For The World’s More Full Of Weeping Than You Can Understand by LadySternchen  

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Chapter 1

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“…droughts as a result of climate change further impair the ability of spruces to fend off the insects, as one of their most effective defences is the production of extensive amounts of resin, in which the beetles get trapped and suffocate. Whilst this method is in general sufficient to prevent mass reproduction and infestation of vast forest areas, the production of resin requires the tree to be sufficiently hydrated. Thus, the danger of significant damage from the Eurasian spruce bark beetle… Beleg!”

“Whoops! Sorry, Mablung.” Beleg laughed, stooping to pick up the pen he had just dropped.

The pen, furthermore, that he had been balancing on the tip of his nose rather than listening to Mablung re-reading aloud what they had already written. They were not at all making much progress.

“You know, I almost broke my record…”

“Impressive,” Mablung said, trying valiantly to keep the resignation out of his voice. “But I’d really rather like to get this finished before you disappear for the holidays tomorrow. I won’t be able to get a hold of you then, and that stuff’s due right at the start of the new term, remember?”

“Yeah well, and whose fault is that, then? Who insisted on us being the first to do our presentation? We could have had months for this.”

“Which means that we’ve done the biggest part already, and need not write this paper and do the presentation while we’re studying for all the other exams.”

Beleg sighed and looked at the books and handwritten notes that were littered across Mablung’s bed.

“I suppose you’re right. But it’s the first day of the holidays today, and we have almost a month to finish it, and it’s not like we don’t have this stuff three-quarters written already.”

Beleg looked pleadingly at him, but Mablung was not being swayed. He did not want to spend his holidays thinking about the only piece of uni work left unfinished. There was a reason why he had chosen to do all his exams on the first possible date.

“Or we finish it today, and then we can enjoy our break in peace without some nagging presentation on our minds.”

Beleg sighed resignedly again, to which Mablung grinned. He knew now that he was winning this argument.

“Alright, alright, I recognise defeat. Why do you always have to be so reasonable?”

“I’m being practical, not reasonable. Come on then. Back to our bork beetles.”

The next two hours passed with even Beleg working properly, so that by the time night started to fall outside, they had the paper ready to hand in. With a bit of luck, their writing would be approved without requiring too many corrections.

“Aaand sent.” Beleg said excitedly, dropping his tablet and letting himself fall backward onto the bed. “Brilliant.”

“See? I told you it would feel nice to have it over with.”

“I was not referring to the homework, but your nagging. But I suppose having this finished has its benefits, too. Best of which is, we can go and make dinner now. I’m starving.”

Mablung aimed a playful kick at Beleg but missed, as his friend had rolled off the bed before Mablung’s foot made contact with his thigh.

“So aren’t you going home for the holidays?” Beleg asked conversationally, crossing the room to turn on the light and acting as though nothing had happened.

“I am, but not until next week. Elu’s got an exam on the 8th…”

“… and you think he needs a distraction from studying?” Beleg chucked.

“I won’t distract him. But Mum still has a project for work to finish this week, and the twins won’t be home until next Saturday, either, because they’re on a skiing trip. So it works out.”

There was a rather knowing look on Beleg’s face, but Mablung didn’t mind. It was no secret that he and Elu only had this one year. The dorm only accommodated undergraduates, and unless Elu would do as he had not done in his life and fail his final exams, he would have to leave at the end of next term. Mablung knew he shouldn’t complain about it at all, they had been more than lucky to be put in the same room despite being in different years, and on different faculties, and even luckier that until now, nobody had noticed that they had never been just roommates.

As though their talking about him had somehow summoned him, a rattle of keys announced Elu’s return. Mablung felt his pulse quicken. He had daydreamed about this all day.

“Speak of the devil…” Beleg grinned, then called to Elu through the door “The door’s unlocked!”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed.” came Elu’s voice from the doorway.

A moment later, he had rid himself of his shoes and jacket and entered the room, smiling at them both.

“Hi Beleg,” he greeted their friend, before turning to Mablung. “I thought you might be out. Didn’t you finish your last course for today at noon?”

“You’d think every sensible student would use their first afternoon of the holidays to have fun, wouldn’t you? But no, Mablung made us both work.” Beleg grumbled. “Talk about finishing presentations for next term.”

“Well, technically, he’s not wrong. Holidays officially don’t start until tomorrow…”

Beleg snorted disgustedly.

“Trust you to side with that workaholic!”

Mablung laughed, and Elu tried to laugh, too, only to be overcome by a coughing fit. Mablung watched his boyfriend worriedly, noting only now how exhausted he looked.

“Are you ok?” he asked, once Elu had recovered somewhat.

“Been better, to be completely honest. But is it any wonder? Half the dorm is down with the flu, and the other half is incubating some other nasty germs. And I don’t need that a week before my Neolithics exam. I tell you, that’s the punishment for putting it off ‘til the last moment.”

