Boys Like Flowers Too

incident at the bus stop

I
      HE'D ALWAYS been fond of balconies.

      Sometimes he felt (if he stood on one long enough) he could feel the breeze weave in and out through his dark locks of hair, lifting him from the porous concrete and making him float tall above the city like the laws of gravity had granted him passage just for the evening. Other times, when weightlessness felt impossible (as it often did) he might lean faithfully, fatally over the wrought iron railing, taunting his balance; eyes fogged, bewitched by some point twixt the coursing traffic below and the bright lights rising up into the black sky above. He might savour the definiteness and poignancy of mortality and then, having satiated the ache in his brain, step backwards into the little sanctuary alcove above his bedroom.

       Perhaps tonight that affinity for the mortal condition was stronger than usual. (After all, the weight of the doctor's hand on his shoulder, a singularly human gesture of false consolation, still pressed down on him. He feared it would leave a mark.) During the first quarter of the moon, sensing the salacious pull of the city lights below, he did just the thing that would intertwine him in the genes of living almost indefinitely—life's double helix of genesis and consequence—if only for a few moments. Tonight he walked up to his balcony's farthest precipice, gripped the balustrade, with no real intention of using it for support, and then closed his eyes. The balcony's metal railing dug into his abdomen, cold and cutting, as he dangled a cigarette from his lazily aloft fingers. He lifted one foot off the floor, then the other. Then he took a long drag and decided—as he begun to list dangerously over the banister, bloodshot eyes now following the wisps of silvery smoke that dispersed into the harsh night's air speckled with stars—that tomorrow he would bite his tongue and visit her properly. And he might even bring flowers.

II

      IF YOU WANTED REALITY, you ought to take the bus. That was just one of Cillian's many Universal Laws. Another being that: no matter how long you've waited, the moment you light a cigarette, your bus will always arrive almost instantaneously.

      He'd barely touched the cigarette's tipping paper to his lips before the Leyland National 229 came into view over the hill. Even buses didn't seem to like the sight of Cillian Woulfe: the big hunk of metal sighed a great mechanical sigh as it came to a stop in front of him. Cillian rolled his eyes, stubbed out his wasteful cigarette and mounted the garish red single-decker (this town wasn't significant enough for two floors, but it did paint its buses Poppy Red instead of just plain red).

      He placed his fair on the counter as the bus driver was already printing off his ticket. "Looking pretty out of it today, Cillian." the driver didn't have to count his change.

      "I'm dandy, Pete," Cillian ripped the ticket from the machine and immediately placed it in the bin behind the cab. Cillian could hear Pete chuckle softly as he made his way to his usual seat. Pete was a morning person in a mid-life crisis kind of way. Damn morning people, he thought, then he put the volume on his headphones way up and closed his eyes.

      He didn't look out the window. He didn't even open his eyes again until he felt someone standing in the aisle next to him. Then Cillian wished he'd opened them sooner.

III

      BUS STOPS were far more interesting and useful places to have art than in museums. Banksy once said that. Oliver thought he was probably right, though there was something missing from his little seed of profoundness—buses themselves, too, were great places for art.

      He knew this probably from the moment he saw you sitting there—actually, he heard you before he saw you. On the left, six rows from the front where there was a step (you liked being elevated above everyone else), and pressed up against the fogged over glass window. Your eyes were closed, one lanky leg pulled onto your seat in the most casual-don't-talk-to-me fashion. Oliver couldn't tell whether it was the fact that he could hear music sounding from your headphones even from this distance; the fact that your black hoodie had the word *scram* written across it in red scrawl; or simply the fact that almost all seats apart from the one next to yours were taken (he didn't have to wonder why) and that he could already hear the bus driver's foot pressing down on the clutch; whatever it was, Oliver started stumbling down the crowded bus aisle towards you. He couldn't help but wonder what colour your eyes were underneath that sleeping façade. In fact, he couldn't seem to take his own eyes off of you: you shone out like a dingy black beacon. It was unnerving, electrifying—and that was even before you cracked open one eye, that splendid colour of blue that sent shock waves down Oliver's spine like electricity.

      The bus jerked forward and Oliver nearly fell into your lap, so thank god he clutched the handrail when he did—except you caught him too, right across his wrist. That skin is sensitive, did you know that? You snatched your hand away, "Jesus-fuck," you muttered, "Sit down already, would you?" And he did. But you didn't look away after that, did you?

      And Oliver couldn't seem to rub away the feeling of your rough skin on his for the rest of the ride.