hesitant

he always watches you with the promise of something behind his eyes, darker and more guarded than you’ve known them to be for months. more often than not, there’s nothing to hide from you - nothing he can hide from you, at the end of it all. you’ve always been smarter than most people give you credit for. 

your work requires precision, a delicate hand that dances and barely touches the hints of danger but that embraces it when it brushes your skin, and he watches you with a steady and approving gaze, the way you work so carefully to connect everything, to give you enough time to get out and go, go, go. not once has he questioned what you do. never has he tried to insist he knows better than you. he knows the people he works with better than either of you know yourselves. 

it’s interesting, in a way, how one man can feel so pivotal, so singularly important, that you think you’d do just about anything for him, if he asked. he could ask you to bring him the stars in the sky and all the oceans on the earth, and you’d find a way to do it. you don’t doubt that she would, either. 

maybe it could be said that you’re something akin to being a disciple, of sorts, except that you never read the bible and she never cared enough to, and he's the only one from the three of you with a catholic family and it shows. lying’s a sin, so he never does. murder’s a sin, so he finds a justification that sounds bullshit to you and her both, but what is there to argue about?

(homosexuality is a sin, the bible says, and you know that one, you know l eviticus 18:22 like you know the palms of your own hands, but you’ve got no reason to care. he's the one that can still hardly accept the fact he isn’t straight, even at thirty-eight years old. he doesn’t tell you or her that he has a problem with it, though, just works through it himself. all alone, as ever.)

honey

you kiss honeyed words from her lips while her hands rest on your waist. the fabric of your shirt crumples between her fingers and she tugs it away from your body, riding up and exposing your midriff to the soft summer breeze coming in through the window. against your lips, you feel that she’s smiling, and that makes you smile too as you break the connection in favour of resting your forehead against hers. there’s hardly any space between your mouths, your breath mingling with hers in the gap and knotting something up tight in your chest. 

you lick your lips. she’s wearing strawberry lipgloss.

“sweet,” you murmur as you close your eyes and she laughs, gentle as the draft and a hundred times more intense. “sugar…”

“yes, honey?”

you can’t say it, so you kiss her again. the words still feel heavy, like something poisoned and so decidedly wrong where they sit on your tongue. 

and maybe this is what it comes to - late nights illuminated only by the screen of your phone where you’ve tucked it beneath the covers, holding it close to your chest. tired eyes threatening to slip closed as the clock ticks up and up, church bells striking one-two-three in the distance. maybe it comes to secrets that you bury deep, deep within yourself, secrets that still threaten to boil over and spill from your lips like a waterfall. and you wonder - by god, do you wonder - why you couldn’t just like boys, why you couldn’t just be like the other girls you know who only worry about whether their boyfriend is still using lynx or whether he’s moved to off-brand cologne, why you didn’t have to hide that you prefer red lips to square jaws.

maybe secrets are a form of lie, but you hide your sunset-coloured love away until the two of you are alone anyway. dishonesty doesn’t feel so wrong if it’s for your own safety, you tell yourself over and over. not telling people doesn’t mean that you’re ashamed.

of course, you don’t say any of it aloud. if she asks what’s wrong, you just tell your violet that you’re stressed, that the essay deadline’s coming up faster than you anticipated, and she laughs and presses another crimson kiss to your jaw and tells you to take care of yourself too. she offers you tea. your heart aches as you smile at her.

the pictures that plaster the internet make you feel homesick when you see them. you wish that were you were there in glorious technicolour instead of the washed-out greys of your home; you wish that you were kissing her on rose-tinted snapshots on twitter instead of behind the walls of her bedroom. you wish you could take a chance instead of bowing your head to follow the status quo.

you tell your mother on a tuesday evening with salt streaming down your skin only for her to wrap you in her embrace and tell you that it’s okay, that she loves you no matter what. she wants to meet your - girlfriend. she wants to meet your girlfriend, and you’re almost giddy on how good it feels to not have to avoid the word, to have to tactfully say “partner” instead. 

your mother starts sending rainbows at the end of every text and you wonder whether being yourself is really meant to feel this warm.

your girlfriend, all her soft curves and rounded edges, wraps you up in fabric that’s orange-white-pink and kisses the corner of your mouth in the june sunshine. you call her “honeydew”, call her “sugar”, you tell her she’s beautiful as she laughs and her cheeks flush until they match your skirt.

