lupin

Snow has shivered down an offensive, routine amount for the past month. It's your fifth winter in this small, washed up, religious town after relocating for the only location that offered you a steady paycheck and a decent community. 

Winter has settled deep in your bones, leaving you blue and bruised. It's a four-cigarette-breaks during your shift type of weather, five layers to feel remotely warm type of weather, and increasing laziness because of such god-less weather. 

You don’t drive. Your apartment is convenient enough to walk to and from, and when you do drive—which is rare—it’s only when you’re going out of town. 

But the weather is blistering today, your cheeks have gotten ruddy just from being indoors with little to no heating, and you don’t know how you’ll even survive the 15-minute walk home without hacking up a fever. You’re ruminating outside of the office, staring with thinning hope at the desolate weather. 

In the distance, a car comes to a stop. A man covered in an offensive amount of layers climbs out beside the car door. Clarity smoothens the confusion in your eyes, as the silhouette forms into the familiar shape. “Lars.”

He smiles, all too kind in a way that you know you will never deserve. And he blinks hard, like he's always willing away a dream, always rooting himself in reality. “It's so cold out.”

“Yeah, it is,” you say. The cold gains a bony hand and strums your ribs like a lyre. Your teeth clatter.

“Can I drive you home?” Lars asks, voice all velvet. 

You blink this time, then another. “Oh, yes. Thank you, Lars.” 

He assists you in the passenger seat, opening and shutting the door for you before he roundabouts back to the driver's seat. The shoe-box sized car is small enough to retain some substantive warmth. As you buckle your seatbelt, a daring thought thaws like sleet in your head. 

It is deep December, and all the trees have shed into skeletal remains, dry like parched paintbrushes. You are in the passenger seat of a beautiful boy’s car, and because we all want to be part of something worth all this suffering, you turn to this beautiful boy with your heart in your hands. Brave and braver, you ask: “Actually—can we go to yours? I feel—I just feel so—“ lonely? “—I want to spend time with you. If you don’t mind.” How clunky. 

“Yeah?” Lars murmurs. His hands recalibrate around the wheel.

“Yeah.”

He nods. “Okay.”

Ever since Bianca, Lars moved back into the main house with Karin, Gus, and now their little boy. But the three are out right now, Lars explaining that the fresh family frequently go to playdates with kindergarten friends in the evenings and they probably won’t be back for a while as it’s someone’s birthday party. 

Five years ago, Lars had emerged from the banality of the workplace. If you were being true, you would say that Lars merged well in the monotony of motion. He kept his head low, moved with routine and spoke very minimally if not at all. That was until Bianca came along, the blow-up sex doll that swooned the town and you included. 

“Can I put a movie on?” you ask as Lars returns with two generous cups of scalding tea.

He sets them on the coffee table.“Okay—what movie?”

“Drive My Car,” you answer as you procure the DVD case. How ridiculously convenient you had just rented it out the same day. “It's Japanese and requires English subtitles. And er, some explicit scenes, but it's important to the plot. Do you mind?”

Lars’ cheeks dusts in blush. “I don't mind.” He rests beside you.

It's a little childish, perhaps even lazy, when you drop on all floors to crawl to the DVD player tucked beneath the TV station in the living room. You nimbly slot the disk in after a quick, gentle blow at the surface. Crawling back on the other end of the couch from Lars, the small TV screen settles into the title page to which you accept press play. 

Against his words, Lars does mind the sexual scenes, but he doesn’t say anything. The storytelling is taboo, but it’s intriguing enough for Lars to not be completely embarrassed and flee the room. Perhaps it’s movie-magic, the way each rolling sequence of the jungle network of automobiles and the Red Saab glides along Japan’s highway systems, and the simplicity of the soundtrack is what lulls you to speak. It's with seamless ease the way in which you can talk to Lars, and you trust that your words will be held gently. So you dare, so you say: “You know, I moved here because I wanted to get away. I wanted to disappear. And it worked for a little bit.  But it's winter, and I feel like I'm slipping away more than I'd like to.”

