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skin

noun. the membrane stretched over one or both of the ends of a drum; the part struck with sticks or mallets.

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THE HALSTON FOXES WON TONIGHT'S game.

That means two things: firstly, the marching band had to stay late at the stadium, filling up the stands, to play our usual victory songs as everyone filed out. Secondly, campus is already pulsing with celebration parties by the time the bus delivers the students back to the Music Department. While the wind instrumentalists can just go home, percussion has to come back and stow all the pit instruments, drums and cymbals. When our section started wheeling and carrying things in from the bus, Keller—with sagging under eyes—gave Callum the keys and told him to swing by her office on Monday morning to return them.

"If anything goes missing or gets damaged," she warned, stifling a yawn, "you will be repaying it with internal organs."

"You're not allowed to say that to a student," he joked, feigning distress.

"Lock up everything, and double check." Then she left.

Twenty minutes later, it's nearly eleven and no-one else is left in the band room. The cymbal cases are always heavier than they look; round black plastic with a handle and a hole through the middle, so multiple cymbals can be stacked on top of each other and bolted securely. The cymbal straps are black leather, removed and strewn inside the case, to be re-knotted the next time they're played.

Callum hauls the last cymbal case onto its appropriate shelf and shoots me a tentative smile. "What was wrong with you today?"

"Nothing," I shrug.

Tonight I played center snare in the Moon show, and it was a hit. There were more cinematic pieces than in Sun, which had pop anthems and show tunes, but turns out obscure film soundtracks are in vogue right now. People like to feel niche.

And maybe I couldn't stop thinking about how there are only two more shows left in the marching season, two more shows before I'll never be an ensemble drummer again. I looked at the audience cheering for us, dance team and cheer squad lined up at the front, confetti raining from the sky, and tried to press every detail into my memory. This is the shitty thing about capitalism; if you can't professionalize your hobbies, you often drift away from them. Specialization is the only way people can make an income and survive. There aren't enough hours for unpaid activities. For all my days I'll be thinking about making ends meet instead of making music.

Does Callum want me to be happy about that?

He prods, "Are you sure?"

I sigh, my frustration and sadness rising to the fore. "What do you think was wrong with me today?" Just so I know what to avoid expressing next time.

Callum dusts his hands together and purses his lips. "You seemed... moody."

"Horror lest a woman be happy and smile all the time."

"So I'm sexist for asking about your feelings."

"You said it, bigot." I'm unrepentant. Ever since I told Callum about growing up in the foster system, he's been taking great lengths to be nicer to me. Which sucks. I want him to treat me like he normally did. As someone deserving of the full force of his ire, instead of someone he has to be soft with. "Lesson is: don't ask about my feelings."

"Well, now I know you're upset." He shoots a knowing smirk in my direction. "You're only combative when you don't want to open up."

Fuck. "And knowing that, why do you keep pushing anyway? My one question for the last three years." Truly. Why must he push? When someone says they don't want to talk about it, Callum should listen, regardless of how worried he is or how much he cares. Stop positioning yourself first for a second and fucking read the room. It's the respectful thing to do.

I grab the heavy door of the drum cupboard and slide it halfway closed, pausing when I get to where Callum stands.

He rests his hand in the carved-out handle, the other hand holding the keys. "I don't know anyone else who insists on their own unhappiness."

Something inside me just snaps. I don't like the feeling I get when he looks at me like this, all investigative and determined, nor when he keeps asking questions, nor when he casually drops observations about my habits like he knows me. He doesn't know me. He doesn't care. The feeling that he might is freefall, it's unravelling, and I don't want to fall or unravel. I haven't cried in six years. I don't want to start now.

"I don't want to open up. Does that upset you?" I grab the keys and try to sidestep Callum to lock the damn storage and get out of this room. "Is that why you get combative—a last resort to crack my exterior?"

"No," he snaps, making a lunge for the keys but failing. There's a muted quality to his answer. His eyes flick away.

I hold the keys behind my back, leaning against the door. "It is, isn't it?" I scoff disbelievingly. "You still can't stand the idea of a single person not awing in your presence. Are you fucking twelve?"

Callum glares at me, fully, with heat, and it feels so good to get his anger back. I know how to navigate him when he hates me. My favorite mental and physical exercise; not an emotional one. He grabs for the keys again, this time wrapping his longer arm around my body and trying to pry my fist open.

"I'm going to lock up," I say petulantly, staring up at his stony expression.

His harsh fingers nearly dig under mine, but I writhe to loosen his grip. The motion presses me closer to his chest, but he doesn't seem bothered as he argues, "Keller gave the keys to me, I'm the one who has to return them."