“i love you,” you say, and the words taste like honey.

recollection

and maybe this is what it comes to - late nights illuminated only by the screen of your phone where you’ve tucked it beneath the covers, holding it close to your chest. tired eyes threatening to slip closed as the clock ticks up and up, church bells striking one-two-three in the distance. maybe telling people is overrated, why put yourself at risk when you can have your nighttime secrets, your twilight sweetheart, star-crossed lovers only after dark.

the thing is, she’s so perfect, and you don’t want to ruin it. the thing is, she’s everything you could ever hope for and more, and you don’t know whether what you have could hold up under sunlight. you don’t know whether her promises of saccharine, sapphic devotion will come to life past dawn, whether she’s telling the truth when she talks of red lips pressed against your skin.

the thing, you know, is that you just don’t know.

and that’s the real reason you’ve never said it out loud, never told anyone what the two of you have, your ten-point text on twitter past dusk. you’ve never said that word aloud before, the big one, never admitted what you are unless you could type it and be sure of reassurance back. it’s a weight on your chest like no other, it’s an ache that threatens to claw its way to the surface every day that you battle it down.

you wonder what her lipgloss would taste like. whether her hands would be as soft against your cheeks as you think they would. whether her hair would tangle in your fingers as you ran them through the soft waves, and whether she would laugh. 

you wonder, most of all, whether your midnight violet wishes she was laid beside you, too.

normality

His face is turned away from you – as it usually is, when he needs a moment to himself. He won’t look at you, will hardly ever even acknowledge that you’re there at all, just shuts himself out on the balcony and locks himself away in search of privacy. Which, sure, okay, you get it, you get it, but you think you’d like it if he could at least tell you he didn’t hate you.

Wes leans on the railings – which you know for a fact are rusting, know the paint is flaking off – and stares out at the skyline, dotted by darkened windows and jagged rooftops that mar the view of the hills in the distance. Four floors below him is the street, dimly lit by quick-fading streetlamps and the burnt-out neon signs in shop windows. It’s still not late enough that the drunks have made their way to home, there are still people and cars milling around. They circle you like sharks, catching the smell of your insecurity on the breeze and honing in, coming closer and closer and –

You drop down on the sofa.

You dig your nails into your palm and you wince, just a little, just enough that he would notice if he were to look at you, that he would gently uncurl your fists and press a soft kiss to the faint crescent indents in the soft skin of your palm. But he isn’t, and he doesn’t. Instead you lean back and tilt your head towards the cracked ceiling, leg bouncing and palm beginning to ache just a little.

“Should really fix it,” you say to yourself as you stare upwards. Do you mean the ceiling, you ask yourself? Or do you mean whatever the hell you and Wes have, or do you mean the blown bulb in the ceiling light, only one-out-of-three on the go at that point. You can’t tell. You don’t know. There’s plenty of things that you don’t know, a great deal you’ve forgotten.

Wes, you know, will soon enough fall into his usual routine for nights like this. He’ll come in after a long while of chosen isolation before grabbing an apple, brushing his teeth and pulling on his loosest sweatpants and sliding into bed beside you. He won’t touch you and you, awake, always awake, won’t touch him. You remember the rule against that. You like making him comfortable.

Staring up at the ceiling, still, you stretch out and, after one more glimpse over to where Wes is curled on the balcony, decide you may as well take the time for yourself to shower. He doesn’t look up when you get up and you still haven’t heard any movement when you shut the bathroom door behind you. The wood takes your weight as you lean against it, eyes shut, waiting for the water to heat up as you hear the rush of it hitting against the porcelain floor of the stall.

The mirror doesn’t steam up quickly, so you stare at yourself. You don’t quite know what it is, but there’s something off about your reflection, you don’t recognise it. Don’t really recognise yourself at all.

Your own routine, so unlike Wes’s, goes like this: you begin by cutting your nails. You trim them down until the beds begin to ache with the cold metal of the clippers against the warmth of your fingers. Twin blades, razor sharp, biting into and through the keratin as the crescents fall to the pockmarked porcelain of the sink. The mirror, where it hangs above, shows the back of your neck and the soft hair there where you bend over the basin, but you ignore its gaze. Why would you look up? Why would you meet your doppelgänger’s eyes  when you know you’ll see nothing but sadness and pain in her eyes, hair falling into her eyes and hiding them, hiding her.

You put the clippers down on the side of the sink. Rest them on the cloth before you clench your fists again, biting down on your lip and letting out a soft hiss as the trimmed-down nails fit into the marks already there as you weigh up the merits of punching the wall to let out even a little of your frustration versus biting down on your knuckles instead. You, of course, choose the latter.

The shower’s been left running while you were busy, filling the bathroom with steam and mist and everything else, covering the already-frosted window and the mirror and the glimpses you sometimes catch of your lookalike in them. The moment you step into the stall you shudder, water rushing over you and the warmth sinking down to your core.

It isn’t warm enough.

You turn the heat up – two degrees, three, four, higher and higher, shivering at the difference, the heat that runs in rivers down your body. The heat, now, at this point almost burns, leaving your skin with the rosy-red of winter, the dull auburn of autumn. It leaves your skin rouged and dew-spattered, a macabre rose garden all over you. The soap running down your arms towards your fingertips could well be melting snow, too, your body a winter flower garden. The water melts the frost across your mind, worry about him spiralling down the drain with the soap and your hair, skin hot and rosy red.

Your towels, as you get out, are scratchy against your now-sore skin, dripping onto the tiled floor as you pull your pyjamas on. Time for the regular routine. Time for you to do as Wes expects, to get in bed and wait for him to slide in beside you. Time to wait for normality once again.

