Fic: And We Don’t Want to See the Signs that You Bore
Title: And We Don’t Want to See the Signs that You Bore
Author: firetruckyouxx
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3303
Pairings, Characters: Neymar/Lionel Messi, Frank Rijkaard, Pep Guardiola
Genre/Warnings: Alternate Universe, Experimental Science, Angst
Summary: He was born with them, the numbers. They were a bloody red, hanging over every person’s head. He did not know he was different.
Author's Note: so, this usually is not my writing style, but i wrote this last year for a creative writing class and i really liked it, so i’m posting it here. the original main character was so closely characterized to leo that i couldn’t help myself and writing neymessi is just too good to pass up.
this gets kind of weird and science-y but also i feel the writing is not that great because my creative writing teacher was a grammar nazi and hated contractions so?? idek.
He was born with them, the numbers. They were a bloody red, hanging over every person’s head. He did not know he was different.
When he was three, he learned the words to form a full sentence. He learned the words to form the only question that mattered.
“Mama?” He stared wide-eyed at the numbers hanging above her head instead of into her bright blue eyes, the ones he got from her. “Wha- do ’ose means?” He pointed to numbers, even though he did not understand them.
“What, pumpkin?” His mother had a smooth drawl for a voice, sweet like honey. “What are you pointing to? Is something in my hair?”
“The things above your head, Mama,” he replied, like it was obvious. Well, it was to him. “They follow you around.”
His mother stared at him with wide eyes and slowly, she looked up and the numbers moved with her head so she would not hit them. “Leo, baby,” she said slowly, reaching a trembling hand out to her son, “there is nothing there.”
He looked at her as eyebrow knitted together on his forehead. “Mommy, wha- are ’ou talkin’ ’bout?”
Leo’s mother’s eyes sparkled in the light and she ran to the phone. Leo could not understand what was going on, could not understand what a “hallucination” that Mama was talking about, could not understand what a psychologist was. He was confused when his mother grabbed his hand and dragged him to the car.
She brought him to a strange man with a weird haircut and warm brown eyes, his numbers starting with two zeroes. Though he did not understand, his stomach twisted with dread and he pointed to the numbers, reciting them aloud. His mother looked on in horror while the strange man with the strange hair watched with mild interest, taking into account his movements, body language and pupil dilation.
The room was completely silent, filled with tension that could be cut with a knife. Leo did not like this man with the hair; the way he was looking at him, like he was a science experiment instead of a human, registered in his mind despite his age and typical obliviousness to basically everything. His skin crawled and his heart jumped into his throat.
His mother could not hang onto her breath for much longer. She breathed in heavily and asked, “Do you have any idea what could be wrong with him?”
The man with the hair stroked his chin, clearly deep in thought. “Well, there are a multitude of possibilities,” he said, slow and deliberate, fingers still stroking his chin. “It could be psychosis, schizophrenia, etcetera, etcetera. I cannot have a clear idea until I conduct more tests, interact with him more. To diagnose something right now upon see only one episode would be a sin.”
Leo’s mother sighed once more, loud and heavy. The sigh sounded too old for her young and youthful face. “After we find out whatever this is, is there any way to c-cure it?”
A pensive look came over the man’s face once more. “Cure it? Most likely not. Again, I cannot be one hundred percent sure what this is, but any major mental illnesses typically cannot be cured. Treated? Of course.”
“So there’s no way of getting rid of this? My son is going to pointing at things that aren’t there for the rest of his life?” Her voice had a note of hysteria to it.
“We won’t know until we conduct tests.” He seemed to like saying that a lot. “We’ll start testing soon, if you’d like.”
“Please.”
So, testing started quickly. Leo never knew what was going on, who these people were, why they wanted to know things about him. He never was really social, even as a baby. He always opted to stare what seemed into space at the time but really it was the numbers. He has always been mesmerized by them.
After a week of testing, the doctors changed and these ones had pointy things with them. They seemed to like poking Leo with them because they did that, a lot. The sharp, pointy objects sometimes punctured the skin, other times they just left a scratch. At first they prodded his whole body, from his forehead to his toes, but slowly, they began to just focus on his head.
