g h o s t s

Casper’s grin did little to alleviate his discomfort, but Emiliano didn’t mind. He would humiliate himself ten times over just for a chance to see that smile. It was almost painful to watch Casper hide himself away and deflect his compliments. Nearly impossible to look at this man built of daydreams and contagious smiles and believe that he could see the beauty in everyone in the room except for himself. It was the kind of hollow sadness that made him wish he had inherited either of his parents talent. Like maybe if he could mimic the sparkle in his eyes the way his father outlined the slight quirk of his mother lips when she was amused or capture the sound of Caspers laughter in music the same way  his mother managed to translate the feeling of falling in love into guitar strums he would have a way to show him how beautiful he truly was.

The sad reality was that Emiliano was not a creator but an observer. A scientist, a believer, a man who could do nothing but try his best to make Casper smile again, and pray that this golden boy would stick around. Hope that if he could see him smile enough he would find a way to explain to him that his smile lit up a room in a way that he would believe. That would have to wait because he was at a loss for words again. The word Adonis reverberated in his mind, making all of his other thoughts hazy and unclear. 

“Wow…uh wow,” he covered his face as he realized how red he must have been, ”I uh–yeah, yes,” he nodded when his words failed him, “Sorry, uh yes starting over sounds good. It’s nice to meet you Casper, I’m Emiliano, and all is forgotten as long as we can also pretend I haven’t said anything embarrassing.”

casper let his head fall again, though a smile still plagued his lips like an unwelcome visitor, like the cold of his childhood hasn’t frozen his frown in place. he felt what he could only assume was some kind of phantom warmth;; a lazy, swimming feeling that made his whole body feel useless. casper knew better than to believe this though. it was just another ghost, just another shadow, just another HURRICANE that would leave him soaked and bitter in its wake. he was made of stubborn poltergeists, their presence like neon signs on the side of a cracked-out desert highway, incessant and buzzing with all the things he’d tried to forget. his BODY was a suburban haunt and his laugh was all soup-can jingles on a too-warm breeze, liminal only because he was already halfway gone. his smile was made of will-o-wisps and and his voice like the static in between radio stations.

but EMILIANO — emiliano was made of life, of sunlight shapes that danced merrily across his skin. his eyes were filled with gentle fires and casper stopped breathing for a moment there when they met his. he wondered, absently, what milk and honey lips would taste like against sea salt and radio static. there’s a metallic taste on his tongue as his eyes flicker down emiliano’s face and back to his eyes, a realization dawning somewhere in his chest, where the ghosts liked to collect, that a man like that could never love a boy like him. even if he could, he deserved so much more than love more like a haunted house than anything else;; more than hands that are always too cold and flickering lights where his eyes should be. but jesus christ, if casper didn’t wish he could. knowing full well the aftermath sure to come, the boy made of  phantoms let himself fill with champagne bubbles, mirror emiliano’s rose gold light, match the ichor that colored the edges of his smile.

                    “stop saying my name like that,” he said,                      and a laugh haunted his voice. he felt                      foolish saying it, but there was something                      about the way emiliano’s voice curled                      around the syllables that made him want                      to melt, and he was already in deep enough.                      “all is forgotten,” he said, a faded laugh tailing                      his words like an afterthought. casper looked                      around at the dwindling party. “what time is it?”

Humans fight or flight response developed out of an evolutionary need. It helped to save early humans from predators and allowed us to evolve past our hunting days. Despite its importance fading the central nervous system still releases adrenaline in times of high emotion such as embarrassment. One of many side effects of that is the dilation of blood vessels to improve blood flow and, in some cases, cause people to blush. The exact reason why peoples faces flush while the rest of our bodies veins are unresponsive to the adrenaline fueled response is up for debate amongst the scientific community.

Emiliano had never put much thought into this, but as Casper hid his face and he felt the heat rise on his own face he had two conflicting ideas. The first was that perhaps millions of years of evolutions had built up, not only to give Casper Young stunning green eyes and a dazzling smile, but to make him impossibly attractive when he was embarrassed. The second was that blushing did nothing but further humiliate human beings. That was certainly how he felt as he struggled to wrap his mind around how he could have possibly had this effect on someone like Casper.

“Dios,” he muttered under his breath, clutching the cross on his rosary, subconsciously. He never used the lord’s name in vain, but as his sympathetic nervous system seemed convinced he was in a life or death situation it didn’t seem like an inappropriate time to pray. Don’t let me fuck this up, he thought desperately as he struggled to form intelligible thoughts and stop staring at Casper.

