Introvert

31

trigger warning for: depictions of self harming, depression, anxiety/panic attacks, depictions of suicide attempts, child abuse, molestation and very brief mentions of homophobia and racism.

 

'“In the darkest part,
in the middle of the night,
I need you the most.”~ Daily Haiku on Love, Tyler Knott Gregson

||Shyanna|| {two days later}

It is 2am, and my hands are shaking.

There's a knocking at my window and a pounding in my eardrums, and the only thing swimming in my mind is the dream I'd had before I'd been woken by the rap of knuckles on glass. My breathing is wrong and my body feels cold all over, but the tapping won't cease and soon, it'll wake my mother up.

I have to check what it is, but the haze of sleep that prevails is dark around the edges, and I can't breathe, I can't breathe, I can't breathe. But I haven't been able to breathe right for years.

When my hand raises to open the curtain, a loud, sharp 'Shyanna!' trills through the single pane of glass, and I almost yelp at the way my name sounds this late at night. Jerking the curtain to the side, my eyes are met with the wide-eyed wonder of Louis Tomlinson himself, bruises scattered along his jaw and stitches along his forehead.

Without thinking, I unlatch the window and inhale the night air, amazed at how good it feels on my already cold flesh. My skin is made of polystyrene, and the wind is picking me apart. It's never felt so good to be so torn open.

"Shyanna, hello." Louis whispers, and oh yes. The reason I'd been woken up. 

He looks delicate like this; made of injuries and tiny bird bones. Like if he really wanted to, he could take flight. It's an unnerving thought, to say the least. I've spent so long flying away from my problems, I'd hate to see someone else doing the same. But Louis looks fine, so there's that.

"It's two in the morning," I mumble, scratching at the dried sleepy tears on my face in an effort to look sane. It probably has the opposite effect. "No offence, but why are you here?"

Louis gives a manic grin, a slightly twisted version of what one would imagine the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland to look like, and bounces up and down on his toes. Again, I wonder if he would actually take flight if given the chance. I wonder if it was the years in the closet that made him so wary, or if he always feels faintly trapped, even now. I know the feeling.

"Misery loves company, Shyanna, didn't you know?" His voice is light and airy, but the tone, the admission, it all screams I'm not okay, I'm not okay. It isn't about reading between the lines, any more. It's about seeing the poorly crafted subtitles and knowing they mean far more than any blank space between printed ink.

"Oh, sweetie, you came to the grim reaper's holiday home." I respond, and the look he gives me is more worried than amused, although I can detect a lot of amusement, too. "Lemme just throw some clothes on, I'll be out in a second. Unless you wanted to come in?"

"Nah, I'm alright out here. Take your time. Gown yourself." He grins, but it wavers when I drag myself to standing position and he catches sight of the abhorrent and fresh scratches tearing up the already marred pale skin of my arms and legs. The question is unspoken, but there anyway. The way it always is.

The scars are a mix of old and mostly healed, and old and too deep to have ever joined back together properly. The cuts, scratches and grazes are all faint in the moonlight, but still there. But the thing is, I'm tired of hiding them like they really are the most awful things to exist. Because the problem isn't the marks on my body; the problem is the thoughts that got them there.