Time Retrieving, 1-hour-story

He shouldn’t have favorites, and at this point it can’t be said he does.
The door opens seven seconds after he knocks, and he knows it because he can hear the ticking echoing inside his ears, as if the clock weren’t on his pocket but on his brain. He tries to ignore it, to tune it out although impossible, when he tilts his head in greeting at the person who stares at him with toast on his right hand, green and blue eyes blinking in wonder before snapping into recognition, and he can see the moment it all falls into place in such an easy going fashion it’s almost painful to see the person grinning back at him.
“Ah, so soon, this time?”
“Once, you didn’t make it to five”
The guy barks a laugh, dimples dancing waltz at its’ rhythm with a toothy smile that shouldn’t, given the circumstances, be that amused. There are many things, given the circumstances, that guy shouldn’t be doing; he shouldn’t be opening wider the door any wider than necessary, stepping inside with an unconcerned wave of his hand, ushering in an old friend that shouldn’t, by its own right, even be a friend. An acquaintance, more like, of those you want to forget everything of and could live on –oh, the irony- without ever remembering a single thing about.
“That is very true. Come on then, show me that clock of yours, do I have the time to send an alarming text?” The hand is inside his pocket the second he hears the words, but as his fingers curl around that very object, the boy throws him a glance over his shoulder, holding a dish with another toast in one hand and a university text book on the other. His eyes and soul are twinkling with amusement, and it’s only one of those two things that he can see clear as day “I was joking”
“You weren’t, three times ago”
“Are you going to keep on holding that against me? How distasteful of you” The glass over the counter is empty, soon the plate it’s too. There is humming deep down his throat as he leaves those on the sink of the small kitchen, and there is something familiar about the way he makes sure is not dripping water before, way too soon, sitting down on the coach, almost expectantly. He keeps quiet even when the boy grins at him, shaking his head at his probably grim expression- Because at least one of them has to set in place the proper mannerism, the proper facial expressions, the proper sentiment, the proper dread “Do not look like that. I have no regrets, on this one. But you already know that, don’t you? Sometimes I can feel you watching over my shoulder, so of course you know. Ahh, you make me say an awful amount of embarrassing things, and it’s barely ten in the morning!” The boy, who is not a boy anymore, not by the standards of the lives he has gone through, but a boy still at his eyes, laughs again, and it’s not waltz or jazz, but he looks like he is five seconds away from breaking into a dance. He himself almost feels ashamed of laughing quietly at it all, dare not interrupt the display.
He shouldn’t have favorites, and at this point it can’t be said he does. Of that he has long since being sure, probably because this time hurts every bit as much as the last time, and the one before that one, and the one before that one, which is to say an awful lot that he would prefer to avoid all together, but fails to do so every single time; they had been in hospitals, hunched over with old age, and they had been in nurseries, humming songs that a grieving dad choose to sing before he even knew he would be grieving.
One time, it was an accident, a misstep on a stair that was too long and too far off the ground. On another time, it had not been an accident at all. But it had been a different kind of situation than the one where jealousy and cheating had been involved in quantious amounts that managed to make the hairs of his neck stand up on end- That time, it had been this child own hands that tied the rope and his own feet that kicked the chair, just that then, he had been a she with a lot of cuts and bruises on arms and legs, and permanently ruined makeup ruining down an otherwise pretty face staring at him as he hold her hand.
A mother, a brother, a father, an aunt, an uncle, a cousin. A beloved cat, a slave, a politician, a hated king, a saint. And a thousand more times, pilling one on top of the other like leaves falling from a never ending tree.
And he, himself, the wind that carries them down.
“Why do you never visit?” He is sitting down on the floor, next to the coach the boy is now lying on, when the question comes. He takes out his clock and weights it in one hand, tilting a face with features he has long since forgotten, and taking a breath that shouldn’t be that shaky, shouldn’t be that hard to drag in.
“It is no good, when I do”
The boy laughs.
“I do not have to shot the messenger if I dislike what he brings. But could you visit? Without it meaning anything? You should do it next time, if you can. I could use the company”
He wishes, as a sign of the selfishness he has allowed himself to harvest deep down over the years, that he could say something to that. He wishes he could say ‘Yes’ without having to hold that clock, without having to open its’ cover and tap twice over its’ glass, as if he could break it in pieces and laugh at it with the boy. Then they could dance.
“You would get tired of me”
So that’s what he says instead. And even when he can’t laugh, the boy can, and he does, over and over again as he shakes his head as if he were shaking stardust from his hair.
“You are probably right. What a shame- Do remember to leave the door open when you go out, it won’t be good if nobody finds me” There is a nod, and that seems to satisfy the boy, because he stretches his arms and rubs his full belly and brushes the soft fabric of the couch.
“I will be there at the beginning” He sort of whispers, when the boy opens his palm and he has to take his hands, clock ticking and ticking and ticking, slower and slower and slower with every passing second “And the only one who knows when the end is”
The boy laughs.
“Not the end”
He tries to smile.
“That’s right. Not the end”
The clock stops.
The boys closes his eyes.
As promised, he leaves the door open on his way out.
The clock starts ticking again even before he is out of the door.