type.

warm&tangly.

june 10 at 12:56 pm

Technically, it is as simple as lying adjacently to each other. The simple juxtaposition of one body to another. Even if it is in close proximity, even if it is something relatively close to intimacy, neither are completely lucid. It is an eyes-closed, dead-to-the-world affair.

But actually being there—

Being on the bed with a boy—

That boy—

It is a mess. Like the colorful lines my toddler of a sister threw across my elementary schoolbooks once upon a time: a squiggly disarray of arms upon arms and legs that run for miles along the almost endless expanse of the soft futon. A mess, a disarrangement, but not, however cluttered it looked, chaos. A chaos of feelings, yes, and a rather confusing event of serendipitous circumstance, but none of it feels regrettable. None of it feels foreboding, none of it feels scary. It is a tangle of limbs and, possibly, hopefully, of relatively similar emotions...

I guess I could call it comfortable.

Comfortable, confusing. Weird but not in a bad way.

His hair is soft and is stretched up and over in the most peculiar curls I have ever seen before ending in soft points across his face. I try to focus on reading the book for him, but the smell of dark roast and cinnamon leads my mind from the biting sarcasm that is Holden Caulfield to the starkly different world beyond my fingertips: the gentler, quieter boy around me. The slender hands that hold my back, the chest supporting the book. The steady breathing on the top of my head.

Taking a pause in between chapters, I glance up at him. His lips are pursed but the rest of his face is relaxed, and though his trademark lopsided grin isn’t visible, his contentment radiates through the slight crinkle at the corners of his eyes.

As I stare in amazement, his dark eyelashes flutter and his eyes open.

Briefly, carefully—

“Do you want to take a break?”

The complete opposite of his bright nonchalance, his loud personality. It’s something smaller, something quaint. He looks younger than he is. His voice is deep and there’s a slight crack in it, though it’s not as rasped as my wrecked vocal chords with all the reading. He sounds tired but energized. Just woken up. As if in reading I had given him a dream to sleep on.

He looks vulnerable. Usually so quick to leave his anxieties with an air of carelessness and a friendly smile, I see worry line his face when I do not respond, his dark, dark eyebrows furrowing behind his light bangs.

“Are you okay?”

I let out a two-note chuckle and nod slightly.

“Better than that,” I mumble, almost whispering.

The timid ghost of a smile spreads on his lips and he mutters a tiny heh, an almost-laugh that’s something softer, sweeter than anything I’ve ever heard from him. Something unguarded. Secret.

“Me too.”