dichotomy ; gawsten

forty nine

"Are you serious?"

Awsten has the tiniest hint of a smile on his face, like it's poking its head up from the ground, sliding its way off his face and making its way upward, tunneling through muscle and bone until it reaches his heart and slips inside, finds its place at the center and stays. "I, uh...yeah. If you want to."

He doesn't know what to say. He doesn't know how to do this. It feels like the first time he picked up a guitar all over again, feeling the strings against his fingers and reveling in how much he didn't know but how right it felt, at the same time. It's different and it's new and the cushion he's sinking into makes his palms sweat and his heart beat faster, but it feels right.

"Did you talk to Otto?" He ventures, instead. He reaches over to pull Awsten into his lap, moves one arm to support his back and presses a kiss against the top of his head. "Is he okay with this?"

"Yeah," is Awsten's reply. "He didn't get it, at first. He said I didn't have to and I know I don't. I want to. I need ta do this. I needa move on. It's been long enough."

"There's no timeline for this shit, love." He feels the sting as the words leave his lips, feels the pang they make as they sound the gong and rattle his heart around once more. It's advice he gives out but never takes. There's no timeline for trauma. You'll be over it whenever you're over it, and no sooner. That's okay. However you feel is okay.

And it is. It's okay, for them. It's okay to take a little longer and need more time, to board themselves up in their rooms and bleed the words out in angry wails, force it in and then let it pour out in a way that is anything but linear. It's okay for them to feel it, to let it hurt as long as it does and not bother to staunch the flood. It's okay for them to cry and hurt and need, just the way it's okay for him to not. It's okay for him to hide and fake and pretend everything's okay, bleed out just enough for him to get through the day and stuff the rest back into his box for another night's forays.

"-be done with it," Awsten is saying. "M'tired of letting it control me. Of letting it destroy me, fuck's sake. I needa learn ta be okay or I'll never get past it."

"Have I ever told you how strong you are?" He bites back the sob rising against the lump in his throat and squeezes Awsten tighter, tilts his head down and buries his nose in his hair.

Some days he can't believe it, thinks through the amount of times Awsten's battlefield has been blood-soaked and a fight has been lost, tallies up the score in his head and wonders how on Earth this boy is still fighting, still surviving, still living, after everything.

It makes him feel like shit a lot of the time. Because car accidents and abusive boyfriends and the loss of one of your fucking senses, not to mention fights and funerals and the feeling of everything falling apart, is something Awsten is beyond familiar to. He's familiar and he is a fucking fighter, against the pain, against the odds, against the fear that nothing would be okay ever again.

He pushed past that and got through it and now he's living out the fantasies he never thought possible, and Geoff is jealous, sometimes. It worked out for Awsten, in the shittiest of circumstances, but it hasn't, for him. Not yet, at least.

But there's a part of him that thinks it will. There's a part of him that's locked into that glimmer of hope, that's beyond captivated by the light at the foot of such a dark tunnel that it doesn't mind the journey. There's a part of him that's already filled with warmth and the rest of him knows it's on its way.

He hopes so, anyway.

"You're strong too." Awsten's voice is soft, but his words are firm. He lifts his head up from under Geoff's to look in his direction. "You've come so far in just three fuckin' months, Geoff. I'm so proud of you." Geoff can hear the tears by the time he finishes, watch Awsten's eyes grow even more glossy, smile and lean in to press their lips together.