EVERYBODY BUT ME
nick wilson
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It was a warm evening when the sun had begun giving in to the moon, bowing to let it shine.
Azriel lay face planted in the comfort of his bed. The lights of his room were turned off, the constellations on his ceiling formed strange shadows on the wooden floorboards, and there was no noise whatsoever to disturb the havoc of his thoughts as he wandered in the loudest and coldest corners of his mind.
The boy was a blink away from falling into a disconnecting sleep when the door to his room screeched against the wall after being thrown open, disrupting the silence that was killing him scarless.
Without even flinching at the sudden noise or opening his eyes, Azriel simply nuzzled his face further into his pillow, about to tell whom he assumed to be his younger sister to leave him alone, when he heard a very familiar voice that was far from being a girl's.
"Wake up, you asshole," demanded his best friend.
"Go away, Warren. I'm not in the damn mood," the raven head mumbled.
The aureate, however, wasn't having it.
Warren simply closed the door to the room, planting the possibility of having left like he was told to do.
Azriel, wanting to check if his best friend who hardly ever listened had really left, opened his eyes.
Just as he was about to turn around, he let out a pained hiss when something heavy and loaded collided with his shirtless back after being aimed right at it.
"What do you want?" Azriel grunted while pushing himself up into a seating position and resting his naked back against the headboard.
He noticed Warren wearing his basketball jersey, meaning he was just out of practice. His curls were still wet and messily ruffled, indicating that he'd taken a hasty shower, wanting to get to his best friend without wasting any more of his time.
Azriel didn't even want to question if the boy's tank top was stained in sweat or water. He was about to make a humorless joke about it, but the glare on Warren's face made him toss it away for another time.
Forming air quotes with his hands, stardust eyes narrowed, Warren quoted, "Azriel finally moved on from his fuck with that loser after fucking her off in the hall yesterday."
Rolling his own eyes in response, Azriel offered, "Look, I can't entertain your nonsense right now. How about waste my time with it tomorrow when I'll have a fuck to give?"
"What the hell did you do, Aze?" Warren demanded, cutting to the chase.
The other boy shrugged casually, "Don't know what you're talking about."
The curly head was about to pick his bag up from the floor to hurl it at Azriel for the second time, but it was immediately snatched away.
"What the fuck, Warren, do you want to crack my spine or something?" Azriel snapped.
He knew very well what the boy was talking about, why he was here, but the last thing he wanted was for his closest friend to be disappointed in him for being such a dick to Nyx.
Sighing, the aureate rubbed his face, "You weren't at school today, I didn't know what was going on, why everyone kept whispering about you and. . .it sucked."
Then, his silver eyes shot an accusatory bullet at Azriel, "That reminds me - you ditched school without telling me, didn't even answer my texts. How could you, Aze?"
"Shut your dramatic little ass up." Azriel requested not so politely, scrunching his features.
Warren kept his eyes locked on his best friend. His gaze softened a few moments later. He walked over to the edge of the bed and slumped down, placing his elbows on his knees. Running a hand through his damp hair, he confessed in a quiet voice, "I thought. . .I thought something had happened, that you'd done something."
A taunting laugh echoed in Azriel's ears as he processed Warren's words.
There was a sting tickling his chest when he realized how much he hated when Warren had to spend so much of his time worrying for him, but he was also unexplainably grateful for his concern at the same time.
The defeated raven monster dropped a broken smirk, "I'm sorry for not giving you the good riddance that you deserve."
In a split second, Warren's fist had made contact with his best friend's face, snapping it to the side from the impact.
Swiping the back of his hand against the corner of his lips where a dull ache was now drumming, Azriel growled, "I mean it for real this time, Warren, what the fuck is your problem?"
Warren sounded anything but warm and friendly when he replied seriously, "I'd warned you about this before, hadn't I? Treat yourself like shit and I'll knock your gut out,"
"Stop being a dick to yourself, Aze. You're not a bad person - unlike what you try to make yourself out to be," the golden boy reminded, his voice dropping yet staying promising as he finished, "You're my best friend, for fuck's sake. I'll worry about you every damn second of the day if I have to,"
Not knowing how to reply to him, realising he couldn't do it, Azriel looked away and asked again, a lot more nicely this time, "What are you doing here?"
"Partly here to give you a hard time about skipping school without giving me a heads up - it was hell without your constant criticism of the world," Warren answered honestly, shrugging. He then added, "And to ask you what happened yesterday,"
"Nothing happened."Azriel dismissed immediately.
Raising a brow, Warren phrased, "So not only did you tell Nyx to fuck off yesterday, but you're not even going to acknowledge it?"
When he got no reply, he gave a single nod, "Alright, sure, that works."
Azriel's brows furrowed, "Can you drop this stupid act and just straight out say whatever you want to? Trying to understand your idiocy is giving me a headache."
"I don't mean much, just that she won't be a bother anymore." Warren shrugged.
This earned an angry scoff from the raven head, "So she was a fucking bother to you?"
