fluctuations

"Uhm. Yeah, sorry. I was uh.. I was just wondering maybe if you weren't busy tomorrow, uhm, you might like to have lunch at my place?" You lowered your head, picking at your fingernails, expecting a refusal. "You know, to say thanks for the other night.."

He stayed silent for a few seconds, just sort of staring at you, taking in the scene of your anxious stature before he slowly started nodding.

"Yeah. Yeah, alrigh'."

You thought you had heard it wrong but no. He agreed. Okay. Great. Now you just had to make him lunch and spend an entire afternoon with him.

"Okay. Cool." You smiled breathlessly because you couldn't really believe it. "Uh, what do you want to eat? So I know what to buy at the shop."

He stared off in thought for a second before looking back at you with this proud look on his face, shrugging his shoulders. "Dunno. S'pose I'll just have to go with ya, decide at the shop. We'll take my car. Ten alright for you?"

You looked at him, bewildered. You hadn't been expecting that. "Yeah. Yeah, tens fine." You nodded, lips parted, shoulders tense.

He brought his cigarette back to his lips, sucking in the smoke before puffing it back out, head lowered to avoid blowing it straight in your face. "Its a date then." He smiled.

You didn't trust you ears for a moment until you were sure you had heard what you thought you did. You repeated his words quietly to yourself, "It's a date..."

You went back to your apartement feeling floaty, terrified, and slightly horny, mentally storing the image of a shirtless Simon for a more appropriate time.

The next morning came and you woke up much too early. You showered, changed, ate a small breakfast and pulled out your phone to check your bank account and see how much money you could spare on ingredients. 45 pounds absolute maximum if you wanted to be able to afford rent. Thats alright. Surely you wouldn't be spending that much. You already have some stuff at home. Maybe it would be fine. Much less expensive than some fancy cafe somewhere at least.

It was 9:58am when Simon knocked on your door. You walked out, purse in hand, and locked the door behind you. The two of you walked down the stairwell because, as it always had been, the elevator was out of order.

"Has that thing ever worked?" You asked him when you passed it a few flights down, pointing at the out of order sign. He looked at the elevator and nodded slowly.

"Yeah. It did. I broke it when I was moving in."

You stopped dead in your tracks as Simon continued on down the steps.

"What?!" You squealed, laughing as you hurried to catch up with him.

"You broke it? How?" You questioned, grabbing his arm to stop him from walking away from you, slowing him down to your speed.

"I'm no' tellin' you." He laughed.

You made it to the front door of the apartment building. He opened the door for you, letting you through first before he followed and started leading you to his car which you learned was not a car but was actually a truck. A black Ford Ranger.

"You have to tell me!" You argued. He couldn't just say something like that and not finish the story.

He walked up the the passanger side of his truck and opened the door, holding out his hand to help you in.

"No, I don't." He retorted when you took his hand and stepped up into the truck. His hand was rough, hardened with callouses from years of holding guns and knives, but his grip was shockingly gentle. Like he was afraid he'd hurt you if he tightened his grip with any sort of force at all.

You settled into the seat and he closed the door behind you, rounding the truck to the drivers side. After turning on the engine and reversing out of the parking spot, you started driving towards the shop.

The shop, when you got there, was quiet. It was sort of expected, though. Who's really doing their shopping at 10 o clock in the morning? You grabbed a basket, just one of the handheld ones with wishful thinking that you wouldn't need an actual trolley. Simon was quick to grab it from you, though, as he gestured with his head for you to follow him down the aisle. Clearly he didn't want you carrying the basket. Whether that was for you or so that he didn't look like a jerk making you carry it you didn't know but the gesture was nice.

Either way, you carried on down the aisle by Simons side. Something about this felt strangely... domestic. Like you were just two people going about their day like it was normal. Routine, even. You had never felt that before. The domesticity of routine with someone not in your family, even though it wasn't exactly routine. It felt nice.

"So, what were you thinking? What are you hungry for?" You asked, arms swinging by your side, eyes skimming the products on the shelves, keeping note of how out-of-budget everything looked.

Simon just shrugged. "This a date, innit? Need ta go all out. Steak? Couple of sides?"

