à la folie

“I’m...I’m sorry Fleance, I really didn’t mean it.”

Shut the fuck up. Don’t talk, don’t look at him. He doesn’t want you looking at him, he said so. He wants you to disappear, to permanently move in with the fairies that clouded my mind.

The bench was digging into my bones, I wanted to shift, but if I moved Lesley might talk again. His voice was a buzzing, gradually building in my head, a blue wall making it hard to think.

It wasn’t anything like the bliss of a cigarette.

“Fleance, please I... I really didn’t mean it, okay? I was just angry and confused and... Fleance please, I know I told you to shut up, but talk now, please... look at me.” I played with the coffee in my hands, my eyes flitting nervously around the edges of the cup. I didn’t want Lesley there today. I didn’t want his green eyes and silky blonde hair, or his pretty bruises and light gold skin.

Bending knees came into my eye-line and then Lesley’s twisted features. I couldn’t identify the expression on his face.

“Fleance, please, I’m sorry, I’m such a-“

“Everything alright?” I looked up then, away from Lesley’s pale eyes to be met by much richer green eyes and green hair. His voice was like heaven. Oliver sat next to me, brushed his lips against my cheek bone then went about prising the lid from his foam coffee cup. He hated having the lid on when he drank, no matter how impractical it made to drink it he always preferred a mug.

Lesley looked from me to Oliver, a different unreadable expression scrolling across his face.

“Oh. I... sorry Fleance, I didn’t...I...” he swallowed, straightening back into his full height “I better be going” He murmured finally, scratching the back of his head and turning around, his legs looked like pins.

“Lesley, won’t you stay? I haven’t seen you in ages, and you look like you need some coffee, you-”

“No Oliver,” Lesley cut him off sharply, stopping in his footsteps. A pause. “I had some at home... I’ll...I’ll see you at school.” he continued walking away, his arms moving from his side to wrap around each-other.

He was so skinny. I’m sure he had been fuller when I first met him, that he hadn’t been so washed out. I’m sure his legs had some meat on them, and his hips had been like Oliver’s, instead of painfully thin and sharp. Those bruises hadn’t been there either, and he had been happier and nicer. He always made sure to share his coffee and cigarettes with me, and now he was never there, always with Gerard. Oliver shared his cigarettes and coffee with me now, even though he liked milk in his coffee, the drink would taste like his lips. Which tasted like smoke.

Which tasted like everything that guy with the greasy black hair had told me to hope for.



I sat under that tree I had sat under the first day at school, watching the impeccably green leaves sway above me, their colour disintegrating into the sorrowful blue sky that enveloped all.

Blue was such a stupid colour, I hate blue. Blue thought it ruled the world with the sky, and the water, but blue didn’t rule to world. I didn’t want blue. It was always about blue, blue, blue and how it hovered in the air.

Why couldn’t everything be green, like the grass?

Everything would be so, so pretty.

Speaking of pretty little things...

Lesley flopped down next to me, his skin brushing against mine and making my epidermis burn. Engulfed by an imaginary fire, my mind writhed. Oliver had gone home, something about feeling ill. He looked yellow, and he was sweating, and when he kissed me, the burn of his skin was far from a product of my sleep-deprived mind.

He had been fine this morning, I think.

“Sorry about this morning.” Lesley’s voice was rough and uncomfortable against my ears, his calf’s were pressed firmly against the top of his thighs and his arms looped his legs, fingers delicately toying with the material of his black jeans. Don’t look at him. He doesn’t want you looking at him. I didn’t know what he was sorry for.

So I said okay, and wondered when the days would get shorter.

I missed seeing those winter stars, sometimes. Back in England.

Everything had looked so pretty in that hellish room, full of blue and plastic.

“Are you...you and Oliver, you know?” I frowned, not understanding the hint his words lay heavily on. I shrugged. Those looks he used to understand didn’t work anymore.

Gerard had taken him away.

Maybe that was for best.

All I wanted was to be green, and gone.

“But he kissed you this morning?”

On the cheekbone . I still didn’t understand what Lesley wanted to know. It was making my head hurt.

“He likes...likes kissing me." I murmured, drawing on the only thing I knew. My fingers rose to my forehead, angry at the confusion clawing my brain cells, choking them. It seemed they were like that more and more. Like there were dying, drowning in my thoughts, in the blue.

In the burning.

Silence. Lesley didn’t talk. Just played with the edge of his jeans and allowed my mind to just drift away to the infinite blue.