Justin Mark Campbell (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
likefatherlikeson) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dreamlikenewyork2017-03-17 11:12 pm
likefatherlikeson) wrote in dreamlikenewyork2017-03-17 11:12 pm
"Loving angels instead."
Who: Justin Campbell and Sasha Stanford
What: Broken life
Where: Home, NYC
When: Friday morning
Life was a constant ebb and flow for Justin. This week, he had faced another crash in his mood, but it was okay because he was only working the weekends for the moment. Fridays, Saturdays and the two shows on Sundays. It meant he had the recovery time through the week, and his doctors were keeping a close eye on him, monitoring any persistent episodes. Persistent meant more extreme and lasted longer than a week. There was no taking away the fact he had Rapid-Cycling Bipolar. There would be highs, and there would be lows. The medication controlled the severity of them, it didn't take them away.
He was starting to feel better, which meant he was back in a place where he could be around people. If the depression hit, he literally went into a type of hibernation. He couldn't face getting out of bed, let alone functioning with anything else. His dad woke him to take his medication, and to shower. That was about the extent of it. There was a relief for him when he woke up and didn't feel that claustrophobic heaviness engulfing him. His grandparents were over from Australia for his dad and Uncle Sam's birthday, and there would be a surprise party on the weekend. These were the times he wanted to be okay.
Home was crazy at the moment, with people all over the place. Sasha was still there, Amarlie was there, Justin's grandparents. But there was also an addition to the equation. Back for his birthday, Justin's parents had presented him with keys to the apartment next door of the blocked, effectively purchasing the entire floor. Because Justin was getting older, the plan had been to give him the sense of having some privacy and independence of his own place to pretty much share with Will, but still having the direct link to his parents to care for him, support him, and be close if there was an emergency.
Since then, everything had gone to complete shit. It had hit the fan, and then some. Crashed and burned. Nothing was the same anymore. The apartment had just sat there empty and untouched. Justin stayed with his dad when his mom moved out, and without anyone to share it with, he hadn't felt any emotional connection to the project of renovating it and shifting there. In fact, he had told his dad to sell it when their divorce went through and he broke up with Will. He didn't want it. It was part of a life he didn't have anymore. It was too emotionally-taxing for him to think much about, and he had then fallen quite seriously sick with a bad episode, so his dad wanted him near anyway.
Enter Amarlie, Asher and Zenith. Before now, Justin hadn't given any further thought. There was even talk of Amarlie staying with them longer-term, only then she said Kai offered her a place to stay with him if she needed it. It was only when Asher and Zenith arrived, with all intentions of remaining in the city, that Justin had propositioned his dad again about the other apartment: Why didn't they do it up for him, Amarlie, Asher and Zenith to all share together? Of course, with Sasha there frequently. It was owned outright, so there would be no rent, and it would only need to be incidentals and staples they needed to buy.
That was what became the plan. Because Justin was busy, he handed over control of the project to Amarlie, Asher and Zenith to deal with. He would have input on it all, and would make his bedroom however he wanted it. For all the months everything had felt shaken up and emotionally-disjointed, it felt like this was the right move. Effectively, the two apartments would be joined, and Justin's dad would have one side, and the teenage brood the other. They would be connected by one large living area with Justin's piano, a massive TV, sound system, Karaoke machine, etc.
Since the guys arrived from San Francisco, though, Justin had been battling this blip in his mood, so no planning had happened. Asher and Zenith were already staying through there, but that was as far as the planning got. Justin, Sasha, Amarlie, Asher and Zenith were all going to hang out later in the day and talk some more about it, but also get to know each other. That was important if they were going to live together. But first, Justin's nana wanted to feed them all, so everyone was in the kitchen, save for Justin's dad, who was at work, and his grandpa, who had taken Dory out for her morning walk.
Justin was sitting up on the counter nearby where his nana was cooking. Cooking a pile of stuff, most of which he probably wouldn't eat, which is why she had the toaster out especially for his Vegemite on toast. And whilst it might be a bit weird for other people, he was sitting there while Sasha, Amarlie, Asher and Zenith were at the kitchen table, where the topic of Justin's Bipolar had come up in conversation. He didn't mind if people talked about it. He wanted them to, if they needed to to understand. Trying to understand was better than walking on eggshells or making assumptions. First it started as a generic discussion about mental illness, and then the conversation went a bit deeper when Asher asked Justin how he could identify if he was feeling depressed or wanting to hurt himself versus feeling suicidal.
