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The point of Rumi, Dizzee thinks, wasn’t the celestial look of his message sprayed like guiding stars across ramshackle trains and old tunnels. The purpose of Rumi was to be killed with or without his top-hat, and what that ending represented. The point was that outsiders would never be insiders whether or not they pretended, and that this world was wrong for them and their galactic wavelengths.
The white politicians like Koch saw him and his kind as from another planet; one of delinquency and graffiti. But Dizzee had his family of outsiders to back him up in that particular interplanetary warfare, his brothers in the tunnels and his brothers round the dinner table. So why was it he felt like an alien in their company too sometimes, and one whose disguise would have to slip sooner or later?
He sighs his body back into the wall and lets his sketchbook’s cover drop closed as the train grinds to a halt at his station with a heavy, metallic record-scratch. He knows why, and he knows that answer is the same reason he felt so immediately free with Thor’s eyes on him in the first moments of their meeting. The reason he had felt so dazed after their kiss, with the beautiful music rising and falling around them like the Manhattan lights; even if afterwards he couldn’t think about it directly, as though the memory was the Bronx summer sun.
He usually lived so free. It usually took the police to get Dizzee to run away from anything, which is why it was frustrating to force himself to hide, flinching at every ‘faggot’ casually dropped in conversation as though they were spotlights trained on him. As he moves towards the train, straightening his denim vest with one hand, he thinks again of Rumi and his top hat- trying so hard to learn normality in vain.
Suddenly a hand reaches out and encircles his wrist, and he would have pulled away and acted the street tough with whoever it was, if not for the softness of the touch and the trippy deja vu it causes.
‘Did you really run off without saying goodbye?’ comes a quiet but incongruously assured voice, and Dizzee swings around to see the same white boy who had been taking up space in his thoughts.
‘Thor?’ he asks. ‘What are you doing here, man?’
The blond grins easily. ‘Maybe I’m heading your way back’, he offers with a shrug, and hops on the train, his tall confident figure seeming impossible to Dizzee against his own nerves.
When Dizzee follows, they exchange books again without speaking, and both run their fingers over the other’s designs in admiration, the paper buckled under the weight of those bright colours. They sit in silence, the bumpiness of the rails knocking their knees together occasionally, and Dizzee’s heart leaps each time.
At his stop, Dizzee leads Thor into a quiet side street, trying to ignore the way his solid presence behind him reminded him of their dancing.
‘Yo, what are you actually doing over here so late? Why did you follow me out?’ he abruptly asks, breaking the silence as soon as they were alone. He tries to keep the amount he cares out of his tone and keep his voice as laid back as usual, but Thor’s hopeful eyes indicate he hadn’t succeeded.
‘I wanted to know why you left, simple as that,’ Thor insists. ‘I thought we shared a real moment back there, a real psychic connection.’
‘You mean you, me and your girl?’ Dizzee can’t help but clarify, eyes lowered.
Thor laughs gently, ‘She’s not my girl, man. I think you know what I mean.’
Dizzee paces slightly, twisting his hands. ‘Maybe. But that back there was a whole ‘nother world, Thor, an extraterrestrial environment. There are different rules here, man, and people can’t be free in the same ways.’
Thor’s smile crinkles his nose playfully. ‘I thought you said your friend’s song would set everyone free.’
That surprises a gentle laugh out of Dizzee. ‘Well, you gotta hope I guess. The superhero pills and the costumes and the music, that could sort a lot of problems for people here if they opened their heart to it.’ Thor nods, leaning in closer, and Dizzee goes on, emboldened by the play of moonlight on this beautiful boy’s profile. ‘They want strength, like any group trying to rise up, but masculine strength brings, like, violence and hate. That’s why the graffiti is so important: writing needs artistic energy, not force, but it still rebels.’
He pauses, suddenly self-conscious in a way he isn’t when philosophising in front of his brothers. Thor doesn’t say anything for a long moment, weighing Dizzee’s sketchbook carefully between his hands.
‘Can I tell you something true?’ he finally offers, golden lashes lowered. ‘You might not want to hear it here.’
Dizzee nods, unable to resist glancing behind him and double-checking the empty street.
‘I never thought Rumi the artist could be as beautiful or vibrant as his work.’
The words hang in the air with no response from Dizzee but a slight inhalation, and no attempt from Thor to take it back. Dizzee inwardly blesses his darker skin for hiding his blush somewhat.
‘You got nice words for a white boy, Thor. I guess you charm girls like her back at the club pretty often, huh?’
Thor is already shaking his head before he finished his question. ‘Sure, it’s an open world back there, but this is different. That’s why I followed you back, man. This is a real wavelength between us, and I mean what I said. You’re the most breathtaking person I’ve ever-’
Dizzee can’t help but laugh slightly, as much out of wonder as at the tender nature of Thor’s outpourings. Thor smiles too, seemingly not offended.
‘It’s true. I’m sorry if it’s too much for you.’
‘I’ve never met anyone who got me right away, like you,’ Dizzee admits, brave enough to meet his gaze. ‘My family love me, but I can tell even they think I’m operating on a different level. You just… seem to know more about me than even I do.’
‘I’m glad you enjoyed the club, at least, I thought you would.’
They lean against the wall for a few more moments, savouring their respective fading buzzes. Thor’s hand moves from Dizzee’s book to the smaller boy’s face, his thumb moving in circles equally gentle and reverent as those he had traced on the practice sketches. While Dizzee’s eyes grow infinitesimally wider, he still finds the courage to move in, angling his lips against those of Thor.
As they kiss, Dizzee runs his hands over Thor’s shirt, twisting his hands to bring him closer and deepen the kiss. When Thor pulls him back towards the wall, he scrapes his knuckles on the rough brick but as their tongues collide in their mouths he is so deliriously happy that the pain is a welcome return to earth. The club had felt like another world; a home, but one of new rules and people. This scenario, of them moving against each other desperately in a dark street, felt very close to his real home, and to the young couples you saw like Mylene and Zeke.
There was one major difference of course, and at the distant sound of a siren, Dizzee reluctantly breaks away from Thor.
‘Every minute I spend with you, I feel like I know more about myself than I ever have before,’ he tells him without a trace of embarrassment and Thor ducks his head, sweeping away a spare lock of blond hair.
‘I gotta talk to you again,’ Thor says sincerely.
‘You will,’ Dizzee asserts, ‘This doesn’t happen without the universe helping out. And I’ll still be writing in the trains and the tunnels, and I’ll be coming back to the club. I’ll seek you out.’
Thor directs his gaze over Dizzee’s shoulder, as though forming a sentence and trialling it in his head before speaking. ‘You’re right, we’ll meet up again soon. I can tell. I really need to catch my train right now, though.’ In a ridiculous gesture, he kisses Dizzee’s hand before walking out of the side street and Dizzee stifles a surprised laugh. ‘Stay celestial, I guess.’
The words are appropriately grand and not entirely serious, but Dizzee takes them to heart like the most sincere farewell since Shakespeare’s sweet sorrow.
Celestial, he thinks, and as he leans back against the wall, exhausted and thinking ahead to the Get Down Brothers’ next move, a small part of him considers how for the length of that short encounter Rumi had not worn his top hat or felt hunted.