She's Got A Boyfriend (Anyway)
Title: She's got a boyfriend (anyway)
Word Count: 2988
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Based on the song 'Sex by the 1975'. Just something I thought about writing quite a lot. One-shot.
This is how it starts.
There is lipstick smeared over her fingertips. Camila’s head is bowed, her hair fringing her vision. Through the gaps in the dark, she can see Lauren. The older girl has her back to her, bent away. Camila can see the impression of her vertebrae through paper skin near the nape of her neck. Lauren’s wearing the red plaid shirt that Camila has been wearing intermittently over the past month. The cotton is hanging off angled, bare shoulders. The air is thick and thrumming.
Camila pushes her ruby fingers against the hollow beneath Lauren’s jaw, shifting on the leather, closer to her. The head in front of her arches backwards, mouth falling open. The world shifts, the axis tilts. There is a wordless gasp, an invitation. Camila presses the blushing hue from her own lips against the spot her fingers marked. Lauren shivers; it is the middle of summer.
There is sometimes violence in the way Camila touches the other girl; it is apparent now, when shaking fingers twist Lauren’s head at an uncomfortable angle. She claims a bruise as a kiss. She sighs when she feels teeth scraping against sensitive skin; this is why Camila’s always worrying her lips with bites - this is what she’s trying to feel in those moments.
When she inhales, her lungs fill up with everything she’s been missing over the past two months. Camila sighs into the sloppy kisses, tongues-laced, a half-hesitant battle. Her pores seem to be breathing in, the cavity in her chest opening up, her skin folding backwards just to allow more of Lauren in. More, more, more.
It aches, it hurts, it burns.
But damn, it feels so good.
-
There is still noise buzzing in her head when they get off stage from a show they’ve just performed. She’s living in a dream, performing with artists that were inspirations.
She can’t wrap her head around it.
Everyone goes out to celebrate afterwards, the energy from the crowd earlier infecting the singers more than they’re willing to let on.
She claims to have a headache and stays back.
It’s not her head that hurts.
Especially, when in the comfort of her hotel bed, she can hear Lauren’s voice bubbling through the thin walls, repeating a name that is not hers.
-
The sun is just setting on a day she’s spent alone, except now she’s pushing her feet over the threshold of Lauren’s room, not bothering to knock.
She’s met with emerald fire, and she feels completely dismantled.
“I read something and I wanted to tell you about it.”
Lauren half-shrugs. They don’t talk anymore - it is so much easier that way - which is why she looks puzzled when Camila’s weight makes the bed dip next to her. Their mouths have better things to do around each other, and her eyes convey those exact thoughts to Camila.
The smaller girl swallows, and she swears she can taste the ghost of Lauren’s tongue on the roof of her mouth.
She kicks off her shoes and lifts her feet onto the bed. Her toes press into the mattress, making small indentations on the white duvet.
“I was reading The Great Expectations.” Re-reading, she adds in her own head. She doesn’t miss the way Lauren’s eyebrows arch up in surprise before she schools a neutral expression on her face. But she can’t hide the curious glimmer in those jade eyes that have always been too easy to read. If only she still remembered the language, Camila thinks.
She remembers when it used to be easy. They would read novels or poetry or even a silly magazine article, and they’d breathlessly find the other, words spilling faster than minds could think. It was as effortless as breathing.
Now, the words come haltingly when Lauren gestures for her to continue.
“Well - it’s more of a quote. I just…,” Camila pauses, uncertain. She breathes. She looks at the window, curtains thrown wide open. The sky is on fire, blood-red sun dipping behind buildings. She feels the scarlet inside her bones because she’s like a planet in close proximity to her own, personal star.
“Camila, just say it.” There’s poorly masked impatience in the husky voice, but Camila knows Lauren better than to believe it. She chooses not to focus on the upturned eyebrows - she rests her gaze on the tiny furrow between them instead.
“And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire.” She is breathless, her words more air than sound. She hates the sound of her whisper breaking in the room; she despises the cracks in the pavement of her voice, and she waits for the heel of contempt to step on it.
“I just thought it was beautiful and I just wanted to -,” she hastily appends, apprehension filling the space beyond her. She doesn’t know what she wanted. She doesn’t know what she wants.
(Except maybe she wants one thing too much, unbearably, impossibly.)
