ALEX
I curl up on the bed, shaken by an asthma attack, and these two days are a nightmare, I either cry or lie there in numbness, in absolute shock and confusion over what happened.
I haven’t had any allergic response since the day Bay and I made love for the first time, but now it’s back with a vengeance.
Sometimes I get off the bed.
Bay’s diary is on the floor. I use clear tape.
Slowly, painstakingly, piece by tiny piece, I tape every torn page back together.
And then I run out of strength, because it makes no sense anyway, so I go back to the bed.
And I lie there again. Dying.
It’s simply impossible. Absolutely impossible.
I’ve read everything the internet has to offer about cases like this, but all of them, absolutely all, say that incompatible people are also incompatible in personality, they have different dispositions, different temperaments, they respond to life situations differently, they usually have completely different outlooks, they struggle to understand each other, their energy pulls them in opposite directions.
So I don’t understand why Bay and I were such a perfect match! I can’t wrap my head around it…
Groaning, whimpering, I thrash a little, glance at the diary, then at the ceiling again.
When I close my eyes, I see his face turned toward me with tenderness and love…
Bay always looked at me like that, as if I was the beginning and the end of his world, his eyes revealed everything to me, and that will never happen again.
I lost him, the person who was ready to do anything for me, who adored me, and whom I adored without limits, I saw my future only with him, without him it’s annihilation, everything is gray and bleak and worthless.
The pain twists inside me as if someone wrapped a thin metal wire around my insides, it hurts so much, it hurts just unbearably.
And I sob again and I cry again and I howl in my bed again.
Eventually I decide I’ll just stay in it.
I won’t go get food or water, I’ll lie here until I fade out, they’ll find my body here. It doesn’t matter anymore, without him nothing matters.
Two days later I’m still in bed.
I haven’t gotten up, weakness and thirst crush me, my mouth is dry as dust, but inside I’ve surrendered, inside I’ve chosen to die and I’m not changing that choice. That’s why I’m lying here, drifting between the hell of what happened and the heaven of what used to be.
I close my eyes and think about our first time, so forbidden and wrong and yet born from such deep love and the desperate need to be together.
I remember Bay’s shyness, his fear, and the enormous trust that bloomed between us, Bay had lost faith that he could ever be close to someone like that, but in my arms everything shifted, I could almost see my touch waking fire in him, as if sparks were flowing into his body, a body that was dimmed and stressed and terrified, melting his barriers drop by drop.
We spent that whole day in bed, breaking through fear, breaking through his resistance, breaking through old wounds and healing them, and when we got up the next day, Bay was like a different person, like life had filled him. We both had marks on our neck glands, marks that didn’t fade.
I touch mine now, its slightly rough surface.
Back then I felt an almost ecstatic joy that this broken, beautiful boy could be saved, that someone so wonderful and good and caring and gentle could walk a path of joy, I was so incredibly happy that we emerged from the darkness together, hand in hand, and built our life.
Now all of that between us, that miracle, that absolute miracle that happened, all of it has been taken away.
Deemed an illusion.
I close my eyes and sink deeper and deeper into the weakness spreading through my body, and I welcome it, and it’s funny, I thought I was the one pouring sparks of life into Bay’s body.
But it went both ways.
We were in perfect synergy, and he poured that energy into me too. It’s really ironic that when I was with him, my allergies and asthma were dormant, as if we were True Mates, as if he healed them. Now I have to dig my inhaler out of the closet and use it basically every hour.
My body refuses to be separated from Bay.
My beautiful boy whom I saved from destruction, and now I realize he saved me the same way, we were a closed system, a set of connected vessels that shattered.
On the third day I can’t get out of bed anymore, the thirst is so strong it hurts, but I welcome the pain because it brings me closer to the end. I start having strange visions, and in them I see Bay standing in the doorway telling me,
"This isn’t real, it was a bad dream, we’re True Mates… somehow, you have to believe it, everything will work out, everything will be perfect."
I smile at the vision, it drifts away, but a moment later it comes back, Bay knocks on the door again, and any second he’ll tell me it was all a stupid joke, that everything was just a dream.
He knocks and knocks, knocks and knocks, until he’s pounding.
"Come in, Bay, come on in, sweetheart, and let’s forget everything, let’s forget the last few days," I whisper, but he keeps knocking.
