turps

Excellent prompt. Hope you don't mind I twisted it a bit.

~*~*~*~

Poison’s huddled in tight, tucked into the scant shade from the Trans Am. There’s dust in his mouth and sand gritting his eyes as he watches Kobra, who’s standing staring off into the distance.

“Sometimes I let myself remember.” Kobra takes a careful step forward, millimetres away from liquid lava that laps at his feet. “About cold salty water and not liquid fire.”

“You hated the beach.” Poison remembers sand that didn’t sting and a previous life that’s turned blurry and brittle with age. “You cried when you first saw the ocean.”

“It was cold… I think.” Kobra rubs at his eyes, steam whisping around his ankles as the lava splutters and burns. “I can’t remember.”

“It was fucking freezing.” Poison pushes himself to his feet, squinting against the relentless glare of the sun as he forces back memories of cool water and childish innocence to a place they won’t hurt. “We should go.”

“I know,” Kobra agrees, but makes no effort to move until, suddenly, never looking at Poison. “I miss it, Gee.”

And the name is a cool drop of water in the vast expanse of the desert, painful and bewitching at once.

Poison simply says, “Me too.”