Second chapter in, and we've already got drama. Before you decide to buckle in for the ride, I should be clean with you and say that I never intended this to be a very fluffy story. So, um…sorry if that's what you were expecting. ._.

But! I promise that I've tried very hard to still make a very enjoyable story. It's slated for about six chapters, plus an epilogue, so I hope you'll stick around! :)

Lea wakes up to find Isa tracing the spider webs of sleep lines on his shoulder, afterimages that the sheets have left on his skin. He notices the frown pulling at the corners of the other boy's face.

Lea chuckles, "They go away eventually, you know."

Isa continues to focus on the lines with an attentiveness that Lea finds intriguing, "I know."

Isa's fingers follow a line until they are resting on Lea's cheek, before he decides to pull his arms into his chest and snuggle close against Lea's frame.

"I have a bad feeling about today."

Lea instinctively wraps his arms around Isa, forming a protective cocoon of warmth.

"How so? Did you see the future while you were tracing my sleep lines? Are you some sort of diviner now?"

Lea giggles at his perceived cleverness, but Isa gives him blunt commentary, "You are such an idiot."

Isa can feel Lea's cheek resting on the crown of his head, feels it lift into a smile, "Maybe I'm a walking prophecy of doom."

"Lea, I'm serious."

At the sound of Isa's tone, the joking immediately stops, "Hey, hey…what's with you? Usually I'm the dramatic one."

It's true.

Lea is the more theatrical of the two—he spouts existential philosophy and is more moved by concepts and unanswered questions. The boy is a waking dream.

Isa is supposed to be the straight-forward one, Lea's anchor when he chases an idea too far into the clouds. None of this, "I've got a feeling" business. Even so…

"I just…if we leave the house, something bad is going to happen."

"That's silly. I would never let anything bad happen to you."

"Lea."

"Okay, fine. So let's say that today is our last day together. How do you want to spend our final moments?"

Isa pinches his eyes shut, frustration levels mounting because Lea is just not getting it.

After a moment of prolonged silence, Isa says softly, "I'd want you to make me pancakes."

Isa pops his head into the kitchen to find Lea pouring batter into a pan, still clad in his night shirt and boxers.

"You're still not dressed?"

Lea shrugs and rattles the pan a bit, "It's my house. This is what I wear."

He cracks a devilish grin that Isa knows all too well and says, "Watch this."

With a flick of the wrist, the pancake goes flying into the air, landing perfectly on a plate that Lea holds out. Isa rubs a sleepy eye, stifles a yawn, "Impressive."

Lea's smile deepens and he grabs some apples off the counter, throwing them into the air. They roll off his shoulder and he bounces them off his elbow as easily as Isa has seen him flip open a Zippo lighter with just a deft wrist movement.

Not that Lea smokes. He just likes carrying around Zippo lighters.

"I should go pro."

Isa makes no comment and sets his arms and head on the counter, watching as Lea starts slicing the apples.

"You know, like people who juggle flamethrowers and shit?"

"How did we move from apples to flamethrowers?"

The blade hits the cutting board with a slap, and Lea sweeps it across the whole length to push the slices into a bowl, a movement so slick and smooth that Isa has to catch himself from staring wide-eyed. Lea has always had a physical intelligence for these sorts of things. He's up for any stunt so long as it feeds his inner need to prove he's alive.

He skateboards, jumps off second stories, and picks fights whenever he can—the other day he challenged a complete stranger and got his ass handed to him for it. Even though Lea usually wins these sorts of things, Isa can't say he's surprised—it was bound to happen sooner or later, at the rate he was going.

And of course, in true Lea fashion, he somehow managed to befriend the kid after getting the crap beat out of him.

Lea shrugs, a quick tug of the shoulders, "I figure that's how they start—practice with things like apples and then switch to the dangerous stuff for showtime."

He slices through a second apple, the blade smacking against the board once before he is stilled by a particular train of thought. Isa watches the gears turning in Lea's head, watches as his gaze lowers to the knife in his hand, suddenly tenses upright when he realizes what Lea is thinking.

"Don't," is all he needs to say.

Lea's smile is cocky, unaware of the way Isa's spine bristles when he grips the knife tighter, "I bet I could do it. Easy as apples."

Isa can see it coming, the slightest movement that precedes the toss, the glint in Lea's eyes as he commits to the idea. He shouts for Lea to stop, but in a split second he realizes he's timed it wrong.

He's as too early as he is too late—he's caught Lea right in the middle of the most crucial movement, the moment he lets go. Isa's cry is sharp enough to cut through steel, and because it's Isa, Lea is caught off guard. Lea turns his head to face him, a movement that ripples down through his shoulder, a subtle wave that causes him to fumble the release.

The knife goes sailing and Isa's heart stops. It feels like the gravity of the room has turned in on itself, as if everything is being pulled into a singular point, as if the knife itself is dragging the very fabric of space along the pathway it traces. There is only enough time for Isa to realize that there isn't any time for him to move.

Then suddenly, like the rush of relief that floods a space when pressure is released, the knife clatters to the floor and the focus of the room snaps back into place like a rubber band. Nobody moves—they both just stand there, staring at the floor and at the space between them.

Isa takes a deep breath, "What the hell were you thinking?"

"It's okay," Lea says quickly, sensing the quiet intensity in Isa's stature, "It didn't hit anything."

He tries to brush the whole thing off, play it cool like he always does. He flushes a smile, trying to superimpose a sense of humor over the atmosphere, stretching the words across the distance without actually saying them—Ha ha, that was close, isn't this funny?

"Like hell that matters. You shouldn't have done it in the first place."

Lea can feel the pressure of a thousand knives twisting in his stomach as he senses the pull of the room shifting again, only this time the space between them warps and grows, as if the whole situation were placed under the thick curve of a fisheye lens.

Lea feels the distance pressing against him and desperately pushes through, clings to some level of normalcy, "Just forget it Isa, it's fine. Nothing happened, alright?"

Isa snaps, "And you think that had anything to do with you? As if luck were some sort of skill?"

"No, I just—"

Lea winces as he hears the pound of a fist against the countertop, "No! Don't you ever do that again!"

The room silences and Lea is paralyzed, completely stripped of any idea of the correct way to proceed. His shoulders tighten as he squashes the urge to reach out and quell the shakes that have quietly seized the boy in front of him, afraid that his touch will only insight a rage worse than his words alone have provoked. But even this internal conflict pales in comparison to realizing that not once during this entire exchanged has Isa looked up at him.

Eyes still downcast, Isa takes ragged breaths through grit teeth, and eventually leaves awkwardly without another word. Lea just stands shell-shocked, unaware that he's stopped breathing. In all the years he's known Isa, he's never seen anything like this. He breathes in painfully and can only think of one word to describe what he's just witnessed—

Beserk.

Lea finds Isa ten minutes later, curled up on the couch, fighting off hiccups amidst a stream of tears. Without a word, he kneels down in front of him and places a gentle hand over Isa's head, a soft kiss on his brow. Isa has to fight back extra tears as Lea slides in next to him, and he doesn't have the heart to tell him that for all Lea's efforts to kiss them away, it's actually having the opposite effect.

"I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

Lea answers these apologies without words, just light kisses, one after another. Isa can hardly take the kindness, the way Lea brushes his thumb over the tears, how he lays a kiss where it matters the most, right beneath the eye. When it's Isa instead of Lea, this is the spot Isa favors—he has no marks for Lea to cover, but the meaning is the same, an act of complete enclosure. It is all Isa can do to blink away the drops that cling to his lashes, to look past the halos of light before he closes his eyes and claims sleep as the alternative to tears.