“No you–don’t,” he started scrambling for words he didn’t have. “Mierda, uh I–you aren’t. Socially inept I mean. You are beautiful. Like…like so beautiful that I’m struggling to form coherent thoughts and actually said that out loud,” he scratched the back of his head and looked back down at the table, “Frick, I–I will just say something more embarrassing and make this worse if I keep talking, so I’m gonna stop rambling now. Okay?” he glanced hesitantly back at Casper, unsure what reaction to anticipate from whatever the hell he’d just said.

casper didn’t think there was a deep enough red to capture the blush behind his cheeks. there wasn’t a strong enough pigment to elicit the importance of every movement of teeth and tongue that contributed to his coloring. he suddenly felt all too warm and the room all too small, and there was a soft anxiety that pushed at the back of his throat like a warning. and yet, there was something in him that compelled him to smile. it was more an i don’t know what to do or how to react smile than anything, else but he was full on grinning. he let a hand fall to cover his mouth and rested his head against the table in front of him.

                       “oh my god,” he groaned softly against                         his hands.

there was a part of him that desperately wanted the conversation to continue;; for the words to be easy and the topic smooth, but with casper young, there was no such thing. he found himself more and more wanting to throw himself into a bottomless pit and not wonder what was at the bottom. this beautiful, beautiful man like motherfucking APOLLO was calling him beautiful and complimenting his art and he wondered what he ever saw in the lilac boy because the man before him was like a sculpture that had come to life. he could never be held in brush strokes or built on graphite pencil lines;; he was an entity all his own. there was a strength to his beauty casper had never seen before. and it was utterly humiliating. he lifted his head to look back at emiliano. 

                       “what? psh, what? no, shut up you’re                          —  you’re beautiful,” he said too quickly,                         his eyes snapping closed. “i didn’t  —                          i didn’t mean like shut up or anything i’m,                         uh, i’m sorry you’re just like  —  you’re just                         like a fucking adonis or something and for                         fuck’s sake i actually just said that out loud.                         can we start over? i’m casper, and i would                         like to personally apologize for my own                         awkwardness.”

Emiliano would have never seen himself in Caspers drawings. The napkins were littered with stories of happy people expressing themselves in their most natural form. Simplistic beauty. It was lovely, but it wasn’t real. Caspers art was all soft strokes and sweeping lines. Emiliano was sharp edges and missing pieces. Parts of his life had fallen apart so many times it was hard to believe others could look at him and not see cracks.

The confident man with bold gestures, he could only assume was supposed to be him from his unique arm gestures, was not the man Emiliano saw in the mirror. When he looked at himself he noticed every scar he got from years of growing up on a farm and the lack of new marks on his body. The comfort he got to live in while his mother was still in Colombia. He saw her frizzy dark brown locks every time he styled his messy hair into a quiff. The chocolate brown eyes that sat beneath his glasses reminded him of the kind gaze his grandmother had given him through her reading glasses. He couldn’t even smile without hearing an echo of his grandfather’s voice, you have the same smile as your father. Emiliano loved that these things were forever a part of him, but sometimes they were a sharp reminder of the things he’d lost of left behind.

The shadows of his doubts and regrets weighed heavy on him. They were what made him strive to do so much world, and why he doubted that he could make a difference on his bad days. They were such a huge part of him it was odd to see an image where none of it was present. Strange as it was it was mostly mystifying and dizzying that this golden man had looked at him and seen art. The words I drew you were still sinking in when Casper started stumbling apologies. He felt bad letting him ramble, but he was speechless. This seemed like too kind of a gesture. Like a dream he couldn’t think too hard about without waking himself up.