You were starting to wish that you had gone with the coffee in a cafe somewhere. Why would you offer lunch at your own place? Thats so stupid! Its way too expensive... Still, you grit your teeth and nodded.

"Steak it is."

When you got to the fridge section you swear you could have puked looking at the prices. The cheapest steak you saw was 10 quid. Simon, seemingly have a taste for the expensive, picked up four wagyu steaks each costing 15 pounds. Just them alone was already over your budget. Did he not know you were poor? Could he not tell from the time you walked home in the pouring rain just so you wouldn't have to spend a fiver for the bus? Still, you said nothing. How could you? You invited him to lunch, your treat. You couldn't say "hey I can't afford anything you picked up in the last five seconds." You told him it was to thank him for his help!

He must have noticed your pained face. How could he not? You were practically green..

"What's wrong? You alrigh'?" He asked, concern etched all over his face as he placed his hand on your upper arm, checking over you like he was inspecting a soldier for wounds.

"Yeah, yeah, of course." You swallowed deeply. "Just, um, I mean, will we really eat four?" You asked, trying to play off your panic as not wanting to waste food.

"Yeah." He said like it was obvious. Like the idea of buying any less than four would leave you both starving. "Don't underestimate how much I can eat, love." He smiled with a tilt of his head. "Anyway, I'm buying so it's up to me."

That made your head snap to look at him. "What?" You furrowed your brows. "No, no, I said I would pay. This is to thank you for the other night." You said waving your arms around with way too much flair to try discourage him from this seemingly out of the blue decision. As relieved as you were, you couldn't let him do that.

"For what? Taking two minutes out of my uneventful evenin' to zip up your dress? That was more of favour for me, darlin', not for you. I should be thankin' you. And I am."

You just stared at him, completely bewildered, like he had spoken a foreign language and you had understood it magically. Meanwhile, Simon just.. kept on walking down the aisle, picking up various food. Broccoli, sauces, potatoes, etc, like he was just doing his regular shop.

"I can't let you do that." You said in defiance when you caught up to him.

"Dont worry about it, love." He snickered, like the concept of him having picked up maybe 100 pounds worth of food by now and just expecting to pay for it entirely by himself was completely normal. "What kind of man would I be if I let my girl pay for the first date?"

His girl.

You just kind of froze for a second, silently screaming on the inside while battling with emotions you've never felt before. How do you respond to that? Did he mean to say it? Did it just slip out?

"Can I at least pay half?" You said, almost desperately, after a few moments of silence. He laughed at your insistence, shaking his head.

"You can pay me back another time. This is just the first of many."

The first of many.

Yeah. Thats okay. You like the sound of that.

"The first of many... okay." You said quietly to yourself beside him, holding back a smile by biting your lip.

When you got to the checkout your heart literally dropped to your stomach. 200 pounds on some steak, a few sides, 2 bottles of wine, and ingredients for cookies for dessert. Simon just laughed at your reaction as he tapped his card like it meant nothing and picked up the two heavy bags. Yeah, it was nice that he was willing to spend that much on you but the guilt was literally eating you alive. You asked him out and then he payed? And it cost the same as a fancy dinned would? And it wouldn't be nearly as fancy and would probably take hours to cook. You were genuinely debating whether to take out a loan to pay him back.

Simon, of course, carried the bags up the stairs when you got back to the apartment. You unlocked your door, thankful you had the sense to clean before you left this morning because your place is normally a mess. He put the bag on the counter as you closed the door and then started pulling out pots, pans, knives, chopping boards, everything you needed for cooking, both of you ready to start cooking straight away.

It was almost like a dance, the way the two of you manouvered around the kitchen together. His hands on your waist when he needed to move you out of the way, you ducking under his arms when he would be reaching into the upper cabinets. You chopped potatoes while he seasoned the steaks. He cooked the broccoli while you grilled the steaks. It was the most fun you had cooking a meal probably ever. Splashing water on each other when washing hands, eating food before it was cooked, making a mess around the kitchen that you didn't care about because it was the most pure you had felt in a long time.

It was 11:30 when you started cooking "lunch". You didn't finish until almost 4. By then you were both starving and didn't even care how the food tasted, or that it was long past any socially acceptable lunch time. You just wanted to eat.

