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He isn’t sure what love is, but maybe it goes a little something like this.
Like the layers of crusted makeup that are pasted to his face and the contacts that make his eyes burn. It’s the way that he looks past it like it’s not even there and Kieren feels exposed despite the layers of shirts and jackets keeping him bundled tightly against the winter even though he barely feels the chill.
Their hands look the same, their fingernails cracked and purple and they fit together like he dragged himself out of the ground just to wind his fingers through them.
Simon’s lips taste like ash and dirt and he loves it, it reminds him of a place of blissful quiet, when things weren’t as complicated as they are now. Their lungs expand and contract together, a sad orchestra composed of closed arteries and black blood that plays on eternally and only for them, Kieren presses his ear to Simon’s chest in the middle of the night and the absence of a heartbeat is as comforting as the rain on the window while they remain curled tight for warmth neither need.
They don’t have souls, or maybe they do, all he knows is that something swells within him when their eyes meet, two sets of too-white irises and broken blood vessels. “You’re incredible.” he breathes into his mouth while the wind howls over the moors and the gravestones stand solemnly, their contents empty.
If there’s nothing nestled between their ribs Kieren wonders how it is that he’s never felt more alive than he does now.
Death should be something he’s used to but each new loss rips a hole in him, it’s all he can do to continue standing and Simon strokes his cheek like he’s still breathing, like he doesn’t miss her too and he can tell he’s trying to stay strong for his sake. Her name is scribbled on scraps of paper when he’s got nothing better to do, Amy Dyer Amy Dyer Amy Dyer.
Over time it all runs together and if he could cry still he’d weep for her.
amydyeramydyeramydyer
She’d scoff at him and say that it’s now his job to look after Simon, to make sure that Phil is doing alright. His grief consumes him in the most functional of ways, he squishes it into the corner of his being so he still has the energy to get up in the morning. Maybe his focus on remaining standing is the reason he doesn’t notice the tremors that continue to shake his hands.
Simon makes him feel whole. Like he’s real, that normalcy is tangible even though he’d have to be a fool to think that what they have is remotely normal. Simon hates that word, he twists away from it, grabbing his face and snarling “We are not normal. We are so much better than normal.”
Kieren wants to ask him when being normal started being a bad thing. He wants to ask him if he’d still love him if his cheeks flushed with blood when his mouth worked over that spot on his neck he remembered as being sensitive once. He wants to know if he’d still look at him if his eyes weren’t pale and glazed over from a death suffered years ago.
His arms now tremble when he isn’t thinking about it, in the afternoons he throws up black tar and while it burns his throat coming up he can’t help but think that maybe his body is purifying itself. Simon doesn’t see, but when they walk through the mud he can feel his toes get cold from the puddles and it’s terrifying and exhilarating at the same time, to feel his fingers when they trace a pattern on his back in the morning.
In the quiet hours when her home is too empty and it makes them both ache in the place their hearts should be they tell stories. Words passing through their mouths and rolling off their tongues to make the spaces seem not so uninhabited. Conversations about humanity, the meaning of life after death, abstract tales about their pasts.
Stores about her.
Amy Dyer
Her name lingers, scribbled on a piece of paper and tacked onto her bedroom door like she’ll fade if they let it go unspoken too long. Simon goes on walks alone and Kieren watches him walk down the road and turn the corner and they both know he’s going to sit by her grave.
He’s getting sicker, maybe his body is past the redeeming point, that this purification is actually killing him. He realizes that once the thought of dying would be a relief to him but now the only thing that floods his mind is panic so sharp it slices him to the core and he wants to dig his heels into the very fabric of this world and beg for more time. Facing death once was easy but he’s not sure he’s ready to do it again, not if Simon can’t follow.
“Would you still love me if I was human?” he doesn’t mean to say it, it was an accident. Simon’s shoulders stiffen as he pulls his pants on in the early hours of the morning. He turns, and Kieren can’t seem to understand why people are afraid of him, of those eyes that seem to see nothing and everything at the same time. The spider veins under the surface of his grey skin spiral intricately in a remarkable pattern and he wants to lovingly follow each one.
