His words catch him off guard, and he immediately stops fiddling with the machine in his hands. He places it down, getting back up to stand in front of him.
“What do you mean?” He’s young, but he knows what he means.
“You know.” Elymas walks around him until he makes a full circle, only to retrace the same shape before he knocks their shoulders together. “The only time I was ever here was the first moment I entered through those doors.” Elymas looks towards the main door, and his eyes follow. The door remains shut, held closed by what looks like a hundred locks. It’s a door that’s not a door, only letting in and never out. “They took me. They took who I was. I’m not really here.” The next time Elymas looks at him, Juwon avoids the gaze. “And I’m not really sure where I am anymore. I feel like I’m here, but I’m not, I’m alive but I’m dead. Like I’m alive but someone’s killed all that I really am.”
He closes the space between them, and soon Ely’s got both his hands. “I don’t know why, but I wanted to tell someone that. I don’t know why, but I’ve always wanted someone to know that.” It’s always this way, how he manages to get so close to him before he can realize anything else. “I don’t know why, but I wanted you to know that.”
“You’re speaking like someone about to leave.” He cuts him off, and retracts his hands. His eyes grow cold, when they should be warmer. He doesn’t know how to respond, because he already knows that Elymas was someone that had left even before he could enter the space of him. “Don’t… don’t speak like that.”
“Okay. I’m here then.” He knows he’ll always remember this moment. It’s the way he looks, how alive and dead he looks all at once. “I’m here.” How he doesn’t know him anymore, or know if he ever has to begin with. “And I’ll always be.”
“NRF067K, dead. Confirmed at 4:31AM this morning.” They pause. “Kang?” They smile. “Are you alright?” They know.
He wants the walls to stop collapsing. “Stay with me.” For what houses he’s building to stay up, for longer than just a moment. “Stay with me, Ely.” For the bricks to remain where he places them, and for the foundation to hold them where he wants it to. “I swear to god, if you dare to leave me now –” He wants the world to cease for just a moment, and allow him a breath. It’s all he asks: a single breath.
“Juwon, you look so beat up right now, it’s hilarious.” He’s laughing but there’s only so much his chest can hold right now. Juwon holds him in his arms, and it’s all so tragic, all such a tragedy.
He still doesn’t know what love is, but he knows it’s not supposed to be this:
All this drowning and all this grief, that he won’t know where to fit anywhere else but everywhere.
“I’m going home.” Elymas guides his face down to meet his. He holds his forehead against him, eyes fighting to stay open, then closed, then open again. His skin’s growing colder by the second, and his own warmth is no longer helping. His hands hold him here, because it’s all they can do.
“Stay here. Don’t go home, stay here.” He forces the words out, between forced breaths. “With me. With me.”
“Okay then.” Ely laughs again, and swipes at his cheek. “I’m here, Juwon.” Even here, Juwon still doesn’t know him. Never has to begin with. “And I’ll always be.”
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