Behind Closed Doors (Lams)

~1~ Pain, suffering, death, and (worst of all) the art of being in love.

A/N for casper, who will be very disheartened to know that john is sexy

also fair warning that my characters question reality far too often sorry guys

TW: anxiety, talk of a past suicide attempt. starting off STRONG !

The world conjured up a lot of things in the strangeness of its presence: like people and landscapes and lagoons and beaches. And, probably the worst thing of them all, human tenderness.

Human tenderness, and vulnerability and love. Where to begin?

Firstly, if there was one notable thing about Alex, it was that he didn't really fuck with any of that. He was certain. He'd stake a bet on it. Better yet, he'd stake his life on it.

It was partly because love simply wasn't something to be fucked around with. It destroyed people. It tore them apart. Ruined more lives than it fixed. And it was partly because Alex just didn't really understand the appeal behind it. Like, at all. There was just something about the idea that had always made his skin crawl.

Perhaps it was because of his lack of such growing up. He'd never really learned how to be loved by another, not in the way he should have. The type of love Alex had known was exploiting. It was painful. It was inconvenient. And, inherently, to love was to suffer.

So he'd always taken a pride in his independence. There was pride in the way he set five alarms before he slept every night, and the way he cooked alone in the kitchen; pride in the way he kept his earphones in at school, full volume despite the class, just so that he could teach himself the content in his own space.

And then there were the moments less filled with it. The days he woke crying, holding himself in his arms and rocking gently like a mother. His room rocked with him. There were the days he'd light cigarettes on his balcony, flicking the tobacco and burnt remains of something else out on the concrete.

But that was nobody's business. Alex had never had his tears wiped for him and he'd never been kissed in his sleep, and, even though his love for himself would never truly be perfect, it had been enough. And, sure, sometimes that was lonely. Really fucking lonely. He'd always taken pride in his independence but resentment in the fact that he could never seem to indulge in humanism the same way everyone around him inherently knew how.

But love wasn't something he needed to survive. They could go ahead, they could play the game- he would stick up his nose to the playing field. It wasn't something he'd craved. He didn't rely on intimacy, because somehow, commitment to another person had been the most terrifying thing in the entire world. Having someone that would know him, every part of him? Being vulnerable, being fragile? Absolutely not.

If Alex had to hug his own pillow sometimes or soothe himself to sleep every night, he supposed it was fine. That didn't mean he was lonely or weird or anything like that, it just meant that sometimes he needed support. Support that he could receive from himself. He didn't need anyone else.

Anyways, point proven, Alex didn't really give a fuck about love. He didn't care about the people that stole glances at his pretty face, didn't care for whoever he'd flirted with in class, and he especially didn't care for touch. He didn't want anyone to put their hands on him, to adore him. It made him feel sick.

Maybe that made him unloveable, but if that was the case, he would be lying if he said that he cared. If he had to be a little unloveable sometimes, just to get through, so be it. Approval didn't matter too much anyways. Alex found that the more time he spent dwelling on how to improve himself for other people, the further into depression he'd end up falling. He wasn't stupid. The first rule of living on the streets (or rather, living at all) is that you never get too attached to anything. Because fortunes changed by the second. What good was approval from others, when they'd be gone in a couple of months either way? Why spend your life catering to the interest of everybody else, when you can be in contentment with yourself first?