Can't Get You Out of My Head (please get out of my head I'm begging) (bxb)

Epilogue | You're Always on my Mind (literally!)

Ethan looks most peaceful when he's asleep. His chest gently rises and falls in tune with his breathing, and his dreams are green and hazy. Soft brown curls fall over his pillow. And over my pillow too because he ends up sleeping on them both.

I almost never get to see him asleep because he wakes up at the crack of dawn, and then wakes me too when he gets bored. But he was up till late last night talking about all the places we're going to go, and the things we're going to see.

The curse of Brambleburg is broken.

I don't know if it broke the night Ethan left and came back, or if it's been broken since the very first day he got here. Either way, the town's border is open, its magic no longer holding us in.

No one has ventured very far out yet, but Ethan and I are set to leave tonight. It's why I'm up so early today, in fact. I was busy getting things prepared for our trip.

Ethan shifts in his sleep, stretching over my side of the bed. The blanket wraps around him like a burrito, tucking him in upto the chin. It's the most serene I've ever seen him look.

Ethan opens his eyes and squints. "I can be peaceful when awake too," he grumbles. He had started to hear my thoughts, just fragments of them from time to time.

I twirl a single red verbena between my thumb and forefinger, tucking it behind his ear. "Good morning, love."

He mutters something incomprehensible, talking to me more in his thoughts as I lean down to kiss him.

I drag him out of bed and we go down to the record store. It's my last day here so I want to get everything organized before we leave. Ethan had already found someone to take over the bookstore.

"Remember how you pretended to love this band?" I tease him as I shelve some records.

Ethan groans. "Alright fine, so I've never heard of them. But you're worse Lukas! I can't believe you've never seen a single Star Wars movie."

"Alright, maybe I still have no idea what a wookie is." I slip an arm around his waist, pulling him close. "But am I still your perfect man?"

"Haha you're cute." Ethan pecks me on the lips. "It's easy to be perfect when you know what the other person is thinking and are willing to lie—totally an unfair advantage!" He points at me. "But now I know what you really think of it."

I laugh, slipping a vinyl into it's cover. "I don't not like it. Besides, I saw one of them," I remind, "at the cinema with you."

"You weren't even watching that day!"

"Well...neither were you."

He flushes, remembering the empty screening hall. Since learning of the townsfolk's telepathic powers, Ethan has been apologizing profusely to everyone he had shared a space with in the past few months. "Oh my god, I'm sorry. My mind is a terrible place to be trapped in."

"It's not terrible. I like hearing your train of thought." I grin. "It really does go to the randomest places." Like if I think of bees....

Ethan tries not to play the association game, but his mind runs away from him like how it always does. Bees, honey, pancakes...waffles are just pancakes with abs...Lukas has really nice abs. Fuck! I swear I'm not always thinking about this!

"You know...it's really hard to believe you." I throw an arm around his shoulder and kiss him hard on the cheek. "How do you feel about pancakes for lunch?"

Evening draws near and Isabella and Sebastian come to send us off. We load our backpacks and some food into the car we'd rented for the journey.

"We wish you a safe trip," Sebastian says. He smiles, face lining with wrinkles.

Oma nods her agreement. I'm glad you're getting to see the world.

I embrace her tightly, and then Sebastian too. We won't be back for a few months, and I'm going to miss everyone in town.

Ethan says his goodbyes and then we get in the car. He drives us to the edge of town. The forest becomes more sparse and gives way to a path I've never seen before.

I was expecting to feel something when we crossed the border, some type of magnetic barrier to break through. But there's nothing. I'm not sure where Brambleburg ends and the rest of the world begins.

I don't look back as we drive to the closest city. Instead I look at Ethan. His curls whip in the wind with the convertible top down. He pulls up to the edge of the road and I inhale sharply. From our vantage point, I see a brand new city laid out before us.

"There it is," Ethan says. "Freiburg im Breisgau."

It looks just like how Brambleburg does from the overlook. And yet, it feels so different. A million lights twinkle in the streetlamps and the windows of buildings, and it's somehow brighter.

We stay there a while, just looking at it. The bright lights of the town refract in Ethan's warm brown eyes. He leans back and tips his head up to the night sky.

"I'm really," a million emotions drift through my mind, and though I can't pick out a monumental enough word to describe how I feel, I hope he catches the extent of them, "happy that I get to do this with you."

"Me too," he whispers, leaning into my shoulder. "I always pictured doing this alone...but I can't tell you how much better this is with you."

I brush a thumb over his freckles and kiss each one of them, tracing constellations on his cheekbones and glimpsing whole galaxies in his gaze.

And I feel like I could stare at the stars with him forever.