help i'm alive {tobias and ira}

There was a euphoric bounce in his step, his heart defying gravity with every flutter of muscle against a lovesick cage. As the sunset colored him orange, its canvas dripped light into his pupils, carving a faded path toward his front porch. Mars was trotting obediently at his heels with a ball between his jaws, breathing heavily from a long, adventurous play session. On days like these – when the boats were small and easy to polish – he finished his work early enough to exercise him properly. They could sprint from shore to shore, drinking salt from the air with every labored breath, and on training days he could leave the eager pooch in the hands of the younger kids. It was mutual entertainment.

Today was one of many carefree days, when his bones felt lighter than bubbles. Lately there had been a change in his demeanor. His blood warmed up more often than not, and when he lied awake in his back yard with Mars’ head on his stomach and his eyes glued to the stars, he thought of only one thing. One person. It was evident in the way he nitpicked himself in the mornings. His Ma had noticed too, asking whom he was trying to impress. His cheeks turned a shade too pink, making him incapable of lying. There was a boy, he had told her. A boy named Tobias.

Tobias was a secret. He didn’t reveal the tale of their first encounter when he delivered bread to the homeless. When Maxwell spilled his sorrows about Betsy into his lap, Ira swallowed the urgency because he was not out there to indulge or mold their lives to his by making it about himself. This “charity” was about them. He wanted to hear what they had to say, what their songs of suffering would illuminate. He couldn’t become a burden by opening his mouth too wide. He had earned their trust; he was not about to lose it.

Instead, the name lingered at the tip of his tongue and the forefront of his conscience. A sweet, sweet echo tingling between his ears. Tobias, the lone boy in the alley with tears to tell a tale: a mother who had forsaken her son and left him to sleep on the docks. He recalled their encounter with a subtle smile. Somehow, Tobias had trusted him enough to follow him home and nestle in his bed whilst Ira snoozed on the couch, wandering into the bedroom every so often to check on him. With a guest in his house, he was restless. What he saw was a face crafted from stardust; beautiful, ethereal, destined to be reborn into something even brighter. The feeling it left in his chest was warm and startling.

Eyes belonging to career comrades often stared at him as if he were a piece of jewelry primed to be stolen. Ira knew he was a romantic, saving himself for somebody special, but there were simple means of quenching desires in the meantime. It was discouragingly easy to find love in dark places. He never did indulge to a passionate extent, but the enticement was present and potent. It lingered like a tangible stench in the air, sweet and tangy all at once. For a while, there had been a dearth of desire. Now it submerged him like an ocean wave in winter. He was freezing, but somehow he was a furnace.

Their friendship was golden. He trusted Tobias and he was certain Tobias trusted him in return, despite his own secrets. The time wasn’t yet right to be risking their relationship for his own selfish desires. Tobias deserved better. Eventually, he hoped he could gather the courage to unveil the truth, but for now he was silent.

He frequently settled into his bed feeling giddy about his days spent with his new best friend. Tonight all he could really think about was how Mars needed a bath. He could bother the poor pooch tomorrow morning; he was already curled up at Ira’s feet, eyes drooping into a sleepy squint. It would be eerily quiet until the following afternoon. His mother was elsewhere, most likely spending the night at another woman’s house. Ira couldn’t hold anything against her. It wasn’t a betrayal, and it wasn’t time’s healing of her insides. The scars would always be there, but she need not flaunt them or lock herself up in despair. Ira wanted her to be happy. If this was the way, so be it.

A pounding on the door shocked Mars into a frenzy of barking. Ira, wrenched out of a dreamless sleep, reached into his nightstand for a weapon until he heard a familiar cry. The panic made his nerves stand on end. Tobias was the one person he wanted to protect, and suddenly he was in danger. He frantically dashed to the front door – Mars one step ahead – and yanked it open. ”Tobias! What’s wrong?” he asked, scanning his body up close. He didn’t look injured, but something was undoubtedly wrong. Not a moment of deliberation was wasted; he wrapped his arm around the boy’s smaller frame and led him inside.

The highest possible tolerance had a threshold. When acid eroded the stone dam forged by humanity’s tolerance for pain, suffering, and oppression, a leak would spring. When sturdiest human being met their worst, a crack would split through the center, collapsing a lifetime’s worth of construction into oblivion. The consequence was destruction. A broken human was a dangerous human, whether they were a danger to others or themselves. The Hunger Games had proven this theory again and again; somebody always perished when a breaking point was reached. Tributes tried to gut themselves, others managed to maul their opponents. It was a lesson he was all too familiar with. Career training was ingrained in his mind like scripture, but experience was the true influence.

