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November, 1994
When the boy storms into the art room, Yuri is unbothered. It’s a frequent occurrence; people use this room for all sorts of activities, school-appropriate and not—dear god, the things Yuri has witnessed.
What does pique his interest is the fact that the boy slams the door behind him then immediately locks it. He slides down to sit with his knees to his chest and covers his mouth and nose, most likely to conceal his heavy breathing. A few moments after, a group of other boys dash down the hall, shouting things akin to he went this way! and where the fuck did that fag go.
Yuri flinches when he hears it and finally looks up to see the boy holding his breath, eyes squeezed closed and hunched in on himself. There’s a red mark on his forearm that looks eerily similar to a handprint.
When the footsteps finally recede, the boy takes a deep, shaky breath and removes his hand from his mouth, instead wrapping his arms around his legs. He seems composed for a few moments…then breaks.
Sobs rack through him. He clenches his fists around his jeans until his knuckles turn white and rests his head on his knees, shoulders shaking. And Yuri just. Watches.
The image is painfully familiar, and suddenly Yuri is horribly reminded of his own breakdowns in this room. Shaking, praying no one hears him, fumbling for his inhaler when his breath got too erratic and his chest tightened.
Watching this boy feel the same, especially with the cause of it…it damn near feels like an asthma attack.
Yuri’s heart feels sore, and he tries to pull his gaze away but can’t; he can’t just casually go back to throwing when someone is breaking in front of him. Sex, he can handle. This…
He swallows down the urge to stand up and try to comfort the boy—as if he would even know or care—and just watches.
Watches as the boy removes his glasses to wipe tears from his face that’ll be replaced in just a moment. Watches as he stands and has to brace himself against the door so his knees don’t buckle. Watches as he slowly unlocks the door, peeks his head outside to make sure those assholes aren’t anywhere near. Watches as he leaves, not knowing that someone saw him and will never forget it.
September, 1995
“Who’s he? I don’t think I’ve seen him before, is he another..” he hesitates around the word, “ghost?”
Wally’s voice sounds. “Yeah, that’s Yuri. He’s been there since, like, the seventies. Only speaks Russian.”
Yuri looks up from the wheel for just a moment to look through the window of the cracked open door and sees Wally and Rhonda and…him. The boy he watched break almost a year ago. And that boy can see him. Can see the other ghosts too, which has to mean that…
He feels the clay that he’s been molding crumple under his hands, and shifts his gaze back down to the wheel. Something deep and foreign in his stomach twists at the thought of him being dead. Was it those boys from a year ago? Yuri’s jaw clenches at the thought of them hurting him, especially with their fucked up motivation that broke and marked him for no real reason.
“Wait, so he’s just..been there? For decades?”
“Yeah, some ghosts are just weird like that. And we still don’t know the real reason, right?” Wally says.
“Nope. They’re just stuck in the past. Looping,” Rhonda answers before putting her signature lollipop back in her mouth.
She and Wally continue debating about this ‘looping’ concept but Yuri finds his gaze landing back on the boy that he still doesn’t know the name of. He’s staring at the other two with interest, which makes sense considering he’s still new. Then, he trails off, and his eyes shift to Yuri.
There’s an incredibly brief moment of contact, a split-second, blink and you’ll miss it moment before Yuri immediately snaps his gaze back to the wheel. He can still feel the boy’s eyes on him and can almost hear the gears turning in his head as he realizes what Yuri must have seen.
“Yeah yeah, anyways! We have more to show you,” Wally says enthusiastically and claps an arm around the boy’s shoulders, and he can feel it when the boy’s eyes shift.
They walk off, unbothered and unknowing, and Yuri looks back up at the empty space where the boy’s presence once lit up the room, and an ache forms in his chest. One that he hasn’t felt in decades.
August, 2000
Rhonda is many things, but quiet is definitely not one of them.
So when the windows in the art room are cracked open to let in summer air, Rhonda’s voice filters in loudly from outside. Yuri’s used to it by now; her emphatic rants are frequent and have been for years. She was fairly quiet at first when she died, still mostly in shock. Then, when Wally came around, said quietness was thrown right out the window.
Usually, she isn’t very distracting. But, Yuri hears a less familiar but much more remembered voice. He pauses his throwing, wipes his hands on his apron and cracks his knuckles, then turns to see what’s happening outside.
Rhonda is in the middle of one of her rants, gesturing largely at the open book in her hands while the boy is standing next to her, leaning over her shoulder and staring at wherever she’s pointing with almost comedic interest. She makes a point seriously, sounding nearly angry at the words on the page, then gets cut off by the boy who says something presumably sly and sarcastic with the cheeky smile he’s wearing.
Rhonda stays silent, staring directly in front of her, then she sighs dramatically and snaps the book shut. She says something direct and irritated and the boy laughs, so hard his head is thrown back and he’s losing his balance. Rhonda sighs again and keeps walking but the boy doesn’t seem to care whatsoever.
He continues to laugh his head off, and late summer light glints on his glasses and bounces off his skin in such a way that he looks like he’s made of gold. His posture is unrestrained and almost unkempt, and his smile is something else—god, Yuri can damn near feel the boy’s laughter reverberating in his skull.
