It was simply something to keep him warm on a cold morning. To shine light through the dreary blue grey skies. To force hope through the blanket of ashen nothingness that clung to the town like a thick black fog.

George knew it ought to have meant something more, but it was just enough - more content than contempt. Warm lips, shaky breaths, in the cold. Bodies pressed close together, in more than just an attempt to keep to the shadows of the churchyard.

"You taste like..." He drew away, long arms encircling his shoulders - tight, as if he might never let George go. Despite every ounce of sense in his body, George would have quite liked that.

The boy looked up at him from behind long, dark eyelashes, tawny brown hair blowing out with the Sunday morning breeze. But he didn't look beautiful. George didn't go after beautiful boys; they were simply unobtainable. Beautiful boys were strictly heterosexual, and out of his league, and lived in nice big houses, and were nice to their mothers, and knew more than just how to light up a joint. George had left all the beautiful boys behind.

He was, however, decently pretty. And George was content to be resigned to kissing pretty boys in churchyards over an ounce; it was as much to do with keeping him warm in the cold spring weather, as it was with simply making a statement.

"Like... honey..." It took him a moment, but the second half of his sentence did finally come, as he blinked erratically viridescent eyes up towards George: desperate and yearning for more.

George forced himself to subdue a snort; he knew all too well the kind of bullshit half way pretty boys would spew when they had half a mind about getting somewhere. Still, he wasn't quite clever enough as to not play along. He didn't care for the reality of the situation, for the meaning behind falsified feelings; he cared instead for something to pass the time, warm hands to hold, a heart to beat against his own.

"You taste like fags." George didn't quite have it within him to return the same sappy rhetoric, and instead, crashed their lips back together, pinning bony shoulders back to the church wall.

"Very funny." He pulled away, leaving George to tug pitifully at his bottom lip: desperate to avoid his gaze, to avoid further conversation. "Come on, George."

"What?" He relented in the end, pulling away to stare great, ashen holes in such a fervent resolve. "Come on, Cam..." He drew out a taunting remark, lighting the most feeble fire in his eyes.

"I don't care whether you think you're god himself, I'm not getting off with you behind a church." He held his arms firmly across his chest, leaving George to skulk off towards the railing that surrounded the churchyard, running his fingers over the black metal spikes with an undeserved resentment.

George stare down at the ground: grass telling no tales of spring, or at least, the approaching summer, considering the placid half-grey it grew. It was as if it just didn't quite have the heart to grow - to accept change with maturity and adapt to it, instead of making a pastime out of poorly justified self-destruction. At least, George wasn't alone in that.

It was all of forty six seconds before Cam followed him. George counted each and every one.

"It's not you." He assured him, voice just as dull and ordinary as the world around them. "It's the church, and the... being in public. We can go back to-"

"No." George told him, turning to press his back against the railings, staring up at Cam, as if daring him to kiss him again. The prospect amused George: pushing people to see how far they might go.

It was no less than ten seconds before they kissed once more. George almost laughed, but settled for smiling up against his lips instead. As Cam smiled back, George let him think that it was for the same reason, that they were on the same page, that this was something, and not just anything, not just a way to spend a morning or an afternoon.. It was all too easy.

Within seconds, George grew comfortable with their situation, Cam easing under his grasp, and George began to contemplate what might be the likelihood of convincing Cam to give him a handjob behind a church. However, the world was quite to shatter such a resolve, as the still of their surroundings burst into life with chatter and the opening of the church doors as half the town spilled out.

Cam practically leapt against George's chest as he pulled them back under the guise of the shadows. His face turned as white as winter snow - perfect from a movie scene, the blood in his body falling right to his feet. And yet, George couldn't subdue his laughter - cackling like he really did own the world and everything in it.

"Come on, Cam." George mimicked his earlier tone, taking a moment to calm his own laughter, before climbing over the railing with ease.

"George-" Cam remained still: very little more than speechless.

George outstretched his hand. "Come on."

He was more insistent than teasing this time around; it bore evidence to the fact that the only real reason George had waited for him was because he still had the weed.

As the voices of churchgoers drew nearer, he placed his hand in George's, and let himself be pulled over the fence, for the two to run hand in hand through the street, laughing themselves stupid.

