A Certain Sort Of Loneliness

Struggles -2-

Lukas worries and Mathias comforts - it's a usual thing really.

Lukas was sighing again. He had been doing that a lot lately, Mathias had noticed, and sighs never meant anything good - or at least not when they were ones like these: deep and shaky, ones that just sounded so, so tired that it made Mathias want to reach out and comfort him - and so that's exactly what he did.

   "Hey." He slung his arms around Lukas, one arm round his waist and the other across his back. There had been protests at first, Mathias remembers, to little things like this but now - now especially - this sort of thing was welcome and Mathias felt Lukas relax and soften in his arms, fingers tracing along his chest in rhythmic, gentle strokes.

    "What's up?" He asked, and he felt Lukas inhale his scent, drowning himself in it for a moment before quietly, quietly,

    "Mathias," he breathed, pausing for a moment to piece his words together somehow, "I don't know what to do anymore." There wasn't much else to say really - it had all been said before, each quiet complaint and worry already shared and shown and yet Lukas found himself saying them anyway - he could only do this with Mathias - it was okay to complain, to let himself talk - he was safe with him, after all.

   "School's starting again soon, I'm worried that Emil won't go - how are we supposed to explain that? What if he's being bullied and that's why he's hiding? What if he's not eating properly? He doesn't know about us and he could barely handle Tino and Berwald, let alone Peter and Lars - what if this makes it worse? What if...What if I was the one who hurt him in the first place? What if this is all my fault?"

   For a while, silence followed his outburst, and all Mathias could do was slowly rub across Lukas's back, he looked down at him softly, and Lukas looked back up,

   "It'll be okay, alright?" He combed through his hair lightly, " We'll get through this - all of us," Lukas had never been the positive one of the group - he was a realist at best and downright paranoid at worst, and Mathias was always going to have to be the optimistic one out of the two of them. But Mathias knew, as Lukas gave him a slight, weak smile, that as time went on his words were starting to lose effect - said too many times with too little done - Mathias knew, something had to happen.

  But for now, for just a little while longer, Mathias allowed himself to relish in the warmth of having Lukas in his arms and returned to stroking his hair lightly as Lukas nestled closer, laying his head on Mathias's chest, all to the sounds of the radio in the back of the room, quiet notes of some soft symphony wafting through the air.