im so sorry about this being so late I've been drowning in school work/friend things that I haven't had the time and ah so sorry
anyway I might end this soon, it's going to be hard to end it nicely but I think people are getting a little restless at the moment so ye
hope you guys are having a lovely time
thanks for all the kind reviews and comments too

(so sorry if this is edited horribly it's nearly 4am and I need sleeeeeep) I'll work on it tomorrow pinky promise)

Girls Like You - The Naked and Famous

He dreamt about Mathias the whole night, the whole week and the whole month and a half he was left without a taste of his darling Dane. He dreamt of that scars, tattoos and constellations of freckles that decorated his pale skin. He dreamt of eyes like the ocean that would switch from calm to hell with the direction of the wind. And he dreamt of those strange cryptic words that would pour from Mathias' thin lips and embrace him like a sin, a curse and a miracle. He'd wake up alone, daylight warming the frown he always found on his face when the realisation hit him every morning that come day he was torn away from his Mathias who he woke up without and could only touch in his dreams.

Stupid how the hours and days of separation are what it took to show him just how deep he was in this. Each time the Dane spent longer and longer with him was pure bliss, every moment they weren't near each other... Well it reminded him how big the risk of was of losing him. It was torment. His hands longed for his warmth and the best he could do to find anything similar to him was to press one of his shirts to his face, trying not to feel like a creep while he tapped out ash to keep his hands occupied with something resembling that warmth.

His work had been mindless, the world around him dull and he tried not to think about how harrowing it was that he remained entirely dependant on somebody who was hardly ever there. He taught classes on a numb tongue, and a numb mind and felt like a stranger to the 30 odd people who filled the lecture hall when they were acquired to be there. It was rather pathetic that he was so immersed in his own self pity that he felt like he didn't know a single face in a room of people he'd talked at and to for nearly a full year. When he grew too restless when he was away from his students he would find his fingers wandering over lead sketches of sharp cheek bones and dead eyes. It unnerved him how as the weeks progressed the what used to be so soft drawings turned into thicker lines, sharper angles, and the deadness in the eyes spread to the rest of the facial features until every line was oozing with an emotion he couldn't quite explain. The nights and afternoons he'd spent chucking his notebook away when he found himself too immersed in the little details morphed into him spending days without touching it to start anew and rip out the pages so the memory of them wouldn't be burned into his retinas.

He started to hum to himself when he began to draw after that, to stop himself to thinking and to keep the strokes of his pencil point light and soft. Eventually it began to reflect the all consuming longing that had been eating away at him since the Dane's departure.

Codependency was wearing him down to his rawest form and it was driving him insane.

No it wasn't codependency it was love, there. He admitted it. It was love. The hellish feeling that kept him up until he dropped and tarnished his appetite was love. Time passed to slowly for his impatient nerves, it passed to quickly when it mattered most and seemed to stretch on for eternity when he'd accepted it in all it's mentally destroying glory.

In his fitful last effort to find a way to let his mind be he agreed to meet up with his sister. Sitting on her porch with a mug of coffee one hand and a marlboro in the other he watched the wind card through the grass. Everything she was mindlessly chattering about went through one ear and out the other but he was content enough to say that the melancholy thoughts that had left him a little breathless had come to a halt and he was at peace. And perhaps just a little more than wistful listening to the soft murmur coming from his sister as he chain smoked until he was sure his lungs were about to give out. It was becoming increasing evident that he still craved another's company.

He jolted when he felt a pair of legs wind around his shin. Looking up questionably at Alice he raised a brow.

"You're not paying attention to me."

"You have my full attention."

"Nooo you've gotten all dreamy eyed. What're you thinking about?"

He shrugged and she leant forward as if what words were about to leave her mouth would be carried away by the wind and lost to his ears. "You remember that boy you used to write about in high school. The one that was only there for a day?"

How could he forget. He nodded.

"I have a feeling he might have found you again and you didn't even realise it." Alice's smile was as soft as her tone as she covered his hands with her own. "I was talking to Mathias about his high school life and he mentioned that he'd done not even a single day's worth of work in a school in the Netherlands."

Oh.

"And I asked where. He gave me the name of your school."

Holy shit.

"He said he said there was a boy who was probably the first normal human being to talk to him in nearly a whole year. Isn't that incredible? And his description of the boy was...unbelievably uncanny to you."

Why didn't he trust his gut.