The elation was hard to comprehend. Perhaps impossible to put into words. The details of it, at least. George was only happy because he was high. It didn't mean a thing as to whose fingers were intertwined with his own; he felt free and that was enough.

They ran for minutes, until their cheeks flushed a hot pink, and their hair lay messily: dragged out behind them in the wind. Still, despite his dishevelment, George hit Cam with an unfairly confident smile - faking it through and through - before leading him down the alleyway to their right.

"You're a dickhead." Cam told him, rather boldly - it ought to be noted, struggling to catch his breath with his head thrown back against the dusty brick wall.

George didn't even seem to hear him, digging out the bag of weed from the pocket of Cam's jeans instead. He caught the beginning of another retort: curling out over the tip of his tongue, but the forbidding look in George's eyes stopped him from quite committing to it.

"Will you get me off here instead?" George curled his lips around a smirk: forever too daring, forever with too much to say for himself, armed only with laughter in defence.

Cam looked across at him like he was mad, like he didn't know it was just the drugs, yet like he'd known George in any other way.

George didn't see him through with a response, instead messily rolling himself a joint between shaking fingers, only quite managing to put it to his lips - never mind light it - before Cam was on his knees, even in the dirt, even in the cold breeze..

George bit back a smirk; it was all too easy.

He'd never quite imagined that Cam was even into him enough in order to suck him off in a grotty old alleyway, seeing as he'd been particularly dubious pertaining to just giving him a handjob not ten minutes prior. Then again, that had been in a churchyard, and Cam was one of those boys who liked to think that he still had some dignity about him.

"God, I love your cock." Cam forced out a moan. George threw his head back against the wall, just to hide the roll of his eyes; he'd never heard anything quite so forced in his life.

"I'm sure it loves you too." George bit back, as Cam continued to stare up at him expectantly. He didn't give him ample opportunity to say much more before pushing himself into his mouth.

George pulled his head up to the sky: fixating on the slither of bleak sunlight stretching down between the rooftops of the buildings above. He mumbled up to the dreary skies, closing his eyes and painting himself a world in which anyone else had their mouth around his cock.

Cam was very situational. George reckoned that was the nicest way to put it. He was a halfway pretty boy in a halfway liveable town; they had halfway tolerable conversations, and shot each other halfway murderous looks, and shared halfway stolen joints, and sometimes George even halfway liked him.

But he wasn't his boyfriend. There was nothing halfway about that. George didn't do boyfriends. George didn't do girlfriends either. He was just prepared to flash a smile at anyone that might be inclined to get down on their knees for him.

In George's mind, they weren't in an alleyway. In his deepest, darkest fantasies, he just had an ounce more respect for himself. They were instead in a bedroom: small but spacious, with four walls yellowed with dust and age and tar. As even by his own creation, their situation could only ever be halfway respectable.

And in George's deepest, darkest fantasies, it certainly wasn't Cam before him. It was one of these elusive beautiful people that he'd long left behind. George didn't dream that he could correct it all; he dreamed instead that the world would bend over backwards for him just to ensure he was content. After all, George had never come to his own head in search of sense. He at least knew better than that.

George thought about a beautiful face and came. He thought about something more than a dirty alleyway and a pathetic Sunday morning. He thought about something meaningful. He thought about everything he'd once lost or thrown down into the dirt. And with eyes wrenched open, his head ached with the comedown, with the split second in which he'd quite believed his own illusion.

"Give us a drag." Cam stumbled to his feet, wrenching the joint from George's lips. He knew better than to ask him to return the favour.

George didn't protest otherwise, attempting to make sense of the mess of blinding white light he'd mixed himself up in. He yearned for the bedroom, the one with the yellowed walls - complete with a distinct smell of candle wax. Burned and burned for days. George dreamed of sitting there and simply watching the flames.

He barely had time to shove his cock back into his pants before a shout came down the alleyway.

"Oi! You two!"

George laughed, giving himself a moment to watch Cam's face turn white, before dashing off: disappearing down the other end of the alleyway. It wasn't until he reached the street that he threw a glance back over his shoulder; it was the very moment he did so that his stomach plummeted down through his chest.

Cam remained still: a frozen silhouette, a perfectly white ghost, paralysed under the eye of the law. George reckoned himself halfway decent, so stopped for a moment, just to ponder the alternate reality in which he had went back for him. In which he'd grabbed Cam by the hand all over again.

