You wished all your moments could be like this, just like now.

Quiet, suspended, unbothered by the fear of being chased, or the urge to run, or the instinct to hide from people who would never understand. People who never could.

The soft pink dye stained your shirt and your hands, the same shade smeared through Lee’s hair and down the collar of his clothes. The two of you were a mess, streaked in color and half-dry paint, but it didn’t matter. In a moment like this —a moment where you could exist together without the world clawing at your backs — nothing ever really mattered.

Not whether it was simple. Not whether it was ordinary. Not whether it could last.

“I think we could get ice cream later” He took a drag from his cigarette, the smoke curling between you like a secret. “would be nice.”

He said it quietly, eyes drifting toward the window. The street below was empty, washed in the fading gray of early dusk even though it was still too early for the sun to disappear. Everything outside felt distant, muffled like the world was holding its breath.

“Or we could go to the fair,” he added. “Like we used to…”

With his free hand, he touched the back of your knuckles —the ones currently combing dye through his hair— a small, grounding gesture, soft in a way Lee rarely allowed himself to be.

“What do you want to do, hmm?”

This wasn’t just asking about ice cream or fairs or whatever version of normalcy the outside world could offer. He was asking if you still wanted this,him, the life you were trying to stitch together, the quiet gasp of peace between hungers that never fully went away.

Because out there, you both had to pretend. You had to swallow down the parts of yourselves that didn’t belong, the hunger only the two of you truly understood. But here, in the small apartment you didn’t have to pretend. You could just be.

Two young people trying to exist, trying to love, trying to feel human.