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There is too much smoke in the air, carrying a stench so foul it clings to the back of the throat, and it burns Santa’s eyes, drawing another fit of dry, ragged coughs from deep inside his chest. Again. He is filthy, like livestock left too long in a crowded pen, his clothes saturated with the scent of grass, sweat, and traces of perfumes that do not belong to him.
The hands of the wall clock drag themselves past midnight, ushering in another day. Another day in which Santa smells of cheap liquor, the concentration of it in his bloodstream reaching absurd heights. There has hardly been a day when he has not drowned himself in another bottle, another dose, another desperate attempt to blur the sharp edges of reality. Tobacco rolled into crooked cigarettes stains his fingers. His lungs ache beneath the weight of years spent inhaling smoke. More often than not, he ends up sprawled somewhere between consciousness and oblivion, a state that, at its worst, resembles a coma far more than sleep.
At some point, the pursuit of the next drink stopped being a choice and became instinct. A reflex. A law of nature.
In his endless search for one dose after another, he had long since misplaced himself. Lost him somewhere between the empty bottles, nicotine stained fingertips, and mornings he could never quite remember. The hope for something resembling a normal life had slipped through his fingers just as easily. These days, he can barely recall what that life was supposed to look like in the first place.
Drinking until no thought could attach itself to another, until every memory dissolved into static and every feeling became pleasantly numb, had become a habit. A routine as natural as breathing. Sometimes, though, it felt like something far worse. As if the life he had been given had hollowed him out from the inside and left alcohol to fill the empty space. As if every bottle had become another brick in the foundation of his existence.
And perhaps that was the cruelest part.
Not that he was destroying himself.
But that somewhere along the way, he had stopped wanting to be saved. Or perhaps he simply no longer remembered how. The days bled into one another like spilled ink, each identical to the last, and Santa drifted through them like a ghost haunting the ruins of his own life, chasing comfort at the bottom of a bottle and finding only another reason to keep drinking.
Once, he had been a student with a future bright enough to make professors proud, one of the most promising names in the Faculty of International Economics. A street musician so familiar that even police officers greeted him by name. A wonderful friend. An easy smile in every gathering. The kind of person people expected great things from.
Now, he is little more than a drunken body sprawled across the staircase of some barely known boy’s apartment building, carrying a cracked slab of stone where a heart should have been.
Another swallow of fifty five percent alcohol burns its way down his throat.
The world immediately tilts.
His head spins again, thoughts blinking out one by one until nothing remains but static. The building, the stairs, the dim hallway lights, everything dissolves into a carousel spinning at impossible speed. Reality becomes something distant and blurred, seen through layers of smoke and intoxication.
The scrapes on his skin pull tight beneath a thin, unpleasant film of healing blood. Beneath his nose, dried crimson has hardened into a rough crust. It is strange, really, that tonight’s fight ended with nothing worse than a broken nose and burst capillaries staining the white of his eye.
A lucky outcome, all things considered.
At least, that is what people would say.
The pain barely reaches him anyway.
Alcohol smothers it before it can fully bloom, wraps heavy hands around its throat and turns it into something phantomlike, something he knows exists but can no longer truly feel. All that remains is the nausea curled between his ribs like a sleeping animal and the fading remnants of something that almost resembles euphoria.
Almost.
The feeling lingers for only a moment before slipping away again, leaving behind an emptiness so vast it seems to echo.
And that emptiness is familiar.
More familiar than happiness.
More familiar than hope.
It settles beside him on the cold concrete steps like an old friend who never learned when to leave.
Somewhere deep inside, beneath the alcohol, beneath the exhaustion, beneath years of slowly dismantling himself piece by piece, there is probably still a person capable of feeling horrified by what he has become.
But tonight, just like every other night, that person remains silent.
And Santa drinks again.
The haze before his eyes grows thicker, turning the world into a watercolor painting left out in the rain. Other drunken teenagers stumble up and down the staircase, and every now and then one of them “accidentally” catches him with a boot. A sharp kick lands against his ribs. Then another.
He barely reacts.
Beneath a T shirt stained with dirt and old sweat, bruises spread like spilled ink. Deep violet stains creep beneath his skin, painting almost every inch of him. His arms. His legs. His chest. The fading imprint of someone’s hand around his neck.
Disgusting.
