dichotomy ; gawsten

thirty six

this is shorter than i envisioned but it didn't feel right adding another scene at the end (you'll see why) 

heavy trigger warning for self-harm. this got so much sadder than i thought it would oops

It feels familiar.

It's like coming home.

He tilts his head back until it hits the wall, closes his eyes and breathes in heavily.

It's been a while. It's been a while since he's done this. It's been a while since he's sat on the floor and rolled up his sleeve and pulled the sharpened piece of metal out of his pocket, since he's traced his fingers down his forearm, felt the roughness, looked down at his skin gotten a sense of what he's done in the past few weeks and what he's about to do right now.

The past few weeks have been a flurry of pleasepleasepleaseIneeditIneeditIneedit. It's not taking a breath and looking for a patch of bare skin and dragging the blade smoothly across. It's not holding toilet paper in one hand and catching the blood as soon as it starts to well, watching it spread like ink across the white clean smooth. It's ripping and tearing and pleaspleasepleaseredredred. It's heaving chests and ragged breaths, coughing, choking on tears and tearing into skin, hoping, praying, begging, that it would make everything stop he needed it to stop he needed the redredred he needed it to stop-

It's been a while since he's sat on the floor and rolled up his sleeve and pressed the metal in slowly; let it sink into his skin as fluidly as it dragged across. He's been cutting his thighs for a while now. There's not much room on his arms and he needed the red he needed it to hurt he didn't have time he was running out of time he needed it to stop it wouldn't stop he needed the red.

And now he's tracing his fingers over the scarred skin, catching the pads on the messy edges. He's reopening old cuts and biting his lip at the pain but his chest is open and his heart is calm and the world is finally still. It feels like he can breathe, like there is an influx of breath left in his body, like he doesn't have to go gasping, try to pull as much inside and seal off every orifice as not to let some of that precious air leave. There's a finite amount in the room and he never has enough.

He lives his life like that. There's a finite amount of air, a finite amount of laughter, a finite amount of happiness...everything has a certain amount and everyone else has drained them dry and he's left on his own, trying to scramble for the last drops of anything he can get. There's a finite amount of everything and he's never in time to get some.

And then he meets Awsten and feels warm, and for the first time, the warmwarmwarm is everywhere, all the time. It never stops. There's no stopping point. The warmwarmwarm is everywhere it's everywhere he can't separate warm from no warm it's everywhere it's just warm everything is warm it's not finite it's not finite it's not finite.

"Geoff?"

He freezes. The blade is still in his skin. The heart goes from calm to chaos in less than a second, like something in his body flipped a switch and every nerve is on alert. The panic is gas first, traveling through the air from the sound vibrations and turning to liquid as soon as it reaches his body. It seeps into his skin and coats everything with a layer of stickiness, fuzzy and blurry, stirs the contents of his stomach until their only choice is to come rushing back up his throat.

"A-Awsten." He chokes out. He can't look up he can't breathe nonono fuckfuckfuck. How did this happen Awsten isn't supposed to be here this isn't supposed to be happening this is supposed to be his time how did Awsten find him how did this happen fuckfuckfuck.

He watches with blurry vision as Awsten moves across the floor. He doesn't have his cane with him. He keeps going until he touches the edge of the sink with one hand and then sinks to his knees.

"Are you still bleeding?"

"W-What?" What the fuck how does he know he can't see how does he know what the fuck is happening how did this happen why is this his life why does this always happen to him what the fuck-

"Geoff, I can't see." Awsten's voice sounds different. It's like he's trying to be firm, but he's too choked up to sound completely stoic. The tears just make it worse. His voice is cracking and breaking all over the place. "Are you going to bleed out on this floor while I give you some stupid fucking speech about staying alive and making it through this?"

"Awsten, I-"

"Answer me!"

"N-No," he forces out. He reaches for more toilet paper and bunches it up, presses it against the open wound with shaking hands. The tissue almost slides off multiple times. He's trembling too hard to keep it there. "I-I'm okay..."

"No you're not," Awsten whispers. "You haven't been for a long time."

"H-How did you- how did you know?" He chokes.

"I couldn't sleep," Awsten says. He takes on more of a wistful tone, like he's back in a different place, looking upon a distant memory. He sounds far away. "I thought I'd find you in the living room and we could cuddle and watch TV until morning. And then I smelt it."

"Awsten-"

"Shut up." Awsten's voice breaks again. "This is- this is so fuckin' hard. Because it's like- I wanna yell at you. I wanna know why you didn't come to me. I wanna grab your shoulders and fuckin' scream 'cause you have me and Otto and Jawn and everyone and you're still fuckin' doing this and you shouldn't be and I hate it." He pauses. A sob tears itself out of his throat. "But I know when I did this I didn't talk to anyone and even though they kept telling me to and when my baby sister asked what all the red lines on my arms were I told her it was the cat. And she knew better, of course she fucking did. She held me and slept in my bed a lot of nights and kept saying she loved me and I knew she was just waiting for me ta say something, but I never did. And then she died." He bites his lip. "She died probably feeling so fuckin' useless 'cause her brother was in so much pain and hurting himself and she knew but couldn't do anything. She loved me enough to give me my space and then died not knowing whether I'd ever be okay again."

Awsten stops. He drops his head down and takes in a large gulp of air. Tears are streaming freely down his cheeks. Geoff stares at him.

He wants to hug him. He wants to take Awsten into his arms and hold him close and give him the tightest, softest, warmest hug ever. Awsten is crying and making little whimpers in between and just as Geoff opens his mouth to say something, opens his arms to pull Awsten into them, Awsten speaks again.

"Please don't do that to me."

Geoff chokes out a sob of his own as he surges forward. He takes Awsten's body into his arms and sits back with him in his lap, wraps his arms so tight around him he's surprised Awsten doesn't start to disintegrate in his hold. "I'm sorry," he cries. "I'm so sorry."

"One day," Awsten starts. His voice is slightly muffled by Geoff's body. "One day you're gonna be in a place where your default isn't gonna be a blade. One day it's gonna be a person and you're gonna let someone hold you and help you through it and tell them everything, one day you're gonna feel like everything is too much and think about how you would've gone for a blade in the past but now you're finding that person to talk to and hug and feel like some part of your life is okay in that moment. Because it happened for me and Otto is so much better than a blade ever was. And it may not be Jawn for you but it'll be someone. One day-" He sobs again. "One day you're not gonna need this anymore, I promise."

And Geoff holds him. He holds him tighter and he cries and presses their faces together, tries to swallow and imagine a day when he wakes up wanting to put a bullet in his brain and finds himself instinctively climbing into Awsten's lap to envelop himself in warmwarmwarm instead of scrambling for the redredred.

One day.