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Ivan cursed under his breath as the plastic bag in his arms broke and its entire content spilled all over his clothes.
It was illegally hot, the sun's light mercilessly grilling Ivan and its heat radiating from the concrete he stood on. He imagined to feel it soaking through his shoes like hot cement, burning his sensitive skin and boiling his insides while all he could do was stand on the street, covered in trash.
Ivan hated summer with a burning passion, and today was no day to change that.
He managed to scramble up the loose piles of trash in his arms and carry them to the nearest dumpster. God, this was so humiliating. He prayed the old hag living next to them didn't decide to look out of her window at this very moment; he'd never hear the end of it.
Ivan sighed in relief as he released the trash and it filled the big dumpster with a mild crashing noise. His contentment vanished into thin air when he realized the bracelet on his right wrist wasn't on its usual place.
Glancing at the dumpster he contemplated just killing himself on the spot, exposed to summer's heat that was still tickling his feet with an unpleasant hot sensation. Maybe he could even blame it on the heat. How Ivan hated the heat.
When Tristan walked past the green dumpster wearing his usual dark suit and unimpressed expression, he imagined to hear a quiet curse that seemed too familiar to be ignored. Stopping in his tracks he glanced at the dumpster, wondering if this was the day he officially lost his sanity and could be declared insane; the greatest and most natural state of being.
"What is this, another Socrates gone mad?"
Ivan glared at Tristan through narrowed eyes. "Are you stalking me?"
"I was actually just walking home," Tristan replied, eyeing the trash Ivan was kneeling in with curious eyes. "Is this a statement? Are you declaring poverty as a personal virtue?"
Ivan rolled his eyes. "I don't even want to know what you're talking about. I lost my bracelet."
"What an unfortunate place to lose something in."
"I'll just forget it," Ivan stated, climbing out of the dumpster. "I'll never find it, anyway."
"You reek," Tristan noticed. "So, is this a normal Friday afternoon activity for people like you?"
The shorter boy sighed as he glanced down at his stained clothes. "Don't mock me, Tristan. I'm tired."
"Maybe you should take a nap."
"It wouldn't help." Ivan glanced up at the sky. "I'm tired of being lost. And my family. And thinking about the things you said last night. You know, maybe you're not a good influence."
Tristan tilted his head, his usual amused smile tugging at his lips. "Because I make you think? Right, I'm such a horrible person."
"Do you always walk through this neighbourhood?"
"I usually take longer routes home, but it's hot and this is the shortest way."
"Ah. Who were you referring to just now?" Ivan asked, glancing at the dumpster. "When I was in there."
Tristan smiled. "Diogenes of Sinope, a self-proclaimed 'citizen of the world'. He lived in wine barrels and such, praising a life of absolute poverty. Everyone hated him and he just didn't care."
"Wow. When did he live?"
Tristan shrugged. "Around 350 BC."
"Wow."
The boy nodded, and Ivan stared a little longer at his tired face and weary smile and short hair that never seemed to change before turning away. "I live over there. You can wait here while I go change."
"Why would I wait?"
"Well, you're here. I thought we could do something."
"I was on my way home," Tristan repeated, noticing the slight disappointment on Ivan's face. "You can come if you want. You can shower at my place."
Ivan hesitated. "You sure? I could just do it here."
"I won't wait out in the heat for you, Ivan. I'm wearing black. Do you want me to die horribly?"
Ivan grinned at their shared hatred for the summer's heat before giving in with an eager nod. The two started walking, and Ivan tried not to be bothered by the distance Tristan made sure to keep between them – after all, Ivan had just spent minutes kneeling in old trash.
Once again the apartment was smelling of mould and old clothes, and it was empty except for the two boys in the bathroom. The shower was older than Tristan himself so he had to explain it to Ivan first.
"You all set?" he asked after laying a towel out for Ivan. "It takes a couple minutes for the water to warm up."
"Yeah, thanks."
Tristan shot him another smile before leaving. Ivan quickly showered, trying hard to fight the crimson blush on his cheeks while abandoning any uncalled thoughts from his mind.
He didn't like Tristan's home but he liked Tristan, and through the short time they had known each other Ivan had found that there was nothing better than spending time with him, even in a place so old and abandoned and lonely.
But Tristan found that with Ivan, it wasn't even that lonely anymore.
Ivan startled under the water as he heard a knock on the bathroom door. "I'll lay out a few clothes for you right here on the floor, just grab them when you're done."
He called back that he had understood, and Tristan left. Once Ivan was done and dressed, he spent a minute too long looking at the loose fabric on his body and taking in Tristan's scent lingering on the clothes like a second layer, giving it a personality Ivan found more intriguing than anything else he knew.
Tristan greeted him with a smile as he left the bathroom. He was laying on his mattress, a book placed in his lap that he just briefly glanced up from. Ivan sat down on the chair he had fallen asleep in once, his gaze drifting through the room.
"It's still as messy as last time I was here."
"I don't care for a clean space," Tristan mumbled, his eyes falling back on the pages of his book.
"What are you reading?"
"How to die, by Seneca."
Ivan pulled a face. "Of course. Why did I even ask."
Tristan just grinned as he glanced at him, that soft and adoring glint back in his eyes. "Want me to read to you?"
Ivan didn't care about death, or an instruction on how to die, or people whose names he forgot the second he heard them. Ivan didn't care and yet he found himself nodding yes because the wish to listen to Tristan talk about anyone and anything was stronger than his own interests.
A few minutes of silence passed as Tristan looked for a passage Ivan might enjoy. Ivan cared less for the words and more for the soft tone of Tristan's voice as he started reading.
"Death too has a bad reputation; but let's not allow that to harm it in our eyes. None of those who bring charges against it have ever tried it, and it's impudent to condemn what you know nothing of. But you do know, at least, how many have found death helpful; how many it has released from tortures, poverty, lamentation, punishments, fatigue. We are in no one's power, if death is in our power."
Tristan closed the book and looked up at Ivan only to find him staring at him. "Remember how we talked about suicide?"
"How could I forget? I hated it."
"Euthanasia; the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable disease. Seneca supported suicide and self-euthanasia in certain cases, such as if freedom were to be destroyed by a tyrant, or if one's health were forever compromised."
Ivan pulled a face. "It's selfish, still. We don't only live for ourselves. There's responsibility – and don't say you don't have it just because you don't allow your life to have any meaning. As long as you're on this earth, and talking to people, and living, you have a responsibility. You matter. When will you realize?"
Tristan listened to him with a smile. "Seneca also believed that in case family and friends depended on you, one might have to postpone their self-euthanasia, so I suppose you're not completely wrong."
"Not just that," Ivan said, his voice sharp. "You might not have anyone depending on you, but that doesn't mean you're not relevant, still."
"You just believe in death's bad reputation. Wait." Tristan opened the book again, quickly flipping through the pages until he stopped at one in the beginning. "Death is the undoing of all our sorrows, an end beyond which our ills cannot go; it returns us to that peace in which we reposed before we were born. If someone pities the dead, let him also pity those not yet born."
Ivan groaned in annoyance for he did not know how to make someone see the truth. There was no way Tristan truly believed in all this – death meant the end of everything; of course it wasn't good nor bad because it was nothing. They only mattered as long as they were alive, for they had no sense of control in anything beyond life.
"I don't fear it," Tristan stated, slowly closing the book and setting it down on the hard ground. "I neither look forward to it nor try to draw it towards me. I just think about it every day, every second of my hollow existence, because what was before us was death, and what comes after us is death, and what does it matter if we cease to be, or never begin? The outcome of either is just this, that you don't exist. And if you don't understand death, you won't find peace in it."
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