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They're in the tunnels, hiss and stench of Krylon making the dark taste muzzy and synthetic. They haven't talked since the night of the party, when Dizzee got lost in the music and let Thor find him there, wrapped up in a bubble of sound and light. They haven't talked since their kiss buzzed and sparked along Dizzee's lips like pop rocks. They haven't talked since, but from the way Thor is looking at him Dizzee knows he'll have to say it.
"I'm not –" Dizzee starts, but he falters. Dizzee doesn't even know what he is so how can he know what he's not?
He does know what his line is supposed to be. Dizzee is supposed to look at Thor and say, You know, the other night wasn't my scene. He knows Thor would let him off the hook and things would be shaky for a while but they would steady, like pretending to tightrope on the very edge of the sidewalk. Dizzee knows Thor would let him off the hook just like he knows he wants to stay hooked.
"Other night was wild, man," Dizzee says finally.
Thor's expression turns a little curious, with something behind it that says he knows what Dizzee's line is supposed to be, too. "Can make you feel like the rest of the world is missing something."
Dizzee can only manage a "yeah" in response, momentarily stunned into stupidity, because that was it, that was entirely it. Something missing had slid into place and locked that night. Dizzee hadn't even known it wasn't there until it was back where it belonged. "When's the next one?"
Another thing he doesn't realize until it melts from Thor's shoulders: tension thick as the smell of paint. Thor's smile is an invitation. "Soon," he promises.
Thor is laughing and Dizzee almost feels like he could reach out and touch it. He thinks it would feel the same as the pulse of music making the floor vibrate. "Say it again," Thor tells him. "Slow."
"Lysergic," Dizzee says.
"Lysergic," Thor repeats.
"Acid," Dizzee says, and he laughs too at the mischievous look on Thor's face.
"Acid," Thor says after him. "I know that part."
"Diethylamide," Dizzee finishes, but it gets them nowhere, this part makes Thor crack up every time. The whole room is swaying and Thor is a shaking smear of gold paint, laughing. "Die-ath-uh-luh-mide."
"Maybe I can learn it if I catch it," Thor says and he leans in, presses his mouth to Dizzee's with a suddenness that Dizzee feels like getting splashed with cool water on the hottest day of the year. Shock and relief.
Acid makes the outside world feel like Dizzee does inside all the time, like boundaries are elastic and meaning is what you make of it. When they drop it together Dizzee can touch music and taste light, and Thor's skin under his tentative hand is like touching pen to paper, color hitting bricks. It's only the second kiss they've had but somehow LSD makes it seem as though the kiss has been there for years. Like there's never been a time outside the kiss, or before the kiss, or without it.
"Did you get it?" Dizzee asks in the breath after they pull apart.
Thor smiles, shakes his head. "Try again."
Dizzee stands in the hall outside the kitchen and overhears his mom give Yolanda advice about boys. He wonders if it applies, but he knows it can't. The advice he got about girls was different, offense instead of defense. He's no ladykilling romantic but he's got charm, he's had more than one girl on his arm and it never felt like lying. But there were all these distinct boxes he had to hopscotch through, one to the next, and Dizzee only ever understood the part of the wheel where the colors blend.
It's late at night coming back up to the Bronx and the train car is empty, ghostly. Lights flicker and metal grinds against metal. Dizzee knew the sensation of the train lurching forward under his feet as early as he knew how to walk. It's safe, even if it's not.
"Can you be both," Dizzee wonders, his heart hammering but his voice blank. Thor looks at him, attention caught and held. They'd both kissed that girl, Thor's friend Edie, and she said she knew Thor the same way she said Thor knew Carlo Pakoussa. "Like both. Girls and…" And. Not an option, not an opportunity, not something Dizzee ever thought about before because there was nothing to think about. It was always both, but he could only have one.
"You can do whatever you want, man," Thor says, and his hand slips from the plastic seat behind Dizzee's shoulders to rest warm and heavy against the middle of Dizzee's back. "It's a brand new world. A dude once walked on the moon."
Dizzee lifts his gaze to look at Thor and says the meanest thing he could say aloud, in his opinion. "But we're on earth."
Thor smiles. It's not altogether a happy one but he's been on this trip a little longer than Dizzee has, or at least he knew he was traveling before Dizzee did. "Barely, man," he says, his hand sliding up to curve around the back of Dizzee's neck. "Just barely."
Forget safety, Dizzee thinks as he moves in to kiss Thor right there in the empty train car. Be notorious.
Out and about in the dimness of the tunnels, it's surprisingly easy. It feels like a place they made up on their own. Maybe their spaceship crash-landed there, and there's only the two of them on the entire planet. Whenever Thor passes by he touches Dizzee somehow, light, on the hip or the shoulder, and sometimes they'll nudge the nose of the flashlight away so their mouths can meet easy as their minds. It feels safe and dangerous at once, like when Thor takes him to parties in SoHo, packed with people but nobody Dizzee knows. It's so far removed from the world Dizzee lives in, the one in his brain and his heart, the dirt under his fingernails. It's a damn long train ride, however many miles, might as well be outer space. Everyone's aliens there and none of them go to his mom's salon. Nobody knows and nobody cares, so Dizzee can dance with Thor. He can kiss Thor, he can kiss another boy in a crowd of people. Anything's possible in outer space.