The thought drifts through his mind with all the weight of a familiar prayer.
Disgust had long ago become the only feeling he could reliably summon for himself, regardless of how ruined he was at any given moment. Whether more than a liter of tequila cocktails flowed through his veins or not a single drop of alcohol touched his system, the result remained the same.
He was sick of himself.
Always.
The sight of his own reflection was enough to make revulsion swell inside him until it became unbearable. Sometimes it felt so overwhelming that he wanted to collapse to his knees right there in front of the mirror, whining like a wounded animal before the merciless piece of glass that reflected every flaw back at him.
To disappear.
To sink into the damp earth and never emerge again.
To die right there on a single square meter of half rotten parquet flooring in some forgotten summer house.
Anywhere, really.
As long as it was somewhere he no longer had to be himself.
The irony was almost laughable. For years he had tried to escape. Through alcohol. Through smoke. Through sleepless nights and reckless fights. Through anything that could silence his thoughts for a few precious hours.
Yet every morning, no matter how hard he ran, he still woke up trapped inside the same skin.
Inside the same body.
Inside the same life.
And there was no hangover crueler than that realization.
His ribs ache beneath another careless kick, but the pain feels distant, muffled beneath layers of intoxication and exhaustion. The nausea curled between his ribs remains far more tangible. It twists and squirms, dragging itself through his stomach like barbed wire.
The staircase smells of cigarettes, spilled alcohol, and old concrete.
The loud music torments his eardrums with heavy, crushing beats, yet even through it he catches the ringtone of his phone, likely lying somewhere deep in his pocket. He already knows who is calling, and the feeling of unwashed shame fills him to the brim, burning him from the inside out, making his heart howl like a wild wolf, trying to tear its way out of his chest with every frantic beat.
In his mind, a thousand completely hollow excuses gather and stack themselves into a fragile, unstable structure of lies, one he is forced to climb every time, only to fall back down in shame, always just one step away from the top.
Today, he does not pick up.
It feels too disgusting.
Again, he will have to lie, in a futile attempt to reconstruct in his head the image of Pond, the “friend” he once was at the very beginning of their path together.
Santa is roughly pulled up from the floor, grabbed by the collar and pressed against the wall, though not hard enough to actually hurt him. Instead of the faded ceiling, his vision is filled with eyes that look almost puppy like, soft in a way that feels wrong in a place like this, framed by equally cracked, split lips and the heavy, suffocating scent of alcohol that clings to both of them.
For a second, the world stops spinning quite so violently.
Then it comes back.
«You’re way past your limit. We’re going home,» Perth hisses, pressing his palm firmly against Santa’s chest, as if trying to hold him in place more than restrain him. There is irritation in his voice, but underneath it something worse, exhaustion, familiarity, resignation. The kind that comes from repeating the same rescue too many times.
They both know how they look.
It is almost laughable, if it did not feel so rotten.
Drunk to the point of collapse, filthy, sweat sticking to their skin, jeans torn at the knees, knuckles split open and painted with old, dried blood that no one bothered to wash off properly. Two people standing in the ruins of their own choices, pretending they still have something left to lose.
Santa lets out a slow breath, shaky, uneven. His head tilts slightly as if he is trying to focus, but the alcohol drags everything into soft edges and broken lines.
Home.
The word should mean something.
It does not, not really.
Home is just another place where the noise continues, just quieter. Just more private.
And honestly, Santa is not sure he deserves even that much.
For a moment, he considers swinging first. Not out of anger. Not even out of spite. Just instinct. Just the body remembering violence better than peace. A simple exchange. A hit, a shove, something sharp and real to cut through the numbness.
Anything to feel like a person again.
But he does not move.
Instead, his weight sags slightly into the wall, like the structure is the only thing keeping him from collapsing completely.
Perth’s hand stays on his chest.
Warm.
Steady.
Annoyingly alive.
Santa swallows, tasting alcohol and metal and something bitter that might be regret if he still allowed himself that word.
«You’re acting like I’m worse than I am,» he mutters, but there is no real force behind it.
Perth scoffs under his breath, leaning closer just enough that Santa can smell him too, sweat and smoke and cheap liquor layered together in something painfully human.
«You’re worse than you think,» he replies, quieter now, almost tired. «And you know it.»