Still when he felt the other man’s eyes burning into him he let out a shaky breath. “No it’s fine, you’re fine, I mean,” he let out a dry laugh. “If you hadn’t kept rambling I probably would have. I didn’t uh I didn’t realize any of these were supposed to be me, but I-I think it’s sweet. It’s kind of flattering someone as beautiful as you thought I was worth drawing.” His left hand fiddled with his rosary beads while he waited for Caspers response, slightly horrified, as he’d noticed a moment to late that he’d let the word beautiful slip.

casper’s face was a mess of RED;; wine and rubies painted across freckle-dotted cheeks, finger-paint scarlet pressed in contrast against soft green eyes. his face faltered, and he was sure a few lines of his irises rearranged themselves to compensate for his disbelief. it wasn’t a secret that casper young didn’t have any sort of KNACK for conversations such as this ( see: flirting ), but this was a whole new level of throwing yourself under the bus, as it were. he felt ever so compelled to slip off his chair and curl up under the table, wait out the storm of pure, unadulterated embarrassment he had created himself above.

not only was it weird enough that he was talking to the stranger he had been sketching across the room, but he had just EXPOSED HIMSELF without any prompting whatsoever. he, frankly, already wanted to die right then and there, and then he heard that milk .&& honey voice wrapping around those syllables and he almost fainted on the spot. there was something beautifully confusing about the man before him;; the way his fingers clutched the rosary hanging around his neck, the faded accent that coated his words, the laugh like FORGET ME NOTS that casper desperately wanted to paint, the colors he couldn’t find to do so. it seemed entirely impossible that he could reciprocate these feelings. it seemed entirely impossible that this man like a PAINTING would call him this. the syllables got caught somewhere between his ears.

                    beautiful. beautiful. beautiful.

no one had ever called casper BEAUTIFUL before. it wasn’t something he could expect either of his parents to say, nor anyone he’d known in high school. even then, he kept to himself. there was a certain kind of SAFETY that he could find in the spaces between his ribs, the charcoal stains on his fingers. there was beauty there, but surely there was none between those god awful gaps between his teeth or the unruly mess of blonde atop his head. there was no ARTISTRY there, only carelessness;; as if someone had thrown him together at the last minute. an afterthought.

                    casper sputtered. “oh my — ” casper                      smiled humorlessly and hid his face                      behind his hands. “fuck. i’m not — ”                      he said, muffled. “beautiful. god, of                      course you didn’t know,” casper                      groaned. “how am i this socially inept?”                      he asked no one in particular, mostly his                      hands. he worked up the courage to look                      back at the man and peeked out between                      a few of his fingers. “i’m sorry.”

Emiliano was of the belief that every living thing was a piece of art hand crafted by God. Life was too remarkable of a gift not to appreciate to the best of his extent. That was why he found biology so incredibly fascinating and medicine so fulfilling. Helping others seemed like the best way to use his time on Earth, and it felt like a good way to show gratitude to God for the miracle he’d let him experience, even though he knew he’d given the gift without expecting anything in return. He only wanted to be half as giving or good as his creator.

He did what he could, but it would never be enough. No matter how many problems he bandaged he knew there would always be more. The thought weighed heavy on his heart, but he found comfort in the belief that what science couldn’t mend the spiritual would. He prayed, went to church, and did whatever else he could to keep his wonder with the world alive. Part of that had always been art. His mother liked to joke that he’d inherited his father’s appreciation for it but her talent. She wasn’t wrong. 

Emiliano couldn’t draw well, but that didn’t stop him from appreciating art that others created. There was something ethereal about man made recreations of God’s owns masterpieces. He shouldn’t have been surprised when the man, who could have passed for an angel, lifted his arms to show sweeping lines bursting with movement and life. Casper kept finding ways to amaze him, and he had the sneaking suspicion this would continue for as long as he knew the other man.

He leaned forward to admire his work, only glancing up when he heard Caspers comments. “Whatever?” he shook his head gently before fixing an admiring gaze back at the drawings, “Casper, these are amazing. I mean I believe you can draw better, but just the fact that these are only sketches is incredible.”

casper remembers that morning so vividly it burns like holy water at the back of his throat. he’s seven. he’s seven and a boy with a name he’ll always remember and eyes he’ll never forget sits down next to him on the bus, says his name like it matters, tell him his like it’s a secret. he sits down next to him and for the next half hour they talk about EVERYTHING and nothing. they let out laughs like lilacs, lyrics written by a budding poet, like this boy is pulling the thistles from his ribcage and replacing them with sweet almond blossoms, pressing forth smiles warmer than his HOME had ever been. they are two twin tide pools, spilling into each other, warm and sweet and young.

