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It is not the embrace of a friend he feels, but instead the eerie chill from the wind by the way it tussles his hair and the fluttering of his clothes.
The sky is blue, bright blue like the ocean it reflects off of. He can feel no sun; warmth would greet him instead if he was anywhere else but here.
He's not anywhere else. This place is cold and unloving, filled with shrieks and crawling shivers up his spine that echo in his ears and leave tingling sensations through his soul. Grief and guilt and scorn.
It's been countless nights of waking in cold sweats, and the rare occasion of screaming when whatever above the world has enough mercy to let him become unparalyzed.
When that does happen, he doesn't want to think about the name that wallows in his throat. It's there. It won't ever go away.
Maybe long ago, when this place wasn't a graveyard of agonising failure, another body would pull him close on the cold nights and keep him warm. Even whisper in his ear something soft and gentle as a reminder.
The reminder mocks with a shriek of everything he's felt, and he can't blame it. Really, the days of doing the same to his own mind has made the emotions numb.
Under his feet stick the uncomfortable feeling of jagged rocks and loose gravel, dust still falling over the area and causing the wind to blow it away. It hasn't been long since he landed here.
Whether it was impulse, or desperation, or purely mad defiance, he found himself running; stumbling away from the small house that feels too big with only one person. Maybe he came to be near something. Maybe he wanted to get away from something.
The last time he stood here, five people stood in front of him, watching his tired and battered face devoid of emotion (he can never process what happened) before they ran and never came back. One was like him, four not, and all were supposed to be dead. He doesn't know why they aren't dead.
The last time he stood here, he fought until his body cried for rest, cried for a single second to unload his muscles like strings wrung up on a crumbling instrument. And yet he still pushed on, until they snapped and tore beyond repair because he wanted to..
He doesn't know. God, God, he can yell and yell and shout into the sky all he wants but there will never be a moment of solace in his life where the reason reaches the sun. Forever it will stay in twilight, waiting for the eternity of a night to end, and the beautiful colours of dawn he will never cherish again touch the concept of why he sees blood that isn't his.
There is always blood. Sometimes, it splatters the walls in glorious crimson. Mostly, it's on his body until he doesn't know where it starts and ends. Neither of them are better than the other. Both of them make him cry until the tears wash it all away.
It's not his. He's tried to make it his. And he's tried for days but it wasn't enough.
He will stay in this limbo that the universe deems as his punishment, vehement towards the immortality and power he once craved before it all went wrong.
Nothing will change that. He wants to accept it.
He chooses to scream until his voice is hoarse.
Time is meaningless to him when there's nothing left to wait for. He doesn't care for how long he's been doing this for.
He did care for one person.
"Jeez. Stop burning through your vocal chords, I'm getting a headache."
He did care-
He-
He-
He doesn't do anything. He does everything.
He does not speak. Not since it happened.
But that isn't his voice, and he won't ever forget his.
Raspier than a throat scratched by gravel, deep as the sea when the darkness swallows it all whole. Hints of air clouding behind each syllable, lifting its tone higher than what it really is. Always the teasing voice of the only person to do a thing.
Always piercing through the walls of what used to be a home.
The owner of that voice made it home.
That voice was home.
He sees through immediately blurry eyes.
A maroon cape adorned with fake gold pins effortlessly veiling awful diclouring patches, and sickening reminders of losing battles on a trench coat; aeons ago, it was passed between hands and flourishes of amazement. Now it's an even more monotone rhubarb, faded from that moment like a photograph taken in the beginning of time.
The pants and boots blackened and bleached time and time again seem in worse repair, the more he stared. And he stared for what seemed like hours at each little cut and scrape and pieces of the ground stuck to their clothes.
Eyes red as strawberries in the summertime, like the hair he braided when a bet went wrong but everything was still okay. Face narrow and jaw sharper than knives, flushed from the cold, thin mahogany lips spread apart to show teeth baring a wide grin. It stares right back.
And that's him.
What he cries for long after the sun has gone down, what name he hears before snapping back to a world where it doesn't exist anymore.
What voice whispers in his ear, loving and taunting and soothing and mocking him like the shuffling of cards with his sanity as the dealer- never winning, never losing. Playing for a chance to break the stalemate with every good hand and ace, only to call it a tie and replay the game like a record on repeat.
What memories of a person litter a vacant house on every loose floorboard, creaking door, cracked window, slanted tile of the roof. Like dust, flying through the air in its thousands, making itself known to him with every ray of sun and every sliver of moonlight that will pass.
Who he knows no longer walks this world, facing the heavens and hells combined and leaving no one to fill the spot as his only living companion.
That's him. It can't be him, and it's him, and won't ever be him and he doesn't care.
He'd craved to see those eyes, that smile, hear the voice more beautiful than a thousand singing angels for so long it filled his hollow soul with an even bigger hunger. Starving until this moment, a whisper of what used to be, always ghosting along his fingertips like a malnourished animal with a meal on the table but never being able to eat.
He won't bite the hand that feeds this now. Not when it can take it away.
Everything means nothing when he looks at him. And everything is him, and he doesn't know what that means.
Once upon a time, he had lost everything.
The universe had ended (him- he was his universe). The final fall of the curtain with a mere soul trapped behind its velvet, forever screaming to let it rise and be seen once again. A book flipping shut, its last words of the protagonist on the pages desperate to continue on the story. Entertain for just a little while longer. A few seconds more.
It was when the curtains stayed closed, the book forgotten for eternity and more, that he wanted to end himself.
(He still wants that.)
But this, this moment, is different.
He could die. Right here, right now. His heart could go still, body collapsing onto the cold ground to leech the heat from his body, eyes wide but staring to where none of the living could go.
