starlight upon fretted sea — luke. & wade.

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

isn't it lovely, all alone?
heart made of glass, my mind of stone
tear me to pieces, skin to bone
hello, welcome home

      You feel as if you had swallowed the sea.

Now, its vastness exists in the small of your gut and the sensation is akin to carrying the whole, colossally massive world within you, a heaviness larger than all you are, than all you shall ever be. Tides churn and ebb within your veins and the whole of your skin feels watered down, like how a tree’s sap gets when it is drenched. There’s driftwood, caught in sprigs between the throat, refusing to be gulped down. There’s brine drenching your organs, as if to preserve them in salt.

      That’s what it means to be a Hailsham—

      a preserved subject.

All the time, it felt as if you were submerged in a tube of rancid, green chemicals, untouched by rot, kept unspoiled for the festival they referred to as ‘the harvest. Every night, you sleep in a mortuary, well—attempt to sleep. There had been countless nights where you purely sit on the end of your bed, with drafts of air wandering in through the ajar windows smelling like the sea itself, and breathe alongside the stars overhead, envisaging yourself as a weightless and sharp thing like the constellations, suspended from the skies with fiery limbs, star-radiance, and a body abound with the echoes of others’ wishes.

But, the sea could never rise from its own heaviness to become one with the stars, so it simply gazes skyward at them in quiet longing.

      Wade Hailsham is a star;

you had known that ever since you first laid your blue eyes on him. He coruscates and burns and splinters into bright sunbeams but does it all unknowingly, innocently, in the way stars do. These little suns are taught to be oblivious to their own brilliance, in case they grow too prideful of it, in case they become Icarus who flew too high. They were humble, modest, sparkling masses, and Wade happens to be the same. And, these stars—they do not choose or care who revers their light, operating as a navigator to all creatures lost and forsaken. You happen to be one of those creatures, searching for a path, and so is Jane.

“We’re leaving,” Wade had told you once, with a silver spoon ineptly balanced on the bridge of his pink nose. “You, me,” he said, and your heart panged when the sentence didn’t end there. “and Jane.” It ached. It burned.

You hadn’t mentioned his words back to him in fear of hearing that name again. It was a name not worthy of fear—Jane. Four syllables, brief, short, like everyone else’s.

Their names were mere batch codes. Numbers assigned to each subject, each livestock.

      Jane Hailsham.

She was an enigma, a girl robed in fair skin but made corporeal with something else, such as hope, adventure, or rebellion. Jane Hailsham had a gleam in her eyes for the grander things in this sordid, humdrum existence, her gaze set on the grand scheme of things. Her charm was obvious too, eyes as round as polished buttons and an equally-polished face to match. She was the land, aswirl with mysteries and mountains. Wade was the stars, bright and fiery and pieced together by light. You were the sea, a cause of shipwrecks, covered in riptides.

A sigh escapes your lips as you haul a stone at the sea, gazing idly at how it skips across the ever blue surface. The onrush of waves and tides—they sing a melody of water to you, but you are too exhausted to heed it, and too weighed down to rise your head and look further than the parts fretted by the thrown pebble. The crunch of shoes on sand, however, draw your face towards it.

You don’t need to stare up at the silhouetted face to know the figure. “Wade,” you greet, with the gravel under your shoes somehow in your tone. “I thought you were at lunch with the others.” In a sudden, your head swirls, hungry for distractions, because it knows a glimpse at the other’s face would make you become undone. A hand delves in the pocket, and your chest is filled with relief when it discovers the papery skin of a cigarette. You fish it out, spark the tip with a lighter you’d stolen, and the nicotine enters. It feels numbing and suffocates your chest—a dangerous sensation you’d fallen in love with.

“I am not evading you, per se,” your eyes are set on the sea ahead, tracing shapes in the place where the skyline and the waters kiss. “But, I know you’ve taken notice of the—eh—tension between us.” The water looks as gloom and grey as you feel. “It’s nothing, I assure you, so forget about it, okay? Let’s go back to the original us, Wade and Luke.” Wade and Jane. Their names rhyme, his and yours do not. Perhaps these, the warning signs, had been alit and bright all along; you simply disregarded them with a thick stubbornness.

      “It’s better that way.”

isn't it lovely, all alone?
heart made of glass, my mind of stone
tear me to pieces, skin to bone
hello, welcome home




lyrics : billie eilish, khalid — lovely

[ ɢʀɪғғɪɴ ]

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

and I hear your ship is coming in
your tears a sea for me to swim
and I hear a storm is coming in
my dear is it all we've ever been?