That lands somewhere it should not.
Santa’s gaze flickers away for a moment, down the corridor, toward nothing in particular. Somewhere in the blur of neon and shadow, there is a version of him that still remembers how to stand straight without falling apart.
He cannot find it tonight.
Perth exhales, loosening his grip slightly, not letting go, just enough to stop it from feeling like a fight.
«Come on,» he says again, softer this time. «I’m not leaving you here.»
And for reasons Santa cannot name, that is exactly what makes it worse.
«You were snorting it. I’m not getting in a car if you’re driving,» he snarls back, shaking off Perth’s hand and grabbing the wall just to stay upright. He is provoking him, deliberately, almost mechanically, like he cannot stop himself even when he knows it is pointless. «What, are you gonna pop your eyes out or did you suddenly decide to become my guardian?»
His whole body is shaking now, because whatever substances were numbing him are wearing off, and the world is snapping back into place all at once. Too loud. Too sharp. Too real. His head spins violently, and every feeling inside him turns up tenfold, like someone has torn off the filter he was hiding behind.
«Santa, what the fuck are you even talking about?» Perth’s voice rises, nearly breaking into a growl, though he is still instinctively trying to keep the older boy from collapsing. «I’m begging you, let’s just go home. I’ll call a taxi, I won’t drive.»
If Santa had always been the one to panic, Perth was the opposite, always searching for a way out that would fit both of them, refusing to let their internal chaos spill out in the middle of some party like broken glass on a clean floor.
«We’re going outside,» he says, more firmly now.
He does not get to finish the sentence properly.
An elbow catches him hard at the back of the head as he reaches for Santa again, just trying to give him something stable to lean on, some way to move without falling apart completely.
Perth staggers a half step, more in surprise than pain, blinking sharply as the impact cuts through the haze. For a second, his grip loosens.
Santa is still there, pressed against the wall, breathing hard, like every inhale costs him something.
And yet, even in this state, even while barely holding himself together, there is still that reflexive violence. That refusal to be helped without bleeding for it first.
Perth exhales through his nose, slow and controlled, forcing his jaw to unclench. His hand comes back up anyway, not striking, just catching Santa again by the arm, steadier this time.
«You done?» he asks, quieter, but sharper in a different way now. Not angry. Just tired. «Or do you need to hit me a few more times before you agree to get out of here?»
There is no real expectation of an answer.
He just keeps him upright.
Because if he lets go now, Santa will hit the floor again.
And neither of them wants to repeat that part.
Santa feels the nausea curl higher, twisting violently in his stomach until it becomes almost unbearable. He swallows hard, but it does nothing to settle it. The cold wind cuts through him immediately, dragging over skin damp with sweat, pushing back his hair that is stuck together with grime and leftover styling products. He sinks down onto the steps, pulling his knees up to his chest without really thinking, as if the position alone could hold him together.
It is disgusting.
Not just the feeling. Everything.
The way his body reacts, slow and delayed, like it no longer belongs to him. The way his skin, dulled to a greyish tone from exhaustion, instantly breaks into goosebumps at the slightest touch of wind. It is late October, and he is sitting on raw concrete in a thin t shirt and torn jeans, shaking as if he has forgotten what warmth even feels like.
Behind him, Perth stands there pretending not to care.
He is not doing a very good job.
Dark bruises sit heavily under his eyes, spreading in uneven yellowish patches near the bridge of his nose. His eyelids look swollen, weighed down by lack of sleep and too much alcohol. He looks just as ruined, just in a different way. The kind of ruin that still insists on staying upright.
«Get up. I’m not going to babysit you,» Perth mutters, extending a dirty hand forward, but refusing to look directly at him, like eye contact would be enough to crack something open.
He says it like a threat.
It is not.
They both know it.
Santa lets out a shaky breath, staring at the hand for a moment too long. His vision is still unstable, the world shifting slightly at the edges, but the offer sits there anyway, solid and real in a way nothing else feels right now.
Perth’s fingers twitch once, impatient. Or maybe nervous.
There is something fragile in the space between them, something neither of them knows how to name without ruining it.
Santa should probably say something sharp again. Something defensive. Something mean enough to keep the distance intact.
But he is too tired for that.
Too cold.
Too close to falling apart completely.
