Chapter 7 - Sleep

Chances are that at some point in your life you've felt something you wished you didn't when you were all alone in your house. Chances are you were still disappointed when someone from your family came home. And chances are there have been times when you thought you were home alone and you weren't and you were embarrassed when their presence was made known. The whole point of being alone is that we can do things we'd find embarrassing in other situations. You could fart really loudly, or sing really badly, or choreograph a musical number that will never see a stage in its life. Basically, anything you do and are when you're alone is what you're really like. So the feeling of being alone is only bad when you're with people - because you need desperately to do the things you would normally, but you can't because people around you might judge you; so the feeling of being alone is really the feeling of being repressed.

Sometimes we feel alone when no one is around us, and that's what's the saddest to me. It's been instilled so deeply inside of you at that point that you feel ashamed to be yourself even to yourself, and suddenly that feeling of being alone is you curled up on the bathroom floor. But that's not always the case. Even if your friend means the world to you and you know everything about them, you can still feel alone. If you can find someone out of life who not only makes you have that odd sense of freedom and desire that you get when you have the house to yourself, but also feels the same when when you're around them, you've succeeded at life in general. I think that's love. I hope to find it.

But I also think there's another kind of love - a kind that's giggles behind booshelves in a library, and waking up to a fresh blanket of unexpected snow outside, and driving with the windows down on a breezy day, and pretending to be little kids again while you do all of those. That's a different kind of freedom and a different kind of love; and though it may be different, it is no less respectable, and deserves any ounce of understanding that the other kind does.

And I think any other kind of love was forced to happen. That could change, but that's what I think. I am human, after all. My views aren't going to remain concreted into me forever. I'm going to change my mind and open up and see things differently, and no matter how much people judge you for doing just that, it's a perfectly fine thing to do. Just like loving. It doesn't matter who you love or how you love, so long as you do. Forced or not, if it makes you happy, it shouldn't be scoffed at.

But love stems from freedom, and freedom stems from that first moment you get a taste of what being able to run around in underwear and an old shirt and basically be Tom Cruise in Risky Business is like without feeling the least bit of embarrassment you know would be present if other people were there. But you don't always feel freedom when you're at home. I brought it up earlier - sometimes when no one else is home, you still feel alone, and on edge, and like you can't be you, and that's either because society has messed you up the way it messes up everyone it touches, or you're waiting for someone to come home.

Blake was still waiting for someone to come home when he was in the safe confines of Kyle's arms, and alone is what he felt. I doubt he'd have felt anything else until his father came home, if he ever did.

Speculate.

But the fact of the matter isn't that he felt alone because Kyle held him, the fact of the matter is that Kyle held him, and Kyle knew he would still feel alone, and Kyle understood that, and so Kyle held him tighter because if he couldn't make Blake feel better, he could try to comfort himself. It didn't work.

They only hugged for the length of about two songs, and then, you guessed it, another favorite of both of them came up. I don't know when either of them developed such good tastes in music, but it was a song I know and love - and that they did, too. And it was the first few notes that attacked them, and Blake raised his head a bit on Kyle's chest, and Kyle's grip loosened, and not in a way that meant they were pulling apart, but that they understood that they didn't have to hold on quite so tightly to still be there.

Something always brings me back to you.
It never takes too long.
No matter what I say or do I'll still feel you here
'til the moment I'm gone.

Kyle paused hearing it, and then pulled back enough to actually look at Blake. He'd have spoken, but he didn't think he needed to, and neither did Blake - Blake looked up at him, and met his eyes, and his were watery and red and his face was blotched and red and pale and the corners of his eyes were wrinkled in the way they do when people cry, and both of them felt - in their opinion - very odd. The truth was that neither of them felt repressed, and that had never happened in the presence of someone else before, so they assumed it was just something unusual and brushed it off.

Feelings may be unusual, but they should never be brushed off.

Speculate.

Kyle didn't need to ask if he was better. Kyle was a very hopeful person, but not stupid. He knew Blake wasn't alright - but it wasn't going to deter him from the idea that he could be. Blake could feel good, he could get happier, he could pursue the possibility of jumping around like Tom Cruise. Kyle could sometimes be hopeful to the point of stubborn denial, but never stupid. Not that I'd run into then, at least.

Both of them could feel the empty rooms, and curtains shifting slightly in the breeze, ruffling just enough to make the dust dance off of them about the floor, prancing to and fro from one spot to the next before they settled in fatal exhaustion. They could feel the smoothness - or roughness - of each floor, and each wall, and the bed frame of each bed, and the legs of each chair. They felt every cushion, blanket, article of clothing, song that played, light beam that cut across the window. It's universal, almost, how powerful being alone can feel when you have the choice to be. It's not isolating; it's liberating. You breathe everything everyone else has ever touched, created, imagined. The world between your four walls is enough to make you God.

I was one of those cynical people that thought being a God wasn't good enough, but they never were. Sitting alone in an old, decrepit house, on a groaning bedframe that squeaked with each breath, Kyle did for Blake what I did for my friend Georgia so many years ago; watched him, and waited to be told he could help. And Blake never told him, just like Georgia never told me.

