CH 2

School didn't change much. Melchior went to his classes, did his work. Moritz still didn't talk to him, didn't grant him even a glance, to acknowledge that anything had shifted in the days since their encounter. Melchior wondered if Moritz seemed a little more sunken, a little more disheveled. He wasn't entirely sure. He felt as though he had little grasp of how things should be anymore.

He walked down the halls in a sort of daze. Whenever one of the other boys would toss him a casual greeting, even look at him sideways as he passed, his stomach gave a jolt, as if everyone could see, somehow read in his eyes, what he'd done. That they were judging him even now.

School didn't change much. Melchior had a feeling he was the one who changed.

When the boys were finally dismissed, Melchior watched how Moritz stuffed his things in his bag as though his life depended on the efficiency of this action. Moritz hurried out of the room, muttering quick goodbyes to the others. Melchior couldn't help but feel tired and weighed down watching him leave – he'd felt tired a lot lately. The kind of tired sleep neglects to rectify.

On the walk home he declined the company of the other boys, though he quickly regretted this decision. He was left alone with his thoughts – never-ending questions of right and wrong and what he wanted and the ever, unending repetition of The Kiss replaying in his mind's eye.

When he reached home Melchior almost stumbled when his eyes fell on Moritz. Sitting on the Gabor's front step, Moritz raised his tired eyes. Dark circles beneath them betrayed his lack of sleep, and Melchior met them cautiously.

"Hello," Moritz said, his voice soft and resigned.

Melchior took a deep breath, not realizing his breathing had grown so shallow. "Are you... okay, Moritz?" he ventured.

Moritz's eyes shifted lazily to the ground for a moment, as though his mind, too, had drifted off elsewhere for the time being."I don't know," he said distantly, as though he were speaking from inside a dream. He started, suddenly, and lifted a hand to his mouth, as though the words had slipped from his lips unbidden.

Melchior shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He was not eager to face the conversation that might result from this, not eager to acknowledge too much of himself in his friend's sunken features.

"Do you want to take a walk?" Moritz asked shyly.

Melchior tried to refuse, but he could not find the words.

Moritz pulled himself up off Melchior's front step and the two of them started in no particular direction, their feet falling in an awkward rhythm. Not knowing what else to do with them, Moritz shoved his hands into his pockets.

An uncomfortable silence hung heavy between them, but Moritz almost wanted to embrace it, to wrestle down the tension and the discourse just to have anything, anything at all.

Moritz, quite simply, was haunted. He was haunted, possessed, captured by the passion of a moment. It was not passion in a way that was sexual or romantic -- no. It was the passion of desperation, the passion of hopelessness. It was this passion that Moritz felt embodied in his memory of The Kiss.

It wasn't that Moritz was ready to be here now -- Melchior avoiding his eyes and the shakiness of their steps betraying both of their insecurities. It was that he saw nowhere else to be; nowhere else to feel.

So they walked, and finally, at the cusp of the woods, Moritz felt compelled to speak.

"You said you didn't think there was anything wrong with me," he whispered, letting the words carry the hint of a question.

Melchior's pace slowed, and there was something there, something in the air, that knocked the air from Moritz's lungs before Melchior even said the words. "I don't know anymore, Moritz."

Moritz was out of doubt, out of anger, out of despair. His words were a sigh, laden with all the breathlessness of dying words, "But, you said."

"I wonder if it might not have been a bad idea from the start," he said, and the words didn't seem to quite fall into context – as though Melchior were talking to himself.

Moritz frowned, pulling his hands out of his pockets to cross them over his chest. He searched for something to say, but the words didn't come.

Melchior swallowed, fidgeted. "I don't know," he said again, but this time there was a note of something desperate there, and the silence hanging between them seemed to carry a note of companionship in its despair.

Moritz tried to keep the thoughts at bay, but he couldn't keep his stomach from turning. Couldn't not think about The Kiss. "But... Don't you feel it too?" Moritz ventured, his voice growing soft with the potential gravity of this question.

Melchior's breath became quick and something blazed in the intensity of his stare. "I don't want to talk about this anymore, Moritz," he almost snapped, and then his tone shifted to a forced neutrality with, "Why don't we go --"

"But I want to talk about it," Moritz said sharply, the fierceness of the statement making them both start, as though they had merely been slumbering so far and had finally awoken.

