a thousand years in perfect symmetry | the pacific | snafu/sledge | [2/2]
Sid takes him to the bar again to meet up with Hoosier and Gwen and a guy called Leckie Sledge has seen before on the streets when they were watered with day-old rain, but never spoken to. The skies clear for a moment and Bravo opens its beer garden the first time since Sledge came to Chicago. It’s festooned with dangling garlands and big bulbed fairy lights that are stretched between scattered trees and the windows one floor above the bar.
There are no cops around this time, but Sledge recognizes the drunk-ass boyfriend and, unnerved, he wouldn’t dare to think of alcohol passing his lips even without his heart and all the things it keeps him from doing.
Leckie turns out to be Hoosier’s best friend, even more in love with his girl than Sid, and a writer who types until deep in the night, uncaring about bleeding fingertips and the midnight-blue crescents that inevitably appear beneath his eyes.
When the guys shifted beer over beer and Sledge had a peachy glass of iced tea, a tanned man, sienna brown with dark curls and caterpillar eyebrows, sneaks up on their table to pull up a rattling chair next to Gwen’s. “That are a lot of dudes to hang out with,” he (Meesh, Sid will offer later, days later) natters. Gwen just pops her gum, bright pink, in return, as if she’s used to him by now.
“Who are you, ginger head, haven’t seen you before, eh?”
Sledge’s heart chants like a drum roll and he holds his empty glass with nimble fingers, trying to calm the palpable beating inside his chest down and keep it from bursting. He doesn’t understand it himself, why he is like that, so stuffed with anxiety and needless turmoil sometimes. There’s nothing swimming in his head or mouth he could answer the curious pair of eyes glued to him.
“Get lost, man,” someone with firm tranquillity hidden in his voice shouts in the direction of their table. His name is Colbert or Brad, maybe both, Sledge isn’t sure. “You’ll scare away all our fucking customers!”
Meesh leaves in a hurry, chin and curls wobbling with his steps.
Arms crossed over his sternum, Sledge lets long-fingered hands, nervous and trembling, run up and down the barely there swell of his biceps. “I’m going to get myself another drink. Back in a sec.” His blood rushes so loudly, it’s stupid. He can’t even make out the laughed replies thrown his way in his eagerness to get away.
Snafu is sitting on one of the high stools at the bar, back bent like a cat’s over his drink. He seems to have a penchant for drinking alone, but Sledge doesn’t see any sense in seeking solace in a crowd. Unsure, he approaches the bar with jelly legs, certain the volume of his heart will reveal him long before his steps ever could. His tattered, navy Converse are quiet and reliable, gluing him to the ground and keeping him from stuttering in his stride.
The cigarette between Snafu’s teeth is burning but he stubs it in an ashtray that’s long threatening to spill over as soon as Sledge appears next to him.
“Told you I wouldn’t smoke anymore,” he explains, winking behind heavy lids. “Not when you’re around at least.” His voice is low and breathy and makes sweat bead at the top of Sledge’s spine.
“Thanks,” Sledge says and it sounds stupid even in his own ears. He feels a blush creep to his cheeks, the hot, telling one that seems to come with Snafu’s presence. Somehow, it’s almost calming in its familiarity.
Snafu turns on his stool in a clean but slow and very him movement. “What do you want, Sledgehammer?” he asks, propping himself up on his elbows. He almost spills his glass of something in the process but he doesn’t seem to care.
You and your eyes and the teeth marks I accidently left on your lips but want to renew, Sledge thinks. He licks the roof of his mouth, dry with the pictures from behind his eyes and the nickname still dripping off Snafu’s lips in small aftershocks that are mirrored in Sledge’s bones, carved into them in fine, ivory lines.
“Nothing, just.” He concentrates on tracing Snafu’s features, gazes along the curve of his brows, instead of where he fits so perfectly into the V of Snafu’s legs.
“Not in front of all these people”, Snafu says with a chuckle, head bent, looking down at where their bodies meet and knowing. “Let’s go home.”
