Made of booze (and of star-stuff)

Swaying, unsteady on the miracle of evolution that was human legs, Wakuu was getting closer to my resting place at the deep end.

As soon as he’d entered the patch of illumination, one of the lanterns revealed more of his face. No longer a contour in the dark, it was flushed bright pink; lips stretched into the familiar adorkable grin, ready to burst into a cackle-explosion at any moment. If it wasn’t for his visibly drunk eyes, with the dense, black eyelashes drooping, one could have concluded: he’s doing just fine, and he’s had a wondrous day, oh goodness, what a happy and carefree chap!

He looked, for lack of a better translated word, unguarded.

On the off-chance that later, upon sobering up, Wakuu would regret showing up naked, I scraped up some mindfulness and civility; before my gaze would involuntarily slip lower, I tore it away so as not to gawk. No matter how much I wanted to gawk.

Now within earshot, he said something in his language-number-one. Slurred words, albeit loud enough; it took me a few seconds to switch my laxed brain to my language-number-three, loosely translating what Wakuu had said into, “I’m sorry I’m plastered.”

Nope, he wasn’t sorry.

“It’s okay.” I shifted to our language-number-two.

And so did he. To the best of his current abilities. “See, uhm’being risqué! Tord’yoo tha’I can.”

“More like risky,” I countered, trying my best not to peek. Or to giggle. “Someone might come in.”

“N-nooo. I hung the mrosed for caintenance sign outs-shide.” Wakuu hiccuped a laugh and, judging by the sounds, stopped walking. “An’everyone went to Knoah’s an’way. To watch th’racisht show.”

“The racist show? Which one?”

“Where evrryone goesh: it was ariens! Buh it was jus’ humans. An’ racishm. Buh I dinna ter'em. Theeey get there afturr a few ep’shodesh. Hehehe.”

Hopefully, they indeed would.

“Are you getting in or not?” Stirring, distorting the starry sky’s reflection in the pool, I quipped, “Wakuu-baba.”

He grumbled a half-assed objection to the nickname and broke into another short and loud guffaw. Its echo bounced over the onsen’s spacious courtyard.

Hearing a soft splashing noise, followed by a satisfied sigh that shifted into a groan, I flinched and peeked, despite all of my attempts not to. I just couldn’t help but turn my head towards him; it was a really, reeeeally nice sound, the one he’d made.

Either out of impatience, or perhaps remembering that there was no need to walk around all the way and that he could take a hydrous shortcut, Wakuu had gotten in, some distance away, and knelt in the water. Waist-deep now, hands over his thighs, head low, he allowed himself one dip up to the middle of his chest, along with one more loud groan, before proceeding to wobble towards me.

Had he straightened and stood back up? Nope, he decided to knee-walk. Was it an attempt to bashfully conceal his nethers? Had he finally gotten embarrassed by his nakedness? Naaaah. Oh, so he was paying tribute to a special knee-walk-centered exercise known to esteemed practitioners of martial arts, then? Pfff. I was willing to bet that he knew even less about martial arts than I did.

Wakuu was simply being a goofball; with his inhibitions stripped away by alcohol, and the inner child plucked back to the surface, dusted off, and given blanket permission to Fuck Around.

Later on, the sober adult would be faced with the Find Out part.

Knee-walking wasn’t easy, neither on the ground nor on soft mats, but underwater? A foolish endeavor. As strenuous and suspenseful as a space walk. Yet Wakuu persisted. Body tilting left-right, left-right, arms bent, elbows out and moving, fists clenched above the waterline. As if he was making his arduous way through a giant bowl of molasses.

“Hel-lo m-ma-go, what nice ... everything ... you have.”

We both snorted. A thin strand of hair escaped from under the towel-shawl and clung to his high forehead. He blew upwards. It clung harder.

“Hey! Don’t you dare to distort the traditional narratives!”

