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His delicate fingertips caressed the cool metal, like a lover's embrace, the bitter-sweet embrace of the first hello and the last goodbye, the world beginning and ending all at once in a single clap of thunder.
The blood-curdled sweat dripped hot and thick from his screaming brow. The iciness soothed as it met politely, temple with barrel. He longed to free the swarm of writhing fire with a drilled hole through his skull and a water pistol, to squeeze the trigger like a lustful lover, allowing him to dissolve. Anything to escape the constant stream of unbending, unyielding, mind-numbing future stretching out in front of him.
And, in anticipation, he breathed in and out. In, out, in, out, in, out, in, ou- .......... out. The gun fell out, out of his hand. A hole is drilled through his skull, but not by any bullet.
The shouts of Neil's father forced their way through his tissue and bone. In that moment he realises internally,
'I could have done it.'
Yet, he continued standing, well, on stable ground, despite having been so very close to the edge.
Hands enveloped him from every angle, but they did not soothe like the barrel. They suffocated. His knees buckled and he collapsed into the sea of selfish tears and tearing hands.
* * *
Neil jolted awake, drenched in a fiery hell pit of his own sweat, filled with regrets. He sat up from his recline and listened past his bedroom door. Pacing. His dad was keeping watch outside.
He sunk back into his sheets feeling like he was returning to the womb: a state without purpose or life, just existence. A writhing coil of unknown boiling waters, naked. No one could see his thoughts and yet he was fully exposed, like a wound under skin, burning liquid-fear spreading through his element, unseen, but felt more acutely.
Silently, he agonised, processing his thoughts in mock poetry,
'If a tree falls in a forest but no one is there to hear it, did it really make a sound? Did it even fall at all? Just because you can't see something break at the foundation does it mean it never broke?
Perhaps I'm not truly broken because no one witnessed me make a silent wish to change, and punish myself when I couldn't.
Perhaps a alcoholic's liver isn't damaged because no one saw him drink. Perhaps the earth wasn't ripped open because no one felt the earthquake. Perhaps that baby didn't die during a war because they were alone in their crib.
Perhaps, in fact, I don't exist.
Our earth is just a tree to fall and turn to ash, something a bigger power would debate even existed. When the dust clears the glancing moment of me bathing in my sweltering misery won't even exist. The flick of my hand, the blink of my eye, erased like eraser shavings, brushed away by the hands of time.'
And yet, despite Neil's realisation of meaninglessness, he felt a strange comfort in the understanding that this was a truth he felt he could be certain of. Both crushing and liberating at the exact same time.
Neil stood carefully, growing accustomed to feeling like a living breathing human once more, he reached out and took the woven crown of flowers into his hand. He turned it over in his palms, the symbol of his only meaning in life, taken away from him by his father. Then, it hit him.
If his life was truly meaningless, if he was destined to die hours ago, then he was living new life where his father's rule meant nothing. He could disappoint his father a thousand times over and yet it wouldn't matter, his life wouldn't be ruined because it has no meaning.
He put the crown down, pulled on his shirt, shoes and coat and finally he delicately placed the flowered crown on his head.
He was a captivating speck of dust lit by the sun's light, caught by the wind.
"This is what freedom feels like," he whispered aloud as he gazed out the still open window.
"Carpe Diem!"
* * *
Todd trudged through the snow alone, flakes hitting hot skin, burning at his tear ridden face. Nuwanda had woken him up to deliver the news of Neil's attempt and he just couldn't cope being cramped in that space with all the worried solemn faces of his friends, no matter how they tried to comfort him. They had tried to follow him but Nuwanda reached out an arm to block their smothering embrace and said,
"Leave him be."
'Why would he have done this? I should have held onto him tighter,' he tortured himself in his head.
He sank to his knees in the snow, whimpering. "If I hadn't been such a coward, if I was able to tell you how I felt, maybe you would've never felt this way," he uttered, voice quivering, into the dawn.
His bare hands met the snow as he sobbed icy tears into the frost, slumped over the ground.
Todd was at once startled by a low grumbling sound from the distance and the crunch of snow. Looking up he spotted a black car trudging over the horizon. He stared for a while, still teary eyed, as well as confused, until, a familiar license plate came into view.
"NEILLLLLL!!!" he cried across the grounds, stumbling and running towards the car.
The car abruptly pulled over and a figure with a crown adorned with flowers burst through the door, sprinting at full pace towards Todd. The light from the sky bounced off the snow igniting the boys eyes. He finally met him in the middle, and before either of them could quite process what their bodies were doing, they were crushed in a shattering embrace. Neil's crown toppled to the ground, forgotten. Todd breathed utter relief down Neil's neck and slowly pulled back to meet his eyes. "Neil, why?-" he was cut off by Neil grasping at his face as if he couldn't believe he was real and his breath caught in his throat in a way he'd never experienced before. Neil rested his hands on Todd's shoulders in comfort.
"Father was going to take away everything I've ever loved, move me away from you all. I couldn't see-.... I didn't-" Neil cut himself off as he began to tear up and embraced Todd again once more, grasping at his coat desperately for stability.
Todd's hands drifted from Neil's back to cradle his head. The cool touch of Todd's fingers coming it a gentle rest on Neil's temple, where the barrel had once imprinted, did not make him feel like he was brought to the edge of death, it instead evoked in him the wondrous sensation that he was truly alive for the first time.
Neil's silky skin melted to butter, malleable in Todd's touch. He felt Todd's breath on him once more as he gasped at Neil sinking into him. Neil breathed in much the same way at being so close.
It occurred to him in that moment, what a thrill it was to still be breathing.
Finally looking up from Neil's shoulder Todd noticed orange and pink light surrounding them. The light of the rising sun bounced off the snow and made the ice glow technicolor. He stepped away and gazed up at the stunning world around him, then turned back to the equally stunned Neil.
"It's so beautiful," he breathed.
"𝘠𝘰𝘶'𝘳𝘦 beautiful," Neil sighed,
and in a symphony of colour and light Neil brought Todd's face to his and locked him a soul-lifting kiss.
And in that second Todd finally understood, '𝘖𝘩. That's what love feels like. That's what I've been missing all this time,' before he was swept away again, Neil's fingers twisted tightly in his hair, his world beginning and ending all at once in a single flash of sunlight.
Their lips parted, foreheads still pressed together in a silent understanding of the danger that this meant for them and of the irreplaceable joy it brought them. They teetered on the edge of falling or flying.
When it came down to it, life meant nothing. Neil could make every mistake: his father and society could hate him and shun him for what he wanted, whether that was acting or Todd's love, but in the vast expanse of the universe none of it mattered. All that really mattered was what mattered to Neil, and he would never let go of the chance to enjoy the things he stayed alive for again.
He picked up his crown and placed it on Todd's head, smiling at the way the red brought out the blush in his cheeks.