#...327 words later

copper rivulets erode skin: his hair in your lap , tousled , smelling of spice and smoke and sun ((him)).

for once, there is silence at the beach. waves, too, and the melody of a breeze, but mostly silence. ben disperses inertia even as he dozes in your lap — exhaling, and swim trunks rustling like plastic when he shifts his weight.

faint patches of sunscreen spot his chest, where he didn’t quite rub it in, and it makes you smile. for all his righteousness he is also somewhat absurd, and that is why you love him.

when you card your fingers through his hair, you find that it is greasy ((you don’t mind ; he is alive enough to feel)). crashing around you, wind thrusts at your back, and your own strands ((runaways from trade mark braids)) sprint across your vision — you see the world through biology and softness — natural flexibility — rushing through obscurity.

you are with him, now ((thoughts are precious and pure ; sacred objects which you can possess)) so when you think of it you do it: you select three strands of his stained, greasy locks and start weaving them in a pattern that mimics your own. ben murmurs softly, baby, or darling, perhaps, some half-conscious token affection that follows you to your own dreamy state.

in the bag beside you there is a compartmentalized container of beads. it is green, a manufactured shade that both of you despise but he wanted because it so aptly fit its artifice. “like the green glass sea,” he told you over hemingway and cigarettes.

but here and now — moments not contrived — art forms collide — real meets not-real — something other forms in the interim.

ben flutters his eyelids, opening them languidly as you secure the last bead. he comprehends your smile, the joy in the creases of your eyes ((lingering in cracks and hidden places)). ben says nothing when he discovers his altered state: he merely pulls you down for a gentle ((searing ; unknowable)) kiss.