his reprieve | falsettos

two (tw: self harm)

marvin jolted up from his bed in a cold sweat, tears welling up in his eyes. he regained his breath, feeling his back rise and fall dramatically with each inhale and exhale, before hastily wiping his eyes. he wishes he would stop dreaming about whizzer.
it's been almost a year since his boyfriend passed away. some would think he would be over it by now; and that would be partially right. marvin can go to jason's baseball practices without crying, and he can visit cordelia and charlotte without seeing a photo of him and whizzer in their living room and feeling an earthquake tear through his body, seismic waves of grief echoing through his brain.
he can do those things now.
but sometimes it's still hard.

he isn't sure whether he's dreaming about whizzer, or whether whizzer is entering his dreams. his encounter with the ghost of his boyfriend was four months ago, and who knows what else he could do ? marvin knows he's out there somewhere, and he knows he can feel his presence in his dreams, see him, reach out to him, so close yet so far.
now fully awake, marvin scrambled for his dream journal, rapidly trying to piece together segments of his dream like a second-hand jigsaw puzzle with a good quarter of the pieces missing.
he can picture a knife, or at least some sort of blade. he remembers mendel shouting, and trina's sobs; perhaps this was a dream about a fight ? so many occurred around the beginning of the 2-year breakup, it wouldn't surprise marvin if they were to stick with him into his dreams. yet, mendel's shouting didn't sound angry, nor defensive, from what marvin could remember. scrawling down messy murmurs in the dimly-lit room, marvin squinted hard at the paper as if it would unfurl a hidden meaning. he can mostly remember whizzer, in that white shirt, petrified by whatever was happening before him.

marvin glanced at the clock on his bedside. 4 A.M.
he could go back to sleep, but he was awake now, and 2 hours sleep wouldn't do him too much good. so he sat, and he waited.
he wasn't sure what for, but he felt like he should wait.

the next day, when he was sidling around by the weisenbachfelds' kitchen doorway, trina went to roll her sleeves up to begin preparing lunch, and when marvin spotted fresh scars lacing his ex-wife's wrists, marvin knew.

whizzer was trying to tell him something.

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i got a lot of positive feedback on 'his reprieve' (aka heartbreak) so i figured i might as well write something else for this after so long.
happy valentine's day :)