But the moment passed. Like all moments do. And George darted off out into the street, stumbling past the shops in search of somewhere somewhat inconspicuous to hide. He wasn't stupid enough to imagine that he wouldn't be pursued also; he didn't imagine that the policeman would be all that content with just a wide eyed, halfway living boy, who looked pretty in the winter light, but was just another dandelion in the spring. But perhaps another would do.

And yet, George was still the romantic: forever searching for that one rose in a field of dandelions. For that one last implication that life wasn't quite as hopeless as it had always seemed. He hated his head, and the stupid thoughts he could never quite let go of.

George ducked inside a bookshop on the corner of the lane: content to browse the aisles for a quarter of an hour, and leave Cam to whatever might become of him. He wouldn't call himself heartless, just realistic. He knew no one was coming back for him in life, so he didn't see why he shouldn't do anything but the same.

But George ducked inside the bookshop on the corner of the lane, and the world folded out to him in the path to an answer he was yet to comprehend the question to.

"If you're not buying anything, you can get out."

The voice cut swiftly into George's resolve: making quick work of wiping the gleeful smile from his face - suddenly it didn't feel so much like he'd escaped anything anymore. Defeated, he slouched against the wall, dragging his eyes around the bookshop, as if the answers might suddenly willingly present themselves to him.

The shop was just the one room, small, and cluttered from wall to wall with shelves and shelves of aged books. Despite the cramped conditions, despite the smell of decay and a century old family dinner gripping the room, George found it homely. More than that, it seemed to resonate the colour gold. Not the polished, fake gold lined up behind display cabinets on high street windows - not preened and ground down to perfection. The shop was the gold you found - the great shimmering lumps within the muddy earth. A sort of last hope, perhaps.

George's smile soon returned to him, breathing in the warm air: old candles, burnt wax, cigarette smoke, tar - from the rotting floorboards to the yellowing walls. George threw his head back against the wall.

"I said." The voice repeated, this time with far more insistence. "If you're not buying anything... you can get out."

Smirk worn across his lips, George was ablaze. World erupting in forever, ardent flames. He envied them. He'd long grown bored of being the one to hold the match; he dreamed to dance amidst the flames, to feel fear, to feel pain, to feel passion, to feel love, all intertwined: forever.

It wasn't until the shop assistant repeated his words for the third time that George found it within himself to pay him any attention.

"You can get o-"

"What makes you think I'm not buying anything?" George pulled himself away from the wall, moving with a new life, as if his spirit had ignited a new fire inside of his chest: vivacious roaring flames.

"I'm not stupid." The shop assistant remained stern and sincere, folding arms over his chest, even as George made quite the show out of plucking a book from the shelf, examining the cover extensively.

He turned his attention to the blurb, putting the words behind his lips like he had the slightest clue what they did really mean. "It's love at first sight for high school student Arnie Cunningham when he and his best friend Dennis Guilder spot the dila-pi...a...d... dilapa-"

There came a snort from behind the counter. George's eyes widened in disbelief, as if such a nerve was truly inconceivable.

"You've never read a book in your life." The boy's voice continued with the utmost assurance.

George rolled his eyes, taking a step forward and sliding the dusty paperback across the counter. Such confidence was soon to be shattered in two, as he drew his gaze up to the cashier, who remained certain and expectant, boring holes into George's shoulders with those dark narrow eyes.

He swallowed. Hard. Daring to cling to his gaze for a minute longer, before the air began to decay around them, leaving them as statues in the dust - no more than words upon the page. Forever to be glazed over and so very soon forgotten.

"I'll buy it." George insisted, yet with half the confidence he'd had before.

The cashier cracked a smile, staring up at him with those eyes, that even from behind obnoxiously large, round spectacles, seemed to command the room: drawing everything into their great inky black abyss. George drew his eyes down to obscenely pink lips stretched out into a smile, revealing slightly crooked teeth, and called himself no exception.

He brushed a hand back through his hair, pushing billowing chestnut curls away from his face - appearing somewhat ashen in the low light - and lifted the paperback from the counter. A smirk tugged at his lips.

"King?" He uttered, amused.

"Hmm...?" George furrowed his brow, imploring further.

