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Miles gazed up at the ceiling.
His head lay at the opposite end of his bed to Alex's.
Alex had covered his body with the sheets and duvet. Miles was exposed.
"I reckon I might love yeh." Miles said.
"I don't." Alex answered with a shadow of a wink.
"Yeh always say that." Miles grinned with a desultory kick into a joint of Alex's knee.
"You always say the same line to see what l'll do." Alex answered
"Yeh can be transparent like clingfilm without even knowin' it. Jamie tells yeh all the time, he's right." Miles said.
"When I choose." Alex answered.
It was a lie they both understood, and a woman in the street outside let her dog take a piss on one of the wheels of Alex's old car.
Alex had driven all the way to Miles house for a conversation.
The smell of the docks and the smoke from the factories came in with the fresh winter air in the partially opened windows.
"Are you sleepin' with anybody else?" Miles asked.
"One last week. It didn't do anything for me, but they didn't want to stay, which worked out well for both of us. Rang Nick and just rambled on with shit for twenty minutes. He knows what I'm like, what it's about." Alex answered.
"What are yeh doin' on Saturday?" Miles asked.
"I bought a 1983 model Land Rover to help out Dad - help out one of his mates. But I need to fit a new clutch into it so I asked Cookie if he'd do it for a hundred quid." Alex described.
Miles snorted a laugh.
"Yeh already have cars. Yeh bought that bloody buildin' on the industrial estate up near your Dad's place to put them in." Miles said.
"Yeah, but he checks there's no robbers and he takes Mum and her friends out in them." Alex said.
"What do yeh want with a fookin' Land Rover when yeh've got Jags?" Miles laughed, spreading out his hands in gesture. "Fuck, I need a fag to deal with this."
"Because it's beautiful." Alex answered.
Miles ungracefully got out of the bed and found his jacket on the floor near the free-standing wardrobe. He took out his lighter and the box of fine-cut thirties.
"Land Rovers are not objects of beauty." Miles said. "Not with three hundred thousand miles on the clock. Not with the smell of fookin' old men and wet labradors. Stop pissin' about and get a Rolls Royce, man, have some class. I want yeh to pull up outside my door in a Phantom while I ponce about."
Alex's mouth twisted in a smile. Miles put a cigarette into his mouth, and had to click the lighter three times to get a flame.
"A hundred quid for Jamie to install a clutch?" Miles brow became crooked. "Fook off. Give him two hundred, it's a shit of a job."
"Alright." Alex agreed.
Ten years before, Miles would have been slightly disconcerted by being naked with someone in his house. The reality of the situation after the fact was often lost on the idiotic, majority population.
His former handsomeness was increased with his increasing age. He was still becoming accustomed to his new handsomeness.
Alex wanted to witness it in proximity.
He did not want it to be too close.
He had dreamed about the proximity closing to nothing with the aid of teeth biting into tendons.
According to the old Druid's, it was an omen.
Alex believed them.
"What did yeh dream about when yeh went to sleep before?" Miles asked.
Nothing revealed, everything denied.
"I don't know. It's not clear." Alex answered.
"Do yeh want to tell me what yeh think it was?" Miles asked.
"No." Alex said.
Miles moved back to the bed. He did not care about getting cigarette ash in his sheets.
Within three deep breaths, Alex felt his body returning to the meditative state he had been in before he had begin to talk.
As the ritual went.
"I should leave you soon." Alex hinted.
He never fulfilled his statement.
Miles could not remember knowing a man so determined to envelope and lengthen a period of consequence, whilst wholeheartedly denying that sentimentality would ever drive him to do so.
Miles was aware that when Alex was in his company for long enough, he started to mirror Miles behaviour.
Miles language went into his thoughts.
Miles determinations and opinions started to fold seamlessly into Alex's own until they were on the verge of being entirely transformed.
Thousands of words, thousands more words, came into Alex's head and mouth.
It could be mystifying.
It could be bewitching.
But those words did not bear the same meanings, despite what others thought.
"Yeh want a drink?" Miles asked.
"Yeah, that'd be good." Alex answered.
"I meant water; do yeh want alcohol?" Miles asked.
"If you are." Alex answered.
He let Miles do as he chose. It made him comfortable.
The observations Alex could indulge and the character he saw in these choices of Miles were the food he thrived upon when he was absent from Miles.
"What alcohol do you have?" Alex asked.
"Fookin' everythin'." Miles declared proudly.
"Tequila?" Alex asked.
"Just say yeh want a margeurita." Miles grinned. "Yeh little bitch, honestly. What are yeh shy of? Fook, I can't see."
Ash littered the white linen as Miles twisted about. Alex assumed Miles glasses, that he hated to wear, were in the bedside table. He was correct, bit found them in danger of being scratched, with loose limbs, for they were half squashed under a tattered book of no consequence to anyone.
Alex caught Miles by his arm to still him, and slid the glasses onto his face.
Miles hesitated in a tight pause as he waited for his eyes to adjust. A vague, hot smell of the burning linen came between them. It did not interest them enough to warrant attention.
"Like with babies." Miles said. "Apparently they can't see shite until they're six months old. They know their family by smell and the sound of their voices."
"Miles..." Alex sung softly. Miles grinned, his eyes narrowing behind his glasses. "Miles...Miles Kane...he's here, present, ladies and gentlemen...and he's got a song for you..."
"Like a fooked up game of peek-a-boo." Miles added. "See yeh now." He lowered his glasses. "See yeh not." He lifted them. "See yeh now." He lowered them. "See yeh not."
Alex took the glasses from Miles nose, and placed them on his own face.
"That was a kink when we were teenagers...sex with the class nerd, the sensory experience...sensory deprivation...get navel-gazing wimp on the floor and fuck him like a bitch..." Alex murmured, going back thirteen, fifteen years in a part of his mind.
"Sex dream." Miles looked over Alex, and how sauve he looked with the glasses that Miles felt made him look so unbecoming.
"Hm, yours?" Alex asked.
Three curls of smoke started to rise from the bed linen.
"Fookin' Jesus, shit!" Miles shouted.
Two naked young men vaulted out of the bed. Miles seized a stale mug of water from his desk and threw it onto the smouldering linen before he slapped his hand against the damp fabric repeatedly.
He had made a mess of the bed, and himself.
"Well done, champ." Alex said, leaning against the doorframe. "Round two's out of the question. I'm not doing it on your couch."
"Funny that, the floor's great since yeh got into the mental habit of hoovering for fun. Miles raised his eyebrows.
Alex wrinkled his nose before he laughed. He took of Miles glasses and lightly clamped the edge of an arm between the tips of his teeth.
"Keep that look." Miles instructed.
"What? For you?" Alex quipped. "Your dysfunctional eyes only? For your eyes not even laser surgery could fix only?"
"Go off with someone else and never be satisfied, then." Miles said. He obscenely wobbled himself. "Yeh know I'm yeh one and only beast of bliss."
Alex was suitably appalled, but did not refuse Miles when he drew closer. He removed his glasses from Alex's face with a kiss to his neck.