"Sleep is the cousin to death. You know that."
He smiled like it was easy, as if the world truly did work in precisely the same manner as his head. Yet the both of them knew that was truly a worrisome notion.
Isak watched Even, only half-way awake: through heavy eyelids, and dark fluttering lashes. Isak watched him, hoping only, even from the bed, to keep him safe. It was a tall order, truly; he couldn't anticipate what would come next, how fate might plot and scheme, and play them both a foul hand. Yet for that night, he was determined to get them right.
Even had condemned himself to the windowsill, watching the last remnants of the nighttime world - stragglers coming home from parties, drunken teenagers, the like - make their way back through the streets of Oslo and to their homes.
"I thought weed was supposed to make you tired." Isak's voice was soft, barely a murmur pressed down against the sheets of his bed. Yet, as the world around them seemed entirely silent, entirely still, it resonated throughout Isak's room with the force of an earthquake. Yet, Even bothered not turn his head.
He watched the stars; he watched the clouds that covered them; it seemed to make sense - for such beauty, twinkling beacons amidst the formidable inky vastness of the night, to be stolen away, perhaps by the very hands that had put them there.
Even forgot that Isak had so much as uttered a single word. Perhaps that was the very moment Isak decided that it was a bad night. And hence came the guilt, and the inner accusations that put it all down to him. For as much as he knew it was anything but, he could never help but place Even's bad nights down as his fault.
"Come to bed..." He pleaded, eyes wide, unblinking, yet shining little beacons through the darkness of the room.
It was not his words but his eyes that had Even turning his head; words served him little purpose with the night wrapped so tightly around the two of them - not the blanket he'd once thought it to be, but instead the bindings that had forever held his head underwater.
In Even's silence, Isak sought to have a conversation solely with their eyes, but still that was a notion Even made quick work of rejecting. He turned his head away, thinking instead in favour of tracking down a runaway notion that he'd almost lost.
"That's why... you don't know what it's like..." Even's words, although long-awaited, came fruitless, baring not a single comfort to the halfway terrified boy, reserved and cast aside, under his sheets.
"What do you mean?" Isak fixed his eyes upon Even's side, and made a promise to himself about keeping them open, not so much as closing them to blink.
"No... that's why..." Even leaned forward, green eyes catching the warm glow of a streetlamp outside, and for the briefest of moments, he appeared otherworldly, ethereal almost: a God in the golden light.
He put the joint out. Isak sucked a deep breath inside his chest, hand-in-hand with a comment about how he never should have let Even have it in the first place; he reckoned that kind of talk was the last thing either of them needed that night.
"The boy who couldn't hold his breath underwater." Even supplied, as if it was obvious, jumping from notion to notion, up inside that head of his: the world Isak so desperately longed to so much as begin to comprehend.
"Yeah..." Isak drew out a sigh, stretching one hand out into the cold, stale, air: yearning for Even to join him, for his words to make the slightest ounce of sense.
"I've had practice." Even exclaimed, face contorting to reflect a man who saw himself holding the key, the key to everything.
"Holding your breath?" Isak managed a smile: lethargic, at best. Still, eyes wide open, he watched as Even pulled himself to his feet, regarding Isak's outstretched hand, as even something reminiscent of a possibility.
Even gave a nod, eyes darting around the room: hesitant, perhaps even distrusting, of the ebbing darkness cast by shadows, in the depths of the corners of the room, and the demons sent to exile there - particularly the ones he'd once called his own.
"Not under real water." Even explained, tearing his gaze back to Isak, to his face, pale, almost glistening in the moonlight: for the boy before him held the beauty of a marble statue, despite curls askew, and eyelids seeking recluse upon the bow of his cheeks.
Isak didn't know what he was ought to say to that; Even could see it in him. As Isak fumbled with his words, Even relented, and put his head to rest, settling himself down upon the very edge of the bed, with his back pressing into Isak's stomach.
"Under what?" Isak's voice grew softer still, yet fingertips softer evermore brushed over Even's hips as he shuffled across to the other end of the bed, giving them both ample room to lay, to share one another heads until that great ebbing darkness vanquished the both of them.
Even shook his head, fingers finding Isak's as he drew his eyes up to the ceiling; he studied every crack, every scuff with both care and intensity. Although truly, they served as little more than a distraction: biding his time away until the truth came hurling out from between gently parted lips.
"That's what it feels like." His voice was monotone, seemingly apathetic; it was the perfect facade for all besides the boy who knew him best - eyes still open wide, settled upon the rise and fall of his chest.
"This?" Isak sought to fill in the gaps; still he wasn't entirely certain as to quite what 'this' amounted to.
Even drew in a sigh, eyes fluttering, slowly, dubiously, as if he didn't quite trust the back of his own eyelids.
"Being depressed." He drew his words out with a carefully construed nonchalance that worked wonderfully in contradicting itself - despite that, it still seemed to fit. "Like I'm just holding my breath underwater, like I can never reach the surface... and there's this... eventuality... that I'll drown. And sometimes it just gets harder, and I feel as though I might as well just give up, that there's no point to trying at all."
Isak wished for a world in which he might have known what to say - just once.