The cuts and scars on his forehead began to increase in number until finally Leo was brought into a stark white room with a lone glass desk and three chairs, one on one side of the desk and two on the other. His mother was already sitting in one of the chairs, twiddling with the fountain pen in her hand, between her index finger and her thumb. The man with the crazy, curly haircut, whose name was Dr. Rijkaard, entered the room with a large stack of papers in his arms. He set them down on the desk in front of Leo’s mother.
“Good morning all,” he said lightly as he slid into the leather seat behind the glass desk. “So,” he begins, folding his hands on the desk, “it has been two weeks since we have started testing. Fortunately, we have made progress, but we have not came to a conclusion on the final diagnosis.”
Leo’s mother went pale. “But you’re working on it, right?”
Dr. Rijkaard waved his hand around with a smile on his face. “Oh, of course. We should reach a final conclusion in the next couple of days or so. The most it should take is another week. However, I need you to sign this so that we can begin the final testing.” He touched the papers in front of him and then pointed to her pen. “It’s nothing too bad or painful. We just need to make sure we are completely correct before we start treatment.”
Leo’s mother looked at her child, worried. “And those cuts and scars aren’t going to be permanent, right?” she asked.
Dr. Rijkaard gave her a sympathetic smile. “No, of course not.” She nodded quickly and signed where she was told to. “Do not worry, Señora Messi, we will help treat your son so that he will be able to live a nice, healthy, normal life like he deserves.”
Señora Messi smiled dimly and nodded weakly. “Thank you, Dr. Rijkaard, really.”
“It’s no problem at all,” he replied coolly, standing up and shaking her hand. “Leo will heal in time, I am positive.” He left after that, the stack of papers in his hand.
Leo’s mother turned to her son after the door close. “You know I love you, sugar,” she said sweetly with tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry.” She bent down to hug him tightly, knotting his shaggy brown hair in her thin fingers. “Papa’s watching out for you up in the sky, okay? He won’t let anything bad happen to you. He promised.”
Daniel looked up at the high white ceiling, looking for his father. “I don- see ’im, Mama,” he finally replied.
She smiled tightly, her lips slightly pursed. “He’s up there, you just can’t see him. Kind of like hide and seek.”
Leo nodded like he understood but really, he didn’t at all. Could Daddy fly like the birds? “I love you, too, Mommy.”
“Bye baby.”
This time when Leo went in to see the people in the white coats, they had masks on, which scared Leo. Dr. Rijkaard took off his mask when Leo was strapped to the table so he won’t point that the numbers anymore.
“Leo, buddy, I want you to read all the numbers for me. Can you do that?”
Leo nodded slowly and did what he was told. While he was reading them, the people in the coats and masks murmured to each other, “What could the numbers possibly mean?” After he was done, they gave him a shot that made him really sleepy, like hot cocoa at his abuela’s did. He woke up hours later to world of hurt but at least he wasn’t strapped down anymore.
The next day, Leo left with his mother. Dr. Rijkaard stood with them as they signed out at the front desk and said, “We’ll call you in a week to discuss the final diagnosis and treatment.”
When Leo got home and looked into the mirror while he was brushing his teeth, he saw a huge jagged scar near his hairline. He began to cry. And he still saw the numbers above his mother’s head.
•-•
When Leo was six, he learned to tell time. He learned about all the different units of time, like seconds and minutes, and he also learned about the days of the week and the months of the year. His favorite month was June because that’s when he was born and his favorite day is Monday because he gets to go to his abuela’s house at night and eat ice cream with her and play fun games with her.
He learned how to read it and write, both formal use and shorthand. As he learned, the numbers above everyone’s head, which were still there despite being with a now frustrated yet still intensely interested Dr. Rijkaard, began to change. Slashes formed in between numbers and colons began appearing.
“Mama!” Leo shouted as his mother walked through the gates of the playground to pick him up from kindergarten. “The numbers changed!”
