Need you like air

Aurel is gone.

Or, at least far away, leaving Sabiel all alone in the apartment. Alone, with silence and only his own thoughts to keep him company, just like in the old days. And he has never realized before just how alone he had been before meeting the older man. How empty his life had been without without any steady human contact, with just brief meetings and no love.

But now, three days after his lover has left for that... Congress, whatever that means, he feels utterly alone and the silence all but chokes him. So he leans more forward towards the laptop on the living room table, his fingers moving with a new found ease over the keys and touch pad. He feels like he has mastered this machine now, he knows what information the symbols are hiding and how to make them reveal it. He uses this to escape.

Since if he looks up, he will see the big, white wall Aurel has said he can do anything with. Paint on it, draw on it, his lover has even bought him oil paint and brushes for it, which are lying beneath it on a chair. So if he doesn't stare on the screen before him, he'll start to feel the need to use them, to doodle and mark all over the white paint. As usual, that instinct to mark something permanently scares him.

Not to mention how the silence in the rooms is making his throat feel thick and make it harder for him to breathe, as if the older man's thoughts had been his air. Just another reason to use the laptop, and make sounds by himself instead.

It is easy to do, after all. There is a lot to see and wonder about on the "net", things he never would have imagined, sounds that make him nostalgic and happy. He has looked through multiple radio stations, listened to their music and hosts, searched for pictures and videos of people doing idiotic things.

Beside the laptop there is a bowl of salad which he made earlier, and now takes a bite of every once in a while. It is what he has been living off these past days, salads and eggs and pasta, simple things you don't need to fry. He himself if very proud, since he hasn't missed a single meal during these days alone, if not only not to worry Aurel.

He bends his neck and bores his nose into the thick, gray and soft yarn that makes up the turtleneck he's currently wearing. As he breathes in, the scent of Aurel's skin fills his nostrils, making him relax and shiver a little. How he misses him... Though, he is pulled from his longing as he really starts to listen to what the video he clicked on is singing. Closing his eyes, he listens to the words, another shiver running through him.

"'Cause my world revolves around you~ It's so hard for me to breathe. Tell me how I'm supposed to breathe with no air~ Can't live, can't breathe with no air. It's how I feel whenever you ain't there~"

He finds himself moving with the music, gently rocking and his lips forming the words as he follows the rhythm. Sure, he knows music has power, that it speaks to people and shows them different worlds. But now, it feels like it's talking about him.

Not having Aurel here, he feels as if he can't breathe, as if there's no air in the rooms and that the walls is closing in on him. Yet, he cannot go out, can't open a window. The cold wind is too harsh for him, tearing at his clothes even if they're whole and new, nothing like what he used to wear before finding a home here. So he has stayed inside all these days, and only ventured outside to buy more tomatoes and juice. Not to mention, that between these walls, he doesn't have to hide what he is, nor the tattoos playing over his skin.

Said tattoos dance softly to the music, brushing against the sweater's and cover's soft fabric and weight, sending small sparks of sensations through him. He has closed his eyes, just listening and missing, as he finds words for his longing.

And when he opens his eyes again, when the music falls silent, he looks at the white, pure, clean, untouched wall on the other side of the room. In that moment, he knows what he wants to do with it. What he needs to do with it. This impulse won't let him rest before he has, it barely lets him click 'Replay' on the video to hear the song from the beginning.

Then, he starts to search, look for inspiration and knowledge for what he wants to do. He types the question 'what is air?' in the search-box, and clicks on 'Pictures', only to be greeted with pictures of colorful balls tied together with small sticks. As he clicks on one of them, he gets to learn that air is made from many small, small things that we can't see with merely our eyes, and that those balls and sticks are used to symbolize them. With that information, he moves on, looking at many other pictures and searching for other words for 'air' in different languages.

He finds languages that are written in symbols, and quickly learns how to doodle them on a piece of paper, learning their shape and rhythm. All the while, he continues to click 'Replay' on the video every time it's over, in the end singing along with the song completely.

