Take Off Your Colours, YMAS FanFic (Josh Franceschi)

The Final Chapter

(A/N) HEY GUYS. Don't know if you saw the message I posted, but here it is: Okay, so I have a Take Off Your Colours update for you! I've just written up the next chapter of TOYC, and something very, very unexpected happened. As I wrote this chapter, it sort of concluded the story, and came to a natural end. Believe me, I had no idea that would happen yet, but sometimes with stories they run their natural course, and I would feel wrong forcing myself to continue it when it feels so ... finished. The storyline has ended, and I feel I have achieved what I wanted with the characters and the story.

I am sorry, I know some of you wanted more chapters, but like I said the story has come to its natural end. I knew it was coming sooner rather than later, I just hadn't thought it would be this soon. Kind of sad actually.

Anyway, here is the last chapter, and I do hope you will enjoy it. I will keep writing stories on here, so please stay with me (YMAS lyrics intended). They might not be fanfics, but I have been wanting to post some of my other work on here that I do hope you will enjoy.

Please, don't hate me.

Peace out!

The Final Chapter

There exists comfortable silence and intense silence. The comfortable silence runs across your skin like hot water, warming you even though you aren't cold. Now, the intense silence is quite different. It sneaks under your skin, and seems to claw its way inside out, tooth and nail. It's the kind of silence that doesn't seem silent, but quite the opposite. It seems noisy and chaotic, and it festers and spreads from your ears, like an unbearable pressure, to your whole body. It makes you feel heavy, and as though everything inside you is causing friction. Like nothing is in the right place anymore. It was how loss felt.

That was the kind of silence that met us as we walked down the path in the cemetery. It was the kind of silence that met me each time I walked into this place, and even with Josh by my side the silence was too heavy. I felt like someone had put their hands on my shoulders and were pressing down with all their power. Like someone had covered my ears, and pressure was building up from the inside as though I was too high up in the air or plunged too deep into water.

'M?' Josh's voice was the needle that popped the growing balloons in my ears, and I realised I had stopped walking. He frowned at me sadly.

I shook off the invisible hands on my shoulders, and began walking again. My arms tightened around the flowers cradled against my chest.

As we reached the familiar headstones, Josh hesitated.

'I'm gonna give you some privacy.'

'No,' I said quickly. 'Please, stay.' His gaze softened, and wandered to the name on the smallest headstone. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second, and let out a big breath that I imagined fogged in the chilly air. No matter how warm the day, a cemetery always felt cold.

'I never actually came here with you before.' he said silently. The kind that was not comfortable, but guilty.

'Because I never asked you to,' I said. 'It was too hard dragging myself here.'

He gave me a weak smile, and walked over and put his arm around my waist. He kissed my temple.

'That quote on Michael's stone -' he mumbled against my skin.

'From The Hobbit,' I said, and turned my head and saw him smile.

'Why am I not surprised?' he mused, and my lips twitched.

'He had quite an unhealthy obsession,' I said thoughtfully. I crouched down in front of his grave, and laid the flowers on the ground next to me. 'Didn't you, little brother?' I asked as I pulled up some weeds at the base of the stone. The fact that his grave was all green instead of fresh brown earth was unsettling. He was gone. Somewhere beneath me there wasn't much left of him. He was gone. Nature had run its course even though nothing about it seemed natural to me. Such a young, happy boy dying was not natural, and nothing could convince me differently.