Illuminated // Phan (boyxboy)

Chapter 17

the biggest biggest shoutout to fictionalyf for making such awesome themes for the book and wallpapers which I'll be using for each chapter in the picture bar!

Trigger Warnings; suicidal thoughts, self harm (possibly quite big?) - feel free to message me on tumblr; fuckuplester if you want the rundown of the chapter but with no triggers x

He fucked up. He really really fucked up; that was the only way to describe it. That was the only way he could ever explain his thoughts for the reason that he was sat dangling his feet over the rocky edge to the forest he had tried to hide in; the howling water below snapped up like hungry alligators. Around him the tree's whispered noisily; their branches telling secrets of something he couldn't understand. Words. Literature. Syntax. FUCK. Hands pulled at his hair, rough, calloused - his/ he was breaking himself apart always. Tear by tear, day by wretched day he wanted to die.

He wasn't going to jump. No, at least he didn't think so. Not now; not then. He couldn't do that, he couldn't give them the satisfaction of doing that; he knew he was weak and broken and pathetic but he owed it to Dan and Scott not to do that. He couldn't put them through the same amount of pain that he felt on a regular, daily basis; he wasn't a monster.

He hated feeling like this; empty, pathetic, worthless. He hated himself, it was no wonder really why his father beat him and his mother neglected him. "I want to die," he remembered telling the teacher wen he was eight. He was so young to admit that he had given up on life in it's entirety. He could still remember watching the shock and sadness appear on the teachers face as she sat him down before calling in for an emergency social worker and counselor.

But still; he couldn't seem to scuttle back from the edge, his legs feeling like weights when he tried to move. Not that he wanted too anyway. He kind of liked the way that his legs dangled precariously over the edge with the promise of an end.

He knew that Scott and Dan were probably hurting and he knew they would both be blaming themselves for what happened and he just wanted to scream that it's not their fault but he couldn't.

Because he was broken.

A scratched record on an eternal record player; tossed aside for a better, newer more shinier version and he couldn't do anything about it.

The water roared below him; a false welcome, a violent embrace that he wanted to step out into too but couldn't.

He couldn't help but stare over the edge when there was so much blood and he was scared. He hadn't meant to do it again, he had promised himself he'd stop but it all got too much and he couldn't cope with it. He was really scared because he wasn't sure what was happening anymore and he knew that he was in too deep and he felt as if he had been thrown to the sharks because he was drowning and he couldn't get out. Maybe those same sharks would eat him if he threw himself off hard enough. Maybe.

He hadn't eaten for a day and a half and before that the food was meager; he didn't want to eat, at the moment it was just nothing but a novelty to stop him passing out. Every time he'd tried to eat the food had caught in his throat against a giant lump that stops him from eating. Scott wouldn't understand - he never did, after his first week at the care home he'd demanded he ate three meals a day unless he was ill.

He wanted to go home and cuddle into Dan and tell him everything; how scared he was, how much he was hurting, what was going on and what it was making him do but he couldn't.