To Miles 24

Everything makes sense when depression comes to me when I see it even from behind, its cloak reminding me of the death but the scythe melancholically lying on the side near Miles’ bed, maybe to remind myself what was long lost.

Matt comes to my mind as well, far too often and sometimes I don’t even know who I send off, I just ask for their name, wondering how much my body still manages to get excited and I’ve heard that sticking your hand in ice makes you feel alive so when I stick in it milk one morning I get a stare from Julian who sips on his coffee, as Miles sits as far away from me as possible.

His voice had cracked, whole body shaking, teeth chattering, eyes red. 

“S-ship sank. You fucker killed him.” Miles grabbed me and shoved me back against the bunks. “You killed Pete!”

I’m such an ungrateful bastard that for a second with the splitting cheek, the dreams still provided me pillows of comfort to glance at Miles before the pain came back and death blackened my existence. All my being shatters and the thought of Pete in drag comes back to me, pulling both my hands, grinning and deceased doesn’t seem to match his face. 

My mind blanks it out too often, but instead I get more chest tore open as I lay in bed.

It got worse.

Two lovers were killed.

The news of Carl’s suicide travelled like fire and it seemed to scare everyone so I had to stay in the cubicles for half the night praying and if not I’d come back to Hince and undress, my eyes closed as his lips would remind me of the death I’ve been sending off people too. I was the one waltzing alone in the room now with no lovers at any side and just Hince clapping in the distance. 

Julian seemed like a timebomb, as I had days when I just wanted to send him away but I had kept the loop around my neck, Julian still on my side, but spending more time with Carlos who seemed immersed in his own weird things and novels he and Julian seemed to exchange pretty often. 

I think I was also convinced that my lovers weren’t in love with me anymore and watching Miles sleep even through dark felt as if the thin curtain which I could break with my fingers was suddenly thick and painful to touch. Sometimes I was too irritated at him and sometimes I just wanted to reach out to him and just to stare at him in the dark where he couldn’t see me, but talking to him would send me shivers and sometimes both Matt and Miles intertwined in the dark, so when I had gotten a letter from Matt it seemed like everything was in place and I felt that I was slowly stabbing myself with a knife as I laid on the bunk, reading the letters which would form his name and how he had written my name and seeing my name was Alexander seemed odd, as if I had never been called like that. 

I think I should slip into the colour blue as I check Miles’ bunk and I finally open the letter. I don’t know why I’m checking if he’s not there and as I take out the letter I see that it’s three pages which sends an odd warmth through me and I before reading light a cigarette, keeping it in my mouth, exhaling and inhaling as I start reading. It’s nice to know that you’re not the first one offering a proper truce. Matt’s handwriting is quite big something I’ve mocked him for and over the years it got smaller but on the letters he makes it wonky as well, just to irritate me. 

He started off with talking about Lana how she had went back to her natural colour and how they hung a day after she had delivered a few planes to the NAS and how they had both discussed me and he felt bad for not writing to me, so here it is for him to start babbling. And then he says he stopped for a day, back on the ship and goofing off his mind still shuffling with what to write until he finally did. Matt apologized before saying how he had enjoyed seeing me (he can’t really write about sex since the letters get opened and checked but he still wrote a love at the end, which managed to slip as nothing else in the content shows anything and I noticed some glimpses of a girl called Breana through out but could be a disguise, something Paul had told me he had used when he was writing to some guy onshore). 

I think of you in the tenderest ways,
With your lips upon my fingertips

But that’s the thing, Alex,

Love destroys you.

I gulp, my fingers shaking lightly and Miles walks in, stops for a brief moment at the door for me to barely notice and I flick my eyes back to the letter.

It shatters you and it gives you some insane courage.

But I don’t think it fully came to me Matt, the courage is the one which strangles me and I watch him, we’ve been like this for days, weeks and he just avoids me and I can’t say anything let alone properly look at him and the only thing which I catch is the dark circles under his eyes and I wonder if we had been struggling with insomnia and scared to smoke a cigarette outside in order to avoid each other. Sometimes I wonder too much, but I don’t let myself do anything. Maybe that’s not the love I need, but it’s the courage I crave to actually do something.

But I had sent two loaders to their death. And many men to be jailed for committing the same sin I had under the heavens. I wonder what is his stance does he actually believe that heaven like the church would be open for both the homosexuals and those who took their own lives? Would that be his comfort zone to explain himself that to try and get a blink of sleep at least. I wonder how comforting that blanket is. 

Miles opens his coffin locker and his back is turned towards me. I just watch him, wanting to stretch my hand to touch him, but I don’t, instead I turn to my side and I watch him take off his shirt and change it and I just stay there, Matt’s letters always there to soothe me, someone who is always by your side I guess gets chucked away sometimes which is a slap to them in my eyes

and maybe that’s the courage I get to stand up and Miles turns towards me and I see the fear in his eyes and it’s not that it’s because I can send him off, it’s the fear of not knowing where we are falling.