Snafu’s lips are cold and taste of rainwater but quickly warm against the skin on Sledge’s neck, on his Adam’s apple and on the small dip between his collarbones. His hands travel along Sledge’s exposed midriff where his sweater is pushed up to his ribs, guiding them both along the walls into his small bedroom. The sound of their mixed heartbeats follows them all the way.
“Lie down,” Snafu commands gently after he strips himself off his clothes, and Sledge, too.
Sledge feels strangely exposed and almost gleaming against the dark bed sheets. He’s still waiting for Snafu to decide he’s not pretty or hot or experienced enough when a hand presses on his knee to keep his legs apart, creating space for Snafu to fit in-between. (Neither of them mentions the bright pink scar between his nipples, right where all his ribs meet.)
The pressure is almost too nice, sending sparks from Sledge’s earlobes to the tips of his toes, and he dares to lick Snafu’s almost-dimple and the sharp blade of his cheek bone right above it. He wants to follow the stripe of skin along his clavicles, too, but he feels like he has to admit first that “I’ve never done this. Ever.” His own noisy breathing fills his ears as his fingers curl into the meat of Snafu’s shoulders. There’s no doubt his nails bite little red crescents into the copper skin, just where the bone curves like a wing, but Snafu meets his gaze with a hasty move of his head, eyes blown wide and sparkling like sea glass.
“I figured,” he pants, “just let me do this.” The words drip from his mouth like molasses before he slides his cupid's bow along the inside of Sledge’s arm, down the slope and angle of his ribs, and leaves a pulsing track of saliva and kisses behind, while his free fingers run down the length of Sledge’s shin to comb through the sparse tangerine curls on his leg.
“Christ, Gene,” he whispers between flicks of his tongue against the freckles scattered across Sledge’s torso, “you’re so goddamn fuckin’ pale.”
Sledge tries not to think about the medication-dependent way his heart should pump, slow and steady instead of jackrabbeting against the bones concealing it, and rather concentrates on the fluttering raised by fleeting bites of nails running up to his hip.
Outside, fresh rain starts to make sounds of the ocean, washing away the last rays of day.
Sledge wakes to Snafu stroking his ankle, his calve, the inside of his knee. His heart is beating in time as he waits for the sleep’s spider webs to vanish from his vision. Only then he notices the skylight above his head, dirty with leftover drizzle and a few muddy leaves that are soft with the morning’s dampness.
“I want you to make me breakfast, Sledgehammer,” Snafu hums into his thigh, his voice a silky tickle. Sledge’s fingers, shy but admiring in their touch, follow the now familiar arc and dip of his spine just to stutter over every protruding vertebra. (This is what tinkering on a piano must be like, he thinks.)
“Good morning to you, too, asshole.” He finds drops of citrus in Snafu’s eyes, hidden behind a thick layer of cerulean and sleepiness. He once heard transplants are yellow like that. “How about some French toast, then?” His voice and the back of his throat feel almost sore from the moans that had rolled over his lips and became all Snafu’s.
When he stands and his back bends with tiny noises, feet pitter-pattering over the time-worn floorboards, there are marks like ink drops scattered along his inner thighs, telling last night’s story in bruising red and mahogany.
He doesn’t even try to fight the elation settling in his bloodstream.
Squashed onto the armchair, they eat their toast with cinnamon and powdered sugar that paints a snowy moustache around the bow of Snafu’s upper lip. Sledge wants to lick it off, so he does, with a pink sweep of tongue and a cheeky smile.
“You want this, then?” Snafu asks, sipping the blueberry juice they found inside the tiny refrigerator’s door. His legs are bare, spilling out of white briefs Sledge wore the night before, while Sledge is drowning in a pair of sweatpants he took from the bedroom floor.
“I - yeah,” he stutters in response, giddy and short of breath, because to him, this sounds just like us. He can feel serpents slithering through his veins, his tangible heartbeat pushing blood in hard bursts through his entire body. For once, it’s not his ill health lightening his head, but the way his tiny universe starts to swathe Snafu with its very own brand of glittering, glimmering stardust, intending to swallow him whole if he allows.
