Work Text:
You spend all afternoon in my room. My favorite blanket pulled over your shoulders as you tap away on your phone, unsure of what to do first.
You flip through my old sketchbook. Trace your finger over the drawings until they smudge and sprinkle little lead fingerprints on the page’s corners. You can almost picture me barging in, door slamming into the wall behind me as I yell at you for snooping through my stuff. You don’t understand why it’s such a big deal, for you see nothing there. You wish you could see what I saw.
You pick up my guitar. Strum gently, afraid that the strings will crumple into dust. You sing my favorite song from when I was twelve. Your voice cracks but the tears remain unshed. You’ll never know my favorite song at seventeen. For a moment, you want to throw the guitar at the wall.
Your eye catches my half-empty pill bottle. You hate that they didn’t work.
You kick the sketchbook onto the ground and a picture falls out. You don’t recognize him, with his lips pressed against my cheek. You don’t recognize me, grinning so hard with hearts in my eyes. You pocket the picture. You’re not sure if you want to find him or not. You can’t allow them to find him.
Do you know I never wanted to leave you? That catching you bite back a laugh at a biting comment I made under my breath filled me with a sense of pride? That I wished more than anything that you could see the same version of me that he saw and not the monster that burned too bright, too fast, that they saw? Do you?