I watch him, I shiver, I can’t touch him and we just stare at each other, he leans closer and I feel like Judas only I won’t give the blow and we kiss, softly, I am now shaking fully pulling him closer to me, as close as I can, as Miles’ hand is in my hair, messing it, another arm around my waist and I can’t hold as we both deepen the kiss and fear still shakes me deeper as I’m scared that this is just passion and love is long discarded. 

The fear of not knowing how deep his morals to be right stand scare me, they don’t just come to me in the night, they dawn on me in the day, we both get far too turned on, but we keep kissing, holding the kiss sometimes between intense making out. I want to know where his heaven and hell stand, what would make him collapse and how many times can he sin again. 

But the longing takes over reason. 

I don’t think he knows what he’s doing but I think I’m selfish enough to be thankful whether it was an impulse or a full acknowledged act. 

It’s not that the magic will go away by midnight or once the eyes are opened, it’s once the lips are split open and love is a knife doing so. 

The thing which pulls us apart is the door as we instantly dettach ourselves, my hair clearly not slicked back anymore and Miles being shirtless isn’t really helping either and we both just cross our legs, which raises more suspicions, but all Carlos does is just shuffle past us, avoiding the new other loaders which haven’t been too talkative so it had been both Thom and Jonny sitting there with me and Miles on opposite side and Julian and Carlos raising suspicions in my head if they had fucked or not. Everything seemed to be uneventful now until the kiss.

Besides one visit to Hince who had managed to open a wine bottle and seemed to be laughing at his own assumption that he’ll be cleansing the ship all the time, crew after crew because everyone is gay anyway. But the topic of Miles was always avoided and whenever I’d walk in to report someone I could feel him getting tense, but Miles’ name never came. It was as if he had been death and I had been birth, it was odd to drink from a wine glass all of a sudden, because I wasn’t too keen besides when I would go to bars, I’d still cling to the milkshakes with Matt and just sitting there with him as he’d watch me and I never really spoke until he’d touch me and I wouldn’t do anything.

I felt odd, because it kept going on and the more miserable I got I felt as if it was someone who seemed to kept me giving me obscure reasons to keep going, I don’t know, it wasn’t that I was angry I just started feeling as if I was in a weird cycle and I was a rat in a wheel, that’s how I felt. It just kept going on and on and maybe he had figured that Miles had managed to slip out of my fingers as well and I had seen Miles exit his furiously, brushing past me. 

It’s like this odd Stockholm syndrome which I’ve started slipping into and I’ve wondered if I should ask him for the books and by the end of the day he’d tell me the battleground that became of Europe and sometimes our talks would expand, somewhat foggy about our lives and I tried my best not to talk about men, he’d just ask me where I had grown up, why the navy and sometimes he’d ask me about the novels he’d try and I’d say that they were bad and that would mean that he would enjoy them. He felt like a different contrast to Miles, as if I was the gray area, that Hince was on the other side, the murderer or the person who ordered and Miles seemed to be simply avoiding the target and I wondered how were the two ever intertwined. 

It felt like the deal with the devil had been made and all what was to be awaited was when the devil would take my soul. I had once written a poem about the fear of spiders and the ending was releasing the spider which was trapped instead of keeping it under the can, so that the moment which was most feared would just come to get over with. I was told that it didn’t make sense, but I beg to differ and that’s I guess some odd metaphor which goes on with me and I had drank as much as I could take, wondering to which direction should I plunge in. 

“Do you believe in fortune telling, Turner?” Hince had asked me breathing out the smoke and hesitating if he should get another bottle, but instead he just sat there. “My wife does it all the time and never tells me what the cards hold for her or for me. I always wondered why the same cards seem to show up regardless of how she shuffles, how much she prays, that makes you wonder doesn’t it? What is it that the fortune teller is afraid to speak of?

I know she has someone, but I don’t know. I’m away, I do the same thing and when we’re together there’s this odd longing which manages to sprout out of nowhere which I don’t even notice when I’m alone, it’s as if... I’m two different people. I don’t know. 

Maybe that’s for the best, eh, Turner?” And he kisses me on the lips, the Judas to his wife. I pull away, reaching for the glass but it’s long empty and Hince smirks standing up and moving closer, tilting my head up and kissing me longer this time. I feel myself shiver, but I get so used to it that I become so numb. I don’t know how much has my mind and my body decided to turn off that during the whole thing I’d even head to Hince for longer and start some odd conversation which would make him raise his eyebrows and he’d follow it. It was mainly to kill time was my second excuse after I had told myself that I was doing to get on his good side. War seemed to be passing us so far and the blood which was getting shed had started scaring us, yet we were still doing nothing aiming with no direction, doing targets and spending time on shore. 

Julian seemed to spend more time with Carlos and I wasn’t feeling jealousy, just an odd confusion around Carlos who had seemed to be flirting with the fact of being a constant asshole to somewhat quite standable and I had gone drinking with them once and once we even snug out to a gay bar and once Julian left for the bathroom, Carlos offered me a cigarette while I was finishing mine. I stubbed mine out sooner and took the offered one, I felt lost wondering what could I actually discuss with Carlos, but he had started the topic. 

