A Melancholy Overture

         Seamus picked carefully at the wrapping, trying not to rip the glossy, golden paper (as well as avoid the sound of said paper being torn, because that sound rather unnerved him). The gift was just so gorgeous that he hardly wanted to open it. However, gifts were meant to be opened, so he proceeded with the diligent unraveling of what awaited beneath the golden covering.
         “Just open the damned thing.” The giver of the gift grunted from across the counter. The man was tall and gruff, and his body seemed to be solely comprised of perfectly-cut geometric shapes.
         Seamus ignored his input, carefully placing the (unscathed) paper aside, and admired the plain, slightly damaged, white box before him. In his head, a guessing game was taking way, and he quietly based his speculations on the size and weight of the package. But before he could propose a guess, his friend placed a large, callous hand on the lid, in an obvious threat to open it himself if Seamus did not speed up the process.
         Seamus pawed his hand away, snuffing a barely audible “Fine”. He closed his eyes and, still quite slowly, removed the top of the box. The man across the counter had, by now, grown quite impatient, snatched up the box, and dumped the contents onto the tabletop. Seamus opened an eye and, for a moment, considered glaring at Jom for ruining his fun. However, with one glance at what lay on the table before him, all thoughts of doing anything short of hugging Jom vanished.
         He held up the solid purple necktie, and flashed his friend a positively pearly grin. He had been mumbling under his breath about needing a nice tie for quite some time now. Although he certainly never made it a point to anyone else, as it was just a kind of note-to-self-you-need-to-get-this-fucking-done sort of mumbling. It was the holidays, and he just hadn’t had time to do anything for himself lately, what with all the people coming in to purchase last-minute pies for family gatherings after they ran short on time to cook something themselves. Seamus couldn’t help but think it sweet that Jom had been keeping an open ear for gift ideas.
         “Listen, I know purple is my favorite color, but I just figured it would go nicely with that frumpy… yellow thing you always wear.” Jom was, of course, referring to the frayed, sunshine-yellow blazer that Seamus did indeed always seem to be wearing (or at least have multiples of).
         “It’s perfect!” Seamus beamed, while in the midst of making a sorry attempt at knotting his gift around his neck. “Er… can you help?” he muttered with a glance at his feet.
         Rolling his eyes and tossing a tiny smile at his flailing friend, Jom jumped atop the counter and pulled Seamus closer. He smoothed the tie slowly against his friend’s chest, attempting to flatten out the mess of wrinkles made by the previous struggle to knot it. Jom’s bear-like hands worked swift and delicately, looping and pulling. He executed his mission quickly, but his hands still held on to the violet silk some moments after it had been successfully knotted. Jom breathed in that sweet, fresh-bread smell that constantly lingered on his friend, and Seamus remained unaware of the gesture, attention trapped by the angry red row of incisions that lined Jom’s inner arm. They leered up at him, and seemed to be hissing that he was somehow at fault; that he was the cause of them. He jerked away from Jom, shaking his head faintly.
         Jom seemed shaken, afraid that his closeness had made Seamus uneasy, and that it was what caused him to withdraw. He began to murmur an apology, but it went unnoticed as Seamus began making a show of admiring his new gift. Jom frowned at this. Seamus was acting as if it hadn’t happened, and Jom thought sorrowfully of how he would prefer the situation to be slightly awkward rather than ignored completely.
         Meanwhile, Seamus was busy trying to erase the image of those sickeningly parallel notches from his mind, once again blinded to the pain of his friend, by the pain of his friend.




         This happened often, and neither of them had yet realized it. They were potentially happy together, potentially made for each other. But the saddening thing was, Seamus spent so much time worrying about Jom’s suffering that he never realized that it was this constant fear of his friend being unhappy that caused his friend’s unhappiness. In some way or another, things always seemed to work themselves out in just the wrong way. Jom would get close, and Seamus would see his scars, pulling away, feeling guilty that he could not do anything to prevent those scars. However, because Seamus was always so caught up in worrying about where he went wrong and how to fix it, Jom would be worrying that Seamus simply didn’t want to have him in that way, and this would be the seed of more scars sprouting up along his arms. It was a terrible, vicious cycle, and there seemed to be no ending- nonetheless a happy ending.