(Will's point of view)
~
I wake up at 4am, just like usually. I never sleep more than 4 hours, most nights less.
It's only way to avoid the nightmares.
Not just the ones when I'm dreaming. Also the ones I'm living with.
I took me a while to get my body to wake up at this time every day, but now I have enough time to get dressed and to leave the house before my parents wake up.
Just once I made the mistake not to be absolutely quiet, so they woke up. It was horrib- don't think about it. Don't remember. Go on.
I leave the house. Still four hours until school starts. I hate these morning hours.
As much as I hate it to be with to many people-being alone is worse.
When I'm alone I get time to think and usually I try to avoid this.
But there's no one I got go to.
Well, of course, I could go to Nico. He wouldn't tell me to leave.
And I would love to see him.
But I can't go there now. He has to sleep. And even I know I can't stay away from him, because I need him, I should try not to be this close to him.
Better having less of him than losing him.
Finally I sit down behind the empty school and read a book.
After a while students arrive and enter the building, so I do too.
It feels like every day.
It feels like walking through a big, colorless crowd, just that I know that I'm the colorless one and not they.
It's cold on the hallways, it's always cold.
There's just one place in the world I feel warm at. But I can't always be with Nico.
My blood is warm too. Not inside of me, but on my bare skin it feels warm.
Not the way Nico does, he's more like the whole sun.
But it's warm. And the red of my blood is sometimes the only color in the grey, colorless world I live in.
I keep wandering around the hallways, the people don't notice me anymore, and I'm glad.
That was the worst at the beginning.
How they look at you.
How you can never tell if they want you to say something.
If they want to help you.
Or if they want you to make a fool of yourself.
How you can't tell friends and enemies apart until you're just invisible for everyone.
That's the trick. Getting invisible.
Most time it works.
But with Nico it never worked. He saw me.
But it never bothered me. He was like an angel. So warm and full of light.
He never told me to stop. Or to change. He just told me that he's there. And it was okay. He was always there. And even when he wasn't, he stopped me from feeling alone.
But I still have to lie to him, because the truth may take him away from me and I can't risk that.
I love him.
Not just as a friend.
But I'm pretty sure he doesn't. I'm just his friend.
And probably it would be okay. If it would just be the two of us. We could probably move on. I could tell him, and we wouldn't stop being friends.
But everyone would think that we're a couple if I would come out.
And you can tell as much as you want that you don't care about other people opinions, but what people think about you changes you.
It would make things much more complicated.
And probably I would lose Nico.
And then I would want to lose myself.
I already thought of every way to do it.
How to end it.
But as long as I have him there's a thing that stops me from doing it.
A reminder that there's another way out of the labyrinth of pain.
Is it fair to make Nico the only reason I stay alive?
Probably not.
But the moment he comes around the corner, the moment I feel warm again, the moment I can see my light again
for a little moment the world moves in the right direction again and it's alright.
~*~
(Nico's point of view)
~
After I entered the school I start to look for Will.
I do this every day.
Because I'm every day afraid he might not be here. Or anywhere.
When I finally see him in a crowd of students, looking lost like always I can breathe normal again and walk up to him.
Some people would probably say that I worry to much about him, but they also don't know about all the shit in his life. All his problems and worries.
I'm the only one he actually talks to and I'm pretty sure I don't know everything about him too.
More than everyone else, yes. But not everything.
And sometimes I ask if I even want to know.
'Hey, Will'
'Hi'
I could ask him how he is.
At the beginning I did this.
But always just said fine.
And I always knew he was lying.
So I stopped asking, and he started to talk.