Or he could feel the pain of a million beings at once (it still wouldn't hurt as much) until the frail limitations of mortals would shatter upon the weight it was given. Every piece of what made him here scattering off the face of the earth and a scene of blood and flesh as it's only show of what was.
Or, he could try again. Do it again. Feel nothing but liquid down his skin, the bright sky enveloped in color that always felt strange to be there. Watch as the bright heavens loomed darker, fading, until it was all gone and maybe it would be over.
He'd be happy.
This would be the last thing he'd ever see.
It would be beautiful. It would be mercy.
Time kept moving, sparing none of it.
"Did I get something in my teeth?" It scrunches its face and feels around its mouth with its tongue, promptly stopping.
"Yeah, I'm never letting you into the kitchen again."
(He faintly remembers a snarky response with these exact words. He hasn't laughed since.)
His complete silence makes its expression lighten into a faint smirk, concern edging around the eyes and crinkle of its skin. It's a look he'd been given with side glances and turned backs, in morning wakeups and goodbye shouts when he went out. It was devastating to see. And it was so devastatingly comforting.
(It's been so long since someone has cared for him. He tries his best not to miss it.
He knows he's always going to.)
It steps towards him. He inches back like a wounded animal that would rather die than take its chances with the unknown.
"Are you okay?"
No, no he's not. He wants to scream out his answer, but the words are stuck behind a barbed-wire fence in his throat ever since he woke up in an empty bed that first day. Ever since he felt the need to have it there.
No. He's not even close to okay, and even he doesn't know how much emotion has boiled up inside him from that one single little question.
But he doesn't remember the last time he felt these emotions- is it anger, pure, irrational, mindless anger? Sadness? Grief? (Has he even passed that first stage?) Is it joy for the seconds that pass in this moment? Inevitable disappointment when it ends?
(He knows there's one more. Not that he'll even think about it.)
He doesn't know if his brain is telling him to run or to stay. That's the reason why it's able to close the gap, until there's only a mere five feet between each other and it's so close to him he can spot every little detail on its face.
Its smile has already gone to something deeper. More calculated inside a soft shift of expression, searching for a response to dead cold irises and mourn.
He's shown this face exactly once before, but it's only now that it can talk back.
"That's a beautiful sunset, you know." He turns around, where the horizon glows bright and each underbelly of every cloud has just turned a thin, saccharine pink. It must have been a while since he got here. "Did I tell you, I've always loved it more than sunrise?"
That's never been a point of conversation; he only knows it from the angry days of yelling and hurt where it would sit on both chairs in the kitchen and stare outside the window.
Some days, when it didn't hurt as much, he would join in and that was the apology.
When it did, words from raw throats and glassy eyes would have to pick up whatever was left.
(He wishes that he could go back in time, where he'd push himself- the one that only held anger to go, say something, because he hasn't talked to a living soul for years.)
It exhales a wisp of white mist, vanishing with a curl of smoke. "I know you never looked at it the same way I did, because I don't think you were ever too creative with your thoughts- no offense, but I think it means a lot.
"Sunset.. feels more satisfying. It's like telling me another day's over." It turns away from the light, where the stars in its eyes are pointed at him. "I know we've had those bad days. Where we think we're worth two seconds of code and a reputation that we wonder ever existed in the first place.
"But it's tomorrow, now. And you don't have to think that anymore. You made it. You can live." He wants to feel the smile that is reserved just for him forever, burn it into his memory where the day there's nothing but a blank face is the day he dies. "What do you think?"
But you didn't make it with me.
And it's true. He's staring at a ghost, a body he buried under its favorite tree that he can never look at again. The yew tree that they used to sit under on hot days and rest, close their eyes to daydream about what they could have become together is nothing but the leaves he sees every time he stands on the edge of the rooftop.
But you can't live because of me.
His hands are covered in blood, and he can see the stains stretching throughout his body, and no amounts of his could even it out because he isn't dead. It drips off his hands even though they look spotless and drench his face when he tries to forget what he's done.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-
There's a hand on his face, and he looks to the only person he had in this world.
"I forgive you."
And the death on his shoulders is gone, and the relief is so sudden he feels like he's floating. Yet he's grounded on earth by the lips on his that tells him that it wasn't his fault, he wasn't the reason, he did his best and that was all he could do.
And it only lasts for three seconds, but it feels like the eternity he's served alone, and he wants it to stay that way.
And of course the universe doesn't listen, lets the time flow like the waves off the cliffside, watches as they part and the other turns and walks to what he knows is the and.
Don't leave me, he wants to say. I only have you, I only need you, I only want you, I-
"I love you."
And the burning in his throat is worth everything a thousand times over.
He knows it's not enough to make him stay. He knows they both have to move on, one way or another, where the only times they'll see each other are in their dreams and golden hour.
But he wants him to know that he's loved him since the moment they met. That in every joke and fight, every greeting and parting and midnight talks and drinks and nights they spent together that he was his everything. He was his universe.
The one he's loved so looks back, the last glints of the sun shining on his face, and he's never seen something so beautiful.
"I love you, too."
Then in a single blink, his eyes of fire and jewels and the same love are gone.
But he's not alone.
For every breeze and crash of the waves, yew trees and braids and strawberries in the summertime-
For every loose floorboard, creaking door, cracked window, slanted tile of the roof. Like the dust he'll see in the sun and every sliver of moonlight that will pass-
For every time the bed will only have one person, in every time he'll daydream and stand on the rooftop and laugh and cry and speak once again-
For every time he looks to the square at the end of the sky, and until he finally goes up to it, and the moment he realizes he can be happy again, and in every sunset he'll see for the rest of his life, the love will still be here.
He will always have that love.
The coolness of the night and of the ocean is not a embrace of a friend, but the realization is like the kiss from the person he will always remember.
And he knows everything is going to be okay.