Broken- And Fixed Again- (A Jamilton Fanfic)

Chapter 8: Lost

//TW: self-hatred, mentions of self-harm and suicide, abuse, swearing\\

Alexander

He's hiding so much from me.

I can hear it in the way his voice clips with every word, as though the sound of his smile is nothing more than a disguise meant to distract me from the pain so obviously pushing him past his limits.

I can hear it in his tight little laugh, which contains almost no humor to it at all. It is empty, a husk of the music I had come to love so dearly. And my world felt all the darker, all the more dull and doomed without it.

I can hear it in his silence, as long as it stretches, as he listens to me ramble on about nothing for as long as I can just to keep him with me.

He is hiding so much from me in his absolute refusal to share his pain, to let me see him for what he is and help him as I long to. He is closing himself off from me, taking just another step backwards every day, further and further from my grasp. And as he retreats to his once-abandoned protective shell, I feel his joy slip right out of my hands as though I'm attempting to hold water.

If only there wasn't an entire city standing between us. If only I could have him, close enough to reach out to. If only I could press my fingers against the warming bliss of his skin and pull him tight to me, so that both our bodies intertwine in all the right ways, and I can pretend even momentarily that we are as we were meant to be.

But he is miles away, and the only thing I have to hold onto him, to affirm he is here, is his occasional laugh filling my heart with the lightest buoyancy, the strongest euphoria. And even that is so...strained. Fragile enough to break even with the most gentle of touches.

Though we may be in the same city, we are not in the same world.

God, I miss him. I long for him like the pieces of my broken heart, needing his presence to be whole and hating myself for that horrible dependency. After everything I had been through, all the people who had turned away from me, all the loved ones who had left me lost, stranded, you would have thought I would be used to losing and moving on.

And unfortunately, I am just as weak as I've always been.

And still, I did everything in my power to hear his gorgeous song, to hear his beautiful laugh and voice and know that there is something good in this world, that he is still alive and as long as he is still alive I will never stop fighting to have him back in my arms, where he belongs, where the world feels so effortlessly right.

"Do you wanna talk about what happened, now?" I asked, checking the time. We had been on call for almost two and a half hours, and I had hardly managed to coax more than a word or two out of him at a time. I just wanted to hear him, to know somehow, even in the face of the most decrepit, savage monsters, that he was smiling.

"Not really," Thomas returned, and the heartache in his hesitation hit me far too hard to be imagined. "I'm sorry."

"You don't have to apologize, bab—" I caught myself, frowning as soon as the first syllable passed my lips. I cleared my throat, my cheeks burning in embarrassment and frustration at my indecision. It had just been so natural. "It's okay, Thomas. I'm just happy I get to talk to you, that's all."