A/N: Wow I have serious writer's block. Anyone following my other stories, namely Every Time it Rains and Being Alive, I will update those eventually, they're not abandoned. Just a typical Melchior/Moritz shuffle. R&R for a super happy author.
Something always brings me back to you.
It never takes too long.
No matter what I say or do, I still feel you here 'till the moment I'm gone.
I live here on my knees as I
Try to make you see that you're
Everything I think I need here on the ground.
But you're neither friend nor foe though I
Can't seem to let you go.
The one thing that I still know is that you're keeping me down
The bleak schoolroom had never felt more like a prison to young Moritz Stiefel. It was no secret that he was a particularly poor student, but he still managed to appear as an oaf in class. His once crisp gray blazer was now wrinkled from slouching and his matching knee socks shrugged at the base of his ankles. But Moritz didn't care. His best friend was sitting in front of him and that helped him through the day. The dazzling boy with the perfectly wavy hair, the whitest teeth, and the piercing brown eyes turned around and whispered:
"Moritz, are you okay? You seem distant."
Moritz felt a slight blush paint his cheek and attempted to cover it quickly by burying his head in his copy of Virgil. He didn't want his friend to know that he had been staring agape at the back of his head, let alone stare at his face.
"I-I've j-j-just been having strange dreams lately Melchi. Not even the terrible kind, just strange. Why must I be plagued by the world around us?" Moritz sputtered out. His unintentional rambling was a dead giveaway that he was off, but Melchior remained quiet.
"Melchi 75 lines for tomorrow? How can anyone do that much? Let alone the parametric equations and the Greek…oh," Moritz shuddered, "the Greek." The very word rolled off his tongue with disgust and disdain. Moritz had been an average student in the sciences: biology being his best subject, but despite a mediocre performance in other subjects, he positively despised Greek. Latin: a failure, Trigonometry: don't hold your breath, but at least he had been able to stomach those. Not so much for Greek.
"They're dead languages anyway, why does our society put such a strong emphasis on them?" Melchior concurred. "Latin is supposedly the language of scholars, but no one in this town has utilized scholarly thought since Immanuel Kant!" he cried outraged. Melchior was one for deep and philosophical thought. The town thinker, he had a reputation for criticizing the government, society and mainly, the papacy. Melchior disliked nothing more than the church.
"Well I am most certainly far from a scholar," Moritz chimed in sheepishly.
"Would you like help with your Virgil tonight?" Melchior offered, "My mother is visiting her sister in Munich. We'll have the house to ourselves," he said calmly. Moritz double-took at Melchior's word-choice. He quickly shook himself out of the state of shock and rapidly nodded, trying to seem gracious for the help on his school work. Before Moritz could escape, Melchior subtly added, "Then we can talk about what's really wrong." Moritz hadn't fooled him. Melchior was a brick wall covered in barbed wire and surrounded by explosives: nothing got past him.
The real question was, would Moritz acknowledge that it was Melchior that was wrong with him? That it was Melchior who kept him up all night and prevented him from studying Latin? That it was Melchior, his best friend in the world, the only person he really trusted, that was keeping him down? And the answer was probably, no.