Mathias jumped back from me, and I would have shoved him out of the way if he hadn't, because my very first instinct was to chase after Emil. The door to my room had been shut forcefully, and I could hear creative grumblings seeping through the cracks. My hand hovered less than an inch from the doorknob, unable to whirl the door open while still getting over the shock of Emil's tortured features. I stepped in anyways, swallowing my fear.
"Emil..." I couldn't grab the words out of the heavy, desperate air. He had dragged or thrown the blanket off of my bed, and was in the middle of laying a kick onto the fabric. He refused to raise his head or acknowledge me, but he dropped his foot.
"I'm leaving," he hissed, storming to the foot of the bed to grab the clothes he'd discarded before going to sleep. I watched in utter silence as he stuffed his bare feet into the legs of his pants, punching his fists through the sleeves of his shirt. He drifted over to the doorway, which I was conveniently blocking with my small body. "Move."
"No," I said firmly, searching his face for any sign of emotion. He seemed to be holding it all in under a thick barrier, only letting his hurt escape through the ice in his voice. Emil ran a hand through his starkly white hair, covering his face as he was doing so, and looked to the side. His neck was red, flushed with harsh, blotchy colour as it had been this morning when I found him. He wiped quickly at his eyes, trying to bully the tears away. They came in slow, tiny drops, but kept wetting his face, then his hand. When he finally, finally glanced at me, his eyes were swollen and his nose red and dripping.
He wasn't sick.
"God dammit, Lukas, get out of my way." His voice was growing even more pained each time he let the words burst out.
He had been crying.
"No," I said, shaking my head as I closed the door behind us. I grasped his wrist with my other hand, pulling it down to his side so I could see his face. "No. Not until you tell me what the hell's wrong."
"You still don't get it, you fucking..." He choked on the insult, trying to whip his arm out of my grasp. "I knew it was going to happen eventually, but I thought I had a chance, that's what! I knew in the end you'd choose him, but I hoped..."
"I'm sorry, Emil," was all I could think of saying.
"You don't even get it, though. The way you fix my hair, or when you go out of your way to give me a hand, you don't really mean it. I'm just a 'little brother,' right? That's all you think of me as." The tears were spilling down his chin now that I'd captured one of his hands.
"I've always thought of you as my little brother..." I agreed with him, even though it felt like it was the wrong thing to say. He laughed humorlessly.
"Well, what if I don't want to be your little brother anymore? What if I don't like the role you gave me, Lukas? When then?" His hands were balled into fists as he said it, and he'd quit trying to stop the crying and hiccupping.
I couldn't speak. I merely gazed at those violet eyes, that bloomed like the first day of spring, as they churned out salty tears and darted all over my face.
"This is ridiculous. I knew it all along that you'd never pick me over him. But I still couldn't help—"
"I'm sorry, Emil. I can't love you back, I'm sorry," The words were cold stumbling off of my lips, but I could never imagine myself loving Emil, kissing Emil... it was just so wrong, as horrible as it sounded. When I looked at him, he was someone I had to shield. He was the Emil in my life, not the Mathias that made me blush and made my fingertips tingle and my lips yearn for a feeling of softness against them. He was the boy I told my secrets to, the one that I wanted to trust me more than anyone else in the world. The one I had to keep painful things away from.
And I'd just caused one of his most painful moments.
My arms wanted to envelop him in an embrace, my lips twitching to tell him that it was okay, that everything was okay and nothing would hurt him ever again, but when I released his wrist, all I could do was brush the blonde hair out of his eyes. He flinched away.
"Don't touch me," he snapped. He'd stopped crying, but he just stood there for a too-long few seconds, broken. But his feet moved, and I drifted out of his way and the next thing I knew, my front door was being pulled shut quietly and gently.
My mind kept replaying the scene in my mind, the complete and ultimate horror and hurt and astonishment that had passed over Emil's face when he discovered Mathias and me in the bathroom. It was horrible, and I felt horrible, and the whole house felt like it had been filled with horrible.
While walking into the kitchen, I expected to see Mathias sitting at the table, wallowing in the awkward, but nothing but a note from him waited for me.
Call me when things cool down.
Sorry.
I ignored it, looking past the edge of the table at a metallic shine that caught my eye. A thin, silver cross lay on the floor and as I bent to pick it up, my finger ran along the shallow, yet fierce scratch that interrupted the smooth surface. The back of the pin was loose and dented.
The sound of metal slamming against the floor echoed in my ears, a memory of this morning when I'd found Emil, and then when he'd found me. This pin—my pin—must have been what he'd thrown in his disgusted rage, which explained the scratch and damage to the back. But why had he thrown it—dropped it?—this morning? I vaguely remembered leaving it on the edge of the sink before bed, so he must have knocked it off this morning, when he was in the bathroom. Or he had been holding it and it fumbled through his fingers. My mind sped through all the details of the day, furious that I hadn't realized things sooner.