Every hint of condescension or anger seemed to drain from Melchior's face, and in an affectionate tone unfamiliar to Moritz, he whispered, "Okay."

Melchior swallowed his protest, and under the unexpected blaze of Moritz's eyes, he let himself give in.

Now that they had this frightful topic hanging over their heads, open for contribution, silence grew between them again. Anything demanding and unprecedented in Moritz had slipped from his awkward stance, and now Melchior was left with the feeling that his friend's well-being was something fragile that he held in his own hands. It was perhaps this idea, more than the fear he expressed for himself, that bred his caution now.

"You look tired," he observed, his voice careful, controlled.

Moritz dragged a hand down his face, as though he could wipe the fatigue from his features this way. He looked small, somehow. It was as though the universe had been pounding him into the ground, pounding dents in his defenses.

"I was hoping... it meant you'd understand," Moritz said, avoiding directly mentioning what lingered on both of their minds. "I was hoping you wouldn't mock me with something like that," he added, the words almost a breath more than a sentence.

"I wasn't... mocking you," Melchior said. He was startled that Moritz would think he might pull something like that – but when Moritz met his eyes defiantly, Melchior knew that Moritz didn't believe he would either, not really.

"Moritz..." he said carefully, "I just – I've been thinking about it, and boys with other boys... I just don't see how that can be natural."

As he said it, finally pinned it down, he couldn't help but feel like he had broken something.

Moritz's expression was so many things Melchior couldn't find words for – there was an anger there, a frustration, surely, but something there was desperate, too -- frightened, maybe. Melchior felt almost like he should look away, that he was seeing something that it wasn't his business to see.

Moritz was breathless as he effortlessly broke down the last of both of their defenses.

"You kissed me."

Melchior was perplexed as to why he was still standing. Was the ground not just pulled out from under him? But somehow, it seemed like in that moment he had an eternity to fall, an eternity to decide what words might save him.

However, he knew. Knew that even at the end of eternity the only words left for him would only break him open.

"I..." his voice seemed to give out, and he swallowed helplessly. "Moritz, what if – so what if I told you what it is you want to hear? What if everything changed? I can't see things changing for the better."

Moritz frowned at him, looking away a moment and then meeting his eyes again with what was almost a perplexed expression. "Melchi," he said, pausing to let out a long breath. "Have things not already changed beyond repair?"

Melchior felt crushed beneath the words, drowning in them. Beyond repair.

Of course they had. Of course they had. Couldn't Moritz see that that wasn't it at all? That Melchior wasn't stupid -- he was just scared, and how was it that Moritz wasn't, too? How was there no way out – no way he could have his security and have his friend, too?

"It's not that I never wanted this," he allowed, his voice strangely calm, impossibly easy. It was easy, he realized, to let it spill – easy to damn himself. "So."

Melchior hadn't said much at all, but it felt like he had said it all, like he had every right to take a step forward now, studying the lines of his friend's face, admiring the emotion that was so thoroughly drained from them both. It almost seemed too painless, too easy, when they leaned into a kiss that was too tired to be awkward and too necessary to resist. Almost.

It didn't feel like a kiss much at all, not like The Kiss that had rocked Melchior's resolve -- more like the inevitable meeting of their frustration that was physical only as an afterthought.

When they separated and their breath became tired sighs again, it was as though Moritz had dented in Melchior's defenses more than the universe ever could on its own.

"So," Moritz breathed, "What now?"

There was no longer a hint of frustration or hostility between them, but instead something awkward, hesitant, almost like all of the discomfort that should have plagued their tired hearts was finally catching up with them.

Melchior ran a weary hand through his hair. "I don't know yet," he said.

With a long look in lieu of a farewell, Melchior finally headed back home. Despite the feeling that he had been torn to apart by the meeting, there was no relief for his worries or desires, only the lack of energy to feel them, and only for now.

Perhaps, though, there was something there that was a little satisfying. Perhaps, looking back and realizing the gravity of that moment, a kiss that was an attempt at a resolution and not the source of more pain, could be a comfort.

Perhaps.