A/N: trigger warning for smoking. Title from Selling Rope by Los Campesinos! (the exclamation mark is in the name of the band btw, I'm not just really passionate about Los Campesinos! ….well I am but that's not the point.

You feel like you're stepping on eggshells.

Carefully, you tread, feel bloody feet and feel tattered flesh. You wish you could hover but you need to test the waters first; walk not like you plan on going anywhere, but like you wish to stay right here. An egg could crack beneath your feet.

There are four reasons.

Reason 1:

He smells like pine trees and soil after it rains. He smells like walks through the woods when you were five and your brother still had time to play hide-and-seek with you in the trees. He smells like nostalgia or a better time, when everything was easy and you didn't ache like the world was on your shoulders.

He smells good.

Reason 2:

You have an acoustic guitar that sits by itself in the corner of your bedroom, and has been collecting dust since the day it was put there. You decided you'd never be able to play that thing, but when you noticed the way the sun bounces of his smile and his eyes light up when you talk to him you pulled it out of its dusty slumber and strummed the strings like that meant something to you.

You knew how to play it properly in four weeks times and every song you plucked away at reminded you of him

Reason 3:

He's the kind of person that puts his hand on your arm when he asks if you're okay, he slings his arm around your shoulder when you tell him a really good joke, he plants a hand firmly on your chest when he's out of breath and needs to lean somewhere. He's a touchy-feely person; he is everyone.

You like to pretend he puts his hands all over you because he wants to touch you.

Reason 4:

In year eight when you realised you were gay and you sat for four hours by yourself in a grotty bathroom stall he was the only one to realise that you'd signed in this morning and not attended any of your classes. He was the only one to slide into the bathroom and knock on the only locked stall and talk to you in hushed tones. He pressed his back against the door and slipped his hand under the gap and you couldn't help yourself because he wanted to touch you and you wanted to touch him and you placed your palm on his and everything seemed a little bit better.

When you left the stall, puffy eyed and red cheeked, he ran soft fingers over your face, placed the tips over your freckles and hugged you. It wasn't a hug like the way he hugged you before; his arms were around your neck and his face was flush against your chest and he breathed softly over you and you felt your skin prickle underneath your shirt.

And they say there is nothing better than remembering the feelings you had for the first person you ever wanted to kiss, but then it just felt like TV static hissing in your blood.

It stills feels that way sometimes. Numbness, like bathing in ice, when you sit in the corner of the locker rooms and smoke when you wait for him to finish hockey practice. He walks in like he isn't sweating waves or radiating the heat of a thousand suns. He smiles and he changes out of his sports kit and you watch every slip of brown skin, shimmering with sweat, and you pretend that you wanted to taste the ash when you lick your lips. When he's finished he asks if you're ready to go home, and you nod in a billow of smoke and stub your cigarette out on the side of a locker.

You're not sure if he knows. You're still breaking eggs.

But you smoke a lot, and you want him to know what the ash tastes like when he prizes it off of your lips.