Heart Strings

Chapter 8: Icing On The Cake

CAUTION: This chapter could be triggering to those who self-harm or are sensitive to self-harm. Please read at your own discretion, otherwise feel free to skip this chapter.

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Hayden had spent the past half hour mentally preparing himself to face Chase. He cleared his throat before knocking on the door. There was no reply from the other side, not that Hayden expected one, and when he tried to open the door, he found it was locked. Also not surprising. "I'm going to stand outside of your door until you let me in." Hayden knew how stubborn Chase was, and he wasn't sure how long he would have to stand there, but he had already said the words, and he couldn't bail. Hayden heard the door click. A forlorn, dejected Chase couldn't meet the other man's gaze, but he opened the door and stood back, allowing him to enter. So he did, taking in the scene of the room. Alcohol bottles were sprawled across the floor, chairs were toppled over, things everywhere. Hayden could tell Chase had wrecked his room and that he was very wasted. It was normally messy, but he didn't usually have broken glass on the floor of the kitchen area. Hayden figured he had spilled wine because red stained the kitchen tiles along with the broken glass. Hayden spent another couple of minutes to clean things up a bit, for both of their safety. When cleaning the glass off the floor of the kitchen, he questioned whether the red on the tiles was wine. It seemed thicker and darker and had a metallic smell. Hayden started to put two and two together and got a sick feeling in his stomach, but decided not to immediately pry Chase with the question of whether or not he had made himself bleed with broken glass. When Hayden was done tidying up, he sat Chase down on his bed. The red head's face was void of expression, but fresh tears were trailing down his face. His eyes were red and puffy, and held darkness in them that made Hayden want to retreat out of the room with his tail between his legs. But he squared his shoulders and put on a comforting face.

"Chase. You've never been this way before. Tell me what's going on." Hayden's hushed voice was somewhat soothing to the forsaken man, but it wasn't enough to make him speak. "Your parents?" Hayden guessed. Chase shook his head. "Well for heaven's sake! I don't know what else to guess. Nothing else in this world seems to faze you until now. Your alcohol consumption is obviously out of control. Your emotions are just-" "You don't have to tell me how big of a fuck up I am. I already know." Chase's voice was oddly hollow. "That's not what I-" "I don't give a damn what you meant, Hayden!" Chase was shaking. "Please, Chase, please tell me what's going on. None of us here like to see you like this. It brings me great pain to see you like this. At least tell me what happened so I can try to do something about it," Hayden pleaded. "There's nothing you can do about it," Chase said intractably.

"When will you get it through your head that you have to stop fighting the world?!" Hayden rose and faced his friend.

"Don't you tell me what I have to do!"

"Why are you putting yourself through all this?"

"It's my fault that I want to drink my life away? It's my fault that I want to cut deeper into my wrists and end it all? It's my fault that he doesn't love me back?! It's my fault that-" Chase cut himself off. "yes, it's all my fault!" Chase's words tore through his throat. The British man fell back onto his bed and wept. Hayden felt tears slide down his cheeks as he sat next to his friend. On the inside he was panicking. He didn't know how to handle anything like this. He felt that anyone else could do a better job of consoling Chase, but he was there now, and he couldn't just get up and leave-he wouldn't. Hayden rubbed Chase's shaking back. "Shh, shh it's alright. Let it out." His voice seemed almost silent compared to the volume both men had just been at. He was sure others in rooms around them had heard the deafening yelling.

"Let me take a look at the damage." Hayden pulled Chase's suit jacket sleeves up to reveal bandaged wounds. "Can I unwrap the bandages?" Hayden asked cautiously, knowing his friend was quite possibly in the most vulnerable state he had ever been in his life. Chase continued to sob, but sat up and undid the wraps around his wrist, revealing horrible slash marks that went pretty deep. Hayden bit his lip to stop it from quivering. More tears welled up in his eyes, and he tried to blink them away, but that only caused them to fall down his face. "Did you clean it?" Hayden asked, his voice unstable. Chase shook his head. 

