Everything was muffled. Numbed. It was as if he fluttering upon a cloud, a soft and comfortable corner where nothing could really reach him. There wasn’t sound or rumor that could distract him. Gone was the pain, gone were those stabs that started from his side and then, just as if there was a fire, had ended up firing up and burning every inch of his body. No more pain. No more suffering. Only a faint echo, a weak memory of how still painful and hard the real world was to face.
Brian wanted to wake up. In that far-fetched place where he was, upon that cloud, there was still one image that hadn’t left his memory and that was Nick’s face during his last moments of lucidity. Nick’s face and, most and mostly, that look of utterly agony and desperation while Nick was begging and praying him to come back. And, in the end, that was the only and most important reason why Brian wanted to wake up: he wanted to open his eyes and assure Nick that he hadn’t gone, he hadn’t left him and he would never ever done something like that on purpose. He wanted to wake up but he was so tired and so weak that he didn’t even try. Every part of his body, bones or muscles, seemed like to weight more than usual, as if someone had placed hard stones on them and he still hadn’t the energy to fight or try to lift them.
“… oh, you can’t make fun of me ever again when I’ll sleep until late…”
Brian shouldn’t, and wasn’t, surprised that the only voice that he could hear belonged to Nick. It was a constant sound, though Brian couldn’t tell how long he had been at least conscious to notice it. Nick’s voice would stop only for a few seconds, just that amount enough to breathe, and then it would keep on talking about everything and everyone, about people Brian didn’t know and places they still had to visit and, when Nick had run out of topics, he started to tell him about movies and tv shows. Oh, when he would be finally strong enough to wake up, Brian was going to share a few words with his lover and that unhealthy habit to stay with him and not even rest a little. Oh Brian knew, Brian just knew that Nick hadn’t really left his side since he found him in that park. Just like he already knew how he had fought and objected whenever Kevin, or his family, had tried to bring him outside and take a break for a few hours.
Oh, Nick was so going to hear him about that!
And that was, in the end, why Brian wouldn’t try to force waking up. He knew that he had to rest and regain his energies because he needed to take care of Nick. It was his duty and the reason why he had fought that part of him that wanted to let go of pain and suffering. He had to get better and recover as quickly as possible.
Although it wasn’t really that bad. Not the whole thing about having almost died. That was a little bit scaring and, if Brian would have been a little more lucid, he would have been definitely terrified about how close he had been to lose everything and Nick. No, what wasn’t really bad was the whole being taken care, the whole feeling protected because he knew that nothing could really harm him until Nick would stay by his side, sitting on an uncomfortable chair and watching over his sleep.
“… but maybe it’s okay, Bri. It’s about time you rest a little. You never stop and I know how it is going to be once you’ll come back home. I need to confess it: it’s a mess. I tried, I swear that I tried to clean a little but I’m never able to do it like you want. Although, my dear, you have a too much high standard!”
Brian smiled. Or, at least, he thought about smiling but he wasn’t sure if that smile managed to appear on his face. Probably not because Nick’s voice kept talking about all the things he managed to break while cleaning and, if he would have smiled, he knew that Nick would have said something. No, no just said. He would have screamed and exclaimed so, maybe, his smile only appeared in a fantasy and in Brian’s imagination. He could picture Nick, looking around the mess left in the house and trying to clean just to make him feel better: it happened before, it happened so many times just like so many times Brian had tried to teach Nick how to do it. Every time it ended in the same exact way, the cleaning all forgotten and the two of them laughing and playing around like little kids.
Brian wanted to tell Nick that it was okay, that he didn’t have to clean or do things because soon he would be able to come home. But consciousness started to slip away, Nick’s voice began to fade until it was just a whisper, too soft to distinguish words and their meaning. Nick’s voice became a sweet lullaby, a slow rocking that brought Brian back to the safe and protected arms of darkness and sleep.
The second time consciousness revealed itself in a harder way, a sharp contrast and opposite to the soft cloud Brian had found himself lying upon the first time. That second time, instead, a fire took the centre of the stage and stole the attention; those flames, although they still weren’t that high and only barely hinted, had brought back all the pain and suffering that Brian had tried to run away from.
