For the first time in my short-ass life and long-ass death, I wake up with somebody in my arms.
This time, it feels safe. This is something new, something I have with only him, something with no repressed memories attached because it's like nothing I've ever experienced before. It's safe, and it's good, and it's happy.
We're spooning - guess that happened sometime in the night. My left arm ended up draped around his middle, my fingertips just touching the skin of his stomach, I assume because his shirt rode up in the night. My right hand is resting against the back of his neck, my fingers just touching his coarse curls. And our legs are intertwined, my right stuck between the both of his. We're a tangle of limbs.
I have to shuffle away after a moment because of a lovely little thing called morning wood, but I let my arm stay draped across his side and my hand touching his neck as I create distance between the bottom half of our bodies. There isn't any reason to spoil this, is there? If he wakes up, I can tell him truthfully that it's not my fault - it did just happen in the night.
I move the hand touching his neck just a little, letting my fingers run through the downy hair that grows at the nape. That's when Theo moves. He doesn't tell me I'm weird, or to get off him - hell, I don't even think he wakes up. He just turns over, eyes still closed, and slots his head right underneath my chin. He's definitely still asleep.
Now, he's lying on my arm and my left hand is resting on his bare spine. His knees are jutting into my stomach, which hurts a little but not enough to be uncomfortable. His hands are tucked into his chest, but one of his fingers is touching my shirt, just above my ribs. I'm wrapped around him.
I'm glad I no longer have a heartbeat. It would be pretty fucking fast.
I drift in and out of sleep for a few hours, this boy who's over a head taller than me curled up in my arms. I've never felt more peaceful in my life.
I wake up suddenly, properly, when Theo also wakes up for real, stretches automatically and hits me in the chin and knees simultaneously. I yelp and he jumps at the noise, scrambling away from me and nearly falling out of the bed. He frowns at me and I expect him to get out of bed or ask me to leave, but he just stretches again and stays put, staring at me with features wrapped in the room's shadow.
"Sorry," he mumbles after a moment, his voice husky.
"It's okay," I reply an octave too high. I remove my arm slowly from underneath his body in case I do something stupid. As always, I'm cold without his skin on mine.
Theo frowns sleepily again, looking adorable with his head being the only thing poking out of the covers. His hand comes free, accidentally hitting mine on the way up, (both of my arms are now lying between us again) and he massages the bridge of his nose. "I tried to beat up Jack Vine."
"Uh huh."
"You broke Jack's nose."
"Yeah."
"I'm suspended."
"'Fraid so."
Theo sighs. "Thanks again. And sorry for making you sleep with me - in my bed, I mean. I'm a pussy." "You're not." I scowl into the semi-darkness. "Don't you dare say that. I'm glad I could be here... here for you."
Theo looks down at me, the beanpole, and shuffles a little closer. My heart leaps into my mouth.
"Did you mean what you said yesterday?" he says, almost inaudibly even though we're most likely alone in the house and definitely alone in the room. "That you'd come and visit my mum with me next Sunday?"
"Of course. Of course, I meant it."
Theo smiles, then shuffles underneath the covers, looking down so I can't catch his eye. His hand finds mine, resting between our almost-touching knees and squeezes. it. "Thanks."
He doesn't move it straightaway afterward. He keeps it resting there.
But, after a moment, he laughs awkwardly and shifts his hand, disguising the movement as a third stretch. Then he pulls the covers away and slides out of his bed, grabbing an overlarge hoodie from the floor and heading out of the door before I can see if he got hard too.
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What are we? Something I don't deserve. Something dangerous. Something that's going to end in pain. But, for now, it's good. It's something I'm too selfish to let go of.
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It's a weekend of blissful silences and long, peaceful nothing. We go for walks. We watch movies on his bed or the sofa. We alternate between going out and staying in for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Theo shows me more of the town, takes me to places of his history. He gives me little snippets of his past, tells me parts of stories about his mother or remembers times when his father still had time for him. I still give him nothing except my now, but he doesn't seem to mind anymore.
