Chapter Text
Being different is complicated. You don't feel like you fit in, you can't belong anywhere. You feel strange, as if something inside you is wrong, as if you are the problem. That feeling that your very existence is a mistake that others can see, judge, and point at.
And being a teenager is also difficult. The physical change you go through, the psychological... the transition from childhood to adolescence is a hostile territory, a labyrinth of mirrors where your own image feels strange to you. Your voice cracks, your body grows in directions you don't understand, and your mind fills with questions that no one knows how to answer. You feel like you have no place in this world, like everyone else received an instruction manual and you forgot to ask for yours.
Lawrence knew that feeling well. At fourteen years old, he was already an expert at feeling out of place.
Lawrence was born in a small town, one of those where everyone knows everyone, where news travels faster than the wind, and where anything different is always a cause for whispers. His right eye had polycoria: his pupil was split in two, as if someone had split his gaze in two different directions. Since he was little, mockery was his daily bread. "Witch eye," the kids in the park would call him. "Demon's gaze," the old ladies in church would whisper.
But that wasn't all. His skin had a slightly bluish tint, a shade that no one else in town shared. Doctors said it was a rare condition, something related to circulation, but children don't understand medical conditions. Children understand differences, and differences are punished.
When Lawrence started high school, the hell intensified. Teenagers, without a doubt, were much ruder and crueler. The taunts that were once childish games turned into shoves in the hallways, into "accidents" where his backpack ended up on the floor, into nicknames that cut into his skin like knives. Being different is horrible in a place like that. It's like wearing a sign on your forehead that says "hit me" and being unable to do anything to take it off.
His parents tried to comfort him, but their comforts always had the same bitter taste. "God made you this way for a reason," his mother would say while hugging him. "You have to be stronger," his father would assert, as if strength were a decision and not a muscle that gets tired from so many blows.
But Lawrence wasn't only physically different. There was something else, a secret he kept deep in his chest, a secret that weighed more than his split pupil and more than his bluish skin. Lawrence had never fallen in love with a girl. At first he thought it was just a matter of time, that he would eventually feel that attraction everyone talked about. But time passed and nothing changed.
At twelve, he tried to convince himself that lying was the solution. When his classmates asked which girl he liked, he invented names, described smiles he'd never seen, fabricated sighs he'd never felt. But the lies grew bigger, harder to sustain, until the day came when he could no longer keep lying to himself.
He had fallen in love with Yakob.
Yakob was his best friend for as long as they could remember. A teenager one year older, with dark hair and an easy smile, with hands always cold and hugs that tasted like home. They had grown up together, played in the snow, shared childhood secrets that later became blurry memories. Lawrence remembered winter afternoons running through snowy streets, snowball fights that ended with both of them laughing on the ground, afternoons doing homework in Lawrence's room while his mother brought them hot chocolate.
Yakob was his safe place. Until that safe place became the source of danger.
It was an ordinary day, one of those when you don't expect your world to change. Yakob had laughed at something, one of those genuine laughs that crinkled his nose, and Lawrence felt something he had never felt before. His heart raced, his cheeks flushed, and a horrible thought crossed his mind: I want to kiss him.
He pulled away from Yakob slowly at first, with excuses that sounded false even to himself. "I have to study," "my parents won't let me go out," "I'm sick." But Yakob wasn't stupid, and Lawrence knew he couldn't avoid him forever.
Fear paralyzed him. He remembered his father's words after church, those sermons about what was "natural" and what was "abomination." He remembered how the priest talked about sin with fiery eyes, how the parishioners nodded their heads as if they were talking about the weather. In that town, difference was not tolerated. And what Lawrence felt for Yakob was the most dangerous difference of all.
Nights became long. Lawrence cried into his pillow, muffling his sobs so his parents wouldn't hear him. He couldn't stand how his heart raced every time he saw his friend. He couldn't stand the lump in his throat when Yakob put a hand on his shoulder. He couldn't stand feeling like a monster for something he hadn't chosen to feel.
So he kept pulling away. And every step he took away from Yakob broke his soul a little more.
One day after school, when the afternoon was beginning to turn grey and snow was starting to fall, Yakob waited for him at the exit. Lawrence tried to dodge him, turn in another direction, act like he hadn't seen him. But Yakob was faster, and soon their paths crossed.
"Lawrence, I need to talk to you," Yakob said, and his voice sounded different, more serious than Lawrence remembered.
"I'm busy," Lawrence lied, looking at the ground, counting the cracks in the sidewalk as if salvation lay in them.
"Busy doing what?" Yakob asked, and there was a tremor in his voice Lawrence hadn't heard before. "Busy avoiding me? Busy acting like I don't exist? Busy breaking my heart day after day?"