"Stephen King." The boy supplied, almost mechanically, staring up at George from behind golden rimmed glasses. "Don't tell me you-"

"I know who Stephen King is." George could say that at least, fighting to regain some sort of barb to his voice. "Carrie." He reached for the book, flipping it over to its front cover, only to find himself dejected and confused.

"You've never read him, have you?" The boy continued, taking the book back from George's grasp; small, soft fingertips brushed against his own.

George saw no point in supporting a crumbling wall, and shook his head, managing a much more genuine smile as he looked back down at the boy; he was almost beguiling in the low light, as if he seemed to radiate the kind of elegance that was lost in dirty streets and cramped terraced houses.

"Christine." He explained, pointing to the title displayed upon the front.

"Yeah, believe it or not - I can read." George insisted: unsure as to whether the curly haired cashier did quite believe him.

He flipped the book back over to its cover. "Dilapidated." He supplied, smirk twitching at the corner of his lips. "They spot the dilapidated 1958 red and white-"

"Does he name all his books after girls?" George mused, struggling to place just what it was about the boy that had him quite so transfixed. Whatever it was, it didn't seem as if it spoke in words George could quite understand.

"No." George received what he would have defined as an unfair eye roll in response. "Christine's the name of the car, anyway."

"Oh..." George gave a shrug. "Is it any good? Is it a... dil...a-dapated... book?"

The cashier struggled to hide a smile. "Dilapidated means destroyed, ruined, basically. So no. And I don't know - I haven't read it."

"You work here." George's eyes grew wide, tapping against the wall as if it might emphasise his point. "That's like working in a butcher's and never having had a sausage before."

"Christine by Stephen King isn't the sausage of literature." He responded rather shortly, as if he couldn't quite decide whether he was quite tired of George yet.

"Yeah, well... you should know whether it's any good..." George trailed off, unsure as to what else he quite had to say for himself.

"Why don't you read it yourself and find out?" He curled his lips up into a smirk. "Three ninety nine."

George drew out a sigh, sucking his cheeks into his mouth for a brief moment: pondering how best to phrase the matter at hand. "Look, you're lovely, and I respect you, and trust you, and-.... Look, I'll buy the book if you look after my weed until tomorrow."

The cashier arched his eyebrows, staring down at George like he simply couldn't quite believe a word leaving his lips. Yet, he appeared far more content with the notion than George could have possibly expected.

"If you give me twenty percent then sure." He leaned forward, captivating George's gaze entirely.

"Twenty percent of what?" George muttered, almost mindlessly, as he found his eyes glued to the strand of hair that had fallen across his left cheek, and how it twitched with every movement of his lips.

"The weed." He supplied, like it was obvious, and really, it was - if just less so to George.

George's eyes wide, as if he entirely struggled to believe the mere preposition. He snorted, shaking his head and laughing in his face.

"Alright then, fine." He folded his arms back across his chest, somewhat disheartened. "Keep your weed. Fuck knows why you'd even want me to look after it, I mean-"

"None of your business." George interjected, finishing for him. He regarded the boy for a minute longer: forever struggling to figure him out. "Twenty percent? You look like you've never smoked anything in your life."

The laugh George was faced with was loud and abrasive, fitting into an imperfect bittersweet harmony with the warm, entrancing look to his eyes - framed perfectly behind long black lashes.

"Look at you, here - buying a book." He gestured down to 'Christine', lying ignored upon the countertop. "We're all full of surprises."

George's cheeks turned an obnoxious flamingo pink. "I didn't come in here to buy the book, I-"

"I know." The boy assured him, reaching his hand out as George dug into his coat pocket, stunned beyond comprehension: words laid out in a language he was quite yet to understand.

-

George found himself acquainted with a surprisingly uneventful afternoon. He had instead expected that someone, anyone, might have enquired after the weed, as that was exactly why he'd sought to hide it in the first place. Yet instead there was a rather large amount of nothing - an extended silence, as if the world might forever remain still.

He couldn't help but remain eternally dubious of the bookshop boy with the curly hair, and the ever-enthralling eyes shimmering from behind round lenses, and the apparent aptitude in rolling more than just the corner of a page. George couldn't avoid the fact that he'd caught his attention; even in that dingy little bookshop, he'd stood out like a peacock amongst hens - something this derelict little town might finally have to say for itself, brought forth in the form of a sweater-wearing boy from the bookshop.

