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They say that to drown is one of the worst ways to die. I don't remember who said it, but that sentence floats through my brain, surprising me again and again with the fact that it remains in my mind.
That no matter what, it remains in my mind.
I.
Hummer couldn't remember a lot from his life before the Leviathan.
He couldn't remember most of his childhood. He couldn't remember his parent's faces.
He couldn't even remember his name.
He didn't need to know it, anyways.
Because he had something to have faith in. Something to finally fill the void in his chest, something to give him a reason to exist.
Something to make him more than merely the sum of his parts.
II.
Hummer couldn't remember most of his childhood.
Whenever he tried to (not often at all), all that his mind had to offer were various drab grey hues, the muffled voices of his parents taking to each other outside his closed bedroom door, and the feeling of sitting alone in his room, teaching himself redstone builds on his first school laptop like it was a religion.
My Dad sold that laptop while I was away on a school trip, his brain told him, his lived memory of the event entirely lost, but his brain still clinging onto whatever it could regardless. A label on a museum wall next to a missing painting; the only proof it ever existed at all being the words written to accompany it.
Overall, from what he could remember, his childhood seemed good enough. His parents were there for him, physically. He didn't have many friends, but he had his school laptop and he had Minecraft, and that was good enough for him.
It had to be.
Because nothing good ever came from wanting more.
III.
Hummer could vaguely, distantly recall memories from his life before he knew of Levi, all blurry and faded, like an old camera roll. Some memories were so damaged that he couldn't even make out what was happening in them. But a few seemed almost entirely untouched by time.
One of the clearest memories he could remember had been of him and… his… university roommates? Yes, right, he had been at university right before he found out about Levi. And for some reason, he and his roommates were at a party.
They were there to try and pick up some girls, he could recall, And they invited me along out of pity. Surely that was the reason.
Because why wouldn't it be? Bastards.
He spent the entire night standing in a corner with a drink, watching faces blur as they paid him no mind and bodies moving in a strange, trancelike joy in the middle of the room. Dancing, he remembered.
I was watching people dance.
But he wasn't looking out into the crowd hoping for a glimpse of long hair and running mascara, like his roommates were.
He was transfixed by the way the men were moving.
Broad shoulders and shirts drenched with sweat and deep, booming laughter that made something inside his chest tighten up with an emotion entirely beyond words but still, somehow, familiar to him.
They kept looking at me like I shouldn't be there. Everyone kept staring at me like they knew. I felt sick.
At some point he must've left, because the next thing he recalled was walking in the dark, the cold of night slowly seeping through his clothes and into his very bones, his vision blurring and unblurring every time he blinked, gritting his teeth as he tried to muffle an ugly, wretched sound threatening to tear itself out of his core.
I was crying, His brain provided.
It was just after midnight.
Occasionally, he would turn his head towards the few still-lit windows of houses he passed by, and look into the warm lights for the few seconds he could before they disappeared into the dark behind him.
He saw people watching TV. He saw people eating dinner together. He saw people dancing, he saw people fighting, he saw people laughing, he saw people kiss, and all of it hurt so badly as he passed it by that he feared he might break apart completely, out in the open, in the middle of an empty street.
Because he knew he would never get to have something like that.
He would never get to know how it felt to be seen.
He would never get to know the warmth of being held.
He would never know what it felt like to be kissed.
He wanted it so, so badly.
But wanting never got him anywhere.
IV.
Ever since he was a child, he felt as though something was different about him. Something was terribly wrong with him.
Like there was some kind of black void in his chest where his heart should be, festering like a tumor, slowly eating away at him from the inside until there was nothing left that resembled a real person at all.
My parents were terrified of it. They tried to pretend it was wasn't there, but it never worked.
My classmates made fun of me because of it. They tried to make me feel bad about it, and it sometimes worked.
But Hummer himself? He loved it, in a way. How could he not?
No matter what, it was there.
It was there when he felt lonely.
It was there when he wept.
It was there with him, even when no one else was.
He couldn't imagine what life would be like without it inside of him.
And no one else could ever understand what that felt like.
-_-_-
He could feel him everywhere around him, surrounding him. He felt him in every breath he took, he felt him with every beat of his heart.
For the first time in his life, he didn't feel alone.
-_-_-
VI.
Someone saw his post on Reddit.
And now, he was here with him.
Some stranger was in his Minecraft world.
Some stranger who had noticed that the screenshot was fake.
Someone who was willing to hear him out.
But for the wrong reasons.
He wanted Levi to be fake, Hummer could feel it. He just wanted to make a video about him, to call the Leviathan a hoax, and move on with his life.
Hummer couldn't just move on.
Because it wasn't just a video game to him. Levi wasn't just some code in some game.
He couldn't be. He had to be more than that.
Because if he wasn't, what did Hummer have left?
He had dropped out of uni, cut contact with his parents, moved into the cheapest apartment he could find, too far away for anyone to come after him, and devoted himself entirely to something that might not even be real, by the accounts of everyone else.
Levi had given him something that no one else had ever given him before.
He couldn't lose it again. It would destroy him if he did.
…
But…
…It felt nice.
If he was being honest with himself, he had never expected anything to come out of the Reddit post, but… it just felt nice.
Having someone to talk to, not just hear him out, but actually listen to him, to have someone be interested in him, in what he had to say, and could then contribute thoughts of his own…
And in such a deep, smooth voice as well…
…
…Fuck.
VII.
Together, they were going to drown for the very last time.
They were going to put their full faith into the Leviathan, and it would save them.
He would save them.
He had to save him. He had stayed through it all, he had to save him.
But as he sank to the bottom of the ocean with a man he'd met a few days ago, a single realization went through his mind, throwing everything he thought he knew into question once more, breaking his mind apart even further;
He never wanted anything like he wanted to kiss him in that moment.
Of course he found him attractive. He was the first person Hummer had met who hadn't just stayed out necessity so, of course, he found himself swooning a little whenever he heard the man's laughter.
But now, he realized, it had become so much more than that.
Because try as he might, Hummer just couldn't help but to want, even if it only ever hurt him, even if it brought about his undoing.
Hummer couldn't help but to want.
He wanted to know what he looked like,
He wanted to be close to him, to be held by him, to dance with him,
To talk to him, and go on walks with him by his side,
To come undone beneath him, to break apart, again and again, and have him choose to stay anyways, always.
Because of love.
Hummer wanted to be loved by him.
He wanted to exist for him.
He wanted to call out to him, across a few block, across an ocean. He wanted to scream for help, for a man he barely knew and yet had grown closer to than he had to anyone else in his entire life, but found himself breathless, as if the saturated, virtual water was filling his real lungs as well.
His real lungs.
What difference did that even make anymore?
The line between what was real and what wasn't had been shattered the day he felt Levi for the first time, it had torn its way through his brain and ruined it entirely, and ever since then, it had only damaged it further and further until he felt more life in the pixels on his monitor than he did in anything in real life.
No. He didn't want to believe in that world.
He didn't want to believe in that Version of himself, the dropout who had nothing left, who had thrown away everything he had, every chance at a happy, normal life, every change at being loved, all because he wanted to believe.
Maybe the line between what was real and what was fake had never existed at all. Maybe he was just as much of a hoax as the Leviathan was.
At least they had that in common.
At least he wasn't to blame for his waterdamaged mind.
So, he closed his eyes,
And he chose to believe.
-_-_-
And Hummer drowned for the very last time.