Entry tags:
i did everything for you;
unspoken things you do in the night
1.
Dave would wake up to feel slightly cold hands on his chest. The moon pressed dimly against the window, and he turned his head towards the warmth. John’s eyes almost glowed luminescent, an eerie and unearthly color against the shadows crossing his face. Dave could feel the pianist hands, calloused from hammers, yet slender against ivory keys, press against his rib cage. He could see the bones against John’s skin, the sharp knuckles tapering into long rough fingers. The thickness of the skin scraped against his rib cage, sliding against the thin muscles on his chest.
In the secrets of the night, he could feel John spread his hands against his muscular yet slight pectorals. The fingers stretched far, brushing his sides, until both hands were warmly placed against his chest, not moving. John never pressed, but his hands followed the shallow breathing, the slow rise and measured descent.
John’s eyes shone that eerie color as he straddled Dave, with his sad face gazing down on his hands. His own breath choked and struggled, coming out in short gasps before failing. The periods of silence were the most frightening until the release of breath, the artificial intake, and the slow reminders to breathe. In desperation and sorrow, he felt for Dave’s breath so he could remember.
Sometimes, Dave would raise his own hands, to touch the sharp knuckles and slender fingers, and they were warm together. Eventually, John’s breath would smooth out to shallow, slow breaths, and he fell asleep with his head against the wall and his hands spread like crow wings on Dave’s chest.
2.
Dave kept clocks in his room. He collected them, ancient cuckoo clocks to the techno neon green numbers. Some of them ticked, an incessant tocking noise sounding out simultaneously against the walls. The reverberations ran along the hallway floors, and John could feel the beat resonating even when he stood outside. The ticking sometimes drove him nuts, falling in line to the way the blood pulsed to his head. He tried to persuade Dave to stop them, but Dave always had a witty retort to disguise his desperation.
Sometimes, John would wake up to Dave kneeling on the floor. He knelt like a prayer, but his fingers deftly opened the gaping gut of a clock. The metal gears, copper and silver and wood, falling into place neatly on the floor. He opened the belly of the LSD screen time savers, pulling the intestinal guts of red and blue wires into his hands. Without light, he dissected the clocks to the smallest screws rolling on the floor.
All the clocks in the room were aligned perfectly because in the night, Dave tore apart the clocks limb to limb, and stitched them back together perfectly with his quick and expert and trembling fingers. The digital clocks were timed to the perfect nanosecond, the wind-up watches wrapped in silver chains perfected in time.
Sometimes, John would rise from the warm bed, and wrap his arms around Dave’s neck. He pressed his face against the space between the shoulder blades, and he fell asleep. Dave sat in the darkness, and finally released the screwdriver in his sweaty palm. The wind gently blew against the smudged cogs. And he bowed his head, like in prayer, and listened to the ticking of John’s heartbeat until his eyes slowly closed.
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