Me? Going MIA for 2 months? It's more likely than you'd think.
TW: self-harm (cutting), depressed thoughts/actions, mentions of eating disorder, suicide attempt(?) (I don't know if you'd call it an attempt exactly, but that's for you to decide.)
X
Alexander had only felt this bad twice before.
Once, after his mom had died, and he was shipped off to foster care after the hurricane, where he barely spoke good English and was reeling from the overload of emotions.
The second time was after Nick had died. He'd been ripped apart, torn and shattered into so many pieces that there wasn't a chance of being put back together in the right way again.
Both times, there hadn't been anyone left to pick up the pieces.
And there wasn't anyone left now, either.
He was a ghost, leftover from a previous century, slowing drifting in and out of everyone's' lives, never sticking around long enough to be missed.
And he was ghostly, given the darkened hollows of his cheeks and the ghastly paleness of his skin, the way that his hair had become a thinner, straw-like version of the thick mop it had once been.
He was a side effect.
He hadn't spoken to the Schuylers in weeks, he hadn't seen Hercules for a while and hadn't spoken to Laf since the night he had asked him to leave.
Conversations with John consisted of checking whether or not Alex had eaten, gone to therapy, refilled his meds, gone to class, or gotten a decent amount of sleep.
Almost all of the answers were no.
He stopped going to Creative Writing, instead choosing to spend the hour and a half in the library, dazedly wandering between the shelves and pulling out random books, skimming them without actually retaining any information. Washington had given up on persuading Alex to participate in class and now left him alone, leaving Alex to doodle in his notebook or gaze blankly into space off to the left of the board.
He didn't really care, not anymore.
In his mind, he was already gone.
X
Today was a bad day.
His body felt as though it were filled with cement. He stared at the ceiling, which was warping and twisting in a full kaleidoscope of color, even though he knew logically that there was only white. Logic had gone out the window many months ago.
He heard John's alarm start going off on his phone, and the hand groggily reaching out from under the pile of blankets to fumble around for it, the thump of the phone hitting the ground and John's sleepy cursing. The sounds were muffled yet screaming in his head, colliding together with a shaking rattle that made his brain hurt. Everything felt like too much-colors, numbers, sounds, twisting, twisting, twisting, until Alex was being dragged down into the whirlpool his mind had created.
"Alex?" John said, and Alex detected a hint of worry in his voice. He forced himself up into a sitting position, then dragged himself out of bed, even though his body felt like it was being ripped to shreds. His hands were numb, and he stood, swaying, eyes shut, in front of his bed for a moment.
Everything hurt.
He took a breath and held it in his chest. His ribs felt fragile, paper-like.
He was falling apart from the inside-out.
He took a step towards the bathroom and felt the floor crumble beneath his feet, yet he somehow stayed upright. This was how it felt, on bad days. The world was crashing and burning around him, and he was crashing and burning on the inside, but everything on the outside looked fine.
He slowly pulled on a hoodie and sweatpants, and dragged a brush through his hair, wincing as it caught on snarls before catching sight of himself in the bathroom mirror. A sunken faced creature looked back at him, dark circles contrasting his eyes, which shone like moons out of the shadows. His cheekbones were sharp and angular, his lips cracked.
In other words, he looked and felt like hell.
Alexander couldn't go to class today. He couldn't deal with Jefferson, or Professor Adams, or anyone else, not like this. He could barely make it from his bed to the bathroom without feeling like shattering into pieces. He wandered back into their room and sat down on the bed before curling into a ball and rolling over so that he faced the wall. John was still moving around, the fridge door opening and shutting as he fed Charlemange.
Then-
"Alex?" The bed dipped underneath John's weight as he sat down; his hand touched lightly on Alex's shoulder. Alex's senses screamed, because it was too much, it was all too much, he was going to explode, but he didn't have the energy to flinch away.
"I'm fine," he managed to mumble. "I'm just-it's one of those days."
"One of those days" seemed to make up most of his days at this point.
He felt John relax minimally, felt his hand leave his shoulder. "Do you want me to stay with you?"
"No." His answer was quiet, emotionless. "Go to class, I'll be fine."
He could feel John's reluctance, but after hesitating for a minute the weight lifted off of the bed and he heard John rummaging around quietly before the door gently clicked shut a few minutes later.
Alex lay there, letting time slip away. He didn't know how many minutes passed, just that there was the overwhelming, crushing metaphorical weight that came with episodes like this; this cold, heavy sludge that seeped into his bones and made moving impossible.