His bones were not his own. The moment his parents signed him over to the institute, every piece of him became property: prime real estate for sale. He'd lived so long in death's shadow that he should have been used to it. He shouldn't have felt fear when the darkness came; it wouldn't ever be enough to keep the sun from setting. But he still hoped, and his bones were not his own but that didn't stop him from loving them anyway. Even as they were sickly and weak and, no doubt, chipping away at this point. He was the malfunction in an otherwise perfect code. Patient zero without a quarantine. He didn't know if whatever he had running through his veins was contagious or not, but he was a threat either way and he knew that. He was a smear to Hailsham's good name, their spotless reputation, a rat living in the walls that they had not yet caught on to. But they would.

Not in time, though. Not if Wade had it his way.

Keeping his secret for so long had nearly destroyed him; he was eternally grateful for Jane and for Luke, for their listening ears, for their solace, for their promises to never tell. And most importantly, for their willingness to run with him.

He'd gotten so used to sneaking through the fence and finding his way down to the oceanfront that he'd almost forgotten it was against the rules. It had started as something special, something that was his forever, something that could not be taken. Sand in his toes, crisp waters splashing against the shore, boats sailing the horizons and the sun plunging deep beneath the waves every evening. And Jane's hand in his. And Luke's smile reflected in his eyes. But the sand was annoying to clean from his feet, the water was a few degrees too cold for comfortable this time of year, the people on those boats were flaunting their freedom in his face, and Luke had not smiled at him in weeks.

Luke was there before him. He guessed he would have already left if he'd known Wade was coming, but there he was, skipping rocks, legs of his pants rolled up, feet buried in the tide, completely oblivious to Wade's existence. Wade had always appreciated the moments like these, when Luke didn't know anyone was watching, the most. It was the only time he could see the boy in his entirety. It was the only time he was not afraid to frown, or roll his eyes, or grit his teeth. Wade watched him for a while, quietly and without moving. His eyes took him swimming in a beach somewhere very, very far away from this island.

"Wade," Luke said at last. His name had always sounded warmer in Luke's mouth; now it felt blue. Like rain on a cold afternoon. Like he had almost said the word dreary and then replaced it with Wade's name at the last second.

"I thought you were at lunch with the others."

He set his jaw, steeling tired eyes on the boy standing in front of him.

"And you came here because you thought I was there," he said, not meaning to sound as biting as he did. The distance between them grew larger every day, and Wade couldn't help fearing it was because of his sickness. He wanted to trust his best friend. Of course he did. But it seemed like ever since he'd mentioned it, Luke had turned in another direction and started walking, and Wade's only choices were turning back to go and find him, risking everything he'd sacrificed to get to this point, or to keep going and hope Luke had a change of heart.

"I am not evading you, per se," Luke countered; Wade fought the urge to roll his eyes and listened instead, "but, I know you’ve taken notice of the—eh—tension between us."

"Because I'm..." he couldn't bring himself to say the word sick again out loud. It made him feel so powerless, like that one piece of him was so large that it eclipsed the rest of who he was. I am more, he thought, so, so much more.

"It’s nothing, I assure you, so forget about it, okay? Let’s go back to the original us, Wade and Luke. It’s better that way."

"Wade and Luke," he repeated. Instinctively, he crossed his left arm over his chest and squeezed his right shoulder.

"Look, I need you. I can't-" he cleared his throat, suddenly becoming content with staring at his own feet instead of matching Luke's gaze, "I can't handle all of this. I'm trying to but I can't. Not without you and Jane. Okay?" When he finally looked back up at the other boy, Wade had to blink away the urge to cry.

"I need you, Luke."

caught the air in your woven mouth
l  e  a  v  e       i  t       a  l  l
i'll be heaving how you went
in search of someone else




lyrics : novo amor — anchor

[ ɢʀɪғғɪɴ ]

[napoleon, d2m ₊⊹ 🐁 ɢʀɪғғɪɴ.]

isn't it lovely, all alone?
heart made of glass, my mind of stone
tear me to pieces, skin to bone
hello, welcome home

The wind becomes colder with each passing second. There’s salt on your cheeks, stinging the worn skin there, and it hurts, but this agony is momentary, unlike the gaping hole within your chest, in the place your heart originally rested. Second by second, it grows—festering. For a boy meant to be untouched by rot or decay, you are overflowing with it, from your calloused fingertips and those cracked lips, to the smoke like gaseous ecstasy in your lungs and the selfishness clinging to your bones.