"It's not a feeling, like you feel an emotion. You feel depression," Justin tried to explain, watching his nana flip a pancake on the griddle. "It's more like a... lack of feeling. You feel so much all at once, it gets all scrambled, and resembles like a numbness. It's not wanting to die, it wanting to not live."
That was when Sasha stood up from the table so abruptly and quickly that the chair scraped on the kitchen tiles and made a loud noise. "I just need to..." He didn't finish, and he wasn't looking at anyone. He just walked out.
Justin on realised how quickly he was exiting the scene when he heard the front door of the apartment open in the distance and slam abruptly shut. It wasn't until that moment that it dawned on him how quiet Sasha had been since he had come through to the kitchen. He had been the last one up, and Justin had told his nana not to make anything for Sasha because he was still asleep. It was about half an hour after everyone else that he came through, and Justin had fretted that they woke him up talking, which Sasha palmed off.
Everyone fell quiet, and while the trio shared some confused glances at the table, Justin leapt off the the kitchen counter, frowning as he bolted after Sasha. He had no idea what was going on, but something wasn't right. The only clue he had to where Sasha went was the stairwell door at the end of the hall on the floor of their apartment was slamming shut when he got out there. He had the physical strength Sasha didn't right now, so he caught up to him quickly.
Sasha was up in the rooftop garden that Justin's dad now owned completely after purchasing the other half of it from the neighbours when he bought the adjoining apartment. When he got there, Sasha wasn't just crying, he had burst into sobs that he wouldn't be able to control. "Sash?" Justin said in concern, going up to him and wrapping his arms around him. "What's the matter, baby? Has something happened?" He knew it wouldn't be pain or feeling sick, because Sasha would tell him that without hesitation. But here he was, seeming like he was trying to run away, and that thought made Justin's stomach lurch. What if that was what he was doing? He wasn't mentally equipped to stave off panic and self-doubt like that.
"I-I'm sorry. It's nothing, I'll be okay," Sasha sobbed, reaching over Justin's shoulder to try to wipe his eyes. He wasn't pulling out of the hug because he didn't want to. He needed the hug more than anything else right now. The fact he was still bawling was completely belying his words. He had come up here to try to pull himself together so he could go back down there okay, but it wasn't working. He just reacted when it got too much.
"It's not nothing. I can't buy that. You're so upset, I'm worried you're going to hurt yourself. Did I do or say something to hurt you?" Being upset, sad, tears, heartache... none of that was new to them. They had been battling that together since the first moment they met. Justin hoped they could still keep doing that, even through the hardest stuff. He had already got through love being absent in the past, and losing it because that hurt him, he wasn't sure he could face it again. It was hard not to immediately panic that Sasha might be cluing into how hard all this was and wanted out. Was it Justin's fault for being depressed these past few days?
Sasha pulled back and shook his head. "No," he sobbed. "It's not that. It's not anything like that! You were just... just... talking about... about..." The words were getting harder to form because he was hiccuping through each sob. There was distress flaring up through his words. He hadn't been wanting to actually say what the problem was to upset Justin, but he was doing that anyway. "I had a nightmare you killed yourself, and I found you."
"Baby..." Justin murmured, and he was nearly bursting into tears himself, because it hurt to hear that. It felt like a punch in the gut, because he couldn't immediately allay Sasha's very valid fears. He couldn't palm them off, or tell him it was silly to worry. It wasn't. Not that Justin didn't want to. He wished he could push it away and reassure Sasha, and when he did start crying too, it was because he couldn't make him feel better with reassurance.
"This is why I didn't want to tell you," Sasha choked out, and his voice cracked on the last word. His arms were protectively wrapped around Justin now, to the point he was clinging to him. The last thing he wanted to do was upset him, especially during a week he had been trying to battle depression for days.
Justin's stomach was doing that pained twisty sick thing again hearing this. It was born of guilt, helplessness, and hate for the illness he couldn't control. Squeezing his eyes closed didn't fight off the tears. If anything, it made them fall even more. "You have to tell me these things. Even if it sucks. Because things being awful and still being able to get through it is why I think we're so good together. You can't just push it away. Trust me, I've tried that with all my shit, it never works. I just feel worse."
