• Syd Barrett •

                                    

                                          
I tried a bit of a different style for this one; I sometimes find writing conversations a bit tough so I thought I'd see if I could twist it round to work in my favour. This one is also quite a bit shorter because my time is so limited at the moment, but please let me know what you think! 😊 
--☆--
1967
You were dancing. 
It was quiet, and it was raining, and you and Syd were dancing. His chest was warm against your ear but his hands were cold upon your back and you could feel the smile on his face pressed against your cheek. The smile you so seldom got to see. 
It was one of those rare moments where you were really one, thinking, breathing, living as one. 
The storm had stolen the electricity from your street, but you were doing what you always did. You were carrying on.
Earlier that afternoon, when the sun had been illuminating the cracked pavement beneath your running feet, Syd had flung open the balcony doors to let in the summer breeze. But, when the clouds had begun to turn people away and the shadows had grown longer, neither of you had bothered to close them, so the windows now carried in with them the smell of fresh rain along with the sound of it cascading down the building front, like the steady flow of a waterfall falling onto a drum. 
Faraway, over the wonky shapes of houses owned by neighbours and strangers alike, you could see the distant lights from the beating heart of Venice gleaming as bright as the planets hidden in the clouded cosmos above. Their glimmering reflections rippled in the lagoon below as it danced around the retreating gondolas, who were rushing their customers away from their hopeful adventures as both of yours ambled slowly on. 
Even further out, along the darkened horizon, the dying outline of buildings you had gotten to know so well stood like castle walls preparing to protect the pair of you from the daybreak, but time was such a foreign concept when you could hear the steady rhythm of his softly beating heart beneath your ear and feel the tickle of his gentle breath along your tingling skin.
The streets below had emptied quickly when the oncoming storm had blanketed the atmosphere in warning, yet the church had kept its lamplit doors open as no rain could dampen their joyful song. You could hear the choir singing just beneath the beat of the rain, songs that looked just as beautiful on paper as they sounded in harmony, songs that could make anyone believe anything on dark winters nights. It was hard for you not to believe that something, someone was watching over the both of you that night, though perhaps your eyes were closed too tight and your ears overloaded with ethereal sounds. 
The smell of the rain on the pavement travelled easily through the wide-open doors, like fallen leaves in the autumn or the crisp smell of snow in the air on a dark, chilling December night. Every now and again, the gale would blow the tulle curtains back into the room like wisps of fading ghosts, but if the chill reached your skin, it never bothered you as you swayed against him. He had longer hair then. It fell over his face in an untameable mass of shadowed curls and brushed your forehead when he moved to whisper his words of the ancients and the stars and all the beautiful things he knew. 
He knew so many beautiful things. Some nights, when the moon was ready to fall back to sleep, you'd be hidden within one another and he would talk to you in his heavy, nostalgic voice about them all until you were fast asleep and he was too entranced inside his own exploding mind to carry on.
Syd had found a small apartment for your little holiday, on the top floor of that beautiful building just round the corner from the church. Really, it was too small for two people to fit comfortably, but there was room enough for an oven and a record player so it was big enough for the both of you. The worn carpet was coarse against your bare feet and he had to be careful where he led you in case you stumbled into the sofa, but not much mattered beyond his hands on your back and your arms about his waist.