Chapter Text
He switches the cap out one more time, rummaging in his pack for the backup Gold Dot, praying that it won't get clogged too. If he'd planned things better, if he'd been more thorough shaking up the last can, he wouldn't have had to. But it's almost six a.m. and his hands are almost completely numb with cold and the gloves he'd grabbed from the bathroom cabinet tiptoeing out of the apartment are a little too tight and he's slept three hours, maybe four, since lunch on Thursday and it's all he can do. This is all he can do.
He bends to take another swig of his paper cup of long-cold black coffee, wedged among the empty cans on the top of the stepladder. The bitter chill of it practically stings his tongue, but he can't fuck up now. Just these strands of white, and then a little more highlighting on the shattering pieces of the wall, and that'll be all. For some reason he kind of wants to cry.
What if, his cruelest voice murmurs. What if you remembered the wrong place?
What if he's forgotten about you already?
He clenches his jaw against it, but the voice persists.
Jens, good-looking guy (not a weirdo). He knows Jens (and Jens knows him). He trusts Jens (can't blame him). Maybe they grew up sharing their clothes. Sharing their food. Sharing a bed, even. Wouldn't be strange.
"Fuck you," he says aloud, switching off his headlamp and letting his chin fall toward his chest. His brain feels heavy; it feels full of creeping things. Thoughts. Words. Most of all, him.
The sound of him saying Sander, Sander, all throaty from being kissed. The smell of the warm place between the corner of his jaw and his neck, where his blood beats fast. The velvet of his earlobe. The almost unbearable delicacy at the place where his collarbones come together. The slide of his tongue, the slight paperiness of his upper lip, the way he sighs when a hand is put on his nape.
Disgusting, says another voice. It might be his mother now, or the biology teacher from Year 5. He can't tell. Unnatural. A dead end. A disease of the brain. Another glug of the coffee, to exorcise them, and—he hopes, he wills—the twinge of his arousal, too.
He must finish. He must finish soon. It'll be starting to get pretty light in at most an hour. He can't hide the ladder in that lot for a third night, if he doesn't want it stolen; he can't ride out again with both his bags and the lantern and headlamp and batteries and all this shit. He can barely imagine hauling it all back tonight, or today, as it is. He's out of hiding spots.
He finishes the coffee to the last black pebbly drop, lets the cup tumble to the concrete below. Later. He'll pick everything up later.
For now, he lifts his hand, and he paints.