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Spoon’s heat under his hands. He could focus on that. The rhythm of breath, of the heartbeat. Strong and steady. The smooth, short hair, prickling against his fingertips. Separate from himself. A good, welcome texture. Corded muscle, thin skin, hot with energy. Life. Spoon was alive. Rohid was alive. This was okay. They were not one in the same. He felt empty. The dog wasn’t empty, the dog was full of air. Rohid tried to focus on the beating of his own heart but it stubbornly stayed still in his chest. Dead weight. Was he alive?
The dog was half asleep, half flopped onto Rohid’s lap, slender legs crossing over his thighs. Huffing slightly and tail thumping lazily against the arm of the couch as Rohid did his best to slip back into reality. Slipping all the way through to the other side. He couldn’t feel his lungs expanding. He must have been breathing, though. Right? He was awake. Maybe. And alive? And. Petting the dog. The dog who was starting to shift and roll, trying to reveal his stomach and managing to anchor his weight against the juncture of.
Ow.
Ow.
The juncture where Rohid’s thigh met his torso, suddenly bearing the full concentrated weight of an adult greyhound. Rohid bit his lower lip and exhaled smoothly through his nose until Spoon finished rearranging himself, belly up to the ceiling, hind legs splayed in an open invitation for belly rubs.
“Fatty,” exhaled in a quiet whisper, unwilling to break the silence too much, but rewarding the dog with ample scritches across his ribcage. There was pain. Not from the dog, thank god not from Spoon. The soreness in. There was consciousness in the other room, awakening. Grumbling, although minimized. Not that he would have minded if it were louder.
He’d stayed the night. He’d done that before. Different reasons. Different outcomes. Last night he hadn’t. Or maybe he had? He could feel the memory of that night stubbornly slipping out of his hands, slippery between his fingers. Fish flesh, slick with ocean salt and blood. Too delicate to be held properly. When had last time been? Had there even been a last…there must have been. It hurt to try and think harder about it, migraine threatening to split his head in half.
There was something knocking against the interior of his skull. A gentle drift. A hand knocking. A. Not a hand? His hands were on the dog.
Chen was awake. And cautiously knocking on Rohid’s thoughts with his own.
If he’d been in a better frame of mind, he would have been able to be impressed by how good at that Chen was getting.
Not the voice in his head, the voice was outside and it was Chen’s and it was saying “Couldn’t sleep?” still in the other room, but speaking up now. Out loud in the world. The real? “Rohid?” Getting Spoon’s attention.
When did?
Rohid lifted a leg to climb back into the bed, Chen agreeably shifting. Clearly expecting him to lay back down and when he didn’t, rolling slightly. Hiding the wince. The shoulder was giving him more and more trouble. Did he ever look up those…When did he get back in the room? He didn’t remember leaving the couch or Spoon leaving his lap or. Or.
“Hey,” quiet. A body leaning up, moving, thickly corded muscle moving beneath thin, heavily scarred skin. Warm. Not offering anything. Not expecting anything either. Sitting up entirely with a strained, breathy noise. Harder to do without the counterweight, but he’d had practice.
“Hey,” hollow repetition. A porcelain doll with a draw-string recorder, spitting back out whatever was said to it first. Tongue thick and dull in his mouth. It didn’t sound his like his voice. Hands on his hands. Slightly off, if one knew to look. Flecked with indents. Good hands. Chen’s hands. “Am I alive?” the words sounded miles away and buried deep in the clay of another doll’s mouth. Why even ask? He had no heartbeat, no air in his lungs, no brain in his head. Empty all the way through until the end of the.
“Yes.” Firm and steady. Mind waking up more, even if he couldn’t make out the thoughts. Didn’t know entirely what he was brushing up against. There was comfort in the solid bricks. Comfort in the way hands were raising his hands up to his neck.
Not a threat. Not a violent action, fingers. False fingers pressing Rohid’s false fingers into his own neck. Light. Just firm enough. Something fluttered. Skin against his own skin. Chen positioning his fingers to feel his own carotid pulse, thrumming slow and low in his neck. He had a heart. It was beating. He.
“You feel that, right?” cautious but simple. Not asking. Informing. You feel that. You feel that.
“Ah.” A simple sound that part of Rohid’s brain was sluggishly but determined to label as something he made. He made that sound. He was alive, he could feel it right there. Right under his fingertips that were absolutely attached to his fingers, hands, arms, shoulders. His living body. “That’s,” half muttered out, feeling like something was shifting with every reassuring ba-thump. “Embarrassing,” words were still hard though.
Chen said something. It felt nice to hear, but Rohid’s brain was still busy with the label maker and his own limbs. His hands were moving through the atmosphere and settled in his lap, where Spoon’s heat was still lingering. “What happened? Last night,” his own voice there, too smoke on the wind thin. But still his. “We had dinner?” A full sentence! Ish. Somewhere in his skull another piece slotted back where it belonged. Shaking free crumbs and tidying itself up for presentation. Thoughts clearer and easier, even if it was only in fractions.
“We did,” Chen shifted again, and Rohid watched as his hands moved to stabilize himself, scooting even further into a seated position. Fully awake now. Maybe Rohid would apologize in the morning for that, if he remembered. “You had spaghetti,” a gentle nudge, not so much guiding as adjusting the aim.
Another bit slotted into place. “It tasted fine,” plain tomato and garlic and it had gotten a little weird and too chewy in the time it took for Rohid to remember he was cooking it. “I overcooked it,” but it had been cooked here, in the kitchen in Chen’s apartment. He remembered boiling the water and getting distracted by Spoon.
