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“I used to count the stars when this happened,” Matteo muttered around the joint in between his teeth.
David watches him out of the corner of his eye. Matteo is slouched against the outside wall with his feet propped up onto balcony banister in front of him. He shields the joint with one hand and lights it up. If David didn’t know better, if he hadn’t been here to stop Matteo from clawing off his own ears from where the world was screaming around him, then he would think that Matteo was fine, that he was just another teenage boy lounging around on a lay Friday night, that he wasn’t ripping himself apart at the seams.
He hums and fixes the blanket that fell from around Matteo’s shoulder. It was too cold to be out here, he thought to himself, but when Matteo asked to go out on the balcony to get some air, to cool down his face from where the tears made him feel like he was on fire, to block out the world that was behind his bedroom door, David’s worries about the wind got stuck in his throat. He just grabbed the blankets off the bed and followed him out.
Matteo doesn’t elaborate, just takes a drag, and David asks, “Why’d you stop?” in that low, quiet voice that is reserved for Matteo only.
“Couldn’t count that high anymore,” Matteo shrugged, and David closed his eyes to try and stop thinking about a young and sad Matteo, counting stars through his tears every night.
David takes the joint from between Matteo’s lips and sucks it in. He holds onto the joint for a second longer, seeing if he could run it down faster. Matteo snatched it back too quick though.
They sit in silence for a while. David didn’t know how long they were out there. It was long enough for the cold to lock up his joints and make his ears start stinging. The only thing he could hear was sizzling down of the joint with each of Matteo’s breaths.
He looked over to see Matteo staring down at his hands. He was balling up his hand in a fist before flexing out his fingers, like he was itching to do something but was trying to stop himself. The joint was down to its end on the other and too close to Matteo’s skin for David’s comfort. “Hey,” he said. “Give me that.”
He plucks the joint from between Matteo’s knuckles and stomps in out next to him.
“What if this never goes away?” Matteo whispers, still looking down in his lap. “What if I’m like this forever, and you’re stuck talking me off the ledge when we’re 90 or some shit?”
“Hm?” David hums and turns towards Matteo. He thinks he can see the moment when Matteo realizes what he said, what he implied, what it all meant. He could see the wheels turning around in Matteo’s head, watched as his lungs clamped up and stopped the his breathing for a second, saw when the anxiety levels started rising up to the top of Matteo’s head until he was about to start panicking again.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean-“
David pushed himself into Matteo’s space until he was cramped up against his side. He wraps his arms tightly around Matteo, thinking maybe he can squeeze all those bad feelings right out of Matteo’s pores. “I always thought when we were all old and wrinkly, you won’t be smoking so much and instead have a hobby like needlepoint or knitting or something,” he says into his shoulder. “I don’t want to get kicked out of the old folk’s home because you have arthritis in your hands and can’t fan the smoke out the room fast enough, and we end up getting caught.”
Matteo holds himself incredibly still, and David worries if he’s breathing. He runs his fingers down the back of Matteo’s wrists until Matteo turns his palm over to link their hands. Matteo starts slumping further into the wall behind him. “Old folk’s home, huh?”
“Yeah,” David looks up at his face and sees that Matteo is still staring up at the sky. “We’re going to be causing chaos in all the hallways. I’ll hang onto the back of your scooter and we’ll throw confetti into everyone’s rooms to remind them to get the sticks out their asses because we’re old, not dead. And the nurses will say we’re the worst people there, but they secretly call us the cutest old couple they’ve ever met behind our backs.”
“That sounds nice,” Matteo says after a minute with his eyes closed and his hand clamping onto David’s so tightly that he can feel his nails in the soft skin on his knuckles.
David hums again. “David and Matteo Schreibner, the elderly menaces of society.”
That gets Matteo to shake his head and snort. He finally looks down at David with a small smile that has David scrunching up his nose and wanting to grin. “Matteo Schreibner, huh?”
David nods and leans up until his nose is pressed into Matteo’s temple. “You’re never getting rid of me now, monkey. Stuck with me forever.”