Peach Silhouette

39 | tolerate it

tw // themes of depression

They found me in the alleyway. I knew they were looking for me, it was stupid to walk home through a confined street. 

The oldest one, a senior, had a knife. They mocked me as usual - the loser who spends his days on computers and hacks the school tech from time to time. 

I walked home that day with bruises and a scar across my collarbone that carried a message I took with me everywhere.

"You don't belong."

My room was quiet. The walls were like a jail cell of my own creation. 

It was dark. 

It's been a while since I turned the lights on, hasn't it.

I stayed where I was. Why turn the lights on, only to see the mess, the failure?

I sighed. My phone vibrated on the nightstand. I grabbed it quickly, but then I put it down. I covered my eyes with my hands, and then let them fall to my side.

I heard distorted words from the room beside mine. Not his. Sapnap's. 

His had been dead silent for days. 

"...heard from Ranboo...not anytime soon...similar situation...refuse to talk to...home..." I stopped listening after a while, energy gone. I drifted into a light sleep, filled with fragments of nightmares and warm memories - memories turned sour, now.

They never tell you that sometimes it isn't the terrifying dreams that haunt you, but the ones that make you wish for what you could've had.

I awoke to a bright light burning in my eyes and the sound of curtains opening. I blinked, my eyes not used to the light. 

"Good morning, boss man. Or rather, afternoon at this point." Tommy came in to view after I rubbed my eyes a few more times. 

"Tommy." 

"Dream."

"Why are you in here?" I asked.

"Mm, cause I feel like it," he replied, beginning to pick up the crumpled paper and various items off the floor. 

"Don't do that." I said sternly. He continued, and I stood up, grabbing his wrist. 

"I said, don't do that." He looked at me, a gentle smile playing on his lips. His eyes held nothing but pure good intention. I was thankful that I couldn't see the familiar glitter of pity. 

"Ok, boss man, what would you rather me do?" 

"I don't know, just, I don't know just not that." I replied.

"We could blow up a nation, or visit a flower garden, or perhaps," he paused. "Something else." I shrugged. "But first, a tidy room is a tidier mind. Let's do something about that." 

"When did you become Marie Kondo?" I grumbled, beginning to tug at the sheets of my bed until I was satisfied with how it looked. He went about my room like a bee, buzzing about and putting things away. 

We worked like that for a while, taking breaks to breathe occasionally. 

He was putting the laundry we had started away, when he pulled out a plaid piece of fabric that I recognized right away.

"What's this-" I rushed towards him, snatching it out of his hands. "Dream?"

"It's...it's his scarf."

The day we went ice skating came back in a torrent of old memories. 

Hot cocoa and our breath coming out in clouds. The way he moved in the dim lighting of the rink.