Sasha wanted to calm down. The rational part in his head was telling him that would the appropriate response. But his heart and emotions were taking over here, and he just started to cry harder. His fist was gripped around a tight knot of Justin's shirt in an attempt to hold him even more tightly. It had been a very vivid and realistic nightmare, and when he woke up, Justin hadn't been in bed. He had a few moments of very real terror until he stumbled out into the hall and heard Justin's voice coming up the hall. He had then retreated back into the bedroom, completely spooked, and took a long shower where he sat on the floor of the cubicle and tried to cry it out. Apparently, he hadn't done as good a job as he thought.
"I'm sorry," Justin murmured, trying to sniffle back the tears hearing how upset Sasha was. They were clinging to each other in the hug. It was hard to realise Sasha had this bad of a nightmare, and Justin must have slept through it. Whenever Justin's nightmares hit and Sasha was staying the night, Sasha woke with him. "I hate that you're having nightmares about this stuff. And I hate that I can't promise you it will be okay. But what I hate most of all is that you felt like you couldn't tell me."
"That's not it. I didn't feel that. I just didn't want to tell you to drag you back down after a hard week," Sasha explained. The hug was only released so he could try to wipe at his tears again, and then was trying to sweep Justin's away for him. "Maybe that's why. I don't know. I didn't want to leave you alone when you were like that. I wanted to stay close in case you needed me. I see you, I watch you. It's not just 'depression'. Oh, Justin's depressed this week. His bipolar is playing up. He's on a low. All that, it's surface shit. It's the description. I-It's like the blurb on the back of a book. That's not it. You can barely get out of bed. You can't face standing in a shower. You take your meds like you're just a robot on autopilot. The light goes from your eyes, the colour goes from your cheeks. When you look at someone, it's like you're looking right through them, like you don't even have the energy to see them. Or you're looking, but you can't see them through the darkness. I know people who have depression. I know there are, just, fuck loads of different types, and fuck loads of different reasons for it happening. Did you know that sixteen million people have experienced depression in our country alone? There's only twenty-three million people in all of Australia. I've been depressed, my dad's been depressed, even my mom. She had post-natal depression after I was born. But this? This is days on end where you... your light goes out. You're not really there. You don't remember how beautiful and amazing you are. You don't think you deserve anything of what you have. I lie there with you and just hold your hand, because I hope that maybe - just maybe - it might tether you back somehow, and you don't forget that you're loved, and you're beautiful, and you have so much to keep going for. And I just... I-I'm so fucking scared I'm going to lose you."
Listening to all this, Justin felt like the emotional rug had been pulled out from under him. At first, he was standing there, hands on Sasha's arms. But the more Sasha spoke, the emotions began to take a physical sensation and his legs weakened. He took some steps back and sat heavily on one of the sun lounges, looking up at Sasha as he got through everything that had been clogging up his mind, leading to have this terrible nightmare. "H-How are you real?" he finally asked in a tiny voice, choked up from the tears that were still falling. "Sash, I c-can't... can't keep doing this to you..."
"No!" Sasha held his hands up, shaking his head. "No, don't you fucking dare. Don't you fucking dare try to pull away from me or end this. I'm not letting you do this, so don't you fucking go there. I didn't not sit there and watch my dad be paralysed or best friend die in front of me for years to come away learning nothing. You want to know something? I'm fucking strong. I don't feel it most of the time, and I'm just faking my way through like like everyone else, but we met for a reason. And part of that is because I can take care of you. I don't need you to be strong, and I don't need you to be well all the time. Do you know the only reason this is happening to me? Because I love you, and you mean so much to me that I am absolutely terrified you'll destroy yourself and I'll have to sit in the front row of your funeral next time. Only this time, you won't be there with me. Do you know what I was thinking when I saw you standing up there on that Footloose stage last week?"
