Stephan seemed to glide into the water. Dearan was walking very softly, some of the rocks were poking his feet. When he finally reached the water, he recoiled at first because of the freezing temperature of the water. He moved in one centimeter at a time before Stephan tried to approach him. Dearan stayed still, pointing aggressively at Stephan.

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

Stephan tilted his head, “Jeez, there you go assuming the worst again. What did you think I was going to do?”

“I thought you were gonna toss me deeper into the pool, sorry,” Dearan said sheepishly. He felt bad for guessing that Stephan would do something so annoying, but at the same time he was sad, he wanted to play around, as bros do.

Stephan moved closer and whispered into Dearan’s ear, “It’s called the ocean when it is outside.” He then tackled Dearan, throwing him a teeny bit deeper, (not more than 2 feet out). Dearan’s combination of flailing and his mini-landing got the freezing water all over both of them.

“Y- you,” Dearan said, as he tried to brush the water off his forehead.

“To be fair, I wasn’t going to until you assumed I was,” Stephan said with a cocky smile. His smile soon disappeared as he realized it was an opening for Dearan to splash the salty water into his mouth.

**

Walking back to Stephan’s house, Dearan wrapped up tight in his towel. He felt vulnerable to Stephan, it was almost as if he had forgotten to be guarded. After his parents looked at him like a science experiment, and his friends filtering in and out of his life, he didn’t like letting people into his life. A similar thing had happened with one of his cousins, he had stayed at her house for a month and accidentally shared too much.

Which of course led to the incident, since then Dearan had reminded himself to shove everyone away although he hadn’t been able to make it his nature yet.