His heart beats faster. It is nothing new. It has happened before, and he knows why.
"We don't have to take our clothes off."
He looks at the other, head with sandy blond locks tilting at the words. Then a smile gradually slides across his face. He replies by pushing his thumb underneath the trouser button and pops it open without a sound. The owner of the trousers sighs, but says nothing more. Instead he slides himself backwards, further in on the bed, sky blue eyes resting on the sandy blonde in front of him. This is nothing new to him either. The sandy blonde leans one hand against the soft, dark mattress next to the other's hip, while he lets his other hand slide across the blue eyed's stomach, pulling his t-shirt up to gather in a heap across his chest as he goes along.
It's nothing unnatural. Everyone does it. It's just that not everyone talks about it, admits to doing it. The only thing separating the sandy blonde from everyone else is perhaps his motives causing him to do it.
It is not the sight of the other when the sandy blonde slides the trousers off with experienced hands that makes the sandy blonde's heart pump harder. It is not the feeling of his own hands sliding the last bit of fabric off leaving him completely exposed to the other, without anything to cover himself up with. That is not what makes his blood run faster through his veins.
He looks up at the sky. Crystal blue it meets his eyes, and without clouds it sends warnings of colder weather to come. He breathes out a ball of mist; his own breath, heated up inside him for then to be coloured white in the cold autumn air.
The jacket is too thin, and he hasn't put his clothes on properly. He never does when he leaves. However, the cold slowly biting its way up along his fingers and arms feels distant, distant against the memory of the touches he had gotten so used to. Hands clutching on for steady hold, fingers sinking into mattress and skin, breaths being pulled in faster and faster.
He closed his eyes. Shuts out the world and the blue sky, tries loose himself in the memory. His heart beats faster. He tries to calm it, tries not to think of anything at all, tries remember those light blue eyes looking at him, but it doesn't help. It doesn't help today either. Instead he just falls deeper. Past the light snow under his shoes, past the hands that held him while the heat had built up between them, down down down. Past it all until a pitch black light catches him and he-
His body jerks. A hair away from walking straight into a lamp post he stops. His eyes are wide open, he heaves for air without remembering being out of breath. The wood in front of him is black and splintered from years of wear. Maybe it had been painted once, when the lamp post was still new. But as he leans a numb hand against it, it looks more like rot. A black oil, forcing its way inside. Further and further in, until the wood is black to the core. Then it gradually collapses. Bits loosening and sliding apart while tree sap pools on the ground.
A splinter is caught in his index finger as he tightens his fist against the wood.
"If today was your last day, where would you rather be?" That's what the blue eyed one had asked him when he put on his jacket. He presses his fist harder against the wood. "If today was you last", he leans his forehead forwards and against the lamp post "if today was your last" his eyes closes, "if today was your last" he clenches his teeth, "if today was your last" he slides down on the ground.
Maybe he would get a splinter in his forehead, and become poisoned by it like the wood. Then he would stand somewhere while he gradually turned black and no one else noticed it.
"If to day was my last," his voice sounds coarse in the quiet air. Around him there is no one. The road is too remote, it's the wrong time of the day. When he repeats the words he can hear how his voice is the only one in the silence. So strangely alone, like was he the only human left in the world.
His heart is still beating. Fast, aguish, like would it break its way straight out of his chest and flee from him. He looses all muscle in the neck and his head falls against his knees. In his hand he pulls to him is a black splinter visible, but he doesn't take any notice of it.
Alone along the road, a tiny dot in a world all too big, and he wonders if it had been better if he had never been born. At least then he would not have known.
He would not have known how much he would love being alive.
"Here,"
He is not sure how he got home or even how he got into bed. And the following morning resides blurry and vague in the back of his mind as he sits by the window at the second row. The history lesson has just ended; the students are getting ready to clear the classroom.
Now he peers up and sees him stand in front of his desk. This is something new. Normally it is the sandy blonde who would seek out the other.
"What?" he asks. A smile ties itself to his lips. –Even though he can feel how soulless it is, he still vaguely hopes the other's blue eyes somehow will not detect it. "Not enough?" he continues to ask, tilting his head like he always does and lifts a hand halfway toward the other in an inviting gesture. However again he is surprised by the other, and instead of somehow knotting his shoulders together like the blue eyed one always would do, he puts something in the sandy blonde's outstretched hand.
"Tickets," he says. His hands retreats and digs deep down in his pockets while his eyes wanders out the window. "If today was my last day," he then says, his voice lower now. "Then I would spend it doing something fun." There is a short silence before he continues: "So, half past three outside the school gates, then?" Still he doesn't look at the sandy blonde. And still with his hands in his pockets he turns around and blends in with a especially noisy gang at the other side of the classroom.
It was an amusement part. An amusement park with merry-go-rounds, rollercoasters, children, and them.
They are walking next to each other, the other with his hands in his pockets, the sandy blonde with his hands in each other. Not a single word or sound is exchanged between them in a long while; that too is something different than usual. Something completely different from those many visits the sandy haired gave the other every week. Something completely different from those evenings in the other's room before his parents got home.
"Why are we here?" he finally asks, his throat dry without knowing why.
"Isn't this what friends do sometimes?" the blue eyed one replies simply. "That one!"
And before the sandy blonde can do or say anything, he has his hand gripped by the other's and is pulled at full speed toward a stomach-wrenching rollercoaster.
"Let's have fun first, then we can see if we have any time left to worry together later," sky blue eyes smile cheerfully at him and he stumbles across the threshold in the asphalt leading toward the ticket-window. "Life is too short to have time for both, after all." And they are past the small gate and seated inside a tiny cart, and before the sandy blonde has time to catch up with exactly what has happened and regain full control of his own limbs the train of carts jerks and pulls itself forwards and upwards. Up, up, up, all the way to the top.
When they reach it and linger shortly at the peak blue eyes glances at green, and his hand gives the smaller a slight squeeze, reminding the sandy blonde the other had yet to let go of him. He peers sideways at the larger boy next to him.
His heart starts beating faster. The cart tilts forwards and over the edge before it dives downwards. He can hear his blood roar in his ears. But it doesn't hurt. It doesn't make him cold to the core like usual. His heart beats and beats, and a wild grin suddenly pulls his lips apart and he laughs.
Life is a gift given to the lucky few, and if tomorrow was too late, he would prefer to smile and laugh today.
This is the translation of the Norwegian "om i dag var din siste" story of mine. It was a story written for a test in school many months back, and I suddenly got the brilliant idea of translating and sharing. And I don't blame you if you don't get it. I don't think my teacher did entirely either.
It was first posted at my other account, but since it's about Norway, I decided to move it here. :)