𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐘 𝐃𝐎𝐍'𝐓 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐀𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐔𝐒|𝐎𝐔𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐁𝐀𝐍𝐊𝐒

𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞

Jaxon Ellis had always been known as an insomniac. He stood awake until the early hours of the morning, his body not allowing for him to envelop itself into the deep slumber he so desperately craved. He's struggled with this problem for as long as he could remember, the issue growing worse as he began to experience puberty for some odd reason. When Jaxon first begun to date Pope, he felt somewhat ashamed to admit his insomnia, for he didn't want his boyfriend to see him as some weirdo.

When Pope helped him work through his sleep issues, even if it kept him up until the early hours of the morning, that was the moment when Jaxon knew that he was the one. Jaxon's insomnia tended to always make its grand appearance when he was drunk, specifically after drowning cheap beer all throughout the night. He didn't know why, and he knew he couldn't go to his parents with this issue, for they would most likely tell him to shake it off and man up. And so Jaxon struggled through his issues on his own just as he always had, his parents always nowhere to be found.

"Oh fuck," Jaxon moaned lowly, the sunlight peeking in through his blinds causing for his pounding headache to grow worse by the second. Jaxon ran a hand over his exhausted face, shocked at the fact that he was able to get more than an hours worth of sleep before shooting awake in the middle of the night with no hopes of drifting off once more. His head turned over to where Damien slept soundly beside him, his soft snores echoing throughout Jaxon's rather large room. The Ellis boy rolled his eyes as he realized that he took the opportunity to crash at his place instead of going back to his own goddamn house which was only five minutes away.

Jaxon hated it when people slept over at his house uninvited. It was a pet peeve that not many people knew about, for if they did they would simply call him stuck up or spoiled. But it was the honest truth. If somebody was going to sleep over at his house, especially his friends or family he hadn't seen in quite some time, he would much rather them make their presence known versus showing up completely unannounced. His so called friends have done that to him one too many times to the point where Jaxon stopped complaining all together. For what was the use? Nobody hardly ever listened to him or what he had to say, even if he screamed it directly in front of their faces. It was an exhausting cycle that Jaxon chose to end before it grew even worse.

"You smell like beer," Damien uttered, his emerald eyes slowly peeling open at the sound of Jaxon shuffling throughout his room. "How are you even functioning right now? You were drunk off your ass last night."

"Don't know, don't care," Jaxon replied, removing his shirt that carried the stench of beer and instead replacing it with one he found discarded on his bedroom floor. "If anyone smells like beer, it's you. I can't believe you drove drunk last night. Fucking idiot."

"Did it, and got us back in one piece. A thank you would be nice," Damien snarked with an eye roll, pulling on one of Jaxon's shirts as well which caused for the Ellis boy to narrow his eyes. Classic Damien, always taking things that didn't even belong to him. "But of course I can't even get that."

"Damn right you can't," Jaxon snapped back, a loud scoff escaping his lips. "You drove in my car, my car that could've gotten ducking towed if the cops found out you were driving it drunk. You know what, I don't even care."

"You shouldn't, because there are way bigger problems. Like that pathetic Pouge shooting a fucking gun."

Jaxon froze at Damien's words, the memory's of the party flooding into his brain like an unstoppable current. Everything had been going so perfectly. He had gotten his moment along with Pope, their lips that tasted of salt water colliding with one another as they blocked out the sounds of judgmental teenagers mere feet away from them. Then came the fight, in which Topper had attempted to drown John B which ended up in JJ pointing a gun to the back of his skull, threatening to blow his brains out. A cold blooded chill ran up Jaxon's spine, the sound of the gun clicking on repeat in his broken mind. Jaxon couldn't help but flinch whenever he thought about how such an innocent night filled with laughter and dancing managed to turn into a battle ground with gunshots ringing out in the ear. He then thought about Pope, and what he must've been feeling that night, for Jaxon always managed to put himself last when it came to their relationship, a trait Pope scolded him for all the time.