Tied together with that fire there was more awareness too. Senses started to send precious and important clues and information: smell reassured him about the fact that he was in a hospital, how it could be different with that peculiar and persistent scent of antiseptic; hearing brought the sounds of all those machines that were working beside his bed and, in the background, there were the muffled rumors of a football match streamed on television. How serious had been his conditions? How long had he been lying unconscious on that bed? Not knowing was terrifying, not knowing made his heart beating faster and air a little bit more difficult to breathe in. At least he his injuries hadn’t been that serious if they hadn’t seen the need to put a tube down his throat: he hated it the last time and he still could remember how panic got a hold of him when he had woken up with the feeling of something stranger inside his throat. He would have shuddered if he had the energies, still hunted by the fear of not being able to breathe or not being able to take away that foreign object because hands were trying to restrain him.
Still, it was the touch that managed to bring and send the most important information, telling his mind about his hand being held by another hand and about, slow and measured caresses on that small spot between thumb and index. Gathering as much energies as he could, Brian dared his weak body to at least reply at that safe grip. It ended up being a subtle caress and he knew that his hold was not even half the force he usually used when holding Nick’s hand but he hoped that it worked nonetheless. Nick’s fingers trembled for just a second, Brian felt it against the skin of his wrist while a lonely and solitary tear fell upon that twine of hands. Oh, how Brian wanted to reach out and brush away those tears from Nick’s eyes. Oh, how he wanted to open his own eyes, how he wanted to succeed in that simple and so natural task, something that should have been implicit that didn’t even need to be thought of. He just wanted to blink once, erasing that dust that seemed like had glued his eyes together and, for one moment, he wanted to reflect himself inside the blue of Nick’s eyes. Just for a second. He wanted to but he couldn’t do it, too blinded and too worried by those flames of pain that seemed to have grown bigger and bigger, raising their heads and wanting to surface in all their glory.
A moan. A faint and weak moan managed to escape from his lips and, after a few moments later, Brian found himself floating towards that cloud and corner where nothing, especially the pain, could reach him. Before shutting down completely, however, Brian could feel a sweet and gentle caress through his hair, a kiss made of the same essence of wings and promises.
“You’re going to be okay. Just sleep. You’ve came back.”
Reassured and trusting Nick’s words, Brian let go and let himself being rocked by the waves of numbness and unconscious.
The third time, the awakening had some sort of resemblance of normality: tiredness and exhaustation were still so present, although he only slept for what he could gathered had been days and days, a thin and frail veil wrapped around his mind. And yet he was more lucid, there was a clear consciousness about where he was and how he felt: his body and his sense had started to take attention to its surrounding and pain, albeit a shadow, was confined only to that part of the body that had been hurt and where there was still an open scar on the skin. Opening his eyes didn’t seem a complicated or impossible task. He still needed more than one trying and, at the beginning, the light of the day had been so bright that Brian had to shut them down immediately and groaning with discomfort. Soon the rumors of a chair screeching filled the air as someone, most probably Nick, tried to lower the curtains to stop that light that was hurting his eyes so bad.
“Try now.”
He trusted those words and so Brian, after hours and days surrounded by the darkness, opened his eyes. At first everything was sort of all blurred, as if there was still a little mist or veil that made it difficult to see; slowly, though, shadows started to become more definite, assuming lines and borders that gave shape to objects and human figure.
Especially one particular figure.
Nick’s.
Nick looked probably worse than him, deep and dark circles around his eyes and a pale skin that almost matched his. And those eyes, that bright blue that was made clearer and more shining because of those tears that wanted so badly to escape and fall down. They were different, the tears, they were so different from the last time Brian had seen and witnessed Nick’s crying, perhaps because that time desperation and utterly agony had been the context that gave meaning and expression to those drops. Not that day, not in that moment because the brightest smile was making them shining even more, reminding Brian why he fell in love with those features decades and decades before. Even more those features, now finally happy and joyful, had been his only company during that sleep with no dreams or something to hold on to.
“Ehi. – Nick whispered, failing miserably in fighting back that lump in his throat. – You’re finally awake. I was starting to think that I had to kiss you, my sleeping beauty.”
Brian’s lips started to move to reply but the driest of the desert, that was what mouth and throat had changed into, prevented every words from coming out. Just a matter f seconds and a glass of water appeared in front of him while a straw made that task a little bit more dignified and less embarrassing.
“Ehi.”
Nick sat down on the bed, taking the glass still full and placing it on the bedside table before taking and holding Brian’s hand in his. And finally, finally, those fingers were warm as they were supposed be. In that moment it hit him the fact that Brian was awake, smiling as if he hadn’t almost died or as if he hadn’t been lying unconscious for days.
