We sat together on the sidewalk of another ***** street. Street lights burned, it was during the quiet of the early hours of morning.
Not quite looking at each other, not quite looking away, he pulled a pack from his motorcycle jacket.
He held it out to me, I hesitated.
"It's a contract," he offered as explanation to a question I didn't ask. "Do you know the deal?"
I frowned, eyes and mind too muddy to do anything but rest heavy. "No." I tried, then thought before trying again. "It'll **** me," I processed, mouth forming the words slowly, though my tone betrayed me as steady and sure. "In the end. Won't it?"
He must have nodded beside me. He was watching me then, taking in my hunched shoulders against the cold, bones that should be young and healthy making me as gaunt and tired as I felt.
"How long do you have?" I whispered.
That haunted gaze of his wavered, sliding from my lips to my eyes, while I still faced away, faced forward. We were two strangers on different paths. Similar, yet parallel, not meant to cross.
He opened his mouth, calculating. "A few years," he offered. "Less than you." And I laughed.
A small, mocking thing. "That's debatable." Came out before I could stop to understand. I tensed, maddened, and that's when I looked at him. "What is the deal?"
Facing me head on, he didn't look shocked, no malaise tinted our conversation. "It'll **** you," he mimicked me, I felt like he was mimicking me, before he continued. "But first, it will save you."
The intone of his sentence nearly made me choke. He offered the pack again.
"When will it call collect?" I muttered, but he must have dismissed it.
We sat for a bit longer as I slid a smoke out from the package and lit up with the help of his lighter, his hands shielding the flame to keep it steady.
He looked at me, like I'd just made a promise to him that I couldn't keep, that he would make good on in the end. "You want it to save you," He told me quietly. I wasn't listening anymore. I wasn't listening.
"You want it to save you, you want it to **** you,"
In a moment he was gone and I mourned the loss.
Unsung clauses in my mind, his voice soft and loving to my ear. "I'll be there when it does,"
Because maybe, maybe I wanted that, too.