Conversations From Afar

warm nights / 27

ITS IN MY ROOTS IN MY VEINS THE BLOOD THAT I SLAYY
(El oh el)

Can I just say FEELS. This was written on gracefulinsanity 's floor on her laptop so there are the creds. We spent the last 13 hours together and we didn't drive each other crazy bc best frends anywho follow her bc fav
******

Cold and disoriented, I sit up in bed. The sheets pool around my waist, and Cam sleeps peacefully at my side. Sheets of rain smash against the window, and a damp, cold breeze assaults my side.

My legs are warm, but goosebumps dot my arms and across my chest. I carefully extract myself from his warmth and crawl off of the bed. I slide the window down with a soft slam, and light fills the room with a far-away crash of thunder.

I turn back to the bed, and Cam is blinking at me, propped on his elbows above the headboard. He peers out the window, hair falling irresistibly over his forehead and biceps bunched beneath his weight.

"Was that lightning?" He asks, his voice sleep-husky and loud in the quiet dorm room.

"I think so," I reply, tiptoeing back to bed over the cold floor. I climb over his legs, nestling myself between him and my along-the-wall pillows. I shiver, and he reaches one of those long, muscular boy-arm-reaches and picks my shirt up off of the floor and offers it to me.

I drop it over my head and cover myself. The fabric is cold, and I press my chilled legs against his bare ones.

"I'm tired," he murmurs, lying back on the pillow and gazing at the ceiling with a sigh.

"Mm."

He stares at the ceiling, and I watch him. His eyes flick to mine, the dim room is illuminated by another flash of lightning. "I had a really weird dream."

"Yeah?" I sit up, because my tiredness has fled and my brain is back in its overactive Cam Is Here mode. I'm comfortably squashed between him and the wall, my legs crossed apple-sauce-style and resting against his side. He sits up, against the headboard, all shirtless and bare skin and boy.

"I was playing one of Gabriel's video games and it was a soccer game, then it was this weird city, like that game...what's it called...Grand Theft Auto. And it was all, like, burning trash cans and running people." He's speaking with a musing lilt, and he reaches out to rest a hand absently on my knee. I twine my fingers with his. "Anyway, there were two doorways and I had to choose, but I wanted what was in both of them and I couldn't decide... then they were locked and I couldn't have either."

He cocks his head to the side, and skims our hands - his knuckles - up and down my thigh. "Did you dream?"

"No, I just slept." My skin tingles where he touched it and I want him to touch me everywhere. Again. Everywhere again.

"Lucky." He says, lifting our hands from my leg. "C'mere."

I snuggle into his arms, my chest against his, our legs entangled. My legs are still freezing and he laughs in surprise. We don't talk, but we don't need to. My heart aches with nostalgia for all of the other nights like this, when this was just a night and it was beautiful, but it would happen again. When he wasn't leaving the next morning.

He strokes a hand up and down my back, beneath the t-shirt. Long, lingering touches that make my toes curl and something in my chest figuratively melt a little bit.

I match my breaths to his, and let the whirlpool of drowsiness draw me down.