Following a ghost through the damp streets of this town under nothing but moonlight was epiphany and surrealism rolled into one.

Lennon resented the part of him that brimmed with curiosity, the part of him that always had too much to ask. And though he knew the ravenhead would never complain about his endless chatter, now didn't seem like the time. So he pulled his jacket closer and pursed his lips, trailing behind Kieran.

Kieran pretended to brisk along the pavements with ease, though his expression remained stony and he didn't dare spare the chestnut boy a glance. He couldn't stand to see the shine of dried tear tracks on Lennon's cheeks under the streetlamps, knowing that he was the cause of it. Instead he relied on the boy's cautious footsteps to reassure himself that Lennon was following closely behind.

After minutes and minutes of stretched silence, Kieran finally stopped in front of a building with two pillars guarding the entrance and an archway that presented the name Curtain Call Studios, the Cs and S overlapping in excessive cursive. Puffing out a quiet sigh, he turned to Lennon.

The boy gawked at him with the biggest eyes Kieran had ever seen on him, twiddling with his fingers.

Smile surfacing despite the burden in his chest, the ravenhead gestured him to come closer before planting a kiss on Lennon's forehead. "Go ahead," he said, reading his mind, "Ask."

"Where are we?" Lennon blurted, eyes darting in all directions before settling on Kieran again, "What are we doing here, Kier? Did something bad happen? I noticed— I noticed how tense you were." He gripped his backpack strap more securely and wished it was the ravenhead's hand he was gripping onto instead.

Kieran blinked. Oh. Guess he wasn't as subtle as he thought he was.

"I'm okay," he reassured, "Just a little shaken."

"Why?" Lennon frowned, worry clouding his irises.

The Adam's apple in his throat bobbed nervously as he brushed his transparent fingers against the boy's. "I want you to know every part of me. Want you to know that I value you even if I can't stick around to show it," he whispered. His voice was soft, yet it held so much gravity. He paused briefly. "I used to dance here."

Lennon's lips parted with a gentle oh, mind flashing back to the time when Kieran could barely offer him his name. Now he offered the most important aspects of himself, the most vulnerable parts.

Another troubled exhale. "I remember it all now," the ravenhead continued, "I fought so hard for a spot in this studio." There was a tint of sadness in his words. Like recollecting his memories has finally allowed him to mourn all the things he had lost. "It's all gone now. None of it exists."

"I'm sorry," the chestnut boy murmured by his ear, sensing Kieran's need for closeness. His hand was raised with visible hesitance, palm open and welcoming. The ravenhead leaned his cheek into it immediately.

"Autumn laughed at me when I told them I was a ballet and contemporary dancer," Kieran continued with a pained chuckle, "Said that the discipline I underwent during my training must've came crashing back down on me, hence the drastic change of personality when I first woke." He shrugged when he noticed the question in Lennon's dark eyes. "I wish they were joking. But it made sense. I was so disciplined and routine-bound— of course a change as big as my parents' divorce tipped me over."

Lennon watched Kieran swallow the lump in his throat before he continued.

"It's heavy, Len," he muttered, words coming out punctured like bullets ripping through his chest, "This feeling that I know everything of the old me and nothing at all. Like I'm trying to gather all these memories and sort out all its timelines and cause and effects." Kieran looked at the chestnut boy sadly.

Whenever Lennon felt the craving of touching the ravenhead, it had always been about communicating affection. And it still was. But there was something more to it now.

Kieran, in all this transparentness, was like glass. His skin was brittle and see-through. And with the sadness of his glossy eyes and the wobble of his lips, Lennon could see the cracks that ran along his cold veins, held together so tight those cracks were pressed into the thinnest of lines.

Lennon wanted to touch him, embrace him— tuck him into his arms in a way that allowed Kieran to let go, to stop holding himself together unceasingly.

"I wish I was there for you then," he said, so full of regret over something he couldn't control.

Kieran smiled slightly, cheek against his palm still. "You can't save everyone."

"No, just wanted to save you."

The tips of Kieran's hair flicked across his forehead when he shook his head in fond disbelief. If he could store all of Lennon's sweet words in a bottle to keep, he would.

"Lennon." Suddenly his eyes were sparkling, life igniting in his dark irises like his youth was reborn. "Remember the first theater across town? Remember when you were willing to break the law to come with me?"

Lennon scoffed, grinning. "The things I did to be close to you."

"Are you willing to do it again?"

He got a sly smile in return. "Where's the lowest window?"

The studio was just as he left it all those months ago— the mirror reaching from floor to ceiling, handrails along the walls and hardwood. Kieran grazed it with the pad of a finger and suddenly he was a tween again, working on his first plies and releves on inexperienced feet.

"I slept here," he realized, "The few months before I died, I practiced and I ate and I slept here."

Lennon appeared next to him, fingers curling around part of the rail next to the ravenhead's hand. "Why?"

"To disappear."

There's something so awful about that revaluation. His past want to disappear had come true in an unimaginable form. He was a ghost now. A shell of a man. Invisible to everyone but this boy.