You're nestled in the corner of the couch, knees tucked to your chin as your eyes are fixed to the television screen. “I just don't feel real, sometimes. I don't know if that makes any sense. So many things don't make any sense.”

In the time you've known Lars, all the versions of him; pre-Bianca, during-Bianca, post-Bianca, he has never been a talker. But he listens. He always listens in an unshakable manner.

“You're real,” he says steadily, staring at his kempt, clean hands. “You're very real.”

You look at him then, warming a thousand parallel universes in your hands. 

You remember when you first met Lars, retracing history and unshedding the years like shaking off layers of thickened coats. In another life, you meet Lars when you're both younger. Perhaps he is still the same, still reserved not out of disdain for the world but out of sheer sensitivity to all its jagged edges. And you frown at how foolish you are: of course, Lars would be the same. He was born knowing grief. How can a baby know love in its final stage, in its absence and wholehearted, beating presence in your own existence? In another life, then, you're born by his side. A family friend, perhaps, a next door neighbour situation, maybe.

But in this life, you're sorry, so you do not say anything in return. 

You sit in the schism of this silence until Lars shuffles closer to you.

“Can we—?”

Your knees are still cramped beneath your chin as you owlishly peer at him. “What?”

He blinks, then blinks and blinks. “Can I hold you?”

The silly thing is that people often mistake you and Lars to be an established couple. That couldn't be anything further from the truth. 

It’s not that you’ve debated the situation before either. Karin has repeatedly approached you without fail wondering about the status of you and Lars’ relationship, friendship, companionship. You'll often find yourself confused, too, as Lars is a traditional man and by now he likely would have asked you to be his girlfriend. He's seen you undressed multiple times, out of sinless curiosity, and you've bathed him many times before that. But there is always a barrier, some kind of cloth that eliminates skin-to-skin contact, the burning.

But you understand. Of course, you do. Dating is simply such a large commitment, and something so daunting requires gentle landings. It’s much more than a plastic concept such as Bianca, and it’s much more entangling and much more ephemeral and all the more frightening in the possibility of disappearance. You permit him this comfort of a gentle landing, so you do not question, do not fret. 

After all, there’s astute affirmation in his allowing. In how he allows you to take up space in his life, in how he allows you to hold him gently. It’s unconventional, but you wouldn’t have it any other way. 

“Of course, Lars,” you say as you unsprawl your body, limb by limb. You beckon him in the cave of your body, and when he crawls into your arms, would you look at that—a perfect fit.

You stay like that for a while. At some point, you're not sure when he allowed you to brush your fingers through his hair. You’re not sure when Lars tells you, “I don’t want you to disappear,” testing the shape of the sound in his mouth. Then he says it again with grounded determination. “I don’t want you to disappear.” To which you respond in a weak whisper because you believe you can keep this promise, “I’m not going to.” 

Physical intimacy is a fickle thing between you two, a suspenseful dance that unwittingly holds your lungs tighter than your ribs, a consistent uncertainty of whether you've done something right or not. But you're sure you're doing something right as he's still in your arms.

Lars rolls around, elbows knocking and adjusting to look up at you from between your body. 

“Yes, Lars?” you ask, and it takes everything in you to not take his adorable face in your palms. 

He smiles up at you. “Nothin,” he says. “Just wanna look at you.”

“Not watch the movie?” you joke. 

“It’s a, no…no,  it’s a good movie.” Lars glances at the television screen, where Yusuke is directing the rehearsal of his theatre group. “I just wanna look at you.”

Okay, screw it—how can you resist when he looks so lovely? You cup his face like you’re holding the whole world in your palms. “Okay,” you say softly.

Lars’ breath hitches, and for five seconds you think he’s about to swat your hand away, until he whispers impossibly softer, “Can I kiss you?”

“Lars,” you start.