+
Gwen’s low hum winds its way out of the shower, and Sid’s hair is sparkling with droplets of water when Sledge comes back to the apartment. They left their clothes tossed over the back of the sofa in idleness and eager hurry likewise. Sledge tries not to think of them fucking away the afternoon hours.
Sid is looking at him with waves in his eyes and runs his fingers down the bridge of his nose, a shock of blond hair falling over his forehead. The fingers of his other hand tap tap tap on the breakfast bar.
“All right, what’s the matter?” Sledge asks, rolling his sleeves up to his armpits just to do something. Everything in the air, thick and stiff and stagnant with their hot breaths, sets his teeth on edge.
“What’s the matter? You never came back from the bar, for once, you idiot!” But that’s not it, Sledge thinks. There’s another elephant in the room, sitting heavily on both their chests. Anger simmers just underneath his skin. “And then I have to hear you went home with Snafu, of all people? What the hell, Gene, I already told you he’s fucked up,” Sid continues.
“So what, Sid? I damn well know what I’m doing!” Sledge understands Sid doesn’t want him to get eaten up by a boy who is so very careless, reckless even, with his own heart. He does, but this isn’t about Sid’s newfound urge to shelter Sledge from life and its corrupting entanglements, or how he’s changed his opinion so drastically on that matter Sledge can barely keep up. This is about his goddamn heart, metaphorically spoken for once, and the way Snafu & Sledge is already buried deep inside of it, even though it should be too early to feel in love.
“What about Mary then?” Sid asks with his eyes on the floor, and it’s the exact same question Sledge threw at him that one morning in the past. It feels ages ago already.
The difference is, though, that he gets it now. He didn’t know the real Mary behind all the makeup and movie star smiles; he doesn’t care about her anymore, never should have. Not like that.
“You need to stop,” Sledge says a few days later with a raspberry love bite blooming just above his neckline and a new assortment of shiny pills lined up on the coffee table. “Gwen, too. You’re not my fucking parents or some shit.” He chews on the insides of his cheeks and imagines biting them through. Things are so strained now, since their fight, as is his voice, like the too tightly wound string of a violin.
“Oh, wow, I’m so sorry I worry about you, Gene, won’t happen again.” Sid doesn’t sound like he means it, but tired and worn out from the inside out. Sledge can see the pillow creases on his face from where he’s sitting Indian style on the sofa, knobbly knees pointing into different directions. He takes his pills with water, Cyclosporine and CellCept first and the rest in a rush because Sid is staring, cornflower blue and like he needs to throw up.
Sid closes his eyes and gold dust streaks across suddenly pale skin. “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” he asks betraying what he said only seconds ago. The words tremble a little on their way out.
Sledge has never seen him like this. Sid used to be the strong one, bursting with faith in all the doctors and nurses Sledge was passed around to, in the never-ending stream of medications and sterile hospital rooms. Now he’s pressing for answers and Sledge is unable to give any. (Even the best fall victim to his heart, eventually.)
+
Weeks pass quietly, but like a storm with them caught in the eye of it all the same. While one day melts into the next, Sledge learns that Snafu owns a bright pink loofah that charms the most gorgeous sounds from his lips.
They’re in the shower and Snafu counts the hickeys he’s left on Sledge with the tips of his fingers, caressing each and every one of them. “I’m jealous of your innocence,” he whispers and Sledge thinks it’s ridiculous but he lets him mouth a trail of kisses along his clavicles anyway, allows his tongue to lave at the dents his teeth have made. “I want you so much.”
Snafu’s fingers sneak across his body. It feels like Sledge’s lungs have seized and his stomach has dropped, in a good way, though, swirling and hot, because Sledge wants him back just as much. His scars and his muscles and him entirely.
+
By now it’s too cold to be outside, despite the sometimes-sunshine. At least that’s what Sledge thinks, cheeks and nose and fingers pinking in the cool air on his way from his flat to Snafu’s. He almost lives there by now, with his toothbrush and his ancient track pants and the comforter his mama sent after him from Alabama, and Snafu mostly lets him. Sid doesn’t like it but that’s part of the point. (It’s not like they’re fighting. Things just aren’t rosy right now and his heart isn’t, either.)