"Lars I think the next time you see him you need to ask him about it but I could have sworn that everything he's ever said, and compared to those poems you used to leave on the backs of napkins as if he'd find them... I have a feeling both stories line up."

He'd only talked about that day once with the Dane, Mathias who kept his eyes down the entire time and smiled and nodded when it was his cue to do so but otherwise remained entirely and surprisingly quiet while he talked. Mathias who brought up knowing him at another point of time before Lars had moved in on very few occasions and each time the more he thought about it, it should have been obvious, the way he'd speak about the topic as if there was something Lars should have noticed. Mathias who held the same scars and a little extra that he'd covered up with permanent drawings as opposed to the ink of a ball point pen that would wash off.

Fucking hell how could he have been so blind. The veil dropped from his eyes and suddenly nearly everything made sense.

"He's been at work so I don't know when I can bring it up." He slipped his hands out from under his sister's and ran them through his hair. Leg shaking under the table and teeth biting the skin of his lip raw he tried to keep an anxiety laced irritation laced anger attack from forming. "When the fuck did you think it would be a good time to tell me this?"

"He only told me this last night." She said. Lars looked up, nostrils flared.

"Excuse me?"

"He was over last night."

"He hasn't been home in a month and the first person he thought to talk to was you?"

"I guess." As he rose from his seat Alice mimicked the action and held a hand to his arm. "Lars don't be mad he seemed pretty desperate to tell somebody something. Look he's probably home or something now but he looked like he was in pretty bad shape."

"He's always in bad shape."

"Lars-"

"What."

"He was terrified."

Without a word he left on shaky legs with an even shakier mind.
He just hoped to god Mathias was back home.

xxx

"If there were a god Lars..." Mathias smiled distantly and curled in closer to his knees. "He'd be begging for my forgiveness."

xxx

He had come home to Mathias being fucked by some lumbering Scandinavian once, he'd come home to him drunk and dancing by himself in the middle of the living room, he'd found him crying alone fully clothed under the fall of shower water and he'd found him hanging off the edge of the balcony on the verge of taking a leap with his clothes billowing in the wind like he had wings. However none of that would have prepared him for this.

Lars Peeters had never been ready to find Mathias with a bottle of whiskey between his teeth, a cigarette still burning on the edge of the bathtub and his hands trembling around his own neck as he massaged thickly forming bruises as if enough rubbing would make them go away. Purple and blue created a definite ring around his pale neck and ate away at the galaxy of freckles and pure white. It was disgusting at most to see him so ruined, to see a man who looked invincible bruised by something or rather somebody Lars didn't know. His hoarse voice had him paying more attention to the words rather than the ruined flesh of the Dane's neck.

"What do you see in me. Disgust? Greed? Vanity?"

He sat down beside him, his own thoughts flowing freely on his tongue. The Dutchman saw no point in lying. "I think you see yourself as heartless. But you have one, tainted with god knows what and I probably won't find out but...It's pretty admirable how ashamed you are to show you feel too much. But there's hatred there beside all the fluffy shit, a queer kind of darkness."

"How romantic." Mathias muttered, grinding a cigarette against the marbled floors.

"Why do you think I see hate Mathias?"

Mathias appeared to be on the verge of turning his chin up at his attempt of psychoanalysing. "Because there's nothing beautiful or to be loved in this filthy world. And I'm just one of the few that are comfortable with it." He continued wrapping his hands around his own neck, the bruises too big to be made by his own hands. Lars pulled his hands away and made the Dane keep them at his sides. "I hate that I don't hate you, and I hate that you don't hate me."

He blatantly ignored the last sentence. "Like I said I also see fear. You're scared to say what you feel."

"I feel like you know me better than I want to know myself Lars." The bitterness sang through clearly.

"Your fear and your hatred...nee.." Lars rubbed his hands over his face trying to word it properly. Funny for a poet to not know how to say something to put another at ease. "It's terrifying, you are fucking terrifying sometimes and unbelievably strange...but beautiful. Everything aside you're still beautiful."

"You have a twisted sense of beauty then."

"You're not too much better."

