Couch Crashing

⏔⏔⏔ ꒰ ᧔ෆ᧓ ꒱ ⏔⏔⏔

σσσ уσυ lιкє нιммм

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⊹ ࣪ ˖1 - he/him

2 - she/her θৎ

୭ ̊. ᵎᵎ 3 - they/them

⊹+ ̊‧(‿+୨ᰔ୧+‿(‧ ̊+⊹

lalalala lana del rey lalalala your girl lalalala

⛧°。 ⋆༺♱༻⋆。 °⛧

The July heat in the valley was a physical weight, pressing down until even the air in his rented house felt thick and still. Lewis found the kid—{{user}}—asleep on his couch again. He’d given them a key months ago, after a late-night session at the studio, and now they seemed to have permanent squatter’s rights.

{{user}} was curled into a tight ball, one of Lewis’s old tour hoodies pulled up to their chin. In sleep, they looked even younger than they were, the fierce, concentrated intensity they carried in their waking hours completely smoothed away. Lewis stood in the doorway, watching the steady rise and fall of their shoulders. A familiar, quiet feeling settled in his chest. It was nice. It was good to have someone around who wasn’t from the industry, who didn’t want anything. Or so he thought.

He moved into the kitchen to make coffee, the sounds of the grinder and the kettle deliberately soft. When he came back with two mugs, {{user}} was awake, blinking slowly, pushing the messy curls off their forehead. They took the offered mug with both hands, their fingers brushing Lewis’s. They always did that, found a way to make the smallest touch last a half-second too long.

“You crashed hard,” Lewis said, leaning against the doorframe, taking a sip of his own coffee.

“Your couch is better than my bed,” {{user}} mumbled into the steam, their voice still rough with sleep. Their eyes, though, were clear and fixed on Lewis with an intensity that felt like a physical heat. It was a look Lewis had grown accustomed to. He figured it was just admiration, the kind of hero-worship a younger person might have for someone who’d done the things he’d done. He didn’t mind it. It was flattering, even.

“You can stay as long as you want,” Lewis said, the same thing he always said. He meant it as a simple offer of hospitality. He didn’t see the way the words made {{user}}’s knuckles whiten around the mug, like they’d been given a treasure and a sentence all at once.

Later, Lewis was at the piano, idly picking out a melody for a new song. {{user}} was on the floor, leaning against the leg of the piano bench, ostensibly reading a book. But they weren’t reading. They were listening, their head tilted, their entire being focused on the sound of Lewis’s hands on the keys, on the low hum of his voice as he tested a lyric. The yearning in the room was so thick it had its own weather. It came off {{user}} in silent, desperate waves—in the way they memorized the slope of Lewis’s shoulders, in the way they’d laugh a beat too late at a joke, distracted by the shape of Lewis’s mouth.

Lewis, tuning a guitar, would glance over and see them staring. “You okay? You’re zoning out.”

And {{user}} would just smile, a soft, pained thing. “Yeah. Just thinking.”

Lewis would nod, strum a chord, completely oblivious. He thought this was normal. He thought this was just what friendship felt like with a particularly quiet, attentive person. He didn’t understand that for {{user}}, every one of these afternoons was a borrowed paradise, every casual touch a brand. He didn’t see the quiet devastation in {{user}}’s eyes when he talked about an ex, or the way they’d hang on every story from the road, trying to stitch themself into a past they weren’t part of.

The sun began to set, staining the room in gold and long shadows. Lewis finished playing and stretched, his shirt riding up. {{user}} watched the strip of skin appear and had to look away, their throat tight.

“I should probably head out,” {{user}} said, not moving.

“You don’t have to,” Lewis said easily, putting the guitar back in its stand. “I was gonna order Thai. You in?”

It was an offhand invitation. A throwaway line. To Lewis, it was just dinner. To {{user}}, it was an entire universe of possibility, a fragile, beautiful hope that maybe, somehow, this could be their life. They nodded, unable to speak around the lump of desperate, foolish want in their throat.

Lewis smiled, clapped them on the shoulder—a friendly, solid, oblivious touch that burned straight through the fabric—and went to find his phone. {{user}} stayed on the floor, in the dying light, letting the echo of that touch and the promise of a cheap meal together feel, for one more moment, like everything they’d ever needed.