A/N: It's been over two months since the last chapter that continued this series. Not a request today, though. Way to go me, real smart... back everything up even more! As always, though, don't be afraid to send in requests or prompts on tumblr. The schedule isn't as keenly honed as before, but I will get to your request!
Anyways, there you go. I like second person perspective an awful lot, and think it has a lot of power, but I haven't yet given it a shot with P&R. Some minor self-harming visuals and concepts of suicide, existential doubt, and disaffectation, so be aware of that friends.
You know what it's like to live life like you're on the edge of a breakdown. Everything you walk past feels like an excuse to collapse to the ground and give up, and everything you deal with every day feels like a reason to stop caring, but you go on anyways. Despite a voice in your head, and not because of it, you shoulder through the concern that drapes itself over every little thought and each second of your life. You remember what it's like to pretend and think that's okay, like sitting around and wondering who would even care if you just took a step too far into traffic was fine or if you found the highest building you could and keeled over a railing or open window. It's like finding a nearly dull kitchen knife in your apartment and carving into your arm just because it's too damn difficult to explain to Andy, who tries his best and he's so good for her, that you just want to scream into an empty void for a full day just to get some of this agony out. Disgusting scars worm their way onto your wrists and over your forearms, and you have to get used to wear longsleeved shirts again, and you think that this is going to make everything the same all over again. The same cycle of day in, day out, where you don't even remember which hour is which or what event is what but you're certain it's a different day. You expect all of this and more, just like you expect things to be the same.
You wake up at four in the morning, afraid of everything, like you always do. Some things don't change. This is one of them, and sitting against that wall just to feel the cold air creaking through the poorly insulated walls and window is all you need. Something about it feels like a change, but only because your hands are freezing and you can swear it feels so good just to feel anything at all.
Covers will shift beside you and it'll be obvious because the apartment is very small and the distance is less than your extended arm. His feet kick over to where yours used to be on the bed, but they meet no resistance. You know he'll figure it out but until then, which might be never, you sit back against the wall and try to let the hours pass like they always seem to every other day. But they don't. Now you're thinking about it, and thinking is a death sentence for you. Every time you sit to think about it, nothing makes sense. If you had the chance to sit down and let the time slide between your fingers, you could never make that decision to let it happen - you could only let it happen. It's all because you have no power, and no control; and it's all because you don't have anything to give besides your time, which is worthless anyways. You have nothing to give and it hurts to think about, but at least the time passes faster when you do.
He eventually gets up and sits next to you. It's not much, but it works. An arm works its way around your back and though it isn't pulling you in or asking anything of you, it can be enough.
You put your head on his shoulder because, in some stupid, childish way, you feel like you're putting some of your weight on him. It's selfish, but he accepts it. He always accepts your weight. Your burden feels lighter when he's there to pick up the slack, and you know it makes you a bad person to hoist this onto him when all Andy can do is smile and take it without a care in the world other than making you feel better. But you both know you won't, and yet you give in because while he can't dig to the core of the problem and totally unhinge it from you he can at least make you smile at times like these. When everything feels like a black sludge you're wandering through, feet stuck in each step and half-step like you're lost and searching for your way when in reality you've never had a goal in the first place, he can rest his hand on your shoulder and pull you closer, tighter. Push your head closer to his chest and let your nose dig into his skin. Take in every breath like a fresh new scent, even though you've memorized the way he smells, because you're selfish. You don't deserve it, that's what you tell yourself, but he lets you in anyways.
You never let him in, save those scant few days when you're breaking apart and crying into his shoulder until the sun shows your red eyes clearly to him, but he'll let you back in every single time. When he asks if you're fine, you eye the knife block and tell him you're doing great. Yet he doesn't say anything about your lies, or how you tell him that everything's okay when it's a hell you're caught in forever, and you love him for not holding you to one word or thing you've said. He moved out of his hometown and followed you because it's what you wanted, but even then you wonder why he did it. Why would he bother uprooting himself - though from what, you're unsure - when all you're going to do is sit there blinking away wetness in your eyes with your head on his shoulder. Like a broken, deadly weight that's constantly threatening to drop itself onto him in the worst ways, and yet he straps that onto his back and smiles back at you before moving on. Because only Andy can do that for you, and that's okay too. Looking up at him even in the dark, where she can barely make out his face but that too is memorized and etched into your head, his smile is striking against the background of the night. It's what you need and although you're not sure if you've given up just yet, he'll be willing to open up and let you in again.
