Notes: I blame llassah.
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They met by the river the summer he was ten.
It was one of the worst summers on record, muggy mornings leading into even muggier afternoons, the kind of long and endless days that brought out swarms of bugs, made your t-shirt stick limply to your skin until you might as well have been wearing nothing at all.
That was how Cal found him, the first day, sprawled out on the moss by the river, shirt off and tucked under his head, skin slowly turning pink as he napped in the sun. Hugh woke to the quiet splashes of Cal tossing stones into the river.
"You're gonna burn," he said, waving a hand at Hugh's chest, and that was their beginning.
It never got more complicated than that, because things don't when you're that age. They'd meet down by the river every day, Cal in ragged shorts that got more beat up as the summer progressed, Hugh wearing a hat that was too big for him, and that he made Cal help him "fix" before he'd wear it.
"It's too clean," he said, peering at it the day after he got it. He'd already shaped the brim, but hats were meant to look worn out, lived in. They threw rocks at it for a while, and when they got sick of that, they kicked it around, playing something that was almost soccer but not quite, and ended with them wrestling each other into the water with their clothes still on.
Cal's hair got lighter in the sun, and freckles started appearing on his nose. He tore a hole in his pants on a rock, and Hugh would drive him crazy by sticking things in it. Grass, stones, sometimes a beetle, just to see Cal jump around and yell.
Cal didn't think Hugh knew that he was afraid of bugs, but he did. He never called him on it, though, because on the nights they'd pitch a tent in the woods and camp out, Hugh would wake up sometimes to find the darkness closing in on him, and he'd reach out to grab Cal's hand.
Cal would wrap his fingers between Hugh's, and not say a word about it in the morning.
Sometimes Cal would show up with ice cream, and they'd sit on the rocks by the river and eat it, Hugh always managing to get some smeared across his face. He was messier than Cal. He would always be the one who went home with mud streaks on his knees, grass stains on his clothes. "Jesus, didn't anyone ever teach you how to eat?" Cal asked one time, reaching over to wipe chocolate from the corner of Hugh's mouth, and his thumb was cool and soft against Hugh's skin.
The summer ended, and Cal's family moved away again. They didn't exchange addresses, because that kind of thing was for sissies and girls. Instead, they fought one last time, over everything and nothing, leaving marks and bruises that would remind them of each other for weeks. They parted at the edge of the river, a little awkward but trying to be cool, one last hug, a cuff on the back of the neck, and then Cal was gone, turning to wave just before he disappeared into the trees.
When they met again years later, they were still the same boys they'd been back then, just with a few more stories, a few more scars. Hugh was still a wreck, on the inside and the outside, and Cal was still willing to hold his hand in the dark.