“You’re right, it is…” Lauren’s face is unreadable. “Beautiful.”
Camila stops breathing altogether.
There’s silence and the amber painting the wall behind Lauren’s head fades and dies out completely. They are cast in violets and blues and it’s suddenly so cold. They can’t stop looking at each other, and this time it’s different because they’re not mentally undressing the other person.
Yet, Camila has never felt so naked in her life.
“But it’s also very sad, isn’t it?” There’s a melancholic tinge to Lauren’s voice when it comes after centuries. Camila’s chest feels fractured and her breath comes in pained, sharp exhales.
“Yes.” Camila gulps, digs her fingertips into her denim-clad thigh until she feels a bruise blooming. “Incredibly.”
She leaves after that; Lauren keeps staring at the red Converse left behind, shoelaces spilling over the grey carpet untidily.
-
Camila’s hands are pressed against the cold ice of the windshield as she rests on the bonnet of Lauren’s car, looking up at stars. They look so distant and disapproving, but she likes how small it makes her feel. The wind has a nasty bite to it, but her palms are sweaty. There is molten lava still settling in the bottom of her stomach, and her bones keep crumbling due to aftershocks from the earthquakes Lauren created in the backseat of her car.
It’s been a tiring country-wide tour and she’s glad to be back home.
Only sometimes it gets too much and somehow, she always finds herself being rescued from the dreary life she so despises by the only person who has the power to shake her up. They drive till they’re on the fringes of the city, the noise and lights fading away into the distance. She doesn’t know exactly where she is, but she likes not knowing. She likes trusting Lauren.
She straightens, rubs her hands on her jeans, and hops off the bonnet. Lauren’s laying on a flat, shapeless rock, arms crossed over her chest. Her eyes have a faraway look to them, glinting dully in the dark. Her pupils are still blown, and when her dark gaze shifts to Camila, the younger girl feels something like fire run through her and settle in the hollow of her spine.
Hands clutching the jagged edges of the rock, she sits down next to Lauren. It’s just an excuse not to touch her; she doesn’t last long, and her trembling fingertips are soon tracing porcelain skin, marveling at marble jaws and charcoal eyelashes.
“You’re so -” Camila wants to say beautiful, but she can’t. “Good at this.” It’s impersonal; her voice is anything but. “You’re really good at making me feel like I’ve run a marathon.” She laughs humourlessly.
“You can’t run.” There’s a bitter smile in Lauren’s voice, but she’s not looking at Camila. Her forehead is creased, and Camila’s fingertips trace her frown till the wrinkles vanish. “If you mean that I’m really, really good at fucking you, then thanks, I guess.” Lauren does laugh, only it’s a sharp sound that makes ribbons out of Camila’s heart.
“Yeah. You’re really good at fucking me.” She can’t help but sound bitter. Lauren still doesn’t look at her.
Something feels like it’s in the slow process of breaking within Camila. She can feel the fissures spreading through her body. Her hands still near Lauren’s hairline, her fingertips slowly slip into the mess of waves. She turns her body and bends down, her lips a breath away from the piercings in Lauren’s ear. She can almost taste metal.
She knots her hands in Lauren’s hair, tugs sharply until she hears a strangled gasp. “But I guess I’m better, y’know? I mean…” and now teeth are scraping against the shell of her ear, and there’s squirming underneath her. “…you don’t even remember he exists when my name’s twisted on your tongue.”
She can almost feel a complaint, a slight shudder of indignation, perhaps guilt begin to shake Lauren, but before the older girl can even think of a retort, Camila’s hands are digging into her hipbones, and her lips are finding new landmarks. The stone statue turns to living, breathing flesh under her, and Camila feels the kind of ecstasy that she imagines sculptors must have felt; turning nature’s lifeless beauty into something exquisite - by breaking it.
They don’t speak a word on the way back.
The stars and the streetlamps and the passing headlights can’t compare to the way Lauren’s eyes look when she mumbles a goodbye.
-
Camila feels like a caged animal inside herself. She’s on the bed in Lauren’s room, and it’s funny because she’s been here before; it was when the world was slightly more normal, slightly less sad. She remembers spending New Year’s Eve on this same bed, wondering if it would be strange to kiss the girl beside her. She’d spent hours later, in the privacy of her own room, imagining what Lauren’s lips would’ve felt pressed against her own; perhaps she was as ruined then as she feels now.