15/2/20

when he sleeps, it’s obvious that he tries to make himself as small as he can. it’s clear that he’s trying to make himself unnoticeable.

he sleeps with the covers pulled up to his head and his knees to his chest, hands at his face while he rests on his side. it’s a stark contrast to how he is when he’s awake, acting like he has to be the biggest presence in the room at any given moment.

none of it, though, is to say that he sleeps silently. he doesn’t snore, doesn’t fidget, but he talks. whispers, really. mumbles.

she doesn’t know how to tell him, so she doesn’t. she lies; says that he snores and he should have bought her earplugs the first time she stayed over. his laugh is well worth the pang of guilt she feels at lying to him.

plus, it isn’t like it’s all that disturbing. it doesn’t keep her awake, or anything, it’s just that she wishes she’d expected it, that she hadn’t woken up in the first time to slurred, almost-indistinguishable mumbles from the other side of the bed as he curled in on himself even more and the red LED’s of the alarm clock blinked three am.

a warning, she thinks as she cards her fingers through his hair while they sit on the sofa, would have been nice. he could have told me that i’ll eventually wake up to him muttering people’s names.

love in private

we touch in isolation and kiss in moderation, every touch is punctuated by a soft breath in the tiny space between our lips. the bedsheets beneath us both are soft, star-speckled and bunched up beneath my knees. your knees. my back, as you push me down and cup my face in your hands and murmur praises against my lips.

on monday i’m pretty and on tuesday i’m beautiful; wednesday makes me sweet and thursday is simply lovely. the weekend is a blur, friday-saturday-sunday, all filled with your words. golden, stunning, ethereal, perfect, spelled out on my skin with the light passes of your lips and gentle touches of your rough fingertips across my back.

that isn’t, of course, to say that i say nothing in return - you’re my earthen miracle, i tell you, my sunshine-soaked boy, my summertime honeybee.

in the summertime, when sunlight isn’t overshadowed by an unending downpour, i’ll hold your hand in the shade of overgrown flora, i’ll kiss you among the sunflowers. i’ll tell the world, unashamedly, that you’re mine and i’m yours, that we’ve both reached the feeling of belonging that we’ve been searching for for so long.

late night thoughts

it’s criminal, really, how damned pretty he can be in those precious moments. stolen seconds late at night or early in the morning, the sky obsidian-dark and weighing down on the two of you like a velvet, light-speckled quilt. he looks gorgeous, illuminated by the streetlights outside and silhouetted against the sky. you could study his face for hours in that instance, and you do it for as long as you’re able - you’re so intimately familiar with the curve of his throat, now, with the way his cheeks are marked with flecks, with kisses from helios himself. good god, given half a chance, you’d like to see how long it would take to kiss each of his freckles, every single one. you want him to know how breathtaking he is, how he makes your heart skip a beat, your lungs seize and your stomach twist.

“where are you going?”

he doesn’t answer. it doesn’t surprise you all that much. silence falls heavy over the room and you close your eyes, gently. when the shower starts you notice it immediately - the water-on-porcelain sound cuts through the twilight silence in a way that’s all too loud. you can hardly hear your own breath over it. why is it so loud?

you roll over and, with all the grace of a drunk after last call, bury your face into the pillow, nose pressed against cotton infused with the smell of what you think is a jarringly artificial cherry scent. washing powder? the shampoo he’d palmed at the convenience store a couple days before, just to see if he could? you don’t know. thinking is too loud, too hard. you’re tired.

halfway to falling asleep, you blink and turn your face up when there’s a weight on the bed next to you before it turns into a hand on your shoulder. warm and calloused, you press your head down with a soft sigh again, ignoring the few water droplets still earnestly clinging to his skin as he curls around you, arm slung over your waist.

the two of you are still like that when you wake up again, the first slivers of dawn forming pools of gold on the white sheets. it’s quieter now, again, the breathing of the man beside you a perfectly acceptable level and the slowly-rising chorus of the city almost familiar in its bustle.

“good morning,” he breathes. in lieu of a real answer you simply hum, which he seems to accept at any rate, pressing sleep-dry lips against the bare skin of your shoulder as you press your face back into the pillow. he’s always softer in the mornings, sunrise smoothing out his jagged corners and making him malleable, soft as wax under that early sun. your perfect icarus, except he’s never made quite such a grave error. maybe you’re his icarus. in any case, neither of you are flying right then, decidedly grounded in the too-soft mattress of the hotel room, sinking into it as though it’s that sea. 

brushing hair from your forehead, he rests his fingers against your skin for a hesitant moment and you have to catch yourself from reeling at the sudden different extremes you’re aware of right then. warm hands against cool skin, fire and ice and sun and moon and, lord, if the two of you could really have this, you might even call him ‘sunshine’. he’s certainly radiant enough for it. a little language practice, maybe, call him any number of pet names he’ll only half-understand on a good day, considering how few shits he’s ever given about properly learning anything but english. god, you could tell him just about anything in another language and you doubt that he’d even question it at all.