{breathe in, breathe out}: heathcliff + izar

Heathcliff Travers

The stall opened, bolts screeching, revealing the pale faced boy before Heathcliff. He was the sort of unfamiliar that brought a pinch in his stomach; enough for Heathcliff to envision he'd stared too long, daydreaming of his name, and what his hands felt like against his own skin. Life found a way, like a sprig breaking through fractured pavement, to make one pay attention. He could spend moments envisioning futures for all around him, cozying up with wives or partners, having the same scowl faced children and then, holding hands in the warmth of an afternoon sun, departing together. Shared memories, existences that would spread out and hide behind shadows. For the world was never just the smooth surface, but the wrinkles of eyelids and the scars tucked away and hidden with make-up. Love came when all else had faded, for those who truly knew it found love existed when all else had worn away, and those who sought it reached, through darkness, for the light.

Here Heathcliff found his eyes, and the solid resolve - the move to speak, but no words came. And they would say that he was weak, to hide away in the bathroom, to speak to someone such as Heathcliff, if for an instant he couldn't hold his own. But where the young boy imagined harsh words or a rebuff he found, within those same eyes, a gentleness that lingered. Why had he stayed? Heathcliff would ask this a thousand times past infinity. He would say it was those eyes, the same that he'd seen in the mirror so many times before. Was he projecting himself onto this boy? Heathcliff was always one for daydreams, and more than once he'd gotten carried away past the brink of no return. But the itch that climbed up his vertebrae and above his shoulders spoke to something deeper. The paleness of his face, and the life in those eyes, there was something deeper.

The only sound to break the silence was the steady drip of a leaky faucet. Outside, there were clamors of boys and girls but they, much like their speech, had faded to nothing. They were forgotten. This was as welcome as it was unnerving. Heathcliff could feel the heat rise in his cheeks as he exchanged glances. When was the last time that he had truly studied someone? The boys on the training floor were peculiar animals, exhibits in strength but more zoo animals than human beings. Under the fluorescents he could make out a human face, the nervousness of a boy that had come inside to make sick - but from what, he wondered, and how? Was it pathetic enough that he thought he shared a common bond with a boy that was able to show weakness here? Heathcliff imagined his sister would think he was a fool, and his mother would have enjoyed mocking him. And yet.


Then there was movement, a tremor, a sway of hands and Heathcliff stepped forward. Was he okay? His life he'd been hammered into believing that there was no strength in helping others because their weakness meant weakness for all of them. No good expending energy in one that could do nothing in return. But Heathcliff was a square peg in a round hole. Try as they might, while wrought iron and struck with the same hammer as the rest of them, he had not bent neatly into a shape. They should've known - perhaps they did already, his dancing and all. Instead of risking the chance of collapse, his hand reached toward the boy's arm to grasp and hold. He wouldn't fall and embarrass himself here. Not in front of Heathcliff. Not while he need his help.

"Wait." Heathcliff gave the command, and hoped he could steady his companion. He could feel the warmth of the other boy. It lit up the palm of his hand and burned toward his face, now flushed with trepidation. "Just wait a minute. You don't have to go back out there just yet." They shouldn't have had to go back out there at all. But that was the difficulty of becoming when fragile and unsteady. They had to find others to lean on through hard times, or else they would wear apart on their own. Heathcliff gave another glance. "You should stay," Heathcliff whispered, afraid of his own voice. "For a little while."

Heathcliff Travers

Oh I’m sorry. The boy spoke, his words like glass, threatening to shatter across the tiled floor underneath him. Heathcliff wondered if time had slowed. He could feel his heart beating under his chest, the boy’s hand resting firmly underneath his collar bone and placed squarely for support. Heathcliff looked down the bony fingers and up the pale, freckled skin. He lingered, his eyes trailing up the path until at last reaching the boy’s face. Was there fear between them, or electricity he’d never sensed? This panicked heartbeat drummed through Heathcliff’s ears and down his throat, paralyzing the words that were supposed to follow. He was to push him away, tell the boy that he needed to get on with whatever he’d come there to do—why help someone so weak, so pathetic.

But the silence pierced through him, and his eyes—he couldn’t look away from the older boy, the roundness of his face. Lost as he was, never once had he wished so much that he’d feel another’s hand against his flesh. Heathcliff took a breath. How many times had he missed this boy’s face before, and now it entered into his reality? How many times would he have walked past? Surely they’d been on the same matts, even taken blows from one another. But he was older, dainty and Healthcliff would have remembered. He took another breath; this time place a hand atop the one on his chest. He looked from his palms to the boy’s eyes.

He and his sister would play pretend. When the lights had gone out and the stars shown through the windowpanes, they’d speak of stories that only existed in their minds. His sister talked of climbing mountains, and seeing lands not touched since the fall of the dark days. She had an obsession with the unknown, of finding truth that had been lost. Heathcliff diverged here, too. He found solace in the truth that dwelled within, of knowing what could exist, should his skin, his eyes, his heart speak it. He liked stories of men and woman changing shape, of magic that could make them creatures that they could not be. Fantastical and unreal. Heathcliff knew that the only truth was laid out by other people. And yet.

“You’ve got…” Healthcliff mustered out a few words, clicking together what should have been a compliment. How strange finding kind words could feel as such a chore. “Small hands. Light hands.” Both phrases seemed wrong, and his face flushed red. What a pathetic thing to say! He pulled back to let the hand drop and to pull away his own. This was stupid; he’d overstayed his welcome and now the boy would think he was a freak. That couldn’t be true—he’d searched his face, he’d seen. There was truth there, wasn’t there? But that was the mistake, in trusting that anyone would ever have a truth worth knowing. The boys here were wicked; Heathcliff was wicked, too. They’d have been better off not existing, if only to spare each other from any pain.