gripped onto the leathery spine of his book, the book which he had brought with him from clear on the other side of the globe. The feeling of leather would always take place of the hard feeling on his feet, all just to protect him. Protect him from those old memories.
Ilia had mentioned something about escaping the mainland, but there was no way he could tell him the entire truth about his own origins, especially since he was new to him. He was new to this island, and he had no idea as to whether anyone would want to know it right away. His knees buckled under the weight of the sun, the same knees that carried him across the grassy steppe for so long and so much. His iced coffee wasn’t enough, and he needed to find some shade before he met those two boys again, that time with their other friends by the shed up the road.
Not the first shed he had been to, either. Not the first shed, but he knew for a fact this one lacked that slippery ice he was all too familiar with. Misha shook his shaggy head and turned towards the volcano looming behind him. All he knew about Mount Wai’ale’ale was the sheer amount of rain up there, and the fact that the earth around him felt old.
This was the Garden Isle, after all, the oldest of the islands. The oldest of the islands for the oldest of the three boys about to congregate together.
He spotted a thick cluster of palm trees right down the pathway outside the coffee bar: a perfect escape away from there, away from the world. However, something told him he was going to have to shed the mask and bear the truth.
The ancient feeling of the earth below him connected with the ancient feeling within him: the feeling as old as time itself which hardened his blood and let his muscles turn to stone, and yet somehow something kept him alive. He missed his bow and arrows, and yet he still trotted like a horse. Still lanky and awkward; still the poor boy stuck in the mud.
His skin was as smooth as porcelain, and he needed to maintain the feeling. The warm Hawaiian breeze let his hair twirl about over his face, over the bridge of his nose and the crest of his lips: it reminded him of being on the Kazakh steppe once more with the other wild horses, being on the run by the Mongols, but he was in a different place that time around.
Absolutely no memory of how he found himself there, outside of the feeling of what had eaten away at him from before, something that had dug itself into his bones and stopped his heart. The memory of that took place so long ago, and yet it felt so fresh at the same time.
The familiar iron taste of blood on his tongue. He tasted blood, and it was the only thing that kept him alive for so long.
The only thing that kept alive the boy who died.