Vermonth Andrews — The Philosophical Stoner

The world refocused in fuzzy, slow layers. First came the silence, a dense, hollow weight that had replaced the roar of the music. Then, the smell: cold cigarette smoke, spilled beer, and the cloying sweetness of incense someone had tried to use to cover it all up. Last, the sensation: a solid, familiar warmth at your side, and a slight stiffness in your neck. You had woken up on the sagging sofa of an unfamiliar house, your head resting in Vermonth's lap, completely alone in a living room that looked like the aftermath of a hurricane.

Total confusion. You barely remembered closing your eyes, right after arriving at this party with your recent—and somewhat chaotic—boyfriend. The mission had been clear: "look after him," make sure no lost soul with dubious intentions dragged him off to a dark corner. Ironically, you had been the first to fall, succumbing to a sudden, invincible drowsiness the moment you crossed the threshold. The pregnancy had turned you into an expert at falling asleep in the most inconvenient places and times.

A soft, raspy laugh, heavy with weed and weariness, vibrated right above you. Vermonth was looking down at you with a wide smile devoid of any reproach. His long fingers, adorned with a couple of brass rings, were distractedly toying with a strand of your hair, twisting and untwisting it with an absorbed tenderness.

"Baby, you missed the whole party... again," he whispered, his voice a rough purr from smoke and the late hour. With his fingers, he gently brushed aside a strand of hair stuck to your eyelashes. "We crossed the threshold, you did a visual reconnaissance of the territory, and poof"—he blew softly—"system collapse. Taken down by your own body. It's adorable," he commented, amused. Then he took one last drag from a natural tobacco cigarette before stubbing it out precisely against the rim of an empty can. The smoke rose in a slow, contemplative spiral, catching the faint light. "Though I still like that you come. You're like my personal teddy bear I can hug. Besides, I think I figured out why you fall asleep so fast at parties... Did you know modern music is designed with specific frequencies to manipulate states of consciousness? Maybe you're more sensitive to those subliminal vibrations..."

He took a final sip of his now lukewarm beer and grimaced as he observed how most of the guests had left, leaving only that characteristic post-party mess. His eyes, slightly red from smoke and fatigue, held that particular gleam they always got when he was about to dive into one of his theories.

"And yeah, the party was okay. It's always interesting to observe human mating rituals in their natural habitat, you know? Besides, I had a fascinating conversation with a guy about how chemtrails are affecting squirrel migration patterns. Top-tier material. I swear. Do you want me to take you home? Although..." He yawned lazily, a long, exaggerated yawn, stretching his long arms above his head without fully letting go of you. "...I'm kinda tired. We could stay here if you want. The host, a being whose identity escapes me, mentioned something about a 'mattress' in the back room. Or well, more like a pile of blankets on the floor, but it's surprisingly comfortable. Like a worm nest. But seriously, what do you prefer? Go back to my apartment or stay here? My place is small but cleaner—well, relatively cleaner—and I have a real bed, though it's a bit hard, but it's horizontal and has legs. Here would be more of an improvised fortress with pillows stolen from the sofa. Both options have their pros and cons, I guess. You decide, I'll adapt. Though if you ask me, I think your back... our back... would probably appreciate the bed." He paused, as if the words he'd just said sounded strange in his own ears. God, he sounded like a real adult. The thought was as disconcerting as it was funny.

Unable to help it, as if guided by a gravitational force, his hand slid from your shoulder and descended with deliberate slowness. His palm came to rest, warm and slightly trembling, on your belly. The gesture had become almost a reflex, a tactile ritual since he'd learned the news, always laden with that same paralyzing mix of overwhelming tenderness and existential panic. His hazel eyes, full of an adoration that melted you, instantly clouded with the familiar veil of nervousness. He cleared his throat, withdrawing his hand abruptly, as if burned.

"But if we leave, just try not to trip over the bodies. I think I saw Carlos passed out cold in the hallway, and he seems to have fused with the carpet. Would be a shame to wake him."

Leaving the party, deciding to go to his place, seemed to close one strange, sticky chapter of the night to open another infinitely more intimate—and potentially terrifying. His apartment. You. The bed. The future. The snoring. The baby. Shit. Maybe he did need another beer.

Anxiety played a nasty trick on him the exact moment he stood up, gently pulling your hand to help you up. A clumsy step, a misjudgment of the hallway's darkness, and his foot found not the firm floor, but something soft and whiny.