When he thinks he has enough knowledge, he turns up the volume on the laptop and stands up, reaching for his pants to put them back on again. Since walking around in just turtleneck and boxers would be quite cold, because the winter has wrapped this world in a thick, soft cover of snow, stealing all warmth from the living. So dressed in his lover's sweater and a pair of black sweatpants, he walks over to the wall.

He stops before it, looking over it with judging and contemplating eyes, in his mind painting up what he'll do. Then, he rolls up the sleeves of the sweater, to not get any paint on it, and grabs a thick felt pen. Black. Just like the tattoos moving over his naked forearms.

Without much thought, he reaches out towards the wall and draws a small circle on it. He hesitates for a short moment with the tip of the pen a centimeter from the remaining whiteness after it, before continuing. Soon, the circle is filled with black, and connected to others with short lines. After a short while, though, he crouches down and grabs the tubes with oil paint instead and squirts out some of them on the pallet. He has never worked with colors before, but there's a first for everything...

After taking a middle sized brush instead, he stands up again and looks over the black symbols one more time. Then he dots the brush in the red paint, and draws one of the many words for 'air' in one of the empty places, having to pick up some more paint more than once. Though after a while, he's more like jabbing the brush in the paint, growing bolder and mixing colors with not much care for contrast or any kind of science.

The wall is soon painted with a trail of a glorious mix of atoms, molecules and foreign letters, all in different sizes and tied together with strange, black tribal markings. As he pulls forward the chair so he can reach higher, he can hear his stomach rumble for food, and he notices how dark it is in the room. The only light breaking through the darkness is coming from a lamp at the couch, and the streetlight through the windows. Blinking, he looks up at the wall again, before pulling the chair where he wants it so he can climb up.

His eyelids might have grown a little heavy, and his arms are a tired, but the impulse is still driving him. He has to finish this before Aurel gets home...

But, impulse or not, after moving the chair two times and crouching down on five occasions, he finds himself lying his head down on the floor for "just two minutes". And the next thing he knows, is that the cold light from the winter sun shining through the windows is tickling his eyelids. He sits up with a jolt, quickly turning his head to stare up what he spent most of the night creating. After some  moments, he licks his dry lips and shivers from the coldness in the room, before standing up to pad over to the laptop which has turned itself off during the night.

He starts it up again, and meanwhile eats the rest of the salad to calm down his empty stomach, not caring for the dots of oil paint stuck to his fingers. When the song is playing in the background, he heads back to the wall painting, and starts again. And once again, he finds himself completely consumed by it, adding more color and black ink where he sees fits.

He barely registers when Aurel is opening the door to the apartment, only whipping his head in the other's direction when he hears his thoughts.

"(Sabiel, I'm home.)" Though, even if his body and heart screams at him to rush to the other, he can't move a muscle, frozen in front of the wall he has made 'anything' on. What if his lover doesn't like it? What if he has done something wrong? What if... "(Is something the matter?)"

He can see on the older man's worried face and hear on his tone that he's wondering why he's not reacting, as Aurel walks closer to him after getting out of his outdoor clothes and shoes. But all he can make his lips say, is a line from the song he's been listening to during almost a whole day. "Tell me how I'm supposed to breathe with no air..."

"(What are you...)" He can only guess what the other understands when he hears the same line being uttered by the singer, and he looks at the wall. Then, Sabiel feels his heart slow down to an almost painfully slow pace, making the seconds it takes for the older man's forehead to even out seem like hours. Though as a slightly cold, and very pale hand, strokes over his cheek and his lover smiles at him, the muscle starts to pick up pace again. "(It's beautiful.)"

Those simple words make him smile even bigger than when he tasted mango again, tears almost spilling over from relief. Though instead, he just wraps his arms tightly around Aurel's body, holding him close and breathing in his scent deeply. Now, he can speak, mumble soft words to the other.

"Welcome home... I missed you."