Both of you were feeling very carefree considering the absolute stupidity that occured while preparing your current meal, so naturally you opened one of the bottles of wine and poured two huge glasses. Then, went straight past the dining room table and to the couch, placing both your dinners on the coffee table.

The food was actually good, to the surprise of both of you. You would have assumed that something would have been wrong but.. no. It was amazing. You had to give Simon credit for the steak. He did all the seasoning. You seasoned the potatoes, though, and the broccoli. It was a group effort.

You thought making dinner was hazardous enough. It was nothing compared two the two of you trying (and failing) to make some sort of edible cookies while having had a bottle and a half of wine between the two of you.

There was flour literally everywhere. You had bought three packets of chocolate chips and had eaten two before the eggs even went in. Speaking of eggs, Simon managed to crack three onto the counter before he successfully got one in. You accidentally poured half the bottle of vanilla extract into the dough when the recipe called for just a drop.

You literally could not stop laughing. Your apartment had never been in such a mess before in the months you had lived there. If it was any other day you woukd have been stressed and fuming but you really just didn't care. It was the happiest you had been in a while.

Eventually, after a lot of hardship, you ended up with something sort of resembling a kind-of batch of cookies. They were weirdly shaped, had barely any chocolate chips, one half was burnt while the other was partially raw. They tasted... well. You tried. You were honestly lucky you didn't set them on fire in the over or crack your head open on the counter slipping on a raw egg on the floor.

By 7pm the cookies were gone (except the completely unedible ones) and you layed on the couch, your head in Simons lap. The wine you bought was gone, and you had even opened a bottle of gin you had in the back of a cupboard somewhere. You talked about everything and nothing. Why you moved, your family, his family, his life in the military which he wouldn't reveal a lot about despite the copious amounts of alcohol in his system.

You must have fallen asleep at some point because you woke up when the light entered your windows the next morning with a sticky note on your forehead. The note read "Morning. You fell asleep so I let myself out. I have more pain killers if you need them." As if on queue your head started pounding in the early stages of a hangover. You turned your head to find a glass of water and two pain killers beside it on your coffee table.

You coffee table which just a few hours ago was destroyed in food and alcohol, was now spotless. You sat up and looked to the kitchen. Spotless aswell. He cleaned. Simon had cleaned your apartment while drunk so that you didn't have to do it while hungover.

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the kayak slices the water calmly and then you're being lifted out by big arms and carefully positioned legs, thick and sturdy.

you think he asks if you're alright, and you think you laugh when he does.

—

the familiar sensation of emerging from unconsciousness crawls over you, your body returning to you piecemeal until you've puzzled it out. you fainted when he lifted you out and you noticed you were standing in some industrial dockyard. specifically now, you're in some office stretched out above you from where you seem to be lying on a couch. everything burns and stings.

"alrigh'?" a thick, craggy voice from behind your head. you twist slightly and there's the man that helped you.

"i'm so sorry," you sob again, like the fainting only hit pause on your crying.

silence. "wot for?"

you don't even know. you're waterlogged and sunburned and you're pretty sure you can't lift your arms above your head if you needed to.

"my boyfriend left me out there," you try to explain through shaking breaths. "he had…everything in his kayak. the compass. water. phones. food. i think maybe he thought i still had my phone on me."

"wot the fuck 're you sayin'? your boyfriend wot?" then he finally pushes himself out of the wooden office chair and leans against the desk where you can see him better. folds his huge arms across his huge chest.

"no," and it's a laugh-cry. "he thought it was funny. wanted to see if i could make it back without his help. i tried following him, but he was too fast. then it came to a fork in the river and i didn't know how to get back."

the man's face is dark with something even beyond anger. it doesn't fit the mundanity of the office surrounding you; lists and certificates and handwritten notes tacked up everywhere on the cheap walls.

it feels good to see it reflected in someone else's face. "i didn't know where i was, or where to paddle. i just needed to find anything human. it's been…hours." and then your anger breaks open easy like yolk trapped under a thin skein to reveal the sadness underneath because all you really are are sad. a man you've been dating, let come inside you more than once, met your friends and your grandparents, left you out in the middle of a giant body of water with no means of survival.

you could've died and you can already hear his voice in your head: babe i thought you had your phone! how was i supposed to know you've put it in my bag? you should've said something. babe please you're really making something out of nothing. you're always saying how much you want to toughen up and get into the outdoors stuff with me. i came back to find you but you'd disappeared; you should've just stayed put and i would've found you. you made it into such a big deal. jesus.

sometimes, the worst part of seeing your partner as they really are is not what they say or do, but what you can very clearly hear them saying or picture them doing.

