LoL Catz Dream

I am in a box, typing. The box is on a bed in a room I'm not familiar with.

I can see over his shoulder as we chat in IMs. I type to him about how odd my new vantage point is. In a moment of optimism, friendship, amusement I come out of the box and stand over him and say, "See, odd how close I am, isn't it?". He goes silent and I know I've screwed up. Damn it. I lamely try to joke, but his fingers are still on his keyboard.

I retreat, heartsick, back to my box. The four top flaps lay open. I change the background I'm sitting on, trying to find something to match my mood...something to ease that horrible feeling of having over stepped, having embarrassed myself and risked a friendship I thought was closer than it apparently was.

Eventually I give up and lay on my stomach, knees bent and ankles crossed behind me, on the bare cardboard. I dig up a pen, a blue ballpoint, and sooth myself with the feel of sliding the along the forgiving bottom of the box. A face starts to emerge as I sketch, nothing noteworthy, the kind of doodle so many envelope backs have seen before.

I can hear typing, he's moving again, I lay my head on my arm and watch the pen glide over the brown fur of the cardboard. I half hope for the ping that will mean he's typing to me, that this moment of awkwardness is passed. I listen to the tippity tap of finger pads on plastic letters and sigh to my core. Glancing over to the screen I wonder if I should log out, go do something else.

The room grows quiet, the incandesant overhead light goes out, and with a sinking heart I start to muster myself to look at the screen where I know I will now see his empty chair and dark monitor as my desktop. Closing my eyes in preperation to sitting up I feel a shadow cross over the top of the box.

I hold my breath, the feel of the shadow comes back, cast over me in the twilight of the room. Hesitant fingers touch my hair, I stumble over words as I whisper an apology. He asks what I'm drawing, I write "nothing" under the woman's face and he says he likes it.

I laugh tentitively, still feeling for where we stand. Somewhere in the back of my mind I wish I'd washed my hair before logging in, or changed out of my pajamas. I wonder what I would see if I were to turn and look into his face. What will his eyes hold? Curiosity over comes resurvation and I look up into familiar brown eyes.

It's quiet, he leans over the box, he's taller than I remember. One arm, the one that reached into my space...that touched my hair, rests on the lip of the box. I apologize again, he shakes his head and smiles, lips closed. It doesn't seem to reach his eyes, but that's ok, there's something else there to see. I offer a small smile, a truce. It's accepted with a look, he touches the arc my cheek with his thumb. A decision slowly forms behind his eyes...he bends over the lip of the box and I raise my head and he kisses me. It's not passionate, but it isn't chaste and I can see more waiting in his gaze. I lift my head up to him in acceptance of whatever is next.

Then quietly he whispers with a grin, "friendship fail"