Theo doesn't ask me to sleep in his bed again Saturday, Sunday, Monday or Tuesday night. It's a good thing, I tell myself. And it is. It gives me a chance to sort out these thoughts I shouldn't be having, these feelings I shouldn't be experiencing. It lets me bunch them up and slot them away with the rest of the stuff I don't let myself think about.
He revises. I read. Georgia jokes, tuts, banters with Theo. The three of us eat dinner together. The school calls and tells Georgia to collect work for Theo. When the weekdays start, he does it and I help him out.
Theo's dad doesn't call.
Sometimes, he spends time alone. And I get that. He's been in my constant company for over a week -he needs some time for himself and I don't resent him for having it. He goes for walks alone in muddy feels and returns with bright eyes and mussed hair - and, once, with a clump of lavender that Georgia takes with a smile and sets in a mug of water on the windowsill. Meanwhile, I either read or I sit in the kitchen with Georgia and watch her clean and cook. She can't really acknowledge me, but she puts on the radio and sends me the occasional half-smile when she can. It's a silence, like the silence I'm used to, but it's a living silence. It's a good silence.
I don't let myself think about missing it.
On Wednesday, the day before Theo's set to return to school, he's quiet at dinner. He pokes his food around the plate with the utensils, crushes chili beans under his fork and nibbles them off, takes five minutes to eat one shred of lettuce. It's kind of annoying. But I put it past me because I can tell something's up.
I flop down on the end of his bed after dinner, showered (I've started doing that now) and wearing a fresh pair of his pajamas he lent me. (These ones smell like him. The other pair he lent me was being overridden by my non-scent.) Theo, sitting against the pillows with his knees up to his chest and a book balanced on top, frowns at me.
"What's eating you?" I ask. "Bacteria."
"Ew. And stop avoiding the question. You were practically silent at dinner."
Theo sighs and looks at the book, refusing to make eye contact. After a pregnant pause, he says: "It's just... I have school tomorrow."
I sit up, my hair falling into my eyes, and shuffle to his end of the bed, the act of getting closer to him feeling more natural than an arbitrary distance.
"I won't let him get at you, Theo," I say, settling next to him with my back curved upwards and leaning on my forearms so I'm looking up at him. "Not again."
Theo scowls. "I'm not afraid, okay?" He shakes his head. "Sorry. But I'm not scared of him, Luke. He knows he can't pull that shit again. We'll both be watched." He sighs. "It's just... this has been great. You, me and Georgia living like we don't have a care in the world. I don't want to go back to that fucking school, with all of them staring and whispering and-"
"Theo," I say, cutting him off. He fixes his dark eyes on me. "I don't want to go back there either. I never do." He opens his mouth and I hold up a finger to stop him. "But we have to."
"Says who?"
"Says me."
Theo rolls his eyes, snapping the book shut. "Stop trying to act like my fucking parent. You're not an adult; you're just as much of a kid as I am."
I refrain from reminding him that I'm actually sixty-one years old because he does have a point. I've lived a lifetime, but I haven't actually lived it. I haven't really had the chance to grow up. All I can do is sit back and watch other people do it around me. This week with Theo is the closest I've ever been to a normal existence.
I sigh. "Let's not fight, please." Theo frowns, then relaxes. "Okay. After a few minutes of awkward silence, Theo carries on reading. Sometime after the clock on the wall reads eleven, he says without looking up from Harry Potter: "Do you want to stay here again tonight?"
I look up from his phone sharply. (I was watching a show.) "Do you want me to?" I ask, almost cautiously.
"Yes," he says, turning the page. Still not looking at me.
"Alright then," I say because two can play at the casual game.
The only change after that is that I watch the cartoon with my body underneath his quilt as opposed to on top of it.
