Reckless Youths

Chapter Five

A/N: When I was writing this it started out really good but it progressively got worse and worse until I was just chucking some words into a sentence and hoping it made sense. Don't forget to vote, comment and enjoy!

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Chapter Five

A tortured cry brings me from my sleep, but it doesn't bring conscious the boy whose cry it is. It reverberates around my room like the echo of a gunshot, only more pained. More hurt.

I sit bolt upright to see Tyler beside me, his face twisted into an expression holding so much pain it puts a knife in my heart. Tyler's pain is my pain, and at this moment his pain is too much.

His cheeks are damp; his eyes are squeezed shut. His chest is heaving along with the ragged breaths he struggles to draw.

"Stop, please," he whimpers, pleads, to something in his unconscious, shaking. He's dreaming, it occurs to me, and just as he opens his mouth to scream I take hold of his arms and shake him awake.

"Ty!"

His eyes fly open and he sits up at the speed of light, looking around the room with ragged breaths until his eyes meet mine. They're wide, and scared, and begging for comfort.

"It was just a dream, Ty," I tell him in my hushed voice, reaching for his hand.

He hiccups and I can see he's trying not to cry, but he can't stay strong. In the dark he reaches for me, his arms squeezing me so hard the intensity is almost scary. He buries his face in my neck and I can feel his tears soak through his jumper. I hug him back, rubbing his back until he stops shaking. I want to ask what happened, who he was telling to stop, what he was telling them to stop doing. So many questions I know he can't answer right now and even if he could, he wouldn't. He, like so many others, needs time to recover before he can talk about it. I learned this after what happened with his father, but even then he wasn't telling me the whole story. Maybe it had something to do with this, and maybe it was just a bad dream that wouldn't seem so bad in the light of day.

"It's okay," I whisper into his hair.

He shakes his head so much I worry he'll get dizzy and responds, "It's not okay."

He suddenly pulls away from me, eyes flicking to the clock on my bedside table. The glowing green numbers say it is 6:05am, which gives Ty the information he seems to be looking for. He pushes out of bed and fumbles around for his phone, turning on it's torch when he finds it.

"What are you doing?" I frown, worried it's worse than it seems. And it seems pretty bad.

"I have to leave."

With that he opens the door to my room and walks right out. I hear his footsteps down the hall to his room where he bangs around for a bit, and the only thing I can think to do is to follow him.

I jog across the landing to his door where he's in running shorts and in the process of pulling a hoodie over his head. I watch him pull socks on and get his running shoes from his cupboard, and it's then I know where he's going.

"Don't leave without me," I tell him, and rush back to my room to get some pants and runners.

When Ty's upset or stressed or angry or pissed off he runs. It's his way of blowing off steam, even in the dead of winter. But it's dark and cold and I don't want him out on his own, so I grab a couple of beanies and meet him at the top of the stairs where he's waiting for me.

I hand over his beanie and he gives me an attempt at a smile, so dismal that his lips don't even turn up. But I can see the effort. So I smile back and squeeze his hand, and in the next moment we're down the stairs and out into the below zero temperature. It doesn't seem to phase him too much and I'm too worried about him to care, so we hit the pavement and start jogging under the fluorescent of the streetlights.