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Everything had gone so wrong so quickly. The past few months had been a downward spiral becoming increasingly faster falling down into chaos. Jess didn’t know how it had gotten to this point to be completely honest. But now he’d hit an all time low. This was worse than New York. Far worse. He never thought he’d get to a point where it could be worse than back then. Luke had been so wrapped up with life in the diner that he’d hadn’t noticed until it was too late. Now he just has to watch his shell of a nephew go through every day without knowing how to help him anymore.
Ryan knew something was wrong. He could see it in his boyfriend’s eyes before anything actually started happening. It began with him having more nonverbal days. Then he started being more tired and going out less, every day becoming more and more draining. Then he stopped going out altogether, just spending his time in bed. Not moving. Not reading. Barely existing. And now he’s stopped eating altogether. Nobody had noticed his relapse with self harm. He doesnt let Ryan touch him anymore, and the two have barely seen each other the last couple of weeks. It’s all gone so fucking horribly wrong.
Every day it feels like his skin is on fire. He’s traced over every scar time after time enough to make him feel sick. He feels numb. So mind painfully, excruciatingly numb. And he’s so fucking tired. He can’t do this anymore. He just fucking can’t.
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Jess is working at the diner one afternoon, after Luke had had to practically drag him out of bed. He’s so fucking cold and tired and doesn’t want to be doing this. He feels like he’s watching himself through some unfocused lense. It’s all so strange. His heads been fucking pounding for the past couple hours, and he’s looking forward to when he can finally go back to bed and pretend that he doesn’t exist. He’s only got about an hour left, and it’s nearly fully dark outside. There’s only two people in the diner now, and his head is killing him. He tries to distract himself from the pain by focusing on his job, desperate for the time to pass faster. Every second tearing away any energy he may have possessed.
He notices Ryan crossing the street towards the diner, and instantly feels an overwhelming sense of guilt. He hadn’t meant to neglect his boyfriend, he’d just been so wrapped up recently with surviving each day as it goes past. It wasn’t fair of him though. Ryan deserves more than that.
Ryan smiles at him sadly, walking up to him slowly before wrapping his arms around him.
“Hey love,” he whispers, and for a split second Jess lets himself lean into the touch, feeling comfortable in his own skin for the first time in a while.
“Hey”. Ryan is taken back by how drastically Jess has deteriorated over the past couple weeks. He looks so fucking tired, eyes shrouded in purple and no light behind them at all. It’s terrifying. Ryan watches his as he works, movements sluggish and drained. Eventually he can’t bear it any longer and wordlessly helps with the load. It’s not even busy, but everything just feels so fucking overwhelming.
“You ok?” Ryan asks cautiously.
“Just got a headache” Jess replies. He refuses to look at the other boy. He’s not lying, his head is killing him, but it’s not the whole truth and they both know it.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been around much recently”. Jess apologises, guilt knowing at him from the inside out.
“It’s alright, I know you’ve got a lot going on at the moment” Ryan tries to reassure him, “I’ve missed you though. You can stay round mine tonight if you want?” In truth he’s missed Jess terribly. It’s made him even more worried about his boyfriend; not seeing him meant he has no clue how he’s doing or what he can do to help. It hurts so much seeing someone he loves in pain like this. He wishes desperately that there’s something he can do to help, but in reality he knows there’s nothing apart from simply being there. And Jess is shutting him out, so he can’t even do that.
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Jess is starting to feel really shit now. His heart starts to race in anxiety- he knows what this is. It’s sickeningly familiar and he realises he doesn’t know if he’ll be so lucky again. He’s suddenly a nauseating amount of dizzy and he has to grip onto the counter to steady himself. Ryan looks at him, eyes shrouded in concern.
“Jess..” he starts nervously-
“Don’t.” Jess refuses to look at him. Refuses to admit he knows what’s going on. Ryan passes him a glass of water. His hands shake as he tries to drink it. The tension is palpable and the silence around them is deafening.
“I’m gonna get Luke” Ryan says. He ignores Jess’s arguments against it and runs upstairs, trying to keep himself calm. He’s so scared.
Jess stops holding onto the counter top and tries to stand by himself as he sees his uncle running down from the apartment, followed hastily by his boyfriend. Luke stops abruptly in shock when he sees his nephew looking worryingly fragile. Shit.
“Are you sure you’re ok?” Luke asks, seeing now something is clearly very wrong. But his voice is so far away Jess can hardly make out what he’s saying. Jess looks at him and Ryan with a haze of confusion and fear. His head js empty and pounding and he can’t fucking breathe and his heart is racing, chest is aching, he’s dizzy, body feels like lead and he just needs to fucking sit down.
Luke manages to catch him just before he hits the ground. Ryan instantly grabs the phone from the wall and calls an ambulance.