Can't Afford To Lose Another Second With You (Scömìche)

Home

A/N: Trigger warning: anxiety/panic attack

It felt weird getting that off of my chest. But it also felt good at the same time. Telling someone, sharing your thoughts about such sensitive topics felt good and calming, and somehow telling Dr. Clarke about this was also helping me to accept it.

I still couldn't quite figure out what it had been, though. I knew what I felt about it, but by no means could I tell what it had meant for my best friend. As I'd told my therapist, the mood had been very sexual. It was probably just the momentary lust, the blink of an eye which made my best friend kiss me. He was my best friend, for God's sake! I needed to get this into my mind.

Best friends. Nothing more and nothing less. Best friends just messing around with each other. Platonic, strictly physical.

But I still couldn't get his words out of my mind, as they echoed and kept me awake at night.

God, Mitchy, you're so fucking perfect.

Had he actually meant that?

I was not perfect. He was, for sure, but I? No. This had to be a mistake. A terrible one, but there really was no reason for him to believe I was perfect. I was the complete opposite of what a perfect person should be like. With depression and crippling anxiety, constant fear of panic attacks when I was okay and actual panic attacks when I wasn't, he couldn't have meant that. At least not in the way I wished he had.

That night he stayed over, but we hadn't done much anymore. I had - ironically enough - offered him my bed to sleep on while I would use a mattress, but he had denied right away, insisting on us sharing my bed.

I mean, it's not something we hadn't done before, but with everything that had happened I wanted to give him a possibility to distance himself from me. I tried to convince myself everything that had happened, the hot tub, the kisses, that everything had been strictly platonic. But I still couldn't wrap my mind around how making out with your best friend in a hot tub could be anything but the least platonic thing you could possibly do.

Then it hit me.

This was literally the same thing I had done to him a few months ago. I had been the one to start it all as I had dared him to kiss me and then on New Year's- when I had blatantly lied to him, saying I love you until I believed it myself. He had touched my chest in the hot tub. He knew my heart had been beating too quickly. Was this some kind of revenge?

I felt heat roll over my body as I closed my eyes, my fingers starting to tremble. I leaned against the wall, my shaking hands covering my face and my legs gave in, letting my body slide to the floor. My face felt wet as the panic spread, leaving behind a mess of sobs and tears. I tried to compose myself, breathing in deeply and exhaling again, just as Dr Clarke had told me to.

I was alone. I tried to shake my thoughts, telling myself that Scott was too good and too kind to lie to me like that- to anyone. Especially if he knew what vulnerable state I was in.

I stopped trying, letting tears stream down my face as I grabbed a pillow from my bed and pressed it against me, clutching it tight until I couldn't feel my fingers anymore. I buried my face in the soft fabric, inhaling the distinctive scent of home: old spice and mint.

I cried more at the realization what that meant, but now it wasn't the anxiety anymore. It was just overall sadness. Which, for the moment, was better than anything I could've felt instead.