dichotomy ; gawsten

fifteen

this is a lot of projection and feelings i am sorry (trigger warnings for depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and mentions of self-harm/suicide)

Geoff sleeps for a long time.

Eventually Awsten's legs fall asleep and the bugs under his skin awaken and everything starts to vibrate. It's fuzzy. It feels like a thousand tiny pinpricks going off in the soles of his feet all at once. He winces and bites his tongue in his haste to hold back a groan. He can't risk moving and disturbing Geoff. The sleep he's gotten until now has been fitful. He shakes and whimpers and lets out little cries of pain in midst his dreams. He doesn't even get to fully rest when he sleeps. Awsten knows the feeling. It's exhausting.

"Aws."

He looks up, in the direction of Otto's voice. He hears footsteps coming closer and then feels Otto's hand in one of his. Otto presses a couple pills and a glass of water into them. He fingers the engraving on the pills. Advil. "I'm okay," he says. "Geoff needs them more than I do."

"Your head is killin' you," Otto says. "I can see it. You needa break too. Take one. He's sleeping."

"I'm not leaving him."

"I'm not askin' you to." Otto's voice sounds strained. Like he's smiling but it's painful. Awsten can see it. Lowered eyes. Mouth in a thin line with the corners upturned every so slightly. Creases in his forehead from the worry lines he's gonna have barely a quarter century into his life.

"You were right about Jawn." His voice surprises him when it breaks. That single sliver gives way to a cracked foundation that pours out rubble as soon as the words leave his lips. His skull pulses painfully. Tears burn at the corners of his eyes. His heart throbs in his chest. He bites his lip to stop it from quivering but shakes nonetheless.

"Awsten..." He feels the weight of Geoff's head leave his lap and scoots to the side. The couch dips next to them as Otto replaces his body with a pillow. And then Otto nudges at his knee and Awsten chokes out a sob that leaves him shaking, and he falls, crumbles into Otto's arms, buries his face in Otto's chest, and cries.

He winds his arms around Otto's shoulders and clings and tries to breathe because this isn't like one of those times when he hid his face in Otto's shirt and cried himself cry at the thought of that being the only part of his eyes that worked. This isn't like one of those times when he laid in bed all day and stared at the wall not moving until Otto crawled in beside him and draped an arm across his waist and pulled him into his chest and promised it'd be okay one day.

And it is. He has a great job and great friends and an apartment and he can go places on his own and he's not sad anymore and everything is finally okay even though he believed for so long it wouldn't be.

Everything is okay but something in his heart is tearing and his chest feels hollow because seeing Geoff hurt makes him wish that wire were real; makes him want to transfer some of Geoff's pain to himself. He's handled it before and he can handle it again, if only it means Geoff doesn't have to deal with it Geoff's been through enough he's dealt with enough he doesn't need more he needs it to stop Awsten wishes he could make it stop.

Otto asks him if he's okay when he finally lifts his head. He reaches up to rub at his eyes and winces when his arm makes contact with the raw skin. And when he answers it's small and broken. Like everything feels.

"Geoff isn't."

...

"Do you have any idea how worried I was?"

He's barely closed the door before his heart starts racing again. He just managed to calm himself down, got off the phone with Awsten as he walked up the stairs to his apartment and stuck his key in the fob. Awsten just talked him off a ledge and he's running right back up to it, curling his toes over the edge and leaning forward, staring down at the bottom with his marathoning heart and too fast mind and shaking hands.