Somehow, someway, he dragged himself into a sitting position, convinced his muscles to work in screaming phantom agony, an almost painful lurch upwards.
Anxiety buffeted the splintering walls of his mind, even as he stumbled to the over to the coffee pot, only noticing that his hands were trembling as he shakily measured water and coffee into the machine.
As the pot began to brew, Alex slowly raised his hand up in front of his face. He examined the way it shook, the tiny tremors that racked his almost skeletal fingers. He didn't know if it was from the restriction, the anxiety, or both. Both were a good bet, he thought distantly. He had begun to notice the way his body shook at this point in time, how his heart would skip a beat here or there, how his knees went weak and his handwriting became shaky as his pencil trembled across the paper.
He had forgotten what it felt like to be normal.
The coffee pot beeped, and he flinched at the noise, the loudness of it screaming across the silent room, and his hand involuntarily swept across the desk, sending a flurry of papers fluttering to the ground, the sound a sharp scrape in his brain.
His hands came up to cover his ears, and he backed up, feet tripping over each other in a desperate attempt to get away get away get away, because everything was too much and too loud.
The backs of his knees hit John's bed, and Alex sank to the ground, eyes screwed shut. His thoughts were screaming, sweeping through his head with a vigorous snarl.
He wanted them to stop, stop, please stop, just stop thinking; he wanted silence, silence, SILENCE.
The thoughts were never going to stop. It would never be silent. Never, no matter how much he cried or pleaded or cut or puked or smoked or drank or prayed to a god he didn't believe in, it would never stop.
There was a moment of blankness in the eye of the howling hurricane as Alex fantasized about blowing his brains out. The realization hit him like a train.
He wanted to die.
Death was the only way to the quiet that he so desperately craved, to the inevitable downfall that he was barreling towards, the only way to silence to burning craziness in his head.
It was so close he could almost taste it. That absolutely nothing, the absence that was waiting for him.
And then almost immediately the panic bled back through.
And he couldn't breathe.
He didn't want to die, not really.
Right?
He wanted to die, but he didn't want to want to die.
This was a paradox that could never be solved.
He didn't want to be numb. Numbness scared him. When he was numb, he was out of control. When he was numb, he didn't want to exist.
Again, that was what he craved. The ability to not exist, the ability to not feel; yet at the same time he was terrified of not feeling.
Mechanically, unfeeling, he somehow stumbled to his feet, dragging himself over to his desk, where he blindly searched through his drawer, scattering pens and dried up highlighters in his wake.
He finally withdrew what he was looking for: an old pair of scissors, slightly dull, slate gray in the light from the window.
He watched himself from above as he rolled up his sleeve and pressed the blade to his skin.
And then everything just sort of...blanked out.
X
He woke up to the sound of a doors opening and slamming in the hallway, loud voices and laughter that echoed throughout the dorm.
What a severe contrast to sitting on the floor of your room, with blood running down your arms while in the worst depression of your life, Alex found himself thinking dully. Pain was distantly rolling off of his arms in waves. Nothing was actually registering in his brain, not yet. He hadn't actually done anything to the point where he needed to go to the hospital-at least, he hoped not. His arms were numb, his brain was numb. It was all one blank space, where time was a puzzle piece that had fallen out of the picture that was the universe.
He dazedly became aware of the fact that tears were making a slow trail down his face. He didn't even know why he was crying.
He hadn't known he was capable of crying anymore.
He slid the rest of the way to the floor, curling into a senseless, limp ball, tears rolling steadily downward and pooling on the floor beneath his cheek.
Time slowed to a crawl, and Alex slipped into a haze of tears and ragged breaths. Dimly, he heard a door open in the background, and then a shriek sliced into the cloud fogging his mind.
"Alexander!" John's voice was pure terror, the kind of scared that Alex would later realize he never wanted to hear again.
John dropped to the floor beside Alex, and Alex had a moment of pure clarity that John's jeans were desperately in need of a wash.
"Alex, can you hear me? Alex, say something!" John's voice was high pitched, shaking with panic and fright.
Alex slowly lifted his head to look at John, and something inside of him physically cracked, flooding his chest with an unidentifiable feeling.
"I think I need help," Alex croaked out, in a voice that was imploding.