Instead, he leans forward just slightly, not enough to stand, just enough to exist closer to the offered hand without fully accepting it yet.
A compromise.
A hesitation.
A quiet admission he would never say out loud.
Perth finally looks at him, just for a second, and whatever he sees there makes his expression tighten.
«Don’t do this right now,» he says under his breath, almost like a plea disguised as irritation.
Santa does not answer.
He just stays there, shaking on the steps, while the wind keeps cutting through him and the night refuses to end.
Santa pushes himself up onto his feet, sniffling, and from the outside he looks so pathetic that both of them almost wish the end of the world would just happen right there, in that exact second, so everything could finally be over.
They do not remember how they get home. They do not remember how violently sick both of them feel in the car, because this time they do not even hold hands during the ride. There is a strange sense that something is shifting in the air tonight, but they are both too cowardly to turn it into words.
Perth opens the old window a little, exhaling thick clouds of cigarette smoke out into the vast space beyond the apartment. Outside, everything is quiet. The only sounds he can pick up are passing cars, the dry rustle of branches, and distant echoes of scattered lives somewhere across the sleeping district. The clouds hang low over the sky like a warm fur blanket, restless and heavy, threatening to break open at any moment and spill rain onto the earth.
He takes another slow drag, closing his eyes, trying to shut himself away from anything that might reach him.
Peace. Stillness. Something close to it, at least.
As if his world had not already split in two, crushed his ribs under heavy boots, and poured boiling water over everything he used to call stable.
Behind him, a sound of movement makes him open his eyes again, reluctantly, and turn.
Santa has come out of the shower.
Even against the backdrop of old, worn out wallpaper and that horrendous green tile, he looks infuriatingly put together, in a way Perth is too exhausted to keep lying to himself about. Even if just an hour ago he was scrubbing off the filth he had brought into this apartment, in the form of hangovers and other people’s dirty kisses.
His dark hair sticks out in all directions, like a nest of swallows caught in a storm. His skin is pale, marked with bruises and scratches, his face slightly swollen from hot water and alcohol.
He looks wrecked.
Just in a way that still somehow passes for human.
«Can we talk?» Perth flicks ash into the saucer on the windowsill and fully turns around, looking at the boy who has just walked into the kitchen. The other one frowns lazily, as if even that simple expression takes effort, drawn toward the kitchen light that makes him look almost unreal. He shrugs and drifts past him, heading for salvation in the form of a glass of cold filtered water.
Santa seems to glow under the light, forcing Perth, still sitting on the windowsill, to squint and mutter under his breath as he stubs the cigarette out and throws the butt out through the open window.
«I feel so bad,» Santa whines, finishing the water in a few gulps, then stepping closer. «I barely managed to stay on my feet, I swear.»
The kitchen smells like coffee brewed the day before, Blue Winston smoke, rosemary, and mint tea sitting in a transparent jar on the most visible shelf. It is Santa’s favorite tea. Everyone who has ever stepped into their small apartment knows that. The dried petals have to be restocked almost every week, because they disappear at an almost ridiculous speed.
«You smoked. A lot,» Santa says flatly.
He leans his hands against the counter and looks at Perth’s shoulders instead of his face. Perth is tall, sharp in a way that feels almost unfair, like he was designed with too much care, as if the best hands in the world had taken their time shaping him.
Santa likes looking at Perth.
A lot.
Too much, probably.
There is something grounding about it, like focusing on something real when everything inside him still feels slightly out of place after the night before. Perth’s presence fills the kitchen in a way that is both irritating and comforting, like a weight you do not notice until it is suddenly gone.
Perth shifts slightly on the windowsill, watching him now instead of pretending not to.
«You’re gonna sit there and stare at me, or are you actually gonna tell me what’s going on in your head?» Quieter than before, the sharpness still there but dulled at the edges.
Perth opens his mouth, then closes it again.
For a moment, he looks like he is about to deflect, joke, or lie.
But nothing comes out.
Instead, he just exhales, tired in a way that has nothing to do with alcohol anymore.
And the silence between them finally starts to feel like a conversation neither of them knows how to have.
«Yeah,» Perth lights his fourth cigarette in a row, eyes closed again as he presses the back of his head against the window frame. «You hide, and I can’t find you, so I smoke. A lot.» He shrugs, completely certain Santa won’t understand what he is talking about, but somehow that makes it easier.
