This fic is set during the TBP/WO9K era and includes: Angst; Hurt/Comfort; Summer Romance; Mental Health Struggles; Graphic Depictions of Sunshine
Awsten is trying. He is, really. But it’s hard to get better.
It would be so much easier to just slip back into destructive habits. It would be so much easier to slip back into his old yellow hoodie and hide his wrists from the world again. It would be so much easier to drown himself out with the people around him so he doesn’t have to think anymore.
But he won’t.
He won’t because if he doesn’t get better, he won’t even be anymore, and he knows it. And there are parts of this whole thing that are good.
They’re few and far between for him, but he decided they were worth fighting for a long time ago. And when the darkness settles around his brain in sullen clouds of weighted thoughts there are places, people, things that can pull him out of it.
Awsten is laying on the grass. It’s hot, almost too hot, but he enjoys it right now. He’s felt cold from the inside out for months now. From the tips of his fingers to his toenails there’s been a frosty ache building in his system for too long.
The sun’s heat is nothing but a blanket of comfort that he needed so, so badly. It crashes over him in waves, makes his nerves stand on end and forces his brain into blissful silence.
The grass around him is mildly uncomfortable, mostly dead and a little bit scratchy, but he doesn’t mind so long as he lays still. One arm is tossed over his eyes to keep the hot white summer sky from entirely melting his brain out of his skull.
There’s music playing through his earbuds, something high energy and upbeat. He’s not really feeling it, but there’s no reason to change it, so instead he just lets the lyrics wash over him, and cleanse him of his wrongdoings.
So long as he stays there, quiet and still, nothing can get him. He doesn’t have to worry about anything out here, the feverish heat and heavy music make everything else fall away until the only thing in the entire world is him.
Nothing else anymore, nothing he needs to think about or question or cry over.
He lets out a breath from the very center of his chest and he can feel the way he bleeds tension from every muscle in his being.
He doesn’t exist alone. He has to remind himself of that, sometimes.
As much as he has found a lifeboat in burying himself in the utter excitement of existing loudly around anyone and everyone, at the end of the day he has always crashed into sheer, existential solitude the second he’s driving home alone.
It isn’t right now though, and it’s hard to wrap his brain around. Because right now Otto is sitting next to him in the driver’s seat of his car. Their hands are entwined, right over the gear shift, and Awsten is sure his pulse must be loud enough to hear even over the engine.
His eyes are tired from staring through flashing lights all night and the world around him is a blur of color. But inside the car, he’s not alone. Inside the car, it is not still or quiet, but it isn't loud and overwhelming either.
In this place, this capsule outside of the real world, he is safe. While his hand is in Otto’s, he is safe. While the hum of the road beneath him makes his bones buzz in a soft, sleepy way, he is really, truly safe.
He really misses that, having someone he can be safe with. Which is stupid, because Otto is that person. But he doesn’t know that. All he knows is Awsten is clingy and loud and annoying. He doesn’t know the other side to him, the side that is calmer and softer and needs him to his core.
He feels utterly alone then, but he forces that out of his mind when Otto’s thumb moves over the side of his hand in slow, calming circles. It’s warm, but not hot, and his grip is soft and loose but still there, and Awsten never wants to let go.
Awsten is empty. He has been bled dry of everything in him, his tears have been washed away at last. He is sitting in an empty church. The pew is uncomfortable beneath him but he relishes it for now.
He rarely goes anymore and does his best to avoid it, really. But sometimes it’s the only thing that makes him feel better amidst a torrent of pain and fear and voices in his head screaming at him.
And yeah, maybe he doesn’t totally believe in the spiritual bullshit, but sue him if it’s nice to bask in the feeling sometimes. His chest feels heavy here, but his thoughts have been cleared away in speaking to nothing, being heard by only his own soul.
He realizes he hasn’t eaten since yesterday morning. It’d slipped his mind among the din of nonsense and fear and emptiness seeking refuge in his thoughts. He’s not totally sure he can handle food right now, but he makes up his mind to try anyways.
He is healing, pieces of himself at a time, gluing the broken glass shards back together until they stick. And the cracks are still there, they won’t ever be fully gone, but the way they glisten in the light is almost beautiful.
