He loves the sunlight.
He loves how its yellow rays, a hot yet tempered thing like flame behind glass, divides a slender wrist to simple geometry. Its golden hand curls, curls around black, turns it in to black, gold, black, a series of warped rectangles. Warm and serene.
He loves his bed.
He loves it during the night, where its function is disastrously subverted, where sleeping, such a simple and quiet and mundane thing, becomes a panicked, high intensity sport. Sweat on his brow, shirt discarded. Heat. He loves his bed during the night, when he can see the light pollution rise above the city like some lumbering beast awakening, and clawing through the smog. Night, when he can see the lights of a million lives filtered in to some single great thing. He loves his bed during the night because, sometimes, he can see the stars if he peers just so, and he imagines he can name them and claim them for his own.
He loves his bed.
He loves it during the evening, when the sun is just retiring below the horizon, blanketing itself with gray skyscrapers and resting its jaw on a shallow hill. He loves his bed during the evening, when Slick, hat discarded, will rest against the headboard and tell him old, forgotten things. When strings are spun, and laughter, and a few drinks are shared. When they retire peacefully now, hands cradling each other. Slick's chest rises. It falls. The blankets lay untwisted around them. The warmth is a subtle clinging against their skins, between the sheets.
He loves his bed.
But he loves it most during the morning.
He loves it because he can hear a faraway bird singing love, and he can hear a horn blaring and a siren distantly screaming. He hears breeze rapping against his window. He hears a trumpeteer begin his morning routine, some struggling man that plays brilliantly on his corner for pennies. He can hear the song of his city. He loves his bed in the morning because, sometimes, he will wake to a golden jacket draped across a black, black pair of shoulders, or a golden hand caressing a sombre jaw. A glint of light off of closed eyes, or half-hidden teeth. A golden heat draping itself across his own arms.
He loves his bed most during the morning because of the golden fingers pressing lightly against his eyes, waking him peacefully slow. Invisible fire behind glass, warm and serene.
But, mostly, he loves his bed during the morning because it's the private place where he watches black, gold, black rectangles stir and wake. A sunrise. The covers will shift away like the shedding of gray buildings, and Slick will carry only the sun with him. A gossamer golden cloak, sliding perfectly against every angle, folding against him and off like curtains in breeze.
He loves the sunlight.
He loves his bed.
And, sometimes, he allows himself to love Slick.
Now, Slick's lips lightly plant on a pale forehead. They make love under golden sheets, eyes still dusted in sleep.