"AY!" a muffled, gruff shout rumbled from the floor.

Vermonth squinted, instinctively squeezing your hand. A sigh, more of resignation than surprise, escaped his lips.

"Whoops," murmured Vermonth, more as a general observation of the situation than an apology directed at Carlos. "Guess we found Carlos. Or rather, my foot did." From the floor, Carlos groaned again, trying to prop himself up on an elbow. He blinked in the gloom like a bewildered owl, his face a mask of confusion and discomfort. He seemed less like a person and more like a creature being rudely excavated from its slumber. Poor bastard, Vermonth thought. He probably didn't even know which dimension he was in.

Vermonth felt a fleeting spark of sympathy, quickly drowned by the urgent desire to evaporate before Carlos became fully conscious and decided to strike up a conversation, or worse, demand reparations for the rude awakening. "Easy, Carlos," Vermonth said, keeping his voice low and even, hoping calm could be contagious or at least hypnotic. "Just a little stumble in the dark. Things that happen when people decide to mimic the carpet. Go back to sleep, champ. Tomorrow you won't even remember." He seriously doubted Carlos was processing the words, but it seemed like the minimum social protocol before a strategic retreat. Besides, apologizing too much implied guilt, and guilt implied responsibility, and responsibility… well, that wasn't on tonight's agenda if he could avoid it.

He shot a quick, genuinely concerned glance at you, his earlier detachment cracked for a moment by real fright. Scaring his pregnant girlfriend, however slightly, by stomping on some relatively soft, drunk guy, wasn't exactly ideal. Lately, any noise or stumble, however minor, put him on high alert, especially if it involved your well-being.

"Hey, are you okay, love? Didn't twist anything? The scare didn't…?" His concern was palpable, though still wrapped in his relaxed facade.

He tugged your hand a little more firmly, guiding you away from the figure stirring on the floor and toward the door that promised escape.

"Okay, I think that's our definitive signal to evaporate," he whispered, leaning into you in a conspiratorial gesture. His gaze swept over your face: the tousled hair, the eyes perhaps still heavy with sleep, the possible discomfort. But in that very moment, under the dim hallway light, he found you beautiful. There was something about you, in this shared mess, in the fact that you were here, with him, after everything… something that made the prospect of dealing with Carlos, of stepping out into the cold night, even the specter of responsibility waiting in his apartment, seem not just manageable, but strangely worthwhile. Or maybe he was just tired and horny. Probably a bit of both. "Let's go," he said, his voice soft but decided, finally opening the door and letting the night breeze in like a promise. "Before anyone else wakes up and thinks we stole… I don't know, the full ashtrays. Just try not to fall asleep on the way, okay? I'd have to sing to keep you awake and my singing voice is way worse than my snoring, and who knows, if you get too quiet, I might even be tempted to… entertain myself a little on the way." His smile was mischievous, soft, and loaded with a promise that made your heart beat a little faster, mixing weariness with a new, sweet kind of anticipation.

The dawn light filtered through the poorly closed curtains, a worn canvas barely containing the nascent day. Golden, dusty streaks cut through the room's gloom, painting diagonal stripes across the landscape of rumpled sheets and clothes scattered on the floor. The air smelled of deep sleep, warm skin, and the faint, acrid trace of smoked weed from hours before, mixed with the stale sweetness of citronella candles they never quite extinguished.

In that haven of stillness, prior to the inevitable chaos of the day, Vermonth was melted against you. His long, slender body—a tangle of bones and relaxation—curled around yours like a vine. His face was buried in the hollow of your neck, his deep, slow breathing creating a hypnotic rhythm against your skin. His brown hair, a wild jungle on the worn cotton pillow, smelled of drugstore shampoo and smoke. Beside him, on the nightstand, his phone vibrated and chirped with the stubborn cacophony of an eighties synth-pop song—his alarm, which had been devoutly ignored for ten minutes. Not a single muscle in him was willing to move; every fiber of his being seemed staked in passive resistance against the dawn.

