F A L L I N G S T A R

T O  T H E
M O O N & B A C K

YOU ARE MY deep end, I think as I stare at her. Her back, covered by a thick, black sweater, presses again the cement gravestone. The words Luna Kingsley, a beloved daughter and sister, engraved into the dirty asphalt. I have never known shallow—actually, Pandora was shallow. But Aurora Kingsley is every beautiful and unexplored corner of this world. Every cave, trench—fucking—I don't know. But she's the deepest depths and most unseen colours of this universe and every other one surrounding ours, too.

Like a black hole in space that absorbs anything that manages to get sucked into it. Everyone and thing cannot help but gravitate toward her. There's this magnetic pull that tugs every pair of eyes, every smile, every glare, and every soul toward her and she has no idea. She truly doesn't have a single clue how powerful—how intense she truly is.

"You know," Rory begins, biting down a smile as she toys with the bracelet encircled around her slender wrist.

It is rather sad, really. How amongst this graveyard of countless gravestones and realistically, over half of them are probably people who died due to old age or other causes—basically, what I'm trying to say is that they have been here for long enough for the flowers to welt and life to stain the letters spelling each one's name. But Rory's sister's grave looked beyond aged. If I didn't know any better, I would assume it belonged to someone who died long, long ago.

It has only been three or four years.

"I haven't been here once since she passed." Rory muses, unable to hold eye contact as she digs the heel of her combat boot into the wet grass next to her sister's grave. "It's kind of shit, don't you think? All of this—" she gestures her hands to the space between us and I fight a smile as I watch her ponder. "—Just to end up like that. Either ashes which pollute the ocean, or a pile of bones, six feet below the world that just keeps going."

I snort. It's not funny, though. "It's shit." I admit, peering up at the bland sky that holds almost as little colour and life as I do.

"It is shit." She responds with certainty. "Actually, no." I cock a brow, confused, silently pressing for her to elaborate further. She rolls her brown eyes at my impatience. "It's torture."

I have never lost someone before. Not someone meaningful, anyway. So, it's difficult for me to understand how it feels to lose someone—grief. I don't understand grief but I know from the sound of her heart cracking like glass, that it can be much worse than the mere thought of actually permanently losing someone.

"How is it fair that you can know someone so beautiful. . .so—just loud and there and just—I don't know. . .lovely, I guess? And then one day, they're gone and the world just keeps spinning." Her glassy eyes appear distant and she stares at something over my shoulder and maybe it's nothing but she looks like she has just met grief—living and human, and she's staring it directly in the eyes. "Like there's no them anymore."

And now, her eyes avert dear grief and find mine again and this time, she doesn't look as though she is about to shrink herself to find the middle point where the white of my eyes turn to blue and leap in, swimming forever in my orbs. This time. . .she looks at me like I am grief. I am the human form.

And she's staring me directly in the eyes.

"The concept of existence feels so heavy but it really is so unimportant, isn't it?" I say in a humorous tone, only because it seems so utterly ridiculous that every second that I have spent up until this very one right now has been spent with broken bones and clothes ripped to shreds, every attempt to reach the end, I'm thrown back to the bottom of the well. "My existence weighs no more than that of a feather."

At the way that she looks at me with dark eyes, hurt by my words, you would assume that my words had been directed toward her and not myself.

"Then, Atlas. . .tell me," her voice is steady and it almost makes me feel unsteady. I watch her in anticipation, feeling as though all of the oxygen had been sucked from the earth. "Why is it that your existence is the first of which has been so incredibly impactful that before you even make your presence known, I can feel your existence. You have no idea how loud your existence really is, Atlas."

I look down at my dirty, muddy shoes, unsure of what to say and how to express that I feel the same way about her existence except she isn't thinking about the after. I can't help but think about what happens when the loudness turns silent.

"It doesn't feel very loud." I murmur, looking up at her through the hair which hangs down over my forehead, overgrown and dark.