“I’m not actually attracted to men, I just happen to have a lot of gay men friends. If that’s what’s on your mind.” He had smiled, clean shaved and I wondered how he had managed to grow a mustache he had mentioned he used to have onshore before he was transferred here. 

Everyone seemed to be a substitute for Miles so once we had to depart our lips for a lost moment and we won’t find our way back, it seemed like everyone else seemed to dawn on me, how much I had Miles and Carlos had kept his silence and I just wondered how would I approach him, fear choking me by the neck. 

“It’s actually not, Carlos.” I confessed widening my eyes and I always pray for Miles to walk in and that I’d have the guts to start all over again, see him with another bloke and then make out on the dancefloor but the memories seem to be partially hidden under a few branches which I’ve thrown into the way myself. All of a sudden I felt as if there were too many lovers and none of them even together seemed to substitute Miles and his eagerness about life, but the eagerness towards me was now long gone. 

“Well, Julian is attracted to you.” Carlos had muttered and it’s one thing when it’s shoved in your face and my mind had been made up to just grab whoever I could and the fact that I had slowly started to let my mind and self get poisoned by sex with Hince was far from something I had wanted. 

I think the more German submarine activity had started I tried to make it slip past my fingers, giving me an odd taste of fear and letting myself dissolve.

I had gave in and I followed Julian just as he was heading out and I closed the door behind us pushing him against a wall and instantly putting my tongue in his mouth as he had pulled me harshly, running his fingers on my body and I had still felt numb, as if I had been watching it all and masturbating to the whole scene. 

The fact that I was actually getting attached to Hince was scaring me, that sex was taking an odd turn and he still disgusted me and he’d avoid mentioning Miles like wildfire yet it was going in cycles, my whole mind was going in cycles

And I was trying to get rid of the memory of Hince actually asking me for once during sex and I had fucked him, he had made sure that I had finished as well and that was twisting my mind, because with me sending of a bunch of men he seemed the constant evil and then you start siding

and for some reason it had dawned on me how much of a twisted person I was, going along with some man’s desires or rather the desire of a nation to wipe out people like me, I was the backstabber, I was the traitor, I would maybe even be forgotten but I’d be there not as the man who did this to fuck over men, but to kill them and it would drive me insane. 

It was as if having sex with Hince was some odd rinsing and some odd forgiveness from Satan since God didn’t want me anymore and I’d hear Miles say how God made everything simpler, how believing in fate and some holiness made life easier, how it made it less lonely

and when that God is taken away from you, you just lose direction

and the fallen angel seems like an escape because he had once been close to God. 

-

Sorry this took a while to write and kind of the fact that I myself have depression is helping me write Al's state and in general so yeah:3 and because it had taken long to write this chapter was intended to be a bit kind of time jump so it was I think done quite well as I hadn't been up with story so my thoughts were as messy as Al's memories XD

Thing is I've known about Carl's death for so long and they were planned as lovers who will go down together, that yeah, I'm mourning the deaths ahead as well. 

I missed Miles and I was thinking of this scene and how would it happen and I love how it ended up spontaneous from what I had thought of and I'll remain silent for now regarding Miles. I ship them so much and yeah :3 

There's a lot of odd love triangles specifically involving Al and Miles and I guess one of the odd ones are Hince, Al and Miles. In general Hince was supposed to be there for the sort of not even worthy of being a villain and then he escalated and he is the story's villain, but Alex is more an anti-hero, while Miles would fit into the hero box, which kind of seems interesting in my head, how they both contrast each other in morals and also views on religion. I guess as years change I pretty much have three things I write about: religion, sex and death xD and it goes in and intertwines and all these things are written xD

Hince and Al freak me out with their poisonous relationship and while I wasn't writing I wanted to do this bizarrely insane Stockholm syndrome between them and the more I wrote the more it made sense why Al is clinging and how he is falling apart slowly. 

I am superstitious and I fortune tell apparently xD so I chucked that bit in, a good fortune teller never tells the person who the fortune is being told to if something bad will happen, so that was used and Hince's wife as a fortune teller seems like a nice idea. 

Also even if it's not mentioned To Miles deals with a lot of non-monogamy and in general Al's polyamorous nature which is far more open than my own xD which I quite like as there's a lot of different relations between him and so many characters and other characters among other characters. So that's I guess also quite a deep running theme, which I'm not sure there will be a big point where Al yells that he's polyamorous, but it's there and well, of course it's there xD which makes me happy and I love the story more, I don't know I guess because it's so big and going on of course I can relate to Al even if I don't think that I'd do the things he would and I'd break differently, there's a lot but then all characters have some traits which I've given them or from people I love but everyone is a heavy mix that even myself I think, because there's no concrete yeah that person is that and etc. I'm not even sure I'd stick myself to Al anyway xD

I hate and I love Carlos at the same time. And I guess he might just be the only straight character here XD 

I dunno I love the whole religion conversation Al and Miles seem to be having in Al's head throughout the story, I dunno, I feel bad but I like the whole idea of making Miles religious and Al not which is the opposite of what I do usually, so yeah

I hope you enjoyed it and please tell me if you enjoyed it and if you want a next chapter:3

I've been writing more so expect more things up soon:3

<3

To Miles 25