"Five more minutes…" he grumbled, the words muffled and hoarse against your skin. "The capitalist waste collection system can wait. All that trash, literal and metaphorical, will be there in an hour… or two." His arm, long and covered with fine hair, tightened further around your waist. "Besides, out there the world is a hostile place, an ecosystem designed to drain the soul in small installments. But here…"

He squeezed his eyelids shut, as if with pure will he could seal reality out of the room. It was then that his other hand, resting innocently on your hip, began a slow, deliberate journey along the curve of your side, descending over the slight swell of your belly until it found the warmth and wetness between your thighs. There was no question, just the sleepy certainty of shared intimacy. His long, slender fingers slid over your skin, already sensitive and awakened by his proximity, and sank into your soaked sex, still soft and receptive from the night before, filled with the warm mingling of their bodies. A low growl, almost of animal satisfaction, vibrated in his chest against your back.

"Here it smells of you, and your well-used cunt…" he whispered, and his voice was no longer merely sleepy, but laden with an intimate, satisfied malice. With a deliberately slow movement, he withdrew his fingers and brought them to his mouth, his narrowed eyes watching you as he savored, with an expression of deep, quiet possession.

The spell of the moment broke almost instantly. As if the act had made him aware of another, vaster reality, his other hand—the one that had been inert—moved. It descended from your side with an almost dreamlike slowness, and his palm, warm and slightly rough, rested with a heartbreaking shyness on your belly, still flat beneath his touch. The pressure was as light as a hummingbird's flutter, an almost reverential contact. His brown eyes, large and gentle, shone with a tenderness so sharp it bordered on pain. But the contact lasted barely a heartbeat. He withdrew his hand with an abrupt movement, as if the skin of your belly had transmitted an electric shock of future, of responsibility, of change. Instead, he buried that suddenly tense fist under the pillow, stifling the gesture in the down. His body, however, remained anchored to yours, refusing to release its refuge.

"You know what I dreamed?" he murmured, changing the subject with the characteristic abruptness of his jumping mind, his voice trying to regain its carefree tone. "I dreamed we moved to a hippie commune in Oregon. No taxes, no bosses, no schedules… just us, a couple of goats maybe, and a huge garden where we'd grow radishes and… well, other herbs." He let out a sigh that was half dream, half deep resignation. "It didn't sound so bad, did it? I mean… hypothetically speaking. It's just an alternative social structure based on self-sufficiency and mutual support. Free from the chains of consumerism and… well, everything."

He paused, and in the charged silence of the room, you could almost hear the turning of his mental gears, searching for another branch to jump to. "Besides…" he continued, his tone adopting a falsely academic air that failed to conceal his nervousness, "have you ever stopped to think that the flowers you sell are, technically, the reproductive organs of plants? It's fascinating. Basically, you have a decorative plant sex business. That makes you a… botanical eros healer, or something." A silly, feeble smile appeared on his lips, hidden again against your skin, as if he feared your reaction.

Suddenly, he pulled back just enough—a couple of centimeters that felt like an abyss—to look at you. The morning light now streamed in more strongly, illuminating the tiny dust motes dancing like anxious atoms around his disheveled head. His eyes, the color of dark honey and with the tranquil depth of a forest lake, scanned you with a genuinely disarming glow of adoration. But that glow quickly clouded over, obscured by a layer of nervousness so palpable it could almost be touched. The internal battle was visible: pure affection fighting against the panic creeping in from the edges.

He cleared his throat, a harsh and incongruous sound in the warm stillness of the room. His gaze escaped downwards, fixing on an indefinite point on your collarbone, as if it were safer to speak to your skin than to your eyes. "Speaking of… well, biology and… reproductive cycles and all that," he began, the words tumbling out, tripping over each other. "I wanted to ask you… I mean, if you don't mind me asking… How… how are you feeling today? In general. Physically. Emotionally. All that stuff." He swallowed with an audible effort. "It's just that… I read somewhere that cravings are a form of subliminal communication from the fetus to the outside world. An unconfirmed theory, of course. But…" He paused, gathered courage, and his gaze met yours briefly, vulnerable and serious. "Do you fancy anything? A burger with extra pickles? Strawberries with mushrooms at six in the morning? Clay? Whatever it is. I… I can go. The shift can wait. It really can wait."

His offer, a clumsy hybrid of desperate chivalry and pure panic, hung in the air between you. It condensed in the space as tangibly as the sunlight now warming the sheets and the light blanket covering them. In his eyes, silently, the ultimate war was being waged: the boy who fantasized about running away to a commune in Oregon, against the man who, against all odds and to his own terror, wished with every fiber of his being to stay and, for the first time, try to get it right.