Drowning in you

•fortyone•

People came and went. Josh knew some of them. Jay, Madison, zack, all the rest of his family that knew him as a brother not a friend.
He felt separated from every one of his senses. His hearing was muffled as if someone had shoved cloth into his ears. Nearly every day someone would approach him. Walk up to his weak frame, which was slumped heavily into the chair next to Tyler's bed, and whisper sickly sweet sympathies into his ear.
People mean well, but words can only carry you so far. Death is so blank and shocking, electricity in your mind. With every second, with every blink of his eyes, with ever tear, every sob, every thought, Josh lost hope. He didn't want to, wanted to believe that Tyler could hold on, and yet Tyler had held on for twenty eight whole years already.
Held onto something he couldn't see, held on for other people. But to live life you must live it for yourself, and Tyler didn't know that. Tyler couldn't live life normally. It was either zero or ten. Depression or living life to its fullest. He didn't take time to catch his breath because he knew in his heart if he did he wouldn't be able to keep going. But he had stopped. His clean perfect runway to fame had stopped, he had crashed, crashed hard. And that was all it took, one single pause. You don't realize that you're hiding from yourself until you can't hide any longer. You wear a mask each day to cover up the scars your mind has left. With each day the mask melds to your body, as much a part of you as yourself, and soon becomes you. Tyler's mask had taken over, but concealing yourself takes more willpower than anything else, and his artificial cover wore away until there was nothing left but innocent skin. Miles and miles of skin.
He stopped. He thought. He breathed in. He breathed out. He realized. He decided. He swallowed poison. He left.
........................
The question, the only question of importance was: will he wake up. As if he was sleeping peacefully. As if he was at ease.
Josh was there always, he hardly left, he couldn't leave, could barely walk away without being plagued with thoughts of Tyler dying.
His mother stopped by when she could, her job kept her busy so she couldn't sit by his side.
Her eyes were dull and her seemed to have more gray strands each day.
So josh sat, listlessly lost in monotonous thoughts. His hand gripping Tyler's hand , never letting go. Every hour he would stand, reach down and straighten Tyler's blankets even though they never had a wrinkle. He would Gently shift Tyler's arms so they lay at his sides. And last of all he would reach up and smooth his silky hair from his brow, pressing the heat of longing through his lips to Tyler's cool forehead.
............................
Josh ventured out of the hospital room occasionally. Listlessly wandering until he inevitably ended up at the cafeteria.
His steps traced a practiced pattern through the room.
He stepped up to the counter, and let his eyes travel across the stale muffins and glass bowl of unnaturally shiny green apples, his fingers pressed against the cool glass of the display case. The cold pricked through the bubble of muted senses he was trapped in.
His eyes traveled up past the tip jar to meet the concerned gaze of the barista. Her warm dark skin glowed even under the Fluorescent lights, her uncommonly large brown doe eyes lined with a thin graceful line of eyeliner.
Her face spoke of true concern, which touched josh. He'd been around so many medical staff in the last few weeks that he could tell the ones who acted concerned from the rest.
"How are you?" Josh drew in a sharp breath, no one had asked him that in a long time, they had all asked " how is he?" Referring to Tyler.
"I-I'm..." josh trailed off. He was not ok, in no way shape or form, so terribly not ok that it scared him to think of it.
"I'm..." he tried again. He didn't know whether to lie or not. He'd lied to much, to many secrets. Even the idea of this seemingly innocent lie made him sick.
"I know, you don't have to tell me." Her voice was lilting and strangely soothing to Josh's rattled mind, He sighed in relief.
She looked at him expectantly.
"B-black coffee." He managed. He shuddered as he remembered the last time he had ordered black coffee.
"I'll have coffee. Black, like my soul" josh had said to the waitress. Tyler had laughed.
That all seemed so far away and long ago. That trip to the cafe in disguise didn't seem real any more.
"You're with that young man in a coma aren't you?" She said, filling Josh's cup with coffee with one hand, and tucking a brown curl streaked with gray behind her ear.
"Yea-h. His name is Tyler." He looked up again to meet her gaze.
"He is strong. You know that right? I've been working here for thirty years now, I walk through that hallway every morning and evening before and after work. I've seen people get better, people get worse, people die.
He's different, that man of yours." Her words were simple enough, but to josh they meant the world. They touched his heart with a heat he hadn't felt for so long. They shook the words he'd been dreading and longing for so long to his lips.
"I'm in love with him."

I updated, sorry it's been taking so long. It's the final stretch of school before summer and I won't be able to update at all basically.
I'm not done writing this, and won't be for a while, so don't lose hope.

I'm almost at 4K reads which is un fucking believable! I still don't understand or deserve all these reads but whatever!

Don't forget to vote/ recommend/ comment
^^if you do I will love you forever^^

I wish you could all see yourself as the beautiful people you are.

That's all, thanks for reading!
-Samantha