Sometime past midnight, after I've finished watching the show and was just considering going to sleep without him, Theo switches off his lamp and nestles underneath the covers with me. Unlike last time, we end up facing each other, even though we don't touch.
Theo doesn't seem very interested in conversation, because his eyes are beginning to slide closed. But I'm wide awake now. Hesitantly, I reach out and touch his arm, letting my fingers linger on his skin for a second after I've captured his attention before letting my hand fall between us.
"Theo... can you tell me about your mother?"
Even in the darkness, I can see Theo's frown. "Why? And don't you know already? I've told you plenty of stories."
"But you haven't told me about her. And you don't have to if you don't want to. She just... she seems pretty great." Theo chuckles sadly. "She was." He shakes his head, his curls making the fabric of the pillow bustle. "Do you really want to talk about this? Like, really actually genuinely?" "Can you think of any more synonyms for 'really'?" I ask, laughing. Theo smiles grudgingly. "And yes, I do. If you don't mind."
Theo nods, rubbing his stubble-less face.
"She... understood the value of things," he begins. Then it floods out like I've just unclogged a drain and there's water rushing from a pipe for the first time in years. "Like, I could've had anything. Everything. But she never just gave me what I wanted because I wanted it. And... and she would listen to me like I was an adult, except when I was being a brat, which was when she would just give me this 'what the fuck are you doing, too?' look that would shut me up way faster than when Dad smacked me." He laughs, dryly, then sniffs a little. Then again. Then shakes his head. "Sorry. It's just... I miss her, you know? It's not like how it happens on TV. I still wake up and walk down the hall to Dad's room, expecting her to be waiting there to hug me after I have a nightmare. It's not just something you get over so you can go punch the bad guy in the face. I still think about her all the time. I wish... I wish I'd figured out I was gay before she'd died. I wish I could've told her." I see him move in the darkness and assume he's wiping his eyes. "I'm sor-"
I think he was trying to apologize again, but I cut him off by closing the gap between us and putting my arm around his shoulder, pulling him into me for some kind of spur-of-the-moment half-hug. I want to embrace him properly, but we're lying on our sides and it might involve me shoving my arm under his torso, which would be the awkwardest thing in the entire world.
Theo tenses as soon as I touch him and my chest twists with embarrassment. I retract my arms quickly, but then he shuffles forward again and rests his head on my shoulder, burying his nose in the crook of my neck, telling me without telling me that this is okay.
Slowly, I slide my arm back around his body, letting my palm rest on the small of his back and tapping my fingers in a small, repeated pattern against his spine, because I don't know how to do that rubbing-in soothing-circles thing. Theo doesn't seem to mind. His breath cools my skin through the fabric of his/my top and right hand is resting against my stomach, his left on the pillow between us and inches from mine.
(Suddenly I wish that fifteen-year-old me had worked out so Theo could comment on a set of rockhard abs that I don't actually have.)
"Oh, I see. You were just getting me to talk about my mum so we could cuddle," Theo mumbles, his tired voice heavy with amusement.
I snort. "I'm actually mildly insulted by that insinuation. I just wanted to hear more about one of the few people in this modern world who actually sounds like a decent person. And... the person who made you."
Theo laughs against my neck. "Ew."
I shake my head. "Not like that. Why are you making me think about that?"
Theo's head shifts down a little and I feel him grin against my collarbone. "No, I get it. Thanks for listening to me... for always being ready to listen. I'm sorry if I haven't done much in terms of giving back."
"You don't have to."
"No. But I want to." I stop tapping his back and shift so my hand is resting on his side, my fingers splayed out across his ribcage like they were a few mornings ago.
"Thanks, Theo. And you give me enough by letting me be the Han Solo to your Evan Skywalker."
"I don't think that fits," he laughs.
"In hindsight, no, I agree." Theo smiles into my skin. "You're an idiot," he says, not unkindly. "Goodnight, Evan."
"'Night, Theo."