“We don’t like ghastly germs, oh no, precious, we don’t!” Beleg hissed, in a very accurate imitation of Gollum, which again made them all laugh.

“You’ll be fine, don’t fret. You’ve got another week, and you must know it off by heart by now, seeing how much you’ve studied. And then it’s only a few courses for musics and writing your thesis and you may call yourself Bachelor of Arts.” he added in his normal voice.

“Only!”

There was a somewhat hysterical gleam to Elu’s grey eyes as he said it, and Mablung couldn’t exactly blame him. Not when he put so much pressure on himself, not when he thought his little brother’s future depended on his proving himself as a model student. There was no question about Elu getting any studying done tonight, however, for he coughed again, this time clutching his bedpost for support.

“That cough really doesn’t sound good. Tell you what, you lie down a bit, and I go and make you some tea. Beleg and I were headed for the kitchen anyway to make dinner.”

“That would be brilliant, Mablung, thanks.” Elu mumbled, slumping onto his bed and stretching out on the covers. “You’re my lifesaver, as always.”

“You’re pampering him, you know.” Beleg said under his breath, once they had put on their shoes and were on their way to the kitchen.

“Elu deserves to be pampered.” Mablung replied passionately. “After all he’s done for Elmo.”

“Yeah, you’re right there. Can’t deny it. How is Elmo, by the way? Elu seems to get over the separation a little now.”

“There’s a difference between getting over something and getting used to it. He buries himself in work because he somehow got it into his head that he needs to prove to social services that he’s a model student. That he’s responsible and dedicated enough, all that. I’m not so sure that’ll work, though, because his dedication was never in question. And all this fretting about marks doesn’t exactly help his mental health, which on the other hand was the reason they took Elmo off him in the first place.”

“Crap. Is he eating, at least?”

“If I make him, yes. If I don’t, no. And that’s the real problem, because social services will be far more concerned with his losing so much weight again than with his grades.” Mablung pinched the bridge of his nose. “That idiot of a doctor caused such a mess. Mum said she was probably just a bit too eager, or maybe they just had some training on not missing anorexic men, but how can anyone be so stupid? Honestly, if they can’t discern between anxiety and an eating disorder, they should not be doctors!”

There was no need for Mablung to elaborate on this any further, as Beleg had been there to watch firsthand as the whole drama unfolded. He had actually been there, at Mablung’s house, the night they had heard about their neighbours, Elu’s parents, being in a terrible car crash. Elu’s father had been killed instantly, and while his mother survived, it was with brain injuries so severe that they left her in a permanent vegetative state. With no family close by, that meant that Elu, who had turned eighteen mere weeks before the accident, had been left fighting for custody of his younger brothers. Well, Elmo, mostly, for given that Olwë had been seventeen already, his ability to live on his own had never been questioned. Little Elmo, however, had only been three years old then, and in desperate need of a proper caregiver. Elu had fought tooth and nail to be appointed just that, and in the end, social services had agreed to give it a try, under the condition that Elu would co-operate with them and not object to their keeping a close eye on him. A completely reasonable request in Mablung’s eyes, only Elu had interpreted it as them just waiting for him to make a mistake and prove them right, and therefore stressed over every detail of Elmo’s upbringing. 

Nonetheless, Elu had somehow managed to do his A-levels while keeping the house and looking after Elmo, had even managed the first year of uni with commuting back and forth, with the help of Olwë and also Mablung’s mother, who had sometimes cooked a week’s worth of meals for the brothers. Then, however, Olwë had been accepted to a naval engineering school, which meant moving country, and all of a sudden, Elu had faced the problem of having no one to care for Elmo during those times that he had uni in the evenings.

To this very day, Mablung found Olwë’s decision selfish. He liked Olwë a lot, and knew that this had been his dream forever, a dream moreover that his parents had saved for to fulfil, but still… he could never have left had it been him. But Elu, dutifully carrying out their parents’ supposed will, had even encouraged Olwë to go. He had not wanted to stand in his brother’s way, even if that meant jeopardising his own future.

Mablung had gladly stepped up then, and offered to babysit Elmo whenever Elu had no one else to look after him. Elmo really was a delight to be around, and moreover, it had been Mablung’s chance to be involved with Elu, at a time when he had thought that there was no way they could ever end up together. Even with that help, however, Elu had struggled, and the constant stress had soon taken its toll on him. He had lost a lot of weight in the course of a few months, being simply unable to get anything down at all for fear of losing his little brother, and then one fateful evening, his going off food had claimed its tribute and Elu had collapsed on his way home from uni.

