Oh gosh it feels like it's been forever since I've updated rather than a little over a week and for that I'm so sorry, exams have been driving me up the wall with all of the revision and such that my minds been in a completely different place! I hope for those who celebrate guy fawkes you had a wonderful time.

In all honesty I'm not too happy with this chapter but I owe you lot at least this much, and oh! Somebody gave me a suggestion I've actually been working on writing out on top of this as another not-so-quite baby but kind of baby chapter in Mathias' point of view so maybe that's something to look forward to (':

Keep being the wonderful readers you are with all of your kind comments and suggestions, see you next time!

Bjork - Play Dead

So Lars decided to take a bit more of Mathias' philosophy on life and spin it into his own. He'd lie down on the floor when the Dane left for work or whatever and listen to music as loud as it would go, for a vinyl anyway, quickly alongside all of the Arctic Monkeys and Velvet Underground appeared Lana just as the blonde had suggested and Lars would admit she had the voice of a fucking angel. On the occasion he'd pull out the guitar Mathias had brought of him and play along. Some days after work he'd bike and catch the train to the nearest beach and just watch the water for ages, and on several occasions he found himself flanked by Mathias who would sit quietly, smiling to himself in amusement and even a little pride as he snapped matchsticks against flint and threw them into the sand where they stood proud like wooden gravestones.

He would admit life got easier when he took what Mathias had said into consideration, the female singer's voice was like a sedative when he was nervous, smoking whenever he wanted instead of saving it was another worry crossed off his list, anyway if he needed another pack and was short of cash all he needed to do was ask the Dane for another. So for days he'd smoke till he was senseless or he just wouldn't touch nicotine at all. He let his worries float alongside him rather than meld into his being made it easier to breathe and he supposed he was thankful for the advice. It didn't change the fact he was still fighting crippling anxiety, but now he could just put it off to the side for a while until it became too much.

He was thankful for a lot of things, all thanks to his Dane, his Dane that has been unconsciously following him throughout his entire life. Before him he had never seen a diamond up close, he had never kissed anybody in the rain nor had he run through a forest at an ungodly hour to be picked up by two men in a convertible. He had never imagined going through abandoned buildings just for the sake of it and he had never seen the sentiment in cameras until he caught sight of Mathias' walls covered in past memories that were captured on print. Even if they were long lost blips in the time lines of existence and even if sometimes Lars would find Mathias staring longing at a handful of them, angrily at others and guilty at double the amount, they were precious to the Dane and eventually Lars began to see them similarly even if he weren't apart of any of those memories.

Lars was thankful for all of the experiences and opportunities, he was thankful for how when he did go to the beach and Mathias came along that they'd sit on the sand, their fingers overlapping each other's and they would find themselves kissing each other until they couldn't feel their lips and Mathias' polaroid ran out of film. Stacks of pictures of the sunrise or the sunset, of hands and freckles and eyes and lips sitting beside them when they grew too lost in the taste of each other, their hands lacing crowns in each other's hair.

They were the boys, men, with a million things on their minds that dug trenches in their thoughts to make them think at deeper levels, made them live on a different plane of existence to everybody else. Hyper-aware almost. Lars with his appointment book full and Mathias with his shot glass never empty. They prided themselves on being relentless and unforgiving to the world they were born into but showing mercy to those within it. Prided themselves on self-deprivation and the deprivation of sleep, their drinks liquor of caffeine and either way it kept them up to experience the world. They could be anything and already they felt like they were everything in a world where they were nothing.

He could almost feel like he conquered the world with his words, with his experiences with the verbs and nouns and adjectives that came from his mouth without so much thought and yet Mathias had said time and time again how it sounded like he was reciting poetry when he spoke. When he was younger he had dreamt of washing the world away with a new language, to create new beginnings with a simple sentence. He felt like he was almost there, having already build up the structure of a story only he and Mathias knew the plot to, the punch line to the end of each joke and the starter to each statement.