My thoughts are loud. My insecurities are loud. My pessimism is loud. My mother is fucking loud. But me—Atlas is silent. I don't think I could be loud even if I wanted to only because I spend so much time speaking, and no one is ever really hearing me. Not entirely, anyway.

Rory shifts, moving carefully around her sister's grave as though she was not below us but physically between us filling up the space. She swiftly gets between my legs, her knees pressed to the underneath of my thighs as she cups my cheeks with her almost painfully cold hands.

"Trust me," she says in a whisper. With the gentle force of her hands which control my face, I am forced to meet her gaze and what a lovely fucking gaze it is. "It is." She reassures.

I raise an eyebrow, a solemn expression resting upon my features, but inside I feel like everything is beginning to make more sense. Little things, big things. Rory things.

I love her.

"I love you." I respond because I do.

I have been loved before but right now at this moment, I feel more and more like I was made for her—or maybe she was made for me because if I was created for her, then they would have made me more resilient and strong and patient.

Like everything at once had stopped in the world, my heart stills in my chest and she leans forward, dry lips pressing against mine so softly that I have to touch her just to make sure that she is real. She is not just a figment of my imagination.

And my calloused fingertips find the skin beneath the thick material of her jumper and electricity transfers the heat from me to her, and I physically feel her grow warm beneath my touch, and I exhale against her lips because she is here, and she is real and despite her silence, her existence is anything but.

Hesitantly, I pull away from the mouth belonging to my lover and she frowns but even then, the fine lines that deepen her skin when she creases her brows don't quite match the intensity of mine.

And I think she notices this because her frown deepens with concern. "Is something wrong?"

I stifle a laugh. Is something wrong? "You know you are speaking to an addict." I state bluntly.

Rory rolls her eyes. "I'm speaking to Atlas and he—"

"—has an addiction." I finish.

She stares at me with an utterly infuriated expression. "No." she retorts firmly. "I am speaking to Atlas and he looks worried."

Maybe I am worried. Maybe that's why I feel ill. Or maybe it's because I have been too focused on getting fucked up every fifteen minutes rather than remembering to eat just one meal a day at least.

A loud clap of thunder rattles the ground beneath us and both of us jolt in fright. Standing up quickly, I pull Rory to her feet, slinging my arm over her shoulders and pulling her to my side.

Before coming here, Rory insisted that we walk and not drive for multiple reasons, one being that she enjoys the exercise, two being that she enjoys walks, and three being that she enjoys walks with me.

I must say that all of those reasons are debatable except for the final one only because I dread walking anywhere because it gives me time to think and I don't like thinking because then I have to face things and much like walks and thinking I absolutely hate confrontation.

That is why I am either high, having sex, or asleep. My mind is never quiet. It just keeps going and going and it's exhausting having to think about such things let alone having to battle them.

You will fight an internal battle with yourself for the rest of your life, Atlas. My mother's words ring in my ears like she is right next to me and not so distant—in the emotional aspect—and it feels like all of my bones are crumbling beneath my skin. That's what it is like having mental illness, you fight until the day you die.

Oh, to be neurotypical.

I think that must be the one thing of which I despise more than confrontation: neurotypical people.

"My love," a whisper laced with silk and all the sweetness in the world—and the bitter, too—speaks and only then do I realise we have left the graveyard entirely and are walking down the bland, depressing suburban streets. She stops me, giving me an assertive look that makes it impossible to look away. "Did something happen?"

Did something happen? Not yet. But something is about to happen and it's going to kill me. And if I stop it, it's going to kill everyone else.

I inhale a sharp intake of cold air and almost choke on it.

She stands before me so small and looks up at me with those beautiful dark eyes and any excuse or reason or truth or lie leaves me and I'm lost for words.

I look at her deeply with the utmost heartbreak and love at the same time and I realise how vast the contrast between the two is.

