#and also mari and tika please don't hit me with la chancla okay

[smolfangirl]

Please don’t ever become a stranger whose laugh I could recognize anywhere

A sound so sweet of you and me - 14 - First goodbye

Word count: 2.2k

Since Tumblr mobile is messing around since the update, I tried to fix this but as long as support doesn’t help, I decided to not give a duck and post this anyway. I’m sorry to clog your dashboards, but welp, I tried to avoid it. And I’m really sorry for the new, non-matching structure of the chapter...

///

“How many minutes until we definitely have to get up?”

Her hand rested on his chest, drew traces and lines that formed letters confessing her love. Matteo reached out for his phone, half smirking at the groan Luna produced as he shifted.

“One hour won’t hurt.”

“That’s a lot of time…” Her voice trailed off. The sun already sneaked through his curtains, it hit her eyes and painted them into an emerald sea.

“You say that like you already have an idea on how to spend it”, he echoed, smiling at the kiss she planted to his cheek. Luna chuckled, even more at his surprised moan when she lifted herself up to settle down on his lap. “I might.”

One kiss. A second. Third.

“A very good idea”, he said after she broke away for a moment. Nodding, her fingers followed the trails of his cheekbones down to his collarbones. “I think I’ll give you a small gift before you go.”

Matteo frowned, not sure what she meant – she’d already given him a little photo album of their time together on the goodbye party two days ago.

It’d been a surprise for him, and his first goodbye party at that, which provoked tears all too easily. Luna sniffed too at some point into the evening, while Gastón outright looked like he attended a funeral. Matteo enjoyed the party though. It warmed his heart to know he’d be missed. And after midnight, they sneaked away from their friends to watch the night sky and kiss the last breaths out of their lungs. He had tried not to cry, not to think of where he’d be in barely three days and where he wanted to stay.

He almost had succeeded.

Now, he still wondered what Luna could get him. “What do you have in… oh.”

He closed his eyes.

///

One hour and a quick shower later, Matteo stared at the purple masterpiece spreading on his neck. “You really gave your all, huh?” he asked a smug Luna entering the bathroom.

“Of course. Only the best for my astronaut.” Wrapping her arms around his waist, she watched him doing his hair. “Hey, can I have that t-shirt you wore before we went to bed yesterday?”

“What if I need it in Italy?”

“You said it’s winter there, you won’t need t-shirts.”

He shook his head, simultaneously checking the mirror to see if his hair stayed in place. “But you do?” She loosened her grip while he grabbed the remaining toiletries and threw them into his opened suitcase. “Can you give me that towel?”

With a pout, she handed it over. “Of course I need t-shirts. Especially the ones that smell like my boyfriend and are way too big.” He trailed behind her as she walked back into his bedroom, hips swinging and reminding him she only wore one of his shirts and underwear, and he really, really wanted to dread going to the airport.

But they were out of time, although they pretended the opposite with their banter.

“And why don’t you just buy them?”

“Oh, right, okay, I will get them right when I go shopping for a new boyfriend”, she said, laughing. If he listened closely, it sounded different, not half as joyful as usual.

A knot appeared in his throat, or what felt like a stone wearing his voice down. This sorrow clouding her mind wore a name, his name when he had claimed to never cause her any harm.

Matteo cleared his throat.

It wasn’t his fault, he told himself, it was a matter out of his hands. So, instead of apologizing, he pulled her close to let her get a taste of where he’d go to keep her by his side. “On second thought, you can have the shirt.”

“Awesome.” Her voice sounded like she almost meant it.

///

His legs got heavier with every step further down the stairs. Every step could be a last one, and the echo from Luna’s feet told him she said goodbye too. Just in case.

With a few hours left till take-off, his parents still kept them in the dark about a possible return to Buenos Aires. Whether it’d be the worst case or only a few weeks of vacations, Matteo had grown eager to know. Saying his farewells to his friends – and Luna especially – without knowing how long it’d take him to come back damn near killed him.

Not that his parents seemed to care.

When Matteo and Luna walked into the living room, his suitcase neatly stored in the hallway, the swing their mood completed could have won an Olympic gold medal.

Everything about his parents screamed stress. His mom hurried through the house, packing their last belongings and throwing angry glares at whoever stood in her way. Meanwhile, his dad began one phone call after another, sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in Italian. Once an angry mix of both.

A silent sigh on his lips, Matteo waved Luna over to the couch. From his experience, there was nothing left for him to be done, so they might as well get the most out of the mere two hours remaining on the clock.

Luna curled up next to him. Buried her head in his shoulders, hand stroking his stomach. With closed eyes, he saved the sensation in his heart. Who knew how long it had to last him…

“Are you coming to the airport too?” His dad threw them an impatient look, finger tapping on the back of his phone. As he spotted Matteo’s hickey, his eyebrows raised too.

“Yes, I’d love to bring”, Luna began but he cut her off. “Okay.”

Then he yelled at another poor person at the end of the line.

Matteo slightly shrugged at his little moon before he gently kissed her forehead. She smiled. Soon his parents faded into a minor detail in his perception, meaningless over the sweet encouragements and love confessions she whispered into his ear. He replied with more kisses. Her hands, neck, face… wherever he could reach her. Not one part of her body should be left without knowing how much he adored her.

“Matteo! Stop being glued to her for one second and help me!” his mom shouted out of the kitchen. Before he got up, Luna threw him an apologetic look. Matteo shrugged once more. To be honest, just her presence eased this loaded atmosphere his parents radiated.