“You okay?”
Her thoughts scatter like light, and she gulps and looks up at Lauren. “Yeah.”
“Want a drink?”
Camila raises an eyebrow at the clear liquid sloshing in the glass Lauren’s cradling. “No, thanks.” She bites her lip as her eyes follow Lauren’s movements around the room. The older girl seems unsettled, her gestures jittery and restless. Everything she does seems to echo in the too-big house, too empty for just the two of them to be in.
Lauren stops near the wall displaying a plethora of photographs: mostly of her family and adoring multitudes of friends (honestly, Camila can’t understand what that must feel like) and more recent ones like sickeningly adorable candids of her and Luis.
Camila’s heart beats too loud and she feels sick to her stomach. It reminds her of being on a plane in turbulence. At any moment, she could be tossed into the sea, and already, she can’t feel her feet. It’s worse because she can see the tremor in ivory fingers ghosting over the glossy paper; she can feel the guilt that is palpable in the room.
However, a decision is soon made. Lauren turns around, hair swishing over her shoulder, and Camila finds that oxygen comes flooding to her brain. Her nerves sing.
Lauren brings with her the faint scent of vodka, as she raises the glass to her lips and downs the drink in one go. The younger girl wonders why she needs liquid courage now, of all times.
They’ve been here before - perhaps not the location, but this juncture where they pretend to split the universe, and slip into a world that belongs only to them. They belong to each other when they stop the time; they’re not Camila or Lauren - perhaps they are more Camila and Lauren than they have ever been; all she knows is she only fees like a live wire with Lauren’s touch etched against her skin.
She understands though, when she feels the warm body move closer to her, without a sense of urgency. The pressure around them remains steady, and it feels good, for once, to have something feel like solid ground. Lauren melts into her, sticking to her sides like she’s softened metal remolding into a new shape. Her arms are everywhere at once, holding Camila like she once used to and never did again.
Everything feels new and old.
Especially the fabric rubbing against Camila’s chin. She recognizes the sweater; it used to be hers, but she decides that it looks better on Lauren anyway. It smells like the two of them; nothing has made her happier than this moment, and its simplicity makes her exhales a little shaky.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m dissolving.”
Camila has a new favourite moment, in the span of two seconds. It’s the split-second where Lauren’s voice turns from scratchy to honey-coated sandpaper, the way the ‘s’ rolls off her tongue, and Camila has to screw her eyes shut and count to ten to stop her head from swimming at the sound.
“Is that a bad thing?”
She’s jubilant because they’re talking and it’s not about tongues and mouths and ‘please - fuck me’. She can hear military fanfare inside her head and she wonders if she’s going crazy or if she’s on the verge of victory.
“I’m not entirely sure,” Lauren sighs, shifting against her. New parts of their skin collide, and Camila’s nerve-ends short-circuit and it feels so different from desire; it feels like a new word in the dictionary of their very own language. “I sometimes look at the dust swirling in the sunlight, and I feel like I am one of those particles and maybe, everyone around me is like that too. Only the air currents are making me drift so far, far away. I don’t know where I’m going.”
“If we were dust particles,” Camila starts, her voice rusty and hesitant, “we’d be the ones that dance around each other. That always keep a distance but are in each other’s force-field, never too far. If you’re drifting away, so am I.”
Lauren looks at her in a wondrous way, eyes wide, open skies and green meadows all at once, and Camila’s never seen such honest hope. It gives her courage, it makes her brave, and she continues speaking.
“And did you know, that there’s gravity between every pair of object, and that perhaps because we are so small, and the universe is so large, we can’t feel the gravity between us. But - but, I swear sometimes I can feel it, because the blood in my veins shift like the tides, and maybe you are the moon.” She sighs and presses the bridge of her nose against Lauren’s cheek, inhaling the faint scent of her. “I can feel it when you sing, and the words make me feel like I’m a nucleus splitting into two and I feel so - I feel so full of energy, I feel like I will shatter and the world will burn with me.”
She’s spilled too much of herself into her words, and she feels like a dissected cadaver lying underneath the probing gaze of a medical student. Lauren is looking at her with scrutiny, her lips parted, her fingers pressed against Camila’s cheekbone.