«Or maybe you just don’t want to find me,» Santa lets out a short hum, hopping up onto the table so he is suddenly much closer than before. He pulls his legs up, wrapping himself inward, closed off. «You’re the one who keeps running away from me, Perth, and I’m the one always trying to catch up.»
He fidgets with the hem of his shirt, crumpling it in his hands, eyes fixed on the floor. It is hard to look at Perth like this, especially knowing that everything he is about to say, everything he already said, is not alcohol talking. It is him. Real him. And there is no hiding behind anything anymore.
«I can’t do this anymore,» Perth says suddenly, swinging his legs off the windowsill and swallowing the smoke he has been holding in his lungs. «I can’t keep watching us rot alive like this. I don’t want it, Santa, do you get it?»
His voice barely holds steady. He digs his knuckle into the edge of the sill, scraping it until the skin splits and blood begins to surface, but he does not stop. The pain is distant, almost irrelevant, compared to what is finally coming out of him.
And for the first time in a long time, it feels like breathing.
«I’m tired of lying. I’m tired of pretending I don’t care. I’m tired of guessing what’s in your head, and why every night we end up like this. I’m tired of seeing you fall apart in the morning, your broken cheekbones, Santa, I’m tired of watching you die, and I’m tired of dying myself.»
He slams his fist into the windowsill. A sharp hiss escapes him as the skin splits further, but he just squeezes his eyes shut, breathing through it, because something inside him finally loosens. Pain is real. At least pain is honest.
«I just want to be with you. Do you understand?» he continues, quieter now, voice rough at the edges. «Not running around clubs, not pretending strangers are you. I don’t want to kiss them while thinking of your face. I don’t want any of that anymore. I don’t think I ever did.»
His fingers twitch toward the cigarette pack again, instinct more than thought.
But Santa is faster.
He catches his wrist.
Pulls him back.
Pins him against the windowsill.
And for a second, neither of them speaks.
The air between them feels too small for everything that has just been said.
Perth exhales shakily, staring at him now instead of the floor.
Santa is too close.
Too real.
Too late to pretend none of it matters anymore.
Santa looks at him with a fox like gaze, as if trying to analyze him, read him like an open book. Or maybe it is the other way around, maybe he is trying to devour him with his eyes. Perth is more than willing to admit he does not mind that at all, in fact he might even like it, but he only stays silent, blinking slowly, not taking his eyes off him for a second.
«I really want to kiss you, Perth,» Santa says quietly. «And please, if you do not want this, stop me before it is too late. I promise I will never ask you for something like this again if you do not want it.»
For a second, Perth forgets how to breathe.
The universe feels like it pauses with them, leaving only two broken lives standing in a small kitchen that suddenly feels much too fragile to hold everything that is about to happen.
Perth’s hands rest on Santa’s shoulders. He does not push him away. He does not pull him closer either. He just holds on, as if trying to steady something that has been shaking for far too long. Santa waits. He gives him space. He gives him time. No rushing. No taking. Just a quiet offering of choice.
«I really want this, Santa. Please.»
A second passes.
And then the world stops mattering completely.
Santa kisses him.
Carefully at first, as if afraid he might break something. His lips meet Perth’s softly, almost uncertain, like he has been carrying this moment inside him for longer than either of them can remember. His hands slide up along Perth’s back, settling between his shoulder blades, holding him with a gentleness that feels almost unreal compared to everything that came before.
There is no bite in him now. No sharp edges. No distance.
Only warmth.
Only something painfully tender, something that feels like it was always meant to belong here, between them, no matter how long they tried to pretend otherwise.
Perth responds slowly, as if he is afraid that moving too fast will make it disappear. But it does not. It only deepens, steadies, becomes real in a way neither of them can undo.
They kiss until their lips are red, until small new bruises form where they press too hard without meaning to. Time stretches and bends, dissolving into something unimportant. Outside the kitchen window, the night quietly surrenders to dawn without either of them noticing.
Sunlight slips in gently, brushing over Santa’s hair as his fingers get tangled there, soft and unsteady, like he is memorizing every second of this.
Perth stays in his hands.
And Santa does not let go.
Because after the darkest night, there is always a sunrise.
“The sun will rise and we will try again” - Twenty One Pilots