"Alex. Alexander. Oh, honey." John's voice was broken yet gentle, and he gingerly lifted Alex, settling him against his chest. A dam broke, and Alex sobbed into his shirt, tears and snot pouring down his face in a disgusting mix that soaked the fabric.
He faintly heard Johns' sharp intake of breath as he caught a glimpse of Alex's arms, and fingers lightly flipped his wrist over, leaving the damage bare to the world.
"Oh, Alex..." John breathed, and this brought on a fresh wave of sobs, choking Alex and leaving him breathless.
"I think I need help," Alex repeated, his words catching on his tears and hitching the sentence into jagged mountains.
"Okay. Okay, we're going to get you help," John reassured him, and he shifted to pull out his phone. "I'm going to call the hospital, okay-"
"No!" Alex said fervently, "No, don't call the hospital."
"Alex, you need medical help!" John exclaimed, and Alex shook his head.
"No doctors."
"Alex-"
"No doctors!" Alex repeated, his voice shaking slightly, and he sniffed. John realized he was trembling.
He sighed, torn. "Fine. Fine, but I'm calling Eliza. She's trained to handle this stuff."
There was no objection, and John dialed Eliza, praying that she would answer her phone.
She picked up on the third ring. "Hey John, what's up?" Her voice was peppy but had an underlying tone of tiredness, and John glanced at the clock, realizing that she had probably just gotten done with a shift at the hospital.
"Hey 'Liza. Listen, could you come to our dorm?."
"Okay, yeah sure. What time do you want to meet up? Do you want to get coffee or something?"
"Um, right now. Like, as soon as possible. And," John looked again at the blood that was slowly soaking into the knees of his jeans, "could you bring a first aid kit?"
Eliza's tone took on a serious note, "John...are you okay?"
"I'm fine. It's-it's Alex." His voice cracked slightly.
"I'll be over as fast as I can," she said, and hung up before he could say anything else.
X
The door opened about three minutes later, and Eliza came hustling through, carrying a bag of various medical equipment.
Her gaze landed on Alex .2 seconds after she had walked in the door and her eyes grew big. "Oh my god."
"Hi," Alex said meekly, and John carefully disentangled himself from Alex, getting to his feet. Eliza's eyes swept over the bloodstains on John's jeans, shirt, and the floor, and she looked back up at him. "What. The hell. Happened."
"I fucked up." Alex's voice was small and broken, and he was staring off into the space around Eliza's shoes.
Eliza kneeled next to Alex, situating herself on the hardwood before reaching out, hesitating as her hand hovered above his wrist. She steeled herself, telling herself that she dealt with this every day, even while a part of her mind screamed not with one of your closest friends, not like this, it should never be like this.
She turned Alex's forearm over slowly, and forced a passive face. She had seen worse, she reminded herself. So much worse.
Eliza slipped into Nurse Mode, quickly counting up to nine on his left, then switched to his right, where six new gashes overlapped layers and layers of scar tissue.
"So you're a lefty," she said conversationally and reached behind herself for supplies, unzipping her bag. John's eyebrows drew together slightly, and Eliza glanced at him as she unwrapped an alcohol wipe. "There's more scar tissue on the right forearm, as well as lacerations and depth of the wounds. Alex is left-handed, which means it's easier..." she trailed off, realizing how robotic and indifferent she sounded. She cleared her throat. "Sorry."
"It's okay," Alex said quietly. He was staring at his knees. "I'm used to it."
John flinched and looked away, swallowing hard. He hated this. He hated how Alexander was destroying himself.
How many times had he been examined by doctors, who talked about him as though he was an interesting observation, talked about him as though he were nothing more than the chart in their hands?
John didn't know if he wanted that answer.
"Little sting," Eliza said cheerfully, and she ran the wipe over the cuts, gently swabbing away traces of drying blood. Alex watched this with a blank expression, unflinching.
Eliza was used to this. She had seen too many patients like this, people like Alex, who lost themselves in the act of self-destruction.
It broke her heart.
She had learned to distance herself because it just hurt too much, but every once and a while it would slip in, sneaky as a needle and just as painful.
She moved on to his right arm, swiping at it with an alcohol wipe while Alex sat unnaturally still. He was drawing into himself, secluding himself to a corner of his brain where he felt safe. Again, Eliza was used to this, and she kept working, pressing cotton pads onto the cuts and wrapping them in lengths of gauze.
"All done," she finally said, and uncurled herself from the floor, stretching as she got up.