Lars would sit on the sides of the road with Mathias if it weren't the beach, the balcony or some cafe that made them look and feel more prestigious than they both were. They'd watch the rest of the planet go by for the entire day or maybe just a few minutes, a few hours, however long it took for them to feel content with the steady flow of people walking in and out of their sight as their lives ticked by. They'd sit in silence and try to focus on their thoughts but even the slightest noise be it somebody talking too loud or their own breathing would make it near impossible to piece together irrelevant sentences in their heads.
They'd put them together, the sentences that was, so they weren't alone in their own thoughts so it would blossom into instantaneous conversations that would die as quickly as they came. Lars was happy with his life, he was happy with his company and he was happy knowing that no matter what happened around him there was only one person that filled the rest of the breathing space in his own little world where everything was twisted and time wasn't a concept known to either of them.

As he sat again at their favourite spot on the stretch of sand with the faint sound of the train station in the distance and the crashing walls of water battling to muting it he thought how sad it must be to be other people with lives so monotonous and dull that he would have once been condemned to if it wasn't for the unpredictable blonde curled at his side. Everything had once been so silly and unimportant and the material things in life still were, the patterns and expectations set down before their time could dissipate into thin air and he couldn't care less. Or not that he'd notice. He was too busy focusing on how nice it was between the black and white patterns of real life, the grey where the nicest things were disregarded because of the so called blandness. Thick rain clouds that cried on the nicest of souls to be held and be made happy for one were one of the most wonderful things Lars had come across, he'd seen the storm on Mathias' cheeks and in his eyes and he couldn't deny that anything could be more beautiful. He was cliché loving the broken boys and broken thoughts but he still loved seeing happiness touch the blonde's laugh.

He rested his chin against the other's hair and continued to let his mind float away while his body remained firm on the ground, and he could almost make out the faintest shadow of Mathias' own thoughts up their in the clouds with him. His demons were written down as the sweetest of poetry and his angels the adjectives. Mathias cuddled in closer, his hands curling around the Dutchman's fingers and a happy purr like kind of sound came from the back of his throat. The Dane looked his wealth that morning, his clothes entirely black save for the gold chain looped around his neck, his hair immaculate, designer brands worn with pride. Lars daydreamed of nothing in particular with the ocean as it's backdrop, his mind still whirring information he'd long since thought he'd forgotten and it created dozens more. How daydreams usually lasted about fourteen seconds, how how his life no matter how surreal it felt was not one of those, how even if that was true half the day was spent in fantasies it felt like his entire life on earth had been built up on them.

He'd been spending too much time listening to Mathias. Not that he was complaining.

They'd arrived back to theirs in the early hours and surprisingly enough Lars didn't feel the effects of skipping so much sleep, they parted with a farewell kiss as they went their separate ways for the day. Mathias made a promise to go to the park on his way home to find some dainty flowers to give to Lars and to which he just laughed at his fool and started his day feeling light headed and happy. It didn't last however when he went to spend the last few hours before work with his sister who had flown in to remap her city of birth.

His sister so sweet and soft spoken when it came to it furrowed her brows together and shook her head, curls bouncing around her face like springs. "Lars you fool, when are you going to marry that man?"

"Marry?"

"I swear you two are almost like a married couple, don't wait for him to do it."

"Alice don't be idiotic neither of us are ready for that kind of commitment."

Her eyes narrowed, lips pursed and again she shook her head violently. "I won't hear of it. You two need to grow the fuck up and grow the fuck up together."

Just when he thought he'd organised his life just a little bit the very idea began to tug at his conscious until everything unravels and felt disorganised all over again. The look on his face he was sure was pained as he thought about it and he wouldn't fib and say he hadn't considered it before. But succumbing to his notion of marriage it he really started to believe it was the only way everything would be neat and pristine again. He thanked her with a kiss on the cheek before taking off with his drink in hand and his head heavy with an idea he'd truly been trying to avoid for an indeterminable amount of time.

xxx

Elizabeta was already waiting for him as he pushed through the doors to his office, her nails picking at her skin in what appeared to be impatience. She looked up almost gratefully at his entrance and before they'd even made their way inside she began to talk.

"It's strange that somebody with your job would be so heavily affected by society." The Hungarian said, choosing not a seat to rest against but rather the desk right in front of him, the lid of her water bottle being fondled by her hands. Nails a deep blue that day.

