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The pale blue light of the moon danced across the carpet, illuminating the rough fibers with a hazy glow that made the burn holes from cigarettes and unidentifiable stains almost bearable to look at. Meursault never cared much about hotels. He appreciated why people would prefer to stay somewhere cheap, but he also understood that some people had a taste for comfortable luxury when it came to being away from home. He had no preference either way, the look of a room didn’t matter much when he would only be there for one day, and when he would be asleep for the majority of their stay.
It wasn't like the hotel they were staying at now was the bottom of the barrel. The beds had been made with a duvet and a pillow, and they weren’t filthy. He had no complaints. Underneath the thick blanket, staring at the ceiling, he could forget about what made the room unpleasant. Namely the stained floor, or that their shower only had cold water. Let it be clear that the reason Meursault couldn’t sleep had nothing to do with the hotel. It was just the fact that the night was too alive. There was something teeming in the stars, prickling the hairs on his scarred arms and keeping his eyes wide awake.
He saw his brain as a ball of yarn. He imagined himself slowly unraveling the thick strings that made up the railways for his thoughts. He would dig his fingers into it, burying his nails in the flesh and pulling it apart slowly. Brain tissue tearing apart, the squelching noises of neuroglia breaking apart, a sharp wincing pain, and then the peaceful nothingness of apathy. When there was a big enough hole for him to fit inside, he would slip into the void he created, where no thoughts were able to get in, and he would stay there. That place—The one in the space between his thoughts—Would be a peaceful place.
Meursault guessed that Gregor wasn’t able to sleep either. In the bed a few feet away, the man had been tossing his body around. It had been going on for about ten minutes now, to the point where Meursault had begun to form a solid assumption that Gregor had not slept at all since they shut the lights off.
“Are you alright?” Meursault asked softly, continuing to stare at the ceiling. It was a popcorn ceiling, and he was enjoying imagining pictures in the little details of the polystyrene. He didn’t want to speak too loudly. It was night time, and when the two of them were supposed to be sound asleep right now it only felt appropriate to be quiet.
“Can you speak up a little?” Gregor asked. Oh, right. Meursault had forgotten that what Meursault considered loud was almost a whisper by Gregor’s standards.
“Are you alright?” Meursault repeated.
“I always have a hard time sleeping,” Gregor replied with a soft sigh. “I sleep the most comfortably on my side,” He added. Meursault and Gregor had yet to share a room together. Typically Meursault went with Don Quixote, and Gregor with Rodya, but the two women had sprung a surprise on the both of them and decided to share a room together that night. Meursault hadn’t minded at all. Don Quixote was free to do whatever she wanted to do. He knew that she had no obligation to do everything with Meursault, especially when she might be looking for someone who matched her energy better. If he had to guess, he would say that Don was probably asleep by now. However, she would be snoring as loud as a power generator, with her entire body sprawled out across the entire bed. He smiled briefly at the mental picture. That was always how he had found her in the mornings.
“How do you sleep on the bus?” Meursault asked. He had seen Gregor asleep before. Why couldn’t he sleep now?
“It’s different when I’m sitting up, you know? When we drive for days without any stop, I’m forced to sleep. Nobody is comfortable when they sleep on the bus, anyways…” He had given up on finding a comfortable position to sleep in and was sitting on the edge of the bed, his hand gripping the sheets tightly. His glasses and a pack of cigarettes laid on the table beside him. “Do you mind if I—” He gestured to the carton of cigarettes.
Meursault sat up in bed as well and threw his legs over the side, “Go ahead. May I?” Meursault titled his head, nodding to the same carton.
Gregor responded by pulling out a long thin cigarette and handing it gently to Meursault. He took his lighter and held it to the end of the cigarette in his mouth, exhaling a puff of smoke as he shoved it back into his pocket.
“Thank you,” Meursault whispered as he placed the cigarette between his lips. “I understand what you mean,” He added, “I found it nearly impossible to sleep on the bus at first. But I got used to it,” people got used to anything after a while. He looked to his table and grimaced. “Ah,” He puckered his lips and frowned.
“Hm?” Gregor glanced at him, raising an eyebrow.
“Forgot a lighter,” Meursault replied indifferently. He would be fine if he didn’t smoke. But Gregor got up and walked over to him, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Then he pressed the end of his lit cigarette to Meursault’s unlit one, holding it there until Meursault’s grew a faint rosy light on its end.
Meursault could feel his body heating up. Ironically, much like his cigarette. Haha, what a funny analogy. He inhaled sharply and then proceeded to cough, momentarily forgetting that inhaling would fill his lungs with smoke. A cloud settled in the room, and he swiped it away with his hand. It was rare for him to be caught so off guard by something, especially something so small and insignificant. He had never cared about somebody being intimate or close to him before, now shouldn’t have been any different.
Gregor returned to his spot on the bed and held his cigarette between his fingers. He stared at the ceiling and blew out a long stream of haze.
Meursault was still struggling to recover. He hadn’t expected anything so… Informal from Gregor. He usually was quite professional.
Of course, there was the chance that something like this would happen, Meursault thought. The two of them had been working more closely together over the past few weeks, and that had accumulated into something more intimate. There was no intercourse, but they had exchanged a… kissing session (why was that so hard to say?). Meursault hadn’t thought much of it. People just do that sometimes. The way he saw it, he and Gregor just had something pent up from being in a crowded area for so long with no intimacy, and the two of them were the closest living human. Meursault hadn’t felt anything that he would attribute to love, in the metaphorical sense of the word. There had been heat in his body, and his heartbeat increased, but that was all just a natural reaction to kissing somebody else. He had felt the same thing when he was with other women, but he never saw himself in anything seriously long term with them.