“Why do you say such things?”
“I don’t mean to.”
Camila can feel reticence becoming a wall between them, and she feels like a bird whose wings have just been clipped. Lauren moves away, as if trying not to hurt Camila and wanting to hurt her at the same time. She looks at her nightstand, at the framed photographic evidence of what was wrong with the world. She blinks away the sting in her eyes, turning her head as she does so. She doesn’t want Camila to notice; but she knows that the younger girl’s already got wet smears from Lauren’s eyes clinging to the front of her shirt anyway.
“Does he take care of you?”
Camila almost adds, ‘Because I could.’ But she doesn’t. She doesn’t want to tread thin ice with razor blades, especially when the cracks are obvious enough for everyone to see.
“Yes. He takes very good care of me.”
Camila’s jaw stiffens and her nails engrave crescents into her palms.
“Okay.”
“Yeah.”
She straightens, moves towards Lauren with purpose. Her hands are gentle and rough at the same time. Her lips flutter across collarbones, her fingers try to ignite flinty eyes. She wants to watch the older girl burn; she wants to be the one leaving a heap of ash this time. But Lauren moves away, getting off the bed.
“No.” Her voice sounds like closing doors. She’s trembling like a leaf. “No,” she repeats, and her eyes can’t stop moving around the room but they’re not looking at Camila. “I completely forgot - I have a date later.”
“Right. Okay.” Camila can see red, feel red, everything is red and burning fire and she’s the one being pushed into the furnace again. She’s nothing, she’s no one, she’s too loud and awkward and she’s painted the sheets with the scarlet embarrassment of her words and it makes the bedroom look like a crime-scene and no wonder Lauren wants her out of here.
Her feet find the door by difficulty. Her fingers twist the knob, her sweaty palm slipping on the cool metal. She hesitates; her glance falls on the wall of photographs. She sees something that makes her stomach drop - a captured moment from a midnight too many nights ago, when two teenage girls ushered in a new year, exultant in each other’s presence. She feels like she had started breaking centuries ago and now she’s finally, completely demolished.
She leaves, but the traces of her words still remain stuck in Lauren’s ears, ringing like alarm-bells shouting of a fire burning, somewhere.
Word Count: 2988
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Based on the song 'Sex by the 1975'. Just something I thought about writing quite a lot. One-shot.
This is how it starts.
There is lipstick smeared over her fingertips. Camila’s head is bowed, her hair fringing her vision. Through the gaps in the dark, she can see Lauren. The older girl has her back to her, bent away. Camila can see the impression of her vertebrae through paper skin near the nape of her neck. Lauren’s wearing the red plaid shirt that Camila has been wearing intermittently over the past month. The cotton is hanging off angled, bare shoulders. The air is thick and thrumming.
Camila pushes her ruby fingers against the hollow beneath Lauren’s jaw, shifting on the leather, closer to her. The head in front of her arches backwards, mouth falling open. The world shifts, the axis tilts. There is a wordless gasp, an invitation. Camila presses the blushing hue from her own lips against the spot her fingers marked. Lauren shivers; it is the middle of summer.
There is sometimes violence in the way Camila touches the other girl; it is apparent now, when shaking fingers twist Lauren’s head at an uncomfortable angle. She claims a bruise as a kiss. She sighs when she feels teeth scraping against sensitive skin; this is why Camila’s always worrying her lips with bites - this is what she’s trying to feel in those moments.
When she inhales, her lungs fill up with everything she’s been missing over the past two months. Camila sighs into the sloppy kisses, tongues-laced, a half-hesitant battle. Her pores seem to be breathing in, the cavity in her chest opening up, her skin folding backwards just to allow more of Lauren in. More, more, more.
It aches, it hurts, it burns.
But damn, it feels so good.
-
There is still noise buzzing in her head when they get off stage from a show they’ve just performed. She’s living in a dream, performing with artists that were inspirations.
She can’t wrap her head around it.
Everyone goes out to celebrate afterwards, the energy from the crowd earlier infecting the singers more than they’re willing to let on.
She claims to have a headache and stays back.
It’s not her head that hurts.
Especially, when in the comfort of her hotel bed, she can hear Lauren’s voice bubbling through the thin walls, repeating a name that is not hers.
