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They have always been free to love.
Some of the carers encouraged it even, bringing out demonstrations of the daily lives of weathermen and painters and everything in between and letting them take turns wearing a big patchwork coat that drags a little on floor as they walk in much larger strides than normal.
They're probably marked as radicals to the people outside. Why bother wasting effort on livestock? The end result is only marginally better anyway.
Regardless, the carers would pull him aside and ask, “Shu, what do you like nowadays?”
Sometimes he’d spin something about computers– the real ones with metal and lightning inside, not the cardboard slabs they give all the kids in here because it's never been worth teaching them any real skills– and sometimes he’d just shrug and say everything has been fine and he likes it all about the same. When they ask, they don't always intend to listen, so it doesn't really matter if he tells the truth.
It’s not like they'd waste something so valuable on them regardless. He’s not so naive to still believe in things like that.
The carers have this image of him as the easygoing, reliable type, so he tries to not rock the boat too much. Sometimes it works out in his favour, affording him these little pockets of freedom to be alone as he wipes down the tables and traces fingertips over the places he’s left behind.
There are plenty of things to love without hosting some big charade anyway, so he doesn't really see a point to it. It’s not like he’s going to be the next big star stretched across the open ocean.
Shu has always been ready for completion because that’s what he was made for.
Some of the other institutes don't let their charges out much, or at least that’s what he’s heard in little gossipy whispers while the carers duck their heads out to throw out the trash. They’re the lucky ones for being raised here. Some don't even let their charges meet each other, keeping them trapped in individual metal cells with an eye for efficiency above everything.
He supposes there's always some things to be thankful for.
There’s a familiar face in front of him while he gets his vitals checked tonight. Sometimes he wonders if they’ll see it the moment he’s plugged in, if it’s written as plainly across his face as it feels sometimes, some odd arrhythmia settling deep in his bones that he cannot quite shake off. Looking up at their faces though, one nurse with a clipboard and another with the meter, it seems like nothing is amiss. There are no hushed whispers passing through their lips, no sudden alarms blaring or needles jammed into his throat. There is just a curt nod as the first one scribbles down his measurements and sends him on his way, pulling back the curtain.
Luca sends him a tiny wave as he passes, hand kept by his side to make it a smaller movement.
He nods to the right a bit in one fluid motion, a sign that they’ll meet up again in an hour in the usual place.
The health sector is the only new part of the facility, so they watch it the closest. It’s also the easiest place to run into other people without making it obvious, though, with everyone herded into the hall for their checkups. A lot of their daily things are hastily cobbled together in comparison, but they all try to turn a blind eye to it. It helps too, not knowing too much of what they are missing.
It’s easier that way.
At night, hanging around the back of the main hall, Luca and Shu pass their broken bottle back and forth, taking turns running to the tap when it empties. There's a fracture running down the seam in the bottom, so anything they put inside will slowly trickle out.
Shu lost the cap after an especially rowdy day searching for crabs and clams on the rocky shoals, so now they cannot even hold it upside down anymore to make it last a little longer.
“Hey, Shu,” he heard Luca say, hands searching blindly in the dark. “There’s a shooting star up there! Make a wish.”
If it's possible to turn back time, to keep it close like a message in a bottle, then it should also be possible to freeze it in place for just a moment. No matter how briefly it may be, Shu always finds himself hoping that it will happen some day.
“So what did you wish for?” Luca asks. He laughs a little too, but it never sounds mocking. His knees are drawn close to his chest, making himself a little smaller.
If he could shrink himself down too, maybe they’d feel a little less guilty about always squeezing two people inside space that's built for one. It’s a bad habit they’ve settled into, but not one either of them really bothers correcting. Shu will never plainly admit how much he enjoys it.
Sometimes he waits, counting down the seconds till the discomfort washes over him, but it never really comes. Not with Luca. Not like this.
It’s never going to come, so Shu simply waits and he lets himself love him.
“Nothing much, I guess.”
Luca does a small shuffle towards him and quickly eases to a stop like he wasn't expecting him to notice.
Shu completes the motion for him, nestling their sides together. They lock into place like magnets.
“You know what I wished for?” Luca’s words are a soft rumble in his ear. They're punctuated with promises of brighter futures and the tickling of grown out hair against his neck. From this distance, he can even feel the words as they come out of Luca’s throat.
“I think I can make a pretty good guess.”
Sometimes when they go back, back to their own individual extra long twin sized beds, he doesn't wash the dirt off his fingertips for a good while longer, looking at his own personal splotchy night sky.
It makes the moment linger.
They don't quite kiss around the others, because you never know how attached is too attached and when they will inevitably separate you.
He saw it happen once. Another blonde boy got so attached to a little plush toy, a cat of all things, that he refused to go anywhere without it. Carried it through the mud and the frost as they trekked through the forest to catch some bugs to study. Took it into the showers with him and lovingly placed it on his covers.
The carers draw the line at things like that, things that get in the way of how they want to raise them.
The next day, someone stuffed it down in pieces down the pipes, all washed down with a bottle of blue drain cleaner. Another carer held his hand and softly pat his head as he cried wondering what happened. Pretended like it was a mystery.
They do that too, pretending like they're not equally culpable for all the pain in this place.
Shu finds it a bit hypocritical that they nurture their hearts yet easily break them, but he supposes they're lucky they bother to nurture them at all.
In the few books he’s gotten his hands on, some of them talk about the outside world in such broad, loving strokes. They whisper secrets about shared words and music from the inside of a car or dreams and reunions and the pink-orange glow of lamps against the seasoned sky. It must be nice, living in a loved world like that.
In some ways his life is like that. A car, recycled air and flickering lights, waiting at an infinite yellow light. Inside the car lies his lifetime friend, his still-beating heart. There’s nothing but yellow cars on yellow lines in front of a yellow building as birds soar above him.
Yellow for Luca, of course, because sunshine and sunflowers and the acrid taste of lemon oil on shared crusts of stale bread are all so very much like him, but also because of waiting, for a wait that will never end because it will never be his choice to start moving.
And part of him wonders sometimes, one day, when he makes his final donation and completes, will the new owner of his old heart feel an unexplainable twitch when they see a flash of blonde hair or the purpling skies as the sun is setting?
Will they know how much love he crammed deep inside that little heart for the short time that he got to keep it?
Will it still remember Luca long after they're both too far gone to know the answer?
Staring out to the courtyard, seeing the sky painted across Luca’s smiling eyes as he too searches for him somewhere behind hundreds of windows, the answer seems obvious.
There's no way it could ever forget a love like this.