Perhaps it wasn't the mystery that left the sweet taste on his tongue, oh so tempting like a forbidden fruit that would be heavenly to bite into. It was rather the fact he saw something else that even he was much too scared to say out loud. Despite the other's usually cool exterior and happy smiles and curious words there was something else brewing in there, something else he could say he had the pleasure of nipping at, smoothing his tongue over to catch the taste without getting the full experience of consuming. Lars...would be foolish to say he loved him despite of it, rather in spite of it, because of this...thing he loved him because of it. Maybe. It made the Dane's mouth something akin to weaponry, a mouth full of a sharp tongue and sentences full of shrapnel. The taste of cyanide on his skin was addictive in a way his words could not but that wasn't to say he was a saint. He was confused about this man who knew him since he was a boy, he was unsure of what to make of it. Meeting Mathias so many years later with his first memory being something so faded into history he struggled regretfully to remember it.

Lars couldn't remember when he pulled out the pen and started drawing all over the Dane's curled legs. Some time during his thinking he must have but he didn't stop even when he came back to reality instead of the world made up of pondering and considerations. He could feel Mathias lazily watching from above him as he drew lines between the darkest freckles on his legs, creating his own constellations on the Dane's calves and up his knees to where the fabric of his three quarter sweatpants disrupted his paths. Carefully he inked out names of each little collection of lines and dots once they created some kind of shape and moved on. Only when he felt a cigarette butt at his lips did he look up to the heavy gaze of the blonde who's smile for one brilliant moment actually met his eyes.

"Mathias did you know we'd already met?" He said quickly, almost wanting to swallow them back up again when he saw dejection touch that heart stopping smile.

"Yes."

"Did you know who I was when you first saw me?"

"Yes."

That was all he needed to hear for the time being. The itch at the back of his throat was beaten down and numbed with truth and he was alright with that. For now. One less hidden truth out in the open, one less thing to toss and turn about unconsciously. He went back to sketching on the other's skin before quietly requesting something long overdue. Later he'd think about how childish it sounded, a phrase he hadn't needed to say since high school and he would have regretted asking in the way he did if it weren't for the reply. "...Mathias will go out with me."

"I thought I already was." He grinned and leant forward until their lips were pressed together, he could feel the other smile against their meld and an airy chuckle flowed into his own parted lips. "You idiot of course I will."

It seemed like the right moment for confessions, his new-found and brief confidence already running his mouth and his brain. Mathias slipped away back to his previous position against the bathtub and Lars took his hand in his, letting his fingers brush over the new wounds marring his knuckles. Out of the corner he watched the steady rise and fall of the Dane's chest and eventually the surprisingly bashful smile that spread across his cheeks. He mouthed the words quietly to himself, testing the weight of them before his voice caught up with him.

"I love you."

"I think I love you too."

"Good."

"Nej. Perfect."

He found the other heart to fuse to his own to create that ridiculous stereotypical shape of the organ.
Lars knew..
Things always ended.
To hope that they would last was idiotic and stupid.
If they didn't, his tobacco wouldn't run out and Mathias' laughter wouldn't be always be punctuated with a frown...
...and the honey moon phase wouldn't keep on coming and going at it's leisure due to each of their mood swings.
It was cold hard truth that nothing lasted, but with their hands tangled together and in such a strange, strange world with such a strange man with a strange life he started to withdraw from prying into once he had what he needed he could almost pretend that this would. For once he believed it. They wanted each other to the point the needed each other and they needed each other so obsessively it became a want.

He'd seen both the hideously disturbing and breathtakingly beautiful sides of Mathias. And despite what scared him he staying.

xxx

Mathias sat on the counter, swinging his legs against the cupboard doors while picking absently at a rice ball, chicken and rice sticking to fingers where his tongue couldn't catch it. Lars watched those thin legs kick against the wood like it wasn't even there, completely bare to the chilly morning in a pair of briefs. He was unlucky enough to not be granted the sight of the Dane shirtless. He would curse that jersey if it weren't for the fact that he'd managed to pull his own attention to the thick bands of discolouration colouring the other's neck.

"So you're not going to tell me how you got the bruises." He said moving up beside him while he made himself something to drink. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the other smile and shake his head.

"Nope!"

"Ever?"

"Never ever." He smiled wide. "A man's got to have some private life. Speaking of, are you going to tell me about the job offer?"

He nearly swallowed his own tongue. "How do y-"

"You got another letter a week ago, don't worry I accepted it for you."

"I-"

Mathias held up a hand to cut him off. "And before you say anything I know exactly why you didn't accept it and don't worry I'm coming with you."

"But your jo-"

"Is in any country they need me I only moved to Frankfurt because it's a nice city. Trust me it's fine I've got a studio and everything so you can do your artwork and I can put glow and the dark paint on the walls once it's been painted."

