Meet Me In The Hallway

Eco Trip

I was laying on the bottom part of Harry's stomach doing my best to distract him with a game I had made up called, "Between Two Ferns."

It basically consisted of me going over all his tattoos and telling him why I thought they were stupid.

It started when we had first gotten to South America. The hours in my bed at home had been frenzied and apparently noisy, but the lights were off and I missed a few additions to Harry' s body.

It should have been a game for me. Surely, I could play those memory cards that little kids do and try to write down all of the 50+ tattoos the gorgeous idiot had on his body. I had postulated their meaning one night, using my deep thinking wanna be a writer and have read too many classics brain to give full meaning to many of the pieces of art he had chosen. I had then come to find out many of them were just completely stupid.
"Oh, I wanted to try my gun."
"Zayn likes Pink Floyd, well that album, I think."
"Oh, do you not like 'Pingu', love?"

These were the deep well of meaning for his forever etchings I'd run into. When we had a whole hotel room with a big white bed to sleep in one night in Rio, I'd been loose lipped from caipirinhas and loose limbed from Harry and told him that my Favorite tattoo had been the 'might as well' tattoo he had covered up with the giant ferns.

I'd been emboldened by the alcohol I was slowly learning to enjoy in his presence. He'd been imbibing it liberally and I'd pulled him off Ben Winston to take him to our room. Some part of me meant this very innocently, but the newer, louder part meant every filthy implication of putting him to bed.

I also wanted to try something new. The elevator had been empty, and for once it was handsy Melly.

"Baby." He'd snorted, "that tickles!" He'd sneezed while I wiggled my fingers over his newly obscured v lines.

"Good, now you know how it feels!" I'd giggled like I was the receiver of the tickles and the door had opened and he made a run for the door of our room. He'd swiped himself in and tried to close me out. My first instinct was to fight my way in, like I would with my brother, but instead I used a tactic I had recently discovered. I stuck out my bottom lip a little and looked up at him through my lashes, "Baby," I added a touch of whine to my voice. It really made me want to roll my eyes at myself, but Harry turned to custard when I combined these moves.

He pulled the door back open and linked our fingers, pulling. The momentum of the move propelled me into his body and the closing door meant magnetized lips. Harry walked backwards through the living area making the most direct line possible without eyes and while physically connected to someone by teeth and tongue.

It felt sexy, but Harry was undeniably clumsy and drunk. I had thought about his flailing limbs and falling habits one day and remembered when Michael sprouted up during puberty. It was like he was unaware of where his body began and ended suddenly. My brother had grown out of this growth induced bumbling. Harry had not.

I wonder if from the outside looked like a pinball game as we ricocheted off of sofas and walls to make it to the bedroom. From the inside, the focus was on one another and getting to the room with the softest horizontal surface.

The back of Harry's knees hit the mattress and I'd pushed him down. His hat popped off his head and the light from the window hit the sweat on his cheekbones making them glow. The light also caught the points of his collarbones and the ridges of his ribs and even the tips of his hipbones. These points of interest caught my eye too, in wonderfully frustrating ways. I realized then that he was drunk, but I was definitely tipsy.

I pinched his right fern. I really wanted to pinch his v lines, but I couldn't see them so well anymore.

"Why the fuck did you get these, mate?" I soothed my finger over the now hidden words. I missed them. He shivered at the contact, but frowned at my words.