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Mateo didn’t often regret things. But tonight, he very much does.
Lately he’s just been so full of regret over everything he’s done before, every word he’s said, all the times he didn’t speak up when he could have. The words he left unsaid. The feeling is so strong that it’s almost overwhelming; he can’t distract himself from it, can’t create distance. It’s always there, lingering in the back of his mind like a parasite, attached to his very core. He can’t seem to shake it no matter what he does.
His captain had left a while ago to “hill country” – every time he talks to someone in the 126, they say, he needs space, or just give him time, but still every night he goes to sleep tossing and turning, wondering what he did, where the hell it all went wrong. He can’t stop himself from overthinking, from staying up late and staring at the ceiling like it’ll tell him everything he did, like it’ll tell him how to fix it.
Sometimes he sits in bed all night and barely sleeps. Sometimes it’s so bad he just knows he won’t be able to sleep, so he goes for a drive around the city, watching other people be happy, thinking of other lives he could be living instead of the one he is right now. Because if he thinks about that enough, maybe the feelings eating at him will dissipate for just enough that he can take a deep breath instead of the constant feeling of drowning he’s been experiencing lately. Because maybe, maybe somehow these people, their lives, the things they do, will give him some answer on how to keep living.
Even though the feeling is all-consuming, there is just enough space for the sadness to creep in, too. The regret is all tied up with depression and pain and he can barely untangle it enough to understand what he’s thinking and why. But what he does know is he’s sick of it, and he’s getting really tired of waking up every morning alone to his shrill alarm, making coffee for just one person, heading to work by himself, coming home to a cold and empty house.
But every day he wakes up anyways, because he has a job to do. Because he has to feed the dog, to water the plants, to make sure that everything in the house gets done no matter how much he wants to crawl back into bed and forget that he exists, forget all of the bad things he’s done, forget whatever the hell he did to make his captain leave him like this without a goodbye.
If he had been innocent, they would still be talking. He would be calling his captain every other day, giving him updates, chatting, maybe even planning a hangout or two. But lately all of his messages are stuck on delivered no matter how many times he refreshes the app or resets his phone. It’s just there, sitting, lingering like his regret does. Every new message he sends kills him inside, because there’s this horrible feeling that he should’ve said these things sooner, that he should have apologized.
But for what? What did he even do? How could he apologize if he had no idea what he did wrong? That’s one of the worst parts, really; the not knowing. Because maybe he’s doing that over and over with everyone, and he’ll lose more people, and he’ll never fix himself, and then he’ll end up entirely alone, stranded, doomed to a lonely existence.
Tonight is worse than usual. It’s one of the nights he would drive around, but his hands are shaking and he hasn’t eaten all day, and yeah, he hasn’t been taking care of himself at all, but maybe that doesn’t even matter as long as everything else looks fine, as long as he keeps taking care of everything.
But he can’t keep it up. He can’t, no matter how hard he tries. The plants are dying, the dog is unhappy– probably because his real owner isn’t around, and he misses him– the trash and dishes are piling up, the rooms are getting dusty. But even though he notices these things, he can’t bring himself to fix them. He can barely get out of bed lately.
He knows the problem - he knows it’s depression, and he knows it’s bad. But knowing doesn’t fix the problem. Knowing doesn’t do shit. It just tells him he’s fucked.
He runs a hand through his hair and sits on the porch, watching the sky. It’s completely dark except the street lights and the city far off in the distance. Owen’s place– Owen’s, because he is just a guest here, even if he does pay rent– is distanced from the city, enough that it feels more like it’s in the country than the outskirts of Austin. That means he can kind of make out stars, which is nice, because he used to watch them all the time as a kid when he was panicking or needed something to distract himself with when his guardians were arguing in the kitchen. He’d play music to drown out the screaming match and look for constellations he’d heard about.
But there is no screaming, there is no arguing, there are no harsh words. The only pain in this house is in his head, and it’s killing him.
He’s fidgeting with a pocketknife - something he does when the depression and anxiety get bad enough that he needs even a minimal distraction like keeping his hands busy. His phone is dead, not that he’d text anyone anyways. Everything just fucking hurts.
He wishes he’d said something, anything at all, to make him stay. Something like i need you or im so sorry or you’re my family, cap, so please dont go.
But no - he had said nothing. He didn’t know, sure, but now that he does, now that he knows he’s completely alone, he wishes so badly that he’d said anything to make it all better. But there was nothing. There was never any chance he could fix it; that’s why he’s alone right now. That’s why he’s sitting in the cold, watching planes and lights instead of sleeping.
That’s why he keeps having these thoughts of jumping off roofs and buildings.
It is such a painful experience to know you may never see someone you loved again, and not because they are dead, but because they don’t want to see you - because the love you put there was never enough. Because you were never enough. He never knew how badly it could hurt, but now he does, and he hates it - downright despises it.
The suicidal thoughts are coming to a head and he doesn’t know how to stop them without talking to his captain - someone he’d thought was a close friend, maybe even a father figure. But now it all seemed so trivial, so ridiculous, so… one-sided.
Even though he’s shivering, and even though he hasn’t eaten, he doesn’t know what to do. He’s fucking hopeless. He’s alone.
Buttercup nudges his knee and suddenly he’s back to reality, just for tonight. Just until he gets overwhelmed with the pain again tomorrow night and forgets why he ever wanted to live in the first place.
He pets him gently, running his trembling hand through his fur. The dog seems… happy. He’d assumed he was taking shit care of it, but it seems like he’s been doing all right, considering that the dog is wagging his tail and begging for more pets.
It’s unfortunate that this is the only reason he’s still alive– to take care of someone else’s dog that will forget all about him when his real owner comes back – but it’s better than nothing, which is what he used to be stuck with.
He sighs and stands, leading the dog back inside. They head to his room, where he decides to try to sleep again, wiping the tears from his eyes. He lets the dog sleep on his bed, something his captain was usually against, but who was fucking here, huh? Who was actually taking care of it, and the house? Who was paying rent? So yeah, he was going to let the dog sleep with him.
Buttercup curls up next to him and sleeps soundly through the night, and even though Mateo doesn’t sleep well, he pets him idly and sleeps better than he has in months anyways.
He’s not okay at all. But he’s gonna get through it, one way or another. Even if it had to be just like this for a while.