Nick had dreamed about that moment, right from the second the doctors told him that Brian was going to make it through. That moment had been the only thing making him going through days and days all blurred together, surrounded by silence and those monitors beeping and telling him that Brian was still fighting. But now that it actually happened, now that he could see himself in those blue eyes, Nick didn’t know what to say. Oh, in those lonely days, he had prepared words and things that he was sure were needed to be say. But now they seemed useless. And so cliché. And Brian never liked those words. No, he hated them so bad that, years before, he had almost thrown him out of his room when Nick had tried to apologize for not being there for his surgery.
But, although Nick didn’t know what to say, he also didn’t like that silence. Too loud, too suffocating and it was giving Brian the time and the energies to look through the mask Nick had wore until that moment. So Nick started babbling and rambling about everything that could come up to his mind, all those words that doctors had spoken through all the hours of waiting and all those threads of hopes Nick had clung to because he couldn’t and wouldn’t believe them.
“You’re gonna be okay. You’ve scared everyone. You’ve scared me so bad. They weren’t sure… for a couple of minutes they weren’t sure because you’ve lost so much blood. They wanted to give up, they didn’t believe that you could… but you did. You fought so much. You’ve proved them wrong, my brave fighter.” Nick caressed Brian’s hair with his fingers, leaving a soft kiss on that spot where hair and skin melted together.
“Nick.” Brian tried to stop him right there, his voice just above a whisper, hoarse and already tired for just being awake those few minutes. But he didn’t need much energy to understand what was going through Nick’s mind and soul behind that façade and those sentences tied together without a real meaning: that accident, that aggression, hadn’t taken away his most precious treasure, that knowing perfectly how Nick worked and all the things Brian had learnt while living and loving Nick.
“… but now you’re awake and you’re gonna be okay. I will make sure of it. Although it will take more time for you to go back and jump from everything…”
“Nick.”
That last time Nick’s name on Brian’s lips had been a thin whisper, a tone full of sweetness and understanding. As it had always been because no one but Brian was able to read Nick like that, as if his soul was only a mirror that reflected every thought and every emotion. And Nick couldn’t hold back anymore, couldn’t control anymore that storm ranging and growing bigger and bigger inside him: that storm was made by thunders and rain of hours of fear, minutes of anxiety and feeling guilty and seconds spent trying to imagine his life without Brian and immediately scolding himself for that weakness. Now he didn’t have to be strong, he didn’t have to bite back tears and cries because Brian was back and he was already willing to take that weight off from his shoulders. So Nick slid down until he could hide his face on Brian’s chest as the tears started to run away from those chains they had been prisoners of for so many days and so many sleepless nights. He could finally break down, although there was a faint and small voice, inside his mind, that was trying to warn him about how weak Brian still was: it should have been the opposite, it should have been him the one reassuring someone who had just woken up from almost dying instead than being comforted. But there he was, lying and draped carefully around Brian’s body, clinging as if he was still terrified about losing him, about Brian slipping away and shifting again in that ghost that, Nick was sure, would haunt in his dreams for years and years in the future.
Brian didn’t have to speak, didn’t have to use words and didn’t even try to stop those tears falling down on his chest: those few and precious energies left were used to keep his fingers caressing Nick’s hair and head, sure and convinced that all he needed to say to him was being conveyed by his caresses. They would find time to talk, just not in that moment. There was going to be all the time in the world for talking and healing, not only physically. But, in that particular moment between time and space, nothing else mattered but the two of them.
“I was so scared. I was terrified that I was going to be left alone. I don’t want to live without you in my life. You’re all that I have left in this world.”
“But I’m back. I promised you and I kept my words. I’m back. I will always coming back for you. I will never leave you alone again.”
“I’m so sorry... I… I should…”
“It’s okay. We’re both sorry. I should never let you think that I could be ashamed of us.”
All that mattered, in that moment, were the two of them. Nothing else, just them and those words that would shift and change into whispers and caresses, lingering in a thin line between comfort and promises of not letting the world, and its prejudices, have so much control and power over that beautiful and precious thing they had and could ever find again in their life. Because that was the lesson both of them had learned: it didn’t matter what people could or would think over their relationship and their love, it didn’t matter what they could and might say behind their backs, as they walked hand in hand and acted like every other couple. Their words, their poison, would and couldn’t touch and ruin what they had or could ever be able to break them apart. Even if they tried over and over again, failure was what was waiting for them because even death hadn’t been able to come between Brian and Nick.
“I love you.”
Those three words were Brian’s last whisper before he let sleep wrap its arms around him, promising to heal those scars and pain that still were screaming and talking loudly.
“I know. I love you too. – Nick replied in a voice hoarse from the tears as his lips leaned on Brian’s forehead and left a butterfly kiss. – Thank you for coming back to me. Thank you for listening to my prayer.”
