It's Dark

It’s dark when I enter the room, the coldness of the toothpaste still lingers in my mouth and I run my teeth over my smooth enamel. I shut the door behind me, pushing out the last of the light from the softly lit corridor.

Outside your window, a streetlight the colour of moonlight shines in, illuminating the curve of your side where you have collapsed under the blanket, half on your side, face to the wall.

I shuffle my feet against along the floor, slowly, so as not to step on anything, for who knows what things you will find on your floor.

When I reach the mattress I sit on the edge and push my trousers down my legs to settle them in a pile on the floor, quickly followed by the soft sound of my bra dropping onto them.

Turning slightly, I take the corner of the blanket in my hand and lift it to slide into the warmth of the bed and you.

As I settle down, face towards your back, I inhale the sweet and somewhat flowery scent of you, knowing that when I go home tomorrow morning and miss you, all I’ll need to do is clutch my hair to my nose and inhale; you will be there.

I reach out my hand and touch your back, huddling closer to the solid warmth of you, my feet skimming your calves.

You let out a breath and turn to me; instantly I feel my blood shiver, my skin seems to come alive at the mere thought of you touching me. When you do it’s so soft, so comfortable my body automatically moves to accommodate this now well now well-known position.

My legs sliding in between yours, our hands finding each other's fingers entwining and then my favourite, our foreheads pressed together. Our mouths so close I can feel the tingle of your lips mere centimetres away from mine. I breathe in deep of your breath, totally, completely at peace. How such a simple thing can make every other single thing in the world bearable.

In my head I begin to see the twists and turns of a fantasy, a dream to experience this moment, this glorious now over and over, night after night. The idea is quickly followed by a flush of embarrassment, I need to get a grip on myself. This thing we have is so delicate, so new to us both in a multitude of ways. Thinking about forever is only inviting misfortune to something made simple by keeping it in the now.

Even so, I let the dream wander around my mind for a moment before I let the sleep ebbing in the corners of my mind take over my whole body as it sinks down where you already are resting.

That night I float on the edge of waking three or four times but only to know that you are here still and then I settle back to my vivid dreams that I will remember mere flashes of the next morning.

By the time your alarm goes off at 6:30 AM I am in deep slumber, so by the time I realise you have moved to turn the damn thing off I am only just pulling myself away from sleep.

In the night I have moved away from you slightly but we still face each other. I blink, each time it seems to take an age for me to lift my lids again. Lazy and softly you blink back at me.

In the day you wear glasses that dramatically magnify your eyes, making them luminous and instantly recognisable; without them, you can barely see a couple inches in front of you. Even now I know that although I lie only three inches away from you, you will not be able to focus on my eyes but I know you try.

Without the glasses, swaddled in the night’s blankets and lulled by sleep, you are a different man. Lying here you are soft and quiet, bathed in dreams and I find myself coming to the thought that this is the part of you that I have been gifted to see that many don’t. This is my you, the part that drew me to you from the start.

We do not speak, only breath passes our lips and your arm moving to drape across my waist where the weight of it is a special kind of bliss.

In this moment we are nothing more or less than us, simply and utterly drugged by an experience shared. Lying here we are completely and utterly vulnerable, and although I know you cannot see me, I feel as though your whole being knows the journey to my very soul.