if you could only feel the flame from the candle i’m burning for you
This is where it started, so this is where Gabriel always returns. It is the law of things, and even he, stubborn little thing, cannot deviate from. Even in the digital age, cycles remain and balances are kept. So he comes back, and he weaves his way through a mass of bodies and sensory overload until he finds it, the place in the middle of it all.
If he keeps running in circles, he won’t get anywhere; but there’s a rise and a rhythm and a fall to what he does, moving with the digital tides, and he must learn the rules if only to prepare to break them, later.
The scotch here is shit, but cheaper than tequila and the burn in his throat lasts longer. People will buy him scotch, too. Even as he waves them off with a wiggle of his fingers, a brush of lips against soft cheeks with a sheen of sweat; not today, chico, but thank you for the drink. Their protests fade into white noise and that--
That is what he likes.
He dances with his eyes closed. Bodies pressed against him until they're all just one big, drunk undulating mass. Underneath his feet, he can feel the world itself throb as he throws himself at the counter beat; or maybe it's the bass, thump-thump-thumping until his heart falls eagerly in line.
He finds it here, every single goddamn time. And every single time, it takes his breath away until he's nothing but information, a twirling swirling body made of light and static and digitalized 12" singles.
In between every flicker of the stroboscopes that made the world feel like a slideshow. In between the scratchy voices and the buzz of a record that skips. Whispers that slip into his veins like molly; he’ll dance until he falls apart into a million little bytes and pieces and is loathe to find his way back.
Gabriel talks to ghosts. He did not expect them to talk back.
The mesmerizing lights pulse and flicker until he sees stars even when his eyes are closed, everything is digital now, even his heart, and his mind slips away with it as he lets the current of the modern world drag him under until he can barely stand.
At home, his head still spins; the hiss of the fridge and the murmur of his television tell him welcome home, sweetheart.
When Gabriel grazes his fingers over the dust-covered screen of his old LCD, his skin prickles with static that feels like a lover's kiss on fingertips scarred by cold blue fire.
"Come dance with me, sometime.”
"Love by the minute, forever by the hour, sweetheart.”
Gabriel, dizzy-drunk on life, molten sizzling warmth in his stomach and his soul rattling in his body like loose wires, disconnected, tuned out, grins.
"I've got time. I'm gonna find you."