He just looks so happy, so joyous and loose and nothing like how he was when Yuri first saw him. And—it feels good to see him so unshackled from the chains of hate, so free of pain, so-
Beautiful, Yuri thinks before he can stop himself, but swallows down the thought before it becomes something more, and instead turns back to where the half-molded pot has been spinning, letting the ache in his chest grow.
October, 2007
Just like always, the door farthest from Yuri in the art room opening is no unfamiliarity. But, Yuri has taken to noticing when someone comes in silently after school hours, which is much less frequent.
So, he glances up to look through the window of the separate room in the studio and—because the universe is nothing if not a torturer—sees him. He’s leaning against the door, eyes closed and taking deep breaths, seemingly unaware of the other presence in the room. He rubs his face with both hands and lets out an exasperated sigh, and Yuri gets why. He might not be close with Wally and Rhonda, but he knows they can be…a lot.
The half-thrown pot breaks under his hands—again, god he needs to control himself—and he looks back down at the wheel. He hears a few footsteps and expects a sound of acknowledgment like there usually is when someone realizes they aren’t alone in the room, but gets nothing. Glancing back up at the boy, he’s turned away from Yuri and is pondering the paintings hung up on the wall.
The school keeps a couple of walls in the art room dedicated to the paintings that win school awards; it’s been a thing since Yuri was alive where there’s a district-wide prompt art contest every year and the winning piece is hung up in the winning school. Split River’s won plenty of times over the course of the thirty-odd years it’s been happening.
Yuri’s done some inspecting of them himself; they’re all very good, and there’s a wide range of styles it covers. Sculptures, paintings, watercolors, realism, and so on have all won before. He almost tried out himself once, but chickened out at the last second at the thought of everyone seeing him and his art.
It’s a vulnerable part of him, and always has been. It’s his escape and his haven and, of course, what he would want to do for eternity if given the chance to choose.
The boy takes a few steps forward, examining each of the pieces with thorough interest. He looks somewhat artistic himself, so he might very well be criticizing the art as well as inspecting it. Yuri lets his thoughts trail off for a moment; thinks about how the boy’s hands and forearms would look coated with the clay slurry Yuri is so familiar with. Ponders the image of Yuri’s hands placed over his, chest pressed to his back, warm and real and almost alive, hands molding and delicate. Wonders what the boy’s hands feel like-
He winces at the thought, realizing where his mind had gone. He needs to control himself.
Yuri brings himself back to the present when the boy stops his slow walk, settling in front of a painting and staring directly at it. It’s a large watercolor, abstract and almost surreal, of seemingly a figure drawn in a mix of lines and colors being covered and drawn in by a soft composition of reds and blues. The figure seems simply human, in normal clothing, wearing glasses, with what looks like some sort of bracelet around the left wrist.
It was the 1995 winner, painted by—if Yuri’s memory serves him right—Emilio something. The prompt was ‘Heaven’.
The boy looks down at his wrist and Yuri’s gaze follows. His hands are shaking, and Yuri notices for the first time the—the bracelet around his wrist: a worn thing, probably handmade with love. And it clicks.
Yuri looks back and forth from the painting and the boy and—oh.
He watches as the boy removes his glasses to wipe tears from his eyes, and he tries to take a deep breath but fails, breath shaking. He presses the back of his hand against his mouth and tries to compose himself. And, for the second time, Yuri just watches.
Except, this time, he actually can comfort him. He can reach out, break the oath he made decades ago, step out of his shell for the first time in years and help someone in the process.
But he doesn’t.
The boy puts his glasses back on and finally breathes correctly, then turns and walks back out of the room without even a breath in Yuri’s direction.
The ache in his chest is becoming unbearable.
April, 2017
Can you miss someone you’ve never actually met?
Yes, apparently. The only image Yuri’s had of the boy in years is from the painting Emilio made. That boy won’t meet his eyes either.
Yuri’s ribs are cracking.
February, 2024
Thank god, they finally left. Yuri has no idea who that new girl is, but she seems to be close with the others already. And at some point she said something about someone running around in her body? Yuri was distracted by him again. Except now, he has a name.
If we’re doing charades, I call Charley, was what Rhonda had said, and Yuri felt his breath snag in his chest for a second, mingling with the ache that’s been residing there for decades. Charley. He wants to repeat the name in his mind like a prayer.
But now, Rhonda, Wally, and the new girl are gone, which leaves him alone with the boy—Charley—who seems to be having a blast inspecting all the works on the shelves.
“This class could seriously clean up on Etsy,” whatever that is, “I mean, if this had a brim, I’d wear it.” Then Charley picks up a small red pot from the shelf and holds it on his head like it’s a hat, strutting slightly in place in a way that makes Yuri have to bite on his tongue not to laugh.
Charley’s what he’s been for years: cute, breathtaking (hardy fucking har), and just…enticing. Intriguing. Fascinating.
So, without much thought or internal warning, Yuri does something he hasn’t done in years, yet has been keeping himself from doing for even longer. “Janet made that one.”
Charley turns, surprised, and finally, finally meets his eyes.
And the ache in Yuri’s chest dissipates, instead replaced by something new. Life.
Love.