His other hand grabs my arm to pin it on the door, by our sides. I'm probably not stronger than Callum in any other metric, but finger strength is a prerequisite for drummers. I keep my hand balled in a tight fist, the metal ridges of the keys digging into my palm. Hopeless.

"You had long enough to do it," I point out. "Maybe you shouldn't have wasted time trying to have a fucking heart-to-heart."

He gives up trying to get the keys, giving me an exasperated, red-cheeked look.

That look.

His look, when he wants to me kiss him. With my free hand, I grab his t-shirt and pull him down to my mouth. The first kiss is short, charged. Callum pulls away to glance around the band room, then spits, "I fucking hate you."

He drags me around the half-open door into the storage room. We stagger back against the other side of it, and he kisses me instantly, one hand snaking around my waist and pulling me flush against him. Where our mouths join, everything is hot and wet and moving in perfect synchrony.

When I feel Callum's hand surreptitiously wrap around my wrist, I pull away and laugh in his face. "No. I won. Let it go. I'll return the keys to Keller."

Callum groans in defeat but laughs, too. He rests his forehead on mine. "Maybe I was prying. Sorry for being a caring person. How dare I."

"You should be." I drop the keys to the floor so I can wrap my arms around him, feel the ridges of his shoulder blades and the muscles of his back. It's colder in here because the floor is concrete, trapping zero heat, and I can see shelves upon shelves of marching percussion.

"I should be sorry?" he says, breath fanning across my cheek.

"Yes. Don't be caring. One day you're going to care about the wrong thing and it will crush you and then you'll realize I was right."

Callum pulls back one inch, just enough to whisper against my mouth, "I'm not afraid of that. I'd rather care too much than too little." At the same time frustration snakes up my spine, I feel how wet the fabric between my legs has become.

"I'm—" I grumble, tugging his lower lip between my teeth. A shudder rolls through his body and his grip on me tightens deliciously. "—the opposite."

I'd rather care too little than too much.

"I know," he says, slipping his hands underneath my t-shirt and dragging it over my head. I shiver when my bare back hits the cool wood again. "I know," he whispers again.

I watch with the weirdest combination of emotion in me. He's so beautiful. He's so infuriating. He gets on my nerves. He set my nerves on fire. I'm sad I'll never be like him. Who wants to be like him, anyway? I hate him so much. I want him so much.

As if to clear it, Callum shakes his head, releasing a disbelieving exhale, and turns me around. I brace myself. Denim connects with the swell of my ass, grinding slowly until his solid erection digs into my flesh. He presses a firm hand on the small of my back until I arch and bend over, palms propped on the door. My core pulses in perfect time, a potent, inexplicable mixture of lust and fury building in my bloodstream.

He nips at my earlobe, his warm breath sending shivers over my bare arms. On top, I only have a navy cotton bra. "Try not to scream this time. The acoustics in here are crazy."

His adept hands reach around me to unbutton my jeans and slide the waistband down my thighs. The cold air ghosts over my dampness, goosebumps tingling down my legs. I don't know what Callum is thinking right now, how he looks, watching me bent over and bare-assed for him.

"No rush," I taunt, even as I arch my back more, searching unsuccessfully for contact between his body and mine.

I hear the thud of knees on the ground and then Callum's mouth is hot on my core. "Oh," I gasp, shoving my knuckles between my teeth to muffle myself.

If my weight hadn't been supported by the door, I would have crumpled to the ground. Callum's tongue, working deeper into me, make my knees buckle. I cling to support as mind-numbing sensation sweeps over my body, starting from the nexus between my legs and spiraling out into places like my fingertips, the ends of my hair, and my toes which curl up inside my sneakers.

Callum moans low against my wet flesh, the vibration an added sensation to join his stroking tongue. In moments like this, what I'd said to Renata—getting him out of my system—seems as innately wrong as writing river in red ink, flame in blue.

Anyone can see. It's obvious.

A long, expert finger slides into me. My nerves tense up even as my muscles relax, an odd mixture of comfort and alertness. Callum's other hand smooths over my ass, squeezing a handful of my flesh just enough to hurt and wrench a plaintive cry from my throat.

"I told you to keep quiet," he laughs, angling his head to kiss the spot he just gripped.

"I hate you."

"You hate this?"

Another finger joins, and I do my best to stay on my own two feet while Callum strokes me closer and closer to an orgasm. I beg him with a backward-reaching hand, gripping his hair, doing everything I can to wordlessly express how much I want him to keep going, not to stop.

