Brightness and Berries

Theo was sure his feet were bleeding by the time he stopped running. He practically crashed to the pavement, his aching arms wrapping around his aching knees. He breathed in, finding the air as cold as ever, this time laced with cigarettes being smoked by some stupid grown-up in the corner of his eye, far away enough for Theo to squish with his fingers.

He’d been running so long, he hadn’t seen that the sun was setting. The sun was a weird thing. When it wasn’t forcing him to jump from shadow to shadow all the time, it was making the city look almost pretty. Caked in rays of somber amber and brushed by canvasses of pink and purple, it resembled that messy hand-painting Fen had done when Theo brought three little paint pots he found. Well, borrowed. Well, stole.

Sure, if you were stealing, of course you’d expect for the fruit-stand man (or as Theo liked to call him, “Pines,” for the way that weirdo gazed at his pineapples like a collection of long-lost lovers when he thought nobody could see him) to run after you if he caught you swiping a box of strawberries. But it was one box! Hardly worth making homeless eleven-year-olds sprint through half the city! Grown-ups. They sucked.

But now he was at alley, big and long and with a dead end so nobody could sneak in from the other side.

Once he came across a bundle of softness curled up with a pillow in a makeshift matchup of kid-sized boxes, near a spread of mangled carpets, that bundle sprang out of sleep at the sound of his footsteps. White hair stuck up in a starry blur, soft yellow eyes shone in glee and every sweating, blistering, exhausted sensation gripping Theo was cast out. Except for a growling pain in his stomach.

“You’re okay!” Fen squealed, nearly knocking Theo back on his feet with the hug that followed.

“Obviously.” Theo laughed. “And look what I got.”

Fen’s eyes went from shining lights to miniature supernovas. “Strawberries!”

They huddled in their cardboard fortress, Fen’s warmth seeping into Theo and making every step of that run worth it. Theo tore off his mangled shoes, and his feet weren’t bleeding, but a couple of his toes were. Of course, Fen had to look over Theo and start worrying.

“You’re bleeding!”

Smiling was the best way to calm Fen down. Theo’s was believable, surely. “Alright, Pines made me work for this one. But I’m incapable of dying, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

It took a while, but Fen was reassured enough to start eating. Theo’s hands fell over his stomach, the aching growing deeper and deeper but it was better than letting Fen be the one starving.

Theo nearly spat out the strawberry when Fen, out of nowhere, jammed it into his mouth with eyes of worry and a smile Theo needed to learn from because it was way more convincing than what he saw in a mirror.