His mother’s face brightened up right away; it was the first time that Leo had seen anything like that expression on her face in a long time. “Are they gone?” she asked excitedly. Maybe Dr. Rijkaard was not so bad.
“No, of course not!” Her face completely fell, and she did not even bother to feign even the slightest of smiles. “They changed, not left! They got slashes, like the dates do, you know, like the ones we’re learning about, and they got those double dot things, like on the clock in the kitchen! The one with the birds!”
“I think we need to go see Dr. Rijkaard again,” she replied after a pregnant pause. She grabbed her son’s hand and dragged him to the car, her other hand occupied by her cheap cellphone. “Hello? Yes, this is Celia Messi, my son Lionel is a patient of Dr. Rijkaard…Yes, there is an emergency…”
When they arrived at the doctor’s office, Dr. Rijkaard was waiting for them in the front, a chart in his hands. “Is everything alright?” His face was worried, his lips in a downward curve.
“The numbers changed,” is all Daniel’s mother offered, her eyes shifting nervously between the patients reading dated magazines in ugly, overstuffed, red chairs.
“I see,” was the reply as Dr. Wyreck ushered them into his office.
•-•
When Leo was ten, he began recording the numbers with the names of the people they hung over in a little green notebook that his mother bought him for school. He didn’t take many notes at school; he remembered most of what his teacher, Señor Sabella, said anyway. His real notebook was mostly blank except for some homework assignments that he was told would be collected.
Dr. Guardiola, his new doctor since Dr. Rijkaard passed away a year ago, encouraged him to do so. He suggested that maybe it would help him understand what the numbers mean. Leo liked Dr. Guardiola better than Dr. Rijkaard since after treatment, his whole body didn’t ache for days. He also did not leer at him like an interesting science experiment but instead like an actual person. Leo’s mother even noticed a significant difference in his mood as he went for his weekly checkups.
His notebook filled up quickly as he recorded all the numbers of his classmates, his mother, his grandma, his doctors, Dr. Guardiola. He made his mom run out the store to buy him another one for the next day. Soon, he could not travel without it. Every person whose name he learned was recorded in his little notebook along with their numbers.
One visit, Leo quietly told Dr. Guardiola, “Dr. Rijkaard, the one who died, well, his numbers were really low. The day before he died, the numbers with the colon was going down really quickly and the front numbers were on double zero for a long time.”
The doctor nodded and wrote down Leo’s words. “Do you remember his numbers, Leo?”
Leo nodded and opened up his original green notebook. “They’re the second numbers I wrote, after my mama’s.” He pointed to it.
His eyes widened. “Leo…” His tan complexion turned ghostly pale at the sight of the numbers. “Do you remember the date that Dr. Rijkaard passed away?”
“June thirteenth, I think.”
“And the time?”
“Mid-afternoon was when my mama got the call from one of the doctors.”
Dr. Guardiola slid the notebook back to Leo and said, “Take a look at the numbers you wrote down.” He pointed to Dr. Rijkaard’s numbers like Leo did before. “What do you see?”
Leo’s eyes widened almost as big as his grandma’s tea saucers. “W-What? How is that possible?” He cleared his throat. “The numbers, they’re death dates.”
•-•
When Leo was fifteen, he made his first real friend. It was the end of his freshmen year and he avoided everyone like the plague for five years after what he and Dr. Guardiola now refer to as the Great Revelation. When he was ten, he knew when everyone around him was going to die, even his mother, who had a lot of time hanging over her head compared to other people.
A boy that he had never seen before sat next to him at the empty library table during lunch. He had startlingly bright eyes, a weird haircut and a wicked smirk on his face. “Why do you always sit alone here during lunch?” the boy with the wicked smile asked with no malice in his voice. “You seem nice enough.”
Leo did not want to look at his numbers, tried to block them out. He liked this kid already, with his blunt personality and his mischievous grin. Instead of answering him, he just shrugged and buried his head further in his book, Fight Club. It was his favorite because the narrator only really had one friend and it was just a voice inside his head; it made him feel better about himself.
“Not the talkative type, I see,” the boy quipped. “Well, I’m Neymar.”
