Super Rich Kids (BoyxBoy)

Chapter 24 (pt. 1): Your Ballad

Once warm flesh felt chilled to the touch. I shivered, curled around myself and tried not to pass out. My lips have tinted a nice blue color... skin red and raw from hours of scrubbing and scratching. The water in the shower had long since gone cold, but with each icy drop my body felt that much cleaner.

I could practically feel the sins slipping off of me and falling on to the tile. I imagined my skin becoming cleaner and more pure with every drop of water. Though, in reality I was only damaging my body. Pale flesh grew red and mildly irritated. The palms of my hands were rough and dry, skin peeling from over washing and scrubbing.

The smooth skin on the insides of my thighs revealed long red scratches. Nails against the sensitive area had done its damage, and the marks burned with the stream of icy water and grew aggravated with the amount of soap.

"Alexander!" I rolled my eyes at the incessant pounding on the bathroom door, even stopped to wonder why I decided to let Joey in after a week of ignoring him. Maybe I got lonely amongst myself... or maybe I was just going stir crazy. "Alexander... this is insane. This is your third shower today and it is only two." I ignored him, reached for the bar of soap and passed it over my chest. With the silence that followed his outburst, I thought he left.

I was relieved for only a short moment, before the door clicked and opened. Joey walked in, one hand covering his eyes as he tried to maneuver around the bathroom blindly. "What the fuck, Joey..." I mumbled, unfazed by his interruption.

"You are going to get hypothermia and I'm not down! Get the fuck out the shower before I have to drag your ass." He stumbled around, bumped into the towel rack and nearly tripped over the trashcan. Any other time I would have laughed at his stupidity, but I couldn't bring myself to smile let alone engage my vocal chords in an extraneous way.

Recently, the mere thought of any kind of emotion has had me cringing. My own feelings have exhausted me and worn me down. It seemed easier to just skip out on all of the over thinking and feelings that come with it

I shut off the stream of water, avoided looking at the mirrors as I pulled a towel from the rack. "Decent?" He asked, to which I mumbled a quiet 'yeah' once the towel was secured around my waist.

He removed his hand, tilted his head and glared at me. "Are you insane? You look dead."

I felt dead.

Shrugging my shoulders, I pushed past him a little too aggressively. I could have apologized, but I didn't. I dismissed my own behavior so easily and attempted to pass it off as completely normal, when in reality it was anything but. He followed my every step, nearly at my heels as I entered my bedroom. "Can I change?" I turned around quickly, raising my hand before he could bump into me.

"Can you stop being an asshole, for two seconds?" He glared, shoving my outstretched hand away with unnecessary force. I flinched pulling it towards my chest as if it had been touched by the essence of a blue flame. My stomach churned-- hand shook slightly as I rubbed at the damaged and now tainted flesh of my hand. I felt sick, immediately pushed past him to my dresser where I scrambled to find the small bottle of hand sanitizer amongst half empty bottles of cheap alcohol. 

I didn't realize I was holding my breath, not until the surfaces of my hands were covered in the cool substance and I could relax. Joey watched me with lips slightly apart and brows creased. I wanted nothing more than to force him to leave. He's seeing too much. And in the back of my mind I knew that every one of my actions is being studied. A mental list was being made of all of the things wrong with me, just another something to be passed on to my brother by word of mouth, another something for him to worry about.

Such invasion of my space had me on edge, and I needed to be alone. I felt the direct sense of dread as I imagined spending a day with someone who could never completely understand how my brain was functioning during such a time. "Alexander..."