chaleur at amour

In the pale blue sky in what happens in the early, early morning small black dots are visible. Wherever you look they are everywhere. And no matter how much you would like to attribute your shitty condition to a buggy in space this will not solve the problem. My vision periodically becomes dark.  Having blinked a few more times I manage to get rid of the dark spots and now I don’t have to look at the amazingly beautiful, already barely green mountains through the prism of the stained windows of my eyes.  The mountains are truly beautiful. They are clearly not the tallest on earth but this does not detract from their greatness. There, on the hills in the background... Somewhere in that place where the colors of the trees merge together turning into dusty black the morning fog flies. For another measly quarter of an hour it will cover the sleepy heights with its mysterious translucent haze. I sniffle from the cold and suddenly turn around. No one. After looking at the empty space for a couple of seconds I turn back to the city. The city, by the way, from this side looks more like an urban village. Private houses on three floors a scattering of fir trees in their openings a concrete forest to the right of the main road and cozy hills on the left side of the houses. Doubts that this is not a village are dispelled only by white multi-storey buildings of ten floors, no more. The morning fog no longer hides them. That same pitiful quarter of an hour flew unnoticed past the eyes of the teenager, who had been looking steadily at one point all this time. Apparently, he was thinking...  Minho — my best friend who is now at school on the other side of the city, was also thinking. Only he was not staring at any mountains, but at an annoyingly chalk-whitened green board. Is it really so difficult for today's class officers to carry out their duties!? And even at his filthy previous school they handled it better!  Hitting the desk with his palm, thereby attracting unnecessary attention from his classmates, the dark-haired man gets up from his chair and irritably heads towards the exit of the class.  The ringtone of the smartphone in my pocket distracts me from contemplating the waking city. I guess who is calling and, putting my hand into my coat pocket, I fish him out.  — Hello? — I answer barely audibly, afraid to frighten away the magical atmosphere of the October morning.  In response, Minho’s irritated voice comes to me. Everything seems to piss him off again. The brunette transferred to another school a couple of weeks ago due to the fact that his parents decided to move to another apartment, located on the other side of the city from the old school. And, apparently, he is not very happy with the state of things in the new educational institution.  Minho and I have known each other since third grade. I must say, we were the only, in my opinion, adequate boys in this social group. A very close-minded social group. This thought united us as future best friends. We were smart beyond our years and were significantly ahead of our classmates in terms of knowledge, not only in terms of knowledge related to studies, but also in many other things.  Six years have passed and we still hold these thoughts. Six years have passed, and when I ask “Hello” on the phone, I still hear:  — Did it hit you in the forehead with a dick?  — It did.— I answer thoughtfully, looking at the field growing at a distance from the mountains.  Minho understands what this means.  — Honey... — He exhales into the phone. He rarely calls me that way. The number of times this nickname was pronounced can be counted on one hand. And each time it carried with it a baggage of difficult thoughts and feelings.  — Where are you? — He asks a little less irritated.  — You know. — Just don’t jump, okay?  Whether this request really sounded like a request and not just another joke, no one will ever know. Perhaps it carries meaning from each meaning?  Minho receives my affirmative hum, after which he throws me off, and I stand there, waiting for the fact that in forty minutes I will turn around and another “no one...” will flash through my head.  While I wait for my only friend, who is probably running away from the first lesson, Memories from three months ago flash through my head. I involuntarily remember all those moments of summer that made me happy. And in each of these moments there was only one person present. A man who, I am sure, is now running towards me at breakneck speed across the city, having neglected his studies. And I never cease to admire the view that I’ve been staring at for a good half an hour.  “Oh, these mountains, these green fields - so dear, so beautiful. I stand ten floors higher and, frightened by the flying birds nearby, I look into the distance. Wrapping myself up in a warm coat, I remember the hot summer and the days spent among the thickets of tall grass. I remember the ball, thoughtlessly lost in this very grass; I remember my fingers being knocked out because of this very ball. I remember conversations about nothing and at the same time about everything: about the most intriguing and important. I remember the photographs you took that are randomly scattered across the film. They have butterflies and happiness; they have an endless number of purple-yellow flowers covering the entire field. They show your fancy dances...” It seems like a couple more thoughts like this and I’ll be overcome by melancholy.  Twenty-nine, surprisingly short minutes later, I hear the shutter of the front door of my apartment click and open, creaking slightly.  Sticking my nose in my scarf, I hide a satisfied smile, and at the same time the question “how did he get there so quickly?” Did he really use his last money to call a taxi again? Madman. From this thought the smile becomes wider.  And yes, I gave him a duplicate key to my apartment. Just because he wanted him to have them. The door to the balcony opens and a rosy-cheeked Minho rushes in.  — I’ll tell you the truth, I didn’t take your hum as an affirmative answer and I really thought that you might want to learn to fly. — Minho admits, a little excitedly.  “Learning to fly” sounds funny in my situation. He looks around my entire body with his arrogant gaze and, unexpectedly for me, grabs my forearm, urging me to go outside the balcony area.  — Do you enjoy standing in the cold? — He unzips my coat to make sure that I’m not putting it on my naked body, as I usually do in the morning when I go out onto the balcony... "To smoke" just begs for it.  — Fuck, — he says, seeing a naked torso under the coat.  — I’m wearing jeans, — I justify by the fact that I’m partially fulfilling my promise that I won’t go out onto the balcony in the cold wearing only a coat.  — Success,— Minho throws the black fabric of my outerwear off my shoulders and presses me to him, hugging me tightly.  — What were you thinking about?  — About the mountains, about you, about summer.... About that ball for which we ran across the entire field,— I tell him, burying my face in his neck. So warm. It's ironic to crave warmth and yet avoid it in every possible way.  Minho ran his fingers down my spine, sending shivers down my spine. I squeezed the fabric of his sweater tighter in the lower back area and burned his cold neck with my hot breath. I stood on the balcony for an hour, but he was cold. Minho gets cold quickly, unlike me.  — Promise me, Hunny,— his whisper seemed too loud in the morning silence. — Promise that you won’t leave so easily. Promise that y...— the voice trembled. He pulled away from me, stretching out his hands, resting on my shoulders. It seemed that at that moment he wanted to look into my eyes, but for some reason it was clear that it was difficult for him to raise his head. Then I gently touched his chin, encouraging him to lift it. He did this, but did not open his eyes. At that moment, my heart ached painfully, which made me feel an inexplicable feeling of guilt inside. It seemed to me that my frivolity regarding my own health was somewhat burdensome... for him.  — I promise.  At that moment, he slowly opened his eyes, revealing to my gaze the green color of his iris. The same green as the color of the endless field where we loved to play volleyball in the summer. Which I promise Minho will definitely return to. Promise that we will hold on and get there again. Among the trees, full of greenery and a scattering of small wildflowers, that’s what he wanted to say.  Few people can understand the feeling that this place evokes in our duct-taped souls. It gave us something that we never had and, it would seem, could not have. This is something that still, three months later, evokes a sea of genuine feelings in us. There we first understood what it means to love. To be important to someone, to be the only person necessary in life.  There, under the willow tree, I first heard what the average person is used to hearing from their relatives. This is something that would not have caused in anyone else the reaction that I had, because for them these words would not carry something so special.  “... I’ll be there” - this phrase taken out of context scrolls through your head every day. She is the only one who helps me not to forget what I am still here for. This is why I keep my promises to Minho.  “You said you were afraid of heights and couldn’t stand the cold. - he remembered, giving me a pass. “Then let me make sure you are never afraid again.”  You should have seen his eyes at that moment. I was ready to believe in anything, looking at that expression reflected in them. He was absolutely sure of what he was saying. He really wanted to be with me, despite all the difficulties of this kind of relationship.  He said: "Trust me, you will never be afraid again." In three months, I never once questioned his words.  I began to go out onto the balcony, which I was afraid to step on. I did this in those moments when he was not next to me. We lived a good distance from each other. Many factors prevented our daily meetings.  Without him, it was sometimes difficult for me to bear everything that fell on my young soul, but every time I stepped over the edge of the balcony and glanced at the fact that I was at a height of ten floors, I was overcome by an inexplicable feeling of calm. Amazing, right?  How did one person, with just words, instill in my soul that categorical faith, which once and, I am sure, was able to free me forever from the feeling of eternal anxiety and fear of the whole damn world, which, on in fact, it’s not that damned if you look at it from a different angle. Or maybe through different eyes? So green.  — Honey,— he calls me that for the third time that day, and I’m ready to lay down the whole world at the feet of a person who is able to address someone with such a feeling in his voice.  — I believe you, my warm one.  My warm. He saved me from the cold. I touched his forehead with my lips and realized that no amount of mental pain could make me leave Minho. Nothing and no one in this world will allow me to do this to him, no. Not with him. Just not with the man who once saved me. Not with someone who happened to notice me lying in the tall grass when I was having a particularly hard time. Maybe it was hard for me only because he wasn’t in my life? The one who would one day say “I’ll be there”?  I felt funny from the whole stream of endless thoughts on this matter, and Minho, noticing how the corners of my lips involuntarily rose, kissed me on the tip of my nose, thereby rescuing me from these very thoughts. For some reason, only at that moment did I remember that I was standing in front of him half naked, which made me involuntarily bite my lower lip.  — Tea? — I blurted out the first thing that came to mind in order to dilute the atmosphere.  — Tea.  Minho leaned forward and touched my lips with his for the first time. It was quite unexpected and strange. I had never been kissed before, but I realized that this simple action on his part had been collecting dust for a long time in the chest of those hidden desires that he might be afraid to even think about. This made me smile again. I pulled away from him with difficulty to say “you’re incredible,” and again attached myself to his velvet lips. We didn’t think about tea that day anymore.