The sun baked the worn streets of Naples, glinting off the café window where Narancia sat slouched in a chair, his legs spread wide and arms crossed over the backrest. He rocked the chair backward onto two legs like he always did, tipping dangerously close to a fall but somehow never going over. His headband was crooked, his tank top rumpled and halfway riding up his stomach, but he didn’t seem to care—or maybe he didn’t notice.

He took another sip from the glass of soda between them and narrowed his eyes at Narancia. He refused to listen to any warning given about his chair leaning, only offering a— “Pfft.” Narancia smirked and leaned further back, daring gravity. “I’ve got perfect balance, idiot. I ain’t gonna fall.”

He had. Twice. He didn’t remind him.

Across the patio, a pair of girls at a nearby table were whispering behind their hands, glancing their way. Not that they needed to eavesdrop—Narancia was loud enough for the whole block to hear, and with the way he casually sprawled toward him, grinning, always somehow touching him—his wrist, his shoulder, his knee bumped against his—it wasn’t hard to see how people might get the wrong idea.

Well. Wrong, depending on how you looked at it.

Bringing them up also did nothing to deter Narancia.

Narancia blinked, then scowled like he usually did when someone made him think too hard. “Huh? What, those girls?” He glanced over his shoulder. “They’re probably jealous or something.”

At the look on his face, he continued in full.

“‘Cause you get to sit with me,” he declared, shoving a thumb toward himself with full confidence. “I’m cool as hell. Who wouldn’t be jealous?”

He rolled his eyes, laughing, but didn’t disagree. Naranica was cool, in that loud, unfiltered, makes-everything-an-adventure kind of way. He was the kind of guy who made grocery shopping feel like a mission and chasing pigeons seem like a tactical operation.

Still, with his close the two of them were, people thought they were…you know, together.

Not the first time people had thought so, not by a long shot. It always happened when the two were out—too much energy between them, too much space Narancia refused to give him.

Like now: one of Narancia’s feet was stretched out and resting halfway under his chair. His hand had flicked a sugar packet at him earlier and now rested on the edge of his side of the table. He was always within his orbit. Like a satellite. Or maybe a crash course.

Or when he called him his soulmate for sharing the last slice of pizza.

You know, normal, Narancia things like that.