The concept of death was frightening because there was no guarantee of afterlife. It was the destruction of happiness in its purest, most physical form, and humans were biologically programmed to feel discomfort at the sheer idea of it. Death was one of his thresholds. The death of his mother, a night the moon bled red like his aching heart at the sight of a skeleton instead of a smiling woman. The narrow escape of the alleyway stranger, the night warm trickles of blood felt familiar instead of strange. One life he couldn’t save, and one life he did, but both ended in the death of somebody he had despised even though he had never known them.

Thresholds were dangerous, and he could feel the dam trembling.

Tobias was warm and sweet, fitting nicely against him. He couldn’t cherish the contact. He had come to speak of death and panic, something that he would rather not have stalking him when he had finally found peace. Tobias was not somebody he could lose. Death would keep its greedy hands away from him. Anybody who tried to end this life – or had in the past, evidently – would die unpleasantly, and that was a terrifying promise Ira knew he could keep. But he couldn’t say it out loud. He was supposed to be the gentle giant, not the cold vigilante.

Who touched you? He wanted to say it, but Tobias was frantic. There was no time to breathe between desperate syllables. He hadn’t known very much about his brother. Not his name, just the word Cai, and that he wasn’t there. He was merely an outline of a person in Ira’s mind. A taller someone who resembled Tobias, but without a picture he was simply a blurred image, a cloud of colored fog. He had been found, implying that he had been missing. Not vanished, but held captive. Peacekeepers, perhaps? But he could see no reason why they would kill Tobias. Someone of his nature could not commit a crime. Right?

”Breathe, Tobias,” he whispered, stroking circles into his back. He could feel every heave of his chest. Mars was no longer barking, but laying by one of the chairs nearby, staring at the two the way he always did when was on guard. He wanted to protect them, just like Ira wanted to protect Tobias. Neither of them were quite sure who they were protecting him from. One thing was certain, however. ”I won’t let anybody hurt you.”

His promises were not empty.

”Come with me, we can sit in my room and then you can start from the beginning. I can make us some tea, if you want.”

The best tactic right now was to reassure Tobias that he was safe, then gain all of the insight he needed to strategize. Now was not the time for weapons and wonder. Tobias needed comfort, a trustworthy friend. He would do everything in his power to grant his wishes.

Tobias would be the priority, always.

It was a beautiful tragedy to see a human at their worst. Desperate, frantic, broken beyond comprehension by a past storm that had swept a portion of their sanity away. It was raw and animalistic, a being with intelligence and poise reduced to primitive nature. The Hunger Games glorified this untapped aspect of humanity. Blood ran golden if it meant survival, and that was how careers remained motivated and brainwashed. The ones who craved victory, that is. Ira was among the flock of careers who were only in it to protect themselves. In case the odds were not in their favor, they needed to be prepared. He found no glory in killing.

At his worst, the blood dripping between his fingers did not run gold. There was nothing beautiful about stolen life, or how thick the air had been after he ended the lives of those who had crossed the moral boundary (and perhaps he had stepped beyond it himself). It was raw, it was messy, it was ugly, filthy, and shameful. When he was reduced to his worst, he was only a tragedy. A monster. But when Tobias ripped himself away, a scream clawing its way out of his throat, Ira could still see how beautiful he was. He didn’t deserve to be tortured like this.

It was hard to find meaning in senseless shouts. Without context, he knew nothing. From the beginning there had been something unique about him – a storm cloud or a dark aura always at his heels, hiding even darker secrets. Tobias was a glacier and he had only seen the bright, beautiful tip, but beneath the waters lurked an entire storyline that he hadn’t been a part of. Now it was unfolding, and like always, there were graves to mark.

Ira shook his head. Whatever Tobias’ mother said was a lie. A mother who cast her own son out to sleep with the dangers and illness of cold evenings was not entitled to an opinion. She did not get to decide what Tobias deserved. The wicked would have their choices taken from them, sooner or later. He only wished he could offer a helping hand, but even the sky had limits. Hospitality and friendship were his wealth. His heart was in his hands as well, if Tobias would accept it.

