Chapter 9
They parked themselves in front of the coffee table, this time foregoing the couch and loveseat in favour of sitting cross-legged on the carpet.
Breeze had the same flat green leaves as khat and cannabis, but it also had tiny purple buds from the flowers.
Malek carefully removed the leaves from the stem and pushed the thick husk to the side.
He kept the leaves, along with the purple petals—since they were the strongest part—and rolled them into the papers he had on him.
He sealed each one with a quick swipe of his tongue as Caspar watched him curiously, his head tilted.
“It really does look like pot. More flowers, though.”
“Mhm. You know a lot about pot?”
Caspar shrugged. “Doesn’t every university kid?”
“I assure you, this is better.”
“Really?”
“Definitely. And no one is going to yammer on about turpenes, either.”
“What?”
“Never mind.” Malek smiled. He passed one of the rolled papers to Caspar and placed the other between his lips.
He could already taste the sweet minty-vanilla on his tongue.
His muscles relaxed into the carpet. He hadn’t even lit it yet and he already felt it working.
His body’s memory was strong, so much stronger than he realized.
He lit up and inhaled. The smoke tickled his lungs and nose. He let out a breath that seemed purple in the glow from the streetlamps outside.
“Can you turn off the lights?”
“What?”
“The overhead light. It’s going to be too bright when we have this in our system,” Malek explained.
Caspar rose from his spot to hit the switch.
The room descended into darkness, save for the city lights and the flame in front of Malek.
He lit up and inhaled again, shuddering before handing off the lighter.
Caspar coughed once when he lit up, but soon recovered.
The smile that went across Caspar’s face next was so, so worth it.
Malek didn’t care if this meant he only had two nights’ worth of Breeze instead of a week—he’d give every last blooming flower to Caspar to make him smile like that.
Malek’s mind reeled at the thought. He was always much freer under Breeze.
His inhibitions lowered and his thighs tingled.
He cooled his desire by plucking invisible strings to one of his band’s old songs, and only inhaled again when he was sure he could handle it.
“What do you think?”
“I think…” Caspar said, and then laughed. “I think I can feel my own words. Like they have colour and texture in front of me.”
“Yeah, it’s like synaesthesia. That’s partly why Twigs makes this. She’s a synesthete, but she gets frustrated when no one else can see the world like she can. So she developed this plant, and voilà. Instant connection. Instant understanding. It’s wonderful.”
“Synaesthesia.” Caspar said each syllable like it was chocolate on his tongue. “What does that mean?”
“Her senses blur. Letters have colours, sounds have smells, and music sometimes comes to her in, like, fireworks before her eyes.”
“That sounds amazing.”
“It is, but it’s also frustrating when no one sees the world how you see it. When no one understands anything from your point of view, and you’re left explaining why you can’t be called your full name because the letters look like clown vomit.”
Caspar laughed. It was infectious, so Malek did too. The clown vomit was a true story, something that Twigs reminded him of over and over again when he tried to call her Tabitha rather than her nickname.
“Isn’t that just how life goes, though?” Caspar asked. “No one sees things the way you do, so you’re endlessly frustrated? Why should seeing colours make things any different?”
“Maybe. But Twigs wanted to have more people she could talk to about the way she experiences things, and she was having a hard time finding all the people with synaesthesia.”
“How many are there?”
“A lot more than just her, but not many when the entire population is taken into consideration. And sometimes, people don’t even realize they have it.”
“Whoa.” Caspar laughed again. He lay down on the carpet, eyes to the ceiling. “That’s insane.”
“Totally. But hey, how do we even know we’re gay until someone shows us what being in love is like, and you realize, whoa, that’s not like me at all.”
“Or if you’re into both. And then it’s like, bam, the future has way too many fucking options, but none at the same time.”
Malek shuddered. Was Caspar’s talk about being bisexual part of him blurring and mixing his senses, or were his inhibitions being lowered, like Malek’s just were? He hadn’t meant to talk about realizing he was gay as a kid, but it slipped out.
