Work Text:
Begin…
- - -
You watch your favorite movie for the hundredth time, hoping maybe, just maybe, your favorite character won’t die this time.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
You always expected something else.
- - -
Forty seconds isn’t a long time. In forty seconds you could hear a secret, you could commit a crime, you could admit you loved someone. They’re all the same thing.
In forty seconds (you counted), you were swept away.
- - -
There are twenty pairs of eyes on you. Green, blue, blue, blue, brown, brown, blue, brown, brown, brown, brown, blue, green, blue, brown, brown, brown, brown, blue, blue. They feel like oil sliding over your skin, and there’s a bird behind your ribcage, chipping away at your bones. You feel like you could end the world, like you could fall to your knees and cry, like you could disappear.
There are twenty-one pairs of eyes on you, now. Green, blue, blue, blue, brown, brown, blue, brown, brown, brown, brown, blue, green, blue, brown, brown, brown, brown, blue, blue, and brown. His eyes are brown. He smiles at you, and his eyes don’t feel like oil on your skin, they feel like a baptism, and the bird in your chest begins to bite at your ligaments. You feel like if you ended the world, fell to your knees and cried, disappeared, he wouldn’t blame you for any of it.
His name is Anthony, and you decide in that moment that you love him.
- - -
Sometimes he’ll get an ache in his chest and an itch under his skin and he’ll run. He’ll run until he can’t run anymore, until his chest is heaving like a stormy ocean and his face is flooded with tidal waves. You’ll have to pick up his pieces. He shatters himself day in and day out and you’ll need to put him together like a mosaic; you’ll have to press his bits of glass into plaster and fix him, because he can’t do it himself.
He’s a jumble of contradictions, all sharp elbows and soft skin, wild hair and weary eyes. He’s a boy who drives too fast just for the thrill; he’s a man who holds you close when you’re shaking apart. When he’s angry his voice never rises, but he could say “I love you” and make it sound like a death sentence. He’s caring and cruel and he loves like the ocean loves the shore, and no matter how far he goes, he always, always comes back. He’s all you’ve ever wanted: a tired boy with a tendency to run. Sometimes boys like that go too far, too fast, and they don’t come back once they’re over that next hill.
You loved him, you love him, you will love him.
- - -
"I love you."
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick-
"I’m sorry."
-tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick-
"I’m so sorry."
-tick, tick, tick, tick, tick-
"I love you."
-tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.
- - -
Forty percent complete…
- - -
There are two hundred and six bones in the average adult human body. One-quarter of those are in the feet. There are twenty-seven bones in the human hand, and when you hold his, you like to imagine you can feel every single one of them. You put the pads of your fingers over his knuckles, and though it makes the angle odd, he doesn’t seem to mind.
He has scars on his hands. They’re small, nearly unnoticeable, but you’ve mapped out his hands again and again, and every time you discover another scar you hadn’t noticed before. You always ignore the faint ones on his wrists. He doesn’t like to talk about those.
You put your lips to the backs of his hands, and imagine you can kiss every bone he has, every scar he has, and let him know you love them all.
- - -
Carcinogen. Carcinogenic. Cancer. Cancerous. The doctor apologizes, then again. You can’t hear it past the world crashing down around your ears. The doctor leaves, and it occurs to you that Anthony’s bones are wrapped around your own and he’s whispering sorrow to you. You cannot bring yourself to share in his sorrow.
You can taste his words on your tongue, and they taste like cotton.
It took forty seconds for the doctor to break the news, and it felt like a child falling through ice.
- - -
Awake. Such an odd feeling, after being asleep for so long. There’s a haze in front of your eyes, as if you were looking through a thin layer of cotton. Everything feels like cotton: your tongue, your head, the sheets wrapped around you. Even the quiet swish of the ceiling fan blades sounds like cotton. There’s a distance ticking, and as it registers, so does a quiet, nearly unnoticeable voice in the back of your head, counting the ticks.
When the voice hits forty, it starts over again.
The voice sounds like your own, and your throat tastes like cotton.
- - -
You tell yourself you’ll be fine.
"Steven," Anthony says.
You promise yourself you’ll be fine.
"Steven, please," Anthony says.
You can’t be fine if he says your name like that.
"I still love you," Anthony says.
You can’t be fine if he loves you.
- - -
He runs on Christmas, when your bones are delicate and coughs force their way from your body like his name. You can’t chase after him, not this time, and your fingers are shaking so badly you aren’t sure you’d be able to piece him together again. You let Anthony run, but you’ll know he’ll come back.
It takes forty hours, and when he returns, he cries in your arms for forty minutes. You pet his head forty times and whisper “I’ll be fine,” forty times. You’re a broken record, he’s a broken record, and neither of you can be fixed any longer.
- - -
Forty days. That’s the approximation they give you. Forty days to live. You don’t want to spend it in the hospital, so you don’t.
"I’ll be fine," you tell Anthony on the drive home.
He doesn’t believe you, just like he didn’t believe you the other forty times.
You repeat it anyway, and it becomes ritual. “I love you, I’ll be fine.”
He knows you love him.
He knows you won’t be fine.
- - -
Forty percent remaining…
- - -
You know forty ways to say “I love you.” You say “I love you” forty times in each way.
Anthony knows the end is coming.
He repeats each “I love you” with a stumbling tongue, but you’re grateful for it anyway.
- - -
Aminoheptafluorocyclotetraphosphonitrile is a word with forty letters. It’s the name for a chemical compound. You learn to pronounce it, and say it forty times in your head.
Anthony suggests something. He wants to “meet all over again.”
Outwardly, you say it’s a great idea, but inwardly you dread it. You don’t want to meet him again. You wish you’d never met him. You hate to see him suffer like he is.
- - -
There are twenty pairs of eyes on you. Green, blue, blue, blue, brown, brown, blue, brown, brown, brown, brown, blue, green, blue, brown, brown, brown, brown, blue, blue. These eyes have been on you before, but they feel no less oily now. The bird in your chest has long since died. You want to die.
There are twenty-one pairs of eyes on you, now. Green, blue, blue, blue, brown, brown, blue, brown, brown, brown, brown, blue, green, blue, brown, brown, brown, brown, blue, blue, and brown. His eyes are brown. He smiles at you, and it seems forced and wrong. The bird in your chest turns to stone. You feel like if you died, he’d blame you.
- - -
Forty seconds isn’t a long time. In forty seconds you could hear a secret, you could commit a crime, you could admit you loved someone. They’re all the same thing.
In forty seconds (you counted), you were swept away. It took forty days and forty seconds.
- - -
"I love you."
There is no ticking.
"I’m sorry."
There is no ticking.
"I’m so sorry."
There is no ticking.
"I love you."
There is no ticking.
- - -
You watch your favorite move for the hundredth time, hoping maybe, just maybe, your favorite character won’t die this time.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Your favorite character dies, as they did the past ninety-nine times, and you can’t even bring yourself to be disappointed.
You never expected anything else.
- - -
Complete…