he remembers the rest of the day in fractured moments. he stands next to the boy with the lilac laugh and he feels so much BIGGER than he ever has before;; he feels full of life and youth and fervency, like his bones aren’t built from tight-packed snow or freezing marble but something more like the space between the two fingers on the ceiling on the sistine chapel, like the eggshell white in THE GIRL WITH THE PEARL EARRING. he paints him eight hundred different shades and teaches him that he is grace in every color, that he’d still spill lilac laughs if he were green or blue or pink, and he believes him. he doesn’t even mind that the freckles on the lilac boy’s nose don’t rearrange themselves when they see him like casper’s do, or that he doesn’t spend hours picking out just the right shade of BEAUTIFUL to match his eyes, like casper does. he doesn’t mind that over the next NINE YEARS, while he builds this boy out of pencil lines and brush strokes, that he forgets to fill casper back in when he loses his color.

art was MUSCLE MEMORY. it was the learned stroke across the page, the subtle flick of casper’s wrist as he brought the figures blooming in his mind to creation. it was the nuances in two identical drawings;; the vague differences that made the lines of charcoal so breathtakingly enamoring. he fell in love with art perhaps around the same time he fell in love with the lilac boy, but unlike with the boy, he never fell out of it. instead, it grew around him more deeply, encapsulating him in ivy, forming walls three inches thick, twisted together over years of building his own bones back together, out of those BROKEN IVORY CRAYONS, and here emiliano was, melting them in one glance.

casper’s breath hitched a bit, his blush a soft poppy red. the color was new on him. “i, uh, thank you,” he breathed, like it was the faded echo of a prayer. if that was so, his next words were a hail mary. “i hope you aren’t like, freaked out by the fact that i drew you. i’m not, uh, i’m not going to show it to anyone or anything. i was just sort of looking around and you’ve got this like,” he was rambling, but his words were becoming more impassioned. he was talking more towards the table, mostly cause he wasn’t sure he could look emiliano in the eyes. “you’ve got this really interesting energy about you, i guess, and it’s just — ” a testing glance back at the man made him shut his mouth. “i’m rambling,” he said, flushing. “i’m, uh, i’m sorry. i’m just — ” a breath, “nervous.”

He nodded back at Casper without realizing that he was mirroring his actions. He was far too distracted by the way he ran his tongue against his bottom lip. The movement had caught his gaze, and he’d let his eyes linger there for a moment longer than he should have. A fleeting thought that his lips looked soft led him to wonder what Casper’s lips would feel like against his own. He averted his gaze as the warm sensation of embarrassment radiated through him. He stared down at the table as he spoke, “My first language is Spanish, and I lived in Colombia for eleven years.”

As he stared at where Casper’s arms laid on the table he noticed the edge of a napkin sticking out from underneath one of his arms and a pen resting next to it. He thought back to the quiet concentration that had initially drawn him over, and worked up the courage to look back at up at him. “Were you working on something before I came over here? I thought I saw you writing or something.”

casper bit down softly on his lip, failing to hold back a smile, as he watched emiliano’s gaze flicker from where it had rested a bit below casper’s eyes. he couldn’t pretend to be the only victim to this though, as his own gaze had been fixed on soft pink lips, covered in prayers that got stuck in the honey in his voice. he couldn’t pretend he hadn’t thought about them against his own, wondered what that might feel like. he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t, himself, inordinately attracted to this near stranger before him. he continued to look at emiliano though he was looking at the table.

casper hummed in acknowledgement, not wanting to get in the way of his question, then quickly wishing he had. his cheeks blushed a deep red, a bit of a sputter presenting itself as he tried, desperately, to come up with an answer to the question. was he supposed to say, outright, YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL AND I WAS DRAWING YOU I HOPE THAT’S OKAY ? because, though casper generally lacked the skills most valued when it came to social interaction, that did not seem like a smart road to go down. he fumbled and grasped blindly for something to grab hold of, some excuse, before quickly realized he had dug himself into a hole he couldn’t get out of. slowly, almost painfully, he lifted his arms to reveal about three napkins, two and a half packed with sketches, expressive and bursting, all short strokes and bold lines, signifying nothing in particular but speaking volumes. there were line-marked drawings of emiliano’s hands, when he had the chance to see them still, loose, sketched versions of bodies he’d seen around the room, but his were by far the most beautiful.

                    “i, um,” casper laughed awkwardly, smiling                      though a blush crept down his neck and he                      moved his hand to scratch it. “i was drawing.                      it’s nothing special, you know, just gesture                      drawings and whatever, but, i didn’t really                      have anything else to do,” he explained, finally                      looking back up at emiliano.