"It makes it easier to understand what people are thinking if you think it yourself." Lars said, his arms crossed against his chest. "It's easier to sympathise. Are we going to talk about you today or me and my private life Mrs Héderváry?"

"I'm not too sure doc, I can't say there's anything wrong with me." She smiled, looking down at him and he realised her placing wasn't for relaxation but rather for a sense of power. Control. Her head set too high, her eyes confident. A confidence that faded once he stood to tower over her.

"Though I can say that you obviously have a problem with shifts in power."

"In a society run by men it's hard for a woman to have any sense of that. Would you sit down I'm uncomfortable."

"Of course." His notebook was set back on his lap and his fingers mindlessly toyed with his pen. "So what are we going to talk about today. Mathias or the fact you're suddenly affected by how I stand."

Her eyes narrowed dangerously for a moment, before she shook her head and crossed her arms across her chest, gaze being diverted with an air of defeat. Discomfort.

"Mathias is a safer topic don't you think?"

"I'm not in this area of work to gossip about the continent's most famous. What's triggered this, you were so comfortable last week?"

"Material problems, nothing important."

"Obviously it is."

"Don't you think your boyfriend has his head in the clouds? It's truly fascinating to sit down and talk with him because as soon as you mention one thing he'll go off on a tangent and say something along the lines of 'have you ever wondered what the stars would tell observing the world before they die in the sky?'."

"And what would they say about you Mrs Héderváry?"

"One of the brightest stars have already told me they can tell I'm troubled just by the pitch of my tone over the phone. I wonder what you have to say about me."

"I agree with that star of yours. What's your husband's name? Tell me about him." The pen that had been banging against the blank page of his notebook was already poised and ready to be used.

"Roderich, he's a prodigy when it comes to music. However as of late he's been a little too absorbed in it, I think it'd do him better to see you than I. He's certain the notes and melodies are telling him that I'm in an affair which is ridiculous. I may be a woman who has the ability to wear the pants in a relationship but I am not one to abuse my position." Her toying moved from her water bottle to the ends of her hair. "It's ludicrous that he thinks music can tell him that when I'm possibly the most open person he'll ever come across. Tell me you agree he's gone completely mad?"

"You're the one seeking professional aid and not him, perhaps you could convince him to come in?"

"Perhaps."

"Mrs Héderváry does he hurt you?"

She sucked in breath, her scowl being turned to the ground. "Yes."

"How?"

"If I interrupt him a lot of the time I've been screamed at till his voice was hoarse, twice on different occasions he struck me."

Lars nodded as she went on, the odd comment being slipped in here and there in between rapidly scribbling down what came from her mouth. He fuelled her to go on at some points, his brows pulling together the more hesitant she grew to answer questions and eventually to his dismay she'd broken down to tears on his desk. Silently he passed her a box of tissues and put down his notebook.

"Our session is up but I want you to come back in next week."

"Whatever you do, do not mention any of this to Mathias."

"This is entirely confidential I don't discuss patients outside of this room with the person in question." He led her to the door, worry weighing down his shoulders however hers seemed to be held lighter as if a weight had slid of hers and fallen onto his. "He doesn't even know you're here."

"Oh he does, I've told him I've started seeing you already however." She hung her head. "I'm being serious about this, he would kill Roderich if any of this got out. His fast, he's strong, he's very skilled and I swear to got if word got out he'd put all of that to use."

"Mrs Héderváry I promise. I'll see you next week."

He was thankful for her being his last patient for the day, as soon as the door swung closed he rested his forehead against the wood and tried to grasp the concept of how others managed to push away their morals when it came to this job, how they didn't let their own personal opinions run their mouths. In all honesty if Mathias was going to kill her husband he was sure he'd be right there alongside him to eradicate the earth of one more speck of scum on the population of humanity.

So for a few moments he let himself imagine what that would be like, to be standing in a world of power side by side with Mathias. In the blood of winter, the air crisp and the most disgusting population of people at their feet.