I wondered if my own voice sounded as tipsy as his. Unlikely; judging by how tragically lucid my mind remained — while I gawked at his body, after all. Sinewy, lean, and lanky, his arms slender, his chest and abdomen flat, his ribs protruding; even less meat on him than on me. Almost gaunt-looking, in spite of all the muffins and falafel sandwiches.

Who’d need diets when there’s stress and intellectual labor, right?

One step after the other, with slow, careful — and drunken, and joyous — determination, Wakuu pressed on towards me, and the ripples that he created dragged after him like a scattered tail of a comet. Drops of steam were solidifying on his surface.

With conscious effort, I dragged my gaze up to his face. He blinked several times in quick succession, prompting me to ask, “Are you wearing contacts?”

“Uhm’nawt wearing anything!” boasted Wakuu, tossing his granny-shawled head up. His flat stomach rippled too, moving with another bout of laughter, and his right fist punched the air, as if in defiance. Or triumph.

“Uh-huh,” I teased, pointing at his head. A smile crawled to the corners of my mouth. “Suuure.”

No gods believed in by humanity could have ever intentionally created a better embodiment of ‘two skinny dummies skinny-dipping’.

Whether the fist-pumping action had thrown him off balance, or his feet encountered a mossy patch, who would know; with barely more than a meter left to his final goal, Wakuu slipped, waved his arms, and tilted forward like a falling tree. He’d have landed on top of me face-first, either submerging us both underwater, or clobbering me into the stone wall, or introducing his own forehead to it, if I hadn’t snapped up and lurched forward in reflex, with the speed of a salamander’s tongue striking at a bug.

Both of his hands grabbed onto my forearm as his knees hit the bottom, and Wakuu sunk deeper, with a slow-motion splash, still holding. His thumbs pressed into my wrist bone. He tightened the hold into a grip as our joined arms sunk under the surface as well.

“Hi,” he said, peering down, with an air of disbelief to his tone and an expression of wonder in his wide-open eyes, visible even in this dim light. I wasn’t sure whom he was addressing. Me or my wrist.

Or if it was an attempt to not address my nipples. Stupid human physiology, stupid, sensitive skin, acting on its own accord, reacting to the change of temperature: snap-snap.

“Hi,” I echoed in the direction of his nipples.

Wakuu’s grip loosened, yet he wasn’t letting go. He’d surely felt my racing pulse; then again, his own might have been faster.

Something something two racecar-driver pulses caught up in a competition something. Shut. Up.

My free hand darted out, flicking that loosened strand of hair away from his forehead, my thumb leaving a new wet line as it smoothed along his burning temple, gliding down, ending up on his jawline. Uncurling my fingers, I cupped his searing cheek.

His next inhale bordered on a long gasp. A dramatic, almost-cinematic gasp; another teensy step, and it would have crossed into the chewed-up realms of overacting or into opera. Eyelashes fluttering, Wakuu exhaled through his no-longer-grinning mouth, and angled his head — so slow, reluctant, cautious, sensual, ohhh, so starved for touch — and slammed his face into my palm, nuzzling into it frantically, and huffing.

Exactly as Taco had into his, earlier tonight on the square. The main difference: Taco wasn’t cackling like a doofus, in the process.

“What’s up,” I muttered, waggishly tapping and tickling his nose. On the verge of cackling, too, as I realized that the silly ‘question’ was now a reflex. And so was the answer Wakuu gave, accompanied by the mirrored crooked smile.

“Dawg.” He pointed at himself. “Seeing you around.”

When and how had that happened? When had this, of all things, turned into the foundation of a New Shared Language the Combined Number of Speakers: Two?

Also: referential humor, check.

Still smiling, I let my left hand drop, and his head chased a few centimeters after it; no longer a joke, but an impulse caused by a craving. No longer masking his true feelings with physical comedy, no longer pretending not to be starved for touch — but actually starving and letting the naked feeling show.

