Chapter Text
Letters aren’t — aren’t something you’ve thought about in a while.
They hold secrets from a time you’ve forgotten, and although it isn’t hard to make them, the things they bring should be buried.
They make you remember. They make you remember book pressed flowers that slipped out of those weekly pages, carefully scratched notes and pictures, handwriting only you could make out.
It doesn’t matter. Its over, now.
𖥔 𖥔 𖥔
You found the box. You didn’t mean to. It was just there, brimming with papers and notes and messily scrawled wishes. It held the red sweater, the metal rings and the black polish.
You didn’t mean to find it. You didn’t mean to open it. You didn’t mean to read them. You didn’t want to.
But you’d done it anyways. You’d read the letters from the beginning. You’d flipped open every note that passed in class, every shaky polaroid, every fucking grocery store name tag he went through, because that was something he just did, and it hurt all the same.
Your tears stained the ink, and when you’d nearly ruined one of the letters you put them all away. You buried them deep, deep down into the box, and tried to sink that rock in your heart, too.
You thought you were okay.
It seems not.
𖥔 𖥔 𖥔
You’re lying awake.
It’s far past midnight. But your fingers drum beside you, and your head races with things and thoughts and most prominently, him. Letters and words and the times that were flutter in your eyes everytime you try to sleep.
It is unbearable. You feel like you’re own mind is trying to torture you. Trying to hold you accountable. You tell yourself that whatever happened when you were gone wasn’t your fault
Even if you know it was, deep down.
But — just — it wasn’t. Alright? It wasn’t your fault, and it wasn’t his. It wasn’t even his family’s. No one was at fault.
You all just want someone to blame. Someway to cope. Something to do. Something to remember that wasn’t what it was.
And you remember. The one thing you’ve been trying to remember. The small thing that whispered in your mind, and had done so every night after it before you made yourself forget.
You never replied. To the last letter.
It’s haunting you. The second last letter was nothing out of the ordinary. A ring, a picture and a nametag. A long receipt a customer didn’t take that he thought was funny. And a letter that held something more — you just — you just didn’t realize what he meant.
How could you have not noticed. How could you not have read through the lines of his chicken scratch? Were you so oblivious? Or was it that — that underlying fear, that forced ignorance. The fear it’d be true and real and he’d be gone one day.
How could you have done this?
You get up, throwing your comforter across your bed, pulling on your slippers. Without turning on the lights, you look through everything you own. Your closet, your bed, your desk, the box.
You wreck through your room, looking for the small damn thing.
Oh.
It slips out from under a large of books on your desk. Like you’d thrown it there, out of anger, and shame, and grief. Still flat and unwrinkled. Unread and forgotten.
Your shoulders feel heavy. Your legs are weak.
It’s your fault if he’s gone. It really is, you tell yourself.
𖥔 𖥔 𖥔
You open the letter. Carefully, fingertips reaching every edge, as so light touched to not ruin or crease a single thing.
You didn’t know what it contained, but it was the last thing of him that he’d tell you, if not in person.
It was the closest you would get.
A single white petal falls out. You set it aside. You know what the flower is — what it means, what it says, and what he means to you. You don’t — can’t — think about it.
The item that makes a large inprint on the outside of the letter is — it’s — you hold against the desk, trying to stabilize yourself. Your breath shakes, and you try to convince yourself it isn’t what he means.
You place his cuffs on the table, beside the petal.
There is the letter, finally. Three pages long, shorter than he used to write. Nothing other than the two items, no pictures, rings, receipts, nametags, notes, things he drew instead of paying attention in class.
The things that made those letters his are not there. And with the petal, the cuffs, the fucking length of the damn thing, it could only mean—
You shake your head, making your world spin lightly. Never mind that. You breath in, eyes opening to read the first words.
It details —
No.
𖥔 𖥔 𖥔
You pull out your papers, your ink, your pens. Your highlighters, stickers, envelopes, and you press the ink on the pages.
His letter wouldn’t suffice, no, it was exactly not enough and you wouldn’t take anything other then another as an answer. No.
Dear Simon, you write, furiously and messily, please tell me you are still here.