F.A.F // H2OVanoss [Completed]

Chapter 36

WARNING: This chapter contains triggering topics and themes

(My phone is literally about to die so it's like I'm updating with my last dying breath okay later rip my phone)

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Cold water splashes onto his face for a few moments at a time before he blindly reaches down and shuts off the faucet. Before grabbing a towel and drying off his face. Evan takes a deep breath, feeling the panic rise in his chest as he stares back at his reflection. His face was still damp from the water he had splashed on it.

"Relax, you're fine. Everything's fine." He says, attempting to reassure himself that nothing was wrong with him, that he wasn't on the edge of a very bad panic attack. Right now, he realized, he was alone, completely alone, anything could happen, anything. That was scary to Evan, who knew that he could easily fall apart when he was by himself, no one was there to stop him from being his usual, self-destructive self.

Closing his eyes, he tried to place himself inside a nice memory, where he didn't have to worry about the things he worried about now. Memories of middle school flooded his head, how all his smiles were so real and so was his laughter and he felt as if he had taken those things for granted. He had been a stupid middle schooler who thought that being happy was a given, that it wasn't special and precious and hard to come by. That it would be something he would always have. Evan would give anything for just a moment of happiness, without the worry that his thoughts were going to give him.

Tyler filled his head when he thought of eighth grade, and Evan let out a small whimper as all he could think about was that Saturday night, how Tyler had held him as he cried. How he had given him his favorite vodka, knowing his coping mechanisms almost as well as Evan himself knew them. After the third drink, he had noticed a different taste, but he brushed it off as him just being heartbroken and tipsy. His eyes begin to water as he thinks of the way Tyler pushed him onto the bed, their lips connected and Evan had a sinking feeling grow in his stomach as he had pushed him off.

The way he was pushed back down after he was fed another drink and Evan began to cry, begging Tyler to stop. He didn't stop, he just kept going. Evan had felt used as the boy touched him, exposed him, used him, and how weak he had felt underneath his best friend. How fucked up it was that Evan still wanted to trust him, even after he had made him cry, made his day worse than it already was.

He was the main reason that Evan couldn't sleep that night, how he had instead spent his time trying not to cry in fear of Tyler hearing him. The boy's arms were snaked around his waist, terrifying him. Tyler was the reason he had burned his bed sheets, the reason Evan couldn't go to school.

"You're weak, stop being so fucking weak, Evan." He told himself, dropping to his knees as he heaved for breath that didn't seem to be coming. Why was breathing so hard? Was he just so weak that he could barely breathe now?

I love you, Evan. Were the words that Tyler told him as he touched him, as he forced himself onto the broken boy. He told Evan he loved him after love had already hurt Evan once that day.

I love you, Evan. Were the words Jonathan told him after he made him his second choice, for the second time. He told Evan he loved him after he had broken him.

At least Tyler would always pick him first.

Even if all he was is just second best, if he was best at all, if there was a hint of specialness that ran through his veins, which there wasn't. He wasn't good enough, wasn't special enough, wasn't worth it. He didn't deserve for decent people to ever pick him first, not that they ever did in the first place.

His breathing betrayed him as he sat there, on his knees in front of the bathroom vanity, trying to breathe normally for just a single moment as his bad thoughts attacked him. His insecurities, his worries, they all crashed against his collapsed form as he whimpered and cried, mentally pleading for it all to stop. His thoughts were like a storm, taunting him about the things he had done, how they were wrong and made him unlikeable, how Jonathan had never liked him in the first place. How he should just stop trying and it was just so loud and it wouldn't be quiet. Evan just wanted it to be quiet.

Pain spiked through his arm, jolting him from his thoughts as he looked down and became terrified of himself. Six horizontal lines had been slashed into the skin of his wrist, each with blood pooling around it, dripping off his arm and creating a small pool on the floor. In the other hand, he held a razor. His tears mixed with the blood on the floor, he added two more slashes. More blood fell, more tears watered down its thickness.

This pattern continued until he was on the floor curled up next to his pool of blood, his eyes locked onto it as he continued to cry. Stinging pain lingered on his wrist as the metal razor clanged to the floor. He cried until the world went dark, and his thoughts followed him into his dreams.

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"Don't even think about talking to him, got it?" Tyler had cornered Jonathan after school, having slipped away from the rest of the group just so he could get his message across more clearly. "What happened stays between us, alright? As far as Evan is concerned, you're a cheating dick."

Jonathan snorted, rolling his eyes. "And you call yourself his best friend, when you're the reason he's broken, you kissed me! I should punch you right now-"

"Then why don't you, huh? Why don't you punch me? Who's stopping you?"

He narrowed his eyes. "Because, Tyler, people like you always get what's coming to them, don't think of yourself as an exception. If the universe wants me and Evan to be together, it'll find a way, just like it will find a way to knock some sense into you."

Tyler grabbed Jonathan's collar and pushed him against the wall. "When I told you that Evan was mine," he pushed him harder against the wall, his eyes narrowing, "I meant it."