I CALL SHOTGUN

‘Hey - y’ever wonder bout how dey make those…’ Oliver waggled his hand out in front of his face, the muscles loose and pliant, ‘Dose little mints? Y’know, wit the hole in em?’

Toby turned his head toward his friend - it took far to long to do, but his skull felt heavy - like it was full of warm water. He felt like he was swimming, really - everything was slow and he could feel the air around him pushing back. He wasn’t bothered by it - this wasn’t his first time smoking a bit of pot, after all. You don’t go to juvie for being a fine upstanding young citizen.

He blinked bloodshot eyes and tried to focus on Oliver’s face; it was hard, as the red of his curls shone, really shone. It might have been the drugs, but there were flecks of gold there, that changed and glittered when Olivier moved his head. Toby frowned slightly. ‘…..huh?’

‘Y’know - mints. With holes.’ They were both sat on the floor of Toby’s bedroom, backs against his perpetually unmade bed, and Oliver had his head rolled back against the mattresss. They had to smoke in Toby’s room - because, he had insisted, he ‘liked his fucking room better than Ollie’s’. Which  apparently smelt like leprechaun. Some part of Oliver thought it was maybe a bit more than that - thought maybe Toby wanted to make sure they blamed the right person. Well, the most likely suspect anyway. He had been the one to find the stuff, roll the joints - but then Toby was the bad one. People would expect it of him. Olivier huffed - the protective idiot was actually kind of awesome. And really fucking thick.

He took a long drag from the smouldering joint, and tried again. His voice was slurred. ‘A machine, I reckon. T’make the holes. But what d’they do wit em? After, I mean?’

Toby reached over while Oliver spoke, lifting the joint from between his fingers and taking a hit off it, watching the smoke curling and coiling from between his friend’s red lips. He lost track of time, the drug influencing his focus. He could hear something, but it was muffled and faint as though coming from a few rooms away. It was like his mind had placed a magnifying glass over those lips, the way the grey smoke billowed over the slightly chapped skin, the way it caught around his teeth and rolled under and up, over the bow of Ollie’s top lip.

It felt like years until his hearing cleared, though it was only a minute or so; it was like he had surfaced from deep water or taken ear plugs out suddenly.

‘…in there? Toby, mate?’

He blinked, incredibly aware of the action as his gaze slid up to meet Oliver’s. ‘Huh?

Oliver snorted, ‘I asked if you wanted t’shotgun, since you were lookin so hard.’

Toby looked at him, his brain working slowly but surely over the idea and red and what it meant and what it could mean and his lips really were red and how it could change their friendship and how stoned they both were and red and what would happen when they weren’t and red red red.

‘Sure. Okay.’ He tooks a long hit off the joint, his eyes never leaving those blue eyes (opposites and contrasts and don’t look at his mouth not yet), then held out a hand for Ollie. He kept the smoke down, his voice hoarse as his throat tightened and tensed around it, ‘Come here.’