Pride and Joy ✓

twenty eight

THURSDAY. 06. JAN. 2022.

"I DIDN'T know you smoked."

Briskly, he stubbed the cigarette out on the bench of the bleachers and coughed, flicking it down onto the grass. Denver descended the benches and dropped down beside him with a loud kind of elegance.

"I don't," he said briskly, interlacing his fingers and holding his hands between his knees.

Denver blinked at him and then blinked at the smoked cigarette, rotting in the dewy blades of grass, visible between the gaps of the bench they were sitting on and the one below. "That's funny," he remarked, gazing at the cigarette and back at Nate. "I could've sworn I just watched you put out a cigarette."

He gave a wry smile and glanced towards the grey sky. "I don't smoke regularly," he corrected. Denver noticed the dark hair at the nape of his neck getting thicker. "It's all social."

"There's no one here," Denver replied, staring out at the empty, clouded field.

"One of my friends was here before you," he shrugged, gently knocking into Denver and daring to glimpse at him, a small smile grazing his lips. "I was stressed out." He paused. "Has it put you off me?"

"No," he said, glancing at Nate.

His posture was slightly hunched, his shoulders tighter and more wound than usual, and there were bags under his eyes, faint purple rings circling underneath fields of green. There was something weak in his smile, like the strings that commanded the corners of his lips had fallen loose. Denver wanted to reach out to him, to take his hand and hold it tight, but he almost felt like he couldn't move.

A silence shrouded them, engulfing them in their own invisible cloud of smoke.

"I don't, you know," he murmured eventually, glimpsing at Denver and rubbing his hands together, which was funny because his hands always ran warm anyway.

Absentmindedly, Denver hummed, still staring out at the field and ignoring the heaviness in Nate's gaze. There was a weight in his eyes that Denver could feel on his shoulders; deep in his chest; crushing his bones; a rope wrapped around his heart, pulling tighter and tighter.

"Smoke," he explained, studying Denver carefully— the burden in the fields meant carelessness wasn't an option. Despite the seat he had besides Denver, it was an unspoken truth that really he was somewhere in the ground, his heart decaying in the soil next to the cigarette; he would not ask Denver to help him dig it out.

"Okay," Denver nodded, his throat raw and his fingers stiff.

"You look like you're disappointed in me," he continued, his throat bobbing as he swallowed a dying request back down into his chest, crushing it with the rock inside of his heart.

"Some people think I look disappointed naturally," Denver shrugged.

With an uncertainty that made his heart jump, Nate watched him.

"I'm not disappointed," he clarified, pulling his jacket closer around himself and slipping his hands into the warmth of the sleeves.

"Do you care if I smoke?" He asked, almost hopefully.

"No," Denver said, and he was lying.

People smoking usually didn't bother him because, unless someone was exhaling their clouds into his face, it wasn't any of his business, but this was different. Cigarettes didn't belong between Nate's love heart lips; that smoke didn't belong in lungs filled with so many stars. Denver didn't like to imagine them blinking out; the smoke's hands stealing them and swallowing them whole.