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Keith has never been good at expressing his emotions.
He feels them, and he feels them deeply, but they bubble up inside of him and stay in his chest, moving through his heart, his lungs, his spine, his body, and just barely linger in his throat before he realizes that he doesn’t know how to vocalize them. It’s been like this since he was a kid; a boy, shy and angry, a boy, sad and small, a boy, withered and gone.
Maybe it’s to do with the fact that he didn’t grow up with a mother, someone to show him how to be in tune with his emotions.
Or maybe it’s the fact that sometimes he can’t tell what is real. That sometimes he feels fake, like he needs more to become solid to the touch.
Maybe it’s something else entirely.
Maybe he is just broken, maybe he is just weak. This, this is something he cannot explain, will never be able to explain.
So he stays quiet. So he lets things bubble up.
He allows himself this much.
-
Lance, on the other hand. Wow, Lance.
Lance McClain, who lets himself be vulnerable, who lets himself be known loudly and proudly, who wears his heart on his sleeve like a badge of honor. Like a prize to be won.
(Would Keith like to win that, win his heart, keep it in his pocket, to run his fingers over and to cherish with all of his soul. Yes. Yes, more than anything.)
(He keeps it to himself, just like everything else.)
Lance is a monster, Lance is an angel. He is a boy, he is a man, he is a being, he is something that cannot be explained with human words, human words in any language. He is the opposite of an enigma, not a mystery to anybody, yet he makes Keith ache with how badly he wants to know him, to understand him.
Why can’t he just understand?
-
It’s a summer’s night. Keith is feeling too small to be real this evening, like no matter how hard he tries, he could never explain this rusted feeling of being alive. Of wanting so much more.
(Everything is always coated in a hazy shade of blue on nights like these, of a drowning feeling and a sinking heart.)
He wants a sunset tonight, a sunset would heal him more than anything. Just a soft, muted blend of warm colours to remind him that he is okay. That he is real.
If he were to just look out the window, to open his eyes and think, maybe he would see one. It would wholly envelop him, take him into its red-orange-purple-white arms, and let him know that everything will be alright.
But instead?
Instead, he continues to lay there, not giving himself the satisfaction of a cure to his want.
Isn’t it funny, he thinks, how the one thing I want most in the world is just within my reach? Isn’t it funny, how this could be about the sunset, or about anything else. Anyone else.
-
A scene:
An early-twenty-something-year-old. A bed. A lamp, turned to the lowest setting. The sky has turned dark. He never went to look.
Lying on his side, he turns to check his phone.
One missed message. It reads, hey. I’ve been thinking about things recently. About us. I like you. Let me know if you feel the same.
A sigh. A click. The light, although it was barely there, turns off. Thoughts whirring in a too-full head. A response formulating.
End scene.
-
Yes, Keith has feelings for Lance. This much is obvious. This much is actually glaringly obvious, to anyone from family, from friends, from passerby’s on the street. Keith is head over heels, heels over head, whatever you want to call it, smitten for Lance. He just doesn’t know how to go about it.
Lance knows this, it seems. He cares about Keith, cares about him enough to reach out to him. To let the already open book of his life turn a page, a page that is empty, ready to be filled with love notes and days full of laughter, of longing to be close, of shortening the distance between them.
(Keith can’t handle it, can’t bear to accept the fact that someone is so willingly open to loving him back.)
-
Another scene, although this takes place in the past:
A doctors office, a shut door. Pages upon pages of a pamphlet. A father, a son, a diagnosis.
Your son may have more difficulty understanding others. Your son may not be comfortable with eye contact. Your son may be smart, but he may never feel equal to his peers. Your son may be doomed to a difficult life. Your son is lucky, your son is beautiful, your son will never be normal. Your son is an angel, he is a freak of nature, he is a gift from god. May we all come closer to understanding him, some day soon. Hallelujah, amen.
End scene.
-
(Will he understand. Does he understand? Is he talking about himself, is he talking about Lance? Is life that simple, to answer questions, to leave us empty handed, is life really that simple? Can it be?)
-
He has already denied himself one simple pleasure tonight. In the end, is it really worth it? To live life not letting yourself do the things you want to do? To be on earth, to be anywhere, and to let yourself down by the way of your own hands? To be your own disaster?
Is it worth it?
-
A response, typed out by hesitant fingers. I feel. I don’t know what I feel, but I know I feel it. I like you, you are the end of the world. Let me crash and burn into you.
-
Pacing. Pacing. Back and forth, up and down, across his small, too-full room, filled with a bed, with books, with trinkets and oddities, with a boy who feels too much and can’t let go. A boy who is in love with another boy, both boys who are really men, both men who just feel like boys.