"Come in, Bay, come back to me, let’s find the happiness we thought slipped away for a second," I mumble.
"Come in, Bay, come back into my arms."
I toss on the bed.
"Come in, Bay, come to me and stay with me forever…"
But he keeps knocking and knocking and he doesn’t come in.
Eventually I start wondering if the knocking really comes from my vision.
It returns as a stubborn pounding drilling straight into my awareness.
Knock knock knock knock knock knock.
I squeeze my eyes shut and try to shut it out, but at the edge of consciousness I hear a voice, someone calling me.
"Alex? Are you in there?"
What the hell? Irritation rises in me that someone dares to interrupt my dying? I hate that someone is trying to ruin what I so perfectly planned.
The fucking knocking doesn’t stop, it keeps pounding and pounding and pounding.
Shaking like an addict, I slide off the bed.
On all fours I crawl down the stairs and drag myself toward the door, I can’t stand up anymore, I’m too weak.
The door has a video intercom, I force myself up just enough to press the button.
On the screen appears the face of someone I would never expect to see here.
It’s my cousin, Jared!
He’s three years younger than me, someone I’ve barely ever met.
For a moment I stare at the screen, unable to believe what I’m seeing.
My dad cut ties with his own dad, who was an exceptionally harmful, toxic man. My dad’s only omega brother ran away from home, fell into addiction, and left his only child with my granddad, and that child was Jared, the one standing here.
He is my only living relative beyond Granddad.
I’d seen him maybe a few times in my life, at funerals of some distant relatives on my dad’s side.
We exchanged maybe a few words, Jared was skittish, almost fearful, standing obediently next to my granddad with his permanently harsh, mean face. So it was impossible for me to build any relationship with him.
What could he be doing here?
And again, why does he dare interrupt my dying?
I don’t even know for what reason, but I press the button to unlock the door.
Jared steps inside.
He’s changed so much since I last saw him, he’s fifteen now and clearly going to be an omega, and surprisingly tall for his age, and… strikingly pretty.
But that isn’t what stands out the most.
It’s the bruises on his face.
At first he looks around like he’s searching for me at his eye level, then his gaze drops to the floor where I’m curled up.
"What the hell is going on?" I mutter angrily.
"Alex? Hi. Why are you on the floor?"
"Because I’m trying to die, for fuck’s sake, what are you doing here?"
Jared stares at me with huge light green eyes, that strange silvery-green, almost like celadon.
"Die?"
"Yes, fuck!" I snarl, turn away, and start dragging myself back upstairs toward my bedroom and my bed.
I’m planning to return there, probably in some haze brought on by starvation, because it’s hard to imagine dying when there’s a fifteen year old with bruises on his face standing in your house.
"Alex, Alex, wait, wait," Jared repeats helplessly, following right behind me like a lost puppy.
I feel irritation, even anger, that he disturbed me, but unfortunately at this moment I probably have to pause my plan.
I reach the stairs and sit on the last step, resting my forehead against the railing.
"What are you doing here, Jared, can you explain that to me?"
Jared stares at me for a moment, then looks around slowly and notices the kitchenette, walks over to the fridge, opens it, studies its contents for a moment, then pulls out a carton of almond milk I use for coffee.
I stare at him, not quite understanding what he’s doing.
He comes up to me and hands me the open carton.
"First have something to drink, your lips are so chapped it has to hurt to even talk."
"That’s what happens when someone tries to die," I growl, but my eyes snag on the carton, on the cool, reviving liquid inside, and for a moment all I can think about is how incredible it would feel to let it slide down my throat.
I finally grab the carton with a nervous jerk and press the opening to my mouth, and the first swallows are almost divine. The coffee milk is a little sweet, or maybe it only feels that way, but it tastes unbelievably good.
I take a few gulps, but at the last second I stop myself from draining the whole thing, because I know I probably shouldn’t do that after three days without any food. My hands tremble.
"Alex, be careful…"
"So tell me what you’re doing here," I mutter, wiping the milk from my lips with the back of my other hand.
Jared leans against the banister and bites his lip in that tense, nervous way of his.
"A few days ago I ran away from home. I’d had enough of Granddad, enough of the insults, enough of the beatings…"