It was more than a little worrying how easy it was to picture.

xxx

When he went back home, late at night and exhausted from yet again listening to people's problems while still trying not to attack something out of the thought of one of his patients taking abuse. He found a slight change to the apartment. One of the lounge walls had been completely covered from floor to ceiling in inciting yet intimidating paintings, vague strokes of black paint created figures, sentences, and flowers that climbed to the stars of the roof. He spent a few minutes scanning over the artwork that he didn't think Mathias had the skill to create, foolish perhaps Mathias was full of things he still didn't know. Paying the rest of it no mind he left his things in the living room, paint splatters all over the floorboards as if to imitate and inverted version of the glow and the dark painted stars on the the ceiling.

Mathias wasn't anywhere in sight so he let himself spread entirely across the mattress and fantasise about nothing but sanity.

xxx

He woke at the damnest hour of the morning to the silhouette of Mathias blowing smoke rings towards the walls of printed memories and written poetry. The hand that remained cigarette-free caressed the length of Lars' arm and traced an icy path with the trail of his touch. He had to squint to try and make out the other's features, shadows hiding the slow upturn of his lips and only just managing to shield the heaviness of his eyes with it's taint. That wasn't to mention that the single ear bud he could make out hanging out of Mathias' ear had the sound amped up loud enough that he could hear every word from whatever the Dane was listening to it mingled with his dirty breath to the point that every inhale was timed with the slow beat of the music. Upon shifting closer he found the entirety of the Dane being colder than ice and a deep chuckle reverberated off the brick walls at the movement. The hand on his arm when to his knee and squeezed softly, a silent acknowledgement to the fact he was indeed semi awake.

The light that crept through the thin curtains glinted against the edge of what appeared to be a half empty bottle of wine, and beside it a pile of daises that looked linked together in a chain. Chuckling quietly at the promise kept by Mathias earlier in the day he leant across the blonde's lap to brushed his fingers against the petals before his hands fell limp again.

Mathias eventually snuffed out his affliction against the edge of the bottle of wine that sat on the bedside table and he shifted down under the covers until his frozen toes were pressed against the backs of Lars' calves and his frostbitten nose was nuzzled against his shoulder. He curled close, the sour smell of vomit and liquor present on his every exhale and at the low hum of Mathias' voice did Lars allow himself to go back to sleep.

The middle morning leaked into the slow pace of the afternoon and before the clock had ticked over to half 2 Mathias had padded against the bare wooden floors with his hair still bed-kissed and wild from tossing and turning in the sheets and his smile lazy and half crawling up his face. He curled up against Lars' thigh, the smell of the bedding still poisoning his skin in with the stale scent of cigarette smoke and exotic liquor that he'd been nursing as a means to swallow down the prescription medication that specifically stated they were not to be taken with alcohol. If it weren't for the overcoat of over-priced perfume and the undertone of his natural scent Lars might have told him to wash. Mathias ran his hands up his forearms to make the sleeves of his hoodie bunch at the elbows, the hood being pulled close to his face but not over his head as if to block out the light but almost instantaneously as his head met Lars' clothed leg he relaxed.

A few seconds of quiet led to Mathias popped saliva bubbles that left a suggestive sheen on his lips, Lars had to force himself to focus back on his work or else he would have ripped off the Dane's clothes in the most peculiar sort of way.

"Mathias that's fucking disgusting."

He stopped.

However he was disappointed to say the least that Mathias had yet again turned to the bottle of wine as a means of comfort to lead him by hand over the boundary from morbidity to ecstasy. The times he'd found the Dane abusing substances to take the place of what Lars usually did for him had dwindled down to hardly every however once he was gone, even if for a while, the dependency clicked back in place and riddled the Dane's head with the idea he wouldn't survive without the possessive hold of alcohol to keep him steady. That he needed something to diminish whatever acted as the puppeteer pulling the strings behind his every thought, his every smoke ridden breath and at the rate he blinked.