"Didn't have to deal with my sister showing up at my apartment to ask if I'm okay after my parents separated, or just anyone or anything that could've distracted me from dance." A void chuckle pushed past his colorless lips. "Funny how I used to think dance was my coping mechanism. Now I see that it was the avoidance itself." It was strange, having to pick apart the strands of his past like this. But at least having Lennon's gaze on him made him feel like something close to a feather.

"Does it scare you now?" the boy asked, tongue poked against the inside of his cheek.

"What?"

"Dancing."

Kieran nodded solemnly, but his next sentence contrasted his crippling fear. "I want to dance for you."

Lennon blinked rapidly, caught off guard. "But—"

An index finger was pressed against his lips and a blush colored his freckled cheeks instantly. Kieran's stern look broke apart when he realized how flustered Lennon got over that one little gesture, grinning almost coyly.

"You practically committed a second break-in to be here with me. Please, let me do this for you."

"But I know how hard it is for you, Kier. I can't ask you to do this just days after finding out about your parents' divorce and the reasoning behind your death and— and all that you've suffered through..." Lennon protested, even with Kieran's finger trying to silence him. He'd always had trouble keeping his lips zipped anyway.

"It is hard. And that's precisely why I want to do this." The ravenhead tilted his head back and laughed, partly in amusement and partly in incredulity. "Lennon," he said, surging forward until their foreheads were just an inch apart, "I can do anything when I'm with you, do you understand? I'm so scared, Len, but I'm willing to try."

Heart hammering under his ribcage, Lennon channeled all his pride and love into his returning gaze. Kieran may possibly be the one entity in his lifetime to ever leave him wordless.

"In some— sick, twisted way, Len, I'm glad I am where I am today. In this state, in all this chaos. I found you. And you make me feel things I never got to feel even when I was alive. I'm— I'm the luckiest dead person ever."

A short-lived giggle spilled out of Lennon's lips, hand coming up to cover his face.

"I'm serious!" Kieran exclaimed like he was offended.

"Okay, okay!"

"Now give me your laptop," the ravenhead demanded with a half-grin. But he failed to mask the slight waver in his voice.

Lennon knelt on the floor and dug through his backpack for the laptop Kieran had asked him to bring. There were speakers in the room, but neither of them bothered. The ravenhead searched for a song from the internet.

Music began to spill through the tiny speakers and Kieran breathed in deeply as if soaking in the first few piano notes. "My parents used to play this song around the house— well, at least when I was still there," he murmured, "My dad used to call it their love song, and truthfully, I really thought they were so in love."

Lennon bit the inside of his cheek.

Not all love lasts.

Kieran took off his shoes and stood, leaving Lennon on the floor, knees tucked into his chest. The ravenhead raised his arms gracefully, and for a few seconds, Lennon drank in the elegance of his pose and both the determination and the discomfort on his features.

The vibrant, sensuous sound of a violin intertwined with the piano, pulling at the chestnut boy's heartstrings.

Oh. This was actually happening.

Qīn'ài de nǐ duǒ zài nǎlǐ fādāi

Lennon blinked, realizing that the song was in Kieran's mother tongue. And he may not understand the language, but his heart leaped at the intimacy it conveyed— another personal layer of the ravenhead unveiled.

yǒu shé me xīnshì hái wúfǎ shìhuái

The ravenhead hadn't moved, eyes screwed shut and breathing labored. And for a moment, Lennon couldn't push down the concern rising in his throat, getting to his feet. He hated seeing him struggle like this. But his words retreated from his tongue when Kieran took a single step forward.

wǒmen zǒng bǎ rénshēng xiǎng dé tài huài

A hundred technical terms raced through Kieran's mind. Every jump, every twirl he had ever tempted in his past life came raining down on him. Assemblé, Grande Jeté, Plié, Pirouette, Tour en l'air—

He let the first verse float by.

què wúfǎ xíguàn bèi yīlài

And when the first sentence of the chorus came, he burst into a fury of motion. His eyes were shut, as if he was at the height of the rollercoaster drop, the grandest crescendo of an orchestra, when all it was was the gentle tapping of a piano.

Then he stumbled over his own feet.

Eyes flying open, he braced himself for the floor with his teeth gritted. And he may not be able to feel physical pain, but the dent in his pride was enough to have him kneeling at the universe's feet.

Why? The same thoughts recycled in his mind. Why me? Why make me go through this?

"Oh Kier."

Kieran looked up, meeting the image of Lennon crouching in front of him. The boy had his hands raised like he wanted to tend to Kieran's invisible injuries.

They made eye contact.

"I feel so— so pathetic," Kieran agonized, shoulders slumping.

"Oh Kier," Lennon echoed. He kissed his ebony hair.

"What if I'm too late? What if I can't dance anymore?" he quavered, vision blurring.

"You can." Lennon tried and failed to tug at the ravenhead's turtleneck collar. Right, they couldn't touch. "Kieran I need you to look at me."

So he did.