You had been selfish for far too long that the world said, ‘no more,’ and smeared Jane Hailsham into the picture, a divine creation of reckless, blue strokes and oil paint. She is the painting that stops everyone in their tracks, her colors kaleidoscopic and wild, her edges faint and sharp all at once. You are the white canvas, a blank slate, kept alongside the others in a room full of pristine canvases.

The smoke that escapes from your ajar lips is taken away in a sudden by a waft of ocean air.

You envy it—the way the smoke disappears so effortlessly, with no consequences or pain or second-thoughts. A boy cannot disappear as effortlessly, you muse with disdain. But, the cigarette smoke helps, in a way. It eats you from the inside, in an excruciatingly-slow manner, until one day, you are nothing but a cavern of smoke and rot.

Fingers move and shift the cigarette from one hand to another—both have become adept at holding the one. You take another drag, slower this time, letting the nicotine kiss and make love with your mouth. Jane Hailsham’s mouth undoubtedly doesn’t taste like cigarette smoke and bad chemicals, but ripen cherries and other saccharine fruits. You don’t fathom about the taste of Wade’s mouth, because it haunts the cavern of yours, the ghosts of a flavor, 

      and a stolen kiss.

“And you came here because you thought I was there,” Wade says, and the bite in his words steer your eyes towards him. With unkempt hair and thin cheekbones and brown-flecked eyes, he stares back at you, a dream-like boy, a star in its radiant glory. But, this star is sick, you remind yourself, on the verge of splintering into a hungry black-hole. You mockingly raise both of his hands, as if in surrender. “Caught me red-handed, man,” you say, dry and humorless sarcasm laced to each word, like poison. “I am not the brightest person here, so I am not shocked.”

Somewhere, in the darkening skies ahead, thunder howls and lightning makes its fury known brightly. Blue light forks through the smoky clouds, illuminating each strand of haze and vapor. You feel it in your bones—the forked lightning, and the storm clouds. It moves through each tendon and vein, down the ivory marrows, until it cloaks the entire skeleton of you. “Wade and Luke,” the other echoes your own words back and you hear them like the distant thunder, as if the cold distance in between had grown conspicuously in a matter of seconds. Wade, with his feet on the golden sands of the shoreline, stares at you, who is caught in the storm clouds, every part of you a fury, electric and raging. 

      “Look, I need you. I can't—”

      “You can’t what?”

      “I can't handle all of this. I'm trying to
       but I can't. Not without you and Jane.”

That’s when your thunder roars and lighting descends, perilously, to kiss the shore—all in a fit of colossal, burning rage. The sound of your own destruction, in a sudden, is akin to a sweet melody. The boy breaks apart at his seams, and becomes undone. “Then, you don’t entirely need me, Wade, not in the slight.” You level your gaze with his, and let him see the fire crackling upon the little blue seas you call eyes. “I refuse to be a recurring character in your story arc, a subordinate in your twisted, heroic fantasies, and a helping hand in your little getaway with Jane!” Tears well in your eyes—you even taste them in the cavern of your mouth, saline and bitter but not as bitter as you are towards Wade, towards his indifference and oblivion.

“You don’t get to rewrite my own story, you don’t get to belittle me in it, and lastly, you don’t get to fucking kiss me and then walk away, holding Jane’s hand, as if I am just some lonesome boy in a kissing booth!” The cigarette dies under the heavy force of your shoe, and smoke rises. For a second, the quietness only exists, the roaring orchestra of sea-waves and riptides only sounds, the smoke only rises. Then, time continues once more, and all that was afloat once falls and breaks into a thousand countless, hopeless fragments.

      You break, splinters flying outward.

“Take her,” the words are steel, the disdain and the anger in them emphasized, “I know you just wanted to make me feel included—but I assure you, I am completely fine with staying here and donating my organs to a rich merchant.” Feet wobbles onward, resolute on returning to the institute, and your shoulder meets his for a second’s worth, but you push through. Sobs and agony threatens to rise and break free, but you hold them down.

     Don’t let him see your suffering.

“And, for the love of Ripred, don’t even think about giving me a farewell kiss when you leave. Do not even search for me.”

isn't it lovely, all alone?
heart made of glass, my mind of stone
tear me to pieces, skin to bone
hello, welcome home




lyrics : billie eilish, khalid — lovely

[ ɢʀɪғғɪɴ ]