Everyday he’d come to me. There wasn’t really an explanation for that. I’d ask him and he’d shrug limply. He was so tense yet his body was so tired at the same time. We lived right next to each other. One day he knocked on the door and when I opened it Key’s body fell right into my arms. I panicked. My parents weren’t home. I didn’t know what to do. Then he told me to not call anybody. Though I was very perplexed, I did as I was told because the desperation in his eyes was hard to ignore. I didn’t know what he wanted. I don’t really think he wanted anything. Maybe he just needed to… be somewhere other than home.

     Key started coming over three days a week and then he just started coming over every day. He never said anything but the occurrences going on at his own home but they were not very hard to infer when very little to no words were said. He’d have bruises on every part of his body. One or sometimes both of his eyes would be swollen. His lip would be split and sometimes fresh blood would still be running down from the cut. His entire body would be trembling.

     The first time I heard Key’s voice loud and clear made my heart jump in surprise. It was silky and deep. It was beautiful. He only asked me for a glass of water. After his thirst was quenched he fell asleep at the dinner table. I carried him into my room and let him sleep on my bed. He curled up into a ball and shivered. I wrapped a blanket around him but he still shivered so I got in bed with him and pulled him into an embrace. We literally spent two days like that.

     The first time Key told me about his family my heart shattered. Key’s mother had left. Just left. She left Key to deal with an abusive father who beat him unrelentingly and when his mother was present his father had beaten her as well. Key was a thin, weak and fragile boy. He had obviously been beaten since he was only very young. At that moment I hugged him and he would silently refuse to let go when I tried to pull away by clinging to my shirt.

     My parents came back from their separate business trips. They accepted Key willingly and whole-heartedly. My parents only stayed for a full week and then left again for their jobs and their business trips that last months.

     Key told me that he was in all of my classes at school. I hadn’t noticed. He was merely a shadow at the corner of the classroom. He would never speak or contribute. I had never noticed him enter or depart the classroom. A beautiful, loud voice was still waiting to be let out from his throat and his heart was still yet to be let out of its cage. I just didn’t know how to free them.

     I had fed him, bathed him, tried to initiate long conversations with him but none of that had worked. I didn’t know what to do.

     One day he didn’t come over. Nor did he come the next day. Nor did he come the next day either. He didn’t come over for a month straight. I always waited out on the front porch for his shadowy figure to appear and fall into my arms so I could give him warmth; give him safety. I waited for hours, days then weeks. He didn’t come.

     When he did finally come he was completely fine. He wasn’t wounded but his skin was as pale as clean, white bed sheets and he was so thin. I fed him. Then I bathed him and put him to bed. As I walked away his fingers clung to my shirt. He forced me into bed with him and I got underneath the covers willingly and without reluctance. He rested his head on my shoulder and I wrapped my arms around him. He was so cold. So thin. So fragile. So beautiful.  

     We both stayed in bed until late in the afternoon the next day.

     “I feel like a flower. And you’re the water and sunlight that’s helping me blossom,” he said so softly and so delicately.

     “You’re going to be a beautiful flower,” I whispered to him. I really could’ve said something better but that’s all I could say to him because even when he was a seed I knew he would blossom into a beautiful, sturdy flower.

     “But flowers wilt,” Key muttered sadly.

     “Then you’re not a flower,” I replied softly like he was just so fragile that anything loud would startle him and make his innocent heart crawl back into its cage. “Let’s say… You’re like a ship.”

     Key laughs. He actually laughs. It’s faint but it’s a laugh—a chuckle. It’s a beautiful sound. I chuckle too. “Let’s say you’re a special ship sailing across the ocean. You went through the storm, got tossed and turned, got thrown off course but…”

     “But…?” he urges the rest of it out of me but I was still contemplating.

     “…But in the end you still reach your destination,” I concluded.  

     “But what if I get ship-wrecked on an abandoned island?” he asks cleverly.

     “You can’t,” I reply.

     “Why?” he asks.

     “Because I won’t let you,” I tell him unwaveringly.  

     “But you can’t decide where the water’s going to take me. The water’s like fate. You can’t predict where it’s going to take you,” Key explains and clings tighter to me.

      “Then… The water—fate—has already led you to your destination,” I tell him while brushing loose strands of his hair that covers his face.

     He snorts. “Where is that?”

     “To me,” I answer and kiss him tenderly on the forehead.

     He doesn’t do anything else after that except tighten his grip on me. We didn’t get out of bed again. We watched through the window as the sun went down and the moon rose, bright and full.

     “You’re the moon,” he said softly as I was just about to drift to sleep. “You’re the big bright moon that led me through the darkness…” He shifted and crawled up the bed to kiss me on the lips. “And into your arms.”

Fin.

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A/N:

Oh my gat is this romance and a ton of clichéd metaphors I see?

I hope you all enjoyed all this mushy romantic mush I've left here. I really like it so...Yes, enjoy it and love it ^^;;

As usual, grammar, punctuation and spelling mistakes are to be ignored... Unless you want to point them out to me so I can fix them then go ahead, I'm not stopping you \O/

Comments are loved <3