Oxygen (Catfish And The Bottlemen/1975)

Saffron

The room was shifting, rocking like a boat on the water, gently tilting with the waves.

"Your walls are bending shape," I breath with a small smirk where I lay back on Matty's floor, tuning in and out of the music drifting in from the next room.

"Yeah they do that sometimes," he smirked back pushing himself up from the floor to roll a joint. "Are you coming down?"

The room was dark, his voice dark too, the atmosphere velvety and peaceful.

"I think so," I exhaled smoke, cigarette burning in my fingers at my side.

Every now and then a quiver would run through my body, like an electric pulse or a static shock. It was strange but it left me feeling warmer than before.

"Good," he grinned taking a little box from his rugsack, rolling a joint as he nodded his head in time to the bass. "Your friends know how to fuck shit up don't they," he was talking about Jazz and Alice, the way they could lose their heads and take recklessness to the next level.

"Just make sure ally doesn't get hold of anythin flammable," I said gazing up at the ceiling with a soft smile on my lips. "Rudys your cousin anyway, id have thought you knew him better than us..."

Even among our friends Rudy was a bit of a mystery... like Fliss in many ways. We knew very little of his life outside london, very little of the life he'd lead up until his 17th birthday. He didn't talk about home like he had two, just the little semidetatched he shared with us.

"Oh Rudys a tabloid lover," shrugged Matty smirking when I screwed my face up in confusion...  "you know... you middle class kids are all the same, get everything for nothing nothing comes your way, emotional bored and self contained..." he sang with a playful chuckle. "7 years in boarding school, gets everythin handed to him on a plate... but he's totally different back home... if me anti knew half the things you lot do about Ru she'd be mortified..."

I grinned then, toothy and childish.

"Same goes for most of our parents though lets be honest,"

Matty shrugged his shoulders then, lighting up, "I don't think about it now," he breathed looking back at me, almost through me, strangely pensive, catching me speechless.

When he offered me a drag I couldn't move, only for a moment was I held captive and unnerved. He had a way of looking into your soul, winding you round like a coil and leaving you there, tense and stranded.

"Ta," I managed taking in a long, laboured drag, eyes closed only so as I could look away.

We remained silent for a long time then, passing joint after joint back and fourth. When the music died down I knew it must have been late, when the sun filtered through the curtain blind I knew it must have been earlier than I'd imagined, but Matty didn't seem to mind.

"Sounds like were the last ones standing..." he winked standing up to peer through his bedroom door. "You've got stamina Saffron, I like it," he threw himself down on his bed and when I didn't move he laughed. "Youre not telling me your comfier down there are you..." his voice was low and teasing, a little cocky, the way rhys had always been and then, with him on my mind, sneaking in through a window I'd forgotten to lock, I felt my shoulders sink.

"I didn't think you were ready to go to sleep..." I murmured lighting another cigarette.

With the windows all locked and the door shut we'd managed to hot box his bedroom and now, through the clouds of smoke which lingered in the air, he was a muffled and blurred in my peripheral vision. Even when he pushed himself up and chucked his tshirt across the room at me.

"Who said anything about sleeping..."

I pushed myself up, crawling to the end of his bed, sitting crossed legs with my cigarette smouldering centimeters away from his cheek.

"In our house we don't get into bed until we're about to pass out..."

For a second he did nothing but look back at me, studying me through the smoke. His eyes were dark and it was difficult to tell his pupil from his iris, though with the amount we'd taken that night I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd no iris left.

He licked his lips, mouth slightly open as he gazed back at me with hollow cheeks, eyelashes a little glitter stained, eyeliner slightly smudged. I began to grow self conscious, but I didn't dare to look down. Rhys had always hated me looking down.

"Then where do you fuck?" He said simply, voice ever so steady, words placed clever and carefully.

For a second I was speechless, my jaw stiffening because I'd never thought the night would end on that note, but then he relaxed and withdrew, flashing me a cheekier smile before lying back down.

"Anywhere we want..." I managed, feeling a spark of bravery take over even if only for a moment. He laughed then, clapping his hands, eyes closed with his feet in my lap.

"My kind of girl," he grinned, chucking to himself as I shrugged his feet from my lap and threw myself down on my tummy beside him, listening to him mumbled the same phrase again, still smiling all the while.

I gazed up at the ceiling, high as anything and hardly able to move, smirking slightly a little impressed with myself, struggling to ignore the strange sensation in my spine, like someone else should have been on my mind.

I felt Mattys fingers on my arm, drawing circles and when I turned back he had propped himself up on his elbow, studying me again.

"You're playing today..." he mused watching me with a small smirk.

"Yeah," I exhaled, my eyes were beginning to sting, but I couldn't look away.

"This boyfriend of yours then..." he started, fearlessly, apathetically running his fingers down my arm. "Will he be there?"

"Perhaps," I shrugged my shoulders closing my eyes and rolling over, ready to pass out and pretend he hadn't ruined the moment.

"Perhaps..." he smirked but I was already somewhere else, pretending that he was someone else, pretending that I had nothing to feel guilty for, but I did.