tratie oneshots

{ warmth - tw }

words: 789

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tw: self harm

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so, i've been debating posting this for around a month now, but i'm finally doing it because i want to upload and this is prewritten. the same note from 'bridge' applies to this oneshot: it's not meant in any way to romanticize mental illness, and please don't feel obligated to read if it makes you uncomfortable/will have a negative effect on your mental state

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It was cold against his skin.

It was pain, in jagged lines and hues of red.

It was a craving - an obsession, even.

Travis still couldn't figure out why he did it. He enjoyed hurting himself? He felt like he deserved it? Sometimes, it felt like a stereotype that fit under the 'mental illness umbrella'. If you didn't do it, suddenly you were okay. If that was how it worked, Travis felt sure he would have quit long before.

The blade, it was cold, but the perfect type of cold. Not freezing, yet refreshing.

His wrist, dotted with crimson freckles scattered in not-so-straight lines, formed of minuscule red gemstones.

Next came Travis's least favorite part. He hated it so much that every single time, he told himself it wouldn't happen again. He would hide the knife or he would tell someone. He would do something. He never did.

Stinging, his wrist was stinging as he gazed at the ruby beads.

The click of the doorknob.

The unnatural glow of the lightbulbs.

Everything had to be hidden; his wrist, the blade. Himself.

A face.

Green eyes, the prettiest green.

Widening in recognition.

It wasn't happening.

It couldn't be happening.

Blue eyes like sapphire pools, tightly closed. Refusing to meet the beautiful ones.

Why was it so cold all of a sudden?

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pov switch because this was written at 2 am and i apparently do whatever i want that early in the morning

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Katie couldn't move.

It was like she was running through a rainstorm as she gripped the blade carefully, prying it from his grasp. Whipped and sprayed by raging currents anywhere she turned, fully preparing her to drown. But he was far more important. She couldn't let herself slip just yet.

He shifted his gaze as far away from hers as he could, until he had to physically shut his eyes, the blue disappearing suddenly.

Even before, the blue wasn't the same, Katie realized. It had been slowly dimming, shifting from a bright shade of cerulean, to a deep, murky azure color. After the light was gone, it was apparent that most of Travis's energy and joy had been expressed through his eyes. He was like a closed down theme-park; once happy and brimming with excitement, but now everyone had left, and all the metal turned to rust.

The knife slipped out of their now joint grasp and landed on the tiles of the floor, its clatter shattering the thick silence.

Neither of them spoke. So many questions were swirling through Katie's mind, trapped within the same current that usually bound her, that she couldn't focus on one to ask.

There were one word questions, and twenty word questions, so many possibilities for what she could've asked, or in some people's minds, should've asked.

But she asked none of those. None of the long, drawn out questions that Travis's usual English-nerd self would've loved to analyze.

No, Katie asked the simplest of questions, one that almost anyone could ask.

"Why?"

And Katie felt her last wall crumble, final straw break, when Travis could give her no answer.

"I don't know, Kates," his voice cracked, revealing how shattered the person who hid behind playful banter and lighthearted jokes really was.

She forced her own panic levels down; this was not her time to be worrying about screwing things up. She needed to be there for Travis. So she was.

She dropped down beside him onto the slick tiles, taking his hand in her own.

Words wouldn't help. Any "I can help you"s or "we'll get through this"s would be discounted as lies, and tossed aside.

Actions could not.

Actions burned themselves into one's brain, fighting to be remembered. Speeches were written out in the history books, but fists raised in unity were a symbol displayed everywhere.

Katie knew full well how empty words could sound if spoken at the wrong time, in the wrong moment.

So she didn't speak.

Nor did Travis.

She let a blanket of silence wrap around them again, gently. It wasn't gripping them like a claw, stealing away every thought, and suffocating them like before. It was there, reminding Katie of how comforting silence could be sometimes.

Still silent, Katie stood and wet the corner of a tissue, before rejoining Travis on the floor and starting to slowly dab at one wrist, and then the next.

Everything seemed cold; the air, the floor, his hand, the water, and that should've scared Katie. But it didn't. Because, as cold as it was, and as cold as it got, she would be there for Travis, just as he would be there for her, offering warmth.

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this isn't good, and i'm sorry for posting two tw chapters so close together

it doesn't even feel like tratie anymore, just 'she writes random stories and slaps two names in for the characters', but i guess that's too long of a title. i'll try to write more in-character stuff soon-ish

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