Chapter 14: Fiction

I remember, it was one week later. You and Sam, you came back from a job. Some vampire problem in some city I didn't know. And I had stayed here like you had wanted it. You needed me save, and who was I to deny you that? I hadn't even followed you. I admit, I had thought about it, but it hadn't felt right. And I began to put more trust in you than I ever thought was possible. You would come back, and you would be whole and undamaged, and you would be whole and undamaged for me. It was only a try really, a test if I would be able to let you go without hovering over you like a ghost. And you haven't disappointed me.

And it filled me with everything I could dare to ask for, that the first thing you did, after you had entered your bunker, was to look for me. As if you needed me to recharge, to come home, to fully arrive. To really know you're save. And I can be that for you. Your peace pole.

You came to me into the room with all the dark wooden tables, with the little lamps on them, and smiled. Your hands grabbed my shoulders for a moment, when you went past me to sit down on the chair next to mine. And my eyes followed you and saw you were happy to see me. I don't know, where Sam was, maybe in his room, but it didn't even matter, not to me and not to you. The only thing mattering were we, here, here in our togethership.

"How've you been?" you asked, and it almost seemed like a riddle to me and for a minute I looked at my hands, as if I could find its solution there.

"How have you been?" I asked, because you already knew my answer, I saw it in your eyes.

"Fine," you said, as if to be surprised by it, "job's done. We're not in pieces."

And even when the shortage of your words almost seemed like you didn't want to talk, there was so much more you told me without words. And it was enough. It was enough for me. And enough for you. And perhaps I hoped for more details to your story, perhaps I hoped in general for more to happen, but in the end, perhaps we are nonetheless the ones painting on our canvases. Perhaps we were in some kind of bubble, where everything is fiction, future and prediction. But could I not see into the future and make the fiction in my head become real, I would still choose this very bubble as the place I want to be. Because only there everything feels infinite, because you make it infinite, in your never ending mortality.

"You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful."

(John Green, "The Fault in our Stars")

Your hand settled on my arm, warm and soft, and then again somehow still holding everything I was, and you said silently, "I've missed you"

"And I have bought Scotch for you," I said just as silently, with the bottle of brown liquor in my hand, as if it was the only answer there was. You smiled and I knew, you had understood.

"I'll get some glasses," we both said at the same time, as we equally stood up. A little bit confused, no, surprised maybe, and however amused, we looked at each other and shared our quiet laugh. Again your hand found me, found my shoulder, found my face and its cheek. And you stared at me with a gaze I didn't know yet. And it was as if I saw you for the first time. Your thumb moved slowly, just once, across my rough skin, and it was as if you wanted to say something, and at the same time absolutely nothing at all. And had I first hated your quiet, it now captured me completely and I couldn't help but love all about it. And when you, suddenly and fully unexpected, like the visions in my head, like the future I wanted to see, laid your lips onto mine, just for a tiny moment really, I finally realized, how real my fiction was. How real we were.

"I love you like a drowning man loves oxygen. And it would destroy me to have you less."

(John Green, "The Fault in Our Stars"; free translation from German)