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Alexander is the sun, and sometimes the sun gets too bright. John's skin is delicate and soft and fragile, and god knows he burns so fucking easily. After a year, his skin is red and cracked and sore, and it hurts to even move, and every time Alex touches him, he burns. But John has always craved pain, has always craved the flames flickering over his fingers, and he loves the way it seems to shine right through his flesh, like he's holding his hand over a candle, soft and pink and delicate. The thing is, a person can only cover a candle for so long before the fire starts to burn, before their hand starts to char. But he keeps holding his hand there, sees the flames lick over his fingers, sees pink, delicate flesh over the candle and thinks it's the most beautiful thing.
He knows it's selfish, knows he should just let go and let everyone else see the way Alex shines, the way he lights up every room he walks into, but he can't quite find it in himself to do it. He wants to keep Alex in his palm, wants to watch him flicker and dance and if it burns him, so be it. But fire needs to breathe, and John knows if he doesn't move his hand from over the candle it'll sputter into nothing more than ash, and he thinks it might be easier to watch the fire from a distance than to see it die.
He's tying Alex down to earth, and Alex keeps trying to rise through the clouds, lift his feet off the dry, cracked ground, into the soft, hazy sky, but he keeps tugging at the string tied on John's wrist, keeps trying to bring him with him. John is too heavy. Alex is full of helium, and John is full of stones. There was a night where he felt something like helium inside his veins, where he felt lighter than the fucking air, where Alex had lifted him up into the clouds and he could feel them pressing around him, and the wind had a voice and it told him this was it, this was all he'd ever want, and then it laughed as though even it knew it couldn't last.
Alex doesn't want anything from him, and John doesn't understand, because everyone always wants something, more than what John has, so he gives and he gives and gives and hopes it's enough, but Alex doesn't seem to care. Alex tells him he loves him likes it's the only thing he needs to say, but it's not, because John loves him too but that doesn't matter, because love is letting go, and John's not sure he can do that.
I ne'er saw true beauty till tonight, he remembers thinking, on the night where Alex had shone brighter than the flashing lights above, where the bruises blooming over his skin could almost be mistaken for the forget-me-nots John keeps on his window. There are daffodils in Alex's eyes. Well, not really. His eyes are a dark, soft brown, that isn't quite brown but something else, because when the light glints over them they turn into liquid gold, turn into honey and drip over Alex's eyelashes and cling there, drops of glittering amber. Daffodils.
Then: these violent desires have violent ends. But he pushes it away, because Romeo and Juliet has always been overrated. He mumbles this to Alex at some point, and Alex laughs and looks at him with that kind of bemused, adoring gaze because Alex looks at everyone like they're fucking everything, and John is nothing. John wishes he'd understand, but Alex reads Steinbeck, not Shakespeare.
Alex speaks of mice and of men, and John has never liked mice, and men seem to be destroying everything nowadays. (Everything. The way Alex looks at everything.)
"Romeo and Juliet isn't a love story," he says one night, and Alex blinks at him, wide and soft, because he's never read Shakespeare. John almost growls, catching the sound in his throat and jerking his head in frustration, wringing his wrists. (Wrists he think might snap. Wrists he hope will snap, because honestly it's so easy to break a bone. To shatter yourself. Shatter.)
"Shakespeare's mocking them," he tries to explain. Shakespeare's mocking him.
Alex cocks his head, and the daffodils are back, yellow and bright and lovely. His lips fall open, as though he's about to speak, and John thinks he can see flowers in his throat too (roses), see petals filling the air as he breathes out. John cuts him off, sharp and angry. But he's not, he's not angry. Not at Alex. Fuck Shakespeare.
"Young men's love lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes," John quotes, and the words are familiar. Harsh. Familiarity is harsh. He thinks that might be all he needs to say.
Alex nods, like he understands. "I love you," he says, and the only thing John can think to say back is Shakespeare. Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs, and Alex laughs again, sharp and metallic and wrong, like he knows it's not really funny. When John kisses him, his mouth tastes of copper (of blood), but he folds himself into Alex's arms, carves a place for himself in Alex's bones and makes a home. (Bones break so easily. Shatter.)
It's John who leaves in the end. Or, he tries to, on a day when the sun seems to be impossibly brighter, impossibly hotter (the kind of heat that stretches over his skin in a thick film, dries him up and burns him until he's nothing but ash).
"We need to talk," he says, and god, isn't that a cliche.
Alex frowns, and his face crumples, flowers wilting. Outside, the sun passes behind a cloud, and John can feel something settling in the back of his throat. Alex pushes away his laptop, lays his hands in his lap and waits. John pretends he doesn't notice the way Alex's fingers are trembling. The way they twist around the cuff of his hoody, the way his eyes are suddenly filled with something else, the way the thick, dripping honey is suddenly gone from the brown. The way his flames flicker.