“Leo,” he muttered back, hoping the kid would take a hint and back off. It’s not that Leo did not want friends per se, he just would prefer it if he didn’t know when his friends would, you know, die.
Neymar hummed in response and then basically shouted, “Oh dude, I love that movie,” as he pointed to Leo’s book. Leo peered down at it and then finally took a good look at Neymar through narrowed eyes.
“The movie is okay but the book is so much better,” he said with a tone of finality, like it was not up for argument.
“I guess I have to check it out to make sure that you’re not a liar or anything.”
Leo raised an eyebrow and replied, “You just met me and you don’t believe me?”
“I don’t believe you because I just met you.”
He nodded. “Fair enough.” Leo somehow refrained from looking about Neymar’s head, his eyes not leaving the crazy bright ones.
There was a moment of silence between them, not an awkward one, until Neymar finally broke it with, “I guess the only way I’m going to get you to talk is a book and movie debate. Guess I have to watch more movies or something.”
Leo bursted out laughing and was given a withering look by the old librarian, whose hearing aid was usually off during this lunch period since the only regulars were him and a senior named Jessica who didn’t want anything to do with anyone or anything. The only reason he knew her name is because she dropped her notebook once and he picked it up for her. In return, instead of a thanks, he got a snarled, “Never touch my things again or you won’t have a hand to touch them with.”
Needless to say, he never touched anything of hers ever again.
Leo liked Neymar and his razor sharp smile that matched his wild eyes and his purposely messy dark hair. He forgot about the numbers hanging over his head.
•-•
When Leo was eighteen and graduating from high school after four long years, he finally looked above Neymar’s head for the first time at his numbers. He almost fainted when there were none hanging over his head. He was the only person Leo had ever met without blood red numbers hanging over his head.
Guilty for looking, Leo told Neymar, “I can see when people will die, everyone in the world. Everyone except for you.”
Neymar’s whole face brightened up, like it does when Leo speaks more than two sentences at a time, and kissed him on the mouth for the first time. It was Leo’s first kiss, and needless to say, he was so shocked that his mouth fell open.
“Dude, me too,” he replied, still squeezing him tightly. “The only reason I approached you that day was because you didn’t have a date hanging above your head.”
Suddenly, Leo didn’t feel so alone in the world, so he kisses the Brazilian again, just because he feels like he could.
•-•
When Leo was twenty, he stopped going to Dr. Guardiola. No one understood him like Neymar did and no “treatment” could ever heal him. He wasn’t crazy; he was just different.
•-•
When Leo was twenty-five and living with Neymar, his mother passed away from cervical cancer. It was a long time coming as she was diagnosed with it two years before and was battling it ever since.
Neymar stood with him on the day that she was set to die and they watched from behind the glass of the hospital wall as the time dwindled down slowly but steadily. They watched as she took her last breath and called for a nurse calmly when the machine began erratically beeping.
Tears welled up in Leo’s eyes but didn’t fall; he’s had years to prepare for this moment and she would want Leo to be as strong as he could be. It hit him that he was alone: his father, his mother and his grandmother all passed away. He had no one left.
Neymar, squeezing his hand tightly as if to remind him he still had him, led him out of the hospital that day and began making funeral arrangements. All the while, he was repeating the mantra, “It will all be okay.”
•-•
When Leo was thirty, it occurred to him that he may never die. He brought his concerns up with Neymar one night while they were lounging on their couch, watching shitty Argentine soap operas and lazily making out, who took this into consideration.
“That may be true…After all, we don’t have numbers over our heads. Still, we are aging, so that has to count for something.”
“Maybe,” Leo hummed back as he graded one of his student’s papers, muttering curses under his breath every time his students misspelled words even when they all had computers with perfectly functioning autocorrect on them.
•-•
When Leo was fifty, he realized that never dying meant seeing everyone around him die. He didn’t really enjoy that thought.
•-•
When Leo was one hundred, he began de-aging. His hair began to grow back and his skin began to thicken. He looked at Neymar from where he laid in the bed next to him, their hands clasped together, and nodded wordlessly. They were reborn. They were infinite.
