𝐒𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐋𝐢𝐟𝐞 [𝐉𝐚𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐫 - 𝐓𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭]

9 | Golden

R U N E — 2005

— HE DREAMS OF SOMETHING STRANGE. Or, less strange, more unusual, for Rune at least, who hasn't felt anything much other than occasional shame and brief anger for the last five years or so. Nothing this close to desire — nothing like the heat simmering just beneath his skin, that thing that gets the other teenage boys all hot and bothered.

It's vague in that way dreams are — and yet there are these startling moments of clarity, where he feels as though his eyes are shooting open, back arching against a soft surface, chest opening in deep, flaying breaths. The hint of a mouth, of teeth, of open lips and warm breath against his neck, his chest, creeping over him. And there's hands — his own, with the same faint scarring on the knuckles — twisting into hair that's sometimes blond, sometimes black, and Rune can't quite decide, in this bizarre, drifting state, which looks better against the gold and iron rings on his fingers. Someone moves against him, and he can't decide whether there's one person or two — Rune barely catches the tail end of a cut off whimper before it all gets a little too light, like dawn breaking over the space in his mind. Faces, smeared like a rained-on painting, drift into this white fog, and Rune has this brief moment of understanding where he realises he's waking up, the thoughts are leaving him, and he tries to keep his eyes shut. Instead, he awakens, eyes closed, but very much conscious again. Conscious of the duvet hooked around his legs, the pillow twisted under his mouth, hands in the mattress. In the mattress. There's stuffing peaking out from tears the size of his finger tips, like he gripped and the digits went straight through.

"Christ." It's been years, he thinks. Since he attended church. Since he thought of such things. Of men. He strains to think of who he was dreaming of, to stir it back up again, but his mind twists that blond and black hair and instead he ends up afraid, because it felt like memory, and he's a virgin.

"Jesus fucking Christ," Rune sits up, slams his fist against the wooden headboard, and jolts into standing when the entire bed moves a few inches and smacks into the wall. A poster flutters to the floor in the 5am quiet of his room. Rune wipes a hand over his eyes, savours how sore, how tired, they feel, as if he's been awake all night. The heat is gone from his skin, leaving nothing but a lingering frustration and the holes in his mattress.

The bay window glows like an arched doorway of pure white, as if the world's been erased and nothing lies beyond this room. Rune glares at the curtains, still drawn back, and sits himself down at the desk in the hollow of the window. The broach that came from the window —or, maybe from him? Or, or— is still sitting in its drawer when Rune pulls the jarred thing open, wrapped up in a Kleenex like a discarded breakfast muffin. A little laugh bubbles through him as he feels the cold thing in his hand, the familiar weight and shape, the groves of the beetle's wing, the tarnished lines around the inlaid ruby. Rune's head thuds against the desk, sounding fittingly heavy, crammed full with too much. He thinks of this broach, thinks hard about where he might know it from.