teach me gently on how to breathe || tradley/brad

طيران

The smaller boy slides off the swing when he pulls away and nuzzles his face in his chest. "Promise me you'll be okay?"

"You should promise me you'll be okay," Tristan says, gripping the younger boy by his shoulders and repositioning him in front of him. Brad self-consciously looks down causing Tristan to cup his face in his hands and force him to look into his eyes. "Please no more purging."

"It'll make you happy?"

"More than happy," he automatically replies.

"Then I'll try."

The blond frowns at this. "Try?"

"I don't want to let you down if it ends up happening again, Tris."

"Okay," he whispers, kissing him again. "I'll accept that, I guess."

Brad spots his dad's vehicle heading towards the parking lot of the playground, concluding their conversation. He sucks in a breath and turns back to the taller boy. "Well, I guess this is goodbye for now."

"Sadly." Tristan pulls him into a hug that Brad never wants to walk away from. "We only live like an hour away from each other, anyway. I'm sure we'll have plenty of opportunites to be together, right?"

"Of course." He hesitantly pulls away from Tristan's embrace and waves him off before turning away and slowly walking towards his dad's car. This has been quite a night, Brad thinks as he climbs into the passenger's seat, recapping everything that had happened, starting from him entering the bowling alley. It doesn't even feel like those hours of his life even happened due to the disparity of everything right now from the beginning of his day: how happy he feels, how okay everything is. It feels like nothing could interrupt his happiness.

"Who's that?" his dad asks, questioningly eyeing the tiny figure walking through the darkness.

Brad looks out the car window, a small smile growing on his face at the sight of Tristan's silhouette plopping down on a swing and pushing himself forth into the air. "A friend," the teenager simply replies, strapping on his seatbelt.

. . .

"I shouldn't be eating this," James voices as he rips open his fourth candy bar that afternoon and carelessly chucks the wrapper somewhere in his bedroom. "Why can't milk chocolate have zero calories? Why do you have to be so bad for me, Chocolate?"

"James," Con warns, "what did I say about talking to your food?"

"That it makes me sound insane," the older boy replies, waving his friend off before looking at the candy bar again with a frown. "I really shouldn't eat you."

Connor face-palms.

"I'll burn the calories off later," James verbally decides, even though Brad's sure he's talking to himself, before devouring the candy bar entirely in a second. Brad watches, amazed. He extends his arm over to James's nightstand and slowly hands him the only chocolate-free napkin resting on it. "Thanks," the older boy says, tugging his lips into a smile full of chocolate. Brad just slowly nods, pulling his wide eyes away from the mess of James McVey.

Connor pushes three bags of crisps off James's bed before plopping down. "You're scaring Brad, James."

"No, I'm not," James denies, wiping his mouth clean with the napkin Brad handed him. He furrows his eyebrows at the curly-haired boy nervously shifting in his sitting position. "Wait, you're not scared, are you?"

"More like uncomfortable," Brad replies.

"Sorry. Okay, I'm going to stop eating," the seventeen-year-old says before pulling the lid off of a heart shaped box and silently slipping a piece of chocolate into his mouth. "I fucking hate Valentine's Day."