They were more than just numbers.
Author: firetruckyouxx
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3303
Pairings, Characters: Neymar/Lionel Messi, Frank Rijkaard, Pep Guardiola
Genre/Warnings: Alternate Universe, Experimental Science, Angst
Summary: He was born with them, the numbers. They were a bloody red, hanging over every person’s head. He did not know he was different.
Author's Note: so, this usually is not my writing style, but i wrote this last year for a creative writing class and i really liked it, so i’m posting it here. the original main character was so closely characterized to leo that i couldn’t help myself and writing neymessi is just too good to pass up.
this gets kind of weird and science-y but also i feel the writing is not that great because my creative writing teacher was a grammar nazi and hated contractions so?? idek.
He was born with them, the numbers. They were a bloody red, hanging over every person’s head. He did not know he was different.
When he was three, he learned the words to form a full sentence. He learned the words to form the only question that mattered.
“Mama?” He stared wide-eyed at the numbers hanging above her head instead of into her bright blue eyes, the ones he got from her. “Wha- do ’ose means?” He pointed to numbers, even though he did not understand them.
“What, pumpkin?” His mother had a smooth drawl for a voice, sweet like honey. “What are you pointing to? Is something in my hair?”
“The things above your head, Mama,” he replied, like it was obvious. Well, it was to him. “They follow you around.”
His mother stared at him with wide eyes and slowly, she looked up and the numbers moved with her head so she would not hit them. “Leo, baby,” she said slowly, reaching a trembling hand out to her son, “there is nothing there.”
He looked at her as eyebrow knitted together on his forehead. “Mommy, wha- are ’ou talkin’ ’bout?”
Leo’s mother’s eyes sparkled in the light and she ran to the phone. Leo could not understand what was going on, could not understand what a “hallucination” that Mama was talking about, could not understand what a psychologist was. He was confused when his mother grabbed his hand and dragged him to the car.
She brought him to a strange man with a weird haircut and warm brown eyes, his numbers starting with two zeroes. Though he did not understand, his stomach twisted with dread and he pointed to the numbers, reciting them aloud. His mother looked on in horror while the strange man with the strange hair watched with mild interest, taking into account his movements, body language and pupil dilation.
The room was completely silent, filled with tension that could be cut with a knife. Leo did not like this man with the hair; the way he was looking at him, like he was a science experiment instead of a human, registered in his mind despite his age and typical obliviousness to basically everything. His skin crawled and his heart jumped into his throat.
His mother could not hang onto her breath for much longer. She breathed in heavily and asked, “Do you have any idea what could be wrong with him?”
The man with the hair stroked his chin, clearly deep in thought. “Well, there are a multitude of possibilities,” he said, slow and deliberate, fingers still stroking his chin. “It could be psychosis, schizophrenia, etcetera, etcetera. I cannot have a clear idea until I conduct more tests, interact with him more. To diagnose something right now upon see only one episode would be a sin.”
Leo’s mother sighed once more, loud and heavy. The sigh sounded too old for her young and youthful face. “After we find out whatever this is, is there any way to c-cure it?”
A pensive look came over the man’s face once more. “Cure it? Most likely not. Again, I cannot be one hundred percent sure what this is, but any major mental illnesses typically cannot be cured. Treated? Of course.”
“So there’s no way of getting rid of this? My son is going to pointing at things that aren’t there for the rest of his life?” Her voice had a note of hysteria to it.
“We won’t know until we conduct tests.” He seemed to like saying that a lot. “We’ll start testing soon, if you’d like.”
“Please.”
So, testing started quickly. Leo never knew what was going on, who these people were, why they wanted to know things about him. He never was really social, even as a baby. He always opted to stare what seemed into space at the time but really it was the numbers. He has always been mesmerized by them.
After a week of testing, the doctors changed and these ones had pointy things with them. They seemed to like poking Leo with them because they did that, a lot. The sharp, pointy objects sometimes punctured the skin, other times they just left a scratch. At first they prodded his whole body, from his forehead to his toes, but slowly, they began to just focus on his head.
