HIGH TOPS, harry bingham

━━━ 00. The Before

WARNINGS FOR:
panic attacks & discussions of cancer and death

TWO YEARS PRIOR.
━━━ SOPHOMORE YEAR.

Harry Bingham's world, though rather small, is crashing down around him and he— can't— breathe. The revelation that his breaths are becoming shorter, quicker, falling in a rapid succession of too much ribcage, not enough oxygen, and a pinch of abdominal pain is not helping his situation—not at all. Being broken is one thing, admitting to yourself you are is another. It isn't like his family is against therapy or whatever because his older sister has been going for, like, forever, and Harry never thought it was that big of a deal, but the idea that therapy might be a necessary addition to his own life—for some reason—is making whatever is happening to him worse.

His head feels light and dizzy, his vision blurs, and it is difficult to stand. He can't hear, he can't feel; his nerve endings feel fuzzy, like someone took sandpaper to his neurons. The walls are closing in on him; all he wants is air—the cold air of New England Octobers coursing through his lungs, pushing his hair back, and cooling the sweat accumulating on his forehead. His hand fumbles for the handle of the front door while his family crashes and burns behind him in the family room.

The air—what little there is, that is—gets knocked out of him as he forgets the step down from the front door and onto the cement slab that finds piles of packages stacked up on it each day. Harry isn't sure what his plan is now since he still can hardly keep a breath inside of him and his vision is clearing up but aggravatingly slowly.

Someone is talking, but Harry is not parsing their words together, and, since he's shut his eyes so tightly he can see colors behind the darks of his eyelids, he can't see anything either.

He walks straight into the person walking up the sidewalk to the front door.

"You good?" are the first words Harry is able to fit together is his flickering mind, and it's almost laughable. Is he good? What does it fucking look like?

Whoever it is seems to understand that they are irritating him on top of his current situation, because they stop asking asinine questions like You good?. Instead, they put their hands—Harry can feel a keychain hooked over one of their fingers press into his skin—at the tops of his biceps, just below the incline of his shoulders. "Is this okay?"

Harry grunts— "Mm." It is okay; it isn't hurting him, actually, he feels more tethered to the world now than he had in the past five minutes. He feels more tethered now than he had since his parents decided to spit out the most life-altering, shitty news fucking possible.

The person is with it enough to see that Harry visibly is calming down, so they keep their hands on his arms firmly but not so tight that he feels caged in, boxed in. Still, there is an acute prick, like a woodpecker, drilling in the back of his brain that this person can probably, maybe, feel his heart beating through his chest.

Then, their hands disappear from Harry's arms, and there's a chill that penetrates the sweater he's wearing at the loss of contact only for the person to find his wrists instead.

"How's this?"

They keep asking questions as they maneuver Harry's index and middle fingers to feel his own pulse on his opposite wrist.

"See," the voice says again. "You're okay. You're breathing. You're alive." A beat. Then, "Can you say that? 'I'm okay. I'm breathing. I'm alive.'?"

It takes a moment—a few, actually, of Harry fighting his own brain—but, eventually, he is able to repeat the words back.

"Good," and Harry can hear a smile through their words like they're actually proud of him or something. "Okay, try this one: 'This isn't real, I am real.'"