Justin shook his head, and he couldn't fight off a crushed sob when he was roughly swiping his fingers over the tears spilling down his cheeks. Sasha was one of those more quiet sort of introverted people. Unless he knew you, then he came out of his shell. But it was true. His emotional strength ran deep, and it wasn't far of Justin to try to reflexively pull the plug here to protect him. It was like saying he wasn't capable of getting through this, which was so opposed to everything Justin felt in his heart. It was his fucking head trying to mess it all up again. Why didn't it just work? Why couldn't he be normal?
"That you're proof Heaven exists." Sasha was dead serious in saying this, and it wasn't anything cheesy like thinking Justin looked like an angel or anything that sounded like it was born of a bad pick-up line. "I don't think you were supposed to survive cutting your wrist on that train. You want to know why? That guy who found you? It was Andi's uncle. She was there with you in the theatre that night, and it was her way of saying to me, 'You're going to be okay, and by the way, you're welcome but don't let him go'. But now I'm scared this dream was some sort of warning, and... and will you promise to tell me if you ever feel like like hanging yourself in that fucking theatre with that belt you wear in the final scene?"
Justin was sitting there staring at Sasha. More tears were filling his eyes, and he only shifted his gaze when his vision blurred up and it intercepted the flood of emotion washing over him. They turned to the surface of the pool and as much as he wanted to swallow to eradicate that lump in his throat, it wouldn't work. Even if he had initially sat weakly, he was now rigid, hands gripping the edge of the sunlounge on either side of his legs. He believed in stuff like this. Not religion, nothing like that. But guardian angels and a higher power. Things he could never explain, especially when he didn't even understand himself, let alone anything much more complex and deep like this.
"You've thought about it, haven't you? O-Or nearly tried it?" Sasha realised, putting his hands up to his mouth when he saw how Justin was reacting here. "When?"
"Before I left for Sydney this last time," Justin admitted in a hoarse whisper. "This is... it's... that can't have been her uncle. Why didn't you fucking say anything sooner?"
Sasha stepped forward and dropped to his knees in front of Justin. He took his hands, first kissing both palms and then turning them over to kiss the backs of his fingers. "I didn't know, baby. I didn't know. Please don't think I knew and kept it from you. It wasn't like that. He lives in Atlanta. And yeah, he's a biker. Has a bike shop down there. He wasn't at her funeral because he had to have a stent in his heart. He was in hospital. He was travelling up to Boston by train to see her folks because they couldn't clear him to fly that soon with his specific condition. He still wanted to get to the family as soon as he could after Andi died. Andi's mom, it's her brother. He didn't see you at her funeral with me because he wasn't there. His wife read the interview we did with the magazine, and she called my mom. Mom didn't say anything to me straight away because she was worried how I might take it. It spooked her. It spooked her, it spooked Andi's mom and her uncle just as much. I only found out a couple of weeks ago."
Justin needed a hug. He couldn't just process all this stuff when his brain was recovering from barely functioning throughout the week. He put his arms around Sasha again, and buried his head against his shoulder. The most emotionally-crippling part was that Sasha had a dream about something that could have been very real. Justin had been intercepted from doing it. He had this strange panic attack about going on stage that night, probably because an episode was already starting to trigger in him. "It was the night I ended up on Brooklyn Bridge, before Reecy found me. It was the first time I had this horrific fear of going out on stage. My mind was racing. I don't know how I got through the show. I wanted to choke myself. I wanted to feel myself stop breathing. People think self-harm is just cutting. It's not."
"I know," Sasha murmured, cuddling Justin, rubbing his back. Hell, his own tears didn't want to let up, but they were easing a little now he had offloaded this stuff. "Since you told me that you've been doing it for as long as you can remember, I started to read more about it. Why didn't you? Why the bridge instead? What happened?"
"I don't know. I can't remember. I hadn't slept in days. I purposefully drank burning hot coffee so it would hurt me when I swallowed it. I... was interrupted, I think. Caden, maybe. Wardrobe. I don't remember episodes in the same way everyone else days. I remember them in a manic fog. It's more like a jumble with a soundtrack of the worst music you've ever heard played on the loudest volume out so it becomes like nails on a chalkboard because my brain is in hyperdrive." Justin shook his head against Sasha's shoulder. "I don't remember. Most of the shit I don't remember in a rational way. The memories, they're all what someone else relayed back to me through their eyes."
