Happy Valentine's Day! :D

Suggested Listening: "Till I Fall" - Dan Mangan

Take Your Time

~Lungs~

At highway speed, the surging wind made the open window vibrate. The initial blast of it had forced the air from my chest with the shock of just how cold it was, but now the stinging-needles sensation that accompanied each inhale had become almost comfortable. Dangling limply out the window, my hand I allowed to be turned into an ice cube by the buffeting gust. I felt alive.

And Matt hadn't even complained about my feet being up on the dash – which, you know, was cool.

In order for the music to be heard over the wind, we had the radio turned up much higher than usual. I could feel the driving, distorted guitar from "Sometimes" by My Bloody Valentine like it was a twin to my pulse hammering against my ribcage. I felt pent up, feral, like a lion pacing before the bars of its enclosure. So far, this outlet Matt had so kindly provided was proving sufficient to stop me from going completely wild.

"Oh, Matty," I sighed, tilting my head back and closing my eyes. "How did you know this is exactly what I needed?"

He laughed; I was surprised he could hear me over all the noise. "I know you. If the weather had been nice enough, you would have gone careening off on your bike somewhere, and you wouldn't turn back until you'd either run out of gas or run out of energy. My bet would be on the gas."

"Too true." I sighed again, just for effect, complete with a languid stretch. Matt laughed some more.

All things considered, I was fucking tired. Christmas had come and gone, and somehow, I had managed to complete all of the orders at the shop. Between me and the leather artisan that usually assisted my father, we just barely scraped by: the man put in a huge amount of overtime to complete our custom orders, while I brought the items to be repaired home to sew under my father's supervision. During store hours (which, for me, translated to every moment I wasn't sleeping or taking care of other needs during that holiday season) I was responsible for all managerial tasks. After having me in charge, I'm sure the employees were praying even harder for a speedy recovery for my father; even I had been starting to be annoyed by my demanding attitude.

"Don't work yourself too hard, Mihael," my father had said to me one day as I passed the couch he was laying on, on my way out the door to go to work. "It won't do to have both of us suffering from heart disease."

"Just get well, Dad," I'd said. Then, under my breath: "When you're better, it will be my turn."

But I had survived, and the store was doing well. My father was still required to rest for several more weeks yet, but the situation was no longer quite so dire. It was time for me to take my foot off the accelerator and gear down; Matt was helping me to do that tonight. As a Christmas present, he was driving me up north to see the northern lights, which were supposed to be visible further south than usual due to current solar activity.

Tonight, he was wearing the sweater I'd given to him for Christmas, and I don't even feel ashamed to admit how much it pleased me. (Especially since he looked so good he was downright edible – and, I thank my lucky stars, he's all mine.)

It was quite a drive to our destination, a public campground (free to use, due to the fact that there were neither utilities nor designated lots), so the plan was to spend the night. I was surprised that there weren't road closures in an area this close to the mountains this time of year – not that I was complaining. Matt had told me that he'd done a lot of research beforehand to find the perfect location. I had to give it to him; he'd planned this trip diligently.

I'm aware I give him a hard time for being lazy, but I know very well how much dedication he puts towards the things he cares about. If he put half as much energy into other areas of his life as he does detailing his car or writing code at his computer, he could very well be capable of taking over the world.

But then, if he were any different, he wouldn't be him.

So, I guess the world will just have to be satisfied with not having video games being an integral part of school curriculum and shirts not only being available in striped variations; Matt is otherwise preoccupied.

"Why are you giggling?"

I opened my eyes and blinked rapidly to get rid of the blurriness. "I don't know…?" More like, I wasn't even aware I'd been doing that… out loud.

His eyebrows disappeared under his bangs as he raised them. "I don't think I've heard you giggle in a long time…"

"That's because I don't giggle – ever. That was… a higher-pitched chuckle." I was just hoping he didn't ask me why I had been giggling again. I didn't want to have to explain it to him and have him know just how loopy all this stress was making me.

"That's not the first time I've heard you giggle," he insisted.

"Oh, yeah? Name one!"

"Easy." Matt smirked. "The time in elementary when Near came to your birthday party, and we dared him to inhale helium from a balloon and then sing the national anthem. You nearly pissed yourself, you were laughing so hard."

"That doesn't count; I had inhaled helium, too."

He rolled his eyes. "Okay – fine. Then, how about when I do this?" He reached a hand over and pinched the underside of my knee.

The sound I made was so embarrassing that I'm loath to describe it.

And the asshole kept on doing it.

