The Day Love Stories Burned [boyxboy]

Roads Less Travelled

Accel’s POV

Silence sounded like sirens in my ears, the nothingness heavy in in the air. Lights faded in and out on the edges of my vision as my feet stumbled unsteadily along worn white traffic lines. Faintly I could feel the warmth of blood trickling slowly down my temple, my fingers shaking as they clenched spasmodically against empty air by my sides. My body itself was slouched, seeming to sink lower and lower with each futile step towards god-knows-where.

Lost.

There was a familiar feeling, something I could finally ground myself on. The irony left a bitter edge of humour to the traces of the thought. I was lost and yet felt completely at home, pitiful really. There was no-one to feel sorry for me though, no-one to coddle me and whisper sickly sweet words of false comfort. The stinging coldness of reality is sharp and quick. It keeps you on your toes, keeps you hungry and desperate. That’s what I need to be right now. Hungry and desperate. Hungry for a future of safety and warmth and desperate for the love and soul to make it happen.

So that’s what I am. That’s what I will be, and that desperation will keep me going.

I don’t know for how long it will last, but it has to enough for now… has to be. I have nothing else.

Air filtered past my eyes almost in slow motion, ethereal particles of dust drifting and dancing daintily in the yellowed streetlight, seeming to pause this moment in time. Images piled in my head, flying faster and faster until it just stopped, the edges blurred and fading into darkness. Andrew’s smiling face caused my eyes to drift close, the edges of my own lips titling upwards even as one last stray tear slid haltingly from underneath my lids. Dove grey eyes appeared as storm clouds with silver lining, features caught in the eclipse of happiness and satisfaction. Skin as soft and delicate as tiny muscles tugged his face into a dimpled smile; messy brown hair brushing against the pale skin of his cheeks and long eyelashes. My breathing choked for a moment before the image crumbled, breaking apart as softly as a leaf whose skeleton has been exposed for far too long.

Every muscle in my body seemed to tense, the smile wilting from my lips as reality crashed around me with a cacophony of noise and turmoil. Sirens wailed closer and closer, dogs barking and howling, the sound of the highway in the distance. Urgency nudged at the base of my skull. Move, move, move, worry later, stay alive. It was like fighting against a swamp of lead, forcing my legs to move forwards and not turn and run back. Alcohol was steadily clearing from my brain, the adrenaline having pumped it through my blood stream at an alarming rate. Drugs still slurred the world around me slightly but sobriety was returning in painful aches and the shuddering reality of what had come to pass in my drunken state.

“Oh fuck,” I mumbled through bloodied lips. “Really done it this time haven’t you asshole.” Harshly I wiped at the side of my head to try and get rid of the drying blood. Bruises littered my body, and I felt as if my brain had been used in a rough and tumble game of football. The sirens wailed dangerously closer, and turning around I could glimpse flashes of red and blue lights. Before I could panic a loud screech rent loudly through my eardrums. I winced and glared angrily at a grinning Jason sitting behind a wheel of a beaten up Toyota ute.

“Finally found ya,” he leaned out the window, laughing like a madman. Probably still drunk. “Took me ages mate, though Mary ‘ere says you were raving on bout some Andrew kid so I called some peeps and Raz tol’ me you’d be hanging round ‘ere. Get in ‘fore you kill yourself bro.”

I physically grimaced at the rough way Jason spoke, the painfully Bogan Australian accent like sandpaper against my already grated thin nerves.

“Move over, I’m driving,” I growled, shoving my way through the drivers side so Jason practically fell into a still stoned Mary’s lap. It was cramped, but being so small Mary simply contorted her way into the middle so there was breathing space between me and the idiotic lug.