Shawn Mendes Imagines

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(I FOUND THIS ON TUMBLR I COULDN'T FIND THE USER NAME BUT ALL WRITING AND IDEAS IN THIS CHAPTER GO TOWARDS THE PERSON WHO WROTE THIS)

Shawn was always the pragmatic one in your relationship. It was strange considering out of the two of you, he was the one who roamed around the country singing songs about heartbreak and magic and all of that, but true nonetheless. He believed in hard work and patience and a leveled head to get good luck and achievements. You were the one who avoided cracks in the sidewalk and knocked on wood and had a jar of collected lucky heads-up pennies by the bed.

Those pennies are always the first things Shawn sees when he wakes up. He's more than tempted to chuck that stupid jar out the window for all the good it did you. Three dollars and four cents' worth of luck, three hundred and four separate occasions where the universe was supposed to be on your side, and yet.

And yet it's been a year, and Shawn still can't erase the image of your casket being lowered out of his mind.

Waking up is always hard. You haunt every corner of his dreams, and sometimes he gets too far caught up in it, indulging himself in the feeling of your hair in his fingers and your lips on his skin. It's sweet torture, but he will gladly accept this over no sleep at all, which is his only alternative.

As he finds himself slipping from his subconscious, you smile at him before turning and walking away. Left, right, left, right, down a winding trail that leads on forever, into fog he can't see past. He tries reaching for you but it's too late - his eyes are open, and he swears he can still hear your footsteps.
Out of habit, he looks to the spot next to him in bed. It's empty, of course. But he lets the fading sound of your footsteps echo in his mind. On a normal day, you'd be getting up just now, stretching in your too-small top and exposing that little bit of midriff. You'd walk to the closet to pick out an outfit and he'd sneak up behind you to kiss your neck and snake his arms around your waist so he could pull you flush against his chest.
Shawn closes his eyes. This is too much.
It's all too much.

He can only breathe outside.
He's got his morning coffee and his clean sweatshirt on. He's far on the other side of town, a place he's only walked by but never stopped, on the steps of some building of whose function he can't be bothered to know.

Here, people walk by in clusters of family or friends, and nobody knows him. There's the odd person who double-takes because they probably recognize his face from the tabloids, but they all seem to know better than to approach him. Everyone's heard about what happened to you. Shawn's glad nobody's asked him anything; he isn't sure what he'd say. He just knows he needed to get out of there.

The house is suffocating.

It used to be cozy, used to be a place that made his body relax and his heart warm. He could walk through the door and see you cooking dinner, or lounging on the couch. He remembers buying the place, when you first moved in with him, when you started putting up decorations.

"No, let me do it." You swatted his hand away for the thirtieth time, the action causing you to swing precariously on the ladder. His arms shot out immediately, one steadying the ladder and the other gently pushing the small of your back so you were upright again.

"Y/N," Shawn said exasperatedly. "I'm taller. Just let me hang the picture."

"No, you won't do it straight. I've met you before," you chastised, holding the frame flat against the wall. Your arms were extended completely straight up to fit the photo near the top. This one was of the two of you in the park; a candid by a fan who had given it to him later. He was in love with this picture, with the way it showed the shining of your eyes and the genuineness of his smile.