pretty chapped lips : malum :

3.2

dedication: to our newest reader danisawoman who kindly took time to comment when they started reading only a few days ago, thank you so much for brightening up my day and i hope you like this one x

There names were Jack and Alex, the others just their friends. Everyone got a spliff rolled as a welcome back present at the beginning of every party. LSD came in the form of smiley face tabs and Ecstasy was best in liquid form. They were stoners, and they were nice.

It took roughly two blunts and a bottle of beer for Calum to loosen up each night. I realised that after the third, the night when after laughing so hard he ended up whispering against my hair, hand drifting along my arm while murmuring words not quite there and things I couldn't catch. He'd smile, dazed and sky high while telling me about the times he felt tastes and how the first time he kissed a boy high tasted like purple and pink all mixed together like a smoothie.

It took until the fourth night he brought me through their door, sat down on the old red couch he seemed to have claimed as his own with cigarette burns and mismatch flat pillows, for me to finally get a taste of what make his eyes cloud over and lips form into a smile.

"What age are you, Mikey?" It was Alex asking, the one who always smiled and liked popping pills at the start of the night and every twenty minutes after that.

"M' sixteen." I murmured, head against Calums shoulder as fingers grazed through my hair. He liked to play with it when he was burning on his third and the second bottle touched his lips.

"Hm, I was sixteen when I got high for the first time." Alex replied, dopey smile and pretty eyes as he took a hit, eyes fluttering shut with a nostalgic smile. "Was pretty cool."

"Wanna try?"

My stomach was in knots at the question. Alex just sat there, pupils blown and leaning forward, elbows on his knees, watching.

"Yeah, you should. Sure Cal will let you," Jack was sitting on the floor, one knee to his chest as he looked at the boy by my side. I wanted to say the glint in his eyes was challenging, but it could have just been the light catching off the flame that lit before his eyes from Vic to the side, running his fingers over the flame. "Just ask him nice, pet."

I expected him to snap. For the boy who's side I leaned into to tell his friends to fuck off like he did only a few nights prior when only a can of beer was about to be pressed to my hand. But he shrugged, fingers still running through my hair as casually as they had been all night.

"Do you?"

His question had me stunned. Did I? Alex was grinning from where he sat, jack staring like he was trying to decode the moment. I looked at Calum, searching for an answer. But he was just sitting there, looking down at me with that damn unwavering gaze as my mouth ran dry and I didn't know what to say.

But I nodded, and I guessed that was enough.

Somewhere from the corner of my eyes I could see jack moving, probably to grab one of the blunts ready to be lit as Calum kept his eyes on me, like he was waiting for a change in heart before passing me the one that was pressed to his lips moments before.

"Just breath in, be easy about it and hold it there for a little." He told me and it took a moment for me to actually make a move to take the small roll of nothing more but paper and weed pinched between his fingers.

For a moment I was thrown back to when I was fourteen. Luke and I huddled outside his back door, one of his mothers cigarettes passed from hand to hand, determined to try and try again until we stopped coughing the moment it pressed to our lips. And for the first time, I felt grateful for that idiotic competition I only just won.

It was strange. From the moment it was pressed to my lips, even passed the moment when smoke fluttered past them like snow flakes falling in reverse. I could still feel his fingers in my hair, still feel eyes boring holes into my skin, but my fingers tingled and I didn't mind.

"You like it?" His words were hushed, like he was whispering a secret for just us to hear as the smell of smoke grew and I realised it tumbled from past my lips, blunt between my fingers burning lower than it should.

But it was good, and I didn't know if that was a good thing in itself.

"Yeah, it's good."

A/N so writing about jalex in this makes me think way too much of my friend and her boyfriend, ah, stoners, how fond they can be.

anyways i hope you all liked this chapter as always and just one question, would anyone be interested in a character ask or is the idea in itself idiotic?

have a lovely day my itty bitty readers i love you so

-rachel x