Sasha sucked in a breath and bit hard down on his lip. "I know I can't stop it. But can I do anything? Can I... see any signs? Can I do something that makes it not be as bad? Can I..." Have a hope in hell of intercepting what I saw in that nightmare? his brain finished for him, but the words wouldn't come out.
"You already are," Justin told him, not needing him to continue or say anything else. This was one of those moments they had to face together, alone. None of it was easy. In fact, it felt down right crippling to try to understand and process. Sasha dreaming he found Justin dead. The fucking constant shitpile of surviving Bipolar was bad enough, but it was so fucking hard when it hurt the people he loved. He was used to being hurt, which is why he didn't want anyone he cared about to suffer it. "I want to go bed."
"Tired?" Sasha asked quietly, hoping this hadn't drawn Justin back to square one.
"I want to feel close to you," Justin told him. He was tired, but that wasn't it. "Sometimes the best way to push away the pain is do the opposite."
Sasha, then, knew what Justin was saying. Using Justin's knee as a brace to stand up, he took Justin's hands and pulled him up into a kiss. "Show me?" he murmured, stepping back still holding Justin's hands so they could head back downstairs.
Justin nodded, holding Sasha's gaze. "Sash?" He earned an open and attentive gaze in return. "Andi didn't save my life. You did."
LOG, COMPLETE
What: Broken life
Where: Home, NYC
When: Friday morning
Life was a constant ebb and flow for Justin. This week, he had faced another crash in his mood, but it was okay because he was only working the weekends for the moment. Fridays, Saturdays and the two shows on Sundays. It meant he had the recovery time through the week, and his doctors were keeping a close eye on him, monitoring any persistent episodes. Persistent meant more extreme and lasted longer than a week. There was no taking away the fact he had Rapid-Cycling Bipolar. There would be highs, and there would be lows. The medication controlled the severity of them, it didn't take them away.
He was starting to feel better, which meant he was back in a place where he could be around people. If the depression hit, he literally went into a type of hibernation. He couldn't face getting out of bed, let alone functioning with anything else. His dad woke him to take his medication, and to shower. That was about the extent of it. There was a relief for him when he woke up and didn't feel that claustrophobic heaviness engulfing him. His grandparents were over from Australia for his dad and Uncle Sam's birthday, and there would be a surprise party on the weekend. These were the times he wanted to be okay.
Home was crazy at the moment, with people all over the place. Sasha was still there, Amarlie was there, Justin's grandparents. But there was also an addition to the equation. Back for his birthday, Justin's parents had presented him with keys to the apartment next door of the blocked, effectively purchasing the entire floor. Because Justin was getting older, the plan had been to give him the sense of having some privacy and independence of his own place to pretty much share with Will, but still having the direct link to his parents to care for him, support him, and be close if there was an emergency.
Since then, everything had gone to complete shit. It had hit the fan, and then some. Crashed and burned. Nothing was the same anymore. The apartment had just sat there empty and untouched. Justin stayed with his dad when his mom moved out, and without anyone to share it with, he hadn't felt any emotional connection to the project of renovating it and shifting there. In fact, he had told his dad to sell it when their divorce went through and he broke up with Will. He didn't want it. It was part of a life he didn't have anymore. It was too emotionally-taxing for him to think much about, and he had then fallen quite seriously sick with a bad episode, so his dad wanted him near anyway.
Enter Amarlie, Asher and Zenith. Before now, Justin hadn't given any further thought. There was even talk of Amarlie staying with them longer-term, only then she said Kai offered her a place to stay with him if she needed it. It was only when Asher and Zenith arrived, with all intentions of remaining in the city, that Justin had propositioned his dad again about the other apartment: Why didn't they do it up for him, Amarlie, Asher and Zenith to all share together? Of course, with Sasha there frequently. It was owned outright, so there would be no rent, and it would only need to be incidentals and staples they needed to buy.
That was what became the plan. Because Justin was busy, he handed over control of the project to Amarlie, Asher and Zenith to deal with. He would have input on it all, and would make his bedroom however he wanted it. For all the months everything had felt shaken up and emotionally-disjointed, it felt like this was the right move. Effectively, the two apartments would be joined, and Justin's dad would have one side, and the teenage brood the other. They would be connected by one large living area with Justin's piano, a massive TV, sound system, Karaoke machine, etc.