I stiffen up as the crest swells and breaks over me, carrying me away. Points of pleasure strike my body the way I imagine the flyaway embers of fireworks would—burning, localized, fading, then replaced somewhere else on my body with another flame.

Callum eats me out through it all, his mouth moving slower and his tongue lighter in pressure to coax me down from the high. Goddamn it, why is he so good at this?

"Shall we go now?" he whispers, tonguing the juncture between my thigh and ass. "Not waste any more time?"

I turn around, pulling him up from the floor. His blond hair is wild from my hands. He's so beautiful it truly hurts sometimes. "No. I want you. Do you have a condom?"

Callum pats his pockets, a devilish grin blossoming. "Come here," he says, guiding me to lean over one shelf deeper in the storage room. It's the perfect height for my hips, but the metal is cool against my abdomen.

I am putty in his hands as he undoes his jeans, rolls on the condom—I can smell the latex and lube, memories of all the previous times sweeping over me like a Pavlovian response—and buries himself inside me.

Keep quiet, I tell myself.

Callum withdraws and slowly thrusts a few times, testing how solidly I have myself propped up on the shelf, if anything will squeak, where he has to cradle my weight. He slams in harder after realizing everything is working in out favor—nothing will break, least of all me.

I squeeze around his length each time he slides to the hilt, and earn myself a sharp intake of air beside my left ear. I do it again. And again.

"Fuck," Callum hisses viciously, pressing a soft kiss to the spot underneath my ear. "How are you real?" he whispers into my skin.

I want to say I'm not real, I never have been; I'm just a mosaic of personalities, a mirrorball with nothing inside. I manufactured this version of myself. All the versions of myself. But I'm real when he digs his fingers into my hips, when his kiss leaves behind saliva on my neck, when I feel his momentum slam into me. He's evidence. He's a testament. His anger and his hatred and his lust is proof of me. I was here.

I expect bruises to form by tomorrow. When he slides one hand down the front of my body to strum my clit, I moan in approval. He pulls me upward, leaning back against his chest. I push my fingers backwards into his hair. He seems to like it, if his new rhythm say anything—rough, punishing, knocking each inhale out of me the second I managed to take it.

After adjusting the angle of his thrusts, Callum's cock slides right over the sweet spot inside me and I nearly lose my shit.

"Oh, God, right there," I tell him.

Every part of my body coils and primes itself, my back arching in the extreme, my torso twisted around so that our mouths can meet. I kiss him like I am drunk, which I am—on a different sort of substance.

"Shit," I moan, my head falling back onto Callum's shoulder. "Fucking— oh God."

I know by his erratic pace, the shakiness of his hands where they hold me, and the quiet, deep groans rolling forth from his throat, that he is chasing his release with the same lightning speed I am.

"Fuck, baby," he says in a ragged voice, his finger stroking my clit with a maddening rhythm. I can hear the wet sounds of our bodies slamming together, and it would have embarrassed me if I wasn't so gone for this, for him, swept under a pulsing tide of ecstasy.

I come for him. Around him. With him—I come harder than I ever have before, and my mind blanks. Through the dark, lusty fog in my brain, I register Callum finishing inside me, his cock hammering in deep and irregularly until we both drift back to earth.

We are a sweaty, gasping, speechless mess.

He called me baby.

Callum slides out gently, even as my spasming body begs him not to go. We zip and button up in silence. I lock the drum cupboard door and lean my head on the outside of it: "I can't believe we did that. We just desecrated them."

Now that my mind is clearing, I am so disappointed in myself.

"Who?"

"The drums," I whisper, my heart still hammering. Those beautiful instruments, the ivory drum skins and lacquered barrels and glistening brass cymbals, now traumatized by my horniness. "The precious children. How could we?"

Callum blinks. "You're so fucking weird, Bay."

It's an insult, but a wild flurry bursts into my chest. I pout at him, he laughs. Then I burst into laughter, too. The reverence, the disbelief that fall from Callum's lips—so at odds to the usual derisive comments we exchange—reaches deep inside me to some old hurt and kisses it slightly better.

And I don't want to see the hurt go, I don't want my world to shift these infinitesimal degrees on its axis.

I don't want this.

But also I do.

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a / n :

them <3

i love writing the in-between parts of romances. after you know someone but before you can have them. when all the angst and uncertainty is at a maximum. (hate living in this phase however)

p.s. a while ago i made character aesthetics and even artwork for this story on my instagram. if you would like to connect on that platform, you can find the link in my bio.

aimee x