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There is a constant in everyone’s lives. This constant was just that, a constant. This constant was important because it would lead you to your soulmate. A beautiful thought, really, but a horrifying one.
Jeremy’s constant had clung to him since birth. It was the smoke from the fire that killed his parents and very nearly killed him. It was the smoke from the cheap cigarettes that the orphanage lady smoked. Jeremy often wished that he had a constant that wasn’t so related to danger. There was a girl at the orphanage named Meg and her constant was beautiful.
“It’s stars.” She tells him as her constant disappears from the sky. “That’s my constant. They’re everywhere. I want to be an astronomer. I think that’s how I’ll meet them. What’s yours, Jeremy?”
“Smoke.” He answers and he can smell the acrid cigarette smoke drifting from down the hallway.
He survives in the orphanage until he runs away. He does what he can, makes some money, and lives on the streets. His constant stays in the background.
He is seventeen and his constant rears its head in the form of gunsmoke. He wants to vomit, he has killed this man, this man now slowly bleeding in front of him. He does vomit and he runs.
He sees the stars from his seat on the bus and he wonders how Meg is doing.
There is no place for him as he flees his only home, he does not fit anywhere, but he crams himself into a smog-filled, crime-ridden city. This is the only place for him.
The smoke is everywhere now. It comes from his gun when he kills for pay. The man in front of him is begging.
“Please, please, I have a family.” Jeremy raises his gun on autopilot and he watches from afar when the man’s family holds the funeral, but he doesn’t dare go any closer.
The smoke is from his cigarettes, smoked while hanging out of his apartment window in the dead of night. It floats up, up, up, and curls itself lazily around Meg’s stars. It is beautiful and it works together and Jeremy wonders if maybe he and Meg could’ve worked out, but he knows that they wouldn’t have. The sudden blare of police sirens jolts him from his revelry and he ducks back inside, closing his window behind him.
It is dark the next time his constant appears, high above the roaring flames of a burning building. The flames flicker and gutter and try to lick the sky. He watches the show as beams of the house fall. There is a pair in the fire and Jeremy knows that it is their constant. The fire surrounds them, but pays them no mind. They are the ones that set the fire, Jeremy realizes, and he feels like he is intruding on something private, so he shoots one last glance at his smoke, and he walks away.
He is sitting on a roof and he wonders if maybe he was wrong about his constant. Maybe it’s the bruises on his knuckles or tattoos or even the moon, but he knows without a doubt that it is smoke.
He shoots, again, again, again, and he has breathed in enough smoke to kill a person, but it will not kill him.
He keeps running into the fire-setting duo at the scene of their crimes. He stops to admire his smoke, beautiful and dangerous, and he sees their silhouettes through the flames. It’s sweet, so he smiles, and personal, so he leaves.
The hallway to his apartment smells like sweet smoke and it hangs heavily in the air like a blanket. It attaches itself to the walls and it sits there in waiting like a predatory creature, preparing to make it’s next kill. Jeremy walks through it and the creature relocates to his shoulder.
He has killed another man and the gunshot rings in his ears and the smoke is in his nose. He is driving and there are police behind him, flooding the countryside with blue and red. His car is smoking, so he ditches it and treks back to the city on foot. It’s a long walk to the city, but he can see Meg’s stars more clearly, so he doesn’t mind.
Dawn is breaking over the horizon and he is standing on the pier, wood rough beneath his shoes. He knows that there is a body in the water, he put it there just hours ago. The sky is a soft pastel pink and there are small clouds scudding across it. There is smoke rising from the factories, urban and dirty against the clean and pure sky. Jeremy watches his constant fade high above him and the sun rises completely, flooding the city with pale light.
He is walking through the city and the side of a building erupts into flames. At first, he thinks that it’s the fire duo again, but they usually do their work at night, and there is a trio walking out of the collapsed wall in a billowing cloud of smoke. There is a girl with purple hair and face paint and she is without a doubt Meg. She has her arm around a woman with pink hair and matching face paint. They both hold clear Ziploc bags of diamonds that glitter like stars. And the third, the man has face paint on, differing from the pink and purple of the other two, it’s a mix of white and pale orange. He has smokey eye shadow around his eyes and it curls and fades into the face paint. The smoke twined itself around his body and its ashy fingers caught in the folds of his clothes. It trailed off of him like a cloak and it moved with his shoulders. He locks eyes with the man, who taps Meg on the shoulder and points at Jeremy. Meg looks at him and yips, nearly dropping her bag of stars and running towards him. She slams into him and the world greys over.
He comes to on the most comfortable sofa in the history of mankind. It’s black and there is a star-shaped pattern embroidered onto it.
“Sorry about knocking you out.” Jeremy looks up and sees Meg sitting in a chair on the other side of the room. “Didn’t know if you were a civilian or not.”
“Not.” Jeremy answers. “I’ve been in crime since I ran from the orphanage. What about you? Pretty sure you didn’t make Pink by being an astronomer.”
“Lindsay set off star-shaped fireworks from the top of the mountain. I saw them, followed, and everything clicked.
“Best thing I’ve ever done.” Lindsay says, walking in the room and pressing a kiss to Meg’s forehead. “You’re Jeremy, then?” Jeremy nods. “Trevor’s on the roof. He’s yours, right?” Jeremy nods again.
“He’s mad at me.” Meg says. “Because I knocked you out. He’s worried that you’ll be a civilian and run away from him.
“Not a chance.” Jeremy says and Meg shows him the stairs to the roof.
It is cold and dark and Trevor’s legs are dangling off the edge, he has a cigarette in his mouth and smoke curls around him.
“That shit’ll kill you.” Jeremy says and Trevor snorts.
“Reminds me of you.” Jeremy walks closer.
“Deadly and hot?” Trevor chuckles, but doesn’t look at him.
“Not a civilian, then?” Jeremy shakes his head even though Trevor can’t see.
“Not a chance.” Trevor looks up at Jeremy. There are still smears of face paint across his cheeks and his eyeshadow is untouched.
“Fuck.” Trevor’s voice cracks. “You’re real.”
“Actually, I go by Jeremy.” Trevor smiles and Jeremy sits.
“I never really thought about what would happen after this.” Trevor admits and passes Jeremy the cigarette.
“Neither did I.” Jeremy says. “But we can figure it out together.” They pass the cigarette back and forth and their smoke mingles in the hazy air.
Trevor is amazing, Jeremy soon learns. He walks around with smokey eyeshadow and winged eyeliner. On their first date, Trevor wears a dress, sheer at the bottom, but solidifying into a smokey, grey mass. He looks beautiful and Jeremy tells him so.
There is a constant in everyone’s lives. Jeremy’s constant is smoke and Trevor. The smoke has attached itself to Jeremy since he was young and now it halos around Trevor’s and Jeremy’s heads, proclaiming them false angels of the deadly city. The gun smoke rises as they shoot in a synchronised rhythm. They fit together like they were supposed to and the cigarette smoke won’t kill them.
They have melded with the smoke and they are each other’s constant.