stumbling into line (sidemen ff)

Chapter 33: 'he is happy and that's all he needs'

He was slipping. He could feel everything he ever worked for and wanted slipping from his grasp.

He felt as if he had been gripping onto the edge of a cliff with white knuckles and grazed palms for a long time now but he didn't move, he didn't budge out of fear of falling.

Eventually though, everything around him got too much and too fast, he could only imagine how they felt.

The weight he felt pressing down on him was merely just back lash from the main problem and he had soon figured out that his friends, his amazing, beloved friends, were sat on the cliff. They weren't hanging, just dangling their legs or dipping their toes and it wasn't fair. He never got the choice, he was always gripping on with all the might his tiny body could muster and he was slipping, he was going to fall.

Logic.

That's the one thing that helped him, figuring out what and why a certain thing was hell bent on standing on his fingers and loosening his grasp. If he figured something out then he could pick it apart without it all falling around him.

How was he supposed to figure these things out though?

What sort of logic can you put to going from recording videos freely one day to having to wait until a baby stops crying the next?

Or the sort of thing where two people, who you love dearly, keep a massive secret from you and compromise everything that you ever thought you knew about them?

It hurt his brain and frustrated him to no end.

These things would be his demise. It was inevitable.

-------------------------------

Two weeks. That's all he lasted.

He hated that he didn't know what to do or how to sort things out.

Of course, he had friends and help but none of them were there in the early hours of the morning when he was sat in the kitchen, Caleb sat on his knee, trying to figure out why he was wailing.

Sometimes, Ethan was there, mopping up drool and tears and falling asleep on Simon's shoulder because he refused to go back to bed until Simon did, but Ethan's nights over had gotten less and less and were more commonly on the weekends now, though he did make multiple visits during the day times, which were considerably better than the nights.

It was a Wednesday, or Thursday (he can't remember), when he rang Suzie. He felt kind of bad for waking her up but also didn't because she was Caleb's mum and if he had to listen to his screaming so did she.

He was at his wit's end and he needed help, even if he hated admitting it because he was basically opening up to be a bad father and it tore him up inside.

"Is everything okay?" Are the first worried words that come through the phone, though Simon hardly hears it through his son's constant, piercing cries.

"I can't do this, Suz. He just cries constantly and I can't calm him down, I need help." Simon sighs, relieved to get it off his chest. He feels his pride slowly slipping away but then he remembers back when he was a young teenager and he would tell Suzie almost everything. Not out of choice but because Suzie is very good at manipulating the mind.

"Have you tried singing to him? He likes that." Suzie suggests, a small smile on her face at the thought of Simon singing. That would be a sight.

"I am not singing to him. I'll give him the phone though, you sing to him." He argues, holding the phone out to Caleb, who takes it and his screams cease for mere seconds before starting up again, louder and higher than before.