///

As soon as they sat in the car, a sickness moved into his stomach pit, one that couldn’t be fought with one of his mom’s pills. Not with being close to Luna either.

She chose the middle seat, so she was closer to him, and their hands intertwined the very second they put the seatbelts on. Yet it didn’t feel like enough, he craved to be buried by everything her one last time, like a junkie searching for one last hit before going into rehab.

But Matteo knew he had to be satisfied with what he had now, despite the desperation in his heart that ran as deep as the ocean.

Every attempt to not think about leaving her only caused him to think about it more. Before he met her, his grudge about moving steamed from a general frustration. Over having no say in his life, over having to adapt to yet another city, another language, another life without any other options.

Now it was so much more pain than just being fed up with changes.

Now he wished he could chain himself to his little moon, so his parents had no choice but to leave him with her.

Instead, Matteo had no choice but to leave her.

///

“Come back, okay?”

Two meters till they hit the queue for the security check. Luna clung to his side like she counted as a handbag if she just pressed herself close enough to him. Matteo knew he needed to let her go, his dad already warned him with his gaze.

Yet he lacked the strength to.

“There isn’t a world where I wouldn’t”, he promised. Stealing a kiss from her mouth, he couldn’t stop dreading the inevitable. “I love you. We’ll make this work.”

She stood on her toes, reached for his lips, a bittersweet peck, before she tousled through his curls. The smirk she attempted nearly worked out. “I love you more.”

“Doubt it”, he countered while he repaid her the messy hair favor.

His mom cleared her throat, an impatient click of the tongue ensued. Luna glimpsed at his parents. Looked back at him. The shimmering teardrops in her eyes stole his breath, crushed his heart.

“Don’t make me fight you”, she mumbled, a weak try of a smile on her lips. Sadness leaked into her tone in the same pace it spread all through Matteo’s chest.

“You wouldn’t. Not today.”

“Matteo”, his dad snapped. But he focused on Luna, his moon and stars, the fixpoint his life revolved around. One last time, he traced the soft skin on her cheek with his thumb, watched her eyes flutter shut at his touch.

“Chico fresa?”

“Yeah?”

A green sea in which he discovered himself, just to get lost again.

“I think you should go now.” The end of her sentence faded into the last breaths of air they shared.

“You’re right”, he admitted as much as he hated to. A hug, another kiss. The last one.

“I love you.”

“I love you more.”

///

While Matteo waited in line, Luna never left her place in the terminal, as close to him as the glass walls separating them allowed. She wiped her tears away whenever his gaze strayed from her for a moment, but in the endless stream of her grief, she drowned again before her hand even sank to her side.

When he disappeared out of her vision, a pained smile on his face, she wondered how she had grown so attached to what used to be a stranger twelve months ago. And how her heart could hurt so much without ever being broken.

///

Novia delivery: Have a safe flight! And text me when you landed

To novia delivery: Thank you, solare, you’ll be the first to hear from me

             And thanks for coming with us

Novia delivery: Always ♥ Is your dad mad at you? Bc of our goodbye?

To novia delivery: Not more than usual, don’t worry solare

Novia delivery: I miss you

To novia delivery: I miss you too

///

Gastón called ten minutes before boarding started. Matteo was standing by the windows, staring at the incoming flights and wishing he sat in one of them.

As he picked up, he hoped his voice wouldn’t reflect exactly how miserable he felt.

“Hey.”

At the sigh that followed, he must’ve sound as if he walked the edge to a mental breakdown. “You’re already at the gate?”

“Yeah.”

“Have a good flight, okay? And message me when you’re there, I wanna know you got there safely. And try to sleep on the plane or watch some movies and tell me if I should get any of them on DVD. Where do you sit? Nina said in the front is safer in case something happens. Not that I hope anything will happen, I’m counting on you to be back for the last school year, okay?”

His best friend’s ramble finally elicited a chuckle from him. When they moved to Buenos Aires, Matteo never thought he’d find a friend who worried enough to call him before take-off. Or a soulmate, and most definitely not two of them. Still, here he stood, heart swollen from all this love and bittersweet homesickness.

“Take a breath”, he told Gastón (and himself), chuckling, “will you? You’re worse than Luna.”

“Good. That is my job as your soulmate.”

“She is too, remember?”

His best friend snorted, not a surprise as this was a nerve Matteo could always hit if he wanted to get some payback for a particularly stupid pun. “Details. I am your better soulmate either way and you can bet your cute little ass I won’t let you forget that.”

Before the comeback sitting on the tip of his tongue could slip out, his mom motioned him to walk back to her. Matteo sighed. “I have to go, but don’t think this means I agree with you. Except for my cute ass.”

Something along like “Buzzkill” reached him from the other side of the phone. “Whatever. Have a nice flight, love you.”

“Love you too”, Matteo replied. Then the line went dead.

///

Underneath him, the houses shrunk to the size of Lego pieces. Cars first resembled the toy ones from his childhood before they transformed into moving pinpoints on blurred lines.

Somewhere down there, Luna walked the streets, perhaps staring at the sky, perhaps spotting this very plane, thinking of him. Somewhere down there, a piece of his heart remained, tied to the people and places he loved.

Somewhere on the other side of the ocean, there was a place his parents called home. But it wasn’t Matteo’s home no more, no matter whether he returned to Argentina for the new school year or not. Whether his parents accepted it or not.

Home was in Buenos Aires now, and with the sight of it vanishing, homesickness hit him. And he knew it would stay by his side until he came back.