Apollo

Being outside is exhausting.

It's hard enough just getting out of bed to shower, but spending a whole day running around, making small talk, surrounded by people? Your energy is shot. You look like you'd just been hit by a bus, your hair frizzing, your nerves fried, the dark circles under your eyes deeper than they are after days with no sleep. You might as well have been a dead body by the time you returned to the sweet sanctuary of your room.

Well... not your room.

You notice as much when you feel a finger softly poking and prodding at your shoulder, and you're suddenly given a look into what it's like to be something that washed to shore, dead and half-eaten.

Somehow, in your exhaustion, your feet had taken you from the mirror chamber to Ignihyde dorm, far, far from your own room. You had thrown yourself in a bed of blissful fever and forgetfulness, and refused to move, even when Idia was breathing down your neck, asking if you were alright.

You just barely manage to lift a hand to wave away his worries.

"What do they do to you out there?" he mutters, mopping up the sweat on your head with his hoodie sleeve, without a second of hesitation. "Medieval torture?"

"I'm tired," you say, stupidly, because as much is already obvious. Idia huffs.

"I can tell,"

He looks to the end of the bed for a moment, and then pulls up his blanket, fussing with the soft fabric to tuck you in. It's a pitiful failure of an effort, but an effort nonetheless. He wouldn't go through the trouble of babying you if he didn't worship the ground you walked on... not that he'd put it that way.

He just doesn't want you to die, that's all.

"It was a lot," you say, voice raspy from your lack of rest. "Especially right now..."

Idia's blue-tinged lips twist into a pointed frown, and he fluffs the pillow beneath your head. You figure he's no longer as interested in your own comfort as he is in fidgeting. Whatever he's thinking about is troubling him.

"I know," he says, "I understand." And he really does.

Life has never been kind to people like you and him.

"Going outside is supposed to make you feel better," you mutter. "But I just feel... bad."

That's all you could come up with, although there's much worse wading through the mist and fog of your mind. You hate being looked at. You hate being perceived. You hate having your presence acknowledged.

It's not like anything particularly bad had happened- if anything, it was a perfectly pleasant errand run. You even managed to make eye contact with a few people, and hold it for more than five seconds. But it still didn't feel good. There was no rush of social acceptance when that cashier smiled at you, there was no sunlight piercing through the dark, cloudy sky when that older man held the door open, you didn't even feel any better about yourself after surviving small talk with the many strangers you're expected to court in the outside world.

All of it just made you feel unwell, the dirt and grime of people stuck under your nails, a warm and sticky sheen of sweat on your skin. Leaving your room didn't make you feel like more of a person; it only reminded you how little of one you actually are. You felt more like an animal waiting in line at the market; odd, out of place, and certainly not welcome.

You're not surprised, which is, perhaps, the worst part. If anything, you had expected today to go as such. You're not sure you see the point in trying to fit in if there's always going to be something wrong with you. Everyone knows it.

"What is that?" Idia asks, but his voice is more of an afterthought, sorted into the back files of your mind, like a warm summer memory. You get like this, sometimes- things that happen in the present moment feel unreal, as if you're watching a TV show about your life rather than actively living it.

You swallow. You have to remind yourself to do little things like that- breathe and blink and chew and walk. It's like you forget the most basic things about living, and have to relearn them ten times a day. And there are, of course, the more complex rules: say please and thank you, look people in the eye while speaking, be confident but not proud...

You haven't learned those at all.

Your mind is always somewhere else.

Not that it matters- forcing yourself to fit into the too-tight shoes of being a person, learning proper manners, saying sir and ma'am, making yourself look presentable, look normal, won't stop anyone from noticing the gaping wound in your chest, the hollow pit where your stomach should be. Most people would assume that depression is matter of the heart- but your will to live is really stored in your stomach. Your taste for life, now dull on your own tongue, your hobbies and art and passion, your ability to be a human, to feel like you deserve the space you take. To perform as a person, or even just a living thing, rather than the cadaver you've become, or were born as, whichever is worse.

At the very worst, your excursion today should have made you feel something- embarrassed, afraid, sickly- but all you felt was tired, and hollow.

"What was what?" you have to remind yourself to respond to people when they speak, too. Idia knows.

He holds your chin between his thumb and his pointer finger, and he draws your face back towards him.

"You're doing that thing again. It drives me crazy. Where did you go?"

You don't say anything, and he frowns.

"Are you hungry?"

"Not really,"

"Bored? I could-"

"No,"

You can't remember the last time you weren't bored. Everything in life feels dull and colorless, and not even the most basic of pleasures make you happy- no, not that, it's not happy. Nothing makes you feel full- that is, satisfied. Everything is the anti-climactic conclusion to an action movie with a bad plot twist, a bite but not a meal, the rising inclination of an orchestra that finishes in a flat tone rather than the exhilarating finale you'd been expecting. Nothing makes you feel whole.

And you know you're being difficult, which twists in your stomach with vomit-flavored guilt, and is why you turn down Idia's attempts to help. You don't want to disappoint him when he can't make it better, as he so desperately wants to. You don't want to lose him to your own self-loathing.

"Sick?" he asks, gently, far more than he should.

Close enough. You shrug, giving him only half an answer, though that's just enough for him. Idia is good bedmates with depression; nothing he does for you is done blind.

"Cold?" he continues, his fingers already fidgeting with the edges of the blanket. You nod.