Alex stayed immobile, gazing unseeing into the distance, and Eliza gathered her things, packing them away neatly.
John stopped her by the door. "Thank you, 'Liza. Really. I don't know what I would have done."
Eliza's face settled into a serious expression, "You need to call his therapist and his doctor. Make appointments for as soon as possible. Tell them that he's relapsing and having suicidal ideation, and that he's endangering himself and needs to be seen immediately."
John swallowed, overwhelmed, and nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
Her steely gray-blue eyes locked on to his, staring at him intently. "I'm serious, John. If this continues this is not going to be the worst thing to happen. I've seen it. And it's horrible. And I know you sure as hell don't want that to happen to Alex."
"Okay," John choked out, and Eliza nodded. "Okay."
She pushed past him and swept out into the hallway, leaving a silent room and a wide, vast chasm stretching between two very different people.
X
Alex found enough strength to snap himself out of his daze long enough to crawl into bed, where he wrapped himself in as many blankets as he could fit on top of the comforter. He rolled over and faced the wall, staring mindlessly at the colorless paint and the smooth texture.
He was so fucking cold.
He finally fell asleep to dreams of jumbled, muffled yells and pure, blinding whiteness.
X
When John had changed, and was sure that Alex had finally fallen asleep, he slipped out the door and across the hallway, knocking on Lafayette and Hercules' door with a tired vigor.
Hercules answered, opening the door with the usual friendly look on his face. "Hey."
John cleared his throat, "Can I come in?"
"Yeah, of course," Herc said, and John stepped into their room. Laf was on his bed, reading a book, and he looked up. "Hey John, what's up?"
John took one look at him and burst into tears.
"Hey, whoa, okay," Herc said, and led him over to one of the chairs while Laf scrambled off the bed. John all but collapsed, sinking into the chair and putting his head in his hands while sobs wracked his body.
Laf pulled up a chair while Hercules leaned against the desk and grabbed a box of tissues, offering them to John. "Wanna tell us what's going on?" He asked softly, and John just shook his head, unable to speak as he choked on tears.
"That's okay," Laf said gently, "We can wait."
John cried until he felt like he couldn't cry anymore, until his eyes burned and his nose was so stuffed up he could barely breathe, and then he cried some more. In the back of his mind he realized he had wanted to cry for a very long time, there just hadn't been a breaking point until now.
When he finally calmed down enough that he was able to breathe through more than gasps, Hercules once again offered him the tissues, which John shakily took and sniffled into, blinking away more tears.
"You wanna talk about it?" Herc asked again, and John clenched a tissue in his hand, grounding himself.
He opened his mouth, and suddenly there were more tears, pouring out of his eyes and down his face uncontrollably. "I thought he was getting better," he finally got out, tears garbling his voice, and he swiped at his face, swallowing thickly.
"Alex?" Herc asked calmly, and John nodded, blowing his nose. "I thought-I thought it was helping, I thought therapy was doing something, and I just-" he broke off, taking a breath. "I thought it was going to be okay, and I left this morning, and he said he was fine, and I got back, and he was on the floor," John's voice cracked, breaking into pieces. "There was so much blood."
There was a moment of silence.
"He stopped cutting months ago," John said finally. "I don't understand, I don't..." he shook his head, unable to continue.
Laf had been still up until this point, listening quietly, and at this he stiffened, a wave of emotions washing over his face. He silently got up and began to pace, hands clenching and unclenching as he walked, until his face suddenly twisted into something ugly, something very different from his usual cheerful expressions, and he turned, slamming his fist against the door in a deafening racket. Hercules sprang into action, crossing the room in two strides and reaching out to grab Laf's wrist. "Nope, we're not doing that," he said, and Laf yanked his arm out of Herc's grasp, anger rippling across his features.
"You don't fucking understand," he yelled, and Hercules stared back at him, an unmovable object meeting an unstoppable force. "This is my fault!"
He reached up and grabbed his hair, twisting his fingers through the braids and the curls. He walked away from Herc, angrily kicking his chair and sending it bouncing off of his desk. "This is my fault," he repeated, and dropped his arms to cross them across his chest. "I knew he was cutting, I knew it and I just let it happen, I trusted him," he said shakily, fury radiating from his voice, and he shook his head. "I took his blades, I made him give them to me and promise that he'd stop, and I just-ugh!" he screamed, and he threw his hands up in the air, frustrated tears gathering in his eyes. "I'm so fucking stupid!"
