oneshots and other shit

3: sleepless (even/isak)

"Sleep is the cousin to death. You know that."

He smiled like it was easy, as if the world truly did work in precisely the same manner as his head. Yet the both of them knew that was truly a worrisome notion.

Isak watched Even, only half-way awake: through heavy eyelids, and dark fluttering lashes. Isak watched him, hoping only, even from the bed, to keep him safe. It was a tall order, truly; he couldn't anticipate what would come next, how fate might plot and scheme, and play them both a foul hand. Yet for that night, he was determined to get them right.

Even had condemned himself to the windowsill, watching the last remnants of the nighttime world - stragglers coming home from parties, drunken teenagers, the like - make their way back through the streets of Oslo and to their homes.

"I thought weed was supposed to make you tired." Isak's voice was soft, barely a murmur pressed down against the sheets of his bed. Yet, as the world around them seemed entirely silent, entirely still, it resonated throughout Isak's room with the force of an earthquake. Yet, Even bothered not turn his head.

He watched the stars; he watched the clouds that covered them; it seemed to make sense - for such beauty, twinkling beacons amidst the formidable inky vastness of the night, to be stolen away, perhaps by the very hands that had put them there.

Even forgot that Isak had so much as uttered a single word. Perhaps that was the very moment Isak decided that it was a bad night. And hence came the guilt, and the inner accusations that put it all down to him. For as much as he knew it was anything but, he could never help but place Even's bad nights down as his fault.

"Come to bed..." He pleaded, eyes wide, unblinking, yet shining little beacons through the darkness of the room.

It was not his words but his eyes that had Even turning his head; words served him little purpose with the night wrapped so tightly around the two of them - not the blanket he'd once thought it to be, but instead the bindings that had forever held his head underwater.

In Even's silence, Isak sought to have a conversation solely with their eyes, but still that was a notion Even made quick work of rejecting. He turned his head away, thinking instead in favour of tracking down a runaway notion that he'd almost lost.

"That's why... you don't know what it's like..." Even's words, although long-awaited, came fruitless, baring not a single comfort to the halfway terrified boy, reserved and cast aside, under his sheets.

"What do you mean?" Isak fixed his eyes upon Even's side, and made a promise to himself about keeping them open, not so much as closing them to blink.

"No... that's why..." Even leaned forward, green eyes catching the warm glow of a streetlamp outside, and for the briefest of moments, he appeared otherworldly, ethereal almost: a God in the golden light.

He put the joint out. Isak sucked a deep breath inside his chest, hand-in-hand with a comment about how he never should have let Even have it in the first place; he reckoned that kind of talk was the last thing either of them needed that night.

"The boy who couldn't hold his breath underwater." Even supplied, as if it was obvious, jumping from notion to notion, up inside that head of his: the world Isak so desperately longed to so much as begin to comprehend.

"Yeah..." Isak drew out a sigh, stretching one hand out into the cold, stale, air: yearning for Even to join him, for his words to make the slightest ounce of sense.

"I've had practice." Even exclaimed, face contorting to reflect a man who saw himself holding the key, the key to everything.

"Holding your breath?" Isak managed a smile: lethargic, at best. Still, eyes wide open, he watched as Even pulled himself to his feet, regarding Isak's outstretched hand, as even something reminiscent of a possibility.