Travel Buddies - an Oli Sykes fanfic

Okay? Okay.

A/N;

Yes that was a TFIOS reference. In the chapter I will be expressing some pretty personal stuff, throughout the female protagonist, Lena. I like to imagine myself as her, as I hope to meet Oliver someday. I have gone through a phase of cutting; I started in December 2012, and am two months clean as of 26/03/14. I have been diagnosed with depression, anxiety and insomnia. 

- - -

Lena looked up at Oliver with wide eyes. "Okay?"

Oli laughed. "Okay."

"We made a reference. So, do you read John Green?"

Oli nodded. "'Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.' Never has a quote spoken to me so deeply."

Lena giggled slightly. "'You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you.'"

"'The marks humans leave are too often scars.'" As Oli spoke, Lena looked up at him. Tears welled in her eyes. She'd had a dark past, her father left when she was 12 without a trace, she began cutting when she was fourteen and couldn't stop. Cutting was her release. Her mother constantly blagged on and on in her monotonous voice about how she had to get out of the house more, until, one day, she was taken to the doctors. Diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety, her mother ranted about how if she'd have thought 'happy thoughts' everything would be okay. Since that day, she'd tried to hang herself, cutting just to get through each day. Music was her escape. But it was only a passtivity. Travelling was her activity. Just like her dad.

Oliver encased her in his arms. "Everything's going to be okay. I won't let you get hurt. Grief does not change you, Lena. It reveals you. Right now I'm looking at a beautiful young girl, whom I bestowed the pleasure of being my travel buddy upon. Why? Because you are beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence."

 Lena looked up at him. "Did you recite the whole book?"

"That book touched me. In places where nothing should ever begin to entertain the thought of touching someone. It reached out and grabbed me. In a metaphorical sense."

Lena had never thought of Oliver as smart, he seemed ditzy in footage of the camera. She knew he wrote all of their songs, but this side of him she had never seen. She didn't know if anybody ever had. 

"Depression is a side effect of dying." Oli quoted. "And I don't intend to lose you anytime soon. You're okay."