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It was quiet. The night was solemn as the moon stood still, cracks of it shining through Ozolog’s bedroom windows. There was a slight chill that the air carried, a chill that he had become familiar with as it had stuck with him wherever he went for what felt like ages. His street had felt empty, the lights in his room had felt more dull, and his computer had been left untouched ever since Brandon had left—or, ever since he had accepted the truth, which was that he was gone. However, in his current state of rest, it was a feeling unbeknownst to him. Right now, he was with Brandon.
Hand in hand, they’re playing together in a large body of grass, flora decorating the soil and a beautiful orange-purple horizon stretching far across the open sky. Right now—Ozo is with the person who makes him happiest.
Brandon turns his head towards him, and so Ozolog does the same, their eyes meeting. The two of them exchange a long, yet heartfelt, moment of eye contact, and Ozolog feels himself melt. How could someone be so perfect, as if crafted by the hands of God in every aspect—his soft features, that charming smile, his beaming personality—nothing, nobody, could parallel Brandon. He has a light that you could only find within him; or so, that’s what Ozo thought.
Brandon looked away, but only to lay down on the soft meadow—blades of grass interlocking his fingers in replacement of Ozolog’s as he laid. Ozolog stayed seated, yet kept his eyes locked on Brandon. He couldn’t think of living through life with anyone who wasn’t Brandon, no, not with everything they had gone through together. For as long as Ozolog had known, it’d been him and Brandon.
“I missed you.” Brandon speaks. It’s the only sentence that has been said in about ten minutes as the two of them had been soaking in each other’s presence, cherishing it, even, and staring simply at the sky ahead—simply being next to each other being enough to cause a thrilling feeling of happiness settle deep within the both of them. Ozolog smiles, his gaze softening as Brandon averted his eyes and stared at him.
“I missed you, too. I missed you a lot.” he replies back, his tone laced with nothing but vulnerability; a kind of vulnerability that Ozolog had only ever felt safe with expressing when he was near him. “You’re.. my favorite friend, I think.” he adds on, and he feels like he could spill everything he ever thought about Brandon, how much he appreciated him as a friend, a best friend—but he didn’t. He would keep that in the back of his mind for another time.
Brandon smiles and laughs, shifting above the blades of grass. He clasps his hands together, taking a deep breath. “You too. I think I like you the most out of all of our friends, you know?”
“Yeah..” Ozolog replies, his breath hitching as Brandon seemed to understand him near perfectly. “I know.”
.
As he shifted around in his bed, the blankets wrapped around him moving as he did, he groaned. His eyes would gently open, pupils attempting to adjust to his surroundings, and he groggily sat up—although still weak from just leaving his state of slumber. As he sat there, pillows and blankets still snugly draped around his tired and short frame, he shook his head, attempting to collect himself after what he had just..dreamt? Imagined? He wasn’t quite sure. But what he was sure of was that what he had seen in that dream had to have been real. It had to have fucking been. The way his mind had captured all his features—the way his hair sat in the grass as he laid down in the meadow, the way his eyes gleamed when caught in the bright glimmer of the sun that graced the sky, the same damn mannerisms that Brandon possessed when he was still alive—when he was still there, not just in a dream, but physically, with Ozolog.
Fuck.
Clutching his blanket, hands shaky and skittish, he felt himself tearing up, much to his disappointment. He was past this, he thought—he was past the countless days of grieving, the mass amounts of sleep he had lost over trying to figure out where Brandon could possibly have been. He thought he was over his grades slipping because of the toll his death took on him, but oh God, it seems not. His chest felt heavy as his breathing grew more stilted, and soon enough, he felt the familiar sensation of tears falling down his face, which added more fuel to the already blazing fire.
Ozolog brought his knees up to his chest, his head falling down into them as his crying turned into sobbing. One of his hands left his blanket to reach for his hair, trembling fingers stringing themselves into his black locks in an attempt to soothe himself—which was proving to be futile. His breath came out in short, almost painful successions as his body curled in on itself pathetically, his hands scrambling for purchase in whatever he could grab at. His hair, his pillows, his blankets—he could’ve sworn he would leave imprints on them as he tried desperately to ground himself.
He felt…inexplicable. He had had dreams like this, dreams where Brandon was with him, but they weren’t common. They were only there when he first came to terms with what had happened to him, when he first came to terms with Brandon’s death. He thought he had conquered that, that the grief wasn’t there, that he was numb to what happened; but life, as it always seemed to do for him, would toy with him once more. He could do nothing about it yet cry and sob like he always did—but he didn’t know what else to do. He didn’t know how to handle himself, either.
That was evident by the way he was being right now—his chest seeming to grow impossibly tight, his head pounding as did his heart, and how his eyes screwed themselves shut in what seemed like a sad effort to stop the stream of tears from flowing.
The only person that seemed to always be there for him was Brandon. And now that he was gone, not even Ozolog could be there for himself.
All he could do was pray for it to be over—even if he knew it never would be.