It takes Sledge only five hundred heartbeats to shuffle down Embers Lane and across the street, even though he has to dodge umbrellas all around him. The too-tall stairs make his heart rattle but he got used to that long ago and sits down on one of the landings with his head against the wall, exposing the pallor of his neck.
“You look like shit,” Hoosier states when he opens his apartment door, a brown Toccoa bag in his arms. Apparently, he lives right below Snafu and enjoys telling Sid horrid stories about what they do at night.
“No need to flatter me,” Sledge snorts but it’s true. He feels the exhaustion everywhere; in his bones and words and in-between the bows of his ribs.
Snafu is in the kitchen with a huge knife in his hands and a cantaloupe that tastes like the sun on the counter, halved and dripping with sweet juice.
“Vitamins,” he explains and Sledge can’t hide a smile at that. He didn’t have his daily dose of fruit yet. Snafu learned to remember those things.
Because of his heart condition and his always freezing toes, all the windows are shut, hiding behind thin curtains, and heaters try to warm the air. The apartment doesn’t reek of smoke and peppermint anymore, but the coffee scent stayed and Sledge likes that.
“Do you want to, you know, meet up with Sid and Gwen sometime, and eat a real Chicago deep-dish?” he asks, eyebrows drawn up. He’s wearing one of Snafu’s smaller shirts below his sweater. It smells like both of them. “It’s just that Gwen asked me today.” (She’s trying to be the mediator here, between all of them.)
Snafu continues cutting the cantaloupe into tiny pieces. “No,” he says curtly. He doesn’t sound sorry and he doesn’t touch the curve of Sledge’s jaw in apology, or brushes the overgrown fringe out of Sledge’s eyes. These days, it’s falling into his forehead in streaks of tangerine and pale gold.
“You look like you’ve been thinkin’,” Snafu states, crawling into bed still smelling of the menthol cigarettes he just smoked on the balcony, out into the rain. He once said they would taste like peppermint and chocolate chip.
Sledge grips his fingers, rough like burned clay, under the comforter and looks up at him and the stardust in his eyes. “It’s nothing, but. Earlier, you looked almost pained at the idea of even talking to my friends.” The picture of Snafu grimacing at the invitation had been ghosting in the back of his mind the entire evening.
Snafu closes his mouth with an audible clack of teeth, hesitates. “I’m not really into people or makin’ friends,” he says. It’s bitter and makes Sledge flinch.
“What about me, then?” he asks, feeling the old insecurity from before (before Snafu and kissing messily with clacking teeth, before nights of frantic touches spent between the sheets) creeping through his head, his wire ribcage, into his heart. It’s still very much alive somewhere inside of him, it seems.
Snafu squeezes his hand hard, fingernails cutting into soft skin, and pushes him back against the bed to crawl on top of him. His lashes dip down and conceal the look in his eyes. “You’re different,” he admits into the hollow that’s formed by Sledge’s collarbone and his shoulder, starting to mouth little kisses there. His free fingers curl into the shirt beneath them, tugging to get it off and Sledge lets him, helps by lifting his arms and arching off the mattress a little.
He doesn’t want this to ever end.
+
The night is drawn pitch-black with silent moonbeams spilling through the skylight above Snafu’s bed. Sledge sits upright on the mattress, knees pulled tightly to his chest. His chin is resting on his crossed arms, a hoodie that doesn’t belong to him pulled up over his head.
When Snafu comes back from sitting just inside the balcony door and blowing smoke out into the rain, he slips beneath the duvet, too, with icy feet. Sledge knows he needs those five minutes alone with his cigarettes every now and then.
“You look too tired to be not sleepin’, Sledge,” Snafu says with peppermint breath, “fuckin’ rest already.”
“I’m fine.” It’s almost like a game they play by now. They both have a script they follow strictly.
“Gene,” Snafu sighs as expected. His long bones and sinews curl around Sledge’s in a warm hug from behind. They feel like soft strips of silk that try to keep his ribcage intact. “Let’s go to sleep, okay?” His tanned calves are bare and hot even through Sledge’s pants, rehashing quickly with the heat on full power.
