💦 RoadTrip One Shot Collection 💦

OT5 | Attention

A/N: I'm backkk 😛 This OS is based off a request for a Brook-centric OT5 I got ages ago from bookisopium pls enjoy x

Brooklyn looked in the mirror like he did every day, but today, what he saw wasn't the same. Somehow, he'd taken off the rose-coloured glasses, and now he saw what they saw. He saw what Harper must have seen. He understood why he was lonely.

To Brooklyn, attention was oxygen. He needed it to survive. Without it, the world went fuzzy and the dark cloud that always loomed in his periphery would start closing in. But he had recently learned that attention could just as easily poison him as it could inflate him. Words could hurt; touches weren't always gentle. Just because someone noticed you, didn't mean they would choose you. In fact, you could offer everything you had to a person and they could decide not to take it. When Brook first met Harper, he hadn't been scared of breaking open. Because he had never anticipated that Harper wouldn't like what he found inside.

"You ready to go, Brooky?" Sonny poked his head round the door, curls a somewhat organised mop on his head signifying it was time for them to go. Brook was still undressed, only in his boxers as he took in the disappointing outline of himself in the glass. He hadn't forgotten he'd made plans to go out with Sonny and Jack, he just suddenly couldn't push the thought that his presence would be annoying when they probably wanted to be alone.

"I don't want to go anymore," he whispered, the thought of putting on the smile that used to come so naturally to him even more unbearable than the idea of even putting on a shirt.

"Are you sick, babe?"

"Maybe," mumbled Brook. Sonny looked at him, perplexed by the distinct lack of bubbles coming from his bubbliest friend.

"Do you need any food?"

"No."

"Cuddles?"

"I just want to be alone," Brook croaked, his voice close to breaking, and Sonny frowned. In a year of knowing him he'd never heard such a request from Brook.

"Okay." He backed out of the room, looking hurt and confused, only making Brook feel uglier, his insides now matching his outsides.

It was the boys fault, he thought, that he was hurting like this. If they hadn't built him up so much, given him all the love and attention he could have asked for, fooled him into thinking he was as perfect, he wouldn't have fallen so hard and so carelessly into love in the first place. He'd been this low before, when they first found him, but that was a long time ago. Now that Harper and the voices online had opened his eyes to the pretty lies they'd been telling him all this time, he was spiralling all the way back down again.

Brook ripped his eyes away from the mirror, not able to take the sight anymore. It wasn't the boys, it was him. He was the problem. When they'd found him he'd been cute and bouncy and blond with just the right amount of puppy fat to make him perfectly squeezable. Now he looked gaunt. He'd let the bright blond fade into dull brown. He remembered when Rye used to pinch his cheeks, making him squeal before he kissed the red marks away, smothering him with the rough-and-tumble love that Rye was such a fan of. Now Brook looked like he might break if someone squeezed him. Maybe that was why they didn't touch him anymore.

He dragged his weakened body the short distance across the room to his bed, bunching the covers up around him, trying to make them tight and warm enough to replace the hug he so desperately needed. He had a big bed, which he'd always loved, but now it was too big, because he was all alone and the miles of space surrounding him only reminded him of that. It had even felt too big when it was just him and Harper, but Harper hadn't wanted the other boys involved, and Brook had convinced himself that Harper himself was enough. He hadn't anticipated that he wouldn't be enough for Harper, and now he had lost everybody, left with just a shell of himself and a big empty bed.