- N. Magnet

It was just a few days before The Gathering when you felt him die beneath the weight of your heavy heart.

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You were afraid. Horrified, even. And it kills you now, thinking back, because you played hopscotch with his medications, duck-duck-goosing the empty bottles through races between his bedroom and the kitchen, spelling out the word "Hydroxyzine" every time you beat your thumb on the bottle in your hand. You could've just brought the wrong bottles back to the kitchen, away from that quiet room. You could've read the side effects, the warnings, anything. You could've saved him before he even needed to be saved.

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But you didn't know then, and neither did he - and accidents remain accidents until no one takes the blame.

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You're a volcano getting ready to burst.

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That pressure beneath your head, the same pressure built up from medications and caffeine rising bubbles of carbon dioxide under his ribcage, the shaking of your fists as you realized he'd stopped shaking, stopped breathing. His horrible, horrible sweet smile.

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God, kill me first. That's all you could think when you saw he'd lolled his head to the side, facing you, pursing his pale lips into that bittersweet smile.

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"Goodbye."

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And if you had let him, he would've been gone.

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See, you're not a dirty god. You're no sultry golden halo sitting on the crown of someone's brow, breaking your wings beneath the paperweight that is your tongue. You just saw him, saw that smile, that peaceful face that had endured so much already, and in one selfish call out to the dark, in one cry for help heard by no one but yourself in that silent room, you dug yourself into his chest, you pressed beneath his heart with your hands and lips and chin, you wrestled with the grasps of the Reaper until he gasped for air and his eyes fluttered back into blue butterfly view, and he looked at you, already on the verge of tears, already lacking peace, and he drew you close and you sank into his arms for what you knew wouldn't be the last time. Thank whatever gods there are, it wasn't the last time.

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"How does it feel to cheat Fate?" He laughed weakly, and through a migraine, you laughed back.

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"Exhausting, but relieving."

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And you cried into each other's arms, his eyes ceasing due to exhaustion and yours never ceasing due to disbelief, and despite this, despite just losing his heartbeat for a moment, he cradled you, he held you, he wiped the tears from your eyes and kissed your frozen cheeks and dotted your trembling lips. He said to you, "Thank you. Really." And he told you he hoped you wouldn't be scarred for life, and you shook your head to calm his nerves, but your nerves were shaken like a trembling tree in the depths of climate change.

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How do you lose the warmth in a twin flame's pendulum heartbeat? For those few moments, for those few jabs at his ribcage, you two fell out of sync. You moved in opposite directions, into different planes, pushing and pulling like magnets that exist solely to oppose the other. Foil. Twisted. Unbirthed through the same womb of heart, pressed together through the machinery of mind. Hand in hand, lips on ribcage, absolutely out of touch. Black and white.

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You hated it.

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But he said thank you. You knew that although Fate had pushed him through the arms of anxiety meds and the bottom of a can of soda, that fire of his was not ready to extinguish - yet you sit here now at the edge of your computer screen, spilling coffee all over the shirt that he stole from you but you eventually stole back because it smelled like him, and yes, you sit here and you feel guilty. Because that face, that horrible, horrible sweet smile - it was at peace.

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You wish more than life that you could make him feel at peace.

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"You do," He once said, curled up with blankets underneath a piano. "You do make me feel at peace." But you looked him in the eye, you looked past the river that was once an ocean, and you saw that horrible, horrible sad smile. You fought past the shipwreck at the bottom of your chest, and you pushed out a smile of your own, one with light fangs pouring through rays of pink sunshine once heavy with sugarcane rain. You said nothing in return.

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Listen, I love you. I want that to be one of the sparks in what keeps that flame of ours alive, that heartbeat beating, that pendulum shifting, that magnet pulling me in and pushing us so far out of here that we leave the country and flee for another realm that probably won't feel like home, but will at least be a place to stay until we die for real and find it.

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For a moment, I admit, I was selfish. Yes, I was.

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All I want is to be your home.

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I want to make you smile by randomly making our bed and redecorating the rooms to look new, to look colorful and comfortable. I want you to make me smile by randomly deciding to wake me up with kisses and a pot of coffee for whenever I'm ready for it. I want to go to work in a good mood, to come home to you, to rest my aching bones against yours and breathe in your sweet air and keep you warm when you need the hugs and cool you off when you need the space. I like that - I love that.

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You're a volcano getting ready to burst.

Hydroxyzine dreams and careless sunbeams.

I have to tell myself the truth.

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Golden worry, it's nowhere near the right time to die.

Author's Note

Ignore basic grammatical errors, as there are some rules that, as a writer, I don't care to abide by. I feel restricted when following these rules, and since I have such a hard time getting my thoughts across, I'd rather break a few rules than be grammatically "perfect."

Reviews

[florence]

may i say - i am fascinated! i generally dont read the books on this website but this is incredible. i love how dream-like, surreal even, the writing feels without sacrificing the rawness of reality. the volcano line was a great touch, and im a sucker for religious metaphor, so the "sultry golden halo" was really excellent.

lovely work here, such well-crafted prose. getting psyched to read the next chapter!

[chrysantheranium]

Thank you so very much! I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I hope you enjoy the new chapters once they're released. :)