Since the guys arrived from San Francisco, though, Justin had been battling this blip in his mood, so no planning had happened. Asher and Zenith were already staying through there, but that was as far as the planning got. Justin, Sasha, Amarlie, Asher and Zenith were all going to hang out later in the day and talk some more about it, but also get to know each other. That was important if they were going to live together. But first, Justin's nana wanted to feed them all, so everyone was in the kitchen, save for Justin's dad, who was at work, and his grandpa, who had taken Dory out for her morning walk.
Justin was sitting up on the counter nearby where his nana was cooking. Cooking a pile of stuff, most of which he probably wouldn't eat, which is why she had the toaster out especially for his Vegemite on toast. And whilst it might be a bit weird for other people, he was sitting there while Sasha, Amarlie, Asher and Zenith were at the kitchen table, where the topic of Justin's Bipolar had come up in conversation. He didn't mind if people talked about it. He wanted them to, if they needed to to understand. Trying to understand was better than walking on eggshells or making assumptions. First it started as a generic discussion about mental illness, and then the conversation went a bit deeper when Asher asked Justin how he could identify if he was feeling depressed or wanting to hurt himself versus feeling suicidal.
"It's not a feeling, like you feel an emotion. You feel depression," Justin tried to explain, watching his nana flip a pancake on the griddle. "It's more like a... lack of feeling. You feel so much all at once, it gets all scrambled, and resembles like a numbness. It's not wanting to die, it wanting to not live."
That was when Sasha stood up from the table so abruptly and quickly that the chair scraped on the kitchen tiles and made a loud noise. "I just need to..." He didn't finish, and he wasn't looking at anyone. He just walked out.
Justin on realised how quickly he was exiting the scene when he heard the front door of the apartment open in the distance and slam abruptly shut. It wasn't until that moment that it dawned on him how quiet Sasha had been since he had come through to the kitchen. He had been the last one up, and Justin had told his nana not to make anything for Sasha because he was still asleep. It was about half an hour after everyone else that he came through, and Justin had fretted that they woke him up talking, which Sasha palmed off.
Everyone fell quiet, and while the trio shared some confused glances at the table, Justin leapt off the the kitchen counter, frowning as he bolted after Sasha. He had no idea what was going on, but something wasn't right. The only clue he had to where Sasha went was the stairwell door at the end of the hall on the floor of their apartment was slamming shut when he got out there. He had the physical strength Sasha didn't right now, so he caught up to him quickly.
Sasha was up in the rooftop garden that Justin's dad now owned completely after purchasing the other half of it from the neighbours when he bought the adjoining apartment. When he got there, Sasha wasn't just crying, he had burst into sobs that he wouldn't be able to control. "Sash?" Justin said in concern, going up to him and wrapping his arms around him. "What's the matter, baby? Has something happened?" He knew it wouldn't be pain or feeling sick, because Sasha would tell him that without hesitation. But here he was, seeming like he was trying to run away, and that thought made Justin's stomach lurch. What if that was what he was doing? He wasn't mentally equipped to stave off panic and self-doubt like that.
"I-I'm sorry. It's nothing, I'll be okay," Sasha sobbed, reaching over Justin's shoulder to try to wipe his eyes. He wasn't pulling out of the hug because he didn't want to. He needed the hug more than anything else right now. The fact he was still bawling was completely belying his words. He had come up here to try to pull himself together so he could go back down there okay, but it wasn't working. He just reacted when it got too much.
"It's not nothing. I can't buy that. You're so upset, I'm worried you're going to hurt yourself. Did I do or say something to hurt you?" Being upset, sad, tears, heartache... none of that was new to them. They had been battling that together since the first moment they met. Justin hoped they could still keep doing that, even through the hardest stuff. He had already got through love being absent in the past, and losing it because that hurt him, he wasn't sure he could face it again. It was hard not to immediately panic that Sasha might be cluing into how hard all this was and wanted out. Was it Justin's fault for being depressed these past few days?
Sasha pulled back and shook his head. "No," he sobbed. "It's not that. It's not anything like that! You were just... just... talking about... about..." The words were getting harder to form because he was hiccuping through each sob. There was distress flaring up through his words. He hadn't been wanting to actually say what the problem was to upset Justin, but he was doing that anyway. "I had a nightmare you killed yourself, and I found you."