"you're in a shipyard, love. don' know where you started but i'm bettin' you've come a long ways."

you shrug. "we parked on the side of a two-lane highway. portaged in. i'm not from here, i have no idea."

"judgin' by the look of you, it's been a few hours at least." he pushes himself off the desk and shuffles through something out of sight. comes back with a first aid kit, and after flipping through the contents, what looks like cooling gel packs for burns.

"oh, no, don't waste that on me" is silenced by a rude look.

"can you sit up."

you do awkwardly.

"i'm gonna cut your top off. don't think your arms are gonna be much help." a pair of scissors is brandished and they look insanely small in his big, calloused hands, and he drags it through the fabric of your tank top unless it falls down to your waist, leaving your bikini top underneath. you think if you had your wits about you, you'd try to argue.

"move a bit." he softly uses his hands to shift you, then out of sight, you hear the packet ripped open. then a blissfully cold gel is being spread across the sun-scorched skin; over your shoulders, up your neck and tops of ears, with a gentleness that doesn't match those big hands, down your upper arms, and the top knob of your spine where your tank top had dipped low all day.

a shuddering breath is punched out of you as the gel seems to penetrate the top layer of skin left to cook under the hot august sun with no reprieve from cloud cover.

you're turned back around with his hands on your waist, facing out into this office. it must be one of those offices set up in a trailer. he crouches down in front of you, knee cartilage popping.

"better." he's not asking. declaring it to be true about you. he presses a cold water bottle into your palm, and that's when you both notice where your trail shorts had ridden up, revealing a patch of skin that got burned as well. a stupid rectangle across both thighs.

he rips open another gel pack with his teeth. you watch quietly as he smears it across your flesh, trying not to drag the skin.

"chin up."

more along your breastbone where the tank top didn't shield, up your throat, and you realize how large his hands really span when they're cupped around your trachea. tops of your ears. forehead. it feels so intimate and clinical at the same time.

"that bad, huh," you give out shakily when he's chucked the sixth pack to the side, used up.

he grunts. instructs you to sip the water slow, no matter how dry your mouth feels, how badly you want to tip it down your throat and let it sluice through your bloodstream.

"headache?"

somehow the least of your concerns all things considered, but yes. fetches you some pills from the first aid kit, watches you carefully as you swallow them.

"get some rest then. i'll take y'home when i'm done."

the realization that you don't have anything to get you home yourself is devastating and if you had moisture to conjure fresh tears, you'd surely cry again. trying to find a comfortable position is impossible, so you end up just reclining to the side, wedging someone's spare hooded sweatshirt under your head as a pillow.

shockingly, you must doze off sometime after you hear the man leave the trailer. when your eyes open, dry and achy, there's a flickering overhead light on and the sky's darkened outside. you look around and find a clock on the wall. you don't know when he hauled you in, but it must have been at least an hour of sleep.

you readjust and check out the burns on your forearms, and fall back asleep.

the sound of his boots hitting metal steps has you inhaling sharply out of hazy, discomfited sleep. you watch him enter, eyes trained on you over the desk.

"y'alrigh'?"

you nod stiffly.

"let's go." he helps you into the oversized sweatshirt that you used as a pillow. it stinks like cigarettes and body odour, but it helps protect your sunburn from being scraped against. you're grateful for the size of it, that it doesn't force you to move your arms much to be folded into it.

he has to slow and shorten his long-legged stride to match your small, aching ones across the shadowed shipyard, lit only by sharp white fluorescent overheads. he brings you over to a large black truck, gets you situated (with his help) into the passenger side, and then goes back to the yard to lock up.

when he returns, you're trembling slightly inside the big hoodie. dreading what has to come next.

"everything is at my boyfriend's," you nearly whisper, embarrassed and penitent. "my keys and…it's all there."