“What was that?” Meursault asked, without much hint of annoyance or enjoyment in his voice. He was simply curious. He couldn’t think of a malicious reason that Gregor would have to do something like that. If Gregor had any intentions behind the action, Meursault would prefer that he said them upfront. Meursault never understood nonverbal communication anyways. He would always prefer hard facts and explicit statements instead of phrases with double meanings. That’s the reason why he and Don Quixote got along so well. The two of them were free to state their minds freely without having to worry about the other taking their words the wrong way. Meursault always said what he meant, even if sometimes he didn’t always mean what he said.
“Well, it’s called a cigarette kiss. Because it looks like the ends of your cigarettes are kissing,” Gregor explained, still looking at the ceiling. Meursault could see a faint smile creep up the veteran's lips, as if he was picturing a kiss and getting giddy like a schoolgirl.
“But why did you do that?”
“Did you not like it?” Gregor brought his head away from the ceiling and stared at Meursault’s chin.
Meursault shook his head, “I don’t mind either way. It's just…” He struggled to find the right wording.
“Caught you off guard?” Gregor raised a curious eyebrow, tilting his head slightly in Meursault’s direction. The moonlight danced across his tanned face, drawing light to the stubble on his chin and the way his hair fell in his eyes. He grabbed his glasses from the nightstand and threw them on. They sat crookedly on his nose.
Meursault nodded. “I suppose that’s it,” He mumbled, taking a long drag from his cigarette.
There was a passing moment of quiet where all they did was smoke. The burning of the nicotine filled Meursault’s lungs, and would travel back outwards in whispy clouds when he exhaled. It was a relaxing feeling. Gregor’s cigarettes were bitter on Meursault’s lips. Smoking didn’t do much to him, emotionally speaking. As in, it didn’t alter his brain chemistry or force him to do crazy things. It was just the repetitive motion of pulling the smoke to his lips and then breathing it out was relaxing to him. He could choose to focus on the earthy feeling of the herbs on his lips, or he could mindlessly keep his hands busy while he thought about things. He didn’t remember what compelled him to pick it up. He started when he was a lot younger.
Meursault recalled Gregor telling him that he started smoking consistently after the smoke war. It was common for his buddies to carry cartons of cigarettes around, but Gregor himself had no means to get his own. Every now and again when there was a rare moment of peace Gregor would be able to bum a cigarette off a companion, but the hobby never extended further than that. Once the war ended (or, at least when Gregor was discharged) he was old enough to do what he wanted. So he bought cigarettes, and would smoke them whenever he thought about the battles he faced. Meursault remembered thinking that he must’ve thought about it a lot. But the more he hung around Gregor the more he realized that the Smoke War actually did occupy much of Gregor’s passing moments and free time. It was no wonder the man had seemed so lonely to Meursault once he realized that. Being the only veteran of a war to that degree was sure to be isolating to him. Meursault rarely asked about Gregor’s stories, since he figured it was a sore subject, but whenever Gregor would mention something about the war it was a tiny hint into how he saw the world, it was a little fascinating.
“Meursault?” Gregor asked. He wet the tip of his finger and ground the butt of his smoke into it. He placed the trash back into the carton to throw away later, presumably.
“Hm?”
“What are we?” The question seemed sudden at that moment. One moment they had just been smoking in silence, enjoying each other’s company, and then such a personal question came out of the blue.
Meursault thought about it. He had no idea. He had never really given much time to the question. He had a sinking feeling that Gregor might ask something like that eventually, but he didn’t dwell on it or panic about it. It was just one of those things that would come when they came, he had supposed. And now the question was here: the big crisis over what their relationship was. Life would be so much simpler if things like labels could be figured out with a simple checklist. If you shake hands you are coworkers, if you talk about your lives you are friends, and if you make out and touch one another you are lovers. Meursault desperately wished that his brain could work like that.
It wasn’t that Gregor lacked physical attractiveness or his personality was awful. Out of all the sinners on the bus, Meursault found Gregor to be one of the more enjoyable people to be around. But despite all of Gregor’s beamingly good qualities, Meursault saw nothing in himself that would balance out a metaphorical relationship between the two of them. Gregor was so painfully human, and Meursault rarely felt like that at all.
Maybe it was the issue of Gregor’s friendliness. If the two of them were a stereotypical lovely couple, Meursault would be expected to parallel the level of kindness Gregor exerted on a daily basis. Which was impossible for him, since he had no idea where to even start with the most tame of interactions with the sinners. It couldn’t have been that, either. After going over it, Meursault came to the conclusion that he would be able to deal with having to learn how to interact with people, even if the interactions were just executed programs to him.
“What do you want to be?” Meursault asked. His head was starting to hurt after thinking about it too hard.
Gregor shrugged, “I’ll be whatever you want me to be.”
“I was going to tell you the same thing.”
The two of them stared at each other. The disconnected robot and the out of touch soldier, held in a standstill over the complicated question of love. What a predicament that was.
“I think I’m okay with whatever we have now,” Gregor spoke up after another prolonged period of silence, “I didn’t ask because I was unhappy. This is nice, what we have,” He explained.
Meursault nodded, “I agree with you on that. I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable.”
Gregor brushed it off his shoulders metaphorically. As if to say, No harm done!
Meursault smiled at him and placed the butt of his cigarette in the trashcan next to his bed, which Gregor had lacked. He stared up at the ceiling once more, where the light was dreamily waving through the bumps.
“Are you tired?” Gregor asked.
Meursault nodded.
Gregor ended up agreeing and they both laid back down. The night returned to the calm quiet it was supposed to have, and whatever had been keeping Meursault up before gradually faded into something that seemed small and insignificant now. He just closed his eyes and peacefully drifted off to sleep, Gregor following suit.