"Baby..." Justin murmured, and he was nearly bursting into tears himself, because it hurt to hear that. It felt like a punch in the gut, because he couldn't immediately allay Sasha's very valid fears. He couldn't palm them off, or tell him it was silly to worry. It wasn't. Not that Justin didn't want to. He wished he could push it away and reassure Sasha, and when he did start crying too, it was because he couldn't make him feel better with reassurance.
"This is why I didn't want to tell you," Sasha choked out, and his voice cracked on the last word. His arms were protectively wrapped around Justin now, to the point he was clinging to him. The last thing he wanted to do was upset him, especially during a week he had been trying to battle depression for days.
Justin's stomach was doing that pained twisty sick thing again hearing this. It was born of guilt, helplessness, and hate for the illness he couldn't control. Squeezing his eyes closed didn't fight off the tears. If anything, it made them fall even more. "You have to tell me these things. Even if it sucks. Because things being awful and still being able to get through it is why I think we're so good together. You can't just push it away. Trust me, I've tried that with all my shit, it never works. I just feel worse."
Sasha wanted to calm down. The rational part in his head was telling him that would the appropriate response. But his heart and emotions were taking over here, and he just started to cry harder. His fist was gripped around a tight knot of Justin's shirt in an attempt to hold him even more tightly. It had been a very vivid and realistic nightmare, and when he woke up, Justin hadn't been in bed. He had a few moments of very real terror until he stumbled out into the hall and heard Justin's voice coming up the hall. He had then retreated back into the bedroom, completely spooked, and took a long shower where he sat on the floor of the cubicle and tried to cry it out. Apparently, he hadn't done as good a job as he thought.
"I'm sorry," Justin murmured, trying to sniffle back the tears hearing how upset Sasha was. They were clinging to each other in the hug. It was hard to realise Sasha had this bad of a nightmare, and Justin must have slept through it. Whenever Justin's nightmares hit and Sasha was staying the night, Sasha woke with him. "I hate that you're having nightmares about this stuff. And I hate that I can't promise you it will be okay. But what I hate most of all is that you felt like you couldn't tell me."
"That's not it. I didn't feel that. I just didn't want to tell you to drag you back down after a hard week," Sasha explained. The hug was only released so he could try to wipe at his tears again, and then was trying to sweep Justin's away for him. "Maybe that's why. I don't know. I didn't want to leave you alone when you were like that. I wanted to stay close in case you needed me. I see you, I watch you. It's not just 'depression'. Oh, Justin's depressed this week. His bipolar is playing up. He's on a low. All that, it's surface shit. It's the description. I-It's like the blurb on the back of a book. That's not it. You can barely get out of bed. You can't face standing in a shower. You take your meds like you're just a robot on autopilot. The light goes from your eyes, the colour goes from your cheeks. When you look at someone, it's like you're looking right through them, like you don't even have the energy to see them. Or you're looking, but you can't see them through the darkness. I know people who have depression. I know there are, just, fuck loads of different types, and fuck loads of different reasons for it happening. Did you know that sixteen million people have experienced depression in our country alone? There's only twenty-three million people in all of Australia. I've been depressed, my dad's been depressed, even my mom. She had post-natal depression after I was born. But this? This is days on end where you... your light goes out. You're not really there. You don't remember how beautiful and amazing you are. You don't think you deserve anything of what you have. I lie there with you and just hold your hand, because I hope that maybe - just maybe - it might tether you back somehow, and you don't forget that you're loved, and you're beautiful, and you have so much to keep going for. And I just... I-I'm so fucking scared I'm going to lose you."
Listening to all this, Justin felt like the emotional rug had been pulled out from under him. At first, he was standing there, hands on Sasha's arms. But the more Sasha spoke, the emotions began to take a physical sensation and his legs weakened. He took some steps back and sat heavily on one of the sun lounges, looking up at Sasha as he got through everything that had been clogging up his mind, leading to have this terrible nightmare. "H-How are you real?" he finally asked in a tiny voice, choked up from the tears that were still falling. "Sash, I c-can't... can't keep doing this to you..."