"What's that?"
Ra-Ra reaches out for the necklace that has emerged from its hiding place underneath Dizzee's shirt. It's one of Thor's, looped around Dizzee's neck and fastened there so even when they're apart they're not really apart. Crazy how things like that can come up on you so fast.
Dizzee bats his brother's hand away. "None of your business, Ra."
Dizzee still shares a room with both of his brothers and Thor sleeps on his grandmother's couch, so there's really nowhere to go. On the rare occasions he has an empty room Dizzee thinks about what it would be like to have Thor there, but all he can ever picture is his whole family crowded in the doorway staring at Dizzee like he's a lion at the zoo, an alien in a top hat. He can't imagine what his family would think of this white boy with his long blonde hair and too tight shirts. Some things were obvious, some things were hidden, but it was all enough to put Rumi in a dangerous spotlight.
Sometimes Dizzee thinks about what would happen if no one came to the door. If Dizzee had the opportunity to put his hands under those too-tight t-shirts.
It's like every time he opens a door there's another door behind it.
Dizzee and Ra-Ra are on the fire escape, sweat sticking their t-shirts to them and them to the rusting metal bars. It's late enough that it would be dark if it weren't for all the lights, quiet if it wasn't for all the noise. It never turns off here, not really. Not even during the blackout. Ra is looking through Dizzee's book and Dizzee's letting him, but anticipation is prickling the back of his neck as much as the heat is. It's a weird thing. He can feel it in his mouth all the time lately, pressing at his lips. There's this boy.
He knows the moment Ra finds it from the slow, stretched out, "Yo…"
It's the piece Thor gave him: nasty, free, telepathic. Reading Dizzee's mind before they even knew it. "Yeah," Dizzee says, but that's it. It's still pushing, pushing at his teeth.
"You do this?" Ra-Ra is turning the book upside down and sideways, trying to make sense of it from every angle. That's how he does things. "This looks like you did it."
"Nah, I – Remember I said –" Dizzee taps fingertips against his lips, stalling. Unlocking. "There's this guy. Thor."
Ra remembers, because he remembers everything. His brain is like the back office in the salon, everything alphabetized and organized so he can find it lightning-fast. "Right. White boy."
"White boy," Dizzee agrees. He looks out over the street: the girls going out late in their tight shiny jumpsuits with the flared cuffs, crews running around getting up to something, people closing up shop, tired mothers and fathers trudging home after work. "He's kind of…" The problem is that Dizzee has no script for this, no lines to reference, no way to phrase it. "Him and me, we're tight."
"Oh yeah? You should bring him around."
"Yeah, maybe." A kind of wild desperation takes hold of him, but not a single cell in his whole body so much as twitches. His mom always says that about him – that no matter what's happening, Dizzee stays calm as anything on the surface. But underneath, who could fuckin' tell. Except his mom never said fuck. "We're together, Ra."
Ra looks at him like he's crazy. Dizzee's used to that. "Yeah, I know, Dizz, we've been sitting here for two hours."
"No –" Dizzee doesn't know if he means to laugh or not, but what comes out is a frustrated huff of air. "Me and Thor. We're together. Like, together."
Ra's brows knit. Dizzee swallows and looks down far below at the cracks in the sidewalk. No one says anything for a minute. Then finally Ra-Ra says, "What about –" And Dizzee knows a list of girls' names is set to follow.
"I know. I still – nothing changed. Just like…" Dizzee looks over at his brother, who is neither shocked nor disgusted, just confused. "Like the world keeps opening up and all the neighborhoods expanding. He sees into my brain, man."
Ra-Ra considers this. "White boy," he says finally and cocks his head to the side like a curious puppy. "You can do that?"
Dizzee almost laughs, just because Ra-Ra seems mind-boggled, confounded. And because Dizzee isn't anymore. "Yeah, man, you can do anything."
"Well, you should still bring him around," Ra says.
Dizzee holds his breath. "You don't mind?"
"Nah, man," Ra says. "I didn't even notice so must be nothing changed. Not everyone will be cool but, like, that's how people are. You're still my brother. And I guess if you like this guy then he must be doing something right."
Dizzee smiles and nudges Ra-Ra, not hard, just like he always would. "Your brain always moved twice as fast as anybody else's." He takes a joint out and lights it, takes a drag and hands it over. "Don't tell Mom and Dad. And don't tell Yolanda, she can't keep a secret for shit."
"Duh," Ra says. The air gets thick and sweet. "You act like I just got into this family yesterday."
Dizze asks what Thor's real name is one day and gives Thor his own: Marcus, a name he is called only by his own mother when he gets in trouble and his homeroom teacher during roll call.
Thor touches the still-wet wall, fingertips coming away chartreuse. Later he leaves four perfect yellow-green fingerprints on the side seam of Dizzee's jeans. "Exhibit by Marcus Kipling," Thor says grandly, grinning.
Dizzee doesn't mind the sound of that, the words or the voice saying them. He likes his name in Thor's mouth. It makes space crash into reality, hooks a lasso around the moon and hauls it closer to the surface of the earth.
He steps back to shine a light on his newest work, Rumi's words in Rumi 411's hand, color shocking in the dark. Thor loops an arm around his waist, low. Not companionable, but intimate. Dizzee leans into his side.
Let the caller and the called disappear; be lost in the call.