Yet that was the thing. They'd all looked beautiful once. When they'd been new and exciting ideas, in the place of real people with thoughts and feelings that George might have to pretend he cared enough to adhere to. The notion of it all was somewhat sociopathic, but George knew his angle was far more up the street of apathy. Coming from a cramped living room in the house of 'being too high to give a shit'. It was a place he knew well.

He felt rather lost that afternoon, without the weed, without anything much to say for himself, and the drowned out halfway worry regarding Cam's whereabouts. He didn't doubt that he'd come back and find him within the week, and as thus didn't spare much of a concern either way.

In the end, he found himself perched upon a stone wall towards the outskirts of town come afternoon. In contrast to the morning, he found the world to bare very little meaning at all, as he found himself in a whole new state of captivation, almost an odd kind of enthralled, with a cigarette strewn out between long, messy fingers, and wavering clouds of cigarette smoke drifting across the pages, chasing yellowing trails behind words George struggled to quite fully understand.

Despite himself, he was ever so determined - on a desperate search for answers to life's eternal questions, or at least just enough to relay to a more than decently pretty boy in a bookshop the following day. Something to prove he had indeed read a book in his life; something to plead that he was more than the person he'd thought he was, more than just the guy who'd dropped off his weed.

Really, George felt himself stupid for trusting him, and so much so on the basis of his appearance, as this was just the beginning of every story that had ever turned out wrong. He was certain bookshop boy could assure him of that. But George had always been looking for more in life than he could find in the first few chapters of a paperback, or in cautious smiles on the faces of halfway beautiful strangers, and the sullen look of everyone he'd ever let down.

He dreaded seeing Cam again. For reasons other than the ones he'd care to admit. He dreaded seeing Cam again because he wasn't all confidence and disregard. He dreaded seeing Cam again because he'd fucked up, and George more than halfway cared.

The thought haunted him until the evening drew near, and the dark skies welcomed a familiar figure to his side: taking her place on the wall beside him like she owned it. Like she owned him too. Maybe she had once.

"Are you... reading?" Her voice was teasing, but the element of genuine shock was unwelcomingly pleasant.

George drew his eyes up to meet hers, avoiding the insistence of her gaze with a roll of his eyes, holding the cover of the book up for her to see.

"'Christine'?" She raised her eyebrows, reaching forward and talking the cigarette from his fingers: dangling limply over the wall.

George followed her movements with a sluggish gaze - as if he only halfway considered insisting otherwise. As if he only halfway wanted to smoke anymore. He watched her instead: hazel eyes growing dark with fixation upon the paperback held between George's fingers.

"Why are you reading?" She asked him outright: blunt as usual - although never out malice but instead just mere curiosity. George had always liked that about her; she always had the guts to be honest, and not just when it suited what anyone else might like to hear.

George thought for a moment; unsure as to how he might put the answer into words. As truth be told, it was far from making the most perfect sense as it was, even as it remained hidden up inside his own head.

"Look..." He drew out a sigh, giving 'Christine' the honour of one final pitiful glance, before messily shoving the book back into his jacket pocket. "Chelsea, honestly, I'm not really sure."

"Hmm?" She raised her eyebrows, curling her lips up into a smirk, as she stared across at George in nothing more than blatant amusement.

"I had to hide the weed." George offered up his final hope at an explanation. "I know I said-"

"You've lost it?" Her eyes widened in disbelief, taking George for all he was worth - his words like pleaded offerings against her statue.

"Oh fuck off, it's not lost. I know exactly where it is." George spat, reaching out and pulling his cigarette back from her grasp. He put it back up to his lips, taking an overly extended drag as he stared her down with all the integrity he had left to his name.

"Where is it then?" Chelsea continued: exigent.

George inhaled sharply; unsure how he was possibly ought to explain the rather questionable reasoning that he'd ran with that morning.

"Is it with Cam?" In George's silence, she pressed him further, but was quick to notice the way George grimaced at the mention of his name. "So it's not, then."

George buried his world in a cloud of smoke, hiding away the best he could: longing for great white clouds to shroud him forever. "Cam's..." He trailed off - once again, lost for words.

"You broke up." It didn't take much to fill in the gaps.

