Work Text:
i. lost
Some kinds of drowning don't need water.
The weight of the city, the people, the voices — they don't crush him all at once. It settles in silence, behind his eyes, behind his ribcage, hidden away until it claws itself out. Triumphs taste like ash, once a welcoming warmth now a burning feeling left behind. Torn apart by words and wants and needs and requests and demands, standing in the center with a light shining on his face that blinds him.
People praising him, scolding him,
a room full of people, and he feels alone.
Each smile he gives, every nod returned feels like it has been borrowed by somebody else; a mechanical response, muscle memory drilled into him. Politeness in his bones and words rolling over his lips that stem from smart ideas that usually come easy to him, but right now —
oh, right now they fall backwards and tumble and everything,
everything is a little too much.
They ask about the progress and he cannot give them much more; small steps, he tells them, more time, he tells them, he cannot rush what they don't have quite yet. Cracks in the brilliance they see in him.
He thinks of his mother he thinks of his father, what she would say, would tell him to do; how she would make him breathe in through his nose out of his mouth repeat repeat repeat count to 10,
one
two
three —
(He thinks what his father would say but he can't quite grasp the words, they don't feel right, and another long moment he feels alone, the deeply buried grief hitching in his throat; the feeling of not being able to reach a memory that is starting to blur at the edges, a face that isn't a face anymore but a splash of colours.)
He cracks another smile, plastered on his face. It comes easy to him, all the time, every time, but right now he feels tired. He feels overwhelmed.
He feels
lost.
ii. found
She finds him at the edge of himself,
in the quiet between heartbeats, where he wonders who he is without the purpose given to him.
She finds him at the frail threads others have woven for him, head in his hands feeling as if the weight of this world sits on his shoulders; weighing down the thoughts of tomorrow, blurring out the yesterdays. All the things he has achieved — he knows, he knows — greyed out by that overwhelming feeling of wondering if he belongs here, if what he does is right, of maybe —
maybe.
He thinks of his mother he thinks of his father, thinks of how she would smile at him nod at him tell him he's doing great and that he deserves this:
deserves happiness,
deserves success,
deserves a light shining through the dark,
deserves every single star hanging from the night sky (she would pluck them right out of there one by one with her bare hands for him),
he deserves.
She would tell him that he is on the right path and that sometimes, sometimes there is nothing wrong with feeling lost.
(He thinks what his father would say, if he would be proud of him as well, if he would look him in the eyes and tell him he is on the right path.)
Quiet footsteps on a stone path pull him out of his thoughts, out of the mess that he has made inside his head. Mel stands before him, neutral expression to others but a visible frown to him between her eyebrows ever so slight; a hint of worry, a silent question. There are no words needed, he thinks, when she reaches out for him, because she was there, she saw the insides of him fall apart and put themselves back together only half an hour ago; she looked when no one else did.
Her hand touches his forehead, fingers gently brushing away strands of loose hair.
Where the world burns, she builds a garden.
He doesn't ask to be saved and she doesn't need to fix him.
(He only asks to be seen.)
She reminds him that fixing isn't necessary, that sometimes there is nothing wrong to be mended. There is no shame to break and shatter sometimes — it is not a failure but a pause. And when strength returns, he can gather what remains; when the world stops pressing too hard on cracked surfaces, when the bones don't feel like glass anymore, when the ache isn't so sharp.