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The white railing felt cold and flimsy underneath Basil’s calloused hands. He traced over the marble patterns, breathing a heavy sigh into the cool air.
He leaned into the railing further in his contemplations, feeling it shift ever so slightly beneath his weight. He pictured it snapping and his stomach swayed as his brain conjured an image of the dizzying fall.
Swallowing thickly, he opted to glance sideways instead of down, marvelling at the way Sunny’s inky black hair seemed to absorb all of the surrounding sunlight.
It was an incredible view. The building was taller than everything else around them, and it seemed like there was only the open sky, the sunset swallowing everything else. Vibrant shades of orange and pink turned the clouds purple as they drifted across the great expanse.
The last of the day’s sunbeams cupped Sunny’s face and revealed the deep brown of his eye, which usually seemed entirely black. He was sitting between a gap in the railing, his legs dangling over empty air, his hands behind him on the concrete still.
They had been up here for what felt like hours. Maybe it had been. The wind had started to bite at Basil’s face, the harsh chill formerly absent.
The breeze ruffled his hair, long blonde locks irritating his eyes and he brushed them aside, desperately missing his flower clip.
It was somewhere deep underwater now. Basil pictured it sinking deeply into a muddy riverbed and his heart gave a painful twang.
It was nothing more than what he deserved. The invisible imprint of her rough hands in his chest would stay with him as long as he lived. He wondered if she even regretted it anymore, knowing what she did now.
He wouldn’t.
“I… I still can’t believe you did it.” Basil’s throat felt dry and his voice raspy. It broke the calm atmosphere, and Sunny stiffened slightly, the only indicator that he’d heard.
Basil knew he had ruined it. He could have stood there for several more hours with Sunny, taking in the world, together in their precarious situation. He continued anyway.
“It was you all along,” he whispered. “Part of me doesn’t believe it. Refuses to believe it. But something is gone.”
Sunny’s eye glistened slightly. He didn’t move.
“I know I said… that a good person wouldn’t do that. But… I still think you are. A good person, I mean.”
Not perfect. Far from perfect. But still, so good. And me…
“When… when something went away… well, it was all you, wasn’t it?” Basil chuckled breathily. “You really did it. You came back. You saved me.”
I wanted to save you so bad. But in the end, all I did was hurt you more.
Sunny moved his head away slightly. Basil was used to these one sided conversations with him, but he didn’t think he could read his little gestures as well as he’d once been able to. Maybe it meant that the conversation was over. Maybe it meant that Sunny irrevocably hated him. Maybe… Sunny was just tired.
I’m sorry…
The apology died on his tongue. It felt too empty to let out into the open. It felt too painfully blatant. I’m sorry.
“We could do something together. Before you leave.” Basil stared intently at a passing cloud as he said it. He didn’t want to see Sunny’s reaction. His rejection. “Like… the way we used to. The way it was before.”
Sunny gave a slight sniff but didn’t say anything else. Basil wondered if maybe his hair had brushed his ear and he’d heard that instead, and he fought against the urge to look at him for a bit. He was sure it had been Sunny.
When he finally looked back, Sunny was looking at him. His eye was empty and lifeless, the shine in it completely gone. Basil felt a cold dead weight drop to the bottom of his stomach.
“You’re not leaving for Somewhere City, are you?” Basil swallowed heavily. “You’re leaving forever.”
The wind started to pick up, tousling Sunny’s perfect, dark hair as he spoke for the first time, his voice almost lost to it. “Maybe.”
Several voices began to clamour for attention in Basil’s head, overlapping as they screamed childishly.
That’s mean. That’s so mean Sunny!
Don’t leave me… Not again….
You’re supposed to come back. You’re supposed to save me!
And yet, they couldn’t rouse enough of a panic to disrupt the hollow emotion Basil had been feeling since the truth came out. Basil understood.
The truth had released him from the unimaginable weight of their collective sins, the itching, crawling sensation that had burned his skin for years retreating to a place deep inside him. But its absence had brought an overwhelming sense of finality.
Sunny was still placidly watching him, a trusting tilt to his head. Basil’s heart thumped excruciatingly, trying to form words for him, any kind of comfort.
“K-Kel, Aubrey and Hero are good friends,” he offered weakly. “Maybe… maybe they’ll forgive us.”
It didn’t matter. Both of them knew it, and yet, Sunny nodded, the slightest dip of his head. “Maybe,” he said again, his voice cracking.
They lapsed into silence once more, Basil resting his eyes on Sunny’s hospital slippers. He was moving his legs back and forth in such a way that the shoes wobbled but never fell. They continually tilted forward, then slipped back onto his feet, never falling far enough to lose their grip and spin into the abyss.
Transfixed, Basil wondered if he was testing the air beneath them.
The clouds rolled through the sky, darkening to a deep blue as the pink hues shifted into soft purple, and the oranges pink.
The air was cold and the wind had stopped when Sunny moved again. The sun had long since dipped out of sight from the top of the building, the last of its light glowing in the boy’s eye as he leaned back on his hands and shuffled to his feet. His gaze didn’t leave Basil’s as he did.
So.
That’s it, then.
They had always been doomed, hadn’t they?
Basil shuddered as he opened his mouth, forming words with no sound coming out. Ice crawled up his throat, choking out anything he would have said, anything else he could have possibly offered to the world.
His world. Sunny.
He was sure Sunny knew it. If he went, so did Basil.
The world in which they moved on with their lives together had shrunk to a tiny pinprick in his mind’s eye. It disappeared with a blink as Sunny extended his hand and Basil unthinkingly took it.
It was soft and small in his. Basil became very aware of every callous and barely scabbed over cut on his own palms as they started to sweat, his heart racing.
Sunny spoke, hushed and faint, and Basil clung onto every word, as always. “It’s a long way down…
“Do you want to jump?”
There they stood, hand in hand as panic and elation began to overwhelm Basil. He was able hold his best friend’s hand, one last time.
Do we have to do this?
Though his whole body was tense in anticipation, Sunny didn’t make the move, staring straight ahead. Waiting for something to happen, as always.
Wait.
“Everything is going to be okay.” Basil smiled, his lips twitching up painfully. An assurance, finally one that wasn’t empty, as always.
I love you. Don’t do this, his mind screamed at an unknowing, apathetic void.
His dearest, most familiar stranger.
His cold, unknowable friend.
Both of these things impossibly at once, as always.
There was a time where they would both jump in sync, knowing the other better than themselves. Basil had known every line of the palm of Sunny’s hand, every dream that lined his soul.
Years had passed since then.
Perhaps Basil missed the unspoken cue, because Sunny lurched forward suddenly, wrenching Basil from his foothold on the concrete into the open sky.
His stomach heaved and intense regret flooded him as he became airborne. Wind rushed past his face as their hands were violently ripped apart.
Everything is going to be okay! Everything is going to be okay! Everything is going to be okay!
Basil’s panicked mind howled deliriously at him in the few seconds he had, until three resounding voices drowned out everything else, echoing in his brain for all of eternity.
A squeaky, prepubescent cry, several years separating it from the deeper, friendly voice he had today.
A calm, brotherly sigh, only slightly higher than the low, melodic rumble his voice had become.
A sweet, chirpy tone, the furthest thing from the rough and raspy growl it had matured into.
“Everything could have been okay…
“Why did you do it?”