The bass from the club still trembles in your bones as you lean beside him, shoulders brushing.
You dont smoke. But tonight, you lean into the light and inhale the rich smoke.
The first drag burns. The second settles. By the third, the world feels softer at the edges, like incense smoke curling toward a cathedral ceiling. He watches your mouth as you exhale. You take another.
Nicotine seeps into your bloodstream with patient certainty. Your pulse steadies. Or perhaps it deepens. The night grows quieter around the two of you, as if the world has stepped back to watch. He shifts a little closer.
You can feel the heat of him through the thin fabric of his shirt. You notice the faint scent of his cologne beneath the tobacco. Something warm, sweet. Human.
You wonder how that scent would change in your apartment. You wonder how it would smell against your sheets.
The ember glows brighter between you, a tiny, furious sun. Each inhale feeds it. Each exhale clouds the space between your faces until the club lights blur and the world becomes soft, smoky, intimate. You feel it then. The hunger.
You watch the movement of his throat as he swallows smoke. The delicate shift of muscle beneath skin. The vulnerability of it.
He trusts you. He thinks this is flirting.
You drop ash to the pavement, nausea creeping in. The red tip trembles as you bring it back to your mouth. The act feels ritualistic now. Lift, inhale, hold, release. Breathe in. Breathe out. Like prayer. Only this prayer answers something darker.
Something you wish you didnt have to bring him into. But its already been done a hundred times before anf itll be done a hundred times after and-
Hes kissing you.