“Just a minute,” Sledge complies, feeling Snafu’s heart against the wing of his shoulder. It almost beats in unison with his own.
Maybe this is what love is like, he thinks.
+
Snafu is in the bathroom, brushing his teeth, when Sledge curls up under the duvet in his bedroom. It smells of coffee and laundry detergent and Snafu somewhere deep down in the fibres.
Outside, clouds are masking the moon while a true Chicago storm whips raindrops against the skylight and thunder rumbles in the distance. It sounds like tin drums caught in the crescendo of an orchestra.
“You sleepin’ already?” Snafu changes from his shirt and chinos into a dark pair of sweatpants that’s worn-out in the knees. The muscles in his back ripple with the movements. When he flops down in front of Sledge, sneaking under the covers and breathing mint all over his mouth, he seems to swallow a sigh that makes his Adam’s apple bob. “You look so tired.” He softly runs his thump over the criss-crossing veins beneath Sledge’s eyes. Sledge knows they’re visible under a layer of lilac-blue crescents. “And you’re a block of ice.”
“Warm me up, then,” Sledge says, cheeky but quiet. The crimson warmth of Snafu’s skin seeps right through the cotton of his cable-knit sweater, the one he wore on his first day here.
“Gene.” Snafu looks at him through obsidian lashes. Sledge knows it’s his fault that he isn’t full of feline movements and roaring life anymore. It makes him cringe with guilt. Instead, Snafu now carries the wilting smile of the people who know. (That alone could bring Sledge’s heart to shatter.)
“Please, Snafu,” he says, trying to smooth away the lines on his forehead.
Snafu pushes his sweater up to his armpits then, and slips him a slow but honest smile. He licks his lips. Sledge can feel them wander over his concave ribs, over taut, luminescent skin, the slight bow of his waist and over the hollow of his hip bone just above the too large drawstrings of his track pants, while a pair of hands rubs along his thighs to heat him up. He has to bite the inside of his cheeks to keep from grinning and probably saying I love you over and over again.
His heart is heavy, beating like a hummingbird trapped inside his rib cage. It still can’t cope with the sagging tiredness that settles in his bones and around them. He can feel Snafu’s eyelashes flutter against his cheeks but they don’t distract him from the sudden pain that sparks in his chest and spreads through his entire body. It ignites all the muscle and tissue that stretches over his skeleton.
“Stop,” he breathes. The ball of Snafu’s shoulder is hot under his clammy, feeble grasp. “Please. Make it stop, Snafu, make it stop, it hurts so much.” Air is trapped in his lungs; it tugs painfully, rips at his throat as a solitary tear emerges from beneath his lids only to be swallowed by the entangled bed sheets. He can feel his crippled heart languidly pumping shrapnel through his veins, threatening to stop all too soon now.
The world darkens with Snafu’s smile dripping out the corners of his mouth.
+
When Sledge opens his eyes again, his lips are bruised and sensitive to touch but otherwise his body feels numb all over. The leftover pain is dull and pulsing beneath his skin.
He’s in a hospital; he would recognize those ceilings anywhere. He opens his mouth to say something, anything, but it comes out absent of any sound and colour.
Someone is shouting, though, furious with rage and hurt. “This is all your fault because you fucking smoke all the damn time!” It’s Sid. He’s at the top of Sledge’s short, short list of emergency contacts; he’s part of his family. Right now, his eyes are glassy, wide, and his cheeks are pink. “How could I be this stupid and leave him with you? Fucking Christ, look what you’ve done to him!”
“Shut your mouth, Phillips. This - it’s not my fault.” Snafu looks like he’s been punched in the face, speechless. Sledge is sure his hands are twitching for a cigarette, or maybe to hit something. Or someone.
“Snaf?” he croaks. Maybe he should ask for water like people in movies do. He can feel the salty tracks of dried tears on his skin when his cheeks move.
“I’m here,” Snafu rushes to say, bending his back in a fluid movement. It reminds Sledge of the way he moves against him in his sleep.