Wisps of steam curled and rose around the two of us, yet we weren’t moving. His smirk dissipated, as did mine. Wakuu’s face was close enough for me to see the tiny drops pearling around the outer rim of his lips, catching the scarce yellow light, and the refractions inside them. Glowing like pinpricks of stars.

A loud splash broke through the apprehensive pause as he lunged forward.

I met him halfway.

This kiss was a devourment. An unabashed, no-holds-barred, messy, desperate, sopping-wet indulgence. As if we were two wild animals unleashed into a banquet hall, climbing the tables set with a sumptuous feast, tearing the delicate tablecloths, pushing away the fragile crystal flutes, the priceless silverware, the candleholders; in a mad rush, snarling, sending spittle flying, open-mawed — consuming everything within reach. Everything, and it still wasn’t enough, not enough, not enough.

Fully engaged in the process, we kissed with our whole mouths, utilizing every part of them that we could — our lips, our frenzied tongues, our clashing teeth, our mingling breaths and groans; swirling, sucking, pulling, gnawing, biting.

Our limbs scrambled to rearrange and accommodate; then to pull and to entangle and to claw. The natural buoyancy that had been working against him before, was now helping.

His hands and fingers were... somewhere. Everywhere. Clasping the back of my neck, fisting my damp hair, digging into my ribcage, spreading between my shoulder blades, hooked under my arms, grabbing my hips, cupping my buttocks, circling, kneading, running down and up and down again. Holding me upright and arched all the while, as best their owner could.

Mine fumbled just as blindly. Gripping his shoulders, then every reachable spot of his angular, hard-edged back, climbing up, tracing the bumpy line of his spine, collapsing down the staircase of his jutting ribs.

Both of our surfaces: not merely cracked, not even shattered, but evaporated into nothing. Every single vulnerability underneath, exposed. Bare, no longer contained by discipline, obligations, manners, fear of rejection and ridicule, or inhibitions, no longer bottled up, tamped down and dismissed and masked with comedy, these vulnerabilities came pouring out, colliding in a chaotic explosion of: I’m Not That Strong I’m Not An Island I Need This Please Help Me Carry The Burden.

We let each other see everything, to admit the whole truth; there’d be no going back from this, unless we’d forget by tomorrow.

And no matter in how many spots our bodies were entangled, no matter how tightly, how closely — this felt like not close enough.

The collision didn’t last long. Alas, we were humans, and intoxicated ones to boot; humans needed air and depended on gravity. At some point, I stumbled backwards, and he moved with me, trying not to lose contact with my mouth, which resulted in him leaning in too far and tipping over, and as his chest slid across mine, both of us fell down with a splosh, scrambling to keep ourselves from completely submerging, yet still kissing, still starved. At the last moment, Wakuu reared his face away with a jerk; dazed, panting.

Wearing that stupid prop.

I immediately — and involuntary — broke into sibilant laughter. His rang like another echo. The two facades went back up, although now they were paper-thin and would remain so.

Maybe we’d forget everything by tomorrow. Likely not. Likely one of us, at least, would remember and remind the other. At the moment, however, we needed to remember to pace ourselves.

He pressed his nose to my throat — right above the water — breathing me in, his right thumb gently stroking the skin beneath my ear, his left hand pressing into the stone bottom. I’d hate for this to be forgotten.

Lungs heaving, I slumped against the rock wall, resting on it and my forearms, legs spread on both sides of his pelvis, and let my head fall backwards. My hair floated and swayed beneath the surface of the pool like a blooming cluster of black seaweed.

Wakuu surged forward, reaching for my roots. Pinching a wet strand between two straightened fingers, he smoothened it down, like a hair-stylist in a salon would when appraising the length and getting ready to cut.

My head bobbed with the movement. I peeked at him through half-closed lids. He let go; our lips bumped together one more time, dry, quick, and affirming, before we pulled apart. As his head moved away, a patch of night sky was revealed right above it, and I saw a bright speck, brighter than the rest. It flared up and burned away in the blink of an eye. A falling star.

