All is well
Summary: The cycle repeats. Dave lives like a flower that never seems to leave the winter, its frail, frail petals poking through the frozen snow.
The cold will kill him one day. He just refuses to let that day come.
Adrenaline is mild but always there. Always.
He's long since given up on resetting the counter on his sobriety app. It doesn't really matter now that it's become so infrequent, more of a stress reliever than anything serious.
But it is not actually like that.
It doesn't cut deep. It's shallow and fine. They bleed only enough for each wound to trickle slowly down his tanned skin. But enough. It feels like it's bleeding to a small degree. A punishment for being who he is. Atonement is perhaps a better word.
Okay, that's the point. He goes to school, she studies at the campus library. He calls Beardo and they talk while doing homework, a split screen with a quizlet on civil rights on one side and a pixelated image of them drawing on the other side, their books with big tear-off paper pages in front of them.
When he misses the idea of a mother, a father, he calls his parents. They remind him that he should be doing more. He doesn't miss them anymore. He nods silently, as if they can see his blank approval on the other end of the line.
The cycle repeats. Dave lives like a flower that never seems to go away in the winter, its frail, feeble petals poking through the frozen snow.
The cold will kill him one day. He just refuses to let that day come.
I mean, he's bleeding. It helps him stay that way - it helps him keep pretending that he's okay, that the life he's living isn't so torturous that he spends the few minutes he has before he gets out of bed in the morning thinking about how much he hates himself. How pathetic it all is.
It's a way to maintain the balance he's created for himself. He's destroying himself to be conscious of the fact that he's not enough—to keep himself conscious of that, that everything he does is annoying or too much or not enough. Maybe both.
He doesn't know why he phrased it as maybe. He knows that both are correct answers.
Whatever. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
None of it matters. He bleeds, releasing all the pain he's held onto for months. The cuts heal. They leave thin, straight pink lines behind. He opens them up again. Never deep, but never stops. He always suffers on the surface so he doesn't suffer more than he can handle inside.
Maybe if he told a professional, he knows they would disagree. They would tell him that self-harming won't get him what he's looking for in the long run, and that accumulating barely visible, pale scars on the skin of her hips and thighs isn't something to be proud of, nor is it something that will make him feel like she's improved.
Beardo wouldn't agree. Not because they know; he wants to keep it that way. It's not their problem, and they have enough to worry about. Their internship is going well, but it's a heavy workload. They're fighting with the CSFA about being a disconnected child.
They don't need him to fill their already overflowing capacity for anxiety and fear. They don't need him at all, but they insist on keeping him around.
He hopes they continue. He thinks he might fall in love with them. The way they laugh, the way their rings clack against the screen as they grab their phones and bring their faces close to the camera, lecturing on some terrible professor. He loves everything about them. Who doesn't?
But he wouldn't blame them if they didn't keep him around more. He wouldn't blame anyone. He would continue to pet them from the other side of the screen when they shared photos of their new projects, and he would read every article that mentioned their names and their work with such pride for them that it made him sick.
They don't need to know, that's the point. He's fine. There's nothing to know.
Anyway, they're coming to town today. He's picking them up from the bus stop. He keeps smiling to himself, tugging at their arms with nervous excitement. He's missed them so much. They always give him nice hugs that last a little longer than usual. They always tell him he smells nice.
That's not why he misses them, of course, but the praise and open, easy touch, the affection behind it, is something he doesn't get much of. When they're here, he lets them soak it up like a sponge, desperate and yearning to be someone worth it.
So today, despite the fresh cuts that ache under his jeans and the giant square bandage over them, he feels nothing but happiness. He's been through the pain for months. He's ready to fill the empty sink with sunlight and then let the rest of the muddy pain feel a little more bearable. Start with the good, finish with the bad. It makes it easier to savor. It's an added bonus that it makes him feel fresh to them—cleaner, freer of all the bad, all the worst parts.
Trembling with happiness, he rubs his finger along the corner of his mouth, his head bobbing back and forth as he rocks back and forth on the worn soles of his furry boots, as if searching for the bus.
His heart nearly jumps out of his chest when he turns the corner, his head shining brightly in the hazy early morning sunlight. Maybe he bounces up and down a little. Sue him! He's excited.
He tries to wait patiently for the bus to stop. Trying is the key word, so he stands to the side of the door as a few more people get out.
Beardo appears last and forces himself to remain still as he adjusts his backpacks and the bus door closes behind them.
When they look at him as he stirs, smile, and murmur a sweet "Hey, Dave," his resolve breaks. He pulls into their space, and they laugh and throw their arms around him as if they've missed him too. His weak heart purrs like a kitten with the hope it finds in this.
They nuzzle into the side of his head and he sighs softly into his shoulders as he mutters that his hair is too long. He shakes his head and squeezes them tighter.
After a few minutes they pull away. She mourns, she mourns the hold, but she goes willingly. As his hands are removed, she rubs against the side of her hips, and she takes comfort in the knowledge that they can't feel the bandage under the thick denim. To them, she's fine. She's fine, because she always is. Sometimes she's sad, quieter than usual, but the next day she's always fine. She recovers because it's not so bad.
No one knows how he keeps it that way. Beardo, for one, never will. He won't chase them away with his pain, with the things it reminds him of.
It's like sticky notes on the bathroom mirror, for him to see only, a note to himself about important things.
They all read " You are a disappointment in everything you do in life and that is how you will die. You will die unhappy and mediocre and a burden to your parents " and when they flew out of the metaphorical mirror in Beardo's presence, he decided to pick them up later. They can remain fallen from his consciousness for now.
They smile at him and it's worth the pain. He will suffer alone and enjoy when they visit him and show him mercy. They will never feel the bandages under his clothes.
He is fine.
PS: Pahkitew is an underrated season and I decided to write a story about 2 hated characters :)) I hope you liked it.