WHO: Marijuana & Heroin WHEN: Monday morning, 28 June WHERE: Highway kitchen WHAT: A breakfast interlude with the happy couple when they aren’t quite so happy. WARNINGS: Drugs, abuse of breakfast foods, wild hamsters, who knows what else. TBA
Heroin woke first. There was something about mornings, the sensation of bleary-eyed sleepiness as strands of dreams and memory stretched like he stretched in bed with long lines of taut muscle trembling for connection, pointed toes. Everything was softer when edged with sleep, even the ache and scream of a body shaking off its rust; Heroin slept deeper than most, dreamt deeper than most and waking was always an art of re-inhabiting a body that had forgot its possessor. That was something else which he loved about mornings. All was lace formed in the delicate meetings of too many metaphors from dreams: flying like sex and sex like flying and the present, the real world, was still just a pleasant heaviness in the flesh – flesh made heavier, currently, by Marijuana’s weight where lay on top of Heroin. A small smile danced on Heroin’s lips as his fingers danced in his husband’s hair, curled strands between a middle and pointer finger and then combed them straight again. Stray strands stuck up, tickled Heroin’s chin and mouth even as he smoothed other curls into place; the smell of their shared shampoo teased as much as the dark hair against his skin, a memory of stability. Marijuana slept soundly.
Lazy Sundays, they should last forever. But the memory found in Marijuana’s hair was enough to snap the last of the strands and settle Heroin squarely in his skin again. Words were memories, too, hollow and distant in the moment and filled with anger in the past. He sighed and carefully slipped from underneath his husband’s warmth and kissed the top of Mari’s shoulder, smiled at just how warm that skin was before Heroin snuck out of their blanket-nest. Shaking his head slightly, he smoothed a sheet over his husband’s hip – for Mari’s sake, of course, and not because Heroin wanted to touch, let his fingers linger, trace the outline of a hipbone. He shook his head again, sharper, but smiled as he walked away from the delicious picture of rumpled sheets and naked skin. Perhaps they were lucky, Heroin mused, they could hardly go to bed when bed always meant warmth and safety and snuggling; if only they could stay in bed, there might never be arguments or angry words that felt right in the moment.
Every morning, though, Heroin woke first and left their bed and opened the door to possibilities and possibilities were always a coin flip: pleasant, unpleasant, wouldn’t know, didn’t know, couldn’t know until everything stopped spinning and settled into their new shape. Yesterday’s shape had been brittle, but the only shape the morning needed in the moment was food. The way to a man’s heart was supposed to be through his stomach; Heroin knew other ways, every way to every heart, the pathways of the blood and, really, the heart was only a reservoir while the brain was the road, the only path that mattered. Except, of course, that Marijuana woke up hungry and breakfast in bed had the weight of tradition making it a very fine apology for a bad day’s fight.
Coffee was the first thing Heroin started, a French roast brewing with fresh ground beans while he tossed bacon into a sizzling pan – Marijuana loved his crispy, so Heroin started it first – and then came the pancakes. He mixed dark chocolate with half the batter and finely chopped strawberries went into the other and both batches were poured onto two extra large griddles by which time, he had to flip the bacon and start cracking eggs for a scramble with sausage and bell peppers. Or perhaps he should make it an omelet, Heroin paused with an egg in hand, stared at the stove without seeing it as he weight the pros and cons of various egg dishes while the smell of breakfast rose from the kitchen.