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Gonzalo always had a fascination for flowers.
When he isn't patrolling the bustling streets of Brooklyn, his footsteps silenced by the clamorous noise of the passing trains against the metal railways, looming in the shadows—
You'd see him working away at his mother's garden, lit up by the summer sun and accompanied by the sounds of chirping cicadas.
Calloused hands tended to the Bougainvilleas that bloomed in prettiest shades of pinks and dulcet yellows, budding vibrantly beneath the sunlight and morning dew.
He'd throw away those that had withered, disposes the dead branches he can no longer salvage after his failed attempts at grafting; the ones where the flowers never seemed quite right. They were no longer of use to him, so he cuts off the branches with practiced precision; a life stolen by a quick snip of scissors.
This was the nature of flowers: blooming quickly and dying quicker.
The sight of the wilted flowers, bitten through by caterpillars, later absorbed back into the earth had always been deemed grim by others— but for Gonzalo, it was Vanitas. A reminder that there was a finality to everything, no matter how beautiful.
It was a constant reminder of death.
The sounds of his shears are heard throughout the entire afternoon. It overtakes the cicadas' chirps as he obsesses over every small imperfection. The ground is flooded with dying flora that Gonzalo never bothered to clean up, knowing that, overtime, the snipped off flowers get reabsorbed into the ground or eaten by insects.
…But Miles would often take the unwanted cuttings, his inexperienced hands gently prying off the leaves and stems until only the bougainvillea's bracts remained. They end up delicately bundled up and hung in the darker crevices of his closet.
He waits patiently for them to dry, preserving it. Miles would press some of them between the pages of his sketchpad, so that Gonzalo's presence continues to linger in his drawings and in the inbetweens of his artworks. His art is filled with reminders of Gonzalo, of ruined flowers suspended in amber.
A quiet bitterness bloomed in Gonzalo's chest at the sight.
Those were his flowers, snipped to perfection by his hands and his dirt stained fingers in his universe.
It was supposed to be his spider.
He was supposed to be him.
The universe must've wanted to cut Gonzalo's life short, he thinks. Quickly snipped off by a pair of scissors, throwing him away in pursuit of a prettier flower to grow.
He learned to live in spite of it, exposed himself to the cruelties of the world and left jaded. His lineaments sharpened by glacial stares and threatening glowers.
Gonzalo lost lacked the warmth in Miles' features, softened by nervous smiles and toothy grins; a reminder of what he used to be and who he could've been had Miles not existed.
Miles was everything Gonzalo was meant to become: a boy adored by many and free from the shackles of guilt. He was loved and validated without needing to know the experience of bruised knees and cried apologies.
Always too naïve.
Too trustful.
Too oblivious.
Gonzalo found himself envying those flowers; how even in their ruin they are handled so, so carefully in Miles' curious hands— as if he was afraid he might ruin them even further if he was any less gentler.
He envied how they were perfect forever, unwilling to wilt even in the direst of circumstances while Gonzalo was forced to watch his own body start to corrode around him. The rich vermillion lingering in his fingertips and dried blood beneath his nails, desensitized to the pungent stench of rotting flesh and iron, to the strangled pleas that no longer wounded the insides of his soul—
Gonzalo remembers offering Miles a sunflower.
The brightest and most lush in his mother's garden.
His hands were still dirtied by the ground, still dirtied by gore, and Miles was still aware of the bones Gonzalo had shattered and the bodies he'd hidden— of the moments he had when he was invigorated by violence, donning a special type of cruelty only a mourning boy could have.
Yet Miles still pries the sunflower from Gonzalo's hands, turning it between elegant fingers, calloused from the stiffness of charcoal pencils and—
And he smiles.
He smiles, unaware that his smile clears up Brooklyn's smog-ridden sky the way the Sun could not, and that it brings stars to shame.
Gonzalo's throat felt dry.
...
Gonzalo always had a fascination for flowers.
He wanted to recreate the feeling of being undesired, betrayed by the universe itself. Even as they try their hardest to bloom, even after gallons of spilled blood and broken limbs, hours of kneeling on the cold dirt of his father's grave until his knees started to bruise, the red knuckles and the cried apologies, eyes red rimmed and dry and stinging as held himself together even as his chest felt like it was splitting apart—
Constantly trying to live up to his more vibrant counterpart.
He'll never be truly enough.
Yet Miles' love blooms like a lotus: delicate and pure, even as Gonzalo drags his roots down into the murkiest of waters.
In his darkest moments, Gonzalo wanted to pull off the prettiest branches of his bougainvillaeas, stomp on their petals and watch as the blooms get corroded with dirt and eaten by caterpillars. He wanted to dig through the soil and tear off its roots, until his fingers had started to bruise and bleed and this time will be different because this time, the blood will be his own.
In his darkest moments, Gonzalo had thought of how Miles' skin would feel beneath his teeth; how good it would be to have the boy so, so close yet simultaneously not close enough. A space in his stomach carved with the exact shape of Miles' heart, letting the boy seep his way into the deepest crevices of his ribs, bundled up and hung in the darker spaces and warmth of his guts.
Miles' presence would linger in every corner of his body, and they would be together in the only way that mattered— with his senses filled with the intoxicating scent of sanguine, and a shock of sunflowers.
He thought of Miles' skin bruised with the prettiest shades of pinks and purples, marred with the shape of his teeth, engulfed in bright vermillion.
Gonzalo doesn't have the heart to ruin it beyond that.
Vanitas, as Gonzalo would describe. He could still preserve it, taxidermize it. Miles' body posed and displayed with the preciseness not even his flowers had the pleasure of receiving. Nothing more than the corpse of a pretty butterfly pinned into a board and pressed beneath glass, preserving its beauty, unwilling to let itself rot.
Suspended in amber.
It was a cruel fate, that amber.
It was his flowers between Miles' sketchbook, after all. His bloodied hands that Miles welcomed with the warmth of his own, his tongue that forced its way in Miles' mouth.
It was his spider.
Miles was his birthright. If he cannot keep the boy to himself, then no one else deserves his salvation.
One day, Gonzalo wouldn't be able to resist the temptation.