original fic/ Night breeze
The air is fresh even though it’s already July, Tom sits in front of the open window in his old room. He is back home for the holidays, a luxury which he can’t enjoy very often. He takes out a cigarette and lights it, the little flame warms up his fingers for an instant. Tom remembers the time when smoking a cigarette was something that he and his best buddy John had to do hidden somewhere behind the bushes at the end of the garden, or on the jetty after sunset. He and John lost contact many years ago, when they went to two different universities and what there used to be between them just slipped away through their fingers. But at university Tom met Jack.
He blows out the smoke and looks as it dissolves in the night air. He wonders if Jack will call him, if they will see each other when Tom will go back to New York after the holidays. It isn’t the first time that their relationship arrives to a halt, as a train without tracks in front of it. But somehow every time Tom has ended up with Jack’s lips pressed against his own, with Jack smiling at him over the kitchen table the morning after. He throws the butt of the cigarette out of the window and brings his knees up to his chest. The breeze carries the voice of the people standing by the lake waiting for the fireworks to go off. He tilts his chin up and looks at the black stomach of the night. As the first explosions of light blossom above his head he wonders if Jack is looking at the fireworks too from where he is.