Well, not exactly. I remembered: stars did not fall or shoot, and technically those weren’t stars at all. Not even little stars. They were chunks of rock plummeting through the planet’s atmosphere, so fast that they’d heat up and glow. While burning down to nothing, with nothing reaching the ground.

A familiar tightness gripped my throat, a prickly stinging behind my eyes. If only for a moment; I looked into Wakuu’s drunk, smiling eyes, and the feeling disappeared.

“Glowing meteoroid, at your service,” I murmured.

This town, no matter how small and remote, had its own gravitational field, and I’d gotten caught in it, of my own volition. Still on the fence regarding that which I’d done on a whim, and whether it was a co(s)mically stupid thing to do. Not like I believed in fate. But— “Whatever’s floatin’ up there,” nodded Wakuu. “Fethurs and gloops n’cluded.” I wondered if he, too, had a love-hate relationship with his given name. Maybe I’d ask him later.

Pushing myself up with my elbows, I sat higher, and he angled his upper body away from mine, until he was sitting between my spread knees, and our chests were at the same level, still heaving, still catching up with that pesky needing-oxygen thing.

His right hand glided up my left thigh before coming to an abrupt stop.

“Y’know, when I met you,” Wakuu rasped, at the same time clearing his throat, “I thought that you liked gurlz. Like Chaem.”

Fingertips tentative, in one last bout of doubt; his eyes flicked to the side, avoiding my gaze, watching the surface instead.

I didn’t want to move my tongue too much. At least, not for the purposes of speaking. Pinching his wrist, I mumbled, “Chaem likes guys as well as girls.” Granted, to have the slightest of chances, the guy in question would first need to ascend beyond ‘kid’. I had no idea what that (no doubt excruciatingly hard) trial entailed in her case. Most likely, the accumulation of muscle mass. A whole lot of muscle mass. “You wanna know what I thought of you when I met you?”

Wakuu gave a wry smile, eyebrows waggling. He was back to looking amused and impish. And at me. “That I’m a poser.”

Of course. Why had I allowed myself to believe that I’d never fall victim to ‘in small towns, they tell each other everything’? Although, thinking of the precise manner in which Eva had told him, I imagined something sweet and guileless, something like, ‘then she asked if you’re the local poser, and that was funny, she’s really funny, then I introduced you, oh, sorry I forgot that you were about to head for the harbor and were pressed for time, anyway, she’s funny and nice and I think she wanted to book time to look at the stars’.

“Well, yeah. Guilty,” I admitted, shrugging, smiling back, “I bought into the facade.”

Wakuu wasn’t letting this other thing go, of course. “So you like boyz’n’gurlz.”

I sighed. “I like you, Wakuu-baba.”

“Uuugh. Stahp callin’ me granny!” he protested with a whine of fake indignation, nudging my leg.

“Then stop being one!”

Without delay, Wakuu pried the triangle of fabric off his head and tossed it on the edge. It landed right behind me. His wet fingers combed through his hair, slicking it back. It refused to obey and flopped down, framing his forehead like quotation marks.

He looked cute, no joke. Habitually, I fumbled for a punchline, but didn’t find it. He looked super cute. That’s all. Yes setup. Yes buildup. No punchline. Somehow. No punchline — no joke.

Shifting languidly, with water sloshing around him, Wakuu settled down beside me and relaxed against the stone wall. Arm sliding under the small of my back, he sagged down into the water, tugging me along with him. Bending my legs and pulling them up towards my chest, with my head cocking to the side and leaning on his shoulder, I rolled over to my flank in order to press myself closer to him, and let my knees graze his quadriceps, then to rest over them. Perhaps, the only well-developed muscles that his scrawny body had accumulated, were located on his thighs. An inevitability; the Climb would do that to a person.

Our fingers lazily entwined on top of his abdomen, and the latter rose with another deep intake of air, sending our joined palms floating up to the surface like a pale bobber.

Here we were, cuddling at the deep end. Both of us drunk, naked, sad and stupid clowns, perpetually stressed, perpetually busy, perpetually caretakers... perpetually alone?