Had this happened anywhere but the train station, it might still have turned out alright, as Elu had regained consciousness fairly quickly, but it had not been any other place. Other passengers had called an ambulance immediately, and the paramedics had insisted on taking Elu to hospital. He had been too drowsy to protest at first, and by the time the fluids he was given had started to have an effect, it was too late, and he was already on his way to hospital, and all pleading that he needed to get home to his little brother in vain. Mablung remembered Elu’s call as though it were yesterday, how tired and desperate he had sounded when he had told Mablung that he would not make it home in time. Mablung had agreed to take care of Elmo overnight without a second thought, really only bothered by the fact that Elu was in hospital.

Still, Elu’s collapse might not have had any dire consequences, had Elu not made three very fateful mistakes, the first of which was his insisting that he did not want to stay in hospital overnight. Not only had that turned the doctors and nurses against him instantly, it had also drawn even more attention to the fact that he was the sole caregiver of a little child.

The second mistake came when the doctor, already preparing the discharge against medical advice forms, had warned Elu that he was not only underweight but malnourished, and that if he kept going like this, he would risk significant damage to his heart, to which Elu had—truthfully, but not very prudently—replied that he just could not get any food down because of anxiety. He might have said anything, that he just had had the stomach flu or that he had always been slim, or anything of that sort, but not the truth. Only Elu being Elu, he had told the truth, which promptly made the doctor call in a consult with psychiatry.

Unsurprisingly, but again very unwisely, Elu had panicked, and when that person (Mablung tried his very best not to call the doctor from psychiatry an evil bitch) had hinted that she thought Elu mentally unstable and probably incapable of caring for a young child, Elu had made the third—and most fateful—mistake, and told the consultant that if she did anything that would cause Elmo to be taken from him, he would take his own life.

Mablung wanted to slap Elu for that statement even now. How could anyone, especially someone generally as intelligent as Elu was, be so stupid as to threaten suicide in front of a medical professional? What on earth had ailed him to say that? What troubled Mablung most, however, was the knowledge that Elu would probably have made true that threat, had he had the chance. And that was something Mablung did not even want to think about.

But he hadn’t got the chance, because the hospital had interpreted his outburst as him being suicidal and promptly put him in a psychiatric hold for forty-eight hours, in the course of which they diagnosed him with anorexia nervosa and contacted social services.

Mablung had no idea what of the events that had followed was the worst, social services showing up in the middle of the night to take a sleepy and very bewildered Elmo with them, or visiting an utterly heartbroken Elu the next day. That image haunted Mablung to this day, and was at least partly the reason why he was so eager to make Elu better now. He had looked so lost in that hospital bed, and courtesy of the heart monitor he had still been on much sicker than he had been in truth.

Mablung’s mother had moved heaven and earth to get Elu out of there as soon as possible, then made him an appointment with a proper specialist and insisted that Elu stay at their house until the dust had settled somewhat. In hindsight, Mablung wondered whether he had not been as good in hiding his feelings as he had thought he had been. He really should ask his mum that at some point.

Be that as it may, though, these days Elu had spent in Mablung’s room recovering also marked the beginning of their semi-secret relationship. He had held Elu for hours while Elu had cried and cried until he had had no tears left to spend, and then, without knowing what had ailed him, Mablung had taken the chance and confessed all his feelings to the man he had known ever since he could remember.

“Mablung!”

He jerked out of his daydreams, noticing only now that Beleg held the door to the kitchen open for him.

“Honestly, if you want to keep that relationship of yours a secret, you need to stop running around with little red hearts for eyes and zoning out whenever your sweetheart is mentioned.” Beleg added in a low hiss, making Mablung chuckle guiltily.

He really couldn’t contradict his best friend there. But nor could he come down from cloud nine, even after almost a year of being Elu’s boyfriend. Or indeed keep his thoughts from drifting back to the Elmo-problem, as he called it in his head.

The specialist had instantly reversed the initial diagnoses the hospital had made, and with that Elu had had a much better standing when facing social services a week later. He had been allowed to visit Elmo, at least, and prove to his brother that he was not gone like their parents, and hold him tight. Even Elu had had to agree in the end, though, that Elmo was better off with his foster family at the moment, until Elu had his degree. He was allowed to visit Elmo during the holidays and they talked on the phone every night, and in the meantime Elu had rented out the house to save some money. Living sufficiently far away from uni had secured Elu, Beleg and Mablung a place at one of the dorms, and by very lucky chance, Elu and Mablung had ended up sharing a room. What kind spirit had intervened there to enable this stroke of luck, Mablung had no idea, but he was grateful every single day nonetheless. To the outside world, they were just roommates, like they had been just neighbours at home. Nobody needed to know that one of the beds went unused.

“Mablung, you know I love you a lot, but unless you get a grip and pay attention, I’m going to murder you. I’m actually hungry!”

Mablung put on a hopefully convincing look of remorse, and focused at last on the task they had set themselves, which was to find something edible in either of their compartments in the fridge. Around them, other students were emptying their compartments, or else cooking dinner themselves. There was a definite start of holiday- excitement in the air.