abyss ↣ joe sugg au

nine

[Trigger Warning: mentions of depression/suicide]

i kind of really like this chapter idk

So maybe Joe and Charlotte were having a handstand competition up against one of the bare walls in Joe's apartment. Maybe Joe's glasses, that he only wore when he had to, had fallen off a long time ago and maybe every ounce of blood in their bodies was draining straight to their heads but neither of them would give in.

Joe faltered eventually though, falling arse first onto the laminate floor, proclaiming a string of curses, before turning on his elbows and leaning his chin on his palms, so he was eye level with Charlotte who was still upside down.

"Okay you've won." Joe grumbled, pulling a smile, although pained, from Charlotte. She tumbled down and the pair let their blood circulation return to normal.

"Hey Char, do you know the rules for handstand competitions?" He asked thoughtfully, turning his head to look at Charlotte who was clutching her chest.

"Well not for certain, but rumour has it, the loser has to give the winner a piggyback." Charlotte informed Joe, "Yes. - a nod - "That's definitely the rules."

And this is why the pillows had fallen off the sofa and why the TV remote was on the floor with batteries rolling under the coffee table, and that's why the people in the flat's below could probably hear the two rolling around on Joe's bed, laughing and shouting at the top of their voices. Now though, the window was open and curtains closed only slightly, sheets thrown off the bed a long time ago and cigarette being shared between them both.

It was the usual. Charlotte would finish work on weekdays, or come home from the weekly shop on a Saturday and go to Joe's, she'd stay over on the Saturday and every night, whether she stayed or not, they'd think up stupid challenges to embark on, get drunk (possibly high), laugh and scream because they could, not because they felt like they had to. And they'd always spend hours smoking on Joe's bed, quietly talking or sometime's just in silence. Days and nights merged into one.

"Tell me about Leah, everything." Charlotte asked, not sure if she would of done if she wasn't feeling a little spaced out right now.

"You want me too?" Joe asked, leaning on his elbows and taking a drag of his cigarette.

"Very much." Charlotte nodded and pushed up on the bed, her head falling back on the pillow, cheek turned so she could see Joe.

Joe just hid his face in the crease of his arm before nodding his head, convincing himself that he could do this.

"She was amazing, much too good for me anyway." Joe nodded his head between a drag from his cigarette. There was silence for a handful of minutes, Joe perhaps expecting Charlotte to ask a question. She didn't though.

"She taught me how to do math, and I taught her how to get high at parties. It was a fair deal." His eyes turned fond with a thick string of pain running through the darkened blue. "There's no answer to this equation though, I've checked every text book."

He stops for only a moment, stubbing out the last of his cigarette in the ash tray on his bed side cabinet.

"I was that I'll throw stones at your window at 3am kind of guy. Living for the moment, but the times when the moment was just so long was my favourite part. I would help her out her bedroom window most nights, every night, and we'd go to the park-" Charlotte's chest clutched, "- and we'd just lie there for a handful of hours, the stars our only audience and some nights, when it was dead cold, we'd come back here and she'd most probably cry. I'd comfort her until she fell asleep and I'd watch her sleep a lot, maybe not the sanest of things to do but I felt so insanely in love with her that I didn't think it mattered. I'd always wake her up before the sun came up though, helped her back through her bedroom window. It became so much more than a private tutor session that I'd nervously asked for as a way of spending time with the pretty girl who wore thick framed glasses that were the fashion at the time and it became so much more than teaching her how to live. It became a sickly sweet kind of reality that I never believed was real until it had gone."

Charlotte should of felt haunted. She should of had shivers running sharply through her because she was lying in the shadow of a dead girls body but all she could feel was the alcohol burning through her veins, making her want to scream and laugh and cry but most of all, she wanted to just stay here, basking in her shadow, and listen to Joe talk so passionately, like it was a bird that had been caged for too long, and now it had been opened and it was flying free.

"I'm starting to forget Charlotte. I hate myself." Charlotte realized she hadn't blinked for the past five minutes, and as her vision flicked back to reality (as close as), she saw Joe's eyes were teary, the rims visibly swollen in the poor light and his lip trembling around his ring.

"I can't hear her soft snores anymore, I can't hear her little stifled giggles when she tried not to laugh in the Library. I can't remember what ear ring she used to wear in her third piercing on her left ear. I can't remember the feel of her hands clutching so desperately to mine as I helped her jump from her front porch. I can't hear the little faint humming that was barely audible over the radio of the car. I can't hear her muffled cries and I can't feel the warm tears on my neck and I hate myself, despise myself, I'm so sick of forgetting and I'm so sick of remembering."

Charlotte didn't know what love was. She didn't know how it felt to be loved or to love someone. She didn't know. But now, as she saw Joe bowing his head into his wrists and heard his pleading breaths fill up the room like he was nothing but a set of ribs, she didn't know quite how lucky she was.

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