Speechless (Muke)

DAY 2:

Words For Mikey: Day Two

Eccedentesiast: someone who hides pain behind a smile.

Fake. I am surrounded by fakeness. Fake people. Fake lives. Fake love. I don't think they know that I can even tell. But I'm not stupid. I'm just broken. Every single breath hurts so bad, Mikey. But I'm trying not to let them all see. I'm fake too. It hurts even more. To know that they think they have to be fake. But it's so obvious. It's in the way Ashton's shoulders slump and how his posture is defeated when he thinks nobody's looking. In how Calum's bottom lip will start trembling and how he'll shake in his sleep. In how my mum can't even look at me without her eyes watering and tears falling. In how the doctors offer smiles and tell us that only 24% of deaths are suicides. Only 24? that seems like a pretty big number to me. The only one who isn't being even slightly fake is that little girl, Lucy. She's eight, which isn't really that little anymore, but I feel like I've aged fifty years in the past two days. Do you even have an idea of time in a coma? Are you aware of anything? My mum just took a phone call. I hope it's someone who can get me into see you. I'm falling apart, Mikey. And I don't know how to fix myself.

I love you,

Luke

"Luke? Have you slept?" Luke turned his head a fraction to take in Ashton who was the one speaking.

"No,"

Luke's voice was not his own. It was scratchy and raw and unbelievably foreign. He knew Michael would have teased him. And then his eyes burned again, because Michael was still in the hospital bed alone, and nobody would let him in. He didn't care if the boy wasn't awake. He needed to be in that room. Needed to be with Michael.

"Luke you need to sleep," Calum entered the conversation.

"No. What I need is to get in there and see Michael,"

"Right now there is nothing you can do for him," Ashton argued.

"He told me that when he was unconscious after the accident that he could tell if someone was there in the room with him. He could hear them, feel their presence. What if right now all he needs is to just know somebody's there? Then it is our fault if he dies,"

"Luke. Please calm down. Everyone's trying here,"

"I won't calm down!" Luke yelled. "I f*cking love him, Ashton! Do you not understand that? Every tiny little detail! And every single moment I found more and more things to love, but dammit I didn't show him enough, didn't tell him enough. I did something wrong, because otherwise none of us would be where we are. He spent his entire last day taking me to places he loved and that he wanted to go to show me things. He made me make promises I'm suddenly begging to break. He died his hair with me and I thought things were getting better. So foolish of me right? But what else was I supposed to believe? And he would have known too. All along he would have known and he would have been hoping I'd pull through. For both of us, but here we are. I guess I'm not as good as he credits me to be,"

He was met with silence from the others. There was nothing to counter what Luke had revealed. Nothing to say at all.

Luke had left them utterly speechless, but then again that seemed to be the continuous state of being now. Luke didn't know that it was more than a feeling. He knew you could feel speechless, feel like there were simply no words. But he had no idea that it could be a way of being. Until now of course, since he's stuck living with it.

Luke can't actually remember standing up, but assumes he did it while screaming and Ashton. He's aware of it now though. His knees are weak and shaky under him and his muscles can't remember how to hold him up properly after sitting twenty-four hours. But he doesn't sit down again. He takes short slow strides over to Michael's room and falls still feet from the door. Just a few inches to left and he would have a clear view on-looking Michael's bed. But from where he stands he can see the boy's heart monitor and IV drip. He can see the oxygen tank keeping him breathing, but he can't see any part of him. Luke can't decide if he wants to shift over those few inches or not. He wants to see Michael so desperately, but he doesn't want to see the pale, fluorescent haired, broken, lifeless boy on the bed. Luke isn't even sure it is Michael in there. His Michael could never look like that, but then Luke remembers the ragdoll Michael from the car crash and he shifts over, because no matter what he sees it's still Michael.