-
The sun is just setting on a day she’s spent alone, except now she’s pushing her feet over the threshold of Lauren’s room, not bothering to knock.
She’s met with emerald fire, and she feels completely dismantled.
“I read something and I wanted to tell you about it.”
Lauren half-shrugs. They don’t talk anymore - it is so much easier that way - which is why she looks puzzled when Camila’s weight makes the bed dip next to her. Their mouths have better things to do around each other, and her eyes convey those exact thoughts to Camila.
The smaller girl swallows, and she swears she can taste the ghost of Lauren’s tongue on the roof of her mouth.
She kicks off her shoes and lifts her feet onto the bed. Her toes press into the mattress, making small indentations on the white duvet.
“I was reading The Great Expectations.” Re-reading, she adds in her own head. She doesn’t miss the way Lauren’s eyebrows arch up in surprise before she schools a neutral expression on her face. But she can’t hide the curious glimmer in those jade eyes that have always been too easy to read. If only she still remembered the language, Camila thinks.
She remembers when it used to be easy. They would read novels or poetry or even a silly magazine article, and they’d breathlessly find the other, words spilling faster than minds could think. It was as effortless as breathing.
Now, the words come haltingly when Lauren gestures for her to continue.
“Well - it’s more of a quote. I just…,” Camila pauses, uncertain. She breathes. She looks at the window, curtains thrown wide open. The sky is on fire, blood-red sun dipping behind buildings. She feels the scarlet inside her bones because she’s like a planet in close proximity to her own, personal star.
“Camila, just say it.” There’s poorly masked impatience in the husky voice, but Camila knows Lauren better than to believe it. She chooses not to focus on the upturned eyebrows - she rests her gaze on the tiny furrow between them instead.
“And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire.” She is breathless, her words more air than sound. She hates the sound of her whisper breaking in the room; she despises the cracks in the pavement of her voice, and she waits for the heel of contempt to step on it.
“I just thought it was beautiful and I just wanted to -,” she hastily appends, apprehension filling the space beyond her. She doesn’t know what she wanted. She doesn’t know what she wants.
(Except maybe she wants one thing too much, unbearably, impossibly.)
“You’re right, it is…” Lauren’s face is unreadable. “Beautiful.”
Camila stops breathing altogether.
There’s silence and the amber painting the wall behind Lauren’s head fades and dies out completely. They are cast in violets and blues and it’s suddenly so cold. They can’t stop looking at each other, and this time it’s different because they’re not mentally undressing the other person.
Yet, Camila has never felt so naked in her life.
“But it’s also very sad, isn’t it?” There’s a melancholic tinge to Lauren’s voice when it comes after centuries. Camila’s chest feels fractured and her breath comes in pained, sharp exhales.
“Yes.” Camila gulps, digs her fingertips into her denim-clad thigh until she feels a bruise blooming. “Incredibly.”
She leaves after that; Lauren keeps staring at the red Converse left behind, shoelaces spilling over the grey carpet untidily.
-
Camila’s hands are pressed against the cold ice of the windshield as she rests on the bonnet of Lauren’s car, looking up at stars. They look so distant and disapproving, but she likes how small it makes her feel. The wind has a nasty bite to it, but her palms are sweaty. There is molten lava still settling in the bottom of her stomach, and her bones keep crumbling due to aftershocks from the earthquakes Lauren created in the backseat of her car.
It’s been a tiring country-wide tour and she’s glad to be back home.
Only sometimes it gets too much and somehow, she always finds herself being rescued from the dreary life she so despises by the only person who has the power to shake her up. They drive till they’re on the fringes of the city, the noise and lights fading away into the distance. She doesn’t know exactly where she is, but she likes not knowing. She likes trusting Lauren.
She straightens, rubs her hands on her jeans, and hops off the bonnet. Lauren’s laying on a flat, shapeless rock, arms crossed over her chest. Her eyes have a faraway look to them, glinting dully in the dark. Her pupils are still blown, and when her dark gaze shifts to Camila, the younger girl feels something like fire run through her and settle in the hollow of her spine.
Hands clutching the jagged edges of the rock, she sits down next to Lauren. It’s just an excuse not to touch her; she doesn’t last long, and her trembling fingertips are soon tracing porcelain skin, marveling at marble jaws and charcoal eyelashes.
