35
B lake awoke to a cool, silver sunrise and the sound of the morning tide rolling away. For three seconds he was eased into consciousness before he bolted upright, eyes falling urgently to the passenger seat.
Adrien Porter-Marin was curled up beside him, under the protective blanket of Blake’s coat. His eyes flickered behind thin eyelids, mouth a relaxed line. As Blake watched him, Adrien sighed in his sleep—a dreamy, happy little noise—his lips settling into a pleased curve.
Blake looked down at his phone resting on the dashboard.
He released a breath in the form of a tiny, incredulous laugh, his anxiety rushing out with it.
His body, which had been unconsciously seized up in his sleep, sagged into the seat.
The tension immediately seeped out of his muscles, replaced with a sensation of relief so profound it drove him to tears.
“Shit,” Blake hissed into the cup of his hand, trying his best not to wake Adrien. Blake turned away from him, pressed his hand over his mouth, and stifled a series of choked sobs into his palm.
Is this real?
Blake hadn’t believed it when his phone’s alarm had continued to go off early that morning, the soft chimes mixing with the cold ocean air and lifting away into the fog.
He thought that the timing must have been off.
That he’d miscalculated somehow, and cruel reality would set in at any moment.
That maybe if he held Adrien a little too tightly, looked away for a second too long, that he would fade into the beach mist: nothing more than seafoam in Blake’s arms.
Blake rolled over to check once more, just to see Adrien sleeping soundly beside him, real and solid and there —and there he was.
Despite himself, Blake had to reach out, to touch Adrien and feel his soft flesh under his hand and confirm that yes , he was alive.
No , this wasn’t a dream. His existence was living proof that Blake’s love was enough.
His fingers brushed gingerly over Adrien’s cheek and the other man leaned into the press of his hand, black eyes appearing behind the dark fan of his eyelashes. His smile melted from one of drowsy contentment to sincere, waking joy. Blake’s heart clenched in his chest.
“Good morning, love,” Adrien whispered into Blake’s palm.
Blake smiled, a wet sob escaping his throat. “Good morning.”
Adrien extended his arms and Blake all but dove over the center console, pressing Adrien to him—cradling him, protecting him. He wasn’t sure from what; it was probably more for his own benefit than Adrien’s.
Adrien let himself be held, tucking himself neatly into Blake’s chest, his hands finding their way past Blake’s shoulders to pet through his hair.
“I want to hold you for a little bit longer,” Blake said into the crown of Adrien’s head. If his arms were bound any tighter around the merman, then maybe he could press him into his own flesh, keep him there forever.
Adrien laughed into Blake’s ear—that soft, mysterious laugh he had come to know so well.
Blake wanted to know it even better, hear it every day from there on out.
There was still so, so much he had to learn about the man in his arms, and he was finally coming to understand that he was going to be able to have that.
To be able to keep this warm feeling harbored in his chest for as long as he wanted.
“Go ahead,” Adrien told him, his lips brushing warm over the shell of his ear. He was so soft. So warm. So real . “You can let yourself want.”
And again, Blake let himself want.
?
Beneath the nearby curve of Radio Hill, the undulating mountains of Colma formed a green blanket dotted with grey and white granite sepulchers.
The town was a favorite haunt of Blake’s during college.
When he’d first discovered it after a few missed stops on the BART, he’d initially been creeped out to find a city’s worth of dead people occupying the back door of San Francisco.
But after he’d become acclimated to the garden-like cemeteries and the palace of their columbariums, he often found himself tucked away behind a family mausoleum, textbook spread out over his lap.
It was easy to get used to the dead when they were your neighbors.
However, Blake now found himself more aware of the necropolis’ purpose than ever.
The shape of headstones and the bent boughs of the Monterey cypress trees above were comforting in a new way as Blake turned into the cemetery.
He navigated the Camry up the driveway of Cypress Lawn West cemetery and pulled into the mausoleum’s parking lot.
Nervous, Blake glanced over at Adrien. In his hand, Adrien held Blake’s phone, the image of his funeral program that Jessica had sent displayed on the screen.
In it, there was a greyscale picture of Adrien, his hair an unfamiliar shade of black, styled like the protagonist of a Don Bluth movie.
Beyond a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, his familiar dark eyes were serious.
However, his usual mysterious smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, like he was about to say something sarcastic to the person taking the picture.