"I saw you on stage once," the chestnut boy said, thunder in his words, "I didn't even know your name, Kieran! But I saw it in you then— all your passion and potential, and I still see it in you now." He cupped the sides of Kieran's neck sternly. "Get up. Try again."

The ravenhead gulped, dipping his head in a quick nod.

"Don't think. Don't try to impress me. Don't try to make it perfect. Just make it yours."

Kieran was nodding more ferociously now. "Mine. No one can take it away from me."

"Precisely." The subtle upward quirk of his mouth told him Lennon was smothering a prideful smile.

With boulders and boulders of weight piled onto his back, Kieran got up on shaky legs, keeping his gaze aimed at Lennon. "I can do anything with you," he mouthed, all air no sound.

He flexed his fingers and straightened his back, letting the second verse of the song trickle down his spine, soothe the tension in his muscles and the storm in his head.

And he restarted.

It was tricky at first, but slowly, surely, Lennon could see his gestures becoming less rigid, binding with the slow instrumental.

hǎo dānxīn méi rén dǒng nǐ de wúnài
líkāi wǒ shuí hái bǎ nǐ dāng xiǎohái

There was something so quietly powerful about Kieran when he danced. The music may be the blueprint, but he glided across the floor like he was the creator of it all. Painting pictures with every swoop of an arm, gentle rhythm under his toes. His eyes were closed, but he moved as if he could see the sound waves in the air and seize them, twisting and bending them into all shapes and colors. Everything within the studio space belonged to him. The way he moved was hypnotizing, mystical in its cohesiveness and vibrancy.

Kieran's eyelids fluttered open, finding Lennon's stare and suddenly Lennon was reminded that this was all for him.

yě pà wǒ shīluò zài mángmáng rén hǎi wú

"I know you're scared you'll lose me," the ravenhead recited, voice just hovering above the music as he reached for Lennon, "in this sea of people."

It took the chestnut boy a second to realize he was translating the lyrics for him.

méiguānxì zhǐyào nǐ kěn huítóu wàng

Kieran twirled slowly around the boy, Lennon following to face him. "But it's okay. If you look back—"

huì fāxiàn wǒ yīzhí dōu zài

Their chests aligned.

"—You'll find that I'm always with you."

The back of Lennon's eyes pricked with the sensation of tears. There was something so deeply resonating about Kieran's breathy voice.

nǐ gěi wǒ zhè yībèizi dōu bùxiǎng shī lián de ài

"You give me a love I never want to lose in this lifetime," Kieran whispered tenderly, words fanning against the boy's cheek.

nǐ de měi tiáo xùnxí dōu shì xīntiào jiépāi

"Every message of yours is a heartbeat."

měi miǎo dōu xiǎng yōng nǐ rù huái

"And every second I want to hold you in my arms."

Lennon wrapped his arms around the ravenhead's neck in response, holding them there, knowing he had no leverage. Kieran seemed too much in a daze to continue, eyes unfocused, running over every crevice of the boy's face as his own arms circled the boy's waist.

Gradually everything was reduced to the gentle rhythm of their bodies moving together, a sheen of unshed tears at the corners of both their eyes, even as the music slowed to a halt.

Kieran felt whole, complete, renewed. The former heaviness in his chest was replaced with an unimaginable airiness.

"We should do this more often," the angel in his arms chirped.

"Dates?"

Lennon giggled, heat rising in his cheeks. "Serious question, Kier, is anything we do considered dates?"

"What do you mean?"

"Cause we're not... you know, even if we're not... dating technically? Cause... I'm sorry."

Despite everything, the ravenhead didn't feel his heart sink. "Cause we can't?"

"Cause I can't," the boy clarified, a layer of sadness engulfing his voice. He avoided his eyes, immensely apologetic. "Cause I can't commit to someone I know I'd lose. Cause—"

"I understand. I do," Kieran interjected, fighting to keep the light in his smile. He batted his eyelashes extravagantly. "More than platonic hang out sessions?"

Lennon scoffed, but didn't get the window of opportunity to answer before his ringtone cut him off. He groaned, reaching into his pocket and silencing the call. "It's probably work. I'll get to it later."

"So I'm more important than work?" Kieran remarked before wagging a finger in the boy's face, "That's not very platonic of you."

He jerked back to escape Lennon's playful smack, even with the knowledge that his hand would whip right through him.

"Uh huh, said the guy who slept in my bed!"

"You initiated it!"

They laughed.

They laughed and they laughed and they lived.

"I'm really proud of you," Lennon told him once the teasing had died down and he gathered his things, "I've never seen anything like it, the way you dance. Wish I could photograph you so bad. I know I told you not to worry about being perfect but Kieran holy— it was perfect and you're beyond incredible."

"I don't care what path you choose going forward, even if I'm not in it. But that is how much you mean to me, darling." He stared at Lennon pointedly, watching the flush spread across his freckles. "Remember it."

Love exists in many complicated forms. Theirs was no different— limited, overwhelming, and teetering on every line that could've been crossed.

But it was real and it was present all the same.