My best friend suggested this song to me, so I decided it deserved a feelings jam story. Characters are mine and you can read more about them here.
Zach breathed in the cool night air. It was just what he needed after all those hours of studying and studying and studying. Idiotic business efficiency shit that he wasn’t really sure he’d ever need. But whatever, he’d at least find a job pretty quick with this degree. Right now he needed to abandon all thought of maximizing space while minimizing disorder, and just breath. He knew he should probably not be on the roof, but the idea of safety buzzed gently in the back of his head, hidden under a lot of negativity that he just didn’t have the energy to work through at the moment. A lot of questions, a lot of second guessing, a lot of-shit, no. No.
Inhale. The city air can be stale, but tonight the wind was pulling a nice breeze from the coast which for once didn’t smell like expired seafood. It was March, which for his Southern coastal town meant the world was shrugging off winter’s mantle. But the wind sometimes whipped at him and drew a short shiver from his stiff shoulders. It was still refreshing, the chill that raced across his body. It was sobering.
Exhale. Zach rubbed his knuckles against his triceps, chuckling. He remembered how cold Leonard always felt anytime the thermostat dipped below seventy degrees. He was just so damn skinny! If he’d work out more, had some more muscles…but there wasn’t a thing about Leonard Zach wanted to change. Except maybe how much he’d cared for Zach. It wasn’t really good for Leonard, their ridiculous excuse of a relationship. For whatever reason, Leonard never quit, so neither did Zach. Even now Leonard was slumped over an illustration history text down in Zach’s apartment. But Zach didn’t want to wake him, and so he tiptoed quietly to the stairwell, where some irresponsible drunkard had-after a night of sharing really expensive whiskey with a bunch of guys he barely knew-had kicked open the locked door and tripped out onto the roof. Not that Zach knew anything about that, just as he’d told his neighbors who’d asked him when they’d talked about all the ruckus they’d heard that night.
He stayed away from the edge of the roof, not wanting to be conspicuous. Leaning against the stairwell exit, he glanced up. With a wince, he noticed it was drizzling. Zach wiped off the stray raindrops on his face and continued gazing upwards. The clouds were thinning out, wispy and weakly defined from the black canopy of the sky. Every now and then, a star shimmered dimly at him. He looked back down at his feet, bare and damp on the black tar of the roof. There was such a contrast in the images, it was hard for him to believe they were both from the same reality.
He closed his eyes. God damn he was tired. Physically and emotionally. So fucking tired of everything. The ache in his shoulders and in the back of his skull, the exhaustion weighing him down, the anxiety that clouded him whenever he thought of his parents and their reaction to the discussion he would have to have with them eventually, the indecision about his major, the uncertainty about his future.
He examined all these things in his life, saw them all laid before him. He sighed, then breathed deeply. Out of all of these things, there was one sparkling jewel of certainty and joy. One single facet of his life that he didn’t have to question, not once. One person he never worried about, one that he knew would be there for him and would care for him no matter what he did (because he’d already tested this theory, and yeah nothing was going to drive this person away).
So he breathed out, straightened up, and went back inside the apartment building, back to his home, and kissed Leonard gently on the forehead before settling down beside him on the couch and slipping into a dreamless sleep.
