BOYS OF SUBURBIA [boy x boy] [Wattys 2018]

✗ FIFTY-THREE ✗

"Hey."

"Hey," Niko said hoarsely, his throat dehydrated from the lack of water. He sipped on the styrofoam cup of water put out by the nurse.

"How are you?"

Niko's insides tightened, "Pretty okay," he chuckled lightly, without much humour in it. "Considering."

Sebastian nodded like he understood. "Of course," he said, cerulean eyes wide with concern.

"Yeah," Niko echoed, fixating his stare upon the bed sheets folded in front of him across his body. His mind felt all churned up, like the choppy blue-grey water of an ocean before a gale. There was so much and nothing to say at the same time- because so much weight and darkness held behind them, like a dreary brocade drape coating both of them. It was comforting and suffocating simultaneously.

"I have something to tell you." Sebastian inhaled deeply, like he was buttering himself up to say a new story. Niko glanced up, interest piqued.

"What is it?"

"I...I'm moving," Sebastian mumbled, paying attention to the grimy white floors.

Niko felt all the oxygen exiting his body and then coming back in once again. "To where?" He hated how his voice sounded, high-pitched and strange.

"Scotland."

"Oh," Niko swallowed painfully, "Does this mean....?" He couldn't bring himself to finish. Instead, he looked up and stared straight into Sebastian's meaningful eyes.

"Yeah," Sebastian said, tears welling up in his eyes.

"I might be going to," Niko said, shoving his emotions deep into his eyes. He could not break down. Not now, not right now. He exhaled a shaky breath, "They might put me under court-ordered rehab."

"Fuck," muttered Sebastian softly, "I'm so so sorry, Niko."

Niko's heartstrings tugged. He didn't want Sebastian to think it was his fault- it was never his fault. This was his mess and he dragged Sebastian into it. "Don't say that," Niko smiled- in spite it all, in spite of the bloodstained underneath their fingernails, "I might...it might be good for me."

Sebastian speechlessly nodded and all Niko wanted to do was kiss him. Instead, Niko paid mind to the sight outside. It was late now; so late that it could once again be called early—that too-familiar surreal, enchanted, twilight hour between the end of a party and the unfurling of a new day. The hour when reality grew dim and hazy at the edges when nearly anything seems possible.

"Is this it?" Sebastian asked, frightfully frail in his voice. He had no idea how it came to this, how someone could matter so much all of the sudden. Niko began as the boy who fascinated Sebastian in the distance. There was something about Niko that made you pay attention to him; Sebastian couldn't have put a finger on what it was but knew somehow that it was this, this peculiar and indefinable quality, that he had always envied.

"Possibly," Niko whispered.

"I love you," Sebastian confessed without hesitation, without a beat, without looking down the tall cliff he was staring down. "I love you, you understand? I'll never love anyone else like I loved you."

And that was when Niko lost it- the tears streaming freely down his cinnamon cheeks as Sebastian leaned in to whisper, "Don't cry, don't cry," and put his lips onto his for what felt like it might be the last time.

His mouth tasted like the biscuits his mother bake and he smelled of cigarettes, and his hair was tangled when Niko ran his fingers through it, hoping for redemption and forgiveness in his mouth. As they seperated, lips shiny, eyes wet, Niko stared at his little piece of sunshine in front of him, realizing how it wasn't ideal, they weren't ideal and their lives weren't ideal but it was something.

And somehow, everything will (eventually) be okay. 

-

the end.

[epilogue coming soon!]

dedicated to vanflogh.