A/N: As always, please review if you enjoy it!
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Emil pulled out his phone and dialed Leon's number once he was out on the street. He needed to talk to someone he could trust not to twist his words in his panic. His heart was racing, and he knew he was in the middle of a full-blown anxiety attack. He couldn't believe he had admitted to Lukas that he wanted to die! What the fuck was he thinking?!
Leon picked up on the first ring. "Emil, is everything okay?"
"Nothing is okay!" Emil gasped out. "My brother said some things to me and I freaked out and said some stuff I shouldn't have!" He was near the point of hyperventilation. "Can you meet me at the park between our houses? Please?"
"Yeah, sure thing," Leon quickly said. "I'll see you there in five." There was a click as he hung up.
Emil held his head in his hands. What had he just done? Lukas and Mathias were going to kill him when he got home! But he couldn't go back just yet. Everything seemed so off, and the world was spinning. He could barely breathe. All he wanted at that moment was Leon.
When he got to the park, he noticed that Leon wasn't there yet, so he sat on the swings and pulled his jacket tightly in around him. It was a colder night, and the windchill just made it even worse. He frowned to himself as he began to push the swing to and fro with his feet. Why couldn't things just go right for once? Why did he always have to fight with his family? It wasn't fair! And why did he have to tell them he wanted to die? That was the worst!
Pounding footsteps were heard running toward him and he looked up to see Leon sprinting toward him. He quickly wiped his eyes and asked in a weak voice, "Did you run here?"
"Well I couldn't just leave you in distress, now could I?" Leon asked with a grin. He bent over to catch his breath. "Besides, running is good for you." He sat on the swing next to Emil's. "So what's going on? What happened after Mathias chased me out?"
Emil swallowed. "Well, I stayed in my room until Lukas came home, and then everything went to hell. We started yelling at each other, and then I told them that you're the only reason I even want to be alive…" His voice trailed off. "It's just stupid. It's all so fucking stupid."
"If it's important to you, then it's not stupid," Leon simply stated. "And I'm glad that I'm a reason to be alive. Come here." He pulled Emil into a hug and kissed the top of his head. "Everything is going to be okay, Emil. I promise."
"How can you be so sure?" the silver-haired boy asked him, hiccuping. "Things aren't always that simple. What if we get caught by the murderer while we're out here tonight?"
"Then we'll at least go together," Leon answered with a shrug.
Emil chuckled darkly. "It's so like you to answer like that." He frowned. "Why did I waste so much time distancing myself from you?" he asked no one in particular. "If I knew I would be this happy, I would have accepted your love much earlier."
"Y-You would have?" Leon asked, trying his best not to stammer in his surprise. His eyes were wide, but he decided to keep it cool. "I-I mean, of course you would have." He smiled confidently until Emil reached up and pinched his cheek. "Ow! What was that for?"
"You're a terrible liar," the other boy laughed. "You wouldn't have known that." He brought his hand back down to his lap and smiled. "But thanks anyway. It helped me feel a little better." Emil shivered slightly from the biting wind outside. He knew he should have grabbed a warmer jacket on his way out the door, but he was just too upset to.
Leon frowned. "Are you cold?" he asked. He began to shrug out of his own jacket.
"No, it's okay," Emil quickly said. "I don't want you getting sick because of me. I'll manage. I'm used to the cold. I'm from Scandinavia, remember? This here is nothing." He smiled up at Leon, struggling to keep his teeth from chattering.
"How about we warm up?" Leon suggestively asked, raising an eyebrow at Emil.
The other boy felt his heart pick up in pace. "D-Do what?" he asked. "What do you mean?"
"You know, we could just pick up where we left off in your bedroom," the Asian boy answered, nodding toward the public bathroom at the park that was open year-round.
Emil's eyes widened as he looked up at Leon. "You really want to do that even though we haven't even been together for a week?" he asked.
Leon chuckled to himself. "Emil, we've been doing similar things through phone calls for a couple months now, haven't we?" he asked.