A few hours passed of just Lars flicking through scribbled notes of people who suffered with the pressures of the world in the worst of ways or had little to none issues and ranted about the stupidest things, how their wives were having an affair they were aware of, how their neighbour kept fucking them off, how they once got their expensive suit ruined by rain water when they tripped over their own feet. His hand absently weaved through the Dane's hair as he flicked through sheet after sheet of complaints and problems and obscurities and secrets people entrusted in him. By the time everything was put down he couldn't tell if Mathias was still conscious, the steady beat of his heartbeat against Lars' lap suggesting unconsciousness however the rhythmic pitter patter of his fingers against Lars' knee had him considering otherwise.

"How are you Mathias?" He said, breaking the soundless atmosphere, the drumming against his thigh stopped as Mathias pondered for a moment.

"I'm happy."

"Sadly happy or happily sad?"

"Both." He rolled over so his face was pressed into the Dutchman's leg. Lars pulled him up carefully, the other moving fluidly to settle in his lap as Lars left delicate kisses on the porcelain of his cheeks, over as many clusters of freckles he could get to, on the hue bruising the skin under his eyes and for a few brief, self nourishing moments he wished they would engrave there and stay on him forever like a brand. Mathias' arms settled around his neck comfortably and he felt pliable under his hands.

"Why is there sadness in such a beautiful heart?"

"I don't know, you know me I just get too overwhelmed with life and I don't know how to deal with the whole magnitude of things so...I just sort of want to be smaller, minuscule even just drifting out into the sea like you've said my eyes do whenever I feel like this. Suddenly I don't feel so weightless or fearless and I've just sunken into reality where I...can't get away from anything? Unless I'm with you, you make everything better, you make me not want to drift off. It's always there, like the quiet murmur of your anxiety it's there. Hazy but there." There was space in his exhale like a full little zero Mathias kept after the air left his lungs as if he were savouring the hitch between his breathing. A moment similar to death where the muscles in his heart had rested and the Dane himself was resting there. He smiled as he took in another breath, leaning back from Lars until his arms slipped away and his flexibility became apparent and he arched back perfectly till his fingertips brushed against the wood. "But there's still happiness, more so right now than at any other possible point."

When he came back up his hood was covering his hair and nostalgia tickled at the back of Lars' words that remained captured still in his vocal chords. It was like Mathias were trying to remind him of the past, the pullover an almost replica what he'd been wearing years ago, the stark black a contrast to his skin tone the only difference he could actually see the other's smile. He nuzzled his face into the hood of the other's jersey and kissed him slowly, letting it burn increasingly deeper and his fingers pulled away the fabric to take purchase in the Dane's hair. He had a thing for that he thought.

"My life would be scarily dark if it weren't for you Lars, you've made things worthwhile." Tenderness touched his words and Mathias licked a horizontal stripe across the Dutchman's bottom lip. To which Lars attempted to catch the muscle with his teeth but missed by mere millimetres. "It's a pity how every time we've met you barely remembered my face, every time I remembered though, scared of the fact you were there and confused by why you always were but forever grateful you turned up at the right moment."

Lars pressed his nose into the heavily scented crook of the Dane's nose and hummed at the vibrations he could feel from the other's words. "It's so bizarre. It's like lady luck, or fate or whatever it's called out of the blue remembered us. Something happens to either of us and it remembered we existed. I'd learnt so many little, unimportant things about you over the years, how you dress, the way you drawl when you talk, the look in your eyes when you gain interest. I'd remember those things at the strangest of times and..."

"And.." He muttered.

"Suddenly you'd be there to build on that knowledge. To give me more things to find as a reminder of you whether it be another person with the same ridiculous side fringe you had when you were at school, or a place or a word. Just when I thought I'd forgotten it'd bite me in the ass."

"Effective way to ruin an otherwise poetic paragraph Mathias."

"Oh shut up." Lars laughed at the reappearance of the fierceness in his tone.

"That's more like it." He let strands of hair from the other's fringe drop and drape around his fingers. He admired the way the light hit each natural highlight, shining healthily unlike the way his own had when he'd gone through the phase of bleaching it monthly. Mathias imitated the gesture on the back of his neck, tickling the ends of Lars' hair before stroking down the bumps of his spine before they vanished under the collar of his shirt. For several minutes of unadulterated brilliance did Lars feel like he couldn't come down from the clouds, so high up, so breathless and light that the idea of it made fear grow in his stomach.

