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Under the city lights, 1985
It was much the expected view that met his gaze out yonder, however yonder of a view an uptown suburban street could be. Light, flickering occasionally, scattered across the buildings nearby and adorning them in its glow.
Music leached slowly out the building, dampened only by the cover of falling snow. Even so, the insistent thud of a drumbeat and a loud cheer or two refused to go unnoticed.
Winter had brought the annual social going-ons in full force, he had realised, freezing chill more than evident with his first step out of the party into the inkiness outside.
With a slip of his hand in, and the slip of the cigarette out of the silk-lined pocket, came the effortless flip of lighter that threw a sharp blaze against the snow’s wet. Then the quick scan after, of his surroundings.
Glancing one way. Then the other.
Where were they?
Seeking something, one he very well expected to see.
Where?
Oh, there.
There they were. In broad night-light.
The one touch or sling of an arm too many, the proximity, the undivided attention that cut through even most drugged of haze.
He was yours, all along. Wasn't he?
The undeniable click of a door in ungodly hours, hushed like a guilty secret, graduating to distant sounds that fluttered through the night.
And bastard, you were his!
Suspicions of whatever, or whoever, may have lay behind the scenes, had lingered in his mind, yet he knew that being shrewd didn’t always equate to the truth, and he felt to pry was unnecessary.
Was now prying? He stood there, tasting the thought amidst the snow and smoke. Looking on carefully, in a suit made increasingly wet by the flakes that swirled around, he moved aside in a swift step to further cover himself under the eave.
Anyway. It no longer mattered now, the long-standing question left in the air had given its placid answer.
Glaringly obvious, in retrospect.
In the shadows, yet glaringly, stood the tall figure against the pasty, frigid brick, and the unmistakable smaller one, closeness turning their shadows into one.
There they were - in embrace.
Lost in each other. Crushingly.
A love, if he dared to claim so, if not prematurely. One that they themselves would never outright admit.
One that had them exchanging the warmth of a toasty party for warmth of one other amidst the bitter chill without batting an eyelash.
Under the neon of the building opposite, they were lit in the cyclic purple, greens and pinks, as they kissed.
Larger cloak wrapped across the smaller to keep him out of the cold. They were left hidden, just the way they preferred. The way that was suited, he noted, to the confines of their oft-dissected world.
He watched as they played to the dips of each other. Their high and low. Their song. Slivers of magenta-lit pale fingers pressed the guitarist's face and chest close. And in turn, the resolute scrape along the wall to coax those broad shoulders down and even closer.
So warm, so close that even a single stray snowflake could not weasel its way between their reddened lips.
Not without melting.
They paid notice to the swirling white darting around them. Hands scraping again on the earthen brick against the bassist’s back, thawed by those wandering fingertips - clad in woolen gloves yet the intensity his touch remained no less.
Intensity. They could feel it.
He, could feel it. Vapour tumbling from the lover’s chests.
It was all them, and them only.
Forget the bleeding world.
Standing in the distance, he watched on, throwing caution on them, watching as the flakes whisked it wildly away before it could reach anywhere near them.
It was a moment for no eyes except their own, he knew, flicking away the leftover ashes.
They needed to savour each one they could get. There weren’t going to be many, he knew. Such was the precisely painful way that life tended to go.
Tended, and would.
But for now. For the Power Station, they were here.
“Good luck, boys.”
He didn’t wait to see their heads turn. That descent back down to Earth after being lost in the heaven of another.
Fixing up his coat pocket and saving a prayer for whenever they'd need it, he made his way back inside. One cigarette short, yet smile playing on his lips.
And behind him, a thud of a wild heart-beat, surely, playing on theirs.