“We’ve worked on it,” he reasons, murmuring, referring to Dr. Dagmar’s therapy. “It still hurts, but, we can try—“

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I’d let it hurt if it’s you.”

You narrow your eyes. “Don’t say that.” 

Lars takes the end of his baby blanket from his neck with eager eyes. “Here—will this be okay?”

And just like that, you find yourself nodding weakly like the wildflowers bowing after a downpour. 

He props himself closer, chest against your chest, knees against your crotch and something about this affair is strangely erotic. You kick that thought aside like an abandoned box. Back pressed plush against the couch armrest, you take his baby blanket and cover his lips. Cupping the side of Lars’ face, you wonder if this is the emotion that the poets try to capture when they spin tales about the wild geese and early springs. You begin to understand why Orpheus looked back, why cities collapse beneath lost loves. Mouth veiled with baby blues, you kiss him tender. 

It’s awkward in all the ways a first real kiss with a real human being would be, perhaps amplified by Lars’ baby blanket curtaining both of your lips. But despite the knitted fabric that is rough like nettle, Lars’ lips are soft—and weirdly, he knows how to kiss. 

He kisses you like you're fragile, to which you kiss a little firmer in return because you are anything but. You paw at his tawny hair as Lars presses his knee with impossibly harder pressure against your crotch in a botchy attempt to lean even closer. Jesus Christ, Lars, you want to wheeze because there's no way the boy is aware of what he is doing. 

Lars withdraws first. He lowers the baby blanket, doesn’t wipe his lips. Instead, he rolls it inward like a butterfly curling into itself. And out of nowhere, between a second and a minute, he melts into a cry. 

“Oh, my boy,” you croon, panic washing over your lungs. “Lars, my sweet boy.”

It takes a while to remember the motions of comfort. After all, what you would typically do for another person completely turns upside down with Lars. Where you would offer them a hug, Lars shirks away like a shivering critter. Where you would ask if they'd want space, Lars will take the space to the max and disappear off the face of the earth. When Lars’ social predictably spins out of orbit, god, you're afraid, you're so afraid you may scare him. 

But comfort—this is a universal desire achieved through various avenues. As Lars shrinks into himself, propped upright and face buried in his hands, on the television screen, Yoon-a asks Janice if she is happy. Here, in Lars’ living room, you want to ask him if he is happy. 

But life is no Chekov play. “Lars,” you begin gently instead. “Did I overwhelm you?”

He vigorously shakes his head through the tears.  “No—no, you're so good to me. It's just me.”

“You did well, Lars. Just stay there, okay?” you say. 

“No, I wanna—” he looks up, eyes glassy but true, “I want to hug you.”

“Doesn't it hurt?”

“It's not that. It'll always hurt.”

And isn’t that so, for what is love if not burning? 

You widen your arms, then, as the orchids open up in the spring to welcome the honeybees home. Lars stumbles into your embrace with all his damning density. He buries his face in the crane of your neck, and he holds you so tight until you’re both shaking from the immensity of his sadness. Give me your sadness, you want to say as you cradle from side to side, fingers combing through his hair and his neck. Give me your despair. 

It’s a quiet affair. Somewhere in this state of blurred consciousness, Lars’ crying has subdued and you're now simply holding each other just as humans should. The film rolls on in a dreamy wash of driving through nighttime and sea, Yusuke forced to recontend his role as Uncle Vanya. Misaki brings him back to her hometown covered and wrecked by snow. 

The two characters—so full of grief and empty hands—hug each other. What has love given Yusuke? What has it taken away from him? These questions permeate the alabaster winter within the film as Yusuke declares something akin to a prayer: “Those who survive keep thinking about the dead. In some way or another, that will continue. You and I must keep living like that. We must keep on living.”

Soon, the finale begins, panning into a television screen overseeing the centre stage. 

Yoon-a prepares to deliver her monologue as Sonya in Korean Sign Language. Her arms unfold and beckon like the flutter of a pigeon’s wing folding the sky like laundry, painting that of an imagined homeland where pain is a past thing. 

