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“We lay here for years or for hours,
Your hand in my hand,
So still and discreet.”
-Hozier, In a week
Keefe's eyes filled with horror as realisation dawned on him. Tam was thrown back in shock. His legs gave way, and even though his fate was decided , Tam didn't feel a thing.
His fragments had already been dissolving. Maybe Tam was grateful, Because he didn't know if he could bear to wait for the end on his own. Tam was barely held together with bandages and and empty promises. The cloth tore from the edges of the shards, and they fell down, refusing to shatter, taunting him.
Tam wasn’t a person anymore, he was pieces of humanity desperately arranged together. Blood soaked cloth held him together, gently wrapped around the pieces by his lover. His eyes didn’t see beauty anymore, except him. He was the only thing Tam could ever look at with wonder anymore.
The stones underneath them dug into their skin, and when Tam held his lover's hand, the nail beds gave way to blood. The crevices of his hand were filled with dirt, yet when Tam looked at his face, he couldn’t look away. How ironic it was, that someone so beautiful belonged to him, broken and damaged.
Keefe looked at him, tears streaming from his eyes.
“Tam.” He rasped. Keefe reached out and held his face. He wiped the tears from Tam’s cheeks.
He could ask so many questions.
How did Keefe lose control?
How did they lose themselves?
Why did Tam lay waiting in the face of death, resigned to the familiarity of his fate?
How did the world weather them down so much, all he could ever have was mere glimpses of what it felt like to truly live?
Tam gently reached out and held Keefe's face.
"I'm so sorry. I don't- what happened? I'm so-" Tam placed his finger on Keefe mouth, stealing the words from his throat.
Tam ran his thumb over Keefe's bottom lip, his eyes wandering his face and body, memorising his lover for the last time. The haunted look in his eyes scared Tam more than the blood covering his own hands. Keefe’s lips were left open, sobs crawling out his throat.
Tam’s heart ached, and not just from the wound carved upon it. The shadows danced around them, nestling Keefe gently within them.
“Two corpses we were,
Two corpses I saw.”
-Hozier, in a week
Keefe gasped for breath, the tears flowing faster than before. He couldn’t go on, not with the weight of actions crushing him underneath them.
Tam was his tether. How had he managed to snap it?
How could someone live with their oxygen? Keefe's breath had just run out, and he couldn't go on with him.
Determination and finality shaped his next actions.
"Keefe, no-what are you doing-"
"Keefe!" Tam screamed. He placed his hand on his mouth as a similar wound appeared on Keefe's chest.
"I was never alive, Keefe. But why would you- how could you- do this to yourself?"
"I… I wouldn't have been able to go on, not without you. Not while I knew what I had done to you."
"You- fucking- you're so-why?"
“I was never alive either. You kow that as well as I do.”
"I don't matter, Keefe. You do." Keefe would've laughed if the pain didn't stop him.
"You mean the world to me. You let me see what it would've been like. To be like everyone else. Alive."
"I'm broken. I've always been."
"So have I, my love. You were the only thing that held me together."
Tam screamed. Tears filled his eyes as grabbed Keefe's face.
"We can do this next part together." Keefe whispered. Tam's eyes widened, resignation settling in.
"I was too broken to live on, my love." Tam dissolved in sobs.
The pain kept swallowing both of them, but even with the blood draining out of his face, Tam was still the most beautiful thing Keefe had seen. His eyes held the moonlight and his hair fell into his eyes. Keefe pushed them back.
Tam looked at him desperately, like he was the only thing in the world. Keefe smiled sadly, his chest filling with warmth while his shirt soaked with blood.
"I wanted to love you for a lifetime." Keefe whispered.
“Honey just put your sweet lips on my lips,
We should just kiss like real people do.”
- Hozier, Like real people do
Tam knew that for them, there was no lifetime, there was no love. There were only whispers, only fingers reaching our feverishly, to feel what bloomed naturally in actual hearts. All they had were grasps at what life was truly meant to hold.
Love was an emotion for real people.
Not for broken messes like them.
But Keefe was the most beautiful and captivating mess ever made, his whispers strong enough to cause a riot in Tam’s shattered heart. His lips quivered, and something inside Tam begged for a last time, for a small whisper, for what Keefe had promised him.
Tam moved closer to him, pressing their wounded bodies together. It hurt everywhere, and his fingers trembled as he touched them to Keefe’s face.
They were falling apart under their skin already. Their bones had started to decay. His heart calmed a little, knowing the dirt would claim them as its own.
"Then do it." Tam whispered back.
Tam pressed their lips together. The cold night forgotten in the warmth they shared. Their lips moved desperately, an attempt to dredge up everything about each other. Their breath filled the night. Tam tasted like heaven, like home, like desperation.
They were surrounded with life, chirping insects and rustling leaves. Yet Keefe and Tam held each other, desperately clinging onto the small bits of life.
”We lay here for years or for hours,
Your hand in my hand,
So still and discreet.”
- Hozier, in a week
When the pain took them over , they held each other. Their passion dissolved into gentleness.
When their hearts stilled, their bodies lay entangled, their lips pressed together in the softest kiss, like the rustling of wind.
”And they'd find us in a week,
When the weather gets hot,
After the insects have made their claim,
I’d be home with you.”
- Hozier, in a week
How cruel was it that they would finally be broken down completely, before either of them could heal? The world would weep with sorrow at their love.
But how could two ghosts know the feeling of life? They were merely surviving.
Their souls carried on, and maybe, beyond our comprehension, they did what they were truly made to do.
Live.