That last sentence broke something inside Lawrence. Tears began to fall, hot against his cold cheeks, and before he could stop himself, everything came out. The truth. All the weight he had been carrying for months.
"Because I love you," he said between sobs, his voice broken, the words coming out like a river that had been dammed for too long. "Because I love you in a way I shouldn't, because when I see you I feel like I can't breathe, because every time you smile at me I want to kiss you, and that's wrong, you understand? It's unnatural, it's a sin, it's everything my father says is bad, and I can't help it, I've tried not to feel it, I've tried to push you away, but it hurts, Yakob, it hurts so much..."
They fell silent. The boy with glasses feared the worst. A punch. An insult. A "you're disgusting" spat out with hatred. Or something much worse: seeing Yakob walk away forever, watching him cross the street and disappear into the snow, taking with him the only light Lawrence had.
But no.
Yakob took a step forward, then another, and when he was close enough, he whispered something Lawrence could barely hear over the cold wind:
"I feel the same way."
The words floated in the air like snowflakes, fragile and beautiful. Lawrence looked up, his eyes swollen from crying, and saw that Yakob also had tears in his eyes.
"Since when?" Lawrence asked in a thin voice.
"Forever," Yakob replied, and smiled, that smile that crinkled his nose. "Since we played in the snow and I liked watching you laugh. I thought it was just friendship, but then... it grew. And when you started pulling away, I thought I'd done something wrong. I thought you'd discovered what I felt and that it disgusted you."
"Never," Lawrence said with an urgency that surprised him. "What you feel could never disgust me."
They looked at each other for a long moment, and something changed between them. It wasn't a kiss, or a hug, or a grand declaration. It was just a look, a silent acknowledgment that they were no longer alone.
And so their relationship began.
But what was born in secret had to live in secret. It was difficult in public, and in private they still acted like friends, and that hurt Lawrence too much. How the hell was he supposed to show his boyfriend how much he loved him if he couldn't even give him kisses or hugs anywhere?
At school, Yakob was just "the older friend." On the street, they walked separated by a space that seemed like an ocean to Lawrence. In church, they sat on different pews, and Lawrence spent the entire sermon praying that God wouldn't read his thoughts. At Lawrence's house, Yakob was the "playmate," and when parents weren't looking, they dared to brush each other's hands for a second, just one second, and then pulled apart as if burned.
And it bothered him even more when he saw other couples his age, boys and girls who could hold hands in the park, who could kiss at the school gate, who could show off their love like it was a trophy. They didn't have to hide. They didn't have to make excuses. They could be happy in broad daylight, while Lawrence and Yakob could only love each other in the shadows.
It was horrible. He could never do that, and it broke him.
But they stayed together. Because despite the fear, despite the danger, despite the sleepless nights and Sunday sermons, Lawrence preferred a hidden love to having no love at all. He preferred stolen seconds to years of emptiness. He preferred hands that brush against each other to hands that never touch.
It was one of those winter nights that hit small towns hard, when the wind whistles between the houses and the snow covers everything like a thick blanket. Lawrence was in his room, watching the flakes fall through the window, when his phone vibrated on the nightstand.
It was Yakob.
"Come to the school. I'll take you somewhere special."
Lawrence looked at the clock. Ten at night. Outside, the cold was unforgiving. His parents slept in the next room, and he could hear his father's snores mixing with the wind. Sneaking out of the house was dangerous. If he got caught, the consequences would be severe.
But Yakob was waiting for him.
Without thinking further, Lawrence began to get ready. He gathered his long, curly hair — it barely reached above his shoulders, because the school didn't allow boys to have longer hair, though he would have liked it much longer. He put on his glasses, looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, and for a moment stopped to observe himself.
His right eye, with its two pupils looking in opposite directions. His bluish skin, more noticeable under the cold bathroom light. His thin body, his trembling hands. He was strange, he knew it. He was different, he felt it. But that night, for some reason, he didn't feel ugly. He felt like someone about to experience something important.
He went out through his bedroom window, the same one he had escaped through other times when the house became too small to contain him. The cold bit his face, and the snow crunched under his feet as he walked through the yard.
The streets were almost empty, which was logical at that hour. The streets of that old town were tired, covered in snow, just like its inhabitants. He only asked one thing of those streets: that the solitude remain as it was, that no one appear, that they leave them their shared solitude.
He saw Yakob at the school entrance. He was wearing a thick sweater and a scarf that covered part of his face, leaving only his bright eyes visible. They greeted each other with a simple "hello," a greeting that needed no more words, a greeting that tasted like "I missed you," "I'm glad to see you," "this is dangerous and I don't care."
