from august to december

chapter forty two

section three, october

the sky was foggy and the trees looked empty. there were almost no leaves left, they looked sad.

just standing there in the grey sky they looked desperate to get the sun and its warmth back.

it was cold without it.
so was eden, he was cold without his sun.

he used to say he hated winter and the cold weather, and he still did, now even more than before when warmth reminded him of yuri.

the sun reminded him of yuri, and when he hated yuri he hated the sun and wanted him to be the moon.

but yuri was never the moon, he was way too bright to be just the moon.
eden was the pathetic moon that thought he was so important and better than anyone else.

and his own imperfections he had projected onto the dark haired.

he sat on the floor next to the side table in his living room.
his phone was laying across of him, quite far away in the room actually that he would have to get up to get it.

how long had he been sitting here?
he didn't know. he knew that his legs were frozen and he had to shake them every now and then to make them wake up again.

his chest was as empty as the trees outside.

there was only one call he was waiting for, one message he wanted to receive.

an apology. or whatever.

something.

from yuri.

but there was nothing. for a whole month now, there had been nothing.

he eyed the black screen of his phone intensely.

then it lit up and nobody had ever seen eden jump up this fast and run to squat down and get it.

his heart was beating so fast as he saw the caller's ID.

but the beating calmed down a lot after reading it.

"shino?" he picked up the phone trying to hide the obvious disappointment in his voice and layed back down onto his floor.

"hey, how are you doing?" the vibrating voice of the older echoed through the phone speaker.

"i'm okay."
"should i come over?"
eden sighed and then he closed his eyes.

"yeah."

when park shino was younger, he used to be afraid of many things, but one by one he had to face the fears in his head.

his very first fear of spiders lasted until he was about two and a half years old, when his father suddenly placed a huge one on his arm and all he could do was watch it and observe how it was moving.

and as long as he didn't let the feelings of the spider being disgusting get to him and stayed objective, he wasn't so scared anymore.

his second fear of his parents divorcing happened when he was three.

his fears grew bigger gradually as he grew and just looking at it from above soon turned out to be too weak of a coping mechanism.

because then he was afraid the boys, his only anchor, would lose each other.
and then four years ago it happened.

and then he was afraid that eli would beat himself up and lose his mind, and then that happened.

and then he was afraid that yuri would leave eden because of his addiction, and then that happened.

and then he was afraid hiroto would go back to his previous drug selling, screw up and die, and that happened.

and then he was afraid that leo would die after hiroto died because he didn't know how to continue without him, and then that happened.

and then he was afraid that eden would never be normal again, and, well, that was his current fear.

but he wasn't the type of person to show the fear whenever he spoke or move, he was the type of person to lay down in bed at night and sit it out quietly until it couldn't haunt him anymore.
it was his strongest coping mechanism.

just sit it out in the worst pain possible so that it would go away the next time he thought about it.

it only took him about ten minutes to get to eden's apartment, take off his shoes and find the younger laying on the floor.
shino has always had a spare key, because eden wanted him to feel like he lived here with him and could come whenever he wanted.

his heart broke at the black haired's empty gaze and the old familiar fear creeped up on his shoulders.

but he had to just sit it out and cry about it later.

"he hasn't called, right?" he asked the other softly while sitting down cross legged next to him.

eden reached out his hand while nodding to intertwine their fingers and he held on tightly.

he was afraid, and holding someone's hand was his coping mechanism, it felt like while the fear was swallowing him, the hand was what kept him from being eaten fully.

of course, shino's hand wasn't nearly the same feeling as yuri's warm, big and a little crooked hand, but if he closed it eyes, it would do for now.

"you know, i think you need to be infected by a virus first in order for your body to recover," shino started speaking quietly and stroked eden's thumb. "do you remember the first time he left, how did you deal with that?"

eden turned his head away from shino, his eyes were still closed.

"i don't want to believe he's gone. i have a feeling he is going to come back, shino."

but shino knew that he wasn't going to come back, because he knew more than eden.
but he respected yuri's wish and just quietly bit his bottom lip and squeezed eden's hand tighter.

as they were just sitting there, one couldn't have known.

"he's going to come back to me."