my fault | justin + alex

chapter four

"Yeah."

"Okay," Alex immediately regretted his stupid response. It was stupid, nothing more or less than that, but he also found himself not caring about that either. Justin didn't call him stupid so he let the thought slip from his mind. Perhaps his anxiety wasn't going to hold onto that thought, or maybe even that part of his brain had stopped caring too.

"Alex?" Justin asked, just to see if the blonde was paying attention.

"Yeah?"

He was.

"I just thought- I wanted to, uh," Justin was trying to swallow whatever pride he had left to thank Alex for letting him stay but he couldn't. Hadn't begging to stay here in the first place been enough?

Alex thought so, so he nodded into the darkness of the room. Justin couldn't see him from where he lay on the floor but he heard the slight rustle of the pillow to suggest Alex was moving. "It's fine," Alex responded. He wasn't going to see Justin out on the street and he seemed desperate, Alex was actually worried about what Justin would do now that he didn't have Bryce. It wasn't Alex's concern but his mind was making it a concern of his. He sighed quietly but it could be heard loudly in the silent room. "I mean, what you did isn't fine," he said pointedly. "It's fucked up, but you told her. You can't change what you did so at least you owned up," Alex reminded him the painful truth but no venom or hatred seeped into his tone this time, not like Justin expected. He expected nothing other than hatred from the boy who was once in love with Justin's now ex girlfriend. Funny, really. Jessica Davis was now one of both their ex girlfriends. Justin knew they were supposed to be rivalling exes fighting over her but Jessica wouldn't be taking either of them back, they had both hurt her too much and she probably deserved better. Scratch that, she did deserve better.

That left too broken hearted boys in a bedroom, one on the floor and one on the bed.

"No shit," Justin shot back sarcastically, but it didn't make the atmosphere too tense at all.

It seemed they were both tired of fighting but it was Alex's next words, the ones the brunette didn't expect to hear, that relieved Justin to an incomprehensible degree. He didn't really know what being warmed felt like but he could imagine this was it, a slight bubble in your stomach and a warmth of the heart. It shouldn't matter so much but just having one person say it made life not so hopeless for him after all.

"You're not too bad Foley, I think if you try and do the right fucking thing then you'll actually be able to go back to normal."

Normal.
Justin would give anything to go back to normal, or whatever normal was. He didn't think he'd ever had this feeling back then though and he quite liked the warmth in his chest and the swelling of his heart.

You're not too bad Foley.
Not too bad, Justin thought. It wasn't much but he decided he'd take that over anything else any day. It was good enough, made ten times better because of the person who said it.

•••

Unfortunately he'd tried to return to a normal life by going to school and keeping his head down, but Alex kind of fucked up any sort of normal like for him when he landed himself in hospital.

Justin had expected to see one of the students at Liberty visit Alex at some point, or maybe Alex's mother would tell him about another friend being there, but that hadn't happened yet. He just wanted to leave this shitty life he had because there was no point anymore. The only point he had was making sure Alex wasn't alone, but no one had come to relieve him of that duty yet even though he was sure they would.