Do I know what it’s like…

To search, to lose, to feel his heart sink into the ocean and tangle itself in seaweed until he screamed. Yes, he did, but he knew better than to compare suffering. Every human was built to react differently to tragedy. Perhaps Tobias was shattered, while Ira continued to fill the cracks in his glass heart with hope.

He had counted too many tortured souls in this world, and now there was another. Tobias’ mysterious brother was alive, but at the heaviest cost. There were certain scars that couldn’t heal. He was sure Tobias knew that better than anyone, and he did too. They ached in his chest every other night. ”I’m sorry,” he whispered, because Tobias was a flesh canvas for the devil’s artwork, and yet he couldn’t find a single flaw no matter how desperately Tobias shouted. No matter the words that stumbled past quivering lips, Tobias was not a piece of shit. No monster could reduce him to something vile.

”It’s not your fault. You didn’t cause this…” He repeated it because people had to hear him over and over again to finally believe him. People were often too stubborn to listen. ”You found him, just like you were supposed to. Parts of him will heal with time. He’s not..” A rotting skeleton in a disheveled tent, dead before the moon could rise, ”..dead.” He wouldn’t have to visit a grave with flowers. Maybe parts of his brother were gone and couldn’t be recovered, but bits and pieces would remain. Humans were sturdy like that.

He stepped closer and hesitantly reached out to trace his finger across one of the scars. Soulless monsters existed to seek and destroy. They painted these streets with blood and tried to break innocence over their kneecaps like branches. One too many lives had been ruined by their sadistic pleasures. Ira didn’t want to see any more of it. The night was too dark and full of terrors, yet it was the people like Tobias who reminded him of hope. Nothing he ever said would scare him away or convince him that he wasn’t worth saving.

”When my mom disappeared, it took me six months to find her,” he said, blood freezing at the thought of that night. ”When I finally did, it was too late. She had already starved.” And had been almost unrecognizable, propped gently upright in her tent, head rested on a pillow. Pale and willowy. Skin shriveled as if she would turn to dust at any moment.

”As long as his heart is beating, you can’t give up,” he said, ”And if you think you’re in danger, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you’d like.”

Tobias felt like a sunset, warm and with beautiful colors in his cheeks that stirred a thousand emotions in the empathetic forefront of Ira’s mind. He cupped his cheek and brushed away the tear trails with the edge of his thumb, gentle like a spring breeze. He didn’t want to imagine the grimy hands of black-hearted men reaching for Tobias in the dark, marking him up with more scars and more blood. He didn’t want to imagine them dragging him into the mist. He didn’t want to imagine Tobias gone, because there was already an emptiness in the chambers of his heart during the nights he couldn’t see him. Now he had real dangers to worry about, and it would drive him into madness if he wasn’t careful.

A game of ‘hide and seek’ wouldn’t last long with a new player in the field. A white knight with his weapon wielded, Ira would cease this hunt the moment unwelcome faces appeared on his doorstep. Tobias didn’t know this violent side of him, the red hurricanes behind his eyes when his blood boiled at injustice. It was dangerous, but only to evil men. Men who deserved to meet knives and bullets. Ira would escort them to their graves if they dared lay a handprint on Tobias or his poor brother.

The girl he saved might call him a vigilante, but at least she was alive and unharmed. He had made sure of that.

Tobias sputtered unnecessary apologies, and Ira only listened because he didn’t want to dismiss him when he was at his most vulnerable. There was no need to be sorry; he was scared and cornered. It eas human nature to shout, and to feel as if everything was wrong and nothing could be fixed. Everything Tobias had done was a defense mechanism, and it didn’t offend him. Ira understood every piece of it. ”It’s okay,” he whispered, because Tobias would always be forgiven.

There was a quiet part of him, nestled behind a wall of moral boundary that had planted itself like a seed in his conscience the moment Tobias sank into him, pleading for a distraction. That inner turmoil brought color to his cheeks, but faded in the presence of his lamplight. As much as he loved Tobias, he would not take advantage of him when he was in such a vulnerable state. He was just a terrified boy who wanted comfort, something to distract him from the dangers of the real world and the vicious men who resided in it.

He planted a gentle kiss on Tobias’ forehead instead, suppressing the rapid heartbeats in his chest. ”I can read you a story,” he muttered softly, eyes glancing over the bookshelf in the corner of his room. Some shelves were dusty, but the spines of his favorite fantasies were spotless. He always revisited those tales in times of need. ”Or, if you’re hungry, I can cook you a hot meal.”