Emiliano hadn’t expected Casper to get his name exactly correct. In the four years since he’d moved back to the states he’d heard many mutations of the smooth Spanish name his family knew him by. He had learned not to expect more from Americans than a flat lifeless version of his name. He was pleasantly surprised to hear such a close copy of his own pronunciation. The only thing it lacked was his exact Spanish accent which made it mean so much more. There was a charm to the effortlessness with which other Spanish speakers could repeat his name, but there was something special about the effort Casper went to to make sure he said it correctly that made it sound just as good if not better.

Then, he went and smiled at him. It was small and reserved, but so real and bright. It reached his eyes, and somehow managed to do the seemingly impossible and make him more attractive. If every other little thing this man did was a work of art his smile was an answer to a prayer Emiliano would have never dared to imagine. He had been taught to pray for help not gifts. He’d never ask for something so effortlessly good to be delivered to him, yet there it was right in front of him. If he hadn’t touched Casper only moments ago he might have doubted that he was even real.

The accent question came as no surprise. It was so blatantly there it was rare for him not to get some sort of comment, but it never lead anywhere interesting. Columbia was an abandoned home, a mess of tangled feelings, something he could never truly delve into with a stranger. He always had to emphasize the here and now,  focus on why he left and ignore the pain that came with leaving a home behind. He understood the curiosity, but he was much more interested in the miracle that sat in front of him. 

“I don’t mind at all,” he assured with a slight shake of his head before adding, “But if I answer your question can I ask you something?”

casper peered up at the man in front of him, strong and sturdy and warm-looking, like maybe if you pressed your hand against the space over his heart you’d melt and you wouldn’t even mind. he wondered, absently, if emiliano’s heart had the same beat as his. if it fluttered the same way, like a hummingbird mid flight;; if it reminded him of short sketched lines and thirty-second gesture drawings. he supposed, though, that his heart was there on his sleeve, in the way his voice curled around words or the lines in the palms of his hands. he almost wanted to cry thinking about the fact that he could never capture that with a drawing. he could never tell an entire story of soft accents and honey gazes in pencil strokes. 

perhaps, casper thought, he could try. when he got back to his room he could unpack his pastels and try to recreate the dream of a man before him, try to match eyes full of life to flat colors. he could try, but it would never be enough. nothing would ever be enough to match the way he carried himself, with an air of holiness that casper couldn’t quite place, bones made from something so much stronger than wax, but just as beautifully misunderstood. there was something amazing about him, like if he looked away emiliano wouldn’t be there when he turned back. he bit into his lip as he smiled.

                    “i guess that’s fair,” cas said with a nod,                      letting his tongue run over his lower lip                      momentarily, as if preparing himself to                      answer.

Emiliano was flustered by the light blush that graced the other man’s face. The unrelenting honesty of it was adorable, but realizing he’d been staring at him closely enough to notice it was almost uncomfortable. The embarrassment that came from staring wasn’t enough to make him look away. From across the room he thought he saw a cute boy not a marvel of humankind.  He was the kind of beautiful that made Emiliano wonder how so many of his colleagues could believe that human life was nothing but a random convergence of atoms, when God himself must have taken pride in creating this man. 

He could have stood there for hours admiring the miracle in front of him. Slightly flushed cheeks, wisps of blonde curls, and gorgeous green eyes that were gazing at him of all the people in the room. The mere thought made his heart beat faster. It was disorienting, and made him understand how the word breathless could ever be positive. The only thing he could think was wow, but he knew there had to be better words to explain the kind of unreal wonder he was experiencing. If merely getting to see this man didn’t constitute as a miracle the way he looked at Emiliano surely must have.

He had to bite down on his lip to stop an embarrassingly large grin from splitting across his face when Casper finally spoke. “Casper,” he repeated softly as he sat down. He’d been told a thousand names today, but if he could remember just one it had to be his. He tried not to seem too eager as he stretched his left arm over the table, “I’m Emiliano. It’s nice to meet you.”

casper’s name had presented itself in many voices. it came with accents, against teeth stained with lipstick, in a house too big to call home. he was two syllables said over and over, in hundreds of different ways in millions of different seconds, fleeting and uncertain. but now he heard it from milk and honey lips, spilling with an accent like a sunrise that couldn’t possibly come from anywhere but that space in the middle of his ribcage, like HOME was somewhere between soft S’s and hard R’s. and perhaps it was. but in that fraction of a second casper was all too aware of every sound of every letter that spelled his name, bled in ink and tears and sugar, but only wishing to hear it in milk and honey once more.