An ugly tear drop crawls down your cheek as you trace your thumbs beneath the crescents of Lars’ wet eyes. If Karin or Gus were to return home right now, they would see two humans hugging each other so tight, they’d mistake them for a heart.

Lars in your arms, you think about the promise of beginnings, of endings, of this life. And most of all, perhaps most simply of all, you think about love.

“We'll live through the long, long days, and through the long nights. We'll patiently endure the trials that fate sends our way.  Even if we can't rest, we'll continue to work for others both now and when we have grown old. And when our last hour comes we'll go quietly. And in the great beyond, we'll say to Him that we suffered, that we cried, that life was hard. And God will have pity on us.  Then you and I, we'll see that bright, wonderful, dreamlike life before our eyes. We shall rejoice, and with tender smiles on our faces, we'll look back on our current sorrow.  And then at last, we shall rest. I believe it. I strongly believe it from the bottom of my heart. When that time comes, we shall rest.”

/

Holland March is by no means a daydream. Despite catching a dangerous, spiralling crush on him ever since you moved into the apartment complex adjacent to him a year ago, you've never dared to allow your mind to wander the possibilities of breaking the boundaries of friendship and camaraderie. This decision is staked in a quite simple pragmatic: you don't do crushes.

Sure, you find Holland attractive. Of course, you find him hot. He's musky like any man who chainsmokes as if he could afford all the tobacco in the world, and his stupid moustache frames his stupid face in a stupidly endearing way. Adds to the whole single father look, you guess. But all these observations roundabout back to the simple pragmatic that you do not do crushes. 

Unfortunately, it's safe to say that Holland makes this pragmatic tricky for you to keep afloat.

“Smokin’s bad for you, baby,” he says, cigarette between his lips, because he is an asshole.

You light your cigarette, fingers shielding the flame from the wind. Once the end catches fire, you tuck the lighter back in your jacket pocket and mumble past the smoke, “Man, shut the fuck up.”

“Ouch,” Holland feigns hurt. “Just some medical advice. Don't want your pretty voice to be ruined.”

“I've been smoking since I was 16,” you snap because it's true. You sink deeper in your shitty pull-out camping chair. 

You shrug and take another huff, then another, desperate to chase that nicotine high. “Just had a rough day, you know. These L.A. journalists are so hungry for gossip and it’s taking everything in me to produce words and words and words, and I just can’t.”

“Then don’t,” Holland says like it’s so simple. 

“Of course you’d say that,” you snarl. “You’re shit at your job most times.” 

“And the other times?” Holland asks, unphased by your criticism. He’s heard worse from Holly. 

You shoot him a point-blank expression. “Abysmal.”

Holland merely shrugs, shoulders raised to ears and continues to smoke. As minutes crawl forward towards midnight, Holland doesn’t say anything about your particularly deeper drags, though you know that he knows, and he knows that you know that he knows. At stalemate, you quickly finish that cigarette and onto the next.

“I know you’ve had a rough day, but you'll get dizzy if you smoke that quick, sweetheart. That's not how you enjoy cigs,” Holland finally speaks. 

Perhaps it's the lilt of his tongue that shapes that nickname into a sound that softens you more than it should. Or maybe it's just a bad day, where you think again of how many other women Holland has shamelessly flirted with because that is just Holland: charismatic, funny and an ass. “Stop calling me that,” you bleat weakly.

“What's the problem with calling you sweetheart?” he asks, raising a brow. If he can sense your internal pandemonium, he makes no expression that suggests it. “Call you it all the time.”

You consider yourself a good liar, because you can clothe an act like second skin when you exhale another smoke. “Just don't. Don't like it.” (Technically, true.)

Holland is on another cigarette already too. He leans over to pick up a bottle of beer you purchased earlier for the occasion, and maybe you're seeing things, but a pout downturns his lips. “But I like it.”

And there it is.