"Mathias you-"

"Really shouldn't have yeah yeah I know but hey! Good thing you'll be getting paid more now you can buy yourself alcohol and more weed while I sort out the re-"

Lars practically swung the other off the counter to press their lips together, one to silence the bullshit pouring out of the Dane's mouth and one just for the sake of it. He couldn't show gratitude any other way than that. How would you show your appreciation to a man who already has it all anyway? That aside Mathias responded with a laugh and continued to press against him, his hands fisted in his hair and his lips moving just as tenderly as Lars'. The Dutchman caught a piece of rice on his tongue that had been stuck to the corner of the blonde's lips before pulling back and trying his hardest not to start blushing like a bloody school girl.

Well he couldn't really help how red his cheeks were, or how big his smile was, or how he may or may not have unfortunately started bouncing on the spot.

"I could fucking murder and-and-and do a lot to you right now Mathias."

"I don't think that would be the best I still have to go in for photos tomorrow but hey."

"But your bruises..."

"Can be hidden with heavy make up, photoshop and or a scarf it's no biggy." The Dane cupped the edges of Lars' face, grin bright enough to be one that would light up the entire city. "Isn't this great we're moving to Belgium."

"I know!"

"Your sister's from Belgium."

"I...know?"

"She...could...show...us around!" He murmured between placing pecks everywhere on the Dutchman's face.

"Mathias you idiot I know that country like the back of my hand." Lars lightly took a swipe at his shoulder and backed away. "So when do we move?"

"Well...That depends on stuff but I.."

"You...?"

"What makes you think I know how all that works? We'll need to go furniture shopping and stuff though." He hummed and threw his rubbish in the general direction of the trash.

"Furniture shopping? What about all of this."

"Lars...all of this is staying right here so we have something to come back to if we're ever here."

He blinked. "Isn't that...expensive?"

"It would be to your pocket. Literally nothing to mine now, we need to talk styles. I say paint the roof and walls black in the bedroom and lounge and string up fairy lights."

"Why?"

"Stars dumbass, something for you to look at when you're stoned. I think we can just go to...ugh IKEA but other than that I think we'd be sorted."

"My...clothes?"

"You can bring them with you unless you want me to buy you clothes which I'm totally down with."

Lars chuckled under his breath and as Mathias hopped down to earth to claim the deck he stayed where he was with the mug of coffee near burning his hands. He'd fallen hard for the echo of a boy he'd once met, with smudged and smoky messages written up and down his forearms he'd made the fatal mistake of reading, understanding and inhaling greedily. He'd swallowed down the strangeness and unanswerable questions and they claimed his system and stuck like glue to the end of his thoughts. He made the mistake of consuming what he could from the Dane, he made the fatality of letting Mathias stamp his name all over the Dutchman's heart.

And still nearly nine years later it was still the description of the sad voice and and hesitant half smiles that found it's way onto the back of napkins, with the additions to his exterior, with the additions to his interior, with the additions to everything new he'd learnt about the kid that sneaked his way into his class. Years of an unfathomable longing for a boy he'd known for all of thirty minutes had been cut short as soon as he'd stumbled unknowingly into the very person who's started it.

He was different to every idea and hope he'd pinned to the once nameless boy, he'd pictured him dark haired dark eyed and a wonkier smile with an even wonkier personality. But no, Mathias was light haired held the ocean in his eyes and had a smile that made him inevitably drawn to him. He held a reckless nature, contained an air of amorous freedom that he indulged in, or once did. The poems and quick sketches of passerbys that he used to fill the void of who the boy might have been were nothing compared to the divine spirit who animated wonder. Consumption. Desirable. Something unavoidable. Something that belonged alongside the stars.

He felt like an astronomer admiring him from a far.
But he was so close that he was singed by how intensely he burned.

