Apathy ~Minizerk~

Empathy

"Um, hello, I'm Simon Minter, and I am- I was, Josh's boyfriend," Simon said, palms sweaty. He looked at the faces staring up at him. He didn't know most of them, but he did know some. His mother and aunt, Rachel, and a few faces from school. Vik sat with JJ and Josh's family, along with who Simon assumed were Vik's parents, as he had seen them at a couple school events. The only thing all of the people watching him had in common was why they were here. They had all cared for Josh at some point in their lives.

This is why they were listening to Simon give a speech at Josh's funeral.

"I never was any good at public speaking, and to be honest, I couldn't write some big long speech about Josh without crying and giving up. So instead, I'm going to read a piece that was written for an English class by Vikram Barn, he's here, say hi, Vik," Simon paused, and Vik stood up for a second, "Joshua Bradley, and me. The prompt for the essay was, what is love?"

"What is love, you ask? Well, the first idea was pitched from Josh, and it was 'a series of chemical reactions in the brain,' but of course, we couldn't turn in an assignment with just that fact. We eventually decided on the idea, love is loss." Hands shaking as he read from the paper he was holding, Simon took a breath.

"Love is the longing you feel when you look into someone's eyes for the first time, and you know, you have it bad. It's missing their smell every second you're away from them. Love is having someone that you can always rely on to help you up when you're down and make your day. Until they can't." Simon took another shaky breath.

"Love is smashing your phone in anger. Love is crying until you finally fall asleep in the early hours of the morning. Love is missing them with all of your worth that without them, it feels like life has no meaning. Love is screaming to the night sky, hoping, praying that someone will hear, 'Bring him back!' Love is trying to imagine him being here with you, even though you know deep down inside, that nothing can ever bring him back," tears had begun to well in Simon's eyes.

"Love is hating yourself for him being gone as much as you cared for him when he was here. Love is loss, but as the famous quote goes, 'tis better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.'"Simon finally looked up from the paper, as he was too nervous to do it before he finished.

When he looked up, he realised the majority of people were crying, or on the verge of tears. Simon hadn't been expecting this many people to care about his silly speech. He was holding back tears as everyone applauded, and as he sat down beside his mother, he closed his eyes and let the tears stream down his face. His mother wrapped her arms around him as the applause died out, and he hugged her back, crying on her shoulder.

Looking around, seeing that all of these people had cared for Josh and related to what Simon had said, gave Simon a feeling that, maybe, not everything is going to be so bad.

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A/N I hoped you liked my first fanfiction! I'm going to put up a slightly longer authors note after this that will be deleted once I sort things out, and if you could please read that and respond it would help me out so much and I would love you forever! But I really hoped you liked this, thanks for 2k reads as this is being finished!

Thanks for reading/voting/commenting!!