Here In The Afterglow

Chapter 3.14

Time, it seems, is too much of a hassle for San Francisco.

Days blur together in gradients of a sun not quite set, of sticky-sugar lips and the gilded glaze of reflective light on windows. When night touches the tar it's soft and unhurried, pink sky turning navy and orange cracked at a snail's pace. It's because of this that it all appears suspended in slow motion, out of loop, without constraint.

Louis feels that slowness in himself too, but it isn't a bad thing. His eyelids blink heavy and his lips slide with Harry's lush and long; he watches the sun rise like it takes a day to do so. The weight there, the one that sits in his chest and slows him, is fullness. It's not dread or loneliness or something deep blue. It's warm, red-orange perhaps, and it makes him feel constantly at ease.

In the mornings he wakes early. His body is kicked back into its old routines by the city's sun, the slow but eager rise of it. At this time, their tiny room is dusted in a blush of warm blue and pink, the orange light waiting idly at the window and turning the specks of dust sitting there into a mask. Harry's skin glows in that light, a constant peach flush clinging to the apples of his cheeks, his collarbones and his elbows and knees. Louis leans down to kiss his forehead, slips out of his arms and trudges up the stairs at the end of the hall.

When he walks those stairs he imagines the incline, imagines the pedals beneath his feet and the needles tickling his arms. He sits on the hard concrete of the apartment roof, the lone pine, and watches the world wake up. The tall powerlines are his pines, the roar of engines his rushing river. Despite the noise of a city coming to life, Louis finds it calming in an odd way.

Slowly, gold light creeps along the buildings, the sky turns from rosy-pink to yellow-blue, and Harry comes up to meet him like the rise of the sun with warm arms and a kiss to his neck.

Louis soon forgets what day it is, tries to tell time by the position of the sun in the sky, the colors that dance above them through the wispy clouds. Even then, though, the rise and fall of light starts to become unreliable. It's the slowness, Louis thinks, that sends him into a daze of floating through time.

Instead, he tells time in snapshots of Harry. Harry waking him with feather-light fingertips and a warm mouth. Harry cleaning his glasses by the window as he looks out onto the street. Harry smiling at him under the low, red glaze of the bar. Harry playing Hendrix on Niall's old Strat, tone reverberant and nostalgic in noon light. Harry taking him to see Grease at the theatre, their hands held sticky with caramel popcorn and the heat of the night on the walk home. Harry whispering I love you, the background flickering between different places every time Louis recalls it.

Time truly stops when the rain settles in, the odd bursts of cloud and a storm that sends everything into a standstill. The muggy air remains, aided by the smell of wet tar and a slick city, the way the clouds seems to capture everything in a grey and black dome. When the rain comes, Louis breathes it in slow, savours the pause in time.

On one afternoon, a noon that Louis doesn't have a date or time to pin it with, thunder shakes over them and sends with it sheets of thick rain. It had been a scorching morning. They'd gone to get ice cream for breakfast, and they'd sat on a park bench with their ankles locked, hands sticky with melted sugar. Now, the sun has been battered away, almost like a punishment for its harshness, and the rain runs in rivets down the gutters to spread water through the city.

Despite this insistence, Harry props the window open that afternoon, lays out towels on the windowsill and the floor beneath it so that the sound of the rain fills the entire room, so that the smell of wet pavement and sugary oil curls around them. It's rare that they settle this way without music playing, but Harry leaves the record player quiet this afternoon, tugs Louis onto the floor with a book in each hand, and kisses his forehead.

They lay side by side, arms brushing as they turn pages. Louis' hair curls gently against his neck, sticky and hot from the humid air. Harry's is the same, wild and coiled tight at the ends, falling over his glasses in tiny spirals. He's reading Rumi again, face placid and soft with his thumbs brushing the yellowed, worn pages.

If anyone wants to know what 'spirit' is, or what 'God's fragrance' means, lean your head toward him or her. Keep your face there close. Like this.

It's with a long boom of thunder that Louis realizes Harry's stillness, the absence of a fluttering page to meet his own. Only the rush of the rain and the muffled, sleeping city echoes back to him. Louis pauses and turns to look at him. Harry is already watching him, eyes roaming his face, his neck, his shoulders, with an unhurried gaze, eyes pale in the storm-light.

Finally, he lifts his eyes back to Louis' own, gentle and warm with something behind them, a quiet intent that Louis can't read entirely. Harry leans in slowly, slips his eyes closed and rests his forehead against Louis', and breathes. A buzzing warmth runs through Louis, oozes from his heart into his limbs. He presses close, slips his eyes closed so it's just darkness, the rain and Harry's breathing, his hair tickling his skin and their noses brushing.

It's just one little moment among many, just a press of their foreheads together. But it still makes Louis' body sag, still makes him full to the brim with love.

If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead, don't try to explain the miracle. Kiss me on the lips. Like this. Like this.

"I'm going to marry you someday," Harry says. It's almost conversational, whispered between them.

Louis opens his eyes. Harry is already watching. "I'm going to say yes."

Harry's smile is a tiny quirk of his lips, a full crinkle of his eyes. He kisses Louis softly, just one, long connection of their lips. They breathe through their noses, air fluttering over their skin. When Harry pulls away, their mouths just rest together, brushing with each inhale and exhale.

Thunder claps, and the rain turns to mist on their skin. Louis kisses him again.