Awsten is sitting on the edge of a fountain. The water occasionally lands on his back in a few drops at a time, but he ignores it. Otto isn’t here. His insides are twisted into a confusing puzzle. He should never have kissed him.
Because now that one piece he had is gone, the one that fit into the missing hole in the middle of his being.
They hung out at this park every Friday, 3 pm, without exception. Eventually, it had become so normal they stopped even asking if it was going to happen.
He hates when he lets himself get comfortable like that, lets himself fall into someone until they become so entwined with him that life without them is unimaginable.
Because without fail, that unimaginable will turn into a reality. He loses a piece of himself when that happens, it’s a knife twisted in him and then pulled out just the same, leaving a gaping wound of frozen cold flesh.
He sits there until the sky is dark and the air has gone cold. He sits there until it begins to rain, cool and horribly gentle. It’s a drizzle, really. It would be so much more fitting to be a downpour in curtains of water, but it isn’t.
It’s just enough to get him wet and dripping and annoyed, to make his shirt stick to his back and his jeans uncomfortable. When he finally gets home he doesn’t have it in him to bother changing before he goes to sleep.
He goes a long time alone, after that. It’s always hard when this happens. When the person he feels as a part of himself leaves. They always seem to. They take his devotion for granted and leave him totally isolated.
He wishes he was like that. That he could love at a distance and keep it that way. Wishes it wasn’t a burning need in his core to have his entire world overtaken by one person. He wishes he was normal.
But if he was normal, would he have the highs? If he was normal, would he have the peaks of utter ecstasy?
Were those worth this, the crippling nothing in his bones and his soul and his limbs and his nerves? Was the feeling of world-conquering togetherness worth the world-ending chasm of solitude that always followed?
Awsten is standing away from the crowd. It’s loud and busy and it’s something he should like. He should have loved it, drowning himself in the loud people around him until his own thoughts meant nothing.
But right then, when all he could feel was his chest constricting and his inability to gather so much as a gasp of air, none of that mattered. What mattered was that Otto was standing next to him at this shitty stupid party.
What mattered was that he could feel the carefully constructed lie that he would never even have to see him again was falling apart.
Because so long as he had the excuse of not being around him, he was ok. But now he was right there and he was staring at Awsten and he had no idea how to handle that. He can’t breathe. Fuck this, he needs to go home.
Fuck whatever shitty local band is on the stage tonight, fuck the couple in the corner humping each other, fuck the annoying drunk teenagers pressing in on him from all sides. And, most importantly, fuck Otto.
He goes to dip out of the room, out of the house, out of Otto’s life the way he’d dipped out of Awsten’s. Instead, by the time he’s made it to the porch, a hand is on his shoulder stopping him in his tracks.
It feels dangerous, somehow, just to exist around Otto anymore. It’s a fun kind of dangerous though, like cliff diving or bungee jumping. It’s exciting and new and it feels delicate, a baby bird he has to hold tight in his hands or else it might tumble out and fall.
And they’ve used almost every word they could to describe their relationship by now, from “friends” to “best friends” to “it’s complicated” to “fuckbuddies”. But the one that they’ve finally settled on feels so much different than any other one.
“Boyfriend”. It’s new. It’s something Awsten would never dream of having called anyone before, but now it’s something he can’t stop saying, whispering to himself over and over so he can’t forget what he fought so hard to win.
Otto is his boyfriend. Otto is the person who he can be alone with. They can bask in silence and emptiness and catharsis together. He can be all by his lonesome with another person right beside him, now, and somehow that’s even better.
He can sit on a wooden porch in the evening sun and instead of staring out into nothing he can stare at the hand holding his, resting on the scratchy 2x4s below them.
He can sit on the edge of the pool with just his legs in the water, laughing as the pink raspberry popsicle he bought gets stolen by the man next to him and is returned with a horrible bite taken out of the side.
The candles are burning low on his desk. Otto is sleeping on his bed, crashed out after an exhausting day.
The summer is coming to an end. The bitter cold months gather ever closer, and Awsten can almost feel the way they will encroach upon his newfound hope just like they always do.
But he is getting better. He is.
He made it another 3 months, and the best he can do is make that happen again and again. Three months turn to more quickly, the same way minutes turn to hours, moments to years. He will get better, slowly, but surely.