"It's not your fault," John said, voice scratchy and thick. "I'm his fucking boyfriend, for Christ's sake, I should know what the fuck is going on under my nose."
"It's no one's fault," Hercules said, settling himself on his bed, his voice passive. "We all know how Alex is, we all knew this was going to happen at one point or another."
"But it shouldn't," Laf cried, "None of this should have happened!"
"You're right," Hercules said. "So how are we going to fix this?"
"I don't know," John said quietly.
X
Alex woke uneasily to the door opening and closing. John shuffled through the room, and Alex rolled over, watching him open the mini-fridge and feed Charlemange. John turned back around and noticed Alex watching him.
"Hey," John said softly. "How are you doing?"
Alex took in the tear tracks on his face, the way his eyes were slightly swollen. "You were crying," he noted, and John shrugged. "Yeah, I was," he admitted.
"Because of me." Alex's voice was matter of fact.
"...Yes."
Alex nodded tiredly and slowly sat up, pushing the blanket pile aside. His arms stung dully, like an afterthought. He glanced at the clock and realized that it was later than he thought. John followed his gaze. "We could get something to eat," he suggested, and Alex shook his head.
"Not hungry."
"Yeah, I'm not very hungry either," John muttered, sitting on his bed and twisting his hands together. They both ignored the fact that there was a bloodstain on the edge of the bottom corner of the bedspread.
Alex finally got up and started rifling through his clothes, pulling out a pair of pajama pants and a worn t-shirt. He changed and moved to his desk, where he clumsily opened his laptop and went through the motions of checking his email and if there had been any new assignments posted in his online classrooms.
He spaced out, staring out the window until he noticed John shutting off lights and getting into bed.
"What are you doing?" Alex asked, and John looked back at him. "I'm going to sleep."
"Can I sleep with you?" The question was asked before Alex's brain even had properly processed it, and John seemed surprised at this. Alex had slowly been withdrawing all affection for the past few weeks; this was a surprise.
"Um, yeah. Of course." John shifted over, opening the blankets and making room.
Alex shut his laptop and turned the desk light off, then crawled in next to John, who turned off the remaining light and rolled over. "I love you," he said, voiced laced with drowsiness, and Alex blinked. "I love you too."
"I wish you'd talk to me," John whispered, so quiet Alex almost didn't hear it. He was stunned into silence as John fell asleep, and he rolled onto his side, focusing on the softly glowing numbers on the alarm clock, watching as they slowly ticked past.
"I'm sad," Alex said quietly. John's breathing was slow and steady next to him, his form still underneath the pile of blankets."Like, I'm really fucking sad. All the time. And it won't stop."
There was no answer. Alex stared into the blackness. There was a hole opening inside him, opening inwards. He was the black hole, the unstoppable force that sucked everything until there was nothing left, until everyone he met was just a shell of who they once had been, including him.
I destroy everyone, and then I destroy myself to make up for it, he thought, and he shut his eyes, tears unwillingly welling up behind his eyelids.
He was burning out, like a falling star spinning towards the inescapable impact. He was the Chicxulub asteroid, and he was hurtling towards the collision that would wipe out everyone in his life.
I am tearing through people's lives at the speed of light. I am the destruction in of itself. I am the force come to destroy us all, because I am the asteroid and there is no stopping the inevitable.
Tears welled over and slipped over his cheeks, silently splashing onto the pillow as he rolled over. His shoulders shook with muted, numb sobs, and he felt John shift, felt him roll onto his back.
"Alex?" His voice was slow and sticky with sleep, and he propped himself up on his elbow. "What's wrong?"
Alex rolled towards John, and tears slid into his hair and ears, muffled sounds for a split second. "I'm sad," he cried. "I'm so fucking sad, John, and I want it to stop. Please make it stop. Please make it be quiet."
John's arms wrapped around him, tucking him close to his chest tightly where the smaller male shook with soft sobs. "We're going to make it stop, Alex. We're going to find silence, okay? I'm right here, I promise."
Alex curled into John, focusing on the solidness of his body.
"I'm right here."
X
We're in the downhill run of this fic, and from here on out it's going to be very very angsty, so I'm just warning you now. I was going through major writers block for the longest time, and then yesterday I literally sat down and typed out 2/3rds of this chapter in like 2 hours. I'm so excited to get into the last part of this fic, you don't even know.