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The noises were too loud, the bass was too harsh and the bodies too close. It was warm, so fucking warm and Peter was itching to pull off the knit sweater May had made for him, even though it was actually damn cold due to the approaching end of the year. He stumbled through the throngs of people, struggling to fight the feeling of being wrapped underwater, sounds and mind muffled and lost— loud and jarring. Apologies pained to escape his screeching lungs, asking and begging for a breath of air, unperturbed. Forcing through the crowds of his classmates, he struggled to reach the end of the room, the clear sliding glass to the backyard open and he all but sprinted in his need to get out. A force behind him pushed him and he nearly lost his balance as he stumbled onto the faintly lit backyard.
"You know, when people usually come out here during a party, they tend to want to be alone."
The voice startled him enough to notice a girl, the bottom of her black skirt riding up her thighs and boots strewn on the grass as she dipped her toes inside the pool.
"Six minutes." He had no idea how he choked that out but she looked up, hair messy and undone like it'd been pulled back for a while. A cigarette dangled from her lips as she spoke, the red closed around them drawing him to it as she watched them move.
"What?"
Peter was walking towards her. She pulled her legs out of the water, scooting back to tuck herself into the gap between the reclining chairs. "It's something. . . I used to tell Uncle B— someone I knew that everytime he smoked, that's six minutes less I'd spend with him."
She laughed —whether to act like he hadn’t choked up at the thought of his uncle (whom he hadn’t even spoken about in ages and thought he’d gotten past) or because of the absurdity of his sudden statement and appearance— and the hand squeezing at his lungs loosened ever the slightest. "Well. . . we're all dying. At least I get to control it."
Peter sat down in front of her, legs spread on either side of hers, holding a hand out. She looked amused.
"I did say I want to be alone."
"How about we be alone together then?"
She shook her head, chuckling as she passed him the cigarette. “Was waiting to hear that one,” he heard her murmur as Peter tried his hand at imitating her movements. She'd looked so graceful and had a fluid dexterity in her heady intoxication as she gazed at him, eyes on him deep and piercing. She was a contrast he couldn’t understand, but it drained the water and was cleaning out his lungs that were greedily sucking in pleasant air, trying to fill it with the purity the shaded place offered; but the bitter taste filling his lungs made him choke as he exhaled, the white fog puffing out painfully in his harsh hiccups and bleary coughs.
She was leaned over, patting his back as he calmed down. Peter kept his gaze on her eyes when he realised she was wearing a deep red lace under her silk shirt. "You've never done this, huh?"
"That obvious?" he asked, wiping at his teary eyes and adverting his gaze, not watching as she readjusted her position. The liquid was expunging from his lungs, and his mind grateful for the encompassing scent of sweet vanilla and deep and warm spice. Cool limbs pressed up against warm ones. She shrugged, handing him a bottle. Peter grabbed it by the neck and turned it towards him to look at it, the name catching his eye. "That's expensive for a student."
She smiled, a dim one, like they were best friends sharing a secret. She leaned in closer, her breath hitting his face. It smelled like the sweet wine and cigarette smoke, and some sort of berry. Peter leaned in closer to her in their constrictions, their bodies nearly melding into one. Jeans clad legs nearly forming a cage around a knees-tucked-under-her-chin beauty as she looked up at him. "That's why it isn't mine. I stole it from the parents’ don’t touch my expensive alcohol cabinet."
Peter laughed. Air had begun to slowly flow through his lungs and the alcohol he’d had earlier had stopped blocking his body. He brought the tip to his lips and took a large swig of the contents inside, the sweetness of it much better than the smoke that blew in his face. "You're staring."
“And you are drowning in alcohol. That's your poison, is it not?" she nodded at the bottle. Peter took another long draw of sweet alcohol. It tasted better than the beer that had been thrusted into his hand in a solo cup he'd promptly dropped upon seeing her— someone like her. That person wasn't his girl, not anymore she wasn’t. It couldn't have been. She wasn't here. Columbia wasn’t her scene, MIT was. Peter shrugged.
"It might be."
She hummed, looking around the place. "So, why're you here if you clearly don't want to be?"
"Isn't this how you make friends?"
She looked scoffed knowingly, sounding indifferent and yet amused. "Then you've come to the wrong place. The only friend you're getting is a night and regrets the morning after."
Peter smiled softly, musing over her words. She'd shuffled closer to the warmth he provided. Legs caging in an unknown aphrodisiac dream in their midst. The air was soothing the burning ache in his chest, the feeling cooling down through the sweet chill of the sweet wine.
"What about you?"
She shrugged, blowing out the smoke into his face when she turned to look at him from the pool, before turning back. Peter studied her, brows knitted.
"Why do you do that?" he took a hit of the cigarette she held up to his lips, and parted his lips to return the gesture when she closed in, head resting on his knee as she looked up through her lashes. Cool against warm. Familiarity against unknown.