“You’re so -” Camila wants to say beautiful, but she can’t. “Good at this.” It’s impersonal; her voice is anything but. “You’re really good at making me feel like I’ve run a marathon.” She laughs humourlessly.
“You can’t run.” There’s a bitter smile in Lauren’s voice, but she’s not looking at Camila. Her forehead is creased, and Camila’s fingertips trace her frown till the wrinkles vanish. “If you mean that I’m really, really good at fucking you, then thanks, I guess.” Lauren does laugh, only it’s a sharp sound that makes ribbons out of Camila’s heart.
“Yeah. You’re really good at fucking me.” She can’t help but sound bitter. Lauren still doesn’t look at her.
Something feels like it’s in the slow process of breaking within Camila. She can feel the fissures spreading through her body. Her hands still near Lauren’s hairline, her fingertips slowly slip into the mess of waves. She turns her body and bends down, her lips a breath away from the piercings in Lauren’s ear. She can almost taste metal.
She knots her hands in Lauren’s hair, tugs sharply until she hears a strangled gasp. “But I guess I’m better, y’know? I mean…” and now teeth are scraping against the shell of her ear, and there’s squirming underneath her. “…you don’t even remember he exists when my name’s twisted on your tongue.”
She can almost feel a complaint, a slight shudder of indignation, perhaps guilt begin to shake Lauren, but before the older girl can even think of a retort, Camila’s hands are digging into her hipbones, and her lips are finding new landmarks. The stone statue turns to living, breathing flesh under her, and Camila feels the kind of ecstasy that she imagines sculptors must have felt; turning nature’s lifeless beauty into something exquisite - by breaking it.
They don’t speak a word on the way back.
The stars and the streetlamps and the passing headlights can’t compare to the way Lauren’s eyes look when she mumbles a goodbye.
-
Camila feels like a caged animal inside herself. She’s on the bed in Lauren’s room, and it’s funny because she’s been here before; it was when the world was slightly more normal, slightly less sad. She remembers spending New Year’s Eve on this same bed, wondering if it would be strange to kiss the girl beside her. She’d spent hours later, in the privacy of her own room, imagining what Lauren’s lips would’ve felt pressed against her own; perhaps she was as ruined then as she feels now.
“You okay?”
Her thoughts scatter like light, and she gulps and looks up at Lauren. “Yeah.”
“Want a drink?”
Camila raises an eyebrow at the clear liquid sloshing in the glass Lauren’s cradling. “No, thanks.” She bites her lip as her eyes follow Lauren’s movements around the room. The older girl seems unsettled, her gestures jittery and restless. Everything she does seems to echo in the too-big house, too empty for just the two of them to be in.
Lauren stops near the wall displaying a plethora of photographs: mostly of her family and adoring multitudes of friends (honestly, Camila can’t understand what that must feel like) and more recent ones like sickeningly adorable candids of her and Luis.
Camila’s heart beats too loud and she feels sick to her stomach. It reminds her of being on a plane in turbulence. At any moment, she could be tossed into the sea, and already, she can’t feel her feet. It’s worse because she can see the tremor in ivory fingers ghosting over the glossy paper; she can feel the guilt that is palpable in the room.
However, a decision is soon made. Lauren turns around, hair swishing over her shoulder, and Camila finds that oxygen comes flooding to her brain. Her nerves sing.
Lauren brings with her the faint scent of vodka, as she raises the glass to her lips and downs the drink in one go. The younger girl wonders why she needs liquid courage now, of all times.
They’ve been here before - perhaps not the location, but this juncture where they pretend to split the universe, and slip into a world that belongs only to them. They belong to each other when they stop the time; they’re not Camila or Lauren - perhaps they are more Camila and Lauren than they have ever been; all she knows is she only fees like a live wire with Lauren’s touch etched against her skin.
She understands though, when she feels the warm body move closer to her, without a sense of urgency. The pressure around them remains steady, and it feels good, for once, to have something feel like solid ground. Lauren melts into her, sticking to her sides like she’s softened metal remolding into a new shape. Her arms are everywhere at once, holding Camila like she once used to and never did again.
Everything feels new and old.
Especially the fabric rubbing against Camila’s chin. She recognizes the sweater; it used to be hers, but she decides that it looks better on Lauren anyway. It smells like the two of them; nothing has made her happier than this moment, and its simplicity makes her exhales a little shaky.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m dissolving.”