“That’s what you told me, yeah,” a note of encouragement, hidden among the layers of sleepiness, glad he had remembered on his own. And after a short pause, watching one another in the dark, “Do you remember what woke you up?”
“No,” He’d woken up, if it could be called that, sitting up on the couch with Spoon weighing him down in the world’s best version of a security blanket. “I’d like to sleep,” an empty statement, simply voicing a desire. The part of his brain that hadn’t been slipping through a blank expanse felt like a dribbling idiot, but even that emotion was slid off to one side. He’d feel better after he slept, right? If he slept.
“Okay,” Chen’s voice was clearer on that one, his facial expressions more in focus. Softer, despite how tired he felt. “We can go back to bed,” and Rohid felt an uneasy sense of pride at recognizing Chen’s hand coming to cradle his cheek, the sensation and prickle and dull slide of the thumb at the crest of his cheekbone.
“Sorry,” word slipping out on an easy tendril of smoke, “For last night,”
Morning had come. Was going but was yet to be fully gone. Coffee had been made and left untouched by both of them—cooling and burying the quiet whispers it overheard in its dregs. Chen and Spoon were upwind of the cigarette, thankfully upwind for the coughing fit that followed Rohid’s next inhale. Nicotine and tar. Cost and benefit analysis were run somewhere in the background. But he didn’t smoke anymore.
They both knew it was a lie.
And neither of them wanted Spoon to breathe that shit in. The apology was examined with a much more gentle turning of the lens. Chen turning to look at him in the dullness of the rising sun. “How are you feeling now?” as cautious as the apology. Had he said it out loud? The rawness of his throat made it feel he had, but perhaps that was from the burning.
There weren’t words for it anyway. None that don’t slip through his fingers. He shrugged and felt Chen sigh. Saw it happen, in the shifting shoulders beneath the worn hoodie. As far away and inscrutable as the moon and stars, drifting in their personal galaxies.
There was a part of him that wanted to dig in deep. Wanted to shove his fist down his craw and pull up the words that refuse to leave and onto his tongue. His fingers lingered on his lips as he took another deeper drag. Cigarette smoke serving as a cheap ass canary in the coal mine of his gut. No gas. No words. The shrug was all he could manage. A smaller grunt.
No answer from Chen, letting him drift instead. Dry wind taking him as it would.
They used to scream at each other. Words clipped sharp enough to leave bloody tongues, unable to lick their own wounds for how the licking stung. Leaving those injuries to heal or fester as fate would have it. None of that anymore.
Which was another lie.
Some of that. The easy rut to fall into. But Rohid couldn’t speak much anymore. Not without feeling ghosts running razor wire over his vocal cords. Easier to be quiet.
Easier to be a whisper if and when he needed to talk. Harder to be harsher when the words were moth wing frail. Barely enough air to disrupt the dust. Weight crept into his lungs with the smoke, making it take effort to breathe.
Tired, was all. Just tired. “Last night,” exhaustion in Chen’s voice as well. In the angle of his eyebrows, which always seemed to tell the truth even when he didn’t want them to. “Do you remember what you asked me?” A yes or no question, if he chose to take it that way. He did, shaking his head slightly. Feeling the memory leaving his mind as he exhaled smoke through his nose. Wafting up into the atmosphere. Christ, he must be a pain in the ass to deal with.
“Asked if I was alive,” his voice was getting worse. Hideous in its croaking, throttled with phlegm and impotency. Vocal cords rattling the bars of their cage.
“You did,” glancing away, just long enough to pat Spoon between the shoulders and give Rohid a look that fully communicated that he needed to finish up the cigarette so they could get back inside. “But that wasn’t the only thing you asked me,”
Shit. Rohid’s head was filling with cigarette fumes. Filling the empty space, enough to leave it feeling full. Clouded and heavy and. He didn’t remember asking anything else. “What?” because full sentences were falling away, too much ash filling his fuck fuck he hissed sharply, dropping the burning end of his cigarette on the ground, waving his hand sharply and violently to numb away some of the sting.
“You asked me if I knew what you were,” heavier patience in the voice. The edge of the cliff that the question apparently dragged them both towards holding no fear of the inevitable drop.
Not true. Plenty of fear. Doing it anyway.
Stronger than he could be.
“Yeah?” barely a noise, caught in the wind. What the question had been and what answer Chen had given were lost in shifting sand, eaten by the dunes of his mind. Buried for future archaeologists to ponder over. Shattered, scattered fragments. Spoon had licked his face when they’d gotten inside, but Spoon wasn’t here now.
The wind was.
Catching strands of hair. Chapping his right cheek, wind burn creeping along his temple. Changing trajectory, needing compensation. A shift. Minor adjustments. The figure on the other end of the scope made his fingers ache for the pulling. Heart steadying. Slowing. Each pulse making the reticle bounce.
There was no ammunition in the chamber, not that there had ever needed to be. The smell of smoke, acrid and thick, in the air. Too much. Eye unmoving. Body frozen in time and burning for it. Blanketed down. Heat.
Tired. Tired was all. Tired was why. Memories scattering, grains of sand. Rubble beneath the heel of a boot, stardust, ashes, smoke, getting blown in the eyes. Stealing his breath from his lungs. Stopping the heart. Stopping the diaphragm and gravity. Filling his brain with. Dry and peeling.
Was he still asleep? No.
There was Spoon’s heat under his hands. He could focus on that.