I've not yet told you about Georgia, have I? She was my best friend long before Lisa. She had pretty brown hair and bright green eyes, both from her mother, and her attitude was as peachy as the state she was named after. I really loved Georgia.

But that's irrelevant, so never mind my ramblings.

Let's begin focusing on the relevant. Shall we?

"He'll come home," Kyle said, and Blake shook his head a bit. Kyle looked at him - at the bags under his eyes, at the way he moved so carefully, so stiffly; and changed course with his words and asked, "How long have you been awake?"

"A long time. I don't know." Blake took a deep breath, as if talking had winded him.

When you exercise, your muscles create an acid. It loosens them, strengthens them, and it burns just enough to keep you going, or to keep you losing calories when you sit down to rest. The harder you work the more you create. If you stretch beforehand, there's less buildup when you start to feel the aftereffects of the acid. and you're not as sore. The acid is what creates that soreness, because it leaves your muscles loosened and strengthened, but thoroughly exhausted and burned out. The more often you work out, and the more rigorously you do so, the less the acid is necessary, and the less it hurts to keep working.

Thinking creates that same acid, just in smaller quanitities. There was a study a while ago where people observed all sorts of psychotic events that happened around finals time at a college. Students were using energy drinks to stay up for three days straight, cramming, thinking it was better than not studying, and, as a result, having such a huge amount of that acid in their heads that they had breakdowns and did insane things. But when they got a good night's sleep, they were perfectly fine. Sleeping is the only time the acid drains out. That's part of the reason it's so hard to get up in the morning; your head is a sore as your muscles after you've come down from a workout.

"You need to sleep," Kyle told him.

"He needs to come home, and then I'll sleep," Blake muttered.

"You need to sleep," Kyle said again.

"I'm fine."

"If you're going to tell me you're fine, I'll lie to you, too."

"I'm not lying."

"Hey, it's my turn to lie," Kyle scolded. He considered for a moment, and then said, "My name is Mahatma Ghandi. I am -"

"Dude, you're not Ghandi."

"And you're not fine."

"I don't want to sleep."

"I don't want to see you close your eyes again," Kyle confided, "but that doesn't mean you don't need to."

"What if he comes home?"

Kyle's answer was an unspoken 'he won't'. "I'll still be here. I'll explain it to him."

"What will you do while I sleep?"

"I'll probably read more about constellations."

"You'll be b-"

"I won't be bored. Go to sleep, Blake."

Blake looked at Kyle the way a writer looks at poetry; craving extrication and knowing the less-than-likelihood of their cerebral and somatic limits coinciding to allow them some peace of mind and superlative, fading release. And Kyle looked at Blake like a poet looks at writing; unsure whether to appreciate it as prose or to pity it as words not chiseled down yet to the chopped and stripped minimum they adhere to. And then Blake closed his eyes and bowed his head into Kyle's chest and, just like that, he was gone into that rare coincidental release, and Kyle didn't chisel him in his vulnerability, but laid him down and appreciated that his head was elongated writing written beautifully and unaware of its own allure.

And then Kyle went back to the book, laid his forehead on it, and took deep breaths until his hands stopped shaking. Because there are times when you can run around like Tom Cruise in Risky Business and times when you can curl up on your bathroom floor, and he had no idea which it was time for - it was possible that it was time for giggles behind a bookshelf in a library and waking up to a fresh blanket of unexpected snow outside, but that would all be in whatever Blake's far-too-active head conjured for him while he slept. Kyle felt each slow breath move the bed just a tiny bit, and he tuned his eyes to the words on the page and his heart to thebeat led by Blake's lungs.

And he read about the stars.

And he read about Pegasus, who lived freely until Zues got jealous and kicked his hero's a*s down to Earth and took him as his carrier mule. And he read about Callisto, who had a kid with Jupter and was turned into a bear as consequence of that and then shot by her son as consequence of that. And he read about Orion, who saw some pretty girls and chased afteer them relentlessly for five years only to have Zues, maybe kind of a good guy for once, turn them into doves to let them fly and then into stars. And he decided the stars were really fucked up.

He looked over his shoulder for a moment and took in Blake's shifted position; he'd felt him move, but hadn't looked. He'd said he'd read, so he'd been reading; but he looked at him now, watched him now, and saw the hollow breath fill his chest only to empty itself out, and he saw the way his eyelashes fluttered the tiniest bit when he exhaled, and he saw how his fingers moved toward his pillow for something to hold. And he decided that maybe really fucked up was okay. He knew how Blake sleeped - not because he'd pulled an Edward Cullen and watched him while he sleeped because he was 'fascinating', but because they'd had sleepovers enough times, and while Kyle wasn't the lightest sleeper in the world, sometimes he was awake enough to see how Blake would cling to anything he could. He reached a hand out timidly, retracted it because what the hell was he doing he could just give the dude a pillow, and then put it back on Blake's palm.

Blake gripped it tightly, and Kyle sighed before picking up that huge book with his other hand and shifted so he was on his back next to Blake and the book rested on his stomach.

Author's Note

Sorry this one's so short! Chapter 6 was really long, so this should even it out!