happy endings are for fairy tales // kiani au

TWENTY-ONE: WILL

let me be real with the small number of ppl who still read this, when i started this book i was in a horrible place in my life in which i was thinking of killing myself due to an unfortunate love triangle i fell into (if ur curious, i'm supposed to play the role of will in this story). BUT now it's been about a year, and i've grown and realized that (cough cough this is mostly cos of love, simon) not everything has a bad ending!!! we all deserve a great love story and so do jordan and will (just to let the small part of my heart that still belongs to the cube be happy).

SO! THE ENDING AND THE TITLE WILL NOT MAKE SENSE. from the title it's pretty obvious that the ending is gonna be a sad one which it was planned to be. initially, will was doomed to attempt suicide but i've decided to change that

SO DONT COME AT ME WHEN THEY HAVE A HAPPY ENDING WITH "oh why is the title so different from the actual story" COS IT WAS MEANT TO BE DEPRESSING AT THE START

i might make 2 separate endings cos i love both endings i have planned and although the sad one breaks my heart, it's still honestly a rly beautiful emotional rollercoaster which i'm totally down for (i'm a sucker for angst) we'll see. whatever the case, i'm very determined to finish writing this (it's about 3/5 done) thanks for listening to my ted talk -aŁ

22 july 2017

lines
lines on paper
the ones you drew
on my notebook
tic-tac-toe
happy faces
tattoo ideas
sketches half drawn
interrupted by slumber

lines
lines on faces
smiles
dimples
arched eyebrows
smirks
scratches
glass shards left behind
by the violence of yesterday

lines
lines of words
appraisal
appreciation
insult
hate
taunt
'do us all a favor
and kill yourself, faggot'

but my god,
when did meaningless marks
change into tenacious hurt?
how had you managed
to take such a simple thing
and change it into a symbol
of pain?

lines
lines on my thighs
oozing blood
endless tears
deserved pain
'rust' on the bathtub
jeans and jackets to hide
reopening old wounds
that time failed to heal

and i spent days
weeks even
drawing lines on myself
the same i used to paint
on your arm while you were asleep
murmuring to myself as the bathtub
turned red
tangy with metallic smell

why?
why had you done
this?
why had i allowed
you to?
which final cut
would set me free
from myself?

—

jordan hasn't even made eye contact with me, hasn't even mentioned anything on our chats. it's like he's vanished from the face of my universe, only to seen floating around someone else's, happier.

my grades went down. lines formed up my thigh. dried blood stained the clog of my bathtub. and yet, nothing seemed to take me away from my own emptiness. 

i tried to bury myself in work, to imprint letters and numbers into my mind until the narrative of my own suffering turned into math problems. but instead, attempting to desensitize myself from what had happened made the incidents louder. and soon enough, staring at blank spaces to be filled up appeared more to be like mirrors, a reflection of my own inner turmoil – emptiness.

school turned to hell, and almost every other day one of jordan's "friends" would come up to me and say some dumb shit. i wish i could stop caring, but how could i ignore it? especially when my brain was fixated on one thing: jordan, and the thought of him finally saying something, or at least texting me to talk. because i sure as hell won't start the conversation he's in charge of beginning. even if it's eating at me inside.

—

"hey will, buddy," i hear a voice from afar, drowned out by the darkness of my closed eyes. maybe if the voice stayed out of sight, invisible in my vision, it would go away. maybe if i kept my eyes closed long enough, my whole world would disappear.

"WILL!" the voice crushes the ethereal serenity i'm surrounded by, and i'm plunged back into the hellhole of school, zach holding my shoulders and shaking me awake. i blink a few times to get used to the bright white walls before zach slowly retracts his hands.

"what is it?" i rub my eyes and try to get rid of the puffiness that is evident in my sleep deprived eyes.

"what's up with you nowadays? you can't even sit straight before you fall asleep!" he exclaims, pulling a sympathetic face. i groan and pull my body over the empty canteen table even further, detesting every bit of my surroundings right at that moment.

"if you really want to know," i look him dead in the eye, threatening him with the moving of my eyebrows not to pry further, "i'll let you know later when we're not surrounded by a bunch of fuckers who would spread it."

with that, a switch is flicked. he isn't in his jokey moods anymore, and suddenly everything that he's about to say is dead serious. it is impossible to play games with zach when he is in this mood, when he meant no joy or sarcasm, just plain solemnness. the light in his eyes dull and he keeps his hands folded in his lap. i can tell. he isn't going to let me go home that day without me confiding in him.

and yet, i had already been biting my tongue before i even considered opening my mouth. zach, from the start, has been one of my closest and most trustworthy friend. the first person i admitted to about my unhealthy obsession of eating penguins (a/n this is a brand of biscuit btw not real penguins), or how i hated taking trains because my friend once tripped and fell onto the tracks and almost died. but, he's also the person i lied to about not knowing jordan's identity in my life when it meant so fucking much to me. the same person: zach. the alignment isn't right.

"hey, will, if you really ever do need to talk, this is the best time, y'know?" he tries to be calming. however, when he's in this stressed up mood, i know he's anything but calming. it almost sounds like a confrontation.

seeing him like this, i almost spill it. i almost splutter out my involvement with the police, my hidden identity on the crime scene investigation channel on tv, my ex-girlfriend who i pulled a psychological trigger on, the kiss jordan gave me that still feels numb on my lips. but it isn't out of relief to finally get things off my chest. no, it's out of fear.

i stand up. "not right now," is the only things i can get out of my mouth before i storm off. out of the canteen. almost out of the school gates before i stop myself from taking those last few steps out into the car park. i sit at the nearby boulder for a while. just trying to take the confession away from my mouth, burying it deeper and deeper into the dark side of my mind.

nobody can know. and the episode with zach just scared the living fuck out of me. zach isn't usually like this, but i can't shake off the tone of his words.

i know he is concerned about my growing hatred and isolation, the red scars he has a glance of when he gets too close, when i take something out of the pocket of my shorts and it rides up. he means well. i know he does. so why the fuck does it send chills down my spine?

maybe it's the fear of finally opening up about my feelings for once, i think. and at the bottom of my heart, a part of me shouts out an agreement.