Feeling his lips graze the top of my head, I raised it, and his breath and the tips of his wet hair brushed against my temple. My nose slid up, I nuzzled his cheek and buried my stupid, naked, drunk, smiling face in the curve of his neck for a long moment — before pressing my stupid, naked, drunk, smiling lips to it.

A long, slender, and elegant neck. I’d have called it swan-like if I was a poet.

They should have sent a poet. “Kissing your neck — you know what that makes me?”

In a low, silky voice laced with innuendo, Wakuu whispered seductively right into my ear, “A neck romancer.”

Wit-wordplay, also known as puns, check. Bad puns, check.

A braying, groggy snicker rolled out of his chest, shaking both of us, and he hugged me closer.

“Sooo,” he drawled, quieter, once we’d calmed down and the laughter had morphed into mellow chuckles. "I showed you mine, won’t you show me yours?”

It took my swimming brain more than a moment to understand his meaning. When I managed, the laughter-induced shaking restarted and redoubled, and I had to take a few seconds to breathe past it, while clinging to his skin so as not to slide away.

We were back to being Bad At All Of This. Like children, in every goddamn sense.

Although his delivery was magnificent: the ideal amount of earnestness and innocence, just sly enough, just sheepish enough, with but a piquant pinch of salaciousness. Nothing was off-balance. Flawless.

“Seriously?

That’s your move?” I squeaked before placing several loud smooches across his jaw.

Grinning so hard that his eyes turned into dark slits, Wakuu snorted and shrugged.

“Mind you, I didn’t see anything,” I said, straightening my legs. “It’s dark! And I politely turned away and—”

Still grinning, he made a strangled noise, flapped his feet as if he was stomping them, and pressed, “So y’go to the salon every few weeks, and you get’em to pull all your hair out, down there, right?”

“What the heck!” Sharply, I drew away in order to glare at him in a show of dramatic (pretense) indignation. My own facial muscles were starting to ache; way too soon. “Don’t tell me you’ve been thinking about it ever since that talk!”

“Weeell... When a beautiful girl implies sum’n like that— C’mon, I’m nah made of stone. Aaand now you’re gon’ argue that you’re not beautiful and be all like ‘ohhh staaahp’— Wait.” His features smoothened right before my eyes, mischief disintegrating; his tone changed to almost fully sober and lucid, even a tad wistful as Wakuu continued, “Wait, no. You’re nah gon’ argue. That’s great, actually. That you won’t argue. Anyway, you’re beautiful.” He held my gaze as I let his words settle in.

No punchline.

“Thanks.”

Looking at me with groggy tenderness, Wakuu reached out with one hand to run his fingers through my hair, disentangling my wet locks. Ungluing one from my cheek, he brushed his knuckles down my skin, towards the dip under my jaw.

“So are you,” I added.

Cupped over my cheek, his palm froze. His eyes widened. Recognizing the unique look, I waited. The battle sounded, cold steel clashing against balloon animals... The unfortunate secret: the clowns were the ones who wielded cold steel.

“Ohhhh stah-aaaaap!”

Gobbling up each of the chuckles that followed, I kissed him into a low hum, then into silence.

It’s not that booze was keeping me from feeling too self-conscious — although this, too, naturally — it’s just that being literally buck-naked meant almost nothing after letting oneself get figuratively buck-naked, if only for a few seconds.

Besides, my conscious (but intoxicated) mind continued perceiving all of this as a silly game. Pushing off against the stone edge, I heaved my torso out of the pool and stood up to full height, dripping water. I spread my open palms to the sides in a ‘well, there you go, happy?’ gesture as my eyebrows and the corners of my lips quirked up.

He blinked owlishly, letting his glazed eyes adjust, and so did I. The dim yellow lanterns shone through the mist, casting a soft glow on my pruney fingers — and on my everything else, as well.

