Yesterday I had fallen for a sunbeam.

Burning, scorching hot and blazing. He had been wearing a blue sweater and light freckles dotted his nose. He had smiled so bright that I could see clearly past the nicotine smoke I had in my eyes and the dark sunglasses I wore despite the already darkening skies.

Yes a sunbeam.

His name was Ike Broflovski. He was in the same grade as me, yet a few years younger than me just because he had skipped some grades. I did not know how many years exactly because until now he was just mixed in the staticy world I call reality with everyone else. He had just been another faceless face I had not bothered to learn a name too because before I had not cared.

Now I wanted to know everything.

From the reason to why he tended to chew on his pencil in thought, to what it was like to be a natural genius (and did he even try), and why oh why were his eyes just so fucking brown and depthless that I found myself getting lost sometimes when he was not looking, daring just to take a glance at the sunbeam who had struck my heart.

I wanted to hold you, to kiss you, to have you say things to me I never dreamt of wanting to hear before. I wanted your everything. Your nothing. Your smile, and your laugh, and...

You.

I just wanted you.

So when our history teacher announced us to pick partners, I had thought about you whilst I picked at chipping black fingernail polish that never seemed to stay that perfect smooth black gloss without bumping around the edges. It was like me, cracking and deformed and refusing to do as it was told. Black coating hiding a lighter clean slate, but no one ever bothered to think of those things.

(I am just a rare exception.)

It took me a hundred years, no, a millennium to make my way across the room and to your desk that was so very far away from mine (I suppose you sat that far up to hear what the teacher was saying), and it took me even longer to gather up the courage I had before mustered but now suspected had all been wasted for the long walk up there. I was nervous and filled with ever cliche bubbles and butterflies and maybe swirling stardust because I was inhaling you as I stared at my feet and perfectly imperfect nails trying to say what I wanted to say.

I was lucky you knew the words before I did. Your clever smile gracing your lips as you asked me to be your partner.

(Bathump bathump

...

bathump)

(Did you hear my fluttering, swirling heart stop?)

I had no idea what was happening to me. Just that every time you looked at me or even said my name I died (my heart forgot to beat, my lungs forgot to breathe). I forgot who I was just by being with you, laughing with you, joking and doing everything with you as I simply forgot how cruel the world was without you (it is so terrible to be alone), and that you filled a necessary gap that even close friends could not fill (because now they had became nothing more than letters in my mailbox and voices on the telephone).

We were no longer working on the project, on anything. We were simply being, living, and (loving) liking the other's presence. You were inviting me to sleepovers and late night movies, and I was inviting you to sit with me on the rooftops and point out the constellations, the galaxies, the bright fire in the sky that even you with all the knowledge you had had not known before I said it.

You complained of my nicotine smoke and my death metal music, and I complained about all the shit you had to take for being so easy, amiable you (although I have to admit that do not see anything wrong with being too nice or too naive). We argued before ending up as a tangled, laughing mess once more. I could never quite stand up to your tickle attacks, and you could not quite withstand my horrible jokes.

Even when we fought (because fighting is worse than arguing because the fights could last for a week(s)), somehow one of us would end up succumbing to the pain, the loneliness (because we both know that (I) we were much too use to (your) each other's company) and wind up on a doorstep and saying "I'm sorry" in all the ways he could say it. Forgiveness not being in the words themselves (because words are empty, hollow characters without the feelings beneath them) but in the desperation that drove us here, to that moment, to those near tears, to everything after the nothing. We would be back to our not-quite so normal relationship of bickering, laughing, eating too-buttery popcorn in front of the television set watching actors in monochrome proclaim love lost and love found and whatever else they had to say.

Soon we were close enough that those late night phone calls were for a lot more than talking about school, and gym, and just how lame/cool that New Videogame was. They soon became about School and everything that came with it, and why were people so mean, and being able to cry when no one else was sure to be hearing or watching or seeing you when you were (not) okay. Your "okay's" and "fine's" and "alright's" a lie with a cracking voice and shaking smile.

And I was the only one allowed to hear it over staticy telephones and cell phones that were never good enough because I could not hold you, tell you it can be okay if we try with my eyes through tiny electric receivers. I had to sneak out (windows and snow and the apocalypse could not stop me from coming to you)and run until my lungs were burning and threatening to burst like the stars to your window, to you sitting beneath all your burdens.

The only thing I could offer was my genuine concern that I could never (quite) put in the right words but always had a song for, my voice not a sirensong but yoursong as I poured out everything in quiet whispers that were shouts in your quiet room.

You returnt my songs with stories of good and evil, villians and superheros, fantasy and not-so fiction that was just a repainting of what we knew as the truth.

(You rarely told me a story about -

Love.)

Then one day a butterfly flitted past my lips from my lips to tell you a message from my heart. My heart that tightened as I felt it stop, twoonezero, once the words were out, and they meant something. They meant everything. They were everything I felt in a jumbled mess that assaulted your ears with the ungracefulness of it all.

(Had you gone mute?)

I felt what we had built crumbling around me, and I wondered if anyone else could feel the apocalypse happening when a desire's world collides with reality. I should run, want to run, but I had somehow gotten lost in depthless black brown. I should have laughed, made a joke, but my throat had decided it did not want to work as punishment for what I had already said.

(Please don't be mute.)

Your voice was soft (honey and buttercups and clouds on a Summer day) as you told me a story about a genius who made the foolish mistake of falling in love with the black-clad stargazer, the dreamer who hid behind songs as a way to tell everything, everything that needed to be said. You told a story about secret love and secret hurt and a kiss beneath a snow-covered, frozen tree.

The ending did not seem to make sense until lips pressed against mine and I felt suddenly like it was too hot, too hot here as my cheeks filled with the same fire you were numbing my mind in. It was your lips against mine and, fuck, hands intertwined and another on the back of my head.

I was glad for it because without it I was sure to have flown away.

Because this reality was too unreal, and I felt light(er)(-headed). I was weightless pressed against you with the desperation of needing to be burnt against a sunbeam. Your smile as we pulled apart the only thing that made sense in this crazy circumstance we had fallen into. You told me the end of your story with a breathless sentence that seemed inane because You and I had suddenly became YouandI in just a matter of moments.

Incomprehensible.

Insane.

Our "happy (as we can be) ever after."