Emil weighed that out in his head. It was true, they sort of had. He then got up from his swing and held his hand out to Leon. If he was going to lose his virginity that night, he didn't want it to be to anyone but him. "Let's go," he said.
This time, it was Leon's turn to be shocked. "You're serious? You really want to do it with me?" Nevertheless, he took Emil's hand.
The Icelandic boy pulled his boyfriend to his feet. "You're the one who suggested it, so don't act all surprised and shit when I accept," he huffed. "Now let's go." And with that, he led Leon to the public bathroom of the park.
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Lukas paced in the living room of the apartment, coffee in hand. He was on his second cup as his pacing picked up in speed. "Mat, we have to go," he kept saying. "Emil is in danger. I can sense it."
"It's the coffee," Mathias answered, looking up from the magazine he was flipping through on the couch. "He's only been gone for twenty minutes."
"Yeah, twenty minutes too long!" Lukas nearly shouted. "I need to know that he's safe, Mathias, okay?! You may not understand this because you're an only child, but he's my baby brother! It's my ass if something happens to him, and I'll never be able to live with myself knowing that he was hurt because of me!"
"What do you mean because of you?" his husband asked, putting the magazine down.
"We were fighting, and it was my fault. I said things I shouldn't have," the Norwegian sighed. "I said things that resulted in his storming out. "If only I hadn't said what I did, then he'd be perfectly safe and I wouldn't be breaking down like this!"
"And what do you remember saying that caused him to leave?" Mathias asked.
"What are you, a fucking therapist?!" Lukas angrily demanded. "I used his own words against him when he said that death was preferable to living with us!" He polished off his mug of coffee and threw himself onto the couch next to Mathias, burying his face in his hands. "Oh, God! Oh, God! He's in danger!"
"Calm down, Luke," Mathias said, rubbing his back. "I'm sure he's fine."
"'Calm down.' That's all you say! I'm sick of it! My brother is in possible danger with a murderer that's targeting people from his school, and you're just telling me to calm down!" Lukas gave his husband a look made of pure fury. "I need to go out and look for him! I need to tell him that I'm sorry!" He made to get up from the couch, but Mathias, being much stronger than he was, grabbed his arm and held him down. "Let go of me! I need to go and find my brother!"
"Give him a little more time," the Dane answered. "I could not be any more serious, Lukas. If he is still angry and sees us coming for him, he might turn and run, and that won't help him or us."
Lukas slowly nodded to himself, but he couldn't help but think that his brother's life was in serious danger that night.
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Ivan decided to go to bed early that night. His head was killing him from all of the homework that he was doing. Everything seemed to be piling up for him because his mind always seemed to be elsewhere. His mind was always thinking back to Chun-Yan and the unfortunate circumstance that took her from him.
He knew he would never forgive the man or woman who took his best friend from him. He couldn't. There was no way in hell! Everything was just too hard without her. Ivan had no friends now because of that person. That person was going to pay when Ivan finally caught up to him or her. They were going to pay with everything they had.
As Ivan started to drift off to sleep, something told him that wasn't going to be a normal night. He started having a weird dream again.
In this one, he got up and grabbed the usual boxcutter from the drawer, but this time he also grabbed a brick from the front lawn. His mother was always trying new gardening ideas, so there were always random bricks lying around. Surely, she wouldn't miss one.
He walked for what seemed like miles until he came across a male walking his way. The male was someone he recognized immediately. He was none other than Chun-Yan's younger brother, Leon! And Leon seemed to be distracted by something, as if he were on Cloud Nine.
"Ivan!" he excitedly said. "It's been so long since I've seen you!" He ran over to him. "How have you been?"
"Awful," Ivan flatly stated. "What has you so happy?"
"Nothing really," Leon answered, face turning bright red. He followed Ivan as he continued walking toward a dark alleyway. Little did he knew that Ivan was luring him there. "Where are you walking? Want me to come with you?"
"Yes, actually," Ivan answered, knowing that Leon was too dense to notice what was really going on. "Would you mind coming with me?"