"We were never together!" George burst into a fit of laughter: overcompensating, eternally. He knew however, that Chelsea was forever bound to come to her own conclusions about things, regardless of what was said otherwise.

"Okay, you never said the word 'boyfriend', but... you had a thing." Chelsea leaned forward, snatching the cigarette back from George's fingers. As disgruntled as he was, he still didn't quite have it within him to argue otherwise.

"We didn't have anything - fuck off-"

"You only never said the word 'boyfriend' because you were too scared to." There wasn't a hint of fear in her voice, yet in contrast, George was gripped: frozen, as if his insides were burning up inside his chest.

"I'm not scared of fucking anything." George insisted, looking at her like she was mad. Like she didn't know him at all. Like he was beyond her. Beyond everyone else. Up above the rest of the world.

George's eyes bore holes in her skin as if the brickwall he sat upon was instead a golden throne up high above in heaven. Like that was something he could believe in. It was all a facade; it was forever all lies.

"You are." Chelsea told him - matter-of-factly. "You're scared of getting attached, you're scared of losing people. You're scared of meaning anything to anyone ever. You're scared of going home, and that's why, because you're scared-"

George didn't let her finish. "It's with a boy who works in the bookshop on the high street. He's got curly hair and glasses. Please don't go and threaten him to get it back - he's quite sweet, really."

Chelsea rolled her eyes. "Is he going to be your boyfriend, then? Or... are you going to have a thing, or is he just another nobody? Someone you're too scared to let in."

George sucked his bottom lip back between his teeth. "I let you in." His voice was quiet, wavering.

"Only because I forced you to." She shook her head, looking across at George like still, despite the months, she barely knew him at all. "You-"

George interjected once more. "I had to hide it because the police showed up. Well, one guy. But... we were in plain sight, so we had to leg it, and-... Cam just froze. Like still. Like didn't move. He just... he was just there." George's eyes glassed over thinking about it.

"Probably because he was scared." Chelsea rolled her eyes. "So you shouldn't have left him-"

"Why are you saying I left him?" George looked far too offended, considering the fact that it was the truth.

"Because you did." She told him: beyond certain of it. "Because that's what you do. Shut up, and stop acting like you're better than me, like you're better than anybody else. Where do you think Cam is now?"

George gave a shrug. "Police station? Maybe? Home? I don't know... I don't care-"

"Maybe you should." She snatched the cigarette back, finishing it once and for all, and throwing it down into the dirt. George watched it burn down to nothingness amongst the muck.

"I can't make myself care about someone. I can't make myself love him-"

"It's not about love, it's about..." She trailed off, unsure as to quite what to say. "It's about thinking of other people for once. He loves you. God, he fucking has to, doesn't he? To put up with you."

George wasn't quite sure whether that was a good thing or not.

"The drugs are safe." George added, in his defence, as if that might have helped the situation somewhat.

"Fuck the weed, George." Chelsea shook her head in disbelief. "It's not safe, you've left it with a stranger - some guy you don't even know at all, and... you left Cam too."

"He's not a stranger. He's nice." George still continued on in his defence. "We had a nice conversation where he took the piss out of me, so I bought the book, and he's keeping the pot until tomorrow."

"What's his name?" She demanded, narrowing her eyes across at George.

George faltered, eyes growing wide, struggling over words as he drew his mind back to that morning; he had to have told him, hadn't he?

"David." George spluttered, fingers crossed behind his back.

"No he's fucking not." Chelsea shook her head. "You're such a fucking liar, you-"

"How would you know?"

"I can see it in your eyes, George." She drew out a sigh, sliding off the brickwall and down to her feet, pushing her heels down into the concrete.

He watched her for a moment. Curious whether to see if this was another goodbye: whether he was living through a series of ever impeding breaking points.

"Come on." She told him, offering out her hand.

"Where?" He stared down at her open palm: dubious.

She rolled her eyes, snatching her hand away. "Where do you think?"

George drew out a sigh, swinging one long leg over the wall, and pushing himself back up onto his feet. He stared down at Chelsea; he was forever towering over the world and she was just no exception.

"I'm not going to get Cam back - that's all." George muttered: sullen, but insistent.

"Yeah. I know." Chelsea reached for his hand regardless. "I'm not a fucking idiot."

