The first try
I can feel your love
Your temporary touch
It's a hit and run
-- Glass Animals, Your Love (Déjà Vu)
The walk across the garden allowed him to breathe in and calm down, hands clamping up at his sides. It was fine now; they’d gotten in. The girls would go to the party and never see Laith again. Later, Theodore would explain everything and hopefully come up with a good lie too, just in case. They didn’t usually grill him too much, but then, he’d never done anything that required much scrutiny before. This was easily the weirdest he’d ever acted and an ocean of questions was sure to follow. All they knew was that Laith was connected to Ryan, so, if need be, he’d tell them Laith was his dealer. Fuck it, he did drugs now. It was better than whatever this encounter had made them believe.
Laith leisurely glanced around. No comments were made, just a very careful inspection of the apartment. It was pretty clean today, with none of the girls’ things on the table and no shoes near the door.
The foyer was small, matching the rest of the apartment. The dining room was on the right, a little nook lit up by a single light fixture hanging low from the ceiling. A wall-sized bookshelf separated it from the living room, which was also very simple, just a couch, a TV and a rug in between. The sliding door led to the balcony outside. Across the hallway was the kitchen, in a nook of its own, isolated behind a row of counters.
“What do you think?” This was the first time Theodore had asked anyone that question, pride bubbling in his chest.
Laith frowned. “Fancy. Looks like one of those house décor magazines.”
“We could put on a movie and hang out. I’ll open the balcony doors if you wanna smoke some more.”
Laith looked back at him, eyebrows furrowed, a sort of grimace on his lips. “You didn’t get me drunk and dragged me to your apartment just to watch a fucking movie. At least show me to your room.”
Theodore’s face burned, eyes growing twice their original sizes. That wasn’t his intention at all, but if Laith thought it was and was going along with it anyway, then—his blood ran hot. Did Laith want to…? Really? Speechless, Theodore pointed straight down the hallway where the bedrooms were.
A moment ago, he’d been consumed by the thought of his hands clasped around Laith’s throat, and now that he actually had a shot at it, he was too afraid to do it. Surely, Laith wouldn’t care, as long as he got something out of it too, but what? Theodore had never done anything like this; he didn’t even know what he wanted right now. Laith was right; he’d raised hell to get the man all the way over but didn’t even know why. To hang out, sure, but couldn’t they just do that anywhere? They could’ve stayed at the bar, except he didn’t have any money left, so actually no, they couldn’t. Talking outside was the next logical step, but something inside him just wanted to bring Laith home and push him down on the bed. With a breath caught in his throat, Theodore followed Laith to his room.
This one was a smaller version of his old bedroom back at his parents’, only with far less wardrobe space. Again, the door opened to the foot of the bed, desk across from it and a window in between. The big difference was that he’d hung a full-body mirror by the door. That was it.
Just like last time, the first thing Laith did was walk straight to the window and open it, glancing out. Usually, Theodore closed his door, but with no one home, he decided to leave it open. A sort of thrill shot down his spine with the knowledge that anyone could walk in, even if chances of that happening were impossibly low.
“You have a pool?” Laith sounded surprised, hands on the window frame as he poked his head out.
“Yeah, but it’s only for residents. You can’t go in.”
“We should go in.”
Shaking his head, Theodore pulled the desk chair out and took a seat.
Laith turned to look at him, no further comment on his lips. He seemed to be waiting for something. Petrified, Theodore just blinked. His cognitive abilities left him speechless. A sudden heat wave struck the room. What next? Laith fished out his wallet and pulled half a joint from it, fingers shaking it excitedly.
“Is that a party joint?” It took all Theodore’s mental capacity to keep his voice from shaking.
Laith scoffed out a laugh, joint stuck between his lips. “Yeah, it is.” Placing his wallet on the nightstand, he took out his cigarette pack and retrieved his lighter. The cherry burned as he puffed on the joint, eyes down with his focus. “How do you remember stuff like that?” His question was small and genuine, green eyes finding Theodore through the smoke. “I said it so long ago. It was a joke.”
“I remember everything you’ve ever said to me.”
Laith took the seat directly in front of Theodore, so close that Theodore not only breathed in the herbal scent that permeated the air, but also the rich earthy cologne that always hung so heavily around him. An inch was all the room between their knees.
“You live in my head,” Theodore confessed.
Their eyes met. Laith plucked the joint from his lips and offered it, index and thumb holding it like a precious jewel. Theodore made a point to touch his hand while taking it.
“Sounds like you have a crush,” Laith teased.
Theodore watched the corner of his mouth smirk before puffing on the joint himself, blood warm in his veins. He briefly wondered if that was also how Laith felt.
“Breathe the smoke into your lungs, not just your mouth,” Laith instructed.