"Did I say she was a bother to me?" Warren pointed out. "I mean, come on, you weren't a fan of having her around anyway. Lord knows how you'd immediately bolt the second she'd show up. She won't be stepping foot in your direction now that you've made it clear how tedious it was for you to deal with her. You won't have to do that anymore,"
"You think I wanted to do it?" Azriel snapped.
With mischief swirling in his glittering eyes, the aureate gave a one-sided grin, "Now that you've admitted that you didn't want to, why did you?"
Realizing what the boy had just done, Azriel felt like his tongue had failed him. He continued staring blankly at Warren's annoyingly victorious dimples.
"Don't fucking use that trick of yours on me again," Azriel threatened.
Dismissing with a wave of his hand, Warren murmured, "We'll see about that."
The hazel-eyed boy rested his head against the headboard, tilting it back and curtaining his sight. "I hate this, Warren. I hate feeling like this."
"What, Aze?" his best friend asked gently.
Clenching his bandaged fists, Azriel answered, "I feel like I'm making all the wrong choices, but doing otherwise feels wrong as well. I fucking hate it, I'm no good for anyone."
"The right choices always come with consequences. They open up a door to expectations, and I'm not sure if I can handle the burden of expectations anymore. It's just. . .it's so much easier to leave the doors closed - nothing gets in, no people, no light. It's only me," the raven monster untangled his messy thoughts carefully, trying to share them with someone else for the first time, licking the dryness on his flushed lips.
Warren gave out a dry chuckle, "That's just life, man. Taking the rough road and fighting through it is worth it in the end. The stumbles and the bruises, they add up to everything you've wanted all along. The easy way out, though, brings you to nothing, it's empty, and that's haunting, the nothingness that you didn't even work for. No matter what you want, you're going to have to work your ass off for it. Even if it means losing yourself in the process."
"That's the thing, Warren. I don't even know who I am to begin with, what would I be losing?" Azriel admitted.
He sounded so lost, it scared his best friend.
"I don't know," Warren said honestly. "The only way to find out is by risking finding yourself regardless of how terrified you are of who you'll find,"
There was a calm sort of silence between the two boys for the next few heartbeats, they were both trying to listen to the voice inside their heads. It was then that Warren tilted his head to look at his best friend's tired face, feeling his chest tighten at the way he sat - as if he was losing a fight with himself, hands battered and broken.
"What's so bad about letting her in, Aze?" Warren asked.
Azriel breathed out a sigh, "Exactly that, Warren. She doesn't deserve the darkness that I let myself fall into every day."
"You don't get it, do you?" Warren's tone was soft despite his heavy voice.
"Get what?" Azriel almost snapped, for he was frustrated with his lack of recognition of his own feelings. He hated being so far from himself.
The golden boy smiled, "She's not falling into your darkness. If anything, she's embracing it."
"That makes no sense," Azriel grumbled after a couple of moments of trying to decipher the depths of the boy's statement, unable to do so.
"She has broken through all your crap, she's cut her way past the walls you've spent so long holding up. She's growing on you, just like you've already grown on her. You've just got to let her in," Warren elaborated.
"I'm still the same person, Warren. Being around her doesn't change who I am," the elemental-eyed boy said.
The aureate shook his head, gazing at the closed blinds across the room, "It's never really about changing yourself for somebody else, it's more about accepting each other's differences. You and Nyx? You two are doing everything you can. You too, Aze, as blind you are to see it, are changing your ways - bit by bit, too slow to realize immediately. You haven't gotten into any fights since you found her, I don't remember you laying a hand on anyone. And Nyx? She's already accepted you as you are."
Moments before another silence could envelop the boys, the curly head looked at his best friend.
Sending a teasing wink his way, he piped up, "Mind you, I didn't count Lanchester here - don't even try denying that it wasn't you who gave him that black eye and busted lip. The asshole deserved it for what he did."
Azriel narrowed his eyes, "Do you want me to punch you to prove you wrong?"
"You're an idiot." Warren rolled his eyes while pointing out. Falling back onto his sheets, Azriel asked, "What do I do? What does all of this mean?"
Standing up from the bed, the starry-eyed aureate grabbed his bag and swung it around his shoulder.
"It means that you need to give her a chance, you need to give yourself a chance. Take the fall - the higher it is, the deeper it'll be. Everyone needs and deserves to be happy, you do too, Aze. Ridden yourself of whatever delusion you have of being the worst person ever. Let your feelings overpower your fears for once, not the other way around."
The raven monster watched as his best friend walked over to the door, about to pull it open. "She's not going to be happy with me, Warren,"
"Not all of the weight in this world is yours to carry," Warren revealed.
Azriel let that sink in.
"Whether she'll be happy with you or not is not for you to decide," The golden boy said. "Try making it up to her, if she comes back to you then she's definitely worth trying your hardest for. Don't let her go and you'll see just how happy you can be by risking whatever it is you're afraid of finding,"
With one last glance at his best friend, Warren walked out, leaving him to do the only thing he knew he had to do - make it up to Nyx.
But, Azriel reminded himself that he was not worth the girl or her efforts.
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