"Ok," Alex says, and the word is too short, too quick for all the emotion in it, because Alex keeps all his feelings at the very surface of his skin. When John touches him, he feels like he's swirling his fingers through Alex's very being, dragging it over the planes of his chest, the hollow of his collar, the knobs of his spine, and when he pulls away his fingers are covered in Alex. Buried in him. Drowning in him. Burning in him. Falling apart.
He licks his lips, and tastes salt. Tastes copper. Tastes blood.
"I'm breaking up with you." His words are blunt and ugly and ragged. Raw. (Nothing like Shakespeare). He knows they hit Alex where it hurts, because he flinches, sways slightly, and all the colour drains from his face. John thinks he looks like a black and white picture, where the light is so much brighter and the shadows are so much darker than in reality. The colours have faded from Alex, and if John looks hard enough, if he squints his eyes just right, he can see the paint dripping over Alex's thick, dark lashes, see it crusting in his hair and bleeding through the cracks in his blue veins.
"Why?" Alex's voice is small, lost, so different to how he normally sounds, and John wishes he could just disappear. There's salt in Alex's words, salt and copper and iron. Blood.
John glances out the window, and the sun is still hidden in the thick layer of smog, in the pollution of the city of steel. This is man's legacy, he thinks, and feels like laughing. Men will ruin everything lovely thing they can touch, because everything lovely thing they can touch they've learned they can break. He's seen people do it. He's seen the way they pick daisies, rip off the petals one by one and discard the shreds and never give it a second thought, the way they rip apart leaves for fun. He can always tell who these people are, because there's always green staining the tips of their fingers. There's always blood in their eyes, and hunger in their throats when they open their gaping mouths, suck everything in. A black hole.
He doesn't answer, because there's something clogged in his throat, something hot and sticky, clinging to his tongue and it's almost sweet, like treacle. (John's never liked treacle much.) Parting is such sweet sorrow.
"Why?" This time it's a snarl, and there's paint dripping over Alex's cheeks. He wipes it away, and the colours smear over his skin. Black and white.
And then John's walking over to the door, and he's picking up his jacket but not putting it on because he's sure he can weather the cold, and Alex is screaming at him to answer, to say something (fucking answer me John, give me a reason for fuck's sake, give me a fucking reason), and there's something ugly and choked in his voice, something hot and burning, and it hurts to hear.
Then John's in the street, and he's walking and trying to pretend the hot, molten silver on his cheeks is ice, and it's freezing him, that the cold is reaching past his skin into his very being, and he's frozen too. Then he's gone. (Alex is gone).
There are no daffodils in the street, because New York is made of iron and steel- but when John looks close enough, he thinks he can see something growing through the cracks in the pavement, see something yellow and lovely and brighter than anything else. He can't see Alex.
He thinks of ice. He thinks of sun. He thinks of clouds. He thinks of Shakespeare. He thinks of Romeo and Juliet. He thinks he hates Shakespeare. He certainly does not think of the boy with daffodils in his eyes, with roses in his throat, with forget-me-nots on his skin, with a garden inside his lungs.
He doesn't burn anymore, but somehow that's more painful than before. (Because burning felt like melting. Felt like coming home.) He gets rid of the daffodils on his shelf one day, because they hurt more than anything else (more than burning), because they're too bright and his eyes have grown accustomed to the dark. He throws them out of the window, watches the petals break apart and disintegrate in the hot, hazy sky, watches them land on the street with a dull thud that seems so much louder than it really is. He thinks they look lovely against the white noise of the city. Thinks they look like the sun. Then a car drives by, crushes the daffodils beneath its sticky tires, and the flowers are gone. Sometimes he thinks the flowers were never really there.
Life is different without Alex. Or, not different- it's hard to explain. (Painful to explain.)
Picture this: John sucking lemons and pretending they're the same as daffodils. Picture this: John reading Shakespeare and tearing up the script. Getting lemon juice on the page. Licking it off. Ignoring the petals trapped between the lines. Picture this: John painting over his own skin and spitting out the seeds caught in his teeth. John covering up something no longer there.
Picture this: the boy with the daffodils moving on. In this scene he has a ring on his finger. In this scene she's wearing a white dress, the kind covered in soft lace and memories, so easy to break. To tear apart. In this scene, John is shredding open his flesh, shattering his rib cage (bones are so easy to break) and ripping out something dark and red, something fist-sized and beating. Something with gashes in it's side, something rotten and bleeding, and paint drips over his palm, embeds itself in the creases of his hand and behind his fingernails, and it never comes out.
Picture this: John reading Romeo and Juliet, with the lemons and the seeds and the pulp. Finding a different quote. Wanting to scream. Wanting to cry. Wanting to do nothing. Wanting to die.
I defy you, stars.
Wishes he had been brave enough to do that. Wishes the stars were gone. Wishes the daffodils were here. Wishes wishes wishes wishes wishes. Never stops wishing. Wishes himself into his grave.
Parting such a sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow-
Hopes there will be daffodils at his funeral,