--‘m sorry I fucked up just please don’t leave me—

It all happened in a span of seconds—silken moments I could easily count if my head were in the game and of course it wasn’t, it was up in a cloud somewhere that was a few ticks short from 9, a limbo that spewed its thoughts without registering the feeling packed tightly behind every word. The world was still this pulsing shadowy thing with no real detail to it, save for a piercing blue that was cracking in ways I wasn’t noticing (it’s hard seeing diamonds through the lens of a flood--)—and my head was stuck in this rut of despair because I was losing Lee, wasn’t I, and maybe it was the world that did it or maybe it was my Ma’s words that twisted him or maybe it was my teeth, my words, my fear (roaring like a lion, poised like a scorpion’s dagger) raging and pulling his hair and ripping his soul out of his body and flinging it into the ether.

(I don’t even know what was going on anymore, man. My mind was gone.)

So imagine—just imagine. Just think about how hard those crashes were in that state of mind.

So many crashes.

There was the physical one—that one that happened in a span of seconds, even as my lips trailed off of some moan I had already forgotten about (--don’t wanna lose you, Lee.) Remember how tired I was, right? How exhausting all this shit was for me (this shit called life) and how I was barely able to keep myself on my feet and apparently unable to keep myself in a straight profile (--to the left, to the left, everything you own--) and how my eyelids drooped and the world was nothing but dark velvet with some starlight that was looking at me looking at me looking at me—

--NO!--

--and just like that all my nerves jolted and I jumped a little and my eyes snapped straight the-fuck open cuz his voice was electricity in me, sparking everything, shaking it awake and alert and just in time for the—

--CRASH!!--

--right into me, right into my chest and my neck and damn-near my face if I hadn’t seen him coming—and he pretty much crushed everything out of me, my breath (“BLEGH—“) and the wind that never rose under my wing and my bones were rocked and so was my dome I guess and I was damn-near seeing stars swimming in my vision as he—

--as he clutched at me—

--and I was clutching at him too, I was reaching for that place in his neck where I had held him before (he pulled away from me--) and I was scrambling back into his embrace and there was still tears and I probably would’ve been sobbing if he hadn’t knocked that shit flying out my teeth like he did—

--but there was another crash going on in the inside, too.

It was an entirely different kind of crash—his was passionate and sudden, a wrecking ball into me, a burst of ice crystals flung on all sides as he burst towards me and into me (and there was no blood this time). But this internal one was different in so many ways; it was more like a dawning, y’know, when the sun rises on the horizon and it’s a fanfare of gold ‘n shit and you can damn-near hear the orchestra playing in the background.

(Oh, wait. I guess that’s why they say it “dawned” on you.)

But it hit me just the same, with almost the same intensity. This idea that I had avoided for so long, like direct sunlight in my eyes; this notion that I never truly admitted to myself because it seemed stupid, I didn’t know the guy, I never have and at this rate I probably never would. But it had been there and I had never wanted it, I had never asked for it but he had showed up one night on a beach and we did some stupid shit and we kept doing stupid shit through the years(?!) and he wouldn’t just rub off of me and my life and I was just now acknowledging a thing that Chico (you, I know you’re still here but I forgot) knew even before he had laid eyes on the white bastard I thought about way too often.

Oh fuck, I was thinking, I love this guy.

“Oh fuck,” I was saying, “I’m falling--“

And I was; I didn’t mean to, I swear I didn’t but I was. Cuz my legs had already been weak and my head had already been spinning and my heartbeat was a fragile thing and my mouth still tasted like blood and my eyes were bloodshot too and I wasn’t anywhere near my usual hard self when he bumrushed me like that—

--and my balance was already fucked so we were clutching at each other like idiots but I felt myself falling backward and my legs were too jittery to try and catch me—

--and I gripped him as hard as I could cuz he was there, his weight and his strength there to keep me from falling but I had a fat ass and I was tilting—

"talk"