blackheart ➵ m. clifford

➵ nineteen

➵ jett

Nights alone with my red-lipped, whiskey-hazed boyfriend were my favourite, and between the bottle of Jack and his kiss-bruised lips, I was intoxicated. I was drunk on his tongue and his hands and the way my fingers threaded through his hair and the way he breathed in gasps because God forbid he stopped kissing me. He was lazy and he was tired but this was when I loved him the most, because as his hands roamed and his fingers twisted in my clothes, there was nothing but softness between us.

On his nineteenth, we had done just this. We had bleached his hair and watched Iron Man and Thor and Captain America and we were halfway through The Hulk when we’d fallen asleep in a bundle on his bed. It was the first time that we had ever slept together. And I loved sleeping with Michael; he was warm and soft and squishy in all the right places and he smelled of pepperoni and marijuana but in the end I loved his arms the most. I loved how they folded around my shoulders and held me to his chest, and I loved how I felt invincible in them.

Waking up next to him was just as beautiful. His platinum hair was messily pushed forward over his forehead from the back, and he had dark stubble peppering his jaw and his top lip and he was snuggled down into his pillow with his leg wedged between mine. It wasn’t sunny and there weren’t any of those sunbeams filtering through the curtains, but it was just as perfect with the frost that laced across the windows and I decided that Michael belonged in the winter.

His hair was snowy, now, and soft from hours of coconut oil conditioning – a suggestion on my part – and his skin was so pallid it made him look almost ethereal. His dark lashes cast shadows across the lilac rings beneath his eyes, and he had these tiny crinkles by the sides. And when he woke up, that was beautiful, too, because as his eyes fluttered I was met with luscious green eyes and yawns and he would pull me closer until there wasn’t space between us for a piece of paper.

There’d been morning encounters where I’d woken up spread across his mattress, and he was nestled between my hips in a ball, one of my legs wrapped around his back as his head rested on my stomach. I found it adorable and I noticed that it happened more often than not, whether his body was draped over my side or we awkwardly top-tailed, but my belly was often his pillow.

“Your heart is beating so fast,” He whispered, his lips grazing over the stinging masterpiece he’d just painted across my pulse point. “So, so fast.” Breathing heavily, he left a trail of languid kisses up the column of my throat before catching my lips in a simple, compassionate kiss that was lazy and sloppy and full of half-hearted tongue and tired lips.

He pulled away with a close-lipped groan and fluttering lids, dropping down onto his elbows as his head dropped down to rest against my chest. His arms were hooked under mine, and he was nestled between my knees, shallow breaths fanning across my chest as he tucked his head under my chin. Just being like this was why I loved Michael Clifford.

And then there was that. What I felt for Michael was now much more than a crush - it was heart-fluttering and gut-wrenching and it made me sick to the stomach. There was still so much I had to tell him, and now that I knew that I felt this way, I was scared. I didn’t want him to leave me, now. I thought I at least deserved to be happy for a little bit longer.

But it was nagging at me, it really was. I knew that Michael wasn’t oblivious, and he wasn’t stupid, but I knew that he was curious. I didn’t ever want him to think that I was dishonest, that I was keeping secrets or that I was lying, but I didn’t ever want him to react badly to whatever I had to say. What if he got annoyed at me? What if he decided that dealing with someone like me was too much? What if he left?

“It’s beating even faster, now.” He spoke up, and I let out a hum, feeling my throat close up. “What are you thinking about?”

“Nothin’.” I breathed, but the way the air seemed the break as it left my lungs made him sigh out.