George stared down at their hands, struggling to bite back a smile; maybe everything wasn't quite as fucked as he'd thought.

"What about the weed then?" He offered, closing his fingers in around Chelsea's.

"No, you can deal with that yourself." She told him rather firmly, reaching into the inside pocket of her jacket and retrieving a cigarette from her pack.

"Jesse's not going to be happy." George argued, as if that might somehow persuade her, as if she'd ever once given a damn about him.

"As I said." Chelsea turned to face him, slotting the cigarette between her lips before reaching for her lighter. "You can deal with that yourself."

George shot her a glare, outstretching his hand and taking the cigarette from her lips before she could argue otherwise.

-

Despite himself, more than anything, George just wanted to go to sleep. When the night drew in, and the air bit with an unpleasant cold, as he stood out in a field, a little way off out of town, barely able to hear his own thoughts over the sounds of rabid conversation.

Perhaps it was all down to the fact that he found himself there - disappointingly sober, as the world lit up around in him in every colour of rainbow, and he stood, remaining a somber grey. The crowds parted and he stared down through the grass, to the guy with his acoustic guitar, plucking out a melody like it might call the angels down from heaven to greet him.

He was wide eyed and grinning. Fair haired, happy crystalline blue eyes. The kind of boy George could ruin. The possibility held a weight upon his shoulders as George stood there. Vacant. Somewhere up in the sky, to look back over his shoulder at the town stretching out a mile or so away.

He wanted to go home. Not home. But to Jesse's. To a mattress on the floor. To peace and quiet. To a bathroom and a toilet that flushed. Burnt toast in the morning. George didn't want to think. George wanted to breathe oxygen not tar. He wanted his lungs to survive the night.

But Jesse wouldn't talk to him; Chelsea had been right - he'd laid that trap for himself. And day after day, he'd continue to fall into it. And he was so disgustingly sober as a result of it.

He caught sight of her in the crowd: eyes wild, not scared, nothing, floating, like she wasn't really there - like she'd never really existed. But fuck, she was pretty. Hair tangled and strewn out behind her, makeup smudged across her face, snorting a line off the back of her hand.

George tore his eyes away, as unfamiliar arms snaked around her waist, and with eyes blown wide, head elsewhere, she connected their lips. He would have watched her if he was high. He would have sat and stared for hours. But disgustingly sober, he stood there, heart low in his chest, and regarded her as little more than disgustingly pretty.

He drew his attention to boy instead. Hair so pale it seemed to shimmer in the light. He seemed ethereal almost, plucking the strings of his guitar like it was the song of angels - much more than just the same three chords, over and over again. But he'd gathered an audience, as anyone halfway decent could, with halfway fucked up girls at every corner.

George watched them watch him for a while. He stood and stared until the very moment he stopped playing. Until the very moment they locked eyes, and the air grew still, stubborn, persistent. George watched as he disappeared off into the crowds - to smile and flirt with girls that wouldn't matter come morning.

George wasn't jealous. Just bored.

And far too curious for his own sake.

Heart leaping in his chest: ideas bubbling and frothing from inside of his chest, he followed him. Yet within a minute, he'd lost him in the crowd again: faded away, as if he'd never even the been there, as if the air had been forever still - George wasn't quite sure either way.

He needed to get something. If not from Jesse then from anyone else; he couldn't live like this, he couldn't make it through the night like that. He drew his gaze around, locking eyes with every pretty girl, with every boy with his arms around their waists. George, beyond everything else, was alone.

He continued to push through the crowds, glancing at smiles and pills and powders - a whole world just out of his grasp; Jesse was watching him - he could feel it. He could feel his eyes. It was a look he didn't want to answer to. But he didn't have much say in the matter after all.

George tore his gaze back under the building pressure - his insides bubbling and boiling as if they were soon to explode. Jesse held his gaze as if to test him, with words left unspoken, but burnt with stern looks into his skin. Around him, stood everyone George knew, with smiles and laughter - Chelsea, John, and Gemma, being the faces he could make out in the crowd.

He didn't dare to join them. Jesse and Chelsea weren't alike. They shared the same jokes, the same rooms, but not the same thoughts. Not where it mattered. Perhaps that was why everything had always been so substantially broken. Chelsea cared about people. Jesse cared about drugs. George wasn't sure where he stood at all.