Lars loved unmade beds, so when they left Mathias' bed the Dane's finger's twitching for coffee and his face contorted up in a pain he didn't and possibly would never understand the meaning of. He loved how Mathias sat and listened as Lars spoke of the things he loved about Mathias with a smile and a single tear as a poets words left the Dutchman in sentences he wouldn't have thought to have spoken months before, but had said with a nervous tongue at Mathias' bedside the night before. Lars loved when Mathias was drunk and on the verge of tears because then he was so honest to the Dutchman and to himself about his thoughts and feelings, his fingers would be at the brunette's chest scrambling for a rock, a centre, an anchor to keep him rooted when his world became to cave in on him and he was given a lethal dose of reality. He spoke of how he loved the way his hair was flat and his face bare of the make up mask when he would first wake up and forgotten where he was and who he was with and for how a few moments he'd speak in mumbled Danish until his brain ticked over to a language they both spoke. He loved the way how his eyes would close when he took a drag from the first smoke of the day and he would drift somewhere above the skies along with the smoky trail where he wouldn't be able to be touched by the corrupt and dangerous world they lived in. He loved his honesty in his most vulnerable moments and who no matter how he tried to cover it up he could never truly mask the way he felt behind his charming smile and tailored suits.

But most of all he loved the look in the Dane's eye when he first realised he was in love with Lars. It might have been when they had first made love, it may have been hours earlier when Mathias first admitted it. Whenever it was he was happy to have been able to catch that glint of unadulterated emotion in the wildness of the sea.

Mathias waved at him through the sliding doors, gesturing for him to join him and pushing away from the kitchen he stood at the Dane's side and watched the city go on far, far, far below them. He didn't know at what point Mathias had tangled their fingers together but he took comfort from it for it felt as if the hungry feeling and the lonely feeling that had been eating at him for so long had suddenly merged into something more addictive, it was hard to tell them apart.
Well they would have been if he didn't feel needed for once.

"What do you do for a living beside the whole modelling thing." He spoke his thoughts again and tried to swallow them back up and prayed the ground would gobble him up too.

"I deal drugs." He said nonchalantly, his eyes glued to the tops of tourist's heads.

"Thought so."

And that was that. Mysteries shot down and answered and now he could sleep at night.

"Lars." The way he said the Dutchman's name sent shivers through his spine, so breathless. He turned to face him and he couldn't tell if his eyes were watering from the sting of smoke or he was..crying. However the other didn't look back, just kept his eyes to the sky and continued to talk. "You won't ever hate me will you?"

He sighed. "Don't be stupid."

"That's all I needed to hear." His face was calm but his cheeks grew wetter. The faint ginger glow of the sun did nothing to hide the heaviness that made the other's eyes restless.

Humans are...curious creatures. They seek out meaning, wanting some kind of reason to everything and a reply to every question to give them some clarity. Human desperately sought out their own significance with twists of words and deep thoughts in the hopes that they'd discover it. And here Lars was indulging the human characteristic of wondering what the hell was going on, and in particular what was running through the Dane's head. But since when wasn't he wondering that. Maybe it was the sadness that claimed the other's tone and made a tear roll down his cheek. Maybe it was the sudden drop of the other's mood that made little to no sense. He could have used his words, his extensive knowledge of language to try and pull whatever it was out into the open. Dissect it a bit, numb the pain afterwards and reassure the other he would be fine. But he didn't know what to say or how to go about it or what exactly the other's reaction would be and respite the new found confidence and honesty between the two of them he wasn't sure he'd get what he wanted.

So he held onto the Dane's hand tighter and loved him more than he thought it could just hoping it'd dull out his frustration and simply accepted the fact.

He wouldn't know.

But the tightening of his grip was responded to with an equal squeeze from Mathias and the blonde tucked himself against Lars' arm, smoke pouring freely from his lips as he sighed in relief. The content smile he wore was enough to light up the darker parts of the Dutchman's doubts and he couldn't imagine for a minute why anybody could possibly hate him. The initial feeling of bliss came back and he would admit in the sappiest and most cliché manner that yes, despite a strange sense of dread he felt complete clarity and the notion of purpose became evident. To keep him safe. And to wipe away the tears that words could not with the kind of intimacy Lars selfishly hoped he'd be the only one to grant Mathias. Together with hands held tight and feeling like the only two people in the city, the country, the world. The city merrily background music to their own film. Words came to silence, intention fell dead and everything and nothing made sense. Lars wouldn't know why he was sad, what kept the blonde up at night, why it was so painfully obvious that the other hadn't slept for at least three days, or why the insurmountable wave of despair had decided to wash over Mathias at that exact moment. But he knew how to calm his heartbeat. He fumbled on trying to take away that sadness but against all odds he was still able to comfort him. He knew he loved with the salt water on Mathias' cheeks and oh how he'd fallen into a deep adoration with the sea.

The most blissful of all of life's luxuries was caught in between them as Mathias cried silently against him.

I love, I love, I love....