When Malek was seven, he’d seen a painting in Odafin’s study about the perfect union.
All those paintings were about men and women, balancing together and forming one whole being.
For Malek, he’d known he was gay at that moment—but the lingering feeling of always being half-finished or missing something integral remained.
When he’d found Abe, though, it was like being whole again.
None of those paintings mattered anymore, because he and Abe made something new.
Malek’s nostalgia slipped into depression as his thoughts rushed by him like water.
“Oh,” Caspar said, his eyes wide. “We should have music.”
“We should. You know, I made this mix CD for Twigs. I wanted her to hear the songs I thought of when I heard her name.”
“That’s so cool. Put it on.”
“I don’t… um…” Malek looked down at his phone awkwardly.
He scrolled through some of the emails and incoming messages, ignoring them until he found the digital downloads he’d made of Twigs’s mix.
At least the technological age was good for something.
He put the cell phone with the tracks loaded back on the table.
He took another toke and realized he needed to turn the volume up.
Caspar propped himself up on his elbow, trying to hear.
“I don’t… nothing’s happening.”
“No, I hear it. The first song is pretty quiet,” Malek said. “I put it on because it reminds me of the way her tongue hits her teeth when she says her own name.”
Caspar made a funny face. Malek wanted to kiss it off of him. “What the hell, man? Are you sure you’re not in love with her?”
“I love her, but I’m not in love with her.
I promise. Only men…” Malek stopped talking.
He was getting hard. He pushed away thoughts of the men he’d fucked, of the men he wanted to fuck, of seeing Caspar in the shower, and focused on the cell phone.
The next song came on and it was loud. Punchy. Punk.
“I love this,” Malek said.
“I still can’t really hear it.” Caspar crawled so close to the phone that he was nearly under the coffee table.
Malek crawled on the floor too, shocked at how good it felt against his skin.
He wanted to stay here, sleep here, but he pushed that thought away too.
He focused on Caspar. He folded himself onto this stomach, his arms acting as a pillow.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. I can feel the music in the floor.”
“You can?”
“Yeah. Try it.”
Malek lay down on his side of the coffee table, pillowing his hands. His limbs seemed too large and unruly to cooperate, and soon he was huffing in exasperation.
“No, no. Come here. You gotta be, like, right next to the coffee table.” Caspar inched away to make room.
Malek’s stomach tightened, desire surging, but he shimmied down next to Caspar and lay the same way.
Indeed, he could feel the beat through the carpet, tickling his skin.
It was so novel, so unique that he stayed that way well into the next song.
“What do you think?”
“Best way to listen to music since being front row at a show,” Malek said. “Or maybe since being a singer. I miss being a singer.”
Malek bit his lip, hoping that Caspar wouldn’t ask about that.
He shouldn’t have said anything about All Trades, no matter how incidental.
It was too big of a reveal, and almost as hard to talk about as being a djinn.
Caspar was silent, though. He traced his fingers around the loops of the carpet, then bridged the gap between their bodies so he could trace the lines of the mandala on Malek’s hand.
A sense of familiarity punched its way through Malek’s stomach as Caspar appeared fixated on the colours.
“You know what that is?”
“A mandala. My parents had an art piece with mandalas in the background.”
“They did?”
“Yeah. It’s part of Islam, yeah?”
“Sort of,” Malek said. “Because you can’t draw gods in Islam, many people draw geometric patterns that are supposed to represent them.”
“Yeah, that sounds familiar.”
“Shouldn’t you know if your parents practiced?”
Caspar shrugged. “My parents were always quietly devoted.”
“And you didn’t practice because…?”
“Mommy and daddy gave me a choice in religion.”
“Ah, okay,” Malek said. “What did you choose?”
“Rock concerts and science fairs. Going to the University of Toronto.”
“Those aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive to practicing Islam.”
“Yeah, but I still didn’t exactly want to have that lifestyle. Or turn out like them.” A flash of sadness crossed Caspar’s face, but it was gone just as fast. He curled his fingers around the tattoo on Malek’s hand, almost aimlessly. Malek felt each touch like a bruise, painful yet memorable.