"Some of us aren't prodigies when it comes to language dipshit." Mathias smiled sweetly and pressed their mouths together. "Actually most of us aren't and most of us don't have the taste of that language still on their lips afterwards."

"Now you're just being sweet."

"Now I'm just being honest."

Lars almost smiled back but kept his mirth expressed inwards, amused at how highly Mathias thought of him. How clueless he was of how he used to wear black to mourn the way words would bury deep into his skin and for so long he was unable to dig them out to use them the way he did by the time they'd met. It'd taken him time to caught his use of language from the wide open space full of flying thoughts that slipped between his fingers whenever he tried to pinch inspiration from one of them and allow his tongue the ability to form them into his own words. As Mathias pressed deeper, his lips moving sweetly, tasting bitter and his body weightless Lars wanted to explain how his thoughts possessed no character and sounded like the ramblings of a mad man to somebody who didn't understand how words could be used. The compliment did however wrap it's arms around the Dutchman's slither of an ego like a welcoming embrace, and eventually that smile that had been trembling on his mouth escaped through his broken down wall of self control and transformed itself into shaping the words 'I love you, I love you, I love you.' He couldn't imagine ever kissing anybody who burnt any dimmer than Mathias, couldn't imagine what it'd be like to be deprived of such sweetness and security.

Love was such a big word for only 4 letters.

xxx

There was a sense of achievement and a feeling as if all his silent prayers had been answered knowing for the past few months he'd had the privilege of sharing moments alive, breathing, thinking in the presence of such an enigma. Kissing until the sky turned red and lips turned redder, dancing to music not played and tangling legs under cool sheets until it was hard to figure out whose limb was whose. Their bodies burning after engaging in a bedroom sport until they were breathless, or rather it was hard to tell which breath was their own and their bodies were marked in so many different ways to show they belonged to each other. And for some strange reason they always found each other under the watch of stars in those moments, illuminating their lives with their dead glow from the infinite cosmic void, their minds not held down to earth by any one force of physics but everywhere at once throughout the stretch of time, meeting in history, in alternative worlds.

Perhaps they'd met when the world had just been created, taking the scripted roles of Adam and Eve out from under the original characters. Or in the places of nation that had risen and fallen and conquered from under the dirt. Being the leaders of wars, of art, of music and inspiration.

Something deep inside Lars told him they were made for more, something even deeper told him that somewhere else in the ever growing, impossible universe that they were out there again living on as long as the planet did and took claim of whatever they so wished.

It was strange.

But it felt like that was the reality they should have been born into.

"You feel it too don't you?" If it wasn't the beach, it was a roof no matter the building they'd climb the walls until they found a way out and up to look over the city. Mathias didn't turn his head as he spoke, as if he were addressing the city rather than Lars.

"Feel what?"

"This doesn't feel right, like we're in the wrong version of reality." He sighed out smoke and rested his chin in his hands. Lars shrugged, the gravity of his words clawing deep in the marrow of his bones. He agreed and rather than voice it he simply nodded and took the cigarette from the Dane's hands and to his own lips.

"I feel like the both of us were made for something more. Immortality perhaps. To be infinite, but anything but being human. It's too plain." The fingers not already occupied took up toying with the edge of Mathias' shirt sleeves. "Gods in human bodies would suffice even."

"Good." Mathias laughed, a dry sound and he closed his eyes, leaning as close to the edge as he could. Worry seemed to pinch at his brows, a kind of tension he wasn't able to restrain. Lars could have sworn pain twisted on those features. "I'm not the only one who feels it then. I wonder what we'd be like in a different place? If we were different. Would we even be this close?"

"I'd imagine not too much different, you'd still be hanging onto a million and one addictions and I'd still be neurotic and have better hair than you."

The Dane rolled his eyes and playful nudged Lars' side. "Yeah, yeah dream on. And we'd still go through a packet and a half of cigarettes a day."

"And we'd still love each other."

"We'd still love each other." Mathias agreed. "But then again, we were made to love each other Lars, there's no doubt about it."