was there. An extra pillow and two blankets. Limping over to the door, I drop the pillow and blanket on the spot I've claimed for myself, and then shake the other blanket out and lay it across the bed.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Lakyn asks, sending a plume of smoke my direction.
"It's so you don't have to sleep on the mattress." I have the strangest urge to giggle when he looks me up and down, but I manage to bite my lip and drop my eyes. The sound of him sucking his teeth fills the silence for a second before he stands up and my gaze snaps back to him.
"You're not sleeping on the bed, Red."
"I know." Pointing at the pile by the door, I shrug a bit. "I've got my spot picked out."
"Good." Scooping up his cigarettes, my knife, the ashtray, and the lighter, he takes off the towel and tosses it on the chair. Fuck. He's beautiful. It's not just his eyes, or his face, or even his body… it's how unapologetic he is about his existence. Lakyn Meyer doesn't give a shit what anyone thinks of him, and he never tries to be average like Aftyn does. He doesn't try to be 'normal' because he never could be. He's too real, too wild, and he burns too bright for anyone to ever mistake him for boring.
I know I'm staring when he lays out on the bed—on the blanket I put down for him—and I keep staring as his muscles shift when he reaches over to stack his things on the bedside table and flick the light off. The room plummets into darkness, but the vision of Lakyn is still hovering behind my eyes like one of those afterburns from a bright flash.
"Hey Red?" His voice comes out of the darkness and I can feel some kind of energy running over my skin.
"Yeah?"
"If you touch me or get on the bed while I'm asleep, I'll kill you." It's not a threat it’s a promise, and I know that, but I wouldn't break his rules. I want to learn from him, to show him that I can fit in his life so much better than the walking sperm donation he left behind. I hear a rustle and then the flick of a lighter and the flame lights up his face in the black, which is growing less dark as my eyes adjust to the light leaking around the door from the bathroom and the curtains on the window. Lakyn inhales and the flame disappears, followed swiftly by the smell of cigarette smoke. "Make sure the kid doesn't wake me up."
"Okay, Lakyn." I don't know how long I stand there listening to him inhale and exhale, breathing in the smoke, but eventually I hear him stub out the cigarette and roll over, the mattress creaking as he shifts, until silence settles again. The shower cut off a few minutes ago, but Aftyn is still sulking in the bathroom, and I'm frustrated because I need to look at my leg before I can go to sleep.
Eventually, my eyes adjust enough to find the shadow of the table and my backpack on the floor, and I grab it, putting it back on the chair to dig around by memory for clean clothes to change into. When the bathroom door opens a minute or two later, yellow light floods across the room, and I wave at Aftyn, whispering, "Close it!"
"Fuck off." Aftyn leaves the door open, and I sigh. Fortunately, the angle of the doorway is keeping the light off Lakyn's face, but the extra light does show me something I hadn't noticed before. Lakyn's shirt is on the floor near the bedside table, and I limp over to grab it, shoving it into my backpack before I head to the bathroom. Aftyn's propped himself in the corner of the room with the towel still wrapped around his waist, but when he notices me looking, he flips me off again, hissing out another pathetic threat. "Stay the hell way from me, because I promise, the next time I cut you, you won't be walking away from it."
"Sure thing, Aftyn. I guess you finished crying in the shower?" I ask quietly, flashing a smile at his enraged glare before I step into the bathroom and close the door behind me.
Getting the jeans down my legs is a lesson in pain management, but I bite down on my shirt to keep the groans in