"right." he gets directions and doesn't bother tapping them into his gps, just steers the truck out of the parking lot and onto some dark highway.

"i'm really so—"

"no." he actually raises a hand off the steering wheel to emphasize the rough word. "you're not apologizin' for 'im."

—

the ride is long and silent, and you must doze back off in front of the blue-lit dashboard and the man, who introduced himself finally as simon, who smokes a cigarette out his window a few times. you feel too guilty to ask if he even lives close to the city, to gauge whether this trip is adding time to his own commute. you can only imagine it does, and it burns you hotter for it.

coming to under frequent lights of the highway carved through the city, minutes from your boyfriend's exit.

you direct him the rest of the way, softly. "this unit, yeah, right here."

"what's his name?" he asks while sidling the truck up behind your boyfriend's car. so he did come home.

"sam," you answer without a thought, and then he's out of the truck and locking it behind him, striding in double time up the steps.

you hide. you hate yourself for it but you shrink in the hoodie, pulling it up over your mouth anxiously as you watch the door open under a shitty porch light. then all you see is the massive shadow of this man, simon, with his arms stretched out and he disappears into the open door. the door slams shut.

minutes and minutes stretch. you keep your hand on the handle but you won't leave the safety of the truck cab.

he reemerges alone. he comes up to your car door and unlocks it with the fob. "this all of it? check."

your phone, purse and wallet, house keys, reusable water bottle, and random things like a pair of your pajama shorts, a couple books, toothbrush, skincare stuff, tampons. it's stuffed into one of you old duffel bags you must've lugged over there at some point.

"i mean…i think this is it?"

"don't guess. you don't wanna come back again."

has he broken up with your boyfriend for you?

so you check the bag again. "yes…yes, it's everything." anything else is a lost cause, you don't need to tell him that the hard liquor was all purchased by you.

he hauls himself back in the truck and you can see under the street lights, the split knuckles on his fists, smeared blood down some hairy fingers.

"thank you," you whisper.

his fingers ripple off the wheel in a "don't mention it" gesture. you tell him where your apartment is, and then fall silent.

—

you invite him up. for logistics mostly, because it hurts too much to lift the duffel bag by yourself. he stands beside you in the elevator, huge and bulky, silent on his own.

you feel his eyes flick around your space as you let yourself into the apartment. he agrees to a cup of coffee, despite the hour.

there's only the one couch. you're distinctly aware that the only other man who's sat here with you has been sam. by contrast, simon is huge, taking up space that makes the couch feel more like a loveseat. he's technically in the corner, but his big ass and legs has him nearly halfway to you.

"is this yours?" you ask, fingers picking at the large wrinkled sweatshirt swamping you. "i can give it back."

"nah," he says firmly, and you notice how absurdly small the coffee mug looks wrapped in his big hand and thick fingers. "looks better on you."

you set your mug on the coffee table nervously. "okay, so i get the sense that you don't want me to thank you, that you're not the type that would accept it even if i tried?"

silence tells you you're right.

"do you…are you seeing someone?" you shift slightly to look at him, watch his reaction.

"no."

you already know he wouldn't come up just to be nice. he's dragged a woman to shore and broken up with her shitty boyfriend for her and taken her home. he owes nothing to you.

when you lean over, disbelief seems to flicker over his still face before your mouth finds his. you feel the taut sunburnt skin stretch painfully under the hoodie, but his warm lips opening against yours is a hot distraction. you let both soft, warm puffs of air against him as you pull away and go for the skin of his neck.

this is when you remember that you woke up in your bed with sam this morning.

his hands fall at your waist, where the skin was safe from the sun, pulling at your hips with a soft hot sound behind his teeth. you separate, both huffing.

"i think maybe that we should—"

"yeah, course." he says it too quickly.

you raise your eyebrow. "—wait til i'm healed. is what i was gonna say."

he's surprised. hides it fast but you catch it.

you give him your number. type it into his old phone.

his mouth tastes of cigarettes and coffee when you kiss him goodnight at the door. you don't brush your teeth at bed, choosing to savour the taste on your lips. you pull the hoodie up over your mouth and breathe in his scent, stale and kind of gross but safe, until you fall asleep.

-