That dangerous, beckoning line that you swear is charged with some semblance of truth. Holland may be a bad person, but he wears at least half of his heart on his sleeve. But how much is this theoretical truth purely Holland's personality as a charismatic man, or genuine interest in you? It's these precise theoreticals that make you turn the other way and act oblivious and unwanting.

You take this moment to evade the potential path this conversation could go with no reply. Because maybe both of you are tipsy and smoked through a pack of cigarettes respectively, Holland does not urge you to. So—so. Silence blankets the both of you, and despite all odds, it's warm. Everything is always warm with Holland. 

You’ve finished your cigarette already, and you’re already reaching for another one like a practiced dance. Holland swipes his lighter before you can procure your own, to which you slant him a curious expression. The unlit cigarette lackadaisically hangs from your lips, and you inch closer to him as he's already attending to lightning your cigarette. And god—he is so attentive, so close. Hand cupping around your cig to catch the fire, his face so near yours. You couldn't do anything but stare at the flame, as was he in complete concentration. If you look at him, you are certain one look will expose a year's worth of your idiotic, withheld yearning. 

After a deep inhale and exhale, you nod. “Thanks.” 

Holland leans back with a thud, his chest deflating with a prolonged sigh. He tempers a thought or two or twenty in the fog of his head, before he rolls his lips with fervent chagrin. “Can't just do that to me,” Holland whines, voice small. 

You slowly blink, bewildered by his angle of approach. You're way too drunk for this. He’s way too drunk for this.  “Do what, Hol’?”

“Just say that I can't call you sweetheart.”

“And baby,” you add.

“And baby!” Holland exasperatedly says, throwing his arms up and here is when you can tell he's really drunk. “That's impossible.”

“Uhm, no, it isn't.” Holland is theatrical when he wants to be. “You surely can call at least one woman in your life by their name or nothing at all,” you ramble, the alcohol surging your words like spitfire because intoxication seems to set things straight in your head. Surely you could be imagining all this.

Holland spears you with an almost affronted expression, it startles you. “But you're the only woman in my life.”

A laugh bursts out of your chest unwillingly. Alcohol tends to do that; loosen all the limbs that otherwise keeps you all together, contained and measured. Sure, you can form coherent-ish thoughts, but you cannot contain laughter . “That's a complete lie!” you giggle because it is. And even if it isn't a lie, it's still hilarious. “You're so dramatic.”

“I'm not lying!” Holland protests a bit too sharply.

You frown. “Oh, come on, dude.”

“It's true,” Holland says so seriously, you can hear a full stop at the end of his words. He levels you with a look that looks eerily sober for a second. “Hey, you're so pretty tonight. When did you get so pretty?”

“When you got drunk,” you assert, voice warbling—god-willing. “Holland, you've had too much to drink. Now go to bed.”

Holland huffs, stubbing out his cigarette in the mountains of char and bullied cigarette butts in the ashtray. “You can't just tell me what to do.”

“Yes, I can, because this is my apartment. Holly is all alone and you need to go back.”

“Actually, she's sleeping over at Jenny's—’

“Jessica’s.”

“—So I don't need to go back,” Holland says with finality. 

“Then go to sleep,” you say slowly. “You know where my bedroom is.”

But you're still smoking, still situated comfortably in your shitty, half-broken camping chair and opening up your nearly empty cigarette pack for another smoke. Which Holland interprets that you're not going to sleep anytime soon.

“Why not come to bed with me?” he asks. 

You stare at him, owlish. “I'm taking the couch.”

“You’re doing that thing again—that thing,” Holland blurts. 

“What thing?”  

“That thing—! You always back out when I, when I suggest something remotely, I dunno, when I'm trying to flirt with you! But it's like talking to a brick wall!”

Your jaw slackens and you lower your freshly lit cigarette, which says something, because you always at least take two deep drags when freshly lit to keep the flame. A beat dampens the atmosphere, and to his expectant expression you say with fashionable responsibility, “Hol’, you're drunk.” 