After what is really five minutes but seems more like five hours, his phone lights up. He looks, he looks, he comprehends, and he feels better. A text that reads, thank you. But if I am the end of the world, I’d say you are the Big Bang. The creator of all I have ever known. Thank you.
(A ghost of a smile. An eruption of emotions. Hands squeezing, hands grasping, teeth clenching, mind buzzing. Beauty in its most raw form, happiness in a way that cannot be explained, only felt.)
This is a good thing, a real thing, and Keith is suddenly happy to be alive, happy to be able to feel emotions unlike any others. He is here, he is present, he is safe, and he is a boy in love. Oh, to be a boy in love with another boy. Is there anything more magical, more sacred? Is there anything that can top the feeling of knowing, of reaching and grabbing and holding and knowing?
-
They agree to see eachother the next day, at a local park that is equal distance between their respective apartments, and it’s calm. It’s quiet.
Lance holds his hand while they sit on a park bench. He kisses the callouses of his palms, touches them with matching ones on his fingertips, and asks to do so.
I know touch might not be your thing, he tells him, eyes glittering.
It usually isn’t, he responds. I feel safe around you, though. Just tell me beforehand.
Lance smiles, and is more than happy to oblige.
I am going to keep holding your hand, he tells him. And later, if you’d like, whenever you’d like, I’d like to kiss you. But let me know if it’s okay.
(It won’t be, sometimes, and Keith has known this. Sometimes, no matter how badly he may want it, it will not be okay for seconds, or minutes, or hours. Life is funny like that, and he maybe will one day laugh about it.)
Right now though, he just nods, and blushes, and ducks his head. Listens to Lance’s laugh. Thinks about the things he would do to listen to that laugh everyday.
(Maybe, just maybe, life can always be like this. Maybe life can be a dream.)
Not now, Keith says, but please, sometime soon.
And that’s all he can say, all he can express, and even that took him light years to get the courage to process. He feels weak behind the knees, standing suddenly, shaking his hands, letting go of Lance’s. A moment, a moment of quiet to get himself to be calm again.
This isn’t too much yet, but it might be in a few minutes. That’s okay. He knows this, he knows this because Lance will stay by his side regardless, because if he knows anything, it’s that they care for eachother too much for moments like these to be embarrassing.
When he sits back down, Lance is smiling at him.
(Everything is okay. Everything is calm.)
-
Two hours pass. Two hours of comfortable conversation, of emotions being laid out in front of them, and they grasp at them and hold them, just to let them go and send them off into the sky.
They are laying next to eachother in a field. It feels like a dream too good to be true. Maybe it is, and maybe that is okay to feel. Maybe things are too fake sometimes. But that is besides the point.
They are looking at clouds, sitting in half silence, listening to birds and wind and distant music from people dozens of feet away.
I play guitar, you know, Lance says. Keith knows. I should have brought it today, I could have played you a song.
What would you have played for me, responds Keith. He says it earnestly, he wants a real answer. In this moment, he wants nothing more than to know.
(To know Lance.)
La vie en rose, party police, any love song I could remember at the time. You’re a grand love, Lance smiles, and you deserve a grand love song.
Keith can’t come up with an answer, so he sits up. Looks at Lance. Lifts his hand, puts it back down, grasping at grass and dirt. Lifts it up again. Thinks hard. Hardly thinks. Lance is looking at him like he is the only person he has ever wanted to look at.
And so,
Keith kisses him.
-
When he pulls away, quickly, sweetly, he is glad that Lance doesn’t pull him down, that he lets him have his space afterwards. He is grateful to be able to feel respected and understood.
Wow, Lance breathes out, if I had known I’d get a reaction like that, I’d have brought my guitar everywhere I’d gone until I found you.
What, in hopes that you’d meet me? Keith laughs, glancing at Lance’s lips again. They were soft. It was nice.
No, and suddenly Lance has a serious look on his face, I have always known that I was going to meet you. I just didn’t know when.
Keith doesn’t know how to respond to that, always speechless around Lance.
(The sun is shining above them in all of its glory, looking down upon a scene of tenderness and youth. Of puppy love, of a head leaning onto a shoulder. Keith feels warmth on his clothes. He sees the warmth growing in Lance’s slow spreading smile. What were they just talking about?)
-
I love you, I think, and does it really matter who says it? It’s been years. I love you, I know. You know.
-
Let’s have one last scene:
Two boys spend a lifetime together within a day. And it is lovely. And it is soft. And it is tender. And it is real. And is it love?
-
(It is pretty obviously love. That much is known.)
-
A car ride home, a longing from one side and a yearning from another. Maybe it switches between them halfway through. Who can say?
Lance drops him off at his apartment complex, and leaves his gaze lingering.
I love you, he says. I’m glad we did this. I’m glad I have you. Stay mine for a while, please.
(And what else can Keith say but yes, okay, of course, always, forever. All of the above.)