The bed dips as he forgets getting dressed momentarily and he cocks his head the way he does sometimes, like he’s frustrated that he can pick apart anything but Kieren. They stare at each other for a few moments and Simon touches his face, tender enough to make his lips tremble, his expression unfathomable. He looks sad, but his mouth twitches like there’s a joke hidden in his unspoken reply somewhere and Kieren doesn’t ask the question again.
Insanity is pushing at the edges of his mind, he feels the pressure in his skull and the medication doesn’t help anymore. He has vivid, horrific nightmares of being shot down like an animal in the street.
“I’m breaking.” He tells Simon’s collarbone five minutes after midnight when no one can hear, because if someone hears then it just might come true and he’d rather believe that this will fade in time.
The sun feels different on his skin when he steps outside this time. The rain makes his teeth chatter. Flecks of brown begin to invade his irises and the possibility of something more horrifying than death is beginning to dawn on him. He’s not fading away, he’s coming back.
Simon stays the same, he’ll always stay the same, while the world ages and ails and eventually passes on he will remain stationary. He walks between a thin line and from the looks he gives Kieren he knows that he feels betrayed. That he didn’t want to go on alone, that he had been hoping he would follow along, if not forever maybe just for the meanwhile.
“I’m sorry.” He whispers the night that hands wander and a new sound joins the chorus of moans and affectionate confessions. A frantic new pace set within himself, a beating heart. Simon recoils as if he’s been stung, as if Kieren has committed the ultimate sin and in that moment he now knows why normal is such a horrible thing.
He doesn’t go back to her house. He takes whatever clothes he had stashed away and comes crawling back to his mum and dad’s. They feel his face, look at his eyes and feel his heart beat and declare it a miracle of god. Kieren thinks that he’s been given a new heart just so he can feel the pain of it shattering.
His hands are foreign to him, the purple discoloration is beginning to fade, the gashes and bruises are beginning to heal. He’s shifting gradually, and while everyone gossips and speculates all he can do is hide in his room, more ashamed of his appearance than when he was forced to conceal his skin and change his eye color. His heart hammers unevenly in his ribcage, and he thinks about Amy Dyer, about how she died bleeding on a table.
Shreds of paper litter the floor, names in messy handwriting that lay in tatters.
Amy Dyer Amy Dyer Amy Dyer
Amy Amy Amy
Simon
He doesn’t know what compels him but as the sun sets he finds himself walking. The breeze carries the crisp scents of a winter falling behind to make way for spring, a new beginning. His feet carry him, his lungs contract and he feels the burn, his skin turned from pallid to a pale and a delicate blush gracing his cheeks.
Her grave stone stands still, a rock in the river of time.
It takes every ounce of self control not to simply curl up around it and surrender.
Life holds infinite mysteries and coincidences, most of which he can’t even presume to understand. How events collide like planets on the wrong orbit and how cold sickly hands with broken fingernails closer around his wrist at that moment. How his face looks so vibrant in comparison to Simon’s, white eyes meeting brown and throats closing.
Will you still love me when I’m human. He wants to ask it, the question lingers on his lips but he has no space to ask it as the distance is suddenly occupied by his everything. Tongue and teeth scraping at the now soft flesh. Kieren feels his lip split and blood, fresh and shockingly red snakes down his chin, it smears against Simon’s face, it crusts in the cold.
He can’t speak, even if he wanted to the words won’t flow. Not the right ones anyway. A hand is pressed against his chest, grabbing his shirt so tight the cotton is in danger of ripping. His heart beats, his eyes open, he sucks the blood flowing from his lip and Simon examines him in his entirety.
“You’re incredible.” the Irish accent grates over his ears in the best of ways and he sound as honest as he ever was, those infuriatingly beautiful veins trailing down below his collar.
Kieren isn’t sure what love is. But maybe it goes a little something like this.