Oxygen (Catfish And The Bottlemen/1975)

Van

"Everybodies dancing in the moonlight!" I spun Fliss round in a circle, her hair, two messy plaits, flying with her, the loose stands around her face sticking a little in the sweat which caught the light on her cheekbone.
She smiled up at me with gleaming glittery eyes, her pupils dilated, two black holes, fathomless and yet somehow full of life.

I'd been craving her company all day and now that I had her with me leaning against my chest staining my shirt with the glitter off her cheek, all I really wanted was to get her alone. It was difficult with my arms round her shoulders, staggering about with the rest of our friends, not to forget myself and kiss her hair or her cheek and hold her closer to me than "just friends" would.

It was strange because since the week me and Benji had spent in and out of hospital with her and Katie, losing our minds over their welfare, I'd seen nothing of Fliss but the odd interview or YouTube acoustic video her and Saffron had uploaded from a park in Hampstead Heath. We'd been so close back then, hovering on the edge of admitting everything to one another, and when she'd seen me earlier that day she'd melted like butter in the palm of my hand, settling into my company with such ease and yet still, even now, in the early hours of the morning, we'd said nothing of our last encounter and I was beginning to grow a little fearful that we'd just carry on like this, swaying to stupid songs at midnight, skimming the surface of our true feelings and pretending not to notice.

She let out a sigh against my neck, her breath tickling my skin, cooling me off for a moment. She smelt of alcohol and cigarettes, sickly sweet with a touch of weed, it lingered in her hair and in her sweat, in the shades of blue and red and indigo which washed over us and cast patterns on our skin, reflecting off the disco ball above our heads.

"Alright Felicity Wishes?" I asked with a small smile, she didn't frown like I was expecting her too though, didn't get wound up the way I wanted her to, instead giggling up at me serenely.

"Delightful," she smiled bringing out the smile on my lips too, "you know what would be lovely right now?" She giggled, I smirked my hand on her hip to steady her.
"What?" I chuckled softly brushing her hair from her face. These were the moments I found myself struggling, because her smile was so sweet and her eyes were so bright, her skin beneath my thumb was smooth and unscathed and she was, really, still so young.

She was 17, nearly 18 and I was 24. That wasn't an age gap you could just get away with not when we were who we were.

"You're staring at me," she smirked, "am I all gross an sweaty or somet?" She was almost teasing me, almost like she knew that she was driving me up the wall, but there was an honesty, a sudden lack of confidence shivering in her iris that told me that perhaps this time, she wasn't.

"No," I smirked, "yous look lovely lass," she flashed me a smile and I flashed her one back a little uncertain what to say.

"You know what would be lovely though..." she smiled, "a smoke," she said but her eyes lingered on my lips and for a moment she held me speechless. She laced my fingers with her and dragged me away from the rest of the group, out the little tent and into the dark where people wandered round with pints and queued for the toilets.

"Do you have any?" She asked me, her eyes hopeful, her cheeks flushed pink caught in the fairy lights which hung around a tent which had already closed for the night.

"Yeah, somewhere," I chuckled reaching into my back pocket for my tobacco and my papers, "I've only got this," I said sinking a little as I tipped a little tobacco into my paper and she giggled.

"Thats what friends are for isnt it," she giggled reaching into her wellington boot and taking out a little baggy of weed. She bit her lip in concentration as she ground it up between her fingers and poured it in, rolling a roach before standing back to admire my handy work.