He lets himself in, finding what little heat your lifeless body has been fostering under the blanket, and molding himself to it. He's never been picky about cuddling positions, but he seems to have a particular goal tonight, and so you soon find yourself tucked into his chest, his chin on your head. It's good. If not a little awkward (that is, the feeling of another body) for both of you, but you always manage to get comfortable after a few small shifts.

"Better?" he asks.

"Better," you say, your voice still heavy with a distance you didn't want, you didn't ask for. Idia doesn't seem to mind.

"Okay," he says. And then, awkwardly: "Don't die."

You would be lying if you said it did nothing, or meant nothing- it might not solve all of your problems, but it's better than whatever solution you might have come up with on your own. There's safety here. It's what your wandering feet had been looking for when they took you to his room instead of your own.

Someone cares enough about you to want you to be happy; that's enough. It's more than enough.

"I won't," you promise him, though you're in no state to be making promises.

You suppose that you're the same as him; you only ever want to see him happy.

Most people's minds would have immediately jumped to 'Oh, no, they saw that?!' when confronted with your current circumstances.

Which is in reference to, of course, the dirty, debauched things they did in the odd hours of the night (and some slow summer afternoons), the bad underwear-dancing to their favorite songs, or even the pit-stained pajamas they lounged around in.

You had had similar thoughts, of course. Who wouldn't? You're just thankful that no one(/...thing?) in your humble abode has been cruel enough to bring it up in casual conversation. Yet.

And you did expect some comment, eventually, about the fanfiction you read at your desk, the unfortunate performances you gave in your shower, everything you had done when you thought you were... alone.

What you hadn't expected was this.

The dark of your room at midnight- not too terribly late for you. At least, you're not tired, yet. And you're perfectly used to sitting in a dim, dreary room, the floor cluttered, the shades drawn, dishes and empty containers having conquered all available surfaces, so it's nothing new. That is, after all, what brought you and Skips together in the first place.

The dark.

Refamiliarizing yourself with your room after everything was bound to come with some bumps in the road. The sticky feeling of being watched was always unpleasant, but it was something you'd have to contend with sooner or later, and, besides, it's not as if there's nothing you hadn't done in front of them already... still, you had toned down the nastier stuff, and tonight is pretty normal, all things considered.

You'd been in a bit of a slump, lately, after the high of your new... er, roommates wore off, and you found yourself more or less alone again. Your room had returned to its prior state of disarray, and you were in the eye of the hurricane, blocking out the sound and sun of the outside world with hours worth of doomscrolling.

Stupid, stupid, just bad... why does no one ever post anything decent when you need to be distracted? It's really like everything in the world has it out for you...

Fwump. Something's weight dips the mattress behind you, and you tense, and then turn.

"Oh... hi," you say, awkwardly setting your phone face-down when Skips leers over your shoulder.

He slinks back, further from the moonlight filtering through the curtains, caught in the act of snooping. You suppose he's getting used to being noticed just as much as you are.

"Hey..." he starts. "...Busy?"

No, not at all, you think, but you shrug, anyway. He nods, slowly, knowingly, hesitating, and then:

"...Are you bored?"

You shrug again. Yes. No. Who knows? Not you, at least. You haven't really felt much of anything in the past few days, floating aimlessly in your own stream of consciousness. Brain fog and forgetfulness, the absence of feeling on your skin. Light hasn't touched you in days- which is how he likes it, anyway, though you both know you need air and sun at some point.

Skips looks away, and then back to you.

"...I know you're not mad at me," he states, matter-of-factly.

You give him an odd look. "...I'm not mad at you,"

"And I know you're not getting bored of me, either,"

"I'm not, I wouldn't,"

"...I know... because you do this... a lot," he mutters, eyes darting between the unfortunate state of your unchanged clothes (a few days, now) and unwashed body (longer than that), and the phone on your mattress.

You feel somewhat embarrassed, which is an odd thing to feel with him, of all people. But, you're alone- just you and him, despite the crowded state of your floor and every surface in the small room. "What? I do what...?"

Skips nods towards your phone. "Nothing,"

"Nothing?"

He nods again.

"Nothing," he mutters. "So, what's wrong?"

What's wrong? You wish you knew. If you had an answer for that, you wouldn't be here. Is it your work? Your family, now so far from you? The tingling sensation that comes with being surrounded by love, but always, still, alone? If it were as easy and well-defined as a few sentences in a fanfic, then you would have figured it out ages ago. You'd at least have something to Google- symptoms, causes and cures.

You mostly feel... nothing.

There are no words for the absence of feeling. Of life. No good ones, anyway.

"I'm just..." you start, your want to give him (and yourself) an answer overpowering your common sense.

"...Bad." That's what you're going with? Alright.

"Bad," he repeats, sitting back on the bed and drawing his knees to his chest. He looks forward, for a moment- not to the window, but to the wall, into the shadows, the absorption of silver moonlight into dark nothingness.

"...Bad," he says one more time. "...Yeah... I get it."

You give him another incredulous look. "You do?"

"I do," he confirms, looking at you, now. "I get everything. I am your shadow, after all."

Poor attempt at a joke. But you humor him anyway, smiling. "I guess, technically..."

Skips smiles back, seemingly both happy you're showing him some emotion, and happy that he was the one to pull it out of you.

He stands, suddenly, holding out a hand. "I've been there. I'll help... I can at least get you cleaned up. Probably. Maybe. No promises,"

You stare, and he surges forward, presenting the openness of his palm to you like a gift. It is, you suppose.

A gift.

You take it, and even though it was he who offered in the first place, his cheeks still dust with golden light.

"...Uh... you're cool with showering in the dark, right?"

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