Camila has a new favourite moment, in the span of two seconds. It’s the split-second where Lauren’s voice turns from scratchy to honey-coated sandpaper, the way the ‘s’ rolls off her tongue, and Camila has to screw her eyes shut and count to ten to stop her head from swimming at the sound.
“Is that a bad thing?”
She’s jubilant because they’re talking and it’s not about tongues and mouths and ‘please - fuck me’. She can hear military fanfare inside her head and she wonders if she’s going crazy or if she’s on the verge of victory.
“I’m not entirely sure,” Lauren sighs, shifting against her. New parts of their skin collide, and Camila’s nerve-ends short-circuit and it feels so different from desire; it feels like a new word in the dictionary of their very own language. “I sometimes look at the dust swirling in the sunlight, and I feel like I am one of those particles and maybe, everyone around me is like that too. Only the air currents are making me drift so far, far away. I don’t know where I’m going.”
“If we were dust particles,” Camila starts, her voice rusty and hesitant, “we’d be the ones that dance around each other. That always keep a distance but are in each other’s force-field, never too far. If you’re drifting away, so am I.”
Lauren looks at her in a wondrous way, eyes wide, open skies and green meadows all at once, and Camila’s never seen such honest hope. It gives her courage, it makes her brave, and she continues speaking.
“And did you know, that there’s gravity between every pair of object, and that perhaps because we are so small, and the universe is so large, we can’t feel the gravity between us. But - but, I swear sometimes I can feel it, because the blood in my veins shift like the tides, and maybe you are the moon.” She sighs and presses the bridge of her nose against Lauren’s cheek, inhaling the faint scent of her. “I can feel it when you sing, and the words make me feel like I’m a nucleus splitting into two and I feel so - I feel so full of energy, I feel like I will shatter and the world will burn with me.”
She’s spilled too much of herself into her words, and she feels like a dissected cadaver lying underneath the probing gaze of a medical student. Lauren is looking at her with scrutiny, her lips parted, her fingers pressed against Camila’s cheekbone.
“Why do you say such things?”
“I don’t mean to.”
Camila can feel reticence becoming a wall between them, and she feels like a bird whose wings have just been clipped. Lauren moves away, as if trying not to hurt Camila and wanting to hurt her at the same time. She looks at her nightstand, at the framed photographic evidence of what was wrong with the world. She blinks away the sting in her eyes, turning her head as she does so. She doesn’t want Camila to notice; but she knows that the younger girl’s already got wet smears from Lauren’s eyes clinging to the front of her shirt anyway.
“Does he take care of you?”
Camila almost adds, ‘Because I could.’ But she doesn’t. She doesn’t want to tread thin ice with razor blades, especially when the cracks are obvious enough for everyone to see.
“Yes. He takes very good care of me.”
Camila’s jaw stiffens and her nails engrave crescents into her palms.
“Okay.”
“Yeah.”
She straightens, moves towards Lauren with purpose. Her hands are gentle and rough at the same time. Her lips flutter across collarbones, her fingers try to ignite flinty eyes. She wants to watch the older girl burn; she wants to be the one leaving a heap of ash this time. But Lauren moves away, getting off the bed.
“No.” Her voice sounds like closing doors. She’s trembling like a leaf. “No,” she repeats, and her eyes can’t stop moving around the room but they’re not looking at Camila. “I completely forgot - I have a date later.”
“Right. Okay.” Camila can see red, feel red, everything is red and burning fire and she’s the one being pushed into the furnace again. She’s nothing, she’s no one, she’s too loud and awkward and she’s painted the sheets with the scarlet embarrassment of her words and it makes the bedroom look like a crime-scene and no wonder Lauren wants her out of here.
Her feet find the door by difficulty. Her fingers twist the knob, her sweaty palm slipping on the cool metal. She hesitates; her glance falls on the wall of photographs. She sees something that makes her stomach drop - a captured moment from a midnight too many nights ago, when two teenage girls ushered in a new year, exultant in each other’s presence. She feels like she had started breaking centuries ago and now she’s finally, completely demolished.
She leaves, but the traces of her words still remain stuck in Lauren’s ears, ringing like alarm-bells shouting of a fire burning, somewhere.