I can't believe she hasn't noticed that I'm not sober—but then again, she only knows the version of me that isn't sober. I don't even know sober me because he leaves reality when that happens. . .I suppose when I'm high I do, too. I'm never really here—never really present, that is why it's so fucking hard for me to decipher what is and what isn't.

Like is she really fucking worried about me right now or am I just being paranoid?

I pull her aside, stepping beneath the cover of the bus stop on a dead silent street. Glancing at my surroundings I feel a sense of familiarity and I realise this is the street near the park where we ended up with a bike someone lost, and we found.

I sit down, the cold metal bench felt even through the thick denim of my jeans, and she sits down beside me, our knees touching.

Her temple presses to my shoulder and I avert my gaze to the skin exposed on my kneecap due to the wide rip in my pants. Her hand finds mine quickly and then so does her other one as she encloses hers around my one, hugging it between her legs.

The coldness granted from her fingertips travels into my hand and all the way up my arm, then it curves over my shoulder and surrounds that stupid thing that thumps in my chest. I feel cold—I feel like--I don't know what I feel.

I feel something.

I feel her. And she's so fucking cold.

"Ever since you ghosted me it's felt like I'm in love with a ghost." Her words are coated with a painful substance, and I want it gone because she sounds hurt and it's because of me and I hate it. "You're here but not really. You're always somewhere else, and I know that's because you were fucked up twenty-four-seven, but you're sober, Atlas."

No, I'm not.

I can't look at her. "I know." I have to bite down on the inside of my cheek to prevent myself from saying that's not true, love.

"Come on, Caspar." She whines playfully, pulling on my hand. "I want my space boy back."

I turn to her, and I feel that unbearable coldness reaching for my heart. She's smiling. She's fucking smiling. And she looks more lovely than a falling star piercing through the sky.

"I don't know what to say." I admit, my words were followed by a strained sigh.

She looks at me with an entertained, yet pitiful look and I roll my eyes. "Aw," she coos. This is not something to find cute or entertaining. "I just want you to try and be more present with me and if that's too much to ask, then tell me because I know that there's a lot going on up there, but as much as I love just staring at you, it feels like you can't hear me sometimes and considering you are the only one who ever has heard me, it stings a little."

And the coldness reaches my heart. It covers it entirely, closing over my airways making it hard to breathe and as I inhale it physically does sting because the bitterness I swallow gets stuck in my throat.

"I'm always hearing you." I say with certainty because if there is one thing I do truly know, it is that I'm never listening to anyone but always listening to her. "You have no idea how loud your existence really is, Rory."

A smirk tugs at my lips and a playful smile at hers.

Lifting my hand from its shield—or Rory's hands—I slip my hand beneath the short hair which shields the side of her face and rest my thumb atop her cheek, my fingers grasping her jaw softly.

I press my needy lips to her longing ones and they begin to move softly and slowly against hers. My eyelids flutter shut, and I assume hers do too. And I reflect back to Rory's earlier words and think that maybe I have changed sometime between leaving her and finding her again because the world when I left her is nothing like the world now that I have her in my hands again.

Maybe Alula finding me in the bathroom of my depressing apartment was just another figment of my imagination. Maybe despite what my mother said, my luck had run out and no one was able to save me that time. Perhaps my existence is no longer, and this is what eternity is. It's a place where I am to spend forever with her and deal with the fact that I keep fucking hurting her because even though there are good people who do bad things, I'm just a fucking bad person.

"You're doing it again." Her voice cuts through my thoughts and I'm faced with a pretty face portraying almost more confusion than mine.

When did we stop kissing?

Fuck me.

"Atlas, I haven't known you for all that long, but I still can tell when you're holding something in." I must have frostbite by now. "I mean, come on. You're making out with a girl with absolutely zero self-worth and is covered in scars and ink and I—fuck." She stumbles over her words and I think I do, too. I'm really hurting her and I'm not trying to at all. "I'm scared."

"Of what?"

The darkness in her eyes sheds no emotion and I watch as she physically swallows the tears back down her throat. "You said so yourself. I have abandonment issues."