"Matt!" I shouted between runs of hysterical laughter. "If you don't stop – ah! – fucking pinching me – mmph! – I will – goddammit! – punch you in the throat!" He didn't stop; I retaliated by smacking the offending hand repeatedly until it finally retreated. In case he had any more funny ideas, I reminded him: "Throat punch, fucker."

My threat didn't have the intended results.

Matt grinned. "You're so cute."

I glared at him. "Sadist."

If anything, his grin became wider. "You giggled."

"Under torture, yes." I definitely wasn't giggling now.

"It still counts."

I let Matt have his satisfaction for a few seconds of silence before I burst his bubble: "You do realize that I'll have to exact my revenge now, don't you?"

As we pulled into the campground, driving over a cattle-guard and down a gravel road that was squeezed in by the dense trees on both sides, Matt wore a very sober expression.

Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

As luck would have it, the northern lights were very much not visible at our location, as the steep hills we were surrounded by guided a giant cloud in our direction.

"We're close to the mountains," Matt said. "It'll change quickly."

Whether for better or worse was my unspoken concern; I didn't want to kill his buzz, so I kept it to myself. Even if we never got to see what we had intended, I would be satisfied with the entertainment I'd gained from watching Matt search in vain to find enough stones to make a good fire circle.

"You'd probably have better luck looking by the lake," I said from my spot leisurely reclining against the car, arms crossed.

Nearly blinding me with his flashlight as he turned around, Matt pursed his lips. "Why don't you help me by looking there instead of doing… whatever is it is you're doing? I'll find kindling."

"Look under trees," I pointed out ever so helpfully. "And I was supervising… but I suppose I can help – but only because you asked so nicely."

As I walked away, I heard Matt narrate in a ridiculous, posh British accent, "The wild ass, at home in his natural environment, leaves his mate to the task of gathering resources by himself, while said ass goes to get his rocks off at the local watering hole…"

Since he was still pointing the flashlight beam at me, I gave him something to 'observe' in the form of an exaggerated swing of my hips with each step. I called over my shoulder, not even bothering with the stupid accent: "The fine specimen is unfazed by his mate's poor attempt at humour. While you're only getting 'wood', at least I'll be getting satisfaction."

I think it comes with the territory of being two boys that grew up with each other through the stages of adolescence, but we could honestly turn anything into an innuendo. And we didn't feel shame about it, either.

Matt's chuckles followed me and slowly faded as I clomped across the lightly snow-covered field. Over all, it had been a bitterly cold winter, but also pretty dry. It was a change from the past few years where the snow had piled up steadily throughout the season.

Many things were different about this year.

In order to access the lake I'd seen on the drive to the campsite, I ducked under a barbed-wire fence, ignoring the sign stating that it was private property. Considering that I hadn't seen any livestock around, and my purpose was benign, I didn't think that the owners would care that I spent a few minutes on their side of the fence.

Even with the cloud cover, some light filtered through, reflecting rays of blue and green and providing something to see by. As I crested the rise, I saw the lake laid out before me, its calm, pristine surface mirroring the sky above. My throat felt suddenly tight. Faced with the beauty of the scene before me, carrying on as it was designed to be despite the chaos waging war inside myself, I couldn't breathe. It had been there this entire time, but only now did I recognize this lack for what it was: loneliness.

And I felt my anger about it, too. How can you be lonely when you have so many friends that care about you? How can you be lonely when you're a member of such a large family? How can you be lonely when you're so stupidly in love with someone and you know that that person loves you back?

I recalled what Mrs. Callum had told me when she'd taken me aside and hugged me after my grandmother's funeral: "God is with you in your suffering, my boy."

How is it that I could go to church on a regular basis and not find Him there, but out here, in the middle of nowhere, it felt like He was surrounding me?

I bent down and picked up a rock; it was just the size that Matt was looking for. But I flung it towards the lake with a primal snarl. "Why are You doing this to me?"

Why had my father had a heart attack? Why did my family life have to feel like a constant rollercoaster? Why was I plagued with the feeling that I could never measure up?

Why was I made the way that I am? Why is it that when I find the person that shares my love and happiness, I'm told that it's a sin, and because of my behaviour, I'm exempt from the rule of "Love they neighbour as thyself," and I'm therefore deserving of persecution?

What is the point?

I started down the slope towards the lake, only to catch my foot on a rock I couldn't see, slide down the loose earth, and fall flat on my ass in the muddy shallows.

I started to laugh.

Scratch that – I was practically busting a gut.

"Mello?" I heard behind me.

I just kept on laughing.