"No!" Sasha held his hands up, shaking his head. "No, don't you fucking dare. Don't you fucking dare try to pull away from me or end this. I'm not letting you do this, so don't you fucking go there. I didn't not sit there and watch my dad be paralysed or best friend die in front of me for years to come away learning nothing. You want to know something? I'm fucking strong. I don't feel it most of the time, and I'm just faking my way through like like everyone else, but we met for a reason. And part of that is because I can take care of you. I don't need you to be strong, and I don't need you to be well all the time. Do you know the only reason this is happening to me? Because I love you, and you mean so much to me that I am absolutely terrified you'll destroy yourself and I'll have to sit in the front row of your funeral next time. Only this time, you won't be there with me. Do you know what I was thinking when I saw you standing up there on that Footloose stage last week?"
Justin shook his head, and he couldn't fight off a crushed sob when he was roughly swiping his fingers over the tears spilling down his cheeks. Sasha was one of those more quiet sort of introverted people. Unless he knew you, then he came out of his shell. But it was true. His emotional strength ran deep, and it wasn't far of Justin to try to reflexively pull the plug here to protect him. It was like saying he wasn't capable of getting through this, which was so opposed to everything Justin felt in his heart. It was his fucking head trying to mess it all up again. Why didn't it just work? Why couldn't he be normal?
"That you're proof Heaven exists." Sasha was dead serious in saying this, and it wasn't anything cheesy like thinking Justin looked like an angel or anything that sounded like it was born of a bad pick-up line. "I don't think you were supposed to survive cutting your wrist on that train. You want to know why? That guy who found you? It was Andi's uncle. She was there with you in the theatre that night, and it was her way of saying to me, 'You're going to be okay, and by the way, you're welcome but don't let him go'. But now I'm scared this dream was some sort of warning, and... and will you promise to tell me if you ever feel like like hanging yourself in that fucking theatre with that belt you wear in the final scene?"
Justin was sitting there staring at Sasha. More tears were filling his eyes, and he only shifted his gaze when his vision blurred up and it intercepted the flood of emotion washing over him. They turned to the surface of the pool and as much as he wanted to swallow to eradicate that lump in his throat, it wouldn't work. Even if he had initially sat weakly, he was now rigid, hands gripping the edge of the sunlounge on either side of his legs. He believed in stuff like this. Not religion, nothing like that. But guardian angels and a higher power. Things he could never explain, especially when he didn't even understand himself, let alone anything much more complex and deep like this.
"You've thought about it, haven't you? O-Or nearly tried it?" Sasha realised, putting his hands up to his mouth when he saw how Justin was reacting here. "When?"
"Before I left for Sydney this last time," Justin admitted in a hoarse whisper. "This is... it's... that can't have been her uncle. Why didn't you fucking say anything sooner?"
Sasha stepped forward and dropped to his knees in front of Justin. He took his hands, first kissing both palms and then turning them over to kiss the backs of his fingers. "I didn't know, baby. I didn't know. Please don't think I knew and kept it from you. It wasn't like that. He lives in Atlanta. And yeah, he's a biker. Has a bike shop down there. He wasn't at her funeral because he had to have a stent in his heart. He was in hospital. He was travelling up to Boston by train to see her folks because they couldn't clear him to fly that soon with his specific condition. He still wanted to get to the family as soon as he could after Andi died. Andi's mom, it's her brother. He didn't see you at her funeral with me because he wasn't there. His wife read the interview we did with the magazine, and she called my mom. Mom didn't say anything to me straight away because she was worried how I might take it. It spooked her. It spooked her, it spooked Andi's mom and her uncle just as much. I only found out a couple of weeks ago."
Justin needed a hug. He couldn't just process all this stuff when his brain was recovering from barely functioning throughout the week. He put his arms around Sasha again, and buried his head against his shoulder. The most emotionally-crippling part was that Sasha had a dream about something that could have been very real. Justin had been intercepted from doing it. He had this strange panic attack about going on stage that night, probably because an episode was already starting to trigger in him. "It was the night I ended up on Brooklyn Bridge, before Reecy found me. It was the first time I had this horrific fear of going out on stage. My mind was racing. I don't know how I got through the show. I wanted to choke myself. I wanted to feel myself stop breathing. People think self-harm