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.