what's stopping you?

he just feels so lonely

𝖙𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖌𝖊𝖗 𝖜𝖆𝖗𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌𝖘 𝖎𝖓 𝖔𝖕𝖊𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖆𝖚𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖗'𝖘 𝖓𝖔𝖙𝖊

𐐪𐑂 ♡

"how's dream been doing?"

punz leans back in his chair with a bit of a sigh, an apologetic kind of grimace painting his features.

"not good?"

"not good," punz confirms with a small head shake. "he's still doing the whole eating and making himself sick thing, and most nights he comes to me panicking about a nightmare or something but he still doesn't like being touched, so i just sit and watch."

"surely that can't be good for you either?"

"well no, obviously not," punz scoffs, though the sound is more sad than malicious. "but the pain of me having to watch him suffer is nowhere near the pain he's feeling, so i sort of just fight through it. no matter how many times he comes to me, i'll never turn him away, and that's the bottom line."

"he shouldn't only have to come to you though," foolish tries to reason, not blind to the bags under his best friend's eyes, even through the phone. "does he not have any other coping mechanisms?"

"not unless you count throwing up."

"i think i'm just gonna step out while you guys talk about this."

foolish looks over as karl gets up out of his chair, frowning up at his boyfriend whilst he pulls his headphones off. "that's okay love, i'll call you back in when we're done."

punz can just about see karl nodding in response before he walks out of frame and, presumably, leaves the room. "how is he doing?"

"yeah, not good," foolish sighs. "he tried to convince me that it was his fault the other night," he confides, "i didn't know he'd even been thinking about that."

punz's face curls, his stomach flipping on himself. "like, what happened to dream?"

"yeah," foolish nods, "he sleeps over more often than not now, and the other night he just kept crying about how he should've done something -found him earlier or not let him walk off on his own- obviously i tried to tell him that he couldn't have done anything, and none of us would've ever thought that was happening, so we had no reason to go looking, but he wouldn't listen."

"fuck, man," punz mutters, feeling ill at the thought, and almost like he's going to burst into tears, "that's so fucking awful, oh my god."

"yeah," foolish agrees.

"what's his therapist been saying?" punz wonders.

"not a whole lot," foolish laughs humorlessly, "he's still refusing to talk about anything that isn't surface level, since he says it triggers nightmares, so all she's managed to tell us is that he's severely emetophobic, which i think we could've worked out."

"yeah, doesn't exactly take a detective," punz says, earning a hum from the ravenette.

"has dream said anything about therapy?"