You kiss him, lightly, with your backs against the wall because he wouldn't let you apologize for it. Both times you attempted it, with him in your life, and he could've thought you were broken. He could've thought it was your fault his life wasn't going anywhere with her in it, or that it was his fault for making her like this, but he didn't. In the end, all he wanted was for her to get better. All those days he'd stay in and make sure you were comfortable and eating, skipping too many classes to catch up because you don't want to move, and you want to tell him that his ability to carry you through this is what you need. Maybe there's something wrong there, and you should find help elsewhere and Andy would be okay with that, but it's not what you want. What you want is him saying that you'll be okay. Not better, no, because they both know better is relative and getting there will take time. But, until then, you can be okay. What you want is Andy sitting there for a while and eventually standing up and going back to bed with him.
Facing each other, you spend a few minutes just lying there. No words, no kissing, or anything. You just sit there and it's right. He's enough, and you know that but sometimes he doesn't. So Andy takes all of your burden he can because he wants you to know he'll do it time and time again even though you know he shouldn't. You, selfishly, give it to him willingly. It hurts, but he carries it too now. Not because he thinks like you or because you're his or anything. You just know he loves you, and what that means to him is that you've permanently taken up home within him. You know that means he's going to, naturally, take your weight because when you're on his back and he's giving you a piggyback ride you can smile. Not better, but okay.
After you hurt yourself again, you wanted him to be okay with you. He was.
After you told him that you laid marks into your arm because you got to feel something and feel it so forcefully, you wanted him to understand. He did.
After you nearly killed yourself, you wanted to apologize. He wouldn't let you.
After you hurt yourself again, you wanted him to say nothing.
He did, but it was enough.
After you told him you cut yourself because then time didn't feel like a standstill somehow also caught in a whirlwind, you wanted to avoid his pity.
He had none, and you still don't believe that.
After you came to with bloodshot eyes and bruises on your neck, you wanted him to go away and let you do it.
He didn't, and you're thankful.
After all of that and more, you remember waking up and with tears in your eyes you told him you loved him. You told him that you're so sorry for trying to end your own life, but he doesn't accept your apology. Andy, instead, just takes up and holds onto you telling you to talk about it with him. Instead of asking for an apology and thinking that it will relieve himself of what you continuously drop onto his shoulders, all he does is wipe at your face with his hand and make you want to curl up with him for another ten days and never get out of bed. Left with something like disappointment, you think he's not considering that you were a moment from no longer existing, you realize he knows. This is why you're selfish - you think only of your own perspective. In one way, it's the only one that matters because it is your life. However, you know why he smiles. He does it because you do it, and because when you do actually bother to flash a grin it's real and he knows that by now.
But he knows, and maybe more than you. His hand has a matching disfigurement now. A prickly, bumpy displacement of skin scarred over horribly on his palm where he caught his hand on the fixture in the ceiling that held you up. When you saw it, and how it made his ability to play guitar almost nonexistent, something broke a little. He would never be able to play the same way he could before you were in his life, and it's your fault. When you tell him that, though, he gets mad. Andy has only been angry with you one other time your entire life - when he thought you didn't have any emotions and didn't care at all about him. Likewise, you thought he'd want to go back and take away what he'd done so that he could actually sit down and write songs without an immense pain in his arm. The doctor said something about permanent nerve damage and you hate yourself for doing that to him on top of making him witness that scene in the apartment. Not to mention the security deposit they lost because of her stupidity.
He got mad because you thought him playing guitar mattered more than you did. You know that there's more to it than that. He knows what you think about yourself in those bleak hours, even when you're in bed staring at him like now, but this one shakes him. You want to curl up in bed with him for hours because he thinks like that. He acts on it. When you cry, he doesn't have pity. There's only comfort and understanding. You don't want him to see you like that because, to you, that thin line separating yourself from him completely is all that's left from making you a complete, total burden on him. When you sniff and blink rapidly, he's still there. When you push yourself tight up on him at the morning hour you've lost track of, that black sludge goes away and time empties itself around you without the need of the world around it to fold in, breaking you even further. He's okay with that, and you're not better but doing all right. Not better, but the way he smiles into your hair and holds you close is okay.
After this, you think he'll disappear. He's only a dream, some figment of your imagination, and you don't deserve it. You'll wake up and he'll be gone. After this, he'll leave you with all your weight back on your shoulders to carry it the rest of the way to the finish line or, more likely, drop it all around you and leave everything behind for some empty unknown. He won't be there to take you up when you need him, to leave you alone when you want him to, and to let you know he'll be there whenever you need him to be. He'll just be gone.
After this, he'll leave.
He doesn't.