"So that's why you couldn't." Even continued to elaborate, eyes distant, stealing one last glance of the outside world, of the dimming moonlight, making its best efforts to reach them, but only ever trickling in. "Hold your breath. Because you don't know what it's like."
"I think it was actually because you kissed me that I-" Isak stopped in his tracks, holding Even's gaze, and the sudden weight behind those eyes.
"If I hadn't had kissed you..." Even trailed off. "Then maybe we'd both just still be there, forever holding our breath."
"You mean..." Isak sought to reap meaning for the distant, half realities in which Even had made his home. "Like... we would have never kissed. And we'd just... just..."
Isak didn't want to imagine where they'd be.
"Yeah." Even brushed his thumb over Isak's fingertips: each and every single one. "I kissed you because you shouldn't have to hold your breath when you can breathe."
He bit back a 'you shouldn't have to hold your breath for me'.
Even rolled onto his side, extending his arm out to bracket Isak's waist. He made quick work of the distance between them, for what business had it ever sought, for what had it reaped, for what it had it sewn? Their lips found each other in the darkness, like birds coming home, like the gentle tide lapping over the moonlit shore.
"I don't think I could." Isak drew away with a whispered confession, speaking as if solely to Even's lips, than to the boy that owned them.
"Hmm...?" Even inquired: soft, gentle, threading his fingers into Isak's hair - for it was there he could call home.
"Breathe." Isak explained, gaze shivering, wavering: terrified. "It wasn't in the same way as you. I think it was about being gay..." Still, the word itself bore heavy against Isak's tongue, tumbling onto the sheets between them with a sinking weight: digging a hole beneath the point at which their shoulders met.
"It was that breath of fresh air when we surfaced..." Isak pulled them closer together: eminently one being, if only just for that moment. "Like things finally made sense."
Even kissed him again: for the desperate hope that Isak would take those same breaths of fresh air for the rest of his life; for the fickle hope that they might even share them.
"Then you kissed me." Even muttered, perhaps just to his lips, to his fingers against his neck, tracing his adam's apple, as if to truly hold every part of him: it was a gesture of gratitude, something still, he struggled to quite express.
Isak's eyes grew wide, bright, even in the darkness. The shaky breaths that followed were, of course, to be expected.
"It's like I said." Even continued, spurring up the softest laughter in attempt to placate his words' forever burning fury. "It's what happens after I save you..." He curled his lips up into a smile. "You save me right back."
Isak's eyes flickered, darting about the darkness, crumbling under the weight of such a confession: baring the weight of such a heavy due. Then Even's eyes found his once again, and the world seemed to stop, as if in a standing ovation, for the two sleepless boys and the great whirlwind mess their hearts had gotten caught up in.
Even watched Isak's lips; tongue slipping through his parted own. Yet, as if he didn't quite dare to kiss him, after all, after words bearing weight they struggled to comprehend, he didn't quite dare to alleviate it: as if the crushing force of it all was a better alternative, as if the eventual submersion was a welcome friend.
Isak swallowed his fears and parted his lips.
He kissed Even right back, and thought not of the weight upon him, not of the crashing waves, not of the rampant, cold night, not of the world outside, but of them. Of the momentary gap and the matter of bridging it.
"I save you right back." He told Even, again. For it seemed as if those were words he needed to hear; it was one of those nights.
It mattered not that Isak bore no answers, for Even never faced him with questions, instead just with palms open, extended. As much as Isak felt very much out of his depth, it was becoming forever clear, as the moonlight cast stark against their skin, that Even was not asking him to solve his every problem, but just instead for a hand to hold, for someone to utter words of reassurance, as the night waned away around them.
Isak reckoned, even if just for that moment, he could do that.
He kissed Even again: the boy who'd made a hobby out of staring up at him with those wide, impossible eyes, as if still, he was quite yet to figure him out. With it, he offered up a smile, as his eyes hung low.
"Go to sleep."
Even met him with little more than a smile: yet it was genuine, a smile not just with his lips, but with his eyes, with that heart thudding away inside a rather lonesome chest.
"I told you - sleep's the cousin-"
Isak didn't let him finish: eyes wide once more, heavy, insistent. Lips parted, baring the threat of kissing with eager intent.
Even let himself be subdued, yet kissed back with more force than Isak had initially exerted, as he was, of course, the significantly more alert of the two boys.
As Isak pulled away, nestling himself down under Even's arm, curling it around his waist, Even allowed his eyelids to hang heavy - for perhaps it was simpler just not to open them again.
Moments drew by, the darkness reigned supreme in only the distant corners of the room: ebbing and brewing, but never with enough power to harm them. For the moonlight, not just trickling, not just streaming in, but now pouring over their tightly pressed bodies, would always have the upperhand.
A smile curled itself around Even's lips: parting slowly, as the night nestled itself firmly around them.
He concluded: soft-spoken, voice wavering through the still air:
"Sleep's maybe... not so bad."
-
brought to u specially by me being unable to sleep because evak.
its been bothering me really,,, writing these two - like it sort of insisted to be done
anyway
love u
hope u liked this
votes and comments will be nice
its 3:21am I'm going to bed