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

النهاية

Swinging his bookbag over his shoulder, the younger boy scurries out of the car and excitedly rushes towards the front door. His parents come behind him, laughing at their son's excitement.

"I just really missed home," Brad explains. He grips the straps of his bookbag and sheepishly smiles, impatiently waiting for his parents to unlock the door so he can get to his phone.

"Right," his dad replies. Brad can tell he already knows that he's just eager to talk to Tristan. But you can't really blame him. The curly-haired boy hasn't seen his boyfriend's beautiful face in a month and two weeks. It's killing him. He wants to be able to hug him again and hear him speak and just sit with him. It doesn't really matter what they do together, Brad would be happy just being with him.

His dad unlocks the door and pushes it open to the dark living room. Brad wonders why the blinds are closed, but he doesn't question it, and he feels around in the darkness until his hand comes in contact with the light switch on the wall. He quickly flicks the switch up, illuminating the decorated living room, his wide eyes instantly landing on the huge banner reading: WELCOME HOME, BRAD.

"Aw -" Brad's cooing is instantly cut off by a sudden group of people unexpectedly jumping out from behind the plenty of furniture in the living room and shouting 'surprise!' at him. The curly-haired boy jumps backwards before he's smiling so hard his jaws ache. Mostly everyone is from his neighbourhood, but then there's James, of course, some of the friends he used to hang around in the skate park, and Natalie alongside their nan. Brad searches the room for Tristan, but the tall blond is unfortunately nowhere in sight.

Instantly, the curly-haired boy's unsurprisingly engulfed in a tight hug by his sister. He lets out a laugh and hugs her back before pulling away to wrap his arms around his nan.

"You have to stop doing this to us!" Natalie exclaims.

"Never again," Brad reassures her, pulling away from his father's mum and turning to face Natalie again. "I'm here to say."

His older sister tightly hugs him once more before rushing off to talk to their parents. The curly-haired boy helps his nan over to the couch as James joins his side, wrapping an arm around the shorter boy's shoulder. Brad hasn't seen him since they ate together after Connor's funeral. He looks different - a good different, with a tan and everything.

"You're an idiot," James casually tells him. "Like, I'm actually kind of angry with you."

"Sorry," Brad sincerely apologises, "I really didn't know what I was doing."

"I'm sorry, too." The older boy pulls him into a hug, rubbing his back with one hand. "I didn't think you'd take those diet pills. I should've never told you about them."

"Don't put that on yourself." Brad pulls away and places two hands on the blue-eyed boy's shoulders. "Let's just agree to not talk about six weeks ago anymore, yeah?"

James nods before a smile grows on his face. "You know what we should talk about, though?"

"What?"

"That orange ice-cream over there."

"Mango gelato," the brown-eyed boy corrects, heading over towards the table. His skate friends are already happily digging into all the food. Brad's a little nervous to talk to them again - he doesn't know what they think of him anymore. He randomly dropped them without an explanation and basically insulted their hobby to their face so long ago. He doesn't expect them to like him, like everyone else who decided Brad's not good enough anymore.

"Brad!" The seven teenagers excitedly greet when he reluctantly joins the food table. The curly-haired boy smiles widely at the enthusiastic greeting before plopping down into a chair and instantly jumping into a conversation, like he never left, as James scoops mango gelato out of a container and into two ice-cream bowls.