Ian had always been able to fit into the smallest of spaces. As a child, awkward and lanky by months of food scraps and neglect, pinched into the back seat between Fiona and Lip, their bodies acting as makeshift seatbelts as though their tiny masses alone could save him from any collision; Ian quickly came to understand what little space he could take up.
He hadn't been aware the weight his absence could hold, hadn't been aware that the space which he took up would not simply fill immediately with air rushing in to fill a hole that had once been whole. For Ian, it had always been about slipping into the slightest of spaces; under the hustle of mornings in the kitchen, at the bottom of the cavernous well of his mother's sadness; where paranoia and loneliness coagulated into one, or into the rare silence that existed between quips amongst siblings.
As a dreamer, Ian's mind had always been full and complex; a maze of colored string, thoughts starting from one end and ending elsewhere. A goldmine of dreams, each one hanging like bats from a well-lit cave, arranged in a chaotic order akin to a board of numbers and letters and formulas and symbols, understood only by the one who put them there. Ian had always dreamed quietly, subtlety; as much as he could in the space he found himself in. And never had he released his dreams to anyone, voluntarily. Instead, like a moth leaving his mouth aching for release, his dreams would tentatively flitter around, testing out the surrounding space, as whispers and mutters and in conversations with himself under the dark canopy of nightfall.
He could recall the first time he opened his mouth, and moths bellowed out; seemingly hundreds at a time, the sound of trembling wings filling the immediate air around them. He had, without much thought, brought the boy beside him into his cavern of dreams, told him about the world he ached to see, and of the limits and spaces Chicago confined him to. He showed him all of his quietly kept dreams, his ordered chaos, and his colorful maze of strings. It had been summer, a hot day; one where heat rose from concrete, creating mirages of dancing shapes into the air above it. Rays sweltered down through canopies of tress, sweat coated thin layers of sheen onto skin, and the two of them, hidden within the shadows of an abandoned warehouse rooftop, pants around ankles, hips snapping forward, and sighs falling from open mouths, lay in a puddle in the afterglow of fireworks; one boy with words tumbling out from between rose colored lips, and the other, with a face full bliss, eyes shut and ears open, drinking in every word as though a desert after a drought.
Without realizing, Ian had slipped into a space, equally as small as the others that had come before, but this one different. This one was fleeting and warm and came with an ache that rose from his gut and lined the hollows of his heart. It was the space that existed between the sharp intake of breath below him and his own slow exhale; it was the place between tightly pressed spaces of slotted fingers between desperate pressed hands, the space that existed just behind the veil of roughly spoken words. It was heat and fervor and the slip of a tenderness that existed in the beat between breaths. It was rough and dirty and addicting; it was a sweet hit of sweat and dirt and relief, every time Ian inhaled. It was the space directly underneath a certain sharp jaw bone, carved out into a shape that fit the crook of Ian's nose in a way that slotted the two together like puzzle pieces, locking them into place. It was the space that existed when Ian sometimes got it wrong, and rested his nose slightly too left, or slightly too low and a tattooed hand would roughly shift his head and adjust it until the pieces fit properly again.
He couldn't recall the first time his eyes met blue, clear and bright; an oxymoron when compared to the face that held them. But he could remember a moment in summer, standing less than six feet away from a boy, dirty and full of thorns, a true product of his environment, who took up space, obnoxiously, loudly; as if needing to prove to the universe that he was still there, still breathing. Ian could remember, vividly, standing bored on his base, his big toe finding a divot beneath the canvas, toeing at the dirt and sand, hollowing out the space beneath as the boy beside him, irritated and angry with the world, pissed on his base. The coach, words roaring out his mouth, scolded the boy, who looked on with dirt and a smirk smeared onto the face that held the bluest eyes that Ian couldn't seem to look away from.
Years later, still captured by eyes of blue, and hands of tattoos and dirt, Ian tried to fit into the ever changing space that he came to know as love. The same space that was warm and at times tender, was also a space that was more than often frantic, and full of an ache and a pain and a desperation that was needy and insecure. It was a space that at times wouldn't hold him; at times wouldn't acknowledge him, which confused Ian greatly, for he had always been able to slip into the smallest of spaces. And against all reason and thoughts of common sense, Ian continued to push; push into a space that seemed to be unable to hold him. What some would describe as tenacity, others would argue was stupidity, on his part; like arguing the sanity of a storm chaser who dives head first into the eye of a tornado, just to get a glimpse of serenity. Like the insane, Ian continued to do the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result every time; a graze of the lips, a caress of the hand, a space that was gentle and unhurried and able to hold him, able to love him. It was desperate and needy and it ended with a declaration, silencing a room of chatter, eyes focused on the speaker, whose blue eyes were focused on him; and in that moment Ian didn't care, stupid or insane, he finally had a space where he could fit.
He would remember that moment always, the moment when his heart burst; a thousand colors blurring his sight, a kaleidoscope of feelings rushing through his veins. He would remember the moments after the storm, his tongue memorizing a path up bony knobs, his fingers gripping hot and insistent, frantic tongues battling for dominance. Arguably it is the calm following a storm that makes diving headfirst into the center a seemingly well calculated risk, but it is really the aftershocks that follow an earthquake that should raise the most concern. They hit gradually, the aftershocks; a dull pinch at the base of his head, a slow haze rising, folding into the fissures and fractures of his psyche. And then suddenly, with no warning, it was a thousand armored gnats marching, pillaging the village, bayonets hungry for flesh; and what started as a gradual slide, was now a free fall into a seemingly dark, seemingly empty, seemingly small pit.
But, this space was by far the smallest Ian had ever found himself in. The cocoon of blankets around him, encasing him in a heavy heat; limbs weighted, eyelids made of iron. The sound in his ears, a dull metal on metal friction, the place that should have held coherent thoughts and feelings, now a jigsaw mess of dully colored strings tangled and knotted with no way of knowing the start from the finish, the images in his eyes blurring into a translucent black and white movie.
Some days, he would feel the stare of blue eyes on the nape of his neck, instead of the lips that used to latch, and elicit groans. Without turning his neck or opening his eyes, he could feel the weight of worry, the howl that was now the beat of a heart, and the blood that stained lips from biting fingers raw. And on some days, he would feel the bed dip, a hesitance rolling onto the bed, folding over his skin and Ian would feel himself shout, and thrash against the metal bars in his head; the chains holding him down clanging metal on metal. And only then, would he feel the sharp pain in the space behind his eyes, and realize he hadn't made a sound, hadn't been heard; had only slipped further into the heavy and seductive warmth that was this space.
It was bleak and isolated and heavy; the fog so thick, his cave of dreams now a shadowy room of obscure thoughts and shapes and dreams that more closely resembled nightmares and musings of the insane than the maze of colored thoughts that once filled his mind. It was silence; stone cold and grey. It was small; an ever shrinking cell, metal walls collapsing at such a reckless rate, that he didn't know how he would fit in this space for very much longer.
But then, Ian had always been able to fit into the smallest of spaces.