The cuts and scars on his forehead began to increase in number until finally Leo was brought into a stark white room with a lone glass desk and three chairs, one on one side of the desk and two on the other. His mother was already sitting in one of the chairs, twiddling with the fountain pen in her hand, between her index finger and her thumb. The man with the crazy, curly haircut, whose name was Dr. Rijkaard, entered the room with a large stack of papers in his arms. He set them down on the desk in front of Leo’s mother.
“Good morning all,” he said lightly as he slid into the leather seat behind the glass desk. “So,” he begins, folding his hands on the desk, “it has been two weeks since we have started testing. Fortunately, we have made progress, but we have not came to a conclusion on the final diagnosis.”
Leo’s mother went pale. “But you’re working on it, right?”
Dr. Rijkaard waved his hand around with a smile on his face. “Oh, of course. We should reach a final conclusion in the next couple of days or so. The most it should take is another week. However, I need you to sign this so that we can begin the final testing.” He touched the papers in front of him and then pointed to her pen. “It’s nothing too bad or painful. We just need to make sure we are completely correct before we start treatment.”
Leo’s mother looked at her child, worried. “And those cuts and scars aren’t going to be permanent, right?” she asked.
Dr. Rijkaard gave her a sympathetic smile. “No, of course not.” She nodded quickly and signed where she was told to. “Do not worry, Señora Messi, we will help treat your son so that he will be able to live a nice, healthy, normal life like he deserves.”
Señora Messi smiled dimly and nodded weakly. “Thank you, Dr. Rijkaard, really.”
“It’s no problem at all,” he replied coolly, standing up and shaking her hand. “Leo will heal in time, I am positive.” He left after that, the stack of papers in his hand.
Leo’s mother turned to her son after the door close. “You know I love you, sugar,” she said sweetly with tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry.” She bent down to hug him tightly, knotting his shaggy brown hair in her thin fingers. “Papa’s watching out for you up in the sky, okay? He won’t let anything bad happen to you. He promised.”
Daniel looked up at the high white ceiling, looking for his father. “I don- see ’im, Mama,” he finally replied.
She smiled tightly, her lips slightly pursed. “He’s up there, you just can’t see him. Kind of like hide and seek.”
Leo nodded like he understood but really, he didn’t at all. Could Daddy fly like the birds? “I love you, too, Mommy.”
“Bye baby.”
This time when Leo went in to see the people in the white coats, they had masks on, which scared Leo. Dr. Rijkaard took off his mask when Leo was strapped to the table so he won’t point that the numbers anymore.
“Leo, buddy, I want you to read all the numbers for me. Can you do that?”
Leo nodded slowly and did what he was told. While he was reading them, the people in the coats and masks murmured to each other, “What could the numbers possibly mean?” After he was done, they gave him a shot that made him really sleepy, like hot cocoa at his abuela’s did. He woke up hours later to world of hurt but at least he wasn’t strapped down anymore.
The next day, Leo left with his mother. Dr. Rijkaard stood with them as they signed out at the front desk and said, “We’ll call you in a week to discuss the final diagnosis and treatment.”
When Leo got home and looked into the mirror while he was brushing his teeth, he saw a huge jagged scar near his hairline. He began to cry. And he still saw the numbers above his mother’s head.
•-•
When Leo was six, he learned to tell time. He learned about all the different units of time, like seconds and minutes, and he also learned about the days of the week and the months of the year. His favorite month was June because that’s when he was born and his favorite day is Monday because he gets to go to his abuela’s house at night and eat ice cream with her and play fun games with her.
He learned how to read it and write, both formal use and shorthand. As he learned, the numbers above everyone’s head, which were still there despite being with a now frustrated yet still intensely interested Dr. Rijkaard, began to change. Slashes formed in between numbers and colons began appearing.
“Mama!” Leo shouted as his mother walked through the gates of the playground to pick him up from kindergarten. “The numbers changed!”
His mother’s face brightened up right away; it was the first time that Leo had seen anything like that expression on her face in a long time. “Are they gone?” she asked excitedly. Maybe Dr. Rijkaard was not so bad.
