If there is a slope of skin on Josh's body, Metis has touched it. With bare, fleeting fingers from shoulderblade to clavicle, he has felt it. With electric sparks that could sputter and die in any dim bedroom, he has memorized it. He has held the entire small existance of Josh's body in the palm of his hand and he has watched it disappear through the cracks of his fingers until there was nothing left but silent air.
In the same bedroom he lost it, Metis heaves a heavy sigh. It is the only sound he has let break into his day, into his night as he spends the twelveth hour of the hottest day of summer half fetus-coiled in his humid bedsheets. When he closes his eyes, all he remembers is bone structure and smooth muscles pulled tight. All he remembers is the slight slick of sweat he licked away from the back of Josh's ear as they both laughed, limbs lost in one another's and the vague wind breezing through the parts of their bodies where they didn't touch.
It was always warm when Josh was near. And when warm wasn't the right word, it was always hot, sweaty, steamy. Too heavy for any normal summer day. They would share cups of warm milkshakes and iced-tea with condensation running down the sides and would switch off between football video games and fighting video games and they always argued over the controller, sometimes tripping backwards and fowards, feet slamming the floorboards and pushing the bed to make etchings into the wall.
There would be a little laugh and that would be when Metis found Josh's body again. His fingers caressing down and tugging off his tee shirt. Ignoring the whispers and the murmurs and the quiet pleads of someone is going to walk in, someone is going to see, as if it wasn't obvious already. He would find the firm muscles that made up a body he swore he would hate on principle alone. The body that strained against it's clothing, sometimes too tight, sometimes too obvious even under loose fabric.
A body high school stereotypes were made up of, a body he would have passed over as entirely generic,
Boyish, lean and firm, in the hallways of school in the past fall, the past spring. A body only summer would show him, only summer would let him learn. In his bedroom with Josh underneath him and the pause music fading into the background. Josh inhaled a deep breath and held it as Metis let his fingers pass over his chest and every minute detail soaked in. Every tiny flaw. Scab. Scar. Football bruise and faded pain. As the summer grew to it's hottest point, Metis' fingers were caressing Josh's thighs, sliding on the sweat sheen and tempting the sheer boundaries between them. Even if they were both, naked and frail, for the moment and the morning sunlight burned through the white-out shade, the dawn breaking overhead, Metis' voice had caught, verbalizations stuck unused in his throat. He couldn't clear, he couldn't cough. Josh's fingers were pressed around his neck, pushing him off and away, pushing him back down on the bed and the alltogether generic body that was no longer alltogether generic stood up and turned it's back on Metis' harsh breaths.
"That's enough." Josh had murmured softly, flexing his fingertips as if they had lost their stregnth as the days were dwindling away. And without another word, before the day could drag on, Josh left. Avoiding all the screams and sirens Metis pulled. Ignoring the video game controllers and milkshake glasses. Ignoring everything that Metis had to offer and left behind only the memories that past midnight had begun to fade.
If there is a curve on Josh's body, Metis has touched it but by the end of summer, it would no longer be anything extraordinary.