Every blush of his skin, every time he refused to look at me, I realized, he had just been embarrassed. He had given me a long stare, then I had touched his arm gingerly enough to stir up a blush, before his fever returned and I went to fetch the cold cloth. I'd taken his hand, and he'd refused to look me in the eyes. And then when I'd found him, he said he hadn't slept...
"Well, you didn't care one bit about what kissing him would do to your relationship, did you?" The conversation we'd had the night before came back to me, the fierceness of his words, how wrong he had sounded.
When I had found Emil this morning, he had been crying. All night. Because of me.
I stuffed the cross into my pocket, grabbing for the phone and punching Mathias's number out. But, after the first ring, I couldn't imagine what the hell I would say to him. I pulled the phone away from my face, my finger hovering over the END button.
"Hello?" his voice rang out before I reacted. "Luke?"
I sighed heavily, pressing my lips together for a short moment. "Yeah."
"God, what the hell happened to Emil? I didn't even realize that he..." Mathias couldn't make himself say it.
"Me either," I mumbled, sparing him the pressure to stuff the words out. "About what I said—"
"That's not the important issue right now, is it?" He sounded slightly desperate, laughing without any humor to supply it. "Want me to talk to him?"
"I think you're the number-one person he doesn't want to see right now," I said, not softening the harshness that came with the phrase.
"Right," he agreed, nervous. A stretch of silence lasted long enough for me to hear him trying to mask his breathing. At last, he continued. "Leave him alone for now and talk to him tomorrow. Do you want me to turn the car around and head back to your place?"
"No."
Thankfully, this time, he didn't.
The door to my café jingled deafeningly when I pushed the door open, and I froze, gazing around the cold, eerily quiet room. I nearly called out Emil's name, but the sound began to feel foreign in my throat, like something I wasn't allowed to say. Instead, I let the bell chime again as the door pulled shut behind me. I didn't hear any machines running, and the lights were still off.
I got to work almost instantly, wrestling an apron over my head and taking apart machines to fill them. I was in the middle of making myself a cup of rich, bitter coffee when I heard the sharp, musical tinkle of a bell—which sent my heart racing. Setting the pot down to prevent my possibly-shaky hands from sloshing the hot liquid all over my exposed arms, I reluctantly dragged myself over to the front counter to greet Emil.
"Morning," I said flatly. He didn't look up, didn't respond, but merely stepped through the half-door that led behind the counter. His first thought was to fill machines, but I had already taken care of them, so he ended up just making himself some sort of girly, sweet latte and sipping it blankly, weight shifting from one foot to another. Obviously, conversation was virtually impossible, so I pretended to be busy counting the coins in the cash register.
It was such a relief when the first customer slouched in, groggy from lack of caffeine. More and more began to line up, until the awkwardness was hardly noticeable through all of the orders and rushing around. The distraction was fantastic, keeping my mind off of subjects I was so eager to avoid. Emil seemed to be thinking the same thing, plunging his head into his work and keeping it there. The only words we uttered to each other were the drinks I needed him to make.
As the morning rush of business men and college students dissipated, carelessly leaving their cardboard cups strewn along the tables, a group of three blonde men pushed the door open and entered, laughing, a small boy in tow. Peter was clinging to Tino's sleeve, not shyly, but more as a precaution just in case he found something worth his interest that he just had to drag Tino off to see. Berwald kept glancing back at the two of them, a light behind his eyes that I rarely saw, the ghost of a smile at the edges of his mouth when he looked at Peter. Mathias was laughing obnoxiously, leading them to their usual table.
Every inch of me wanted to rush over and indulge into the ridiculousness of their conversations, the nonstop pestering of Mathias, and the magical little moments when Peter did something sweet. More than anything, though, I wanted to escape the icy presence churning out steaming coffees like a madman in the back room. My eyes kept following their lips, trying to pick up their conversations, but they were too far away for me to hear anything they were talking about. I was looking past a customer, watching as Mathias ripped up napkins to drop confetti on a squealing Peter's head, when he glanced over at me, grinning from ear to ear. The smile faded a little at my expression, sensing my discomfort. Announcing something to Berwald and Tino, he stood abruptly and drifted over to the counter. I cursed to myself, not really wanting to talk to him alone any more than I wanted to work with Emil.
"How are things going?" he asked, propping his elbows up on the counter.
"I have customers," I muttered, walking away to fill an order. I could've told Emil what the customer had ordered, but that didn't provide me with an escape route.
"We can talk when it's less busy," Mathias offered when I returned with an iced coffee that was basically freezing my hand off.
"No thanks."
"No, really. I can come in later tonight." He sounded proud of himself for thinking up something so great. "You guys don't get too many customers in the evening, right?"
"We close at four," I grumbled. He grinned, accepting it as an invitation.
"Alright! I'll be back at four, then. Oh, and can you get me a large coffee, a hot chocolate for the kid—"
"Back of the line, idiot."
