Throatfire: How Language Burns into Being

This excerpt continues Daniel and Theo's story. Unlike the minimalist tone of Part 1 and the lyrical flow of Part 2, this section embraces lexical and syntactic mutation. Its sensory surface allows language to bend, freeing both expression and experience. Here, cadence mirrors breath, and white space becomes emotional terrain.

Throatfire

The air pressed close, tongue-damp.

Cicadas shredded the silence—skinsplit hum.

Pedals churned, panting in the gummy stillness,

eyes fixed on the slick line of a spine. Denim hitching higher.

Bodychase. Desperate.

A glance back—a grinblade flash under the sun.

Race you to the dead oak—voicecrack, sweatstreak—and the wheels spun.

Asphalt rasp, burn climbing up tarmac legs.

A shadow pooled wide, dragging across the dirt path.

Branches tore at teenage arms, bark-ripped and hungry.

The oak loomed ahead, its spine split by lightning.

Brakes snapped. Gravel spat.

You cheated—gasped between blinks. Chestflare.

A shoulder hitch. A slow peel of tankskin. Ribglint. Dripline.

Sweat jewelled his chest.

You followed.

The woods breathed around them. Greenclench, feral and wild.

Shoes kicked off, toes curling against the cool, wet earth.

Waterlick at Theo’s feet.

Bet you won’t dive off the high rock.

Bet I will.

Laughstrike.

Liar.

Watermouth drunk on ankles, knees, hips. Cold gnawed through the heat.

A body stroked the surface, arms wide, face pressed to the sky.

Throatbare, veinbright.

Daniel slipstepped closer, heartdrum loud in water-lungs.

A wrist caught, fingers latched, a body pulled under.

The water closed in—wetgreen crush. Dark, heavy, silent.

Limbs tangled, slick and straining.

A knee brushed a hip. Skinslide. Skinclutch—

(still)

gaspbreak / surfacetear.

Theo’s sharksmile.

Ribs jerking with the rush of air.

On stoneheat, they sprawled, skin ironed to it.

A cattail pulled. Its bristled tip dragged along a sun-chewed nape.

You’re peeling.

Thanks.

A finger traced the edge of a flake of skin, lifting, grazing.

Raw underneath.

A breath stilled. Cattailpulse. A shiverline.

Weight shifted. A rollsink onto the belly.

Chin propped, hands curled beneath. Lower lip sunkissed.

Remember the kid who broke his leg at the quarry? Bone poked right through.

Why’d you bring that up?

Just thinking.

Fingers crawled the stone. A split-finger trace.

How easy it is...to leave proof you were here.

A dragonfly hovered, suspended.

Fractured in the hush between them.

Wings shattered light—humdrift, shiverbuzz—

pearl-glint pulse, each beat a razor twitch through the quiet.

Dusk came fevered, sky bruising purple-black.

Heat thick in the air, burning into nightskin.

Theo stripped, boxers taut, twisted, forgotten.

Slip-slide to his ankles.

Grass-tender flesh met the air, stirring.

Daniel's eyes watered, blooming in the wake of it.

Your turn.

Theo passed him the bottle, whiskey heat alive in his grip.

Liquidfire scorched, throatburnt,

as Daniel's pale form shivered the night awake.

Theo watched. Chin tilted. Eyes steady, dark-mooned.

Tell me something true.

You’re a storm I can’t stop chasing, Daniel thought.

Too hot for truths.

Theo snapped the bottle back, lips brushing the rim

where Daniel’s had been.

Skin-slick.

Night fell.

They lay on the earth's skin, shoulders buzzing with touch.

Theo’s pinky grazed Daniel’s—once, twice—before fingers laced,

a live wire pulse threaded through skin.

Look. Theo pointed. Cassiopeia. The queen tied to her throne.

How’d she get free?

Theo turned. Knee pressed, fleshlock.

She didn’t.

Heat pooled in the spaces where bodies stayed apart.

Daniel’s pulse thrashed—in his temples, in the hipslick hollow.

Thumb circled wristbone—slow, slower—mapping veins, drawing roads,

breaths dying into the black,

unmade.

Theo sat up. Let’s swim again.

Now?

Now.

Patches of darkness rushed past the forest.

The lake swallowed them whole.

Underwater—hands, waistfingers,

steering deeper.

Daniel’s back hit silt, bubbles hissing from lips.

Theo above,

haloed in moonlight,

hair dark fronds, gliding—

gaspbreak / surfacetear.

Theo’s laugh. A feral thing.

Daniel’s lungs, gutted.

On the muddy bank—

muck-sink press.

Theo's weight,

knees digging the wet,

palms flat on Daniel's chest—

breath-shudder, jagged, raw.

Tell me to stop.

Hips jerked—

silent no.

Teeth-bite, collarbone press—

ghostflare, pullback.

A promise held in the skin,

a threadbare threat.

Hands roamed ribs,

thumb-scratch across a scar—

skin-split,

sweat licking down the curve of rolling buttocks.

Their shudder—a strangled hum,

a sob lodged,

neckbone tight,

sound lost in the squeeze.

On the ride home, no words passed.

Theo’s bike wobbled ahead, its silhouette blurred,

swallowed by the heat-thick air.

Daniel's gaze trailing like smoke.

Forkbend. Brake-squeal.

A glance over the shoulder.

Eyes—bright, animalistic—caught in the streetlamp’s glare.

Tongue-stuck, roofbound,

Daniel's mouth a scrape.

Theo’s gaze dropped, swallowed by the dirt.

Tomorrow. Quarry at noon.

Stillness clutched them—a gaze, tight and starved, searched Daniel's face,

curling into a slow-burn brightness

fired back at him.

Theo vanished, ripple-shadow grinning,

slipping through the heat-haze.

Daniel’s legs burned.

Lungs rasped fire.

Fireflies blinked,

their glow eaten by the dark

as he pedalled faster.

In bed, he pressed a palm to his sternum,

where teeth had kissed skin-close.

The flesh throbbed, phantom-marked.

Somewhere, thunder growled—

low, hungry, restless.