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 ^{(it's beta!)}

Frankie closed the apartment door quietly behind him. He wasn't sure who was sleeping and who might still be wandering the limited hallways of the loft the bands had rented. He'd stayed late at the studio, trying his best to get the rift right. But the night was against him and the only thing that soothed him was the walk back to the apartment. There was something that quieted him inside about matching his footfalls to the beat of the music.

He missed the stars and had spent a good deal of the walk home squinting at streetlamps to make them glisten like stars. But here at home it was quieter. The lights were all off and streetlamp light was spilling through the open curtains. Billie was laying on the floor, half-curled in around herself. The streetlamp light gave her skin a yellowish tint, but Frankie knew that in the sun it looked like marble-- glorious white with the blue-purple of her veins in plain sight right under the stretch of her skin.

He watched her shift and the blanket slip off her shoulders. It was cold in the apartment. He wondered if the air caused goosebumps to raise up on her skin. His boots seemed extraordinarily loud on the wood floors as he walked in slow steps toward where she lay. He grabbed the corner of the blanket and pulled it up around her shoulders again. She let out a contented sigh and pulled it tighter around herself.

Frankie leaned against the wall, eventually sliding down it and settling for sitting there with his knees pulled up to his chest. He watched her. He loved the evenness of her breathing and how every so often she would shift her weight. From his spot against the wall, he could imagine that the light through the window was moonlight. And with these fleeting thoughts he let his eyelids flutter closed.

These fleeting thoughts carried into his dreams with a soundtrack of Iron & Wine. Frankie slept. Frankie Dreamt.