+ Positively Negative - | Freddie & Joey

21. Joey -+ Barely Breathing [Part Three]

Fucking thing.

“Shit- Damn it, Joey… I’m Sorry,” Freddie said, sitting up, staring hard at me. I frowned and sat up gently -slowly-, with a frown, too, noticing how his eyes followed mine.

“It's okay... But, Freddie? Something's wrong, isn't it? Did I do something-?”

Freddie shook his head quickly. “No-! No it's not you at all, it's me-”

My mouth fell open and my chest felt as if it was closing in on itself. I shook my head slowly, using the bed to push myself away from Freddie; this was a joke! Really?! After I'd given myself to him like this? So quickly I was being dumped? I was still naked for fuck-sake! And Freddie wasn't like this. Maybe it was because I'd been... bad.

I didn’t know what to think in those seconds that ticked by. I couldn’t understand what I could have done. It felt like with each tick of the simple analogue clock in Freddie’s room, some kind of thread was binding around my heart and pulling… Tighter… What the hell?

“Please,” I whispered, “Don't... I mean- fuck I know what I did to you all those times and the… I thought you were, I thought we were… Good or- was it me just... just now- with the se-x..?” His eyes widened as he took in my pathetically distraught expression, my shoulders unknowingly lifting and tensing, my hands fisting in the covers.

“Shit no, Joey, I'm not breaking up with you! Fuck,” Freddie crawled forwards and he'd lifted his arm so it slung around my neck before I could blink and his lips connected with mine again with a force that almost sent me off the other side of the bed. My hands grasped onto Freddie's sides and he pulled me into him.

“Fuck,” he murmured against my mouth. The breaths that belonged to him were making me uneasy yet high as a fucking kite as they floated into me, pushing my own out of my lungs with every movement of my chest. I was breathing him in. “Stop making me kiss you.” In a moment he was pulling himself away from me again, but this time he kept our foreheads touching, our noses brushing each other every once in a while.

“I’m leaving.”

There was a pause in which I waited for the rest of his sentence. And I waited. Because it sounded like what he’d just said was what I was expecting before, but instead of saying he was dumping me, he’d decided ‘leaving’ was a softer word to use. At least these were more original than the “It’s not you, it’s me” approach. But originality didn’t prevent any hurt at all.

“Funny,” I muttered when he offered nothing else, gently pushing my hands against Freddie’s chest to distance myself from him even though that action caused me to want to melt into him more. His body was so warm, everything was so inviting.

“I’m not joking!” he held my hands against him and I couldn't help the shiver that ran through me from that alone, the jump in my stomach. “Joey, my dad is sending me away.”

My eyes flicked up to his, wide. There was a momentary pause that went by before I could trust myself to speak again. “What?”

“My father is sending me to some fucking place hoping that I'll turn straight.”

I could feel my face visibly pale. “Like... A camp sort of thing?”

I'd heard of those. Many different versions of them. I'd never once imagined that to be real though. Then again, I hadn't imagined I'd be gay either. Homosexuality apparently opened a lot of doors.

“Yeah...” Freddie said. His voice was a calming hum against my throat when I shuffled closer to him slowly and let his head rest on my shoulder. I didn't feel calm though. Pretty far from it. My heart was struggling against the invisible ropes that were bound around it, and my head was hammering, going into over drive.