"Not at all," he answered, eager to tag along. He had always looked up to Ivan since he was a kid. Ivan always seemed so cool to him since he knew his sister didn't hang out with just anybody as often as she hung out with him. "What's up?"
Ivan began fiddling with the brick and the boxcutter in his pocket. "Nothing, really," he answered. "Leon, why are you out this late?"
"Well, I came out to meet up with my boyfriend," Leon answered. "He was having a really hard night, but I managed to cheer him up."
"That's good," Ivan answered. He pulled out the brick. "Look, Leon, I've always seen you as a little brother. You've always been annoying as shit, and you've always known too much about me."
"What are you talking about?" Leon asked, noticing the brick in Ivan's hand. "Ivan, what's going on?" His eyes widened as he was piecing it all together. "You killed my family, didn't you? You're the one going around killing everyone, aren't you?" He was too shocked and stunned to move. "Why?"
"Just as I thought, you're too smart," Ivan sighed. "And you know too much." He frowned and tossed the brick in the air, catching it again in his hand. "I'm sorry, Leon, but I believe this is where we part ways."
The Asian boy's eyes widened. "No! Ivan, please! I won't tell anyone if you just let me go!" His heart picked up in pace as he stood there in what he knew were his final moments. "Please don't kill me! I can't die yet! Ivan, please!"
"No amount of pleading will change the fact that I'm going to kill you tonight," Ivan answered with a smirk. Without another word, he walked up behind the other boy and smacked him, hard, in the back of the head with the brick, knocking him out. "I really did think of you as a little brother, Leon," he told the unconscious boy as he fell to the ground. "But I think you'll be much happier with your sister, you know? She needs your company."
He bent over the boy and placed the boxcutter to his throat, stabbing it in and slitting it. For good measure, he stabbed it into one of Leon's temples as well, like he had done with Peter Oxenstierna. He then flipped over Leon's body and pulled up his shirt, carving, "I AM ASLEEP" into his chest. Ivan took one last look at Leon and frowned. "Enjoy your time with your sister since I can't," he said before leaving to wash everything off in the river.
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Ivan woke with a start. Everything was the same as it always was when he woke from these dreams. He was tired of having them, but then again, he couldn't tell anyone about them without being blamed for the murders, so he always kept them to himself. Though he wondered how long he could contain the burden of knowing how those people died, but wondering whether they actually died by his hand or not.
Though he was nearly certain that he didn't kill them, he was really concerned about who had. After all, he was sleeping every time they died, so it wasn't like he was the one killing all of those people. It was almost as if in his dreams, he was seeing from the eyes of the murderer, and it made him so uncomfortable. He wanted to seek psychological help, but he didn't want people thinking that he was the one doing it. That would be too much.
Ivan's heart raced as he thought about it. It gave him too much anxiety to think about it. What was going on with all of these crazy dreams? But at least he knew who the next victim would be. It was Leon Wang, and that was going to hurt.
What Ivan couldn't understand was why he would say such hurtful things to Leon in his dream. It was true that he thought of Leon as a little brother, but not in the ways he said in the dream.
When they were younger, Ivan would always help Leon with his homework after school and Leon always went to him for advice. Why was Ivan so cruel in those dreams? It was almost as if it were another person posing in his skin. It made him so uncomfortable.
Whatever was going on, it made Ivan uncomfortable, and he wished that it would stop happening.
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Emil waited up for Leon's phone call that night, but it never came. Instead, he picked up his phone and called instead. There was no answer, and it made Emil nervous. Surely Leon made it home, right?
Maybe he just took the long way home after we had sex, Emil tried to tell himself. He did seem pretty dazed by it. Yeah, that's probably it. Calm down, Emil. There's no reason to be panicking. He'll call you back.
Leon didn't end up calling Emil back that night, so the Icelandic boy made a mental note to lecture his boyfriend the next day at school before crawling into bed and falling asleep. Little did he know what heartache he would face the next day...