Work Text:
The sky is never blue. There are no robin’s egg heavens, no denim storms, no indigo sunset edges. The closest you’ve seen is an odd sort of teal on the borders of the rising sun, a ghost of an echo of a memory. When you pointed it out, everyone called it green. It was a green sort of teal, but it was still teal. Wasn’t it?
You miss it, sometimes, knowing that the color of the sky would be the same today as it was yesterday, and the same tomorrow as it is today. He looks at the shifting, melting sky with a poetic sort of boredom. It took you weeks not to shiver every time you went outside. He tells you about his dreams of the sky like the bottom of a pool, and you need a few moments too long not to be jealous.
Was it worth it? You twisted reality in clenched hands to bring him back. When you let go, it stayed twisted. Did you let go? Could you? Are you overthinking things again?
You should be grateful. It’s hard to feel grateful when you’re jammed like a misplaced puzzle piece where you shouldn’t fit. It’s hard to feel anything. You should feel – be – a lot of things you're not. He only has one not-being to worry about, while you keep all the gears spinning and try not to chip too many buzzing teeth in the process.
The clocks in your office tick away, mindless little rabbits imitating life. Sometimes when he’s asleep, you take his pulse. Sometimes it lines up with the seconds; sometimes it leaps away, like it’s afraid of being known like that. Like knowing will collapse the veins into worms.
There is a cat in a box that is alive and dead at the same time, and whose fault is it but yours? Scientist, timekeeper, conductor, son, partner, you are all these things and none of them, every new title painted on top of the next in brilliant sky blue. Monsters in the camp bathrooms and mediation sessions. Teal clouds and pink masks and a notebook full of knowledge that bites cat scratch fever into everyone but the one who deserves it the most. All those clocks, and you're still moments too late more often than not.
But you did it out of love, right? It's an odd word for the ticking time bomb you planted, but that's all it could be. As salmon love the streams, cradle and grave, alive and dead. You count each breath like river stones through the palm of your hand. Each gentle swell and fall of his chest could be his last. You never know. You never knew.