EDIT // IDK WHAT HAPPENED I ACCIDENTALLY PASTED SOME EARLIER LINES BUT HERES THE THING
“With a nervous shake haunting his hand, Bad picked up the phone and began dialing the numbers. He hadn’t talked to this person in ages and wasn’t even sure how he would react, but this was all he had left. Zak hadn’t been around for four days. Four long excruciating days. They went by in a blur, no memories except the haziness of walking around his apartment and eating unspecified food just for the sake of eating it. He needed to let someone know.
He looked down at the phone with all the digits typed into a neat line at the top. The glow of the green call button was mocking Bad, taunting him--luring him. With a heavy sigh and the last shred of self respect, he pressed the button and cautiously held the rectangular device to his face. His breathing was shaky, as if he just witnessed something horrible and couldn’t talk. Like how he felt when Ava split with him, like how he felt on the second day Zak was gone--Broken. Shattered.
The phone rang once. Every instinct in Bad’s body was telling him to hang up, telling him that this wasn’t worth it. It was four in the morning and he was ringing up an old friend to confess his feelings for someone he didn’t even know? He anxiously tapped his fingers on the table, waiting in anticipation for the second ring to escape the phone’s speakers.
There was a clicking sound and Bad paused. Was he just hung up on? Did he hang up and not even realize it? Just as he moved the phone away from his face, he heard a faint voice on the line. “Darryl?”
Don’t respond. Say you accidentally butt-dialed him. “Y-Yeah?” Bad responded, immediately feeling the regret spread through his body. From the top of his head to the soles of his feet, he wanted to take back everything that had ever lead up to this moment.
“Dude, it’s 4:26 in the morning, what happened? Is everything oka--”
“Can I just talk?”
Silence swept over the room and was replaced with a tension so dense, it could be cut with a knife. There was hesitation on the other side, as if his friend had wanted to protest… but he remained silent. Bad knew that was an accepting answer.
“Listen… I know it’s late, and I know that I probably woke you up, but I just… I need to talk to someone, anyone,” Bad pleaded, feeling the hot tears well up in his eyes. He forced his way through it, taking a deep breath in and exhaling. It didn’t help in the slightest.
“Zak’s been missing for days now,” he continued, not caring enough to even explain who this Zak person was or why he was so important--he just needed to get to the point of the call. “He’s gone, I think… like, forever. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to think… I just feel so alone,” he continued, feeling the words fly out of his mouth like a jet taking off for a twenty hour flight. He couldn’t stop himself now--he was in too deep.
“I know you don’t know who he is but he means so much to me, Matt. He means so much,” Bad sighed, trying his hardest to fight off the tears that kept collecting in his eyes like the tide on the beach on a sunny day. He remembered all the time he spent with Zak and how much it meant to him.
It wasn’t a situation where he took Zak for granted, no. He knew what he was getting himself into. “I guess… I’m just upset that he didn’t say goodbye to me,” Bad whimpered through the phone, his lip quivering from the absolute hurricane of emotions that wrapped around his head. His voice was unsteady and he couldn’t keep anything back.
Matt hesitated in response. “I--Okay, Darryl, who is Zak? Forgive me for asking, but this is just--”
“He was my best friend,” Bad blurted out, not caring enough if that statement hurt Matt’s feelings or not.
“Sounds like he was closer than that. You’re completely shaken up about this,” Matt calmly mumbled through the phone. He didn’t seem upset or angry that Bad had called him this late at night. He was compassionate and understanding to Bad’s surprise.
“He wasn’t,” Bad quietly whispered. He wasn’t sure if he was telling himself or Matt that. He sighed before finally letting the tears fall. He closed his eyes and propped his head against his hand at the table he sat at. He looked at the print of the table. It had various red and blue flowers splattered all over it. They seemed gray and depressing under the dim light of the lamp across the room.
“But I wanted to be,” he finally admitted, feeling his face grow hot with guilt and embarrassment. It was embarrassing, right? To get so attached to someone in only a couple weeks was preposterous with his standards. But the way Zak talked and joked with him… He treated Bad like a person. Like someone who was deserving of affection. Like someone important.
“What does that mean?” Matt asked through the phone. Bad took a deep breath and finally said the words that had been manifesting in the back of his mind for the past week. He closed his eyes as tight as he could, trying to find the confidence to finally say it out loud. He was horrified of what Matt would say to him. He was horrified of the consequences of his words. He finally opened his eyes after a few seconds.
“Darryl, what does--”
“I’m in love with him,” Bad finally blurted out, immediately sobbing after choking out the last word. There was a moment of silence between the two. Bad tried to keep his sobs as quiet as he could, but it had been building up for weeks. He couldn’t keep it to himself anymore. He was in love with his best friend.
“Oh,” Matt quietly murmured. Had Bad made a mistake? He knew it. Telling someone and dumping all his feelings onto them was selfish.
“Here, I-I have to go,” Bad sighed, not even bothering to hold back his tears. Matt quietly murmured a goodbye and Bad hung up. He never hung up the phone first. He slammed his phone on the table and finally let himself cry for the first time in months. He let it all out, the bottled up emotions from the breakup, the feelings he had for Zak, everything going wrong on his streams… It was finally at its peak. He couldn’t keep doing this anymore.
He lifted his head from his hands and looked around the room. He was so lonely. Always. Nothing seemed to ever go his way no matter how much he wanted it to. From his youth to his adulthood, he never felt truly safe and happy. Until he met Zak. Oh, how he hated Zak and his perfect smile and his contagious laugh and his witty humor… He was perfect.
With a heavy sigh, Bad finally got up from the chair he’d been sitting at for what felt like hours. Something caught the corner of his eye and he whipped his head around only to be completely obliterated with the sight he saw.
“Zak?”
