Drabble!
(Setting: Modern times, at the edge of town where there is enough free empty space at night for the gypsies to rest. A particular park that merges with woodland for a tiny bit, I think an acre or so. I think that's all that's important and can't be derived from the interaction...)
...“Illya… don’t make a home out of me,” Peter said, smiling compassionately, with a tinge of pain on his face as he wiped the tears from Illya’s face. “I don’t know how to do anything more than be honest… I’ll leave you like everybody else. I go where the breeze takes me – I’m not reliable. But I can tell you this much – nothing else is either. If you’re waiting for me to stop and settle down for you… I know you’re not, but you want it in your heart. I don’t want to break it, but… I think if I could love like you can, I’d be able to see in your heart something more than I see.”
Silence. Illya looked away for the first time in forever. It was strange. They both loved each other as much as they knew how to, and a little bit more out of the naturally tendency broken hearts tend to fall in love. But this wasn’t meant to be. Then what was love?
“Ya know, I’ve always thought about love in movies…”
“I don’t understand how everyone doesn’t love that way,” Illya finished, muttering under his breath.
Peter smirked lightly and kissed Illya, who gasped softly at the touch. “And I don’t see how anyone can. I mean, I see…
Risk, more risk than one can take. That sounds funny coming out of my mouth, huh? But every risk I make, I know I can survive and recover from. The worst thing that can happen is I break a leg, maybe I die. But with that kind of love, it seems a fate worse than death – to trust your whole world, and be left in a black void, filled only with pain. Not even a blank slate. I can’t do that. I would risk, but only to risk starting over again.”
“I can’t imagine that. I heard someone say something once, and… it made me wonder… just how much pain it would cause to be in a video game, stuck towards an endless goal, even knowing you cannot lose, you could die and die and have to start over and over again, not knowing for how long. You could live an eternity there.”
Peter smirked. “That’s exactly what I like. Endless opportunities.”
“But how?”
Peter thought, then turned over and lay on his stomach, gesturing with his hands. “Think of it like a hermit crab. They don’t cry when their shell is broken. They just go and find a new one. And the new one fits better, because their body has grown, they’ve changed. I guess everyone but gypsies are afraid of displacement, afraid of change and loss. But nothing is ever lost – if anything is truly lost, its presence is not missed. But if you miss it, it means it had an effect, it lives on in you. It may not be the same, but it may be even better. And one day, somewhere, it will live on again.”
“Do you believe in an afterlife?”
Peter nodded. “I don’t believe, I know. I know there is no true beginnings, and no true end. We don’t just stop existing because our life ends. I think I remember taking a bit of science somewhere, wasn’t there some law of matter that said atoms and stuff can’t be created or destroyed? Well if that’s true, then how much more true should it be for thoughts, for emotions, for everything that truly makes us what we are? It’s a rule that applies to the most simple, materialistic, shallow objects, it should be true for the higher laws as well. And if it doesn’t, then what does that concern us? We’ll never know, and never feel the pain – we’ll just be absorbed into the void as well. So its better to believe.”
“It’s always better to believe.”
They were quiet for a while.
“You know what I see in love from movies?”
“No. Tell me. Do you love me that way?”
Illya nodded as Peter got on him, resting his head on Illya’s chest and looking up at him. It was not pretentious of him to ask after having plainly told Illya he didn’t love him that way, it was a simple fact he already knew. “People… are amazing. But they don’t usually see it in themselves. They can’t see what they have to teach others, because they already know it and assume everybody else does.”
Peter smirked. “Until they see someone obviously doesn’t,” he said, flicking Illya’s nose and giving him another kiss.
You keep interrupting me, Illya thought to himself, but sighed to himself as he knew it was Peter just being Peter.
“Say it.”
Illya blinked. “Say what?”
“Tell me to stop interrupting you.”
Illya made a face. “You’re not…”
“Not what?”
“Not that observant.”
“You’re right – and most other people won’t be either. I was testing you, stupid. You’re usually more observant than that, little mind-reader.” Peter kissed him again. “I know because it’s the first time I’ve been this horny and you’ve completely ignored my touch.”
Illya blushed, backtracking through the signs. He’d been, for once, too lost in his own thoughts to notice despite the wisdom in Peter’s words, Peter was not, in fact, being serious in the slightest.
He was just being Peter.
“Fine. I’ll tell you. Stop interrupting me. I’m not having sex with you until you hear me out and let me tell you how I love you.”
Peter grinned. “That’s more like it.” He frowned. “Wait, why did I get you to say that?” He made a movement and Illya got up and sat on him. “Are you really going to keep me from running away?” Peter asked, impressed.
“Yes,” Illya said, face red and unsure if he was being too rude. This was important to him, but to use force?
Peter kissed him. “Its sexy when you know what you want and take it. Go on.”
Illya smiled. Peter was right, but he wouldn’t have backed off even if Peter had said otherwise.
It was that important.
One needs to have priorities, to know where to draw the line, he thought to himself.
“I love you like it makes me happy just to be around you, with you. It lifts my day. And I want to be with you forever, as close to you as possible. I want to marry you because it would be like having a sleepover every night with your best friend, to see your face every moment I’m not busy, and sometimes when I am. To return to this, to live in the same house so we could always be together. To go on adventures together and grow and… People say things like “I love you more than anyone else”, because there’s no other way to express the potency of love, even if you’ve felt it a million times. But you don’t have to limit that love to a single person, and there doesn’t have to be a comparison. You love different things about different people, but its not a different love. It’s the same love, and I don’t understand why you can’t say to people how much you love them otherwise, if you’re only their friend or only a parent or child or sibling or anything other than their lover. Peter, I don’t understand,” Illya sobbed, “Why people push me away because I say I love them. Why people won’t let me touch them. Why people do what they do.”
“I don’t understand either,” replied Peter softly, stroking Illya, “but I know that you already have everything you need to be a gypsy.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you can love anyone that much, or at least this is a pretty regular story, then isn’t that the same as finding a home again? Do I make you feel safe?”
“Yeah…”
“Then maybe you can’t have your mom back, or your little brother or dad, or the sister you never met. But you can make new ones.”
“They’re not the same people.”
“They will never be the same, like a hermit crab shell that got crushed. But they will still be a part of you, and the alternative is to walk around naked and vulnerable.”
Illya winced at the blatancy of the cutting words. But they were not said before he was ready for them.
“Life was not made for people to stay in one place. Everything deteriorates, dies, changes, fades. We want to look back, to stop and breathe it in – and that is ok, we can stop for a breather, walk here and there, but you cannot stay there forever. You have to run, run, and keep running. We get tired, but that is what life is made of. Adventure.”
“Peter?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I run with you for a while?”
“As long as you want. I’ll give you an eternity, but I’ll run at my own pace, and I know it doesn’t match yours.”
“Ok.”