gentle green eyes flickered down towards the hand extended in his direction, hesitantly lifting his arm and shaking the man’s hand in greeting. EMILIANO. it was old. roman. ocean-rolled and tumbling, just the way it fell off his tongue. he turned it over in his head a few times, trying to come up with the movements of teeth and tongue to emulate it, the smooth ruggedness it presented, as if it had been held between countless lips but never bitten. it was pristine and warm against his tongue as he repeated it back to him,

                    “emiliano.”

he retracted his hand and rested his arm back against the napkin, hiding sweeping, sketched lines that couldn’t possibly resemble anyone in particular, but nonetheless caused him a vague and fluctuating sense of embarrassment, tried not to focus on the way emiliano had bit back a grin. he failed, and attempted to do the same for himself. perhaps he could save at least a shred of his dignity today, as he seemed to be consistently making a fool of himself in front of beautiful people.

                    “nice to meet you too,” he said with                      a slight smile, biting down on the                      inside of his lip. “what sort of accent                      is that, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Emiliano had spent hours in the same room, setting up tables and chairs, hanging up streamers, and running around doing whatever he could to help, but he was far from tired of it. The room he, his friends, and colleagues had worked on was finally full. Familiar faces and scared freshman alike filled the room with chatter, and he couldn’t be happier. It was times like these that made him believe he’d truly succeeded in making a new home for himself in America. 

He kept busy throughout the night, doing everything he could to assure that it was perfect and everyone was having a good time. It was mostly running around doing errands, but he stopped to talk to any newcomers who he saw sticking to the sideline. He knew how scary it was to be at a new place for the first time, or in your first openly queer space, or both. That had been his case, so he told all the freshman he ran into about all the programs the Queer Students Center offered with a smile. He was in the middle of that very sort of discussion when he first noticed someone looking at him.

A blonde boy, sat a few tables away scribbling onto a piece of paper. Emiliano shrugged and focused on his conversation. The other boy was probably lost in thought, he looked busy. Or at least he had until Emiliano kept feeling someone’s eyes on him from a similar direction. He finished up his conversation with the girls, staying enthusiastic through it all, but sneaking occasional glances at the blonde. He was becoming more and more curious about what he was working on, and he wasn’t sure how much of that was related to the fact that he’d noticed how cute the boy was.

He waved to the girls with a final smile when they walked off to enjoy the party, and glanced back at the blonde boy, still working on something. He adjusted the rosary around his neck, a common nervous habit of his, but one that hadn’t really been present at the party. Talking to people was easy…when they weren’t cute. He walked up to the boys table despite his inhibitions, and offered him a nervous smile as he stood in front of him, “Is this seat taken?”

casper’s life was cold. it was all marble and bony wrists, too-thin hands that belonged to strangers he called his family. he couldn’t remember saying the phrase I LOVE YOU when it wasn’t explicitly warranted, or the phrase being said to him in any sort of casual setting. he had never known honest to god warmth;; what it felt like to be more that just a wisp of smoke, but there was something about the velveteen gaze that made a rosy blush creep up the back of his neck. he could feel a vague heat across his collarbones, melting down the bones he’d built out of broken crayons. he was a man of WAX, his very composition threatened by even the slightest glancing heat. but even this — this vague look that stretched a party that now seemed miles wide, it was like staring directly into the s u n. 

                   ( AND JESUS CHRIST, IF HE DIDN’T FEEL LIKE ICARUS. )

casper tucked his chin towards his chest, actively avoiding eye contact with the man, trying to pick up the melted wax from disdained wings and build himself anew. but he could feel his entire skeleton coming undone when someone approached the table, and he didn’t even have to guess who it might be. he was bright. he was so bright casper thought he might melt completely from the sheer impact, but instead he swallowed thickly and worked up the courage to look up from charcoal stained hands at the man before him. his eyes were soft and kind despite their darkness, a quiet intensity hidden behind swimming irises. he was built like the kind of home casper had never known, the kind he could only imagine.

                    “w-what?” he stammered, realizing after                      a moment that he had been staring at him                     in silence for a few seconds too long. “oh,                      uh, no. no, go ahead. i’m uh, i’m casper,”                      he said, trying to smile as he let his arms                      rest over the napkin to hide its contents. 