“What other tattoos do you have?” Caspar asked. “I saw some of them, when… Oh no.”
“When we were in the shower?”
Caspar bit his lip and nodded.
“It’s okay if you saw them,” Malek said, biting back his confession that he’d looked at Caspar too. “They’re meant to be looked at.”
“Good. Because they’re beautiful. So what do they mean?”
“Thank you. They mean all kinds of things. There are so many stories. I can’t tell you all of them.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m tired and this is really, really good.” Malek rose to pick his cigarette up from the coffee table. Caspar rose too, and took another hit.
It was after they’d both smoked their cigarettes halfway down that Malek realized Caspar was holding his hand. Or was he holding the tattoo? The boundaries between the two ideas blurred in Malek’s mind, then Caspar himself blurred.
Before Malek realized what was happening, Caspar’s lips were on his, and he was licking inside Malek’s mouth.
Malek’s stomach flinched. His dick twitched on a hair trigger and he gasped.
God. He wanted to rub against Caspar and make him come in his pants like a fifteen-year-old.
But Malek couldn’t. Not like this. Not on Caspar’s first night home.
And not when he still needed to grant him two more wishes and then disappear forever.
Malek pushed the final thought out of his mind as he broke the sweet kiss between himself and Caspar.
“No, Caspar, we can’t.”
“Why not? Even if I want to?”
“No.”
“What if I wish it so?”
“You know you can’t ask that of me.” Malek narrowed his eyes. Caspar seemed chilled by it. His sudden boldness disappeared, and his lowered inhibitions turned to stone. It hurt Malek to watch it happen so fast, so cruelly—but it was necessary.
“We can’t do anything.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
Malek felt the words like a strike. He waited. Caspar only huffed and crossed his arms over his chest, mumbling words about getting off.
“That’s why we went to—”
“A brothel. Ugh.” Caspar made a face. “Not the same thing. Not even fucking close.”
Malek didn’t push about why it wasn’t the same.
Instead, he took the final few pulls on his cigarette and ashed it out on the small dish in the centre of the coffee table that Jocasta probably meant to be decorative.
He separated their bodies even further as he stood from the couch.
His towering frame made him feel so much weaker in that moment, especially as all of his body cried out for more.
“It’s hard your first night. I get that. I’m going to go and give you some privacy.”
“But I—I can’t—”
“You won’t be alone, okay? You have the ring on your finger. Your new phone. The important numbers I gave you are in the file on the counter, along with your key and credit card. It’s almost midnight, Caspar. You’re tired. And let me tell you something cool.”
Caspar leaned in, licking his lips hungrily. It took every last ounce of strength in Malek’s body to not kiss them hard and then turn Caspar over to fuck him into the carpet, all while the punk music played on to the same rhythm as their thrusts.
“What?” Caspar asked when Malek still hadn’t focused.
“The cigarette makes you really sensitive. It’ll feel good, even by yourself, okay?”
Caspar let out a low breath, heated and annoyed. Malek tried to ignore the pained expression as he got up and gathered his phone and jacket before heading to the doorway.
“Fuck you,” Caspar said, still sitting on the carpet. “I thought you weren’t going to leave me alone?”
“I’m not. There are so many people, many of them just like you, in this apartment building.”
“Fucking fugitives? Lebanese kids?”
“Network helpers—including me. I can’t get too far from that ring without getting too hazy, so don’t skip town on me either, all right? Until you need me for the next wish, I’ll always be close.”
After a long time, Caspar nodded. The pout he sported made him look adorable rather than intimidating. As Malek left, he expected Caspar to slam the door or continue to curse him, but he merely continued to smoke the cigarette as he stared at the ceiling.
On the first floor, Malek unlocked his door and stepped inside. He flopped on his couch, stuck his hands into his pants, and quickly ushered himself to release, the thought and taste of Caspar on his mouth like a wish.