wonderwall || punznap

happy ever after

but I just wanna feel free

It feels like maybe it's not worth it, I'm just a bother

I wanna live my life happy ever after

happy ever after - aldn

"I'm leaving," were the only words spoken in the last hour.

Luke drove silently through the dark streets, nothing special was said, and Nick already ached to shut him up. Hands, lips — it did not matter.

He sat in the driver's seat, pale, clutching the steering wheel in his hands so hard to the point of whitened knuckles. Nick tried not to look at him, he was looking at his feet, or at the ceiling, or at the edge of the brightening sky, peeking out from behind the trees growing along the side of the road.

"For forever?.." Nick flinched at the hoarse voice of the blond who broke the silence.

"Forever". I hate this word. It is too doomed, gloomy, forcing me to become helpless.

"Forever". But Nick understood that if he said "For a long time", then the blond would ask why, understood, nodded, trying to stifle the feeling that corrodes the heart, but "Forever" - even for Nick it was cruel. This is the end. I hope he understands this.

"Why?" Nick heard an incomprehensible tremor in Luke's voice, swallowed a lump in his throat.

Words were given to the brunette with great difficulty, as if someone was choking from the inside. The loop has been tightened.

Luke inhaled noisily, probably collecting his thoughts. His things were randomly scattered around the usually perfectly clean car — Nick did not like this, everything today was not as usual, but completely chaotic, as if in a fit of rage, despair. But if so, then why?

And then Nick slowly, with an arrangement, said:

"It is my dream. I just want to leave and forget about this damn town forever, I want to forget school, forget everything that I experienced here. I want to forget my always drunk mother and what he has done to me, I want to forget the pain and humiliation. I realize that I have nothing but a couple of hundred, which is barely enough for a one-way ticket. But I don't care. I'm dying here, this city is choking me, this endless gray atmosphere is torturing me, the cold piercing to the bones is killing me. I want to understand what it means to live, really, like all people, what it means not to be afraid and not to have anything in your soul. Let it be hard for me, let me ruin myself at work for a pittance. But I will finally live." Then barely audible. "And not survive"

Nick said he could hurt like a vandal. He looked into Luke's eyes for a second and saw something in them that he hadn't expected at all. And from what he saw, his chest seemed to be torn at the seams for the umpteenth time. And really, which one? Probably the third. The first time was when he said goodbye to his father. Well, he tried to appear calm, albeit sad, but at night, especially the first days after the divorce of his parents, he felt so bad that it was better not to think about it. The second belonged to Clay. Then "Forever" was his. But "Forever" out loud, he was sure he repeated the same thing to himself, even if he hoped otherwise. And now Luke. From his bitterly painful "Forever" dried up in the mouth, burned the insides and, it seems, what was once called the soul.

Nick did not ask why he was doing all this — such a stupid question.

"So you today is the..." Luke broke off in mid-sentence, as if bogged down in a paradox, on the verge between desire and fear to finish the question.

Nick only slightly, weakly nodded his head, but his eyes never left his feet, in torn, soaking wet sneakers.

It's hard for both, it hurts both, only the question is - who is more?