worst ; gawsten

eleven

trigger warnings for anxiety and panic attacks

He swallows.

Clenches his hand around the device in his hand and bites down on his lip. He presses harder, harder, until the skin breaks and he's tasting copper and everything is starting to go slightly blurry and fuzzy around the edges. It's a welcome pain, a pain that he runs for, throws open the doors and flings himself toward, buries in the carpets and drags the curtains around himself, tries to capture and cling and surround, with all of it.

His chest is tight. The walls around it are hammering themselves shut, sliding together and barricading everything in. It's a white-hot ball of fire in his chest that wants to explode and needs to explode but has no room to explode it wants to explode it needs to explode there's no room no room nofuckingroom-

He knew this was coming.

He knew it would happen. He knew he couldn't put his entire life on hold because of her. He knew he'd have to go ahead with everything they'd planned before everything happened, participate in a reality that's now only the ghost of a fantasy.

The plans have been drawn up for weeks.

He always says his entire life is in his phone. People think he's exaggerating. Some of them call him out for relying on a piece of technology to hold the scraps that couldn't fit in his brain and the culmination of everything it's churned out in the past few years.

There's just too much. Holding himself together at the seams is impossible because his skin isn't a viable barrier. The sheer amount of everything is getting scarier and scarier, like he's a pot that's overflowing, liquid oozing from the sides and running down the vessel, like his body is just that, flesh and bone, a bucket that's being filled past the brim and exploding. Everything's running out.

He's nauseous by it. The feeling runs in his veins, the feeling you get after sprinting for a short period of time and stopping abruptly, hands on your knees, feel the world pause for a moment and remember just how fucking sick you are.

He's nauseous.

Reading the plans, he's nauseous.

Imagining the concepts, he's nauseous.

Remembering what it was all supposed to symbolize, he is so fucking nauseous.

It's the constant feeling of being about to throw up, like he can't move or speak or breathe, just in case his stomach decides this is the right time and proceeds to eject its contents back up his throat. He's sick. He's so fucking sick thinking about her makes him sick thinking about what they almost had makes him sick thinking about what he wanted to do for her makes him so fucking sick-

They need to film the video.

They've been pushing it for weeks now. Ever since everything happened. He remembers that night, curling himself into his bunk and choking on the liquid that wouldn't stop coming, please don't make me I can't do this I don't even know what we're gonna do for it now please just-

Life has to go on and this video has to be made and his job needs to shift back into first priority because clearly prioritizing people in his life was the wrong decision. Prioritizing the positives and letting himself be happy and take precedence over the band was the wrong decision. Prioritizing his pain is the only thing that's ever worked in his favor.

Prioritizing his pain.

Prioritizing his pain.

Prioritizing his pain-

...

'The cutest fucking Jason Mraz song ever'

That's what he titled the note. That's the floodgate that tears open to reveal the sweetest, softest, most heartfelt music video idea he's ever had.