He watched as the boy in front of him collected himself, and he felt like he should look away because he had obviously tripped. Nate knew how embarrassed he would be in the situation, so he tried to look inconspicuous by looking around, his eyes fixating on the number on the door. His brows raised slightly as he realized he was standing in front of Kiki’s apartment. Meaning this was her roommate. “I’m Nate, it’s nice to meet you,” he smiled and held his hand out for the other boy to shake. “I’m actually, your roommate’s brother, Akatendeka’s brother.” 

           suddenly, casper felt the overwhelming urge to crawl his way back into the apartment, curl up in a ball, and stay there forever. the boy — nate — was being nice, averting his gaze so as not to embarrass casper any further, but it really wasn’t working. “akatendeka,” he repeated, trying to get accustomed to the sound of the name before he actually had to greet her. “nice to meet you,” he smiled slightly and shook the boy’s hand. “as you can tell, i make wonderful first impressions.”

    —– it was proving MUCH harder than originally expected, to settle in in another country, fenna learned. she didn’t exactly know how — there wasn’t much of a language barrier, as her english was good, and the american culture was ( while very extra ) not extremely different from the dutch one. perhaps she was homesick, but she wasn’t sure; after all, the blonde was quite certain she had never been homesick before. still, as she walked through town and spotted a small park, she knew she should not complain ( and she did not, because while it was hard, it was also exciting & intriguing to be abroad ). as she sunk down on the grass, she opened her bag and searched for her sketchbook – drawing was one of the few ways her mind could feel completely calm – only to figure out that, probably due to her feeling so s c a t t e r b r a i n e d she had forgotten it.

                        “godsamme,” she cursed, before her eyes fell on a stranger ( almost all people were strangers there, though ) and she gathered her courage and asked, “weird question, but do you maybe have a spare piece of paper?”

casper’s fingers were dusted with charcoal, an occupational hazard of gesture drawing. he’d sat himself down in the park against a sturdy tree, sketchbook on his lap and hand poised over the paper. he had been doing loose sketches of people he saw for the past half hour or so, no real goal in mind other than to let off some steam. and so, when the girl sat down near him and started speaking, he was more than welcoming of the conversation.

                    “paper? yeah, of course,” he said, a                      small smile on his lips as he flipped                      the page and tore a few sheets out,                      leaning over and extending them to                      her. “what’re you doing?” casper                      asked, genuinely curious.

casper tried, desperately, not to look desperate. besides the fact that he looked about eight years old, he had lost his only real tie, however threadbare, to socialization. he wasn’t sure exactly where his roommate had run off to, but he thought he saw her disappearing through a door with some girl trailing behind her and decided it best to leave them alone. and so, he was sat at the edge of a brimming party, looking like a lost puppy. his first day, and there were already so many things to do, people to meet, anxieties to force himself over. it was all quite overwhelming and he was struggling to find his footing.

somewhat unconsciously, perhaps as a coping mechanism, casper had dug a pen out of his jacket and located a napkin on which to draw. it was all gestures, the vague shapes of bodies interacting, the wordless language with which they spoke so fluently, so effortlessly. he had spent so much of his life admiring this exchange, that when his eyes fell upon the man across the room, he was baffled by his nature. he was expressive, all hands and gestures, so much more than the subtle tilt of a hip or crossed arms. without thinking, casper brought his hand to the paper, and began to sketch.

Nate was going up the stairwell when he heard a huge crash coming from the hallway that he was passing. Out of curiosity, he peeked through the window of the doorway, only to see legs sticking out of a doorway. “Oh my god,” he muttered to himself before quickly entering the hall and going over to the apartment where the person was lying, “Do you need help?”

oh god, he was cute. why, out of everyone who could’ve seen him in this state, did it have to be some cute boy. not to mention that he was nice on top of that. casper hummed softly in response, or perhaps some sort of vague acknowledgement that yes, this specimen had witnessed him laying on the floor of his new apartment, a specimen with an accent. there is no way this could have gone any worse. had it been a choose your own adventure, casper would have quickly returned to the entrance of the mayan temple.

                    “hm? oh, yes. yeah, yeah i’m alright.                      thank you for, uh, thank you for asking,”                      casper rambled, pushing himself up into                      a seated position. “casper. i mean uh, my                     name is casper.”

                    “fuck,” he breathed, rolling onto his back,                      though he couldn’t help but laugh at himself.                      “nice job, cas. great way to start your first day,”                      he muttered, completely forgetting that his legs                      were still halfway through the open door.