Re: On the rooftop: is the word/Hello
The press of the man’s hand on his shoulder felt iron enough to bruise. “What school?” He asked the man, looking incredulous now. Even through the furious blush, he managed an expression of pure exasperation. “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.” The Elder glanced around desperately at the scantily-clad folks reciting their lines. “Is this like performance art, or something?”
Because if it was, The Elder wanted no part of it. He’d once been trapped in the middle of a flash mob with his last companion, one afternoon while they ate their lunches on a park bench. A little old lady who was actually a teenaged girl in a grey wig and a shawl had led a dance number, and one of the dancers - a lithe man with long, dark hair - had grabbed the Elder’s tie and kissed him on the cheek. The high, hot flush of his cheeks and his cringing away from the man’s hand on the rooftop, it had nothing on the shame that he’d felt as he blushed under that damnable kiss.
“Oh, gross,” he winced and looked away from the serpentine path of the man’s hands. He was offended not by the cavalier attitude, but the objectifying nature of it - and he wondered, briefly, if the man knew that he was going to Hell. “No, I most certainly don’t get you. Frankly I don’t understand anything about this place, including how these people can be so happy without a purpose in life.”
The Elder imagined that he could feel his heels sinking into the brick and concrete of the rooftop below his feet, as soon as that arm clamped around his shoulders. The man’s leather creaked in his ears. His gaze had drifted to follow where the man’s finger pointed, and after a moment’s hesitation, he reached up and gingerly pinched the cuff of a leather sleeve between thumb and forefinger. Tugging gently, he redirected the man’s arm until he was pointing instead at a shadowy alcove where the light didn’t quite reach all the way. Just enough to illuminate two pairs of legs attached to distinctly male bodies, closely entwined in the dimness of their hiding spot.