Hey Bulldog

'ba-bump ba-bump ba-bump'.

His head was on my chest and we held each other.

There were six of us. Like stars we scattered and infiltrated the blanket of darkness.

'I can hear your heart beating. Ba-bump ba-bump.'

He nuzzled closer and I just held him- stoned as he was it didn't matter to me, to him nor to anyone else. Not even the sounds of water meeting land could interrupt the silence that descended upon us. The blind leading the blind- our thoughts held our minds hands, leading us into each of our own worlds.

Namine with her head resting on my other arm was entranced by the dots of light watching us from above.

Kairi sat with her back against the railing staring blankly as she absently stroked Riku's hair whose thoughts took refuge in her lap.

Demyx stood across from us just staring out onto the sand, the shore, the froth, the ocean- just being.

Axel lay there with his head against my chest listening intently to the sound of blood being pumped around my body as if it was the most beautiful thing he had ever heard.

And there I was; laying there letting him have that part of me whilst supporting the thoughts of the two people laying either side of me.

We weren't necessarily happy, we weren't lamenting on the shit hole of a world we were stuck in either. We were just there, existing in this small patch of sand covered concrete that temporarily belonged to us and thinking- about the known and the unknown, about the expected and unexpected, about us but more in particular about how stoned Axel was.

'I want my bed'

The fingers snapped breaking us from our hypnotized states. He shuffled from my body and staggeringly, propped himself up until he was above all of us and taking leave from this spot which we carved out and claimed as our own. We all got up for a moment taking a second to let our surroundings sink in fully and we all glanced at each other with unanimous concern.

Standing at the foot of the stairs and taking his hand I guided Axel up the steps and onto a patch of grass. As we trudged on I commented on how nice the grass felt on our feet- I don't know why I said that but from my past similar experiences the grass had always felt so amazing and trees weren't just trees.

'Yeah man it feels so good. Hey I want to cuddle- I'm in the mood to cuddle but not right now, when we get to my bed you know'

'Okay yeah let's just get you to your bed.'

We crossed the road hand in hand, I helped him up the kerb and we walked in silenced on the pavement. It was brief.

'Hey don't worry, you always seem worried, don't worry'

I didn't know if he was actually fully conscious and aware of what was happening right now or of what was slipping from his mouth but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

'You know why'

'Yeah. I know why.'

And just like that we were again blanketed in this heavy quiet before we reached his place and he led the way up the stairs.

The door into the student housing was missing a chunk of wood in the centre, resembling something you'd expect to see in some sort zombie-post-apocalypse movie. The door hinge was broken and when we walked in straight away we were greeted by an unplugged hair dryer someone had dumped right in front of the entrance. Of course at this stage I had a shit load of questions to ask Axel but I figured those would have to wait. The walls of the narrow corridors were painted a distasteful shade of pale blue and were decorated with multiple mysterious stains of which further contributed to the whole post-apocalypse atmosphere. Normally I would be repulsed by the sordid conditions I found myself in but I was too busy being amused by the whole scene. There I was wearing nothing but Axel's shirt standing in this crappy building helping a stoned British backpacker drunk off a box of goon find his way to bed.

The door to his room was not as uninviting as the rest of the building and had his key attached to the lock already, I was hoping this was a one off thing and not something he did all the time.

He walked in first and I followed not really knowing what to do. Unlike most people my age and with much embarrassment I must admit this was probably the first time I found myself alone in a boy's room at around two in the morning. He walked over to his laptop and scrolled through his extensive Beatles playlist and I sat next to him on the bed. We both held The Beatles in reverence but whilst he religiously stood by Lennon I pledged my allegiance to Paul.

'What's a cool song to chill out to?' he asked me.

'I like Hey Bulldog'

'Yeah maaaaan' he droned as he hit play.

'Sheepdog, standing in the rain

Bullfrog, doing it again'

He crawled over, sprawling his body over his bed and I sat there not because I didn't want to join him but purely because- as I so shamefully admitted to- I had no experience with this kind of thing. Yet by some bizarre miracle I was able to somehow overcome my lack of knowledge and awkwardness to soon enough find myself resting against his body pressed between him and the wall.

'Some kind of happiness is measured out in miles

What makes you think you're special when you smile'

To my surprise I found some way to overcome my inexperience and, with his assistance, had manoeuvred myself so I was lying with my head on his chest- mirroring our earlier position on the walkway by the beach.

'Childlike no one understands

Jack knife in your sweaty hands'

We lay there and while he was preoccupied with his own thing I was preoccupied with deciphering exactly what his own thing was. I asked him if he was thinking and he said yes so I proceeded by asking if he was thinking about good things and he nodded. In that moment I felt safe as if I was detached from all the crap, from my memories- from everything. I had not known then that this feeling of security would become commonplace whenever I was in Axel's presence.

'Some kind of innocence is measured out in years

You don't know what it's like to listen to your fears'

It was almost as if we were suspended in time and nothing else existed but his room, his bed, us and The Beatles.

'You can talk to me

You can talk to me

If you're lonely you can talk to me'

I don't know if he was conscious enough to take any significance in what was happening but the lyrics which we had sung resonated with me and the short relationship I shared with this boy.

This boy who I barely knew.

This boy who let me in his world almost from the get-go.

This boy who was either brave, obnoxious or ignorant enough (to this day I don't know which one it was) to force himself into my own untraversed universe to gain just the slightest peek past the wall I spent so much time looking after.

I found myself enthralled and at the same time rendered completely helpless as I tried to understand how within this average, mortal, human body hid this supreme beauty and enchantment that everyone else struggles to find and hold onto. His fluttering eyelids and sealed lips seemed to conceal some sort of secret. His face radiated with a certain child-like innocence that everyone loses within their years of teenage anguish, for some reason unbeknownst me, his remained with him even now at the age of 21. And it was in those dragged out seconds in which I remained entranced by his being that I believed with conviction that I was inadvertently in love with everything he seemed to represent. I felt a rush of emotions jolt through me entirely. I was illuminated but oblivious, inspired but helpless, safe but vulnerable but most importantly I felt okay. Little did I know that six months later I would come to the hopeless realization that I was in love with him.