It was odd seeing proof that Adrien had existed so far in the past. There was something jarring about seeing him as he was in his first life—it made everything hyper-real in a discombobulating way.
Adrien looked back up at the mausoleum looming above them, comparing it against the information on the pamphlet.
“This is the place,” he said, unaffected. Blake had a feeling that he was the only one shaken up about seeing Adrien’s grave.
“Are… are you sure you want to do this?” Blake asked. He rubbed his hands up and down the sides of the steering wheel; it was half nervous habit and half because his palms were doused with sweat.
“Yeah.” Adrien nodded, pushing open the door. He paused, leg dangling above the ground. He looked down for a moment in contemplation before glancing over at Blake, who was holding his door handle in a death grip.
“You… you don’t have to come with me, if you don’t want to see it,” Adrien said in a hush, and there was such a small vulnerability in his voice that Blake immediately shucked off his reservations.
“Of course I’m coming with you,” he said, before adding: “As long as you want me there.”
Adrien looked over at him, expression adopting some small amount of relief.
“Thanks,” he returned.
As a rule, Blake didn’t like visiting the graves of people he knew. There was a stark divide between the impersonality of visiting a cemetery foreign to him, the ease with which he could detach from its purpose, and the weight of reality when he was familiar with who was under the ground.
The columbarium where Matt’s mom’s ashes were interred was always a little bit too cold and sterile, especially in the hot months of summer where the air conditioning made the fine hairs on the nape of his neck stick straight up.
Splashes and patches of a memory buried close in Blake’s heart played out in his mind’s eye: the wall where his grandparents’ bodies were interred, leaking a dark drip of something that made Blake squirm like he was covered in little bugs.
But the moment that he entered the mausoleum beside Adrien and was enveloped by the glowing halls, dread released from Blake’s body.
High above them, daylight filtered in through stained glass the most sublime shade of emerald, bathing the marble walls in jade light.
The patterns in the skylights made it feel like they were stepping into the umbrella of an antique Tiffany lamp.
It was warm and delicate, a far cry from the gravesites of Blake’s past.
It wasn’t long before they found the place where Adrien’s original body was interred: it was right at eye level, nestled in amongst a row of five cubbies—a tiny white niche amongst a checkerboard of glass-and-marble-faced nooks.
The marmoreal grave glowed a light shade of gold below the illumination of a palm frond skylight, the inscription a bold, dark font:
ADRIEN KAITO PORTER-MARIN
MARCH 2, 1978 - OCTOBER 12, 2002
brOTHER ● ARTIST ● HERO
Blake didn’t say anything. It felt inappropriate to try. The two stood under the otherworldly radiance of the stained-glass roof, hands joined at their sides as they watched the pale face of Adrien’s grave.
By the time Blake opened his mouth to speak, he was interrupted by the click of shoes on tile. Another person was coming down the mausoleum hallway, a bouquet of flowers held in the crook of his elbow. He paused a few steps away from Adrien and Blake.
“Sorry.” He smiled, apologetic.
“No, you’re fine,” Adrien replied, tugging Blake along as he stepped aside for the mourner. To their surprise, the man reached into the bouquet and removed a single green carnation, setting it in the permanent vase bolted beside Adrien’s niche.
Blake stared in stunned silence, at a complete loss for words.
“Looks like we’re visiting the same person,” Adrien commented, tone casual. The stranger turned to him, eyebrows raised.
“No way?” he shuffled the bouquet in his arms, extending a hand towards Adrien. “I’m Jaime Flores, my dad was a friend of…” He gestured towards the niche with his head in lieu of anything more. Adrien gripped Blake’s hand a little harder.
“Ever since I was a kid, we’ve always brought flowers here,” Jaime explained. “I thought I’d drop one off on the way to see my dad’s grave. What about you, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I’m family,” Adrien lied. There was a tremor to his voice, something Blake had only ever heard when Adrien talked about his past. “Was your dad’s name Marcos, by any chance?”
The realization of whose grave Jamie was visiting fell into Blake’s gut, heavy as a stone.
Jaime nodded. “Yeah, did you know him?”
“Yes,” Adrien said, voice thick. “We—we met. Years ago. I didn’t know Marcos had passed.”
Jaime smiled, but it was a grim, tired thing with no humor.