“Oh my god, what's stopping you?” Holland explodes. He begins listing items off with his fingers, words slurring but strafe with conviction it makes your head dizzy. “We're the same-ish age, five years ain't no big difference. We're neighbours. You're hot, and don't think I haven't noticed you staring at me when you think I'm not looking. You're smart, cute, and you take care of Holly well and you care—you care so much. I don't get it, why do you act like you don't see me?”

You stutter. I do see you is your first instinct to reply. Of course, you see him. Many sentences start and stop at the tide of your tongue, but they certainly stumble out unfinished. Finally, after the sloshing of sound blearing in your ears, when you recalibrate in sustained silence, you admit: “I didn't know this was happening. I thought you were just being friendly. It's safe to not assume.”

Holland balks. “Well, that's stupid.”

“Hey, it's not stupid,” you reprimand, irritated. You proceed to ramble, because after all, you are still tipsy and you can't believe this isn't a dream, that Holland is telling you you're stupid for mistaking his flirting as friendliness, because truly, where does that line end and begin? You’ve witnessed Holland make crude comments with many women before. It had been safer for you to assume this is simply Holland being Holland. “Momma told me to not read into anything unless it's explicitly stated. I've had many guys who have carried my jacket for me, I thought they liked me, but turns out they were halfway in going out with some other girl and they were genuinely just being friendly.”

“Yeah, yeah, you're uptight, I get it. But I'm a simple man, baby,” Holland murmurs, eyes flickering to your lips, then back to your eyes. He shifts, a hair too close for your comfort. “And if I kiss you right now, would you still think this is me being friendly?” 

You purse your mouth, stomach flipping upside down and lodging your lungs in your throat. “Hol’, you're being mean,” you say, and in retrospect already, it's childish, but is true. He's being a mean flirt when he knows you're already disarmed, when you're not ready to be soft. 

But then again, when will you ever be ready?

An imperceptible smile smudges Holland's face. “Can you read me?”

Your eyes flicker to his lips, bitten behind his teeth and back to his eyes. It’s Sunday evening and Monday morning you may regret this plunge. But it is Sunday evening, not Monday morning, and right now, you want many things like kissing Holland’s face silly, running your hands through his mussed hair tousled from the day’s whirlwinds. Brave and braver, you nod. “Yeah,” you breathe. “Can read you.”

You don't know who leans in first, but it's a slow, savouring kiss. The first thing you feel is the prickles of his stache, then the smell of his musk that has always made you feel woozy and love-addled whenever you’re too close to him. You don’t know when Holland’s hands had grabbed your waist, or when your palm was placed on the side of his face but eventually, it all culminates to the overwhelming realisation that shit, you’re kissing Holland March. 

You don't say anything. You pull back, flushed and nerves leaping, as your first reaction is to reach for the final cigarette in your now emptied pack. When you look out to the towering, urban expanse that offends the tranquility of the even larger than large night sky, you lit your cigarette with practiced ease. 

“Sorry,” you murmur around the cigarette with shame, because who the fuck smokes a cigarette after kissing their crush who apparently reciprocates your emotions? “Just haven't kissed anyone in a while.”

“That's okay,” Holland replies, seemingly unafraid of your shaken reaction. Perhaps a bit confused, you can’t discredit the slight uncertainty in his face, but you weren’t running out of your apartment in fear, so that must account for something. 

Heart and heavy, you admit another truth: “I'm scared.”

“Why are you scared?” Sometimes, Holland can be soft and genuine. 

A shrug. “Dunno. Just—you really like me?”

“You want me to make it more obvious?”

This earns him a snort, to which you finally look at him—really look at him with steady eyes. “No, it's not you. I just can't wrap my head around the idea that someone may like me.”

“Well,” Holland smiles, doppily and drowsy, “gotta get used to it, pretty.”

You smile in return. You don't scold him for the petname this time. 

/