Beneath the polaroid [BXB]

BENEATH THE POLAROID - 20 | The cruelest truth of all

THE DAY AFTER THE incident, James didn't bother setting his alarm. He knew he wasn't going to school—not today, not after what happened. The thought of facing them again, of seeing William and the others, made his stomach churn violently. There was no way he could do it. He could barely stand to look at himself in the mirror, let alone endure their mocking stares, their words that cut deeper than any physical blow ever could.

Instead, he lay in bed long after the sun had risen, the dull light filtering in through the rain-streaked window. His body still ached from the beating, his muscles stiff and sore. The bruises on his ribs, his arms, and his face throbbed with every shallow breath, but it wasn't the physical pain that kept him lying there. It was the weight in his chest, the sick feeling that wrapped itself around him like a heavy blanket, suffocating and relentless.

At some point, he forced himself up, his mind numb as he wandered into his small, cramped room. The first thing his eyes landed on was the wall—the wall where he had taped all those pictures. Polaroids of William, each one capturing some perfect, fleeting moment. The smirk, the flash of a smile, the way his body moved so effortlessly on the basketball court. James had spent hours studying them, analyzing every detail of William's face, every shift in his posture.

But now, looking at them, they felt different. Tainted.

He sat down heavily on the edge of his bed, his legs too weak to carry him any further. His hands fumbled with the camera sitting on his desk, the same one that had gotten him into this mess. He pulled out a blank Polaroid, staring at the empty square as it rested in his palm, cold and unyielding.

The silence in the room was oppressive, pressing in on him from all sides. He traced the edges of the Polaroid with his thumb, his mind wandering back to William. Why couldn't he let this go? Why couldn't he just hate him like a normal person would? After everything that had happened—the beatings, the slurs, the humiliation—how could he still feel this way?

His thoughts swirled like the storm outside, chaotic and uncontrollable. What was wrong with him?

James wanted to rip the photos off the walls. He wanted to tear them down, shred them, burn them—anything to erase the boy who had caused him so much pain. But he couldn't. He just...couldn't. His eyes kept drifting back to William's face in the photographs, to the sharp line of his jaw, the way his mismatched eyes—one green, one silver—caught the light in a way that made him look otherworldly.

He let out a shaky breath, his fingers clenching the blank Polaroid tighter.

William wasn't a monster. He couldn't be.

Sure, he'd been cruel, vicious even. But there had to be something more. Something deeper. James had seen it, hadn't he? That look, that fleeting glimpse of vulnerability beneath the surface. There was no way someone like William could be all bad. Maybe he was just...confused. Or maybe this was just his way of dealing with things he didn't understand. Maybe the bullying, the slurs, the vandalism—it was all some twisted defense mechanism.

James' mind grasped at straws, trying to justify the unjustifiable. His lips pressed into a thin line, the pain in his chest expanding with each breath as the rationalizations began to spill out, unbidden, from his thoughts.

He doesn't really hate me. The thought slithered into his mind, uncomfortably real. He's just... scared. Of what he might be. Of what it means if he feels anything for someone like me.

There was a warped kind of hope in that thought, a desperate need to believe that William's cruelty wasn't as simple as it seemed. James let it fester, feeding it with every excuse he could think of.

He's just doing what his friends expect him to do. He's not really like them.

But no matter how many times James repeated it to himself, no matter how many justifications he came up with, there was a part of him that knew it was all a lie. Deep down, beneath all the wishful thinking, he knew that William had made his choice. He wasn't some lost boy trying to figure himself out—he was a part of the pack, just like the others. Maybe even worse, because William knew exactly what he was doing, and he enjoyed it.

James swallowed hard, his throat tight as he stared at the blank Polaroid. He could feel the tears prickling behind his eyes, but they wouldn't fall. They never did. He was too far gone for that now. The pain had become something else, something colder. It had settled deep into his bones, numbing him to everything but the constant ache in his chest.

His gaze drifted back to the wall of photos, and he found himself standing, walking toward them as if in a trance. His hand hovered over one of the pictures—a shot of William at the party, laughing with his friends, his head tilted back, that infuriatingly perfect smirk plastered on his face. James' fingers twitched, the urge to rip it down almost overwhelming.

But he didn't.

He couldn't.

Instead, he let his hand fall limply to his side, the weight of his own weakness pressing down on him like a stone. Why couldn't he hate him? Why, after everything, did he still want him so badly?

James collapsed back onto his bed, the springs creaking under his weight. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to drown out the images flashing through his mind. William's face. The smirk. The slur carved into the side of his car. The way he'd stood there, so smug, so untouchable, as if he hadn't just torn James apart.

He pressed the blank Polaroid against his chest, gripping it tightly as if it could somehow absorb all the confusion, the hurt, the longing that twisted inside him. He wanted to scream, to tear the world apart, but there was nothing. Just the silence. The suffocating, unrelenting silence that filled every corner of his room, every corner of his mind.

Maybe it wasn't William's fault. Maybe it was just how things were. Maybe James was the one who was broken, who saw things that weren't really there. Maybe William didn't deserve the pedestal James had placed him on, but how could he help it? William was everything James wasn't—confident, strong, beautiful in a way that made people stop and stare. Even now, even after the destruction, James couldn't tear himself away.

It was pathetic.

James stared up at the ceiling, watching the shadows dance across it as the rain outside continued to fall in sheets. He felt like he was drowning, not in the water, but in the crushing weight of his own obsession.

What had William ever done to earn this devotion? Nothing. Not a damn thing. And yet here James was, unable to let go, even after William had shown him exactly who he was.

And maybe that was the worst part. Knowing that no matter what William did, no matter how much he hurt him, James would always come back for more. He would always be the one with his heart on the line, bleeding out for someone who didn't even see him as human.

The Polaroid in his hand slipped through his fingers, fluttering to the floor like a broken wing. James didn't move to pick it up. He couldn't. He was too tired, too beaten down by the weight of everything that had happened.

In the silence of his room, surrounded by the images of a boy who would never love him back, James let out a long, shaky breath.

He couldn't hate William. He never would.

And that was the cruelest truth of all.