Hayden tugged at his hands to get him to stand. He led Chase to the bathroom, poured hydrogen peroxide on the wounds that weren't too deep, and put a clean bandage over them. "Now let's do some talking," Hayden said, leading him back to the bed. "Who is this person that doesn't love you back?" Hayden asked slowly. There was a long pause. "Shane." Chase's voice was barely audible. Hayden's eyes widened with utter surprise. Chase saw the reaction and turned away. The shaken violist had no idea that Chase was bisexual, but that wasn't the biggest shock to him. He knew for a fact that he had slept with numerous women, but he had never seen Chase show interest in other men. "Shane? But...you hated him." Hayden didn't quite understand. "I never hated him. I loved him all along. And now I can't even pretend to hate him because he isn't here. I was too much of a chicken to come out to him before he quit. So I called him during a break in my practice earlier today because he had been gnawing at my mind for so long. I couldn't handle not knowing if we could have ever been together," Chase said. "How long?" Hayden asked. "How long have you had feelings for him?" He added for elaboration. "Three years." The British man's voice held pain and sorrow. "I called him and, like an idiot, blurted out everything I ever wanted to tell him, because believe me, three years is a long time to wait to tell someone something as important as your love for them."

"How did he react?" Hayden regretting asking that as soon as the question left his mouth. Chase's fists clenched, and a fresh set of tears gushed from his eyes. He absentmindedly felt and prodded at the burning cuts on his wrists. "He said that I am the most pathetic being on the planet, and that no one could ever love me. He said that I don't deserve the love of anyone, let alone him, and he was disgusted just by hearing my voice. Then he hung up on me." Chase fell back down to the bed, sobs muffled by pillows. "Fuck him! No! You had better not believe a single word that he said! Chase, you deserve love just as much as anyone else. The fact that Shane didn't see that makes him the pathetic one!" Hayden was now furious with the narcissistic bastard. He always had to be on his high horse, treating everyone else as peasants.

"Oh for fuck's sake Hayden don't you hear yourself? You're wasting your breath!" Chase erupted. "Am I though?" Hayden asked. "Yes, you are. You asked me why I was fighting the world. Well I'm fighting it because it's all I know how to do. I can't be civilized like you. I always have to stir the waters, make a problem. I'm such a huge asshole! Do you know who my friends are? You, my agent, and the fucking paper man in London on Sundays! Nobody would really care if I were to just disappear, Hayden! The three people I talk to might...might be upset for a while, but people move on. You'd move on." Chase was shaking even more now. Hayden clasped his friends shaking hands in his. "I'd be devastated, Chase! Don't you even think for just one second that I could just brush your suicide off my shoulder like a goddamn speck of dust! What would the orchestra do without you? What would I do without you?" Hayden tried to give Chase a significant anchor. "Demetri said it himself, I'm expendable. You have other friends to talk to here and plenty of friends and family in Washington."

"He was only saying that so you wouldn't drink at the dinner! He was trying to protect you!" Hayden erupted back. "Chase, I know you're upset that you got turned down, and I know that three years is a long time to love someone without them returning the feeling. You probably feel that the last three years have been a waste, but with time you'll move on. Like you said, people move on," Hayden answered. "You don't understand. I know I'll eventually get over my heartbreak. Shane's rejection was just the icing on the cake. The cake of misery, loneliness, desperation, worthlessness, self-hate, and self-realization," Chase responded.

"No matter how much you want to kill yourself, I won't let you. I like you too much to not have you in my life. So you better deal with the fact that if you're going to kill yourself, you might as well take me out with you," Hayden said, folding his arms obstinately in front of him. Chase erupted into tears at the thought, and Hayden brought the British man into his arms for a hug. The hug turned into Chase crying into Hayden's shirt until he fell asleep.    

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Intense. But now we know more about Chase. If you stuck around for this chapter, kudos to you and I hope it didn't make anyone uncomfortable for its somewhat graphic content of self-harm.