Before he could quite figure out, arms snaked around his waist and lips were pressed to his cheek; startled as he was, George didn't quite dare to tear his gaze from Jesse's. In fact, it was Jesse that moved in the end, turning away to take a cigarette from Gemma's hand, outstretched towards him.

George leaned back into the touch: into lips trailing down his cheek and onto his neck. After those first tentative moments, he turned in the grip of the arm around his waist and craned his neck down to meet a pair of blue eyes - not twinkling in the low light, like they were sapphires, but instead, rippling and bubbling, ebbing back and forth, as if he was faced with the vast expanse of a leaden ocean.

He felt himself drowning. It was not in any manner romantic; this wasn't the movies, but real life. And real life ached and tugged and swallowed you whole.

George let her place his arms around her waist, connecting their lips once more, as he watched her - dazed - like she wasn't even real. Like she might fade away into the night. Yet the indifference was bitterly grounding.

"You're not having fun." She told him; it was easy to draw such a truth out simply from his eyes.

Before George had ample opportunity to even respond, she drew her lips back to his, leaving his jaw hanging slack, and his eyes wide, as though frozen in time. She cracked a smile, and produced two pills from her pocket.

George's eyes widened immediately, but resorted to watch in silence as she took the first pill and pushed it through his lips and onto his tongue with her fingertips. Motionless, almost devoid of life itself, George watched as she swallowed the second.

"My name's Eden." She fixed her gaze on his lips, watched as George swallowed hard, closing his eyes and embracing the world as it came crashing down upon him.

"George." He managed in response, pulling his arms tighter around her waist and letting the night run away with him.

"Was that better?" She inquired, words spoken in short moments between kisses: heavy on their lips.

George didn't think about responding, George didn't think about the truth. He stood there, in unfamiliar arms, and let his eyelids flicker close. He let the world pass him by. He needed it, that night.

"Yeah." She answered for him in the end: filling in the blanks by herself, and connecting their lips once more.

George let him kiss her. He let them kiss. He let it pretend like it meant something. Like his head wasn't twisting away from him. Like he'd never be able to catch up to it. This way, at least, they didn't have to speak; they didn't have to find each other in meaningless conversation.

She was nice enough. Forward, definitely, but she had pills. And George would let her kiss him. He'd let himself kiss her back. And they'd pretend to be in love just that night.

She wasn't even halfway pretty, but she was enough.

He put on a good act: moving like their kisses meant a thing, as if he held the world in his hands, and she was mother nature. He held her gaze, clinging to the harsh look in her eyes, to everything around her with the sharpest edges, like he truly cared for her, like this would last for nights by the dozen.

Yet, if he was being entirely truthful with himself, George stood there; he let himself be moved in her arms, and instead thought of Cam - who he'd left to whatever fate the world might dictate. Cam who he maybe should have gone after, Cam who he maybe shouldn't have lead on. But all of George's mistakes, they'd already long been done, and all of George's answers, they'd always been wrong.

It was a losing game. An endless fight. In eyes burning holes into his body from every direction. The warmth of a stranger. The cold of a bitter, unforgiving winter that clung to them still come May.

George tore his eyes open in the end, just for one second - to take in the lights, to take in the world. He caught sight of people by their dozens: entwined in their own lives and conversations, and yet, one person amidst the crowds seemed to shimmer in the night.

He rubbed his eyes: swearing they had to deceive him, for just for a moment, between the crowd, George thought he saw a familiar face. Dark eyes hidden behind an overflowing mop of cascading brown curls.

Alive. Dancing. More than words on a page. More than echoes long gone. More than memories broken and treasured. More than a broken mirror. More than bloody knuckles. More than bedroom walls - yellowed with tar.

"Is that..." George stretched out an arm, grabbing Eden's attention.

It was however, the moment that she turned to follow George's gaze, the very moment that the crowd closed, and any glance of the boy disappeared like a whisper to the breeze.

George swallowed his words and steadied his gaze. It had always just been the drugs. It hadn't made sense, after all. And he searched for blue eyes beside him, but this time, they were absent too.

George had hoped for too much. He always did.

-

hey so new fic

here we go

this is... its gonna be good

i can feel it

i hope u can feel it too

would love it if u vote/comment

love u all