The warmth that raced down his throat felt different than the burning of alcohol, much thicker, itchy. It made him want to cough, while alcohol usually made him want to throw up. He didn’t, though. When the butt left his lips, he turned to exhale toward the window. The breeze blew in without pulling any of the smoke out. He passed the joint back the same way it’d been offered, pinched between his index and thumb. Laith took it without touching his hand.
“Not so bad, huh?” Dark eyebrows bounced as Laith puffed, green eyes half-lidded, fixed on him.
“No, not so bad.”
When the joint passed back, he noticed the dagger on the inside of Laith’s forearm, pointing towards his wrist. Theodore grabbed his arm with a hand and the joint with the other, inspecting the ink there. That was new.
“I got it earlier this year,” Laith told him, unbothered by his grip.
“What does it mean?”
“Nothing; it’s just a cool design. Tattoos stop having any meaning by the second one.”
Theodore blew out smoke and passed the joint back. “What’s your first one?”
Laith pointed to the skull on his left arm, two dimensional, a simple design. So it’d been there since the beginning and Theodore had only noticed it later, huh. Laith pulled the joint away, smoke shaping his first few words. “I got it on my sixteenth birthday. Emily and I used to hit these redneck parties at the time and one of our friends brought his tattoo gun. He tattooed this skull for free; it was my birthday gift.”
“What’s a redneck party?”
Laith grinned. “You know, a clearing in the woods with a fire pit in the middle, shitty music on someone’s radio and a whole lot of beer. I’m trailer trash, so you know.”
“But Emily isn’t?”
“Nah, her family’s well off. We met when I moved to her neighborhood. I was twelve.”
“How old are you now?”
“How old is your brother?”
He clicked his tongue, swiping the joint from Laith’s fingers. “What’s your favorite tattoo?” That question left his lips just before the joint found them.
Laith fell pensive for a moment, eyebrows furrowed the tiniest bit, just as delicate as Carolyn’s scowls. One of his legs stretched next to Theodore, Vans resting by the wheels of the chair as a hand pulled his pant leg up. An amalgamation of famous statues all broken up and deformed decorated his shin, a crumbling version of Michelangelo’s David. “Probably this one. Emily drew it for me.”
“I like the one on your back, the skeleton.” Extremely detailed with ram horns and angel wings, holding a bleeding heart trapped in its bony hands.
His comment bounced Laith’s eyebrows, as if just remembering he had a tattoo on his back at all. “Good choice. I’ve had that one for so long, I can’t believe it still slips my mind.”
“Well, you can’t look at it much; it’s literally between your shoulder blades.”
Laith nodded, taking the joint back.
“What’s your stupidest one?”
Laith turned his left arm to show the comedy and tragedy masks etched just below the inside of his elbow, another two-dimensional design in very thin lines. He had a bracelet on this arm too, a loose metal chain. Even in the low light, it was possible to see the faint scars that lined the inside of his wrist, more spaced out along his forearm. They looked old—how had Theodore never noticed them before? A sharp pain cut through his chest. Thinking back, he couldn’t remember ever studying Laith’s left arm like this. Smoke blew above him.
“Emily said I was dramatic, so I got this to prove it. Now it’s law.”
Theodore took the joint back and puffed on it, heart beating strong, hands perfectly steady. It must be the herbal effects. “Is the dagger your newest one?”
A voice in the back of his mind screamed for him to comment on those scars, but the rest of his body was too relaxed to get worked up right now. Even through the haze in his brain, he knew that bringing those up would ruin the entire night.
Laith straightened his back and rode his shirt up, showing off a pair of wings that crawled up each side of his hips, meeting underneath the waistband of his pants; the way he sat covered the rest of it.
The mood instantly shifted. Theodore’s chest went from hollow and heavy to on fire, blood running hot in his veins. The urge to press his palm flat on Laith’s stomach and feel how firm it was rose up inside.
“You’re such a slut.”
That comment left him without a single thought, the most genuine thing he’d ever said to anyone. It put a wide grin on Laith’s face as he took the joint back. Theodore would’ve remembered that one at the camping site, glad it hadn’t been there at the time, or he would’ve ruined everything way too early on. Emily would’ve never forgiven him.
The way Laith puffed on the joint showed off his neck, the fern leaf there. Theodore reached over and touched it, fingers delicately tracing its lines. Tobacco and amber filled his lungs, up in his head. His fingertips dragged down Laith’s neck, touching his collar bone, the chain there. He followed it to the dog tags and held them, metal glinting under the light, Laith’s name engraved on them. An instinct almost yanked his arm to break the chain, but he let it pass, hand closed tight around the metal plates, edges pushing into his palm.
When Laith moved to offer the joint back, Theodore noticed how close they were, or rather, how close he’d gotten to Laith, less than an inch apart. Without a single thought in his head, he pulled on the dog tags and met Laith’s face with a kiss, eyes closed, heart stuck in his throat.
***
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