My eyebrows knit together as I piece everything together; her prevalent but not unwanted neediness, her constant talking despite the fact when I'm usually detached from the world around me, she finds me in that distant place and waits for me to come back, but she keeps forcing me back and I'm not ready.

Fuck frostbite, I think I have hypothermia at this point because what started as a dull pain, has now consumed me entirely.

"Love," my hand still resonates on her jaw. "I'm not going to leave you." I say before I realise what I have just promised.

I'm leaving tomorrow.

Her sin fades to innocence and I have never experienced her in a form where she looks so child-like. "You can though." She explains. "You can if you need to."

I shake my head because even if I am leaving her this time tomorrow, I am not leaving her because I want to and I still intend on keeping her as close as I can, whether that is a phone call each day or long, pathetic letters and unopened envelopes.

"Why in the world would I ever need to?" I say in almost an angry tone though I'm only angry slightly and it's more so directed toward myself, I'm more confused—at the mentioning, the thought, the possibility of me ever leaving her. "I know you have been told that more times than I have said it and not meant it, but I mean it, Rory." I attempt to speak with the utmost sincerity.

She blinks and that painful look of grief appears again. Her orbs darken so much that eventually, they are able to reflect everything staring into them and eventually I find myself staring directly at my own face in her eyes.

I can't stand me. I can't stand that I can hold her whilst she breaks in my arms and ensure that I will stay here, piecing her together with glue as many times as she needs it, only to be leaving not just the pieces behind tomorrow, but the glue too.

I don't know how someone as clueless and selfish as me can be capable of holding someone else together but if I can do it for her and have her still love me, then I want to keep doing it. But she can't leave with me and I can't stay here.

"How many times have you said it and not meant it?" she whispers, looking up at me through her thick, black eyelashes.

My mouth dries. "Countless." I answer bluntly.

"And how many times have you said it and meant it?"

I try to stop time travelling through the darkness in her eyes and be present, just for once. "Only once." I lie just one more time because what is just one more.

Again, she blinks and I realise that those eyes of hers could swallow every star, planet, and galaxy in the entire universe.

What chance did I ever really have?

I never stood a chance.

But despite my choice in self-destructive tendencies whether that be substance abuse, or sexual intercourse, or reckless driving, she was and always will be the most exquisite form of self-destruction.

"I don't think this is normal." Rory speaks, her tone of voice almost back to normal. Her words are more stable and less like she's being stabbed in the back repeatedly.

Confused, I feel the lines crease on my forehead. "What do you mean?"

She stands up and I don't know how it's possible but I feel even colder now without her. "This—us." She gestures to the new, little but significant space added between us. "It's so intense, so overwhelming and I almost can't bare it."

Almost is all that matters to me.

I stand up, towering over her as I cup her cheeks with my hands. "I know, me either." But I will bare it even if it kills me because no other cause of death could compare to one of the doing of loving someone too hard.

Intently, her eyes bore into mine and I wonder if she thinks that mine could swallow all of space, too.

It's dark now and the clouds have been covered by darkness. The rain has settled, too. But somehow it feels as though no time has passed at all, almost as though it was only seconds ago that we were sitting near Rory's sister's gravestone.

"I'm just—I'm sorry if I seem like some overly obsessed freak now. I just mean that this all feels too good—you feel too good and I'm not ready for it to just stop." She explains in a way that I can actually comprehend. "You're perfect, Atlas. I don't want to lose you."

I have never been called such a word.

Despite the intense moment, I can't help but snort because I have been called basically every insult and compliment under the stars and never once have I been called nor considered perfect.

"Perfect?" I repeat, amused,

Without missing a beat, she nods and by the look on her face, I can tell that no matter what I use to argue against her to invalidate her point, she will not let it happen. She's stubborn. "You are the most beautiful boy I will ever meet." Her sincerity is far more sincere than mine. "And you'll never know how or why because I won't tell you any reason except for that you just