Then, I felt hands trying to help me up; this made me angry enough to stop. I swatted the hands away, but when they persisted, I resorted to swinging my fists. I heard a grunt each time they connected, but the person didn't back off. Instead, they sat down in the wet sand with me and wrapped their arms around me.

"Matt?" I croaked. My face was slick with tears I hadn`t even known I'd shed.

"I'm here."

"What's wrong with me?"

"Nothing," he said, giving me a gentle squeeze. "Absolutely nothing."

In time, the tears subsided.

I didn't know what had urged Matt to follow me, but I was grateful that he had.

We sat like that, just holding each other on the lakeshore, until there was a sudden drop in temperature and tiny snowflakes danced around us. Everything was so quiet and still behind the foreground of swirling snow, that I forgot myself for a minute or so, feeling the emptiness inside me open up like a yawn. I didn't even realize I was shivering until Matt nudged me. We got up together and walked slowly back to his car.

"Let's get out of these wet clothes…" he said. Then, he mumbled so quietly I almost didn't catch it: "'Sorry this turned out to be such a shitty Christmas present."

I turned to face him abruptly, interrupting him from opening the car door. "Matt."

"What?" He blinked, dislodging a snowflake from his eyelashes.

"Look at me."

"I am!"

I grabbed him by the chin and stared directly into his eyes. "Seeing the northern lights was not why I came with you tonight."

Matt frowned. "Why didn't you say anything? We could have done something dif–"

I growled, "I came with you tonight because I wanted to be with you, dumbass." Then, I kissed him.

Immediately, I forgot all about the cold weather as heat washed over me. Tugging him closer by his belt loops, I covered myself with every inch of him. We leaned back against his car as the kiss deepened, and I let his knees rest between mine. Knowing it would drive him wild, I rubbed circles on his hips with my thumbs, keeping a hold on his belt loops to maintain constant contact between our lower bodies.

Matt pulled back, panting, his hair somehow even more dishevelled than usual and his pupils blown wide. He rested his forehead against mine, and I got lost in the depths of his eyes and the desire that he harboured there. "But you're upset," he murmured in a low, gravelly tone.

"I'll be even more upset if you don't start kissing me again in the next three seconds."

Before the word one could even pass my lips, his mouth was covering mine.

Our wet clothes soon became a non-issue; they were quickly flung to God knows where while we scrambled into the backseat. It was months before I actually found that one sock again (it was wedged deep between the driver's seat and the divider in the middle, for those following along at home).

Everything else ceased to matter as we intertwined in the dark, the only place I wasn't hesitant to bare my soul to him completely. I'll never be able to explain how leaving myself so vulnerable to him, accepting him into me so that – at least for a time – we become one, could make me feel so powerful and so terrified all at once.

When the tension building between us finally culminated, Matt kissed my throat sleepily before resting his head in the crook of my neck, keeping most of his weight off of me by resting on his elbows. I carded my hands through his hair and dozed; the only thing that kept me aware of time passing was the cadence of his breaths, flowing in and out of his lungs as regularly as waves breaking against a shore.

On an impulse, I swiped my hand over the condensation formed on the back window by our heavy breathing and squinted out at the world. Overhead, ribbons of light could be seen rippling in the sky, no longer obscured by the rapidly dispersing clouds. I spoke Matt's name, but received no answer. He was asleep. With an indulgent smile, I decided to let him rest.

Closing my eyes, I succumbed as well, at last drowning in my own exhaustion.

Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

[Written in angry scribbles on a piece of paper taken from a notepad in a hospital waiting room]:

I feel like I am an empty vessel, a clay pot, abandoned on the beach. The sand has rubbed off my glaze, taking all my pretty designs with it. The surf and granules erode my skin until I am left raw beneath an open sky. Eventually, my clay body disintegrates until I am one with the sand, and the sand is one with me. The ocean carries parts of me home in its robust, roiling arms. Its currents crush rocks into powder, and then compress them back into rock again in its unfathomable depths. Perhaps one day the rock will accumulate high enough to poke its head above the waves: a mountain made out of unformed bodies. Not in my lifetime, though. The best I can hope for is to be carried on ocean currents to shores far away. Maybe the remnants of my clay will make up the sand on a beach where a little boy in Portugal leaves his footprints, stopping to look out towards the horizon and wondering if there is someone looking back.

The movements of the ocean, my master, are relentless. I am tossed back and forth, in and out, in movements as mechanical as breathing. The moon watches over the endless toiling. Even the ocean is powerless to gravity, a force beyond our control.

That's always what it comes back to, isn't it?