Wakuu was watching me, sprawled, chin tilted up. His dyed hair was tousled, half-wet, framing his face, drooping over his forehead, his dark roots a forest by now.

Awaiting a reaction, I watched his chest caving with a deep exhale, his lips curling into a thin crescent. The skin around his eyes crinkled, and they flitted to meet mine as Wakuu pushed himself up and sat on his calves; the water roiled and rippled with the movement, licking at my thighs.

I could hear his breathing turning ragged; I wasn’t paying the change any mind, due to barely having any presence of mind.

A silly game. Like a brakeless vehicle plummeting down Habitude Lane, my brain expected a joke. Expected something supremely idiotic, perhaps bordering on the lowest of lowbrow humor; for him to trumpet a raspberry on my lower belly, or to motorboat whatever was reachable from down below. For him to bat his eyelashes at me as if he was a cartoon character, then playfully smack my hip. A witty remark, a sarcastic compliment, a dirty and infantile quip, an apologetic, dopey, tiddly grin. A punchline; a retreat. Anything, anything but what actually followed.

Without a trace of hesitation or mischief in his expression, Wakuu closed the gap between our bodies, his movements as graceful as if he truly was a feather carried forward by a gust of wind.

I felt his fingers wreathing around my ankles underwater, thumb-pads pressing against the protruding knobs, and an unbidden image materialized in my head; a distant, hazy memory of an actual children’s game. Of a summer camp, of diving in an azure mountain lake, of keeping an ear out for splashes and conspiratorial giggles, of yearning to relax yet being on the highest of alerts, of expecting that a clammy, impudent hand might grasp and yank my ankle at any moment; of shaking for two reasons, of ice-cold water being the less significant reason, of losing every time, of holding back tears, of forcing out laughter, of pretending to be busy and carefree and brave and indifferent, of pretending not to give a crap.

Just once. Need to get through it once. If I’m funny, they won’t hurt me. If I joke around, they will leave me alone. No one bullies the jester, not for long.

Wakuu’s fingers felt like a grounding anchor; reliable, balancing, predictable, solid, heavy. Eyes shut for a heartbeat, I bottled up the sensation and sent it back in time.

Squeezing once, securing me to the surface of the planet, he started an agonizingly slow, encircled ascent, his fingers crawling and climbing up my calves. As he traced the veins on the backs of my knees, the latter threatened to buckle, but I held firm. His index fingers pressed into the soft hollows, lingering, rubbing several small circles, as if soothing a skittish horse. Water cascaded down his arms as they emerged to the surface, still tethered to me, holding on to my legs.

His inky eyelashes were casting spiderweb shadows on his cheeks. Leaving shallow, pink dents, his thumbs traced two parallel paths up my inner thighs, delicately urging them open, and the sound that I made in response to this process was... not a sound I ever suspected my throat was capable of producing. High-pitched, caught between a squeak, a mewl, and a choked-back sob. My own arms and hands hung limply, yet they balled into tight fists as soon as Wakuu’s lips parted and his warm, wet breath ghosted over my mons pubis.

His curled palms tugged me closer, once; not forceful, not an insistence — a gentle nudge, an offer.

There had been, and were still, half a dozen ways and opportunities for me to stop him, but stopping him was the last thing that I wanted. I stood motionless and breathless, like a sculptural element in a fountain — with my heart banging against the base of my throat, pounding on the insides of my ears, thrumming along my every limb.

As he tossed his head up sharply, Wakuu’s eyes burned into mine; so riveting that I could hardly look away. But why would I ever want to? For one moment, I was peering at him, seeing him — and seeing a star-soaked void, both at the same time, as if my vision had split into two distinct planes of perception, one superimposed on top of the other. For one moment; before I forced myself to focus on him, on the here, on the now, on the silent question in his gaze and ever-so-slightly elevated eyebrows.

My lips moved, opening and closing. Nothing came out but a tiny puff of air.

So instead, I swallowed with a click, inhaled, and gave him a solitary nod.