Sledge would like him to kiss the delicate tissue underneath his eyes but he knows that won’t happen with Sid in the room, so he simply locks their fingers the way he does sometimes when they’re brushing their teeth together, and holds onto them tightly, holds them like his mother used to hold his when he was nothing but a little boy with a broken heart that couldn’t be healed by love alone.
Then he looks at Sid. “You knew this would happen,” he says like please leave him alone do it for me you’re acting like a right ass here.
“I just thought. You had another year, a goddamn whole year.” It takes Sid a moment to calm the breaths in his lungs that are all trying to escape at the same time. His eyes darken shade by shade. “I have to call you parents, Gene.”
“Yes, of course,” Sledge nods weakly. “Just - you know.”
“I do.” He leaves the room with squeaking soles. Sledge can see the stiff vertebrae in his back from where he’s lying.
“We definitely have to accelerate the operation date several months, I’m afraid. January would be good, December would be better. Otherwise your heart condition will lead to severe problems,” the doctor tells him with a worn-down smile he uses too often to appear sincere anymore. Sledge knows them all; this one isn’t the worst. It doesn’t say I’m sorry but you’re going to die there’s nothing we can do.
(He’d gotten that one once. His mama had cried all day, not knowing there’d been a mistake. Things like that happen when you spend most of your time in hospital rooms.)
Snafu lays a calloused hand to his cheek. It’s softer now with the cucumber-melon lotion Sledge made him buy.
“You okay there?” he asks in that very familiar, now rusty and shaken voice.
“I’m fine,” Sledge replies with thin words, a tiny drop of sound that doesn’t hold any meaning. He told this lie too many times already.
There’s a mosaic of feelings in Snafu’s eyes. “You always say that,” he tells, like he’d expected to be lied to. His mouth gives the words a tired, worn-out shape.
Sledge tightens the grip he still has on one of Snafu’s hands. “This is not your fault, you hear me? It was bound to happen, but. It’s not like I’m fighting a losing battle.” He presses his lips together for a second, firmly, terrified of being this helpless again. It turns them even paler. “We’re going to be fine. I promise.”
The words are mostly meant for himself.
+
When your heart fails and you need a new one, shinier and slick with someone else’s blood, but most of all working, the doctors have to rip you apart. You won’t feel anything darling I promise and everything will be better after. (That’s what a good mama tells her nine-year-old boy.)
A surgeon with chartreuse stretched over his mouth and up to his wrists in rubber gloves will expose your chest cavity through an incision down your sternum in order to remove what almost failed to keep you alive. And for a certain amount of time, you will be heartless.
The surgeon will then - carefully, so you don’t die after all - coif the foreign heart and put it in place as if nothing had ever happened. It’s called Orthotopic procedure but all you will know is the blazing scar parting your chest into two equal halves with rosy nipples, and later, hopefully, because you’re not that different from the other boys, with a blanket of hair.
For a while, that’s all that you’ll dare wish for.
+
Midnight is long gone when Sledge wakes again. He can feel someone shiver at his side, shaking his muscles and bones in cold or fear, maybe both.
“Snafu?” He tries to make out the razor sharp slenderness that hugs Snafu’s frame in the dappled light the street outside throws into the room.
Snafu laughs, surprising both of them, but it’s nothing like his usual laugh. It’s harsh and cutting through eardrums. His hand travels across the itchy hospital blanket. “You love me, don’t you?” he asks, scratchily.
Sledge searches for the pulsating sensation in his ill heart, undying and never-ending and eternal, stronger than the hearts he works through themselves. Yes, he thinks, yes yes I do. It sits too heavy on his tongue to make it past his lips, though, and he reaches for Snafu’s wrist, feels all the little bones laced together beneath his fingers.
Snafu swallows thickly, visible even in the dusk. “Don’t die, then,” he rasps. It makes the vein that sticks out on his neck slither and slide beneath its copper coat. Sledge would like to kiss his tight shoulder blades to make them slack and calm the ocean storm in his eyes. All he can do though is counting the steady throbbing against his fingertips that speaks of years and years to come.
It’s in perfect symmetry with the melody the machines attached to his heart whisper into his ears. And that’s what love is like, right?
+