Do The Twist
The time to hesitate is through
No time to wallow in the mire
He listens to the story with eyes wide open, to take in the mouth and the eyes and the silence because for once there is no insistent clicking as the lighter's on the table next to his bed, staying shut and quiet as its owner opens wide and tells it like it is.
He waits patiently after an hour of wishing he could reach over and bite those lips with his teeth, make contact with his own lips, with a look of rapt attention that is not hard to feign because he isn't pretending. He's genuinely interested. He wants to know about the first time, but he's just a little more excited about how the room is getting hotter by degrees and ways to keep the heat coming with methods besides using John's freaky deaky sexy mutant powers that he bites his lip to keep from saying something like "okay, I know we've been roomates for a while but the issue of me wanting to make it with your ass has never come up so I was wondering if you'd noticed, and if so could we make it now?"
The room gets a little bit hotter. Uncomfortably so.
It is summer, after all, but Bobby knows this heavy, stifling heat which seems to be increasing rapidly by degrees is mostly in his head since John's lighter is as immobile and untouched as the last glance at the item had confirmed it to be. So it must be Bobby's imagination, the thick heat he feels in waves-- he can feel it emanating from the body next to his.
It has the weight of warm fingers, curling in his belly and spreading from John's arms to his own. Bobby thinks he feels much too hot, and that his imagination (it must be) needs to stop it and get a hold of itself.
He focuses on John's mouth again, and tries to follow where the story has lead to.
He thinks about the friction of skin on skin.
Conducted and formed
This is a hell of a concept
John tries to concentrate on the story at hand, as the room just gets colder and he wonders why Bobby is fidgeting with the buttons on his (Bobby's) shirt and no longer staring at his (John's) face because it's getting to the crucial part right here and so John decides to keep on going with his story, "And then it wouldn't stop picking on Rufus. I mean this thing was just freakin' vicious, it had already killed several cats, a hamster and at least one other dog-- a chihuahua-- it just went around terrorizing the neighborhood, but nobody ever said anything about putting it down because there were no small children on my street and nobody dared to come over and tell the owner that he had to try a little bit harder to keep this monster penned---"
John shifts a little, because it was getting a little ridiculous now. Goose bumps had prickled on his arms, and his toes were more than slightly chilled. He clears his throat.
"So one day I come home from school, and I see Rufus limping out to greet me. I mean, here's a puppy, the most adorable mutt in the word, whining hello with the most pathetic face ever looking like his leg was nearly chewed off and I almost exploded. Well, not really, but if I'd had something to work with I would have. I go over to the owner's house, and I knock on the door but nobody opens up so I sit on the porch and I find this lighter," John gestures, and picks up said instrument. "I start flipping the lighter on and off while I'm waiting when suddenly the beast shows up. It's the nastiest dog of the most brutal ugly that you could ever imagine. There it was, drooling and growling, with menace in its eye. I get so mad that I get up, and I'm still playing with the lighter, and the beast is growling louder and then it barks a lot, and starts running across the yard like it's gonna jump on me--" He pauses, and confirms that yes, Bobby is once again staring him in the face. Inches away from his, in fact. With a most peculiar glint in his eye, and John thinks it's like the light glinting off snow, like a mirror almost- a signal like the tip of an iceberg, (a mirror on the edge of the tip of the iceberg?) and he's at a loss to explain why suddenly he feels like a pilot flying over that small blip of light not at all knowing what it means. All that distance. Like he's missing something. He purses his lips, and continues fiercely.
"I don't know why 'cause I'm starting to get nervous but I'm not running away at all, I'm just. Standing there. Waiting for it. I'm waiting, and it's running and I'm playing with the lighter and then it jumps and I get the most still feeling in the world when the blood rushes to my head and I could feel all this monster dog breath on my face when it jumps and the lighter clicks and I take a step back and then WOOSH! And after a second of time not moving-"
"Freezing, " Bobby interrupts. John looks at him askance like he's grown another head, because Bobby had interrupted the crucial moment, and snapped him out of being transfixed in the telling of it.
"Okay, yeah- freezing- No! Really it was frying. Time fries." He laughs and continues when Bobby says nothing. "So after this second the notorious hellbeast dog monster is writhing on the grass and I'm running across the street and heading off home wondering what the hell just happened. There was an article in the paper about it, the next day. 'Charred Dog Astounds Neighborhood' There were no witnesses. Although I told Rufus about it. He seemed to get it, and I think it cheered him up even when I said it was an accident."
John pauses, and then notices just exactly how much colder it had become. He takes a deep breath. It comes out in a ringed "O" of cool mist.
The silence sticks around as long as it takes for John to figure out that the "signal", or whatever, seems to be churning into neon or something, burgeoning with each second (freezing?) like the lights on a runway blinking and beckoning for a plane (like his mind) to touch down.
"So," John says cautiously, "when was your first time?"
Bobby decides to pounce.