Of Love and Epitaphs

 📅 August of 2018

〚ᴄᴡ ғᴏʀ ᴍᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴs ᴏғ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴀɴᴅ ᴀᴅᴅɪᴄᴛɪᴏɴ〛

It wasn’t unusual anymore for Chey to find himself in Anarchy’s bedroom; somehow his need to reassure himself of Anarchy’s continued breathing had just been...accepted. Normalized. To the point where Anarchy—either purposefully or unconsciously—now slept on the leftmost side of his bed rather than dead-center: There was always room, these days; always the option for Chey to decide not to return to his own bed. And despite the fact that Anarchy left half of his mattress open without any prompting, with no apparent strings attached, Chey couldn’t help but wonder if it was too telling that he so seldom returned to his own room. His insecurities weren’t strong enough to hold him back, though, and tonight—like always—he pushed past them in his walk to Anarchy’s bed. Laying down there was almost routine; easy and familiar even if it still carried the echoes of their shared past. 

In bed beside him, Chey started—habitually—counting Anarchy’s chestfalls. His mind cleared with the consistency of them: Breathing in, breathing out; full breaths that were no longer shallowed by addiction. No stutters, no silence, no risk. As he settled into the comfort of that safety, Chey noticed that the dog-tags accompanying each counted rise and fall of Anarchy’s chest had flipped over at some point in the night. In contrast to the second, duplicate tag—the back of which still glinted pristine in the ray of moonlight falling over it—the first tag’s reverse side was scratched up; not just worn or scuffed, but scarred. It confused Chey: He knew that Hunter’s ID tags were essentially sacred to Anarchy; he’d kept them safe and clean and close, even as the rest of his world had collapsed around him. The damage was out of place, and curiosity got the better of Chey. He propped himself up higher on one elbow and gently picked up the wounded tag, tilting it in the dim blue light that the night afforded.

He’d come in to count Anarchy’s breaths for reassurance, but it was his own lungs that stuttered in that moment. The scratches on the back of Hunter’s tag weren’t the result of random, meaningless wear-and-tear; weren’t just the accrued damage of years passing. They were deliberate lines, that though imperfect and clearly done by hand, still legibly read out: C-H-E-Y. Anarchy stirred beside Chey, who surfaced from his shock at the sound of Anarchy’s sleepy voice.
“Mmn. Hi, Chey,” Anarchy mumbled in greeting, blinking open his eyes, “I’m breathin’.” He squinted in tired puzzlement at the dog-tag in Chey’s hand. “...What’s up?”
Chey turned the scratched side of the tag towards Anarchy. 
“...I didn’t do this,” he said somewhat tentatively, half statement and half question.
Anarchy seemed to wake up a bit more, there, and half sat up; propped one elbow behind him and brought his other hand up to hold the tag himself. He looked at it for a quiet moment before responding.
“...No, I did.”

Anarchy’s tone was unreadable and there was something soft and introspective about his gaze; a reflective air of remembrance too relaxed to be grief, but too sad to be nostalgia. 
“...When?” Chey asked, tilting his head, “Why?” He felt unable to make sense of Anarchy being the one responsible for the damage, and was perplexed to no end by the presence of his name. Anarchy looked up from the dog-tag to make brief eye contact—and though he glanced away again, his gaze seemed more focused when he did.
“Uh, well,” he started out haltingly, dropping the tag to his chest in order to rub the back of his neck, “It was back in 2012. When I wrote...When I was writing ‘Come Home | Empty Years’ for WANOS. Uh—our first album, We Are Not Our Scars. But...yeah. Writing that was when…” Anarchy’s sentence trailed off and he swallowed hard, visibly choked up, but shook himself off and looked back up at Chey.
 “...It didn't matter that everyone on the streets told me you were dead, you know? I didn’t believe it. I didn't let myself believe it. But I was writing that song and I...I remember writing the line ‘Whether I’m screaming up to heaven or to a town a hundred miles away’ and that...that was the first time I ever...out loud, you know...admitted that you might—” Anarchy’s voice cracked and he had to take a moment— “...that you might be gone. And I just...I had my tattoos, you know, I have your name on my hip—but I wanted something—something to hold, as a memorial, like I had for my brother. And I just...figured I could have you both...here.” Anarchy put his hand to the tags, then; pressed them firmly to his chest where they always fell, over his heart. “...I didn’t think Hunter would mind.”

At first Chey could only stare, touched and agape; his heart was in his throat and no words could squeeze past it. Eventually he managed a choked sort of noise and reached out to run his fingertips over Hunter’s name.
“There aren’t—there aren’t words, ‘Key,” he stuttered. “I’m...it’s an honour to have my name so close to his—to be there with him, for you. I—I can’t even talk.”
Chey became suddenly aware of how close touching the dog-tag brought him to caressing Anarchy’s chest, and found himself abruptly laden with doubt. He wanted nothing more than to run his hand further; from Anarchy’s chest to his stubbled jaw, to pull him into a kiss and press their bodies so close that his own heartbeat, too, could warm that engraved metal tag. But his name shared space with Anarchy’s brother’s. Was that how Anarchy felt about him, too, really? As a brother? Chey could have sworn that he’d been seeing love in how Anarchy looked at him these past few months, but could it have been a brotherly sort of love this whole time? 

Am I misinterpreting things as being more than what they are? 
Am I only seeing what I want to see? 
Hearing what I want to hear? 
Am I so in love that I’m deluding myself into believing he is, too?

Yeah, okay, they were sharing a bed...but they’d done that in youth as well, when they’d called one another ‘best friends’ and nothing more. What were they now?
He wanted to ask. Wanted to tell: A confession danced behind Chey’s lips, but no courage arrived to free it. 
“I don’t think ‘thank you’ means enough,” he whispered instead, withdrawing his hand and settling back into the mattress.
“Mm? You don’t gotta thank me.” Anarchy yawned and lay back down as well, tiredness clearly having crept back over him. “You’ve been having lots of nightmares lately,” he murmured sleepily. “If you want you can just, like...come straight in here. If you think it's gonna be a rough night or whatever.” 
“What? Really?” Chey couldn’t keep himself from smiling, even though the pining layers of his unrequited confusion were only stacking higher.
“Yeah. Of course.” Anarchy rolled onto his side and brushed a lazy, comforting hand over Chey’s shoulder without opening his eyes. “No reason for you to start out alone.”