Chapter Text
It was quiet in the house, loneliness seeping out from every crack in the walls. Melchior lightly rapped his knuckles on the door, though if he were being honest with himself, he wasn’t expecting an answer. The door had been unlocked, but the car out front was gone. Either someone had forgotten to lock the door (which the boy highly doubted- the Stiefel's were careful people), or another member of the household was still inside.
He made his way into the small living room. It had been ages since he had last set foot in the house. The place that used to be a second home to him was now as unfamiliar as the home of a great great uncle your family visits once every-other year.
Melchior felt a small tug in his chest, something similar to longing. In a way he missed this place, or more so, missed the experiences he had filed away in his memory. Of times playing with his friends when they were children full of innocence, playing pirates or knights in the yard, and sneaking into the house by climbing the tree into the back window to help Moritz on his homework when his parents were away.
Moritz. The boy shook his head, reminded of the reason he was in the house in the first place. With a large intake of air, he gathered his courage, and headed up the stairs to a room that he used to know as well as his own.
This time he didn’t knock.
“Moritz. It’s been a while.” He spoke softly, not wanting to frighten the teen.
He wasn’t expected to be greeted in a friendly manner, but even words of anger would have been more comforting than the silence that followed. His ex-best friend, unruly locks of hair defying the laws of gravity, sat hunched at his desk below the window, scribbling. Moritz hardly bat an eye at the taller boy’s voice, instead continuing with his paper.
“Moritz? I’m… I’m back.” He quickly adjusted the watch on his wrist. “From boarding school. Let me tell you, those other guys must have been raised by wolves or something; absolutely no knowledge of any great literature from before this century.”
Harsh silence served to be the only form of acknowledgment.
“I know you can hear me. Come on, we need to talk about this.” Melchior began to shift his weight to take step forward when the chair began to turn. A grim expression was revealed, etched upon the older teen’s pale features, dark bags sinking deeply into his eyes. A hand rose, arm stretching out until it was pointing straight at Melchior. Or more so, the door behind him.
“I-I don’t understand. Just answer me-” He was only met with another, more violent gesture.
“Do you want me to leave?” A nod.
“I will, I’m sorry Moritz, I just don’t see why you’re acting like this.”
The older boy shook his head, and turned the chair back towards the desk, where he once again hunched over the paper, scribbling away as though the taller male was never there, just a ghost in the dark doorway.
Melchior turned back towards the door, questions littering his mind. He was dumbfounded as to what had just happened, and why Moritz was refusing to speak with him. Hesitant footsteps made their way out of the house, until he was back outside on the sidewalk. A light rain had begun to fall, sinking into the white pavement and turning it dark and gray.
“Just great.” Pulling up his hood, Melchior began to trudge back to his own home, which was situated a few blocks away.
Later in the evening-
“Melchior, is something bothering you?”
The teen glanced up, broken from his trance of pushing his food back and forth with his fork.
“You’ve hardly touched your sauerbraten. I thought it was your favorite.”
His gaze met a pair of eyes so full of worry that he couldn’t throw out a white lie as per usual.
“It’s Moritz.”
“Oh right! I thought you were going to visit him today. Was he not home?”
Melchior shook his head. “No, he was there. But… He wasn’t entirely there.”
He recounted the morning to his mother, hoping she would have some sort of idea as to his friend’s strange behavior.
“I don’t understand, mother! He wouldn’t even acknowledge that I was there. He wouldn’t even speak to me!”
Mrs. Gabor frowned, taking in the new information and analyzing the situation as a therapist would for her patients.
“You have the right to be upset, but I would not blame Mortiz for this. To my understanding, he was in a rough place recently, and I believe he needs some time. Give it a few days, and try not to let it get you down. Besides,” she smiled “you start school again tomorrow. It’s Senior year, you need to be on your A-game!”
“Oh. Right.” With a shrug, Melchior picked up his dishes, pretending not to notice his mother’s worried glances as he scraped most of the sauerbraten from his plate into the trash.
Confusion and an unfamiliar sense of guilt was beginning to claw its way into his chest as Melchior tripped up the stairs to his room. His mother’s words repeating in his head.
“He was in a rough place recently.”
Moritz had always been a shy, angst-filled boy, but that was not uncommon in teenagers. Melchior never noticed anything off about him at the end of the school year-
The boy froze in his tracks, hand resting on the doorknob of his room. He had not paid much attention to Moritz at the end of the school year- instead opting to spend time with Wendla. In fact, his best friend had hardly crossed his mind.
This realization left Melchior with an unfamiliar ache- guilt- clawing into his chest, biting and scratching at him until he began to shake.
Unsteady hands fumbled to close the door behind him, his bedroom a blur.
Melchior lay down, head against his pillow as he stared up at the blank ceiling. He was tired. The room was spinning- words, thoughts, phrases, worries, Moritz- all flew around his head all at once.
He didn’t even remember falling asleep.