“No, of course not!” Her face completely fell, and she did not even bother to feign even the slightest of smiles. “They changed, not left! They got slashes, like the dates do, you know, like the ones we’re learning about, and they got those double dot things, like on the clock in the kitchen! The one with the birds!”
“I think we need to go see Dr. Rijkaard again,” she replied after a pregnant pause. She grabbed her son’s hand and dragged him to the car, her other hand occupied by her cheap cellphone. “Hello? Yes, this is Celia Messi, my son Lionel is a patient of Dr. Rijkaard…Yes, there is an emergency…”
When they arrived at the doctor’s office, Dr. Rijkaard was waiting for them in the front, a chart in his hands. “Is everything alright?” His face was worried, his lips in a downward curve.
“The numbers changed,” is all Daniel’s mother offered, her eyes shifting nervously between the patients reading dated magazines in ugly, overstuffed, red chairs.
“I see,” was the reply as Dr. Wyreck ushered them into his office.
•-•
When Leo was ten, he began recording the numbers with the names of the people they hung over in a little green notebook that his mother bought him for school. He didn’t take many notes at school; he remembered most of what his teacher, Señor Sabella, said anyway. His real notebook was mostly blank except for some homework assignments that he was told would be collected.
Dr. Guardiola, his new doctor since Dr. Rijkaard passed away a year ago, encouraged him to do so. He suggested that maybe it would help him understand what the numbers mean. Leo liked Dr. Guardiola better than Dr. Rijkaard since after treatment, his whole body didn’t ache for days. He also did not leer at him like an interesting science experiment but instead like an actual person. Leo’s mother even noticed a significant difference in his mood as he went for his weekly checkups.
His notebook filled up quickly as he recorded all the numbers of his classmates, his mother, his grandma, his doctors, Dr. Guardiola. He made his mom run out the store to buy him another one for the next day. Soon, he could not travel without it. Every person whose name he learned was recorded in his little notebook along with their numbers.
One visit, Leo quietly told Dr. Guardiola, “Dr. Rijkaard, the one who died, well, his numbers were really low. The day before he died, the numbers with the colon was going down really quickly and the front numbers were on double zero for a long time.”
The doctor nodded and wrote down Leo’s words. “Do you remember his numbers, Leo?”
Leo nodded and opened up his original green notebook. “They’re the second numbers I wrote, after my mama’s.” He pointed to it.
His eyes widened. “Leo…” His tan complexion turned ghostly pale at the sight of the numbers. “Do you remember the date that Dr. Rijkaard passed away?”
“June thirteenth, I think.”
“And the time?”
“Mid-afternoon was when my mama got the call from one of the doctors.”
Dr. Guardiola slid the notebook back to Leo and said, “Take a look at the numbers you wrote down.” He pointed to Dr. Rijkaard’s numbers like Leo did before. “What do you see?”
Leo’s eyes widened almost as big as his grandma’s tea saucers. “W-What? How is that possible?” He cleared his throat. “The numbers, they’re death dates.”
•-•
When Leo was fifteen, he made his first real friend. It was the end of his freshmen year and he avoided everyone like the plague for five years after what he and Dr. Guardiola now refer to as the Great Revelation. When he was ten, he knew when everyone around him was going to die, even his mother, who had a lot of time hanging over her head compared to other people.
A boy that he had never seen before sat next to him at the empty library table during lunch. He had startlingly bright eyes, a weird haircut and a wicked smirk on his face. “Why do you always sit alone here during lunch?” the boy with the wicked smile asked with no malice in his voice. “You seem nice enough.”
Leo did not want to look at his numbers, tried to block them out. He liked this kid already, with his blunt personality and his mischievous grin. Instead of answering him, he just shrugged and buried his head further in his book, Fight Club. It was his favorite because the narrator only really had one friend and it was just a voice inside his head; it made him feel better about himself.
“Not the talkative type, I see,” the boy quipped. “Well, I’m Neymar.”
