like real people do — a.h.b.
cw: drug use (weed), suggestive content, shotgunning kinda, yapping (a lot of it)
smoke curls around my fingers in the moonlight. it’s 2 am on a summer night, the heat’s not blistering but it’s warm enough that we sit on the balcony with barely any clothes on, his hand on my thigh, my hand around a spliff.
“d’you think if we were on a different planet, or–or the moon, i dunno, you think we’d be on a balcony somewhere, pointing at the earth?” his voice sounds deeper to my ears than it usually does, the words floating through my veins as sluggishly as the blood.
it’s a thought that takes my mind to interesting places.
i snort. “you’re so high right now.”
he mimics my snort, eyes crinkling. “and you’re so far away right now, c’mere.”
i want to point out that our thighs are touching, my knee nudging his every few seconds when one of us moves. but then his fingers trail up, up, up—roughened pads of his index and middle fingers against the smooth skin of my thighs and suddenly i understand. he’s so far away.
it’d be nicer if i could climb inside him and make a home in his chest cavity. right next to his beating heart.
“thoughts,” he taps my head, “so many of them. what are you thinking?”
“about you, about your chest.”
“my chest?”
he turns fully now, facing me, body angled towards mine while his face looks half-amused half-confused. instead of answering, i take another drag of the spliff and hold it in my throat until it burns. until my body forces a release.
“you’re so high right now!” he mimics my words from before in a high pitched voice. a poor imitation.
“oi! you thought we could have a balcony somewhere on the moon!”
“i still think we would,” he protests. i watch him, enamoured all of a sudden, shivering when his thumb traces my bottom lip gently. “a house just like this. for the two of us. and i think i’d point at the earth, say ‘look at that, look at you and me—’”
“we’d somehow be on earth and on the moon? at the same time?”
my amused tone makes him roll his eyes. “two versions, darling. keep up please. now where was i?”
“look at you and me—”
“ah yes!” his hand wraps around mine, lifting it up until both our fingers are pointing at a random star in the sky.
“look at us, happy and content and tanned from the sun. you’d have blonde hair, i think—”
“you think i should have blonde hair?” i gasp at him, mock offended, “you don’t like my hair the way it is?”
“i love your hair. i’d love it even if it was red or blue or green or purple. but that’s not the point, the point is you’d have blonde hair because we’d be in the sun all day, gardening or keeping bees or kissing or—” and this time he waggles his brows like a teenager, “—fucking.”
i giggle. it’s a pretty thought, a distant dream. but in this moment, it almost feels…touchable. with my finger pointing at the star i grab, i curl my fingers until my hand closes into a fist and i feel the pulsating core of the fading dream in the centre of my palm. he smiles too, and brings the back of my hand to his lips.
“we could do that, be the earth version of ourselves instead of the moon version. i could dye my hair y’know? oooh! we could dye it at home.”
“absolutely not.” he dismisses the idea quickly, before my weed-addled brain can make any plans, and takes the spliff away from me. i don’t protest though—it’s a different kind of joy to watch him indulge, to watch it dangling lazily between his lips until he tilts his face up to the sky and exhales.
“mean,” i tut. “you’d think for a man with such a sweet tongue you’d be less mean to me.”
“oh, you think a lot about my tongue, do you?”
a flush creeps up my cheeks. it’s the heat in the air running inside me, crawling through my veins. it’s the beginning of a summer thunderstorm, zapping through my blood.
“i do. i think about you. all the time.”
“even now? when i’m right next to you?”
“especially now. when you’re so close and so far away.”
then i feel his hand on my waist, a small nudge, and suddenly i’m in his lap, head tucked into the crook of his neck. my cheek right above his beating heart.
“better?”
“much.”
“stay like this then. stay forever.”
i smile at the thought of forever, of us growing old and frail right here on his balcony, tangled up exactly like we are, his fingers running through my grey hair, my hand on his wrinkled cheek.
“open your mouth,” he nudges my chin with his thumb, parting my lips. a moment later smoke surrounds me—exhaled from his lungs, inhaled into mine. warm and charged and sweet.
the faded dream comes to life, this time tinged with the promise of forever. i smile and bury my face into his neck.
then i close my eyes.
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