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Floorboards creak under the weight of frantic pacing. Price’s eye looks around the room like he’s ready for any danger that might come near him or his boyfriend. It was.. still weird to think of it like that. What was once originally just ‘this means nothing’ turned into it meaning everything. The one person he has, or rather, that’s just how it feels right now.
His hands tap and they hit against his thighs; something once soothing that now had no effect. His mother would see him doing it, and she would hold his hands until he stopped panicking at the least. It worked, but nobody else knew that. Nobody else could save him from this, not now and not ever. His gaze shoots over to the figure standing at the door. “Leaving, leaving, he’s leaving” is all his mind screamed at him as he stares at them.
Price’s pacing comes to a halt when he notices the slow, cautious approach towards him. Jazz’s mouth opens, then shuts, and then it opens again. He’s lost for words.
A frenzied gaze behind the eye that stares back at him. All he can do is sigh and return a gaze of pity to the other. Clearly something was going on, he just didn’t know what. He didn’t know what caused it, why he’s like this or how.
“They’re after my head, baby. They want me dead.” Price hissed, the malice in his voice matching the stare he had, “They want me gone, Jazzy.. Every last one of them.”
“Woah- Woah, what makes you say that, Reuben? Did something..”
“No. No. I just know it, okay?”
That pitying gaze Jazz had slowly shifted into confusion. Everything was throwing them off now. He just “knew” it? Why weren’t they being told if something happened? Blinking out of the ever growing pile of mental questions, they frown at the sight of his pacing and hitting again. What on earth happened?
Taking a deep breath, he sighs. He opens his mouth to speak, and raises his hands. Only to hold onto him, to grab the other’s shoulders so he can stop the pacing, so he can reassure him. But he’s met with a frightened gaze and his hands being slapped away.
“Don’t fucking touch me! Don’t touch me, Jasmine, just don’t!” Price had shrieked, and Jazz took a step back. He watches as the other runs a shaking hand through tangled hair; a result of his harsh tugging and pulling. “Not right now, okay, baby?”
Their hands slowly fell to their side as they watched Price go further down this insane rabbit hole. They watched as his shaking hands hit and now dug his nails into his thighs, and they watched as that pacing returned. The one eyed glare lands upon them, and Jazz swears that they can see tears starting to build up. That pity they have grows.
So slowly, Jasmine approaches their boyfriend once again, quickly moving to grab him by the hands and pull him close to their chest. Just to stop the pacing, at least.
As Jazz grabs his hands, Price freezes. His thighs are burning and so are his palms. Whether that’s from the hitting and the clawing, or some faint reminder of incidents he wants to leave behind him, he doesn’t know. But this time, the black haired man doesn’t shriek at the touch. He tries to tug his hands away from a firm grip, but to no avail. He looks down at Jazz, whose thumbs are rubbing circles on the backs of his hands.
“You don’t want me gone, right, baby?” His voice is uncharacteristically quiet. It cracks with each word, like a final plea. “You don’t want me dead, do you?”
The fiery haired man shakes his head. “No way, not a hope in hell, babe. You know I don’t..”
Price tries tugging his hands away once again, but Jazz’s grip remains firm as he slowly drags his boyfriend down onto the ground with him. His heart aches. He just wants to cry, he just wants it all to be done with, to stop feeling so horrible for once. His head was racing, that he was being vulnerable, that he was being stupid. Price tries to pull away from Jazz once again, but the other doesn’t budge.
Whether he likes it or not, Jazz wasn’t going anywhere.
“You wouldn’t want me dead, right Jazzy?”
“No, I wouldn’t, okay, but..” Their own voice is unsure of this. What on Earth had they gotten themselves into? “You need to calm down now, okay?”
“Tell me you don’t want me dead. Tell me. Please.” Price didn’t sound angry, or quiet anymore. He sounded desperate. He sounded so paranoid, Jazz honestly didn’t know how this could’ve started. Maybe it’s just one of those things..? He wouldn’t know, he’s no professional.
Jazz takes a deep breath. “I don’t want you dead, Reuben. Promise you that.” As he speaks, he moves one hand to the other’s tangled mess of hair, the ghost of a smile coming to his face. Maybe it’d be fine. “I love you.”
Continuing his sentence, he twirls a finger in the other’s hair, taking a mental note of the tangles and knots, and the way Price slowly lowered himself down to the floor, head resting on Jazz’s legs. That smile finally settles on his face as he runs his hand through the paranoid man’s hair.
“...Chip never would’ve done this.” He croaks out, and Jasmine raises an eyebrow as he chooses not to comment on the slow fall of tears onto his legs. “He never would’ve..”
“Really, now? I didn’t think he’d.. be the type to shy away from touch.”
He nods slowly. Jazz comes to the realisation, that maybe this might’ve been causing the stress. The lack of affection, physical at that. He doesn’t say anything else, listening in as Price spoke endlessly about Chip saying the same thing, about people wanting his head, and wanting him gone. Jasmine couldn’t make any sense of his boyfriend’s rambling followed by angry, desperate sobs.
It eventually comes to that paranoid “you want me gone” talk all over again, but rather than that, it was he. “He wants me gone”, and “He wanted me gone”, or even “He tried to make me go”. And shamefully enough, Jazz had lost focus. He completely missed who Price was actually referring to. It could be anybody.
“--he wanted me gone, baby.. You wouldn’t let that happen, right?”
Jazz shook his head, sighing and letting that smile return to his face. “No, not at all, babe.”
“...If you love me, kill him.” Reuben murmured, his teary eye glaring at the wall in front of him.
“What?”
Price’s body tensed and curled slightly inwards as Jazz moved his hand from his hair out of shock.
“You have to kill Chip. Please.” He sounded desperate and crazed. “It’s the only way, Jazz, it’s the only way this’ll work.”
But they didn’t respond. They were sat in silence, and their heartbeat seemed to be the only thing they could hear clearly. They were really in over their head now, weren’t they? ‘Kill Chip’, was that the issue to all of this? To all of this behaviour?
“Reu… I..”
“Jazzy, I need you to do this. You love me, right? You have to do this.” His voice wasn’t demanding. It was sad. That was the closest thing it could be described as. “Please..”
He inhales deeply, thinking about the best possible way to approach this. He could kill Chip, but that’d upset the rest of the Albatross. He could lie, but that’d hurt Reuben. Maybe he could say he’d do it and then never fulfil that promise! …Though that’s also lying.
“I.. That’s crazy to ask for, babe.” Jazz simply mumbled, “I can’t kill a man.”
A sniff comes from the taller, the tears spilling down his face. “I’m not fucking crazy. I’m not fucking crazy, Jazz.”
Great. That was definitely a great way to go about it.
“No, no, Reuben. I meant.. Uh.” He bites his lip in thought. Jazz brings the hand that left Price’s hair to his face, and (as best as he can) wipes the tears from his eye. “I mean… It’s too late, okay? So, maybe tomorrow.. Or another day, so you can come too.”
There’s a shared silence between the two after Jazz stops talking. Price’s occasional sniffing breaks that silence. What the hell had he signed up for?
“I’m not crazy.. I promise.”
“You’re not crazy, bae. You’re just having a down moment.”
“I’m not crazy…”