Tender as Silence

The power cut out with a thump. The attic fan, which had been sapping against the thick, late-August air, slowed to a stop. Dust motes hung in the silence that followed.

Milo blinked up at their suddenly visible constellations, his hand frozen inside the old steamer trunk. His fingers brushed cool metal—the lock, the one they’d been sent to find.

Beside him, Jude’s low whistle traced the quiet. Well, he murmured into the room’s belly. That’s that.

The attic heat swelled. No longer just a distant trace but a press. It pushed against Milo’s skin, plump and sticky, smelling of dry paper and the sweet decay of forgotten things.

He straightened slowly, the tarnished heart locket clenched tight in his palm. Its edges bit into the pillows of his hand.

Jude was already moving toward the window, a lean silhouette against the blinding rectangle of light. His shoulder brushed a cobwebbed beam, and a slow shimmer fell from it, catching light like sugar in tea.

Probably just a breaker, Jude muttered. The words barely stirred the quiet.

He leaned on the sill, peering out. Light spilled across his profile—the familiar, slightly crooked bridge of his nose, the dark stubble shadowing his jaw, the sheen of sweat at his temple.

Milo watched a single drop lick a path down Jude’s neck, fading into the collar of his t-shirt. Jude’s breathing—usually drowned out—was suddenly sharp. Steady in and out, matching the thud in Milo’s chest.

It had always been like this, hadn’t it? This quiet hum beneath the surface of twenty years. Shared treehouses, scraped elbows, first cigarettes in shared bathroom stalls.

They had always moved as one, laughter dribbling and bodies held close without thinking. But despite all that, a red current had long since bored into Milo’s skin. It lived in the way Jude’s thumb lingered too long between his shoulder blades, the way his gaze snagged on Milo's mouth when he was thinking hard.

He thought about that night when they’d stood too close and too long in the dark driveway, Jude’s fingertips resting at the back of his neck.

The attic air thickened. Sweat prickled Milo’s hairline, tracing an itchy path down his spine. He shifted his weight, and the floorboards groaned a protest that echoed in the small space.

Jude turned from the window. His eyes, adjusting to the gloom, found Milo’s. In the dimness, they looked black.

It’s hot, Jude breathed, hooking a finger in the neck of his t-shirt. He dragged the fabric away from his skin, revealing a flash of collarbone and the wet hollow of his throat.

Milo’s gaze caught the movement before flitting away, landing on a dusty crate labeled Dad’s Records—Handle Like Nitro.

Yeah, he rasped. His own voice sounded strange. He unclenched the locket, feeling its warmth pulse against his skin. Found it. Your gran’s locket.

Jude moved closer, stopping just an arm’s length away. Heat bled from him, thick waves Milo could smell—clean sweat and cut grass. And beneath it all, the heady fragrance of Jude’s skin and the attic’s ancient breath.

Good, Jude murmured, voice lower, softer. He didn’t reach for it. His eyes traced Milo's face. The curve of his brow, the damp curl of black hair clinging to his cheekbone.

The hush wound tight. The only sounds were their breathing—Milo’s slightly shallower now—and the distant, drowsy drone of a cicada somewhere beyond the house.

He felt hyper-aware: the roughness of his jeans against his thighs, the tender throb against his jaw, the cling of Jude’s sweat-soaked t-shirt to taut muscle.

He resisted the urge to wipe his palms on his shorts. Jude’s eyes seemed to rest on Milo’s mouth for a moment before lifting back up. There was a new focus there, a stripping away of the usual, effortless quiet.

Their old ease strained against it. The comfort that had started to morph into something else now pulsed between them—bloated and raw.

Jude took half a step forward. Not invading, but closing the gap. The scent of him bloomed, splashing onto Milo's tongue. His breath caught.

He could see the faint scar above Jude’s eyebrow—the one from the childhood bike crash he still dreamed about. Jude tumbling and laughing blood. He blinked, catching the dust clinging to Jude's dark lashes, the slight parting of those lips.

He remembered the damp, bitter paper of a cigarette passed mouth-to-mouth, Jude’s breath still warm on it. How he’d swallowed his distaste for its trace. And how, years later, he'd chased that same wetness with a tight grip around himself.

The attic walls seemed to lean in, the stacks of boxes and shrouded furniture shrinking the world to this suspended pocket of light.

Jude lifted his hand—slow, tentative. Not toward the locket, but Milo’s face. He froze. Jude’s fingertips hovered inches from his jaw.

He saw a tremor in them, tension in the wrist. Jude wasn’t looking at his eyes anymore, but just below. His throat bobbed, and the air droned with something demanding space, thick as the dust motes around them.

Outside, the world remained watchful. Silent. No distant radio, no resurrection of the fan. Just the gluey heat, the perfume of memory and sunbaked wood, and the deafening pulse hammering against his ears.

Jude’s fingers didn’t touch his skin—not yet. They hung in the dusty golden light. Milo found he couldn’t look away, couldn’t move, couldn’t summon a laugh to make all this better. His chest ached. Tight, painful heat pressed low, thickening between his legs.

He blinked slow, a quiet folding of the world into a single pulse.

The locket lay heavy and warm in his damp palm. He squeezed it harder, mind on the prickle of steel against flesh.

Finally, Jude’s knuckle, rough from helping rebuild the porch steps, grazed the curve of his cheekbone, a touch so tentative it felt like the axis of the world dislocating. Milo squeezed his eyes against the pull.

The cicada’s drone faded. There was only the rasp of Jude’s calloused skin, the shaky intake of breath, and the vast, echoing silence waiting to devastate.