"I guess it's what every artist goes through at some point, addiction and madness that gives into genius. I'm practically a crazy person they'll tell their friends or dates was an alcoholic and an addict and how she could've taken care of herself better while they stand in front of a a garishly done painting that I made that they somehow adore and venerate at Le Louvre or Le Musée d’Orsay."
Peter smiled at the way she pronounced the french names, the words sounding so at home and one with the thick yet comforting accent of her voice, offering the bottle she stole her way, more than half of its contents creating a warm and fuzzy feeling in his stomach. Fingers trailing the inside of her arm, brushing against the silk of her blouse. She grabbed the bottle, placing it on her lips and drinking languidly, the crimson stain of her lips colouring the rim of the bottle red. He'd usually be wary because of the germs, but there must've been something wrong yet right like everything else in that evening as he took a large sip, the red transferring onto his lips.
Peter looked up, noticing the feeling of her smoky breath mingling with his. He opened his mouth, the girl exhaling into his and luckily, he managed to succeed in keeping his hiccuping breaths to himself, the feeling less pungent than before as he blew the smoke in her face. She smiled, one twinging a deep feeling in his body he couldn't understand as he leaned closer.
"What about those regrets?"
"What about them?"
Peter took the stub from her hands, taking a slow inhale of the fatal components rolled up between his thumb and pointer finger and she let him. She was watching him with intrigued eyes, ones that held opalescent thoughts flowing through dainty burgundy painted hands as her fingers danced on his skin. Peter could feel the trace of them long after they left their heavy yet feathery weight on his body.
"You don't seem to have any."
"I don't feel the need to."
She was giving him an indescribable glance, but Peter preened under the idea of it. The idea that regrets weren't something to have. Something an enigma of his head might have made up, someone he wasn't sure as real, inebriated and alcohol addled as they traded a cigarette back and forth. Knees touching bare skin, and he could feel the warmth through his jeans. Skin touching skin, and he was tracing a steady path up the expanse of her, hand coming to rest under her jaw, thumb pressing onto her lower lip like a question, and she leaned into it, pushing forward in desirous countenance.
Unlike every other person he'd seen at the party, this had been soft. She was warm and gentle and supple and all soft edges under his palms, unlike the dark and sharp bites of her definitive gazes and answers. No clashing teeth, groping at each other against a wall. . . it was all soft and sensual and he couldn't get enough of her lips. He sprung alive under her touch as she brought her hands over his slim and harshly cut edges, over the bruises on his knuckles as she held a hand there, the other curling around the collar of his shirt as she pushed herself onto his lap, Peter following through with wanton ardour.
The quiet bass of the party had begun to get louder and she pulled away, the smudged lipstick drawing dark and hooded eyes to it. Peter turned around, seeing someone from his class, he couldn't exactly remember who it was as they noticed the pair, quietly backing up and shutting the door behind them.
She laughed, her voice lilting with the heady kiss as she sucked the air around them greedily into her lungs, a contrast from her claims of death being an inevitable pair at the end of hand dealt out to them. The sound was airy and light unlike the tension brewing as she moved back, just enough to gaze at his hooded and primal desire, her hips still pressing down into his. Peter missed her warmth at once, almost considering pulling her flush against him once again, but she seemed to revel in the cooling breeze of the approaching winter, an incandescent glow following her every move as the moon seemed to admonish her with her attention, showering her with the sweetest love Peter had ever seen been given to someone he didn't even know. And he wanted that, even if it was just for until when the fiery embers of the sun brought out a new dawn.
"Regrets?"
He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, pulling her closer by the waist as he caressed her cheek. She was running a hand over the splatter of blues, yellows and purples scattered across the carvings of his knuckles. She couldn't look at him —all Adonis and godly— while she was close enough to feel him. She could feel him. She was looking up at the moon as she hummed unintelligibly, the messed up hair and smudged lipstick that had dragged down the column of her exposed throat when he’d moved his thumb making her look like she was a mixture between earthly and heavenly in that moment.
"I have all night for them." Her voice was a whisper as she turned to him, eyes low and holding promises of a lifetime in a night. Sobriety had walked out a long time ago on either of them and Peter didn't mind if he could experience it. He wanted to experience it. He wanted to experience her. "What about you, sweetheart?"
He flushed, swallowing down the rationale screaming at him about his early day following him and smiled, closing the distance again, hands coming to thread through her hair as she pulled him closer by the collar of his sweater, the cool metal digging into the scarred skin of his back that was exposed as they shuffled to find exactly that point to euphoric pleasure contrasting pleasantly with his heated skin as he pressed her into his lithe body, hands running wild to trace every nook and cranny like she was doing.
There was still time for the sun.
[fin.]