I'll Share With You My Heartbeat

thirty one

Whenever Lennon felt the craving of touching the ravenhead, it had always been about communicating affection. And it still was. But there was something more to it now.

Kieran, in all this transparentness, was like glass. His skin was brittle and see-through. And with the sadness of his glossy eyes and the wobble of his lips, Lennon could see the cracks that ran along his cold veins, held together so tight those cracks were pressed into the thinnest of lines.

Lennon wanted to touch him, embrace him— tuck him into his arms in a way that allowed Kieran to let go, to stop holding himself together unceasingly.

"I wish I was there for you then," he said, so full of regret over something he couldn't control.

Kieran smiled slightly, cheek against his palm still. "You can't save everyone."

"No, just wanted to save you."

The tips of Kieran's hair flicked across his forehead when he shook his head in fond disbelief. If he could store all of Lennon's sweet words in a bottle to keep, he would.

"Lennon." Suddenly his eyes were sparkling, life igniting in his dark irises like his youth was reborn. "Remember the first theater across town? Remember when you were willing to break the law to come with me?"

Lennon scoffed, grinning. "The things I did to be close to you."

"Are you willing to do it again?"

He got a sly smile in return. "Where's the lowest window?"

The studio was just as he left it all those months ago— the mirror reaching from floor to ceiling, handrails along the walls and hardwood. Kieran grazed it with the pad of a finger and suddenly he was a tween again, working on his first plies and releves on inexperienced feet.

"I slept here," he realized, "The few months before I died, I practiced and I ate and I slept here."

Lennon appeared next to him, fingers curling around part of the rail next to the ravenhead's hand. "Why?"

"To disappear."

There's something so awful about that revaluation. His past want to disappear had come true in an unimaginable form. He was a ghost now. A shell of a man. Invisible to everyone but this boy.

"Didn't have to deal with my sister showing up at my apartment to ask if I'm okay after my parents separated, or just anyone or anything that could've distracted me from dance." A void chuckle pushed past his colorless lips. "Funny how I used to think dance was my coping mechanism. Now I see that it was the avoidance itself." It was strange, having to pick apart the strands of his past like this. But at least having Lennon's gaze on him made him feel like something close to a feather.

"Does it scare you now?" the boy asked, tongue poked against the inside of his cheek.

"What?"

"Dancing."

Kieran nodded solemnly, but his next sentence contrasted his crippling fear. "I want to dance for you."

Lennon blinked rapidly, caught off guard. "But—"

An index finger was pressed against his lips and a blush colored his freckled cheeks instantly. Kieran's stern look broke apart when he realized how flustered Lennon got over that one little gesture, grinning almost coyly.

"You practically committed a second break-in to be here with me. Please, let me do this for you."

"But I know how hard it is for you, Kier. I can't ask you to do this just days after finding out about your parents' divorce and the reasoning behind your death and— and all that you've suffered through..." Lennon protested, even with Kieran's finger trying to silence him. He'd always had trouble keeping his lips zipped anyway.