They walked in silence at first. Yakob suggested they go to the park, the one near the old factory, the one no one visited in winter because the paths became treacherous with ice. As they walked, they talked about unimportant things: Yakob had failed his math exam, his father had scolded him, hit him. Lawrence nodded, because blows were nothing new for either of them. Their parents always hit them to "make them men." "Men don't cry," they would say as they raised their hands. "Men are strong," they would say as purple bruises formed on their skin. For them, the blows were already normal. Something that hurt, yes, but normal nonetheless.
But Lawrence's mind was elsewhere. It was on how their bodies were so close to each other, close enough that their hands almost touched as they walked. He felt self-conscious. He wanted to hold his hand, but fear overwhelmed him. What if someone came? What if they were seen? Even if there were no people, what if someone looked out a window? What if the whole town woke up right at that moment?
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and took his boyfriend's hand.
Yakob just looked at him for a moment, and then smiled. He didn't say anything. There was no need. They kept walking like that, fingers intertwined, like two normal teenagers on an ordinary night.
Yakob was always cold. Lawrence had known that since they were children. Yakob had a hard time regulating his temperature, and his hands were always icy, seeking warmth anywhere. When they were little, Yakob enjoyed putting his hands down Lawrence's neck to make him scream. Lawrence always thought that maybe Yakob had anemia, something that would explain his extreme paleness and that constant need for warmth. It would also explain why his parents were so neglectful of him, why they never took him to the doctor, why they never worried about those hands that were always cold.
But now, Lawrence didn't want to think about that. Now he just wanted to feel the weight of Yakob's fingers between his own.
They arrived at the park, but not the usual park, a part that Lawrence didn't know. The trees had no leaves, standing like skeletons against the night sky. They walked too far, so far that Lawrence began to wonder if this was really a park or a forest. He couldn't see the end. He couldn't see any lights. Only trees, snow, and the occasional fallen trunk that the storm had knocked down.
"What are we doing all the way out here, Yakob?" Lawrence asked, a hint of fear in his voice.
Yakob stopped. He slowly let go of Lawrence's hand, as if separating from that contact hurt him. Then, with a slowness that felt eternal to Lawrence, he brought his hands to the face of the boy with glasses.
"It's something I've wanted to do for a long time, you know?" Yakob whispered.
Lawrence held his breath. Their eyes met, and in the dim light of the snowy park, he saw something in Yakob's gaze that he had never seen before. Courage. Desire. Fear. Love. All together, all mixed up, all intense.
Yakob tilted his head. His lips brushed Lawrence's for an instant, a touch as soft as the falling snow. Then, without letting Lawrence think, he kissed him.
A tender kiss. The first kiss.
They slowly pulled apart, and Lawrence felt the world had stopped. His whole body was vibrating. His heart was beating so loud he was sure Yakob could hear it. His lips still felt the warmth of the kiss, a warmth that contrasted with the winter cold.
They looked at each other for a few more minutes, admiring each other in silence. Yakob was beautiful in the moonlight, with his pale skin and dark eyes. Lawrence imagined he must look just as beautiful, with his curly hair and glasses fogged by his breath.
And they moved closer again. Another kiss emerged between them, but this one was different. This one was hungrier, more needy, as if the two of them had been holding back that kiss for years and now couldn't contain it. Yakob closed the distance with an urgency that Lawrence found beautiful. He was hungry, yes. Hungry for contact, for skin, for Lawrence.
Kisses spread all over Lawrence's face: from his forehead to his cheeks, from his nose to his closed eyelids. Then Yakob went lower, and started kissing his neck, softly biting, making those little hickeys that Lawrence had seen in the movies his father watched behind his mother's back.
Yakob had seen some movies, yes, those where people kissed and the kisses went down to the neck, and the other person let out moans. His father had told him those sounds meant they felt good. And Yakob wanted Lawrence to feel good. He wanted him to know he was loved, desired, that there was nothing wrong with him.
Lawrence tried to hide the sounds coming from his mouth, embarrassed, aroused, scared. He felt like he was in one of those movies, like it was both a sin and something beautiful at the same time.
"I love finally having you in my arms, my Lawrence," Yakob whispered between kisses. "I wish I could kiss you my whole life."
Lawrence felt tears beginning to form behind his eyes.
"I love you so crazily," Yakob continued, his voice hoarse, trembling, "that I feel like if I lose you, I'll lose my mind."
And they returned to those soft kisses from the beginning, sweet kisses, kisses that tasted of promise and farewell and everything in between.
Because maybe in that corner of the world, among bare trees and freshly fallen snow, they could love each other freely. Without fear. Without guilt. Without the weight of a town that would condemn them if it knew.
Maybe, just for that night, the world could be a different place.