This circle… It must have a beginning and an ending to be complete, but how am I supposed to find them? How am I supposed to carry on what others have started and left for me to continue? How am I supposed to find meaning? I'm running. I remember this song, this stupid fucking song, that we used to sing in Kindergarten called 'Bear Hunt': "Can't go over it, can't go under it, can't go around it, got to go through it!" I have to go through the circle, succumbing to the pressure and making myself as small as possible – like a planet unfortunate enough to have wandered in the direction of a black hole.

Maybe I am already small.

They tell me that You understand. I say that You don't.

I am an empty vessel and You are an open sky, holding Your arms out wide to carry the world inside Your chest.

I want to share all that I have with You, but I'm scared that I have nothing good left.

Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ

Sometime in the night, we were awakened by the pins-and-needles feeling of pinched nerves and the discomfort of cramped limbs. We extricated ourselves from our situation as carefully as possible (but then pausing to erupt into giggles – yes, fucking giggles – every time our skin would stick against the leather seat and make a funny sound). Miraculously, we found most of our clothes in the dark, sans my one sock, and we emerged from the car into the cold and dark of the night. Matt grabbed a blanket from the trunk, and then we lay together beneath it on the hood.

Matt watched the northern lights; I watched him watching the northern lights. Our hearts were full of wonder.

When we got up to get back in the car to sleep, I caught his hand and brought his palm up to my lips, looking him in the eye as I did so. I couldn't find the words, but I wanted him to know how much all that he was doing meant to me – how much he meant to me. Sometimes, I still choked on the words I love you, because they felt so trite an explanation for the metamorphosis my feelings for him underwent as we grew up together. It's like trying to call a supernova a minor incident.

But I could see it in his eyes that he understood. And he loved me the way I am, as I loved him.

That night, as at any other time, it was enough.

The soft murmur of the news radio station; the nip of cold slipping through the window Matt had opened so he could smoke; and the insistent beam of sunshine making shadow puppets of the blood vessels in my closed eyelids all conspired to awaken me the next morning.

Clearing my throat, I ran a hand through my hair as I sat up. I caught my own squinting eyes in the mirror and grimaced; I had lines pressed into my face from using Matt's sweater as a pillow.

"Beautiful morning, isn't it?" said an unusually chipper – for the early morning – Matt. He was sitting in the reclined front passenger seat, shirtless. I could see goose bumps on his arms, but he didn't seem bothered.

I fell back into my makeshift back-seat-turned-bed with all the grace I could muster. Read: very little – not that I gave a shit. "Fuck you," I shot back.

He laughed as he pulled his cigarette away from his mouth, each exhalation a puff of smoke. "Someone's in a good mood."

"You're a pain in the ass – literally." There was a pain in my lower back, and it wasn't caused by the awkward sleeping accommodations. The knowledge of it incited both feelings of annoyance and satisfaction.

Matt's trademark, so it seemed.

The hypocrite giggled.

"'Think that's funny?" I asked rhetorically. "Next time it's your turn."

Coincidentally, Matt changed the subject. "I thought you're a morning person."

"Not today. Today I feel like death warmed over… and look like it, too."

"'Could've fooled me; you could shave your head and wear a paper bag and still be the most attractive person I've set eyes on."

I snorted, but couldn't suppress a small smile. "Charmer."

Matt turned his head so I could see him waggle his eyebrows. "I've been practicing."

I groaned. "I'm not going to dignify that with a response."

"'Didn't expect you to." He stubbed out his cigarette and flicked it outside. "It sure snowed a lot last night."

Carrying through with the intention of my previous statement, I hummed my agreement rather than saying something. Matt quirked his eyebrow at me over his shoulder.

"Yes?"

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" he asked.

I smiled. "'Depends. Are you still being a total dork?"

"Only seventy-five percent," Matt assured me in a serious tone. "The rest of me is wanting to act like a kid and have a snowball fight."

Before the last word had even left his mouth, I tossed his balled-up sweater at his head. "Last one fully dressed and out of the car is a rotten egg."

Thanks to my stupid lost sock, I lost. But then I nailed Matt with a snowball right to the center of the chest, and that, I must say, was as sweet as winning.

Indeed, this trip was exactly what I needed; I felt my exhaustion melting away by the minute. As for the rest, I didn't have to address all of my worries in one go.

Past or future – all of us are caught in that one miniscule place in between. The present: it only lasts a second. And within that second is contained the chance to place the finishing touch to complete something years in the making, or to remove the keystone that prevents everything from imploding in on itself.

Perhaps what I was doing right then, taking that one second I had to breathe it all in and take inventory of my blessings, was exactly what I was meant to be doing.