“Leo,” he muttered back, hoping the kid would take a hint and back off. It’s not that Leo did not want friends per se, he just would prefer it if he didn’t know when his friends would, you know, die.
Neymar hummed in response and then basically shouted, “Oh dude, I love that movie,” as he pointed to Leo’s book. Leo peered down at it and then finally took a good look at Neymar through narrowed eyes.
“The movie is okay but the book is so much better,” he said with a tone of finality, like it was not up for argument.
“I guess I have to check it out to make sure that you’re not a liar or anything.”
Leo raised an eyebrow and replied, “You just met me and you don’t believe me?”
“I don’t believe you because I just met you.”
He nodded. “Fair enough.” Leo somehow refrained from looking about Neymar’s head, his eyes not leaving the crazy bright ones.
There was a moment of silence between them, not an awkward one, until Neymar finally broke it with, “I guess the only way I’m going to get you to talk is a book and movie debate. Guess I have to watch more movies or something.”
Leo bursted out laughing and was given a withering look by the old librarian, whose hearing aid was usually off during this lunch period since the only regulars were him and a senior named Jessica who didn’t want anything to do with anyone or anything. The only reason he knew her name is because she dropped her notebook once and he picked it up for her. In return, instead of a thanks, he got a snarled, “Never touch my things again or you won’t have a hand to touch them with.”
Needless to say, he never touched anything of hers ever again.
Leo liked Neymar and his razor sharp smile that matched his wild eyes and his purposely messy dark hair. He forgot about the numbers hanging over his head.
•-•
When Leo was eighteen and graduating from high school after four long years, he finally looked above Neymar’s head for the first time at his numbers. He almost fainted when there were none hanging over his head. He was the only person Leo had ever met without blood red numbers hanging over his head.
Guilty for looking, Leo told Neymar, “I can see when people will die, everyone in the world. Everyone except for you.”
Neymar’s whole face brightened up, like it does when Leo speaks more than two sentences at a time, and kissed him on the mouth for the first time. It was Leo’s first kiss, and needless to say, he was so shocked that his mouth fell open.
“Dude, me too,” he replied, still squeezing him tightly. “The only reason I approached you that day was because you didn’t have a date hanging above your head.”
Suddenly, Leo didn’t feel so alone in the world, so he kisses the Brazilian again, just because he feels like he could.
•-•
When Leo was twenty, he stopped going to Dr. Guardiola. No one understood him like Neymar did and no “treatment” could ever heal him. He wasn’t crazy; he was just different.
•-•
When Leo was twenty-five and living with Neymar, his mother passed away from cervical cancer. It was a long time coming as she was diagnosed with it two years before and was battling it ever since.
Neymar stood with him on the day that she was set to die and they watched from behind the glass of the hospital wall as the time dwindled down slowly but steadily. They watched as she took her last breath and called for a nurse calmly when the machine began erratically beeping.
Tears welled up in Leo’s eyes but didn’t fall; he’s had years to prepare for this moment and she would want Leo to be as strong as he could be. It hit him that he was alone: his father, his mother and his grandmother all passed away. He had no one left.
Neymar, squeezing his hand tightly as if to remind him he still had him, led him out of the hospital that day and began making funeral arrangements. All the while, he was repeating the mantra, “It will all be okay.”
•-•
When Leo was thirty, it occurred to him that he may never die. He brought his concerns up with Neymar one night while they were lounging on their couch, watching shitty Argentine soap operas and lazily making out, who took this into consideration.
“That may be true…After all, we don’t have numbers over our heads. Still, we are aging, so that has to count for something.”
“Maybe,” Leo hummed back as he graded one of his student’s papers, muttering curses under his breath every time his students misspelled words even when they all had computers with perfectly functioning autocorrect on them.
•-•
When Leo was fifty, he realized that never dying meant seeing everyone around him die. He didn’t really enjoy that thought.
•-•
When Leo was one hundred, he began de-aging. His hair began to grow back and his skin began to thicken. He looked at Neymar from where he laid in the bed next to him, their hands clasped together, and nodded wordlessly. They were reborn. They were infinite.
They were more than just numbers.