Week Eight: excerpt of chapter seven

This time of the year

                  12:18 tomorrow morning

                        is beautiful.

                                                       I don’t dread it.

                  You meet me on the roof

                                    and the moon lights up

                                                      the smoke.

{ Why are you beautiful when

you smoke? }

                                              I wish I had more

12:18 tomorrow mornings

                            like the ones I have now.

Alex’s room was an add on, built sometime in the eighties long after the rest of the house had been standing. It stuck out of the side of the house in a way that would be ugly if Alex hadn’t lived there his whole life. The roof above it used to be thin aluminium, but the summer before he and his father had ripped it up and replaced it with insulating rubber, making the rain drops softer during wetter months.

Just as Alex reached out to open the back door, Mark put a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s nearly sun up anyway, we should watch the sunrise.”

Alex thought about it. “Okay, we can sit on the roof. Let me get a ladder.”

Mark helped him carry the ladder from the shed to the deck next to Alex’s bedroom, leaning it up against the roof and climbing up one after the other. There were some eucalyptus leaves scattered around, but Alex was just glad there were no dead animals in the gutters. Mark disappeared for a moment and then came back with the pillows and duvet from Alex’s bed. He made up a bed in the middle of the roof, lying under the duvet and then holding out an arm for Alex. Alex rolled his eyes but got under the covers as well, cushioning his head on the juncture where Mark’s shoulder turned into his chest. Mark giggled, breath tickling Alex’s hair as he wrapped an arm around his shoulders, hugging him closer. Alex placed a hand splayed out on Mark’s chest.

It was weird, to be tucked up in bed but on the roof. Odd, to be so comfortable cradled against Mark’s body, sharing heat between the two of them. Strange, to be so aware of every bit of his skin that was in contact with Mark, to be so conscious about how much of his weight was on Mark. He shrugged it off; overall he was content with being swaddled by Mark and cradled.

Mark started to trace shapes on Alex’s shoulder cap, fingers dancing along his skin to where his shirt had fallen down to expose his collarbones. The touch tickled a little, making Alex’s breath hitch as he stared up as the brightening sky. He returned the touch, dragging his forefinger up and down Mark’s sternum and making his shirt ride up a little. Alex caught himself wishing they didn’t have the duvet so he could see the sliver of skin above Mark’s pants. He stamped out the thought as quickly as he could, squeezing his eyes shut.

Eventually, Mark’s hand moved to Alex’s hair, twirling the strands of it around his fingers and gently scratching at his scalp. Alex melted, humming in satisfaction as Mark rubbed behind his ears. Mark laughed at him, breath grazing across Alex’s forehead.

“You’re like a cat, sometimes.”

Alex frowned a little, but he rubbed his cheek on Mark’s chest. “You give good head rubs, if anything it’s your fault.”

“Here, sit up, I wanna smoke.”

Alex moved his head to a pillow as Mark sat up and fished out his pack of cigarettes and lighter. He put a hand behind his head and looked up as Mark cupped a hand around the end of the cigarette and lit it.

“What happened to quitting?”

Mark laughed around the durry. “Pretty sure somewhere in there I mentioned that part of changing is going back to how you were.”

Alex rolled his eyes as Mark lay down and passed the cigarette to him. “Sounds like some pretentious bullshit to me.”

“As if you can talk,” Mark said, poking Alex in his side, causing him to choke a little on the smoke filling his lungs. “You listen to fucking alternative indie music, you’re the most pretentious of all of us.”

“Maybe so,” Alex said, blowing smoke into Mark’s face and giggling as he waved a hand through it. “But that doesn’t make the rest of you any less pretentious.”

Mark took the durry off him and flipped over onto his back. Alex simply watched his profile, admiring the way the sun turned his blond hair a peachy colour as it peaked over the horizon. Mark seemed to have his eyes fixed there and he squinted into the light. The smoke coming from his mouth was turning golden, his irises a redder brown than they were in normal lighting. His skin was bronzed from the summer, and it seemed to glisten as the sun hit it. Alex took it all in. The way the outer corners of his eyes drooped down a little, the slow slope of his nose before it rounded off, the jut of his lower lip as it wrapped around the cigarette. Alex’s eyes trailed along Mark’s hairline, sideburns framing his ear and leading to his jawline, soft corners and sharp chin covered in sparse, fine stubble. His eyelashes, long and lit up by the sun, caressing his cheek as he blinked, making him look a lot softer than he probably wanted to seem.

Mark turned his head, and suddenly, like the night before, their faces were very close together. Their noses were almost touching, and Mark looked down at Alex’s lips before licking his own. Alex’s heart leapt into his throat as Mark started angling his head, and he scrunched his eyes shut while he waited for the impact.

“Oh shit, am I about to interrupt something?”

Alex and Mark flinched away from each other, Alex yelping as he struggled to sit up and see who it was. Aiden was giving them a devilish grin from where he was halfway out of the window of Alex’s old bedroom. He unfroze, climbing the rest of the way out when neither of them told him to go away. He walked over to them and wriggled his way under the covers between them, not noticing the way Alex’s cheeks were burning and his eyes were stinging. Aiden sensed the awkward air around them and cleared his throat.

“Good idea to watch the sunset, we should get the others out here.”

He pulled out his phone and called Carlos, who answered the phone with a grumble about how early it was. He and Jaemin joined them a few moments later, looking a little dishevelled as they tried to stretch the edges of Alex’s duvet over all five of them. They stayed out there on the roof for an hour before heading back inside because the sun got too hot for them to handle. Once inside, Ty and Johnny cooked them all a big breakfast, saying the bacon would help them get over their hangovers. The whole time, Alex couldn’t help the shame burning a hole in his stomach and forcing him to avoid eye contact with Mark.