I Like You Better In Red {DEH}

The Roof Universe

tw: mentions of suicidal thoughts, drugs, and abuse

'hey evan, i had fun too. excuse my lack of capital letters, i type like a five year old sometimes, it's fun.'
'anyways, i'd love to hang out again soon. sadly i don't always have free time, my family is...interesting'

Evan cocked his head even though Connor couldn't see him, he was curios.
'In what way do you mean 'interesting'?'

'they're pretty strict about curfew shit like that'

'You never seemed like you'd be one to care about following curfew. Am I wrong?'

'no, you're pretty accurate with that, i don't give a shit'

'I probably shouldn't be the one to ask you to break rules, but why does it matter?'

'i don't want to get into it right now,
i'm sorry'

'Oh, okay. I'm sorry for pressing it'

'its fine'
'hey, have to go but i'll try to text you later tonight'

'Oh, okay. Bye'

Connor didn't respond

~~~

Connor lied, a lot. If he was Pinocchio, he'd be fucking screwed. They were rarely big lies. More like, he lied about why he could go out or in the rare occasion someone asked him how he was doing, he'd just glance over and spit something out like 'I'm fucking fine, piss off'. It always seemed to be aggressive.

He lied to Evan. It wasn't that his parents had a strict curfew, they seemed to have given up on Connor a long time ago. No, he said that because he was scared of getting too close to Evan, scared of hurting him. Evan seemed scared of life, as if an acorn falling too fast would scare him. Connor got violent sometimes, he knew he did, and he didn't want Evan to see that. He also didn't want Evan to know he was planning on taking his own life soon.

To sum it up, Connor was terrified of Evan, not in a normal sense though. Not like how some kids at school were terrified of Connor. No, Connor was terrified of Evan because he already seemed so broken and if Connor took one wrong step, he could break him even more. Maybe one right step could fix him? Probably not. He was just terrified to get close, because he didn't want to shatter him more than he already did.

Connor tried to wrap up those thoughts and climbed onto the roof, through his bedroom window. He brought a small baggie of pot out onto the roof with him and got high off his ass. He had tried to always get high on the roof recently. He didn't want to hurt his family.

That was a lie, he didn't want to hurt Zoe. He didn't care about screaming at Cynthia and Larry when his was high and he didn't care about trying to get physical with Larry when he was high. He was scared of hurting Zoe. He knew how much she was probably affected by it.

She lost sleep when she heard Connor blasting music while screaming in the middle of the night.
She would try to practice guitar in her room only to have to shut the door and lock because she's heard good old, stoned Connor coming up to the door where he'd proceeded to bang on it until it almost broke screaming he was gonna kill her.
There were a few times Zoe was pressed against a wall with Connor screaming at her and he'd go to punch her. The thing was Connor never did punch her, he would try to but something in the 'big brother head compartment' went off and he'd punch the wall next to her instead.
Zoe had to hear him screaming at Cynthia.
Zoe had to hear him screaming and trying to get physical with Larry.
Zoe had to hear Connor threaten to kill himself.

Zoe had to deal with all of that. Connor felt like shit because of it. He was scared to become Evan's friend out of fear he'd put him through what he put Zoe through. He was done thinking about hurting Evan though.

He was high, on the roof. He spent the time screaming into the dead quite neighborhood. He stayed out their for hours, every time he felt himself coming down from the high, he smoked more.

Come roughly two in the morning he let himself come down from the high and just kept screaming and crying at the darkness, scratching at his neck violently, screaming how he wanted out of this life, screaming and crying into the darkness until it hurt to breath. It hurt it breath, it hurt, it hurt, it hurt.

He only stopped screaming when he became lightheaded and realized something, the darkness of the night almost seemed to muffle his sounds, none of the neighbors were alerted somehow, he was in his own little universe on that roof. Maybe he could bring Evan into the roof universe some day, maybe they could both scream their problems away. Maybe they could both be happy.

But when was the last time a fantasy came true?