To Keep You

Chapter Thirteen: New Year's Eve-

A/N: Cute gif of sleepy Parker :) Hope this chapter's okay! Title change bc I realised the previous chapter was called 'Anew' and it sounds like my story had trouble and stuttered before finally being able to pronounce "A New Year" LMAO 

    I won't lie, Connor and I weren't forever. Nothing ever was, right? But we were something for quite a long time. Maybe we were the closest to forever that you could be. Maybe it wasn't about how long; maybe it was about how much.

    Was I making any sense? Perhaps not to others, but it made sense to me and maybe that was all that really mattered.

     It started with the rooftop kiss, as we'd began to call it, and it ended with Connor pulling away for a breather, I'd heard Parker in the background say, "Almost is nearly here, Rob." As I turned to face him––panic surely white in my face––he was gone.

    Connor spoke quietly while his fingers fumbled with the drawstring of my hoodie, "How did it happen?" and I knew exactly what he was referring to. My right hand raised between us, fingers seeking out the curve of Connor's wrist.

    I wasn't sure why I needed to feel out his pulse. Why I placed my finger over the indent under his wrist and felt out the thump, thump, thump as the rest of my fingers sought out the warmth of his skin. But I did, and Connor looked sad as he watched me.

    "He slipped," I answered, monotone, vacant, expressionless as I stared back at him. "Bled to death. Internal wounds. Something about his spine, I can't really remember."

    Connor nodded gently, glancing down at where my fingers were still clinging to his wrist. My attention was on the pulse that pushed itself up against Connor's skin to meet with the pad of my index finger and that was the only way I knew that we were alive, and Parker was dead.

     It was all getting a little blurred, lately. Life and Death.

    I kissed Connor. I kissed him again and it became more urgent, flustered, lips pressed against each other tightly as if the only oxygen left was that between the two of us and it was a fight for who could claim the last breath.

     And then I stopped. And Connor stopped. And things fell silent and there was no Parker in the background this time, there was only a dark sky and bright city lights. And silence. The rooftop had been something amazing again, at least for a moment. And now it was not.

     But maybe that one moment was all anybody ever needed.

     Christmas came and went just as it always did. 

     I sat in my own glass box, on the inside Parker sat beside me and we weren't smiling and we weren't talking and there was no sense of friendship or love or happiness or forgiveness. There was only sadness and pain and loneliness.

     On the outside, there was Jaime and Arthur and Amy and there was laughter and family and a whole house full of love and joy. Gifts, alcohol, food -- but I couldn't reach any of it. I'd walk past the kitchen and I'd stop and stare but I could never go in.

     I hadn't eaten for a whole day and that was just the beginning.

     Time seemed to pass by so slowly. Each day I woke up to an advent calendar chocolate in my face, Jaime attached to the arm that held it. I woke to a milkshake that I nodded my head to and drank it all down like a good boy, only to throw it back up a few moments later.

     Jaime would sit beside me as I leaned over the toilet, saying things like, "It's okay, you're alright, you'll get through this, Rob." It didn't feel like I'd get through this.