Reality And Us

Chapter Thirty

There was something beautiful to be found within this certain kind of pain, something poetic and yet tragic. A force, trying to destroy, but the only way it could destroy was if you were emotionally devoted to someone else's entire being. Was this the price to pay for love?

Zane couldn't tell. He knew he hadn't suffered that much when being with Noemi, it was just the aftermath which had wrecked him, made him cry for days. But within that relationship, he had been happy. He had had, if he remembered correctly, the impression that she cared about him, seriously cared, and she had - just not in the way he had wanted her to.

Now, with Lee, it was more difficult. All of his friends had loved Noemi, but with his current boyfriend this definitely wasn't the case. No, Nick disliked him, because apparently his boyfriend was some sort of asshole. And now, thinking about it, Zane realized that in the past, a lot of happenings in between them were just one-sided caring. One-sided appreciation, one-sided expression of love.

And one-sided arguments, one-sided manipulation, one-sided invalidation.

All the times Lee had 'forgiven' him, he had just wanted to make himself the victim, make Zane feel sorry, more bound to the older.

This wasn't healthy, wasn't good, but how could he make it stop? With every single thought he was thinking making him feel guilt and self-centered anger and regret of failing to see a good side in his boyfriend? Which was not entirely true, he could see one. But sometimes, the negative simply outweighs the positive. And he might be in love, might have his feelings and thoughts and perception twisted to agree with Lee, but that was no way of growing old happily.

Just yesterday someone had first tried to open his eyes to the truth behind this relationship, and now his mind was already busy trying to stop it. It was so fast, it was confusing, and he still didn't properly know where he was. Where was forwards, where was backwards?

One part of him wanted to stop, stop everything between him and Lee. One part of him wanted to better the relationship, talk it out, make it work once again. One part of him insisted on nothing being wrong, wanted to forget this weekend and continue with how it used to be.

He knew that something was wrong, he knew he'd have to ignore what he felt his heart was telling him - it was poisoned with emotions originally not his own, that had taken over his to dodge conflict, had slowly entered his self to make his boyfriend happy. The outcome of emotional dependency to a dangerous extent. He'd have to rely on his mind with this one, had to differentiate between reality and imagination, between his own and Lee's influence, in order to come to a reasonable, and most important, healthy decision.

Was this too broken to be fixed? Could they work this out together? He didn't know. Couldn't tell. But would Lee be willing to? After intentionally doing so many things manipulating, wrecking Zane as a person, was he really to be trusted, was he even interested in change? He didn't know if this was just a game to the older, if there was anything his boyfriend was serious about, anything his boyfriend had been honest with. After all, he couldn't read Lee's thoughts, couldn't know how he felt.

A relationship had its up and downs, but could trust this damaged, shattered even, be actually be revived?

There wasn't a lot of conclusions this whole thinking could lead him to. Especially since Nick had pretty much just given Zane his insight, and the younger boy's thoughts had this tendency to be reasoned quite well.

It was obvious he had to say good-bye, but still, he couldn't help himself wanting to stick around for just a day or two longer. He knew he was dependent on his boyfriend's thoughts.

His mind was again complete chaos - nothing too new that weekend - but it was obvious he needed help to get out, to recover. Because he was quite obviously heavily affected.