Welcome To The Media (Dylmas AU)

32. A Night To Remember

Thomas's pov

21 days remaining

The paper of Reggie's journal felt withered beneath my fingers as I ruffled through the pages. Some corners crinkled, folded, ripped even, giving the journal an age that did not at all match its actual construction. Secrets buried quietly within the worn pages seem to age the book, brief whispers fluttering through the pages like the forgotten memories of forgotten people from forgotten worlds.

I paused to study my messy handwriting scrawled over page after page after page--thousands of words that seemed to leap out of me and write themselves along each line. In the dim lighting of the room, I made out brief clips of sentences that chronicled my week with Dylan thus far. He kissed me by the waterfall, I wrote for Thursday morning, which melted into, I shoved him into the lake when he wasn't expecting it. I smiled at that, because just the thought of his flippant cursing and pertinent scowl, barely hiding his smile, was enough to bring me warmth. I flipped to Friday, where we spent the day hiking and laughing and kissing and I read line after line of me going on about Dylan's smile when he made a poor joke and how cute it was when afterwards he always glanced at me first to gauge my reaction.

There were so many words and so many phrases that it all seemed to melt together in my mind, numbing me. I kept reading happy and fun and I wondered if I had used any other adjectives at all, because surely I couldn't sum up an entire week with Dylan under such ordinary words. Happy and fun and carefree were really the only way to describe my time with him, though; it was like everything else faded away and I was no longer Thomas Brodie-Sangster: wannabe bad-boy from Hollywood. Dylan made me into just Thomas, a boy from London who seeked adventure and laughter and happy, carefree, fun. I didn't even know that that was exactly what I had been looking for all this time until Dylan literally gave me no choice but to forget about the rest of the world.

I shut the book with a sigh and placed it lightly on Dylan's desk. I turned in the chair, my movements slow and reluctant, as if I had a weight pulling on my shoulders. In fact, maybe I did.

Dylan was asleep on his bed, pushed to one side and waiting for me to join him. His fingers clenched at the empty bed sheets beside him as if searching for the warmth of my body. I almost didn't notice the soft smile that rested on my lips as I watched his chest carefully rise and fall. Almost.

Glancing over my shoulder at the journal laying on the desk, my smile instantly faded. Dylan lay unconscious in front of me, and the journal sat strewn beside me. Both looked harmless on the outside, but on the inside, both had the power to destroy me.

Dylan stirred slightly and I tensed, but he relaxed back into the pillows after a few moments. I was really playing with fate here, keeping the journal so open with Dylan just feet away. Maybe there was a part of me that wanted Dylan to wake up though. Maybe, just maybe, I hoped he would open his eyes and find me here, empty, and understand that I didn't want to do this anymore. None of this.

I turned back to the journal and resisted the overwhelming urge to rip it in half. To destroy all the evidence. To ruin it so thoroughly that it might be broken a fraction as much as it was bound to wreck me. Instead, I picked it up and fluttered through the pages again. Reading through each glowing page that practically screamed how much I cared for Dylan.

I picked up the pen I had been clutching for hours and turned to a fresh page. I felt tears blink up behind my eyelids as swell after swell of emotion seemed to suddenly rise within me, as my heart ached and longed and broke all in a matter of moments. And then I was writing, hard and fast and messy--broken sentences that carried my anguish through the worn out pages, that contrasted sharply to every other glowing word I had used to describe my relationship with Dylan. I was a hurricane, raining down pain and regret and guilt in a few flashy sentences, knowing deep down, I was the only one who could truly understand the weight of their meaning.