The House Above the Sea

valentine's day extra!

02.14.2022

gahhhhh thank you so much for all the love this book has received! I'm very bad at consistently responding to comments and messages (we're working on it) but just know I see them and I'm so so so grateful. You guys are the reason I'm here!

Since it's Valentine's Day, I thought it'd be nice to get a lil snapshot of Neo and Kit's life together in college. Enjoy and let me know what you think!

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The apartment smells like turpentine and candle wax, and tonight, Kit has it all to himself.

He's good at being alone. It comes naturally to him, as he supposes it should after all the years in solitude he spent in the old house back on the North Shore. There's a difference, though, between here and there. In the house, he had nothing to listen to but the menacing crash of the waves against the edge of the cliff, a constant melody of destruction. Maybe sometimes he would catch the faint sound of a voice somewhere outside, but most of the time it was just him, himself the only reminder that humanity even still existed.

In New York humanity is all around him, quite literally. Even when he shuts the radio off and turns out all the lights, something else will always fill the void: the neon lights of the movie theater across the street, the trembling, emotional voice of the street performer singing a ballad a few blocks down. Here it seems that the word alone has a different definition—something less substantial, more subtle.

On nights like these, Kit usually paints. He rolls back the rug in his and Neo's room and lays out a tarp instead, sets an easel down on top of it. He squeezes fresh dollops of vibrant paint over a palette already collaged with remnants of old projects, finished and otherwise. After this he stares at the empty canvas for a while. And then he sets to work.

During his brief time so far in college, Kit's met a number of artists like him, and all of their methods are different. He knows people who plan their projects months and months ahead of time, and people who make them up as they go. He knows people who need to work in complete and utter silence, and he knows one person in particular who needs both the television and a boom box on to get any work done at all. Some people talk to themselves as they work, and this is the one he understands the least.

Even now, three years after he gained it back from the ghost who stole it, sometimes he gets overwhelmed by the sound of his own voice. Sometimes it sounds disembodied, like it still isn't exactly his, like he's the one who's stolen it from a stranger. He told Neo this once, and he looked so sad about it that Kit had quickly changed the subject.

Still, it bothers him. He wonders if his voice will ever feel authentically his again.

As Kit's painting, the delicate tap and swish of the brush strokes forming a sort of musical rhythm, a sudden thud startles him, blue droplets flinging across the canvas. He pushes out a sigh of dismay.

"Kit?"

He turns. Neo's there, hanging on the doorway. His hair is messy and he's smiling in a way that makes him seem like he's only half awake.

"Kit," Neo says again. "I love the look on your face when you paint, you know. Have I ever...have I ever told you that? You get this frown, like you're really thinking deeply, considering everything. It used to freak me out. Now I find it cute."

Kit's eyes narrow. "Are you drunk?"

"A bit."

Kit rolls his eyes, turning back to his easel. The floorboards creak, then Neo's arms are around his waist. Neo turns his head, planting a kiss on the slope of skin where Kit's neck meets his shoulder. "What is it?" He's whispering now. His voice is close enough to hold. "The sea? The sky?"

At the moment the canvas is dark blue, save for the lighter spots Kit accidentally flung upon it just seconds ago. Kit thinks about it, and then he says, "It's both, I think. The place where the sea and the sky meet, and the sea reflects it."

A pause. "The sky reflects the sea, too. They reflect each other."

The brush gently clinks as Kit sets it to rest upon the easel. Slowly, he lets his head drop onto Neo's. "How do you figure?"

"The stars are as old as time. When you look up at them, it's like the past is looking back down at you."

Kit laughs briefly. "Sounds like poetry."

"It's science."

"Poetry is a science. All the best poets will tell you that."

Neo lets out a groan to signal he is done thinking about all of this, and lifts the paint-splattered palette from Kit's fingers, placing it down on the nightstand instead. Knowing what he wants, Kit turns to face him, taking a curl of his hair—it's gotten longer, much longer than it used to be when they were younger—and twirling it around his index finger. "The party wasn't any fun?"

"It's a party," Neo replies. There is only one lamp in their bedroom and its light is failing; Neo's face is a beautiful arrangement of gold and shadow. "They're always fun for a little while. And then you realize you're tired and the world is a bit more sparkly than usual and maybe you should go home."

Kit smooths Neo's hair back from his face so he can look at him, really look at him. "Well. I'm glad you're home."

"Even though I interrupted your bleeding-artist time?"

"I am not—" Kit flushes. "It's not bleeding. You can be an artist without being sad!"

"Maybe. But you still get that bleeding-artist look on your face when you're painting."

Kit gasps, betrayed. "You said it was a frown."

"Yeah. A bleeding-artist frown."

At that, Kit scoffs, shoving at Neo. He doesn't mean to, but he sends him toppling backwards onto the unmade bed, the pillows bouncing around him. Neo's eyes are wide and blank for a moment, as if his fuzzy brain can't comprehend how he was vertical one moment and horizontal the next, until a flicker of understanding passes his face.

He raises a very suggestive brow at Kit.

Kit hates that brow. It gets him every time.

He steps forward, leaning over Neo, combing a hand around his face. "I can't stand you, by the way. Just thought you should know."

Neo catches Kit's hand in his own, the knuckles of which are decorated with flecks of blue paint. Neo kisses them anyway, tenderly, lovingly, tracing their shape with his mouth. "Oh, you don't have to tell me that. You artists tend to wear your emotions on your sleeve."

Kit glares at him, and Neo laughs—a happy, hearty sound, like it's coming from his stomach. Kit loves Neo's laugh. He always has, ever since the first time he heard it back in Hawaii. To him it is not just a sound. In some ways it just feels like home.

"Neo."

He must hear the sincerity in Kit's voice, because he goes quiet.

Kit lowers himself a bit; as he does, he presses his hand first to Neo's chest, then trails it up to his collarbone, and up again, until finally it rests upon the curve of his cheek. He tells him: "You're my favorite."

Neo closes his eyes as Kit kisses each of his eyelids. "Your favorite what? Person?"

"Yes. That too," Kit says. "But no. Open your eyes, babe."

He does. They are a warm, milky brown, eyelashes perfectly curled. Kit aches.

"You are my favorite masterpiece," Kit tells him. "Nothing moves me like you do. And you know what? I don't think anything ever will."

Neo's eyes go round—he looks young, unguarded, for that moment—and he opens his mouth. "Kit—"

"Don't say anything," he says, and Neo mirrors his smile. "Just be. That's enough."

Kit studies him for another moment, just because he can, just because for eighteen months all he had of Neo was a fading memory so now he will hold on to every moment like it's his very last. And Neo, because he knows this, because he's the same, waits for him.

Kit at last falls chest-to-chest against Neo, and Neo takes in a shuddering inhale as Kit catches his mouth in his. The sea meets the sky. It is poetry and science.