"Con and I have decided! We're moving!" James smiled to me widely, all I could do was fake happiness for my best friend, because I knew he was planning on moving far away.
"We don't want to stay in the same place forever, we want to see new places, move somewhere where we're more central. So we're moving to Birmingham!" Con beamed.
"Oh...uh, wow." I tried to smile "That's far."
"Yeah." James smiled "But we need it so badly. It's not going to be for a while, but it's happening!"
"Wow." I faked it, as I always did, I was never happy enough to smile, but I swallowed through it, just to make James happy.
I stayed at James' house for a few more hours, pretending I wasn't falling apart at the thought of him moving so many miles away. Around 6pm I excused myself and made a bee-line straight to the bar.
I didn't care that I was supposed to be alcohol free, especially with the medication I was supposed to be taking, but all I could think about was the fact that I needed to feel the burn, I needed to feel.
We all know how this story ends, I end up smashed, so smashed I can't even walk but some how I find myself sat on my bed, puffing on my first cigarette in over a week, my phone in my hand, waiting for James to pick up the phone at four in the morning.
"Jamesy!" I grinned when I heard him groggily greet me "I've missed youuu!"
I was always such a happy drunk, which is why I turned to alcohol to try and make myself a happy person, I guess.
"...Tris? What the fuck, it's thre- four! Four in the morning! What the fuck do you want." He scolded harshly.
"First of all...uh...I'm not drunk- and I didn't just blow seventy quid at the bar." I slurred the blatant lies and I swear the disappointed sigh that came from James was almost enough to sober me up "Buttttt all I can think about is how hot that Brad kid was - and that you're moving! I don't want you to go jamesy! I miss you already."
"Tris." James sighed, now I can imagine him sitting on the edge of his bed, his head in his hands, his boyfriend sleeping quietly next to him, unaware of any of this, blissfully sleeping next to the man of his dreams. "I need you to go to bed." He swallowed hard as I lit up another cigarette, the other having been finished, I nurtured the feeling of my Lungs aching for fresh air as carbon monoxide began constructing my blood vessels, nicotine rushing though me. "I'll come over in the morning...But please, sleep."
"Give me that Brad boys number first." I argued "Or I'll have to go out and find him!"
"No! Oh my god do not leave your house!" James warned cautiously "You could die!"
"I don't care." I shrugged "Brad's hot enough to die for."
"You don't mean that." He sighed, I heard him moving around in his bedroom, the sound of his lips gently touching Connors and him whispering something to the presumably sleeping man "Stay in your room...I'm coming to look after you."
"Jamesy, I think imma puke." I frowned, being instructed by James to go to the bathroom, where I sat by the toilet and stayed there, not actually throwing up. About ten minutes later I heard James come in and walk up the stairs, his gentle hand on my back as he helped me stand up and stumble to my room.
He helped undress me, his nose crinkling at the smell of fresh cigarette smoke that was lingering in my room.
"Oh Tris." He sighed "I thought we were past this." He whispered, getting into bed with me, playing with my hair gently, the way he used to.
"Don't move." I shook my head, I felt myself getting emotional, which wasn't unusual for this stage of the night.
"Mhm." James sighed "I want to."
"No." I argued, tears falling down my cheeks "I can't live without you. Fuck since you broke up with me I've been fucked, can't you see that?! I fucking loved you and you just left me in the gutter. You were the hottest guy I was ever gonna have. You were perfect and then you broke my heart. I still cry about it all the time."
"You're...You're just drunk." James sighed, settling me back down into bed "Sleep it off. We'll start again tomorrow."
"You'll start dating me again tomorrow?!" I smiled widely, excited by this.
"...sure." James sighed, I didn't know that I wouldn't remember this in the morning, but he did. He knew if he said that I'd settle down and sober up much quicker than if he continued to argue with me.
"Good. 'Cause I'm so much better for you than Con." I smiled, settling down, eventually faking asleep, being woken up early the next morning by my best friend opening the curtains and making excessive noise.
"Ugh, fuck off." I groaned, more groggy than usual.
"Nope. You drink, you face the consequences, and that entails coming for a run with me. Get up." James shook his head, chucking gym clothes at me.
"You're a bastard." I groaned, sitting up and throwing the clothes back at him and burying my face in the pillow before sitting upright and rushing to the bathroom, making it in time for the remnants of the kebab I drunkenly ate to re-appear in the toilet bowl.
"And this, Evans, is why we don't drink." James sighed, standing in the doorway, not even discretely judging me.
"Oh fuck off." I rolled my eyes "You know you caused this."
"I also know some of your deepest secrets that you so willingly spilled last night. Which is also why we don't drink." He smirked teasingly "You think I didn't know you didn't like Con?"
"Please, since when did you ever believe a word I slurred out whilst drunk? It's all bullshit." I tried to brush it off, but my cheeks turned bright red.
"I've caught you firing him the dirtiest looks in the world." James cut me off "He catches you too. It's not his fault you haven't moved on. It's also not his fault that I've decided he's best for me."
"James it's not like tha-"
"It definitely is." James shook his head "Tris, why don't you talk to me?"
"...Because I know you'll try and sort my problems out, you won't let me do it myself." I sighed, staying on the bathroom floor "And it's not my place to tell you I don't like your boyfriend. He makes you happy."
James took in a deep breath and softened his expression, placing a reassuring hand on my back, rubbing it up and down "It'll he alright Tris."
"If it's gonna be alright, why the fuck do I still want to die?" I questioned "Why do I still crave the burn and pure bliss of a drunken mind. Why do I still feel nothing, after years of therapy and mind-numbing medication that only makes my problem so much worse. Why."
"I don't know." James sighed "I don't know. But it'll be alright."
"Stop saying that." I shook my head "You don't know that."
YOU ARE READING
Knuckles // Tradley AU
Fanfiction"I loved the boy that hated my guts" - The one where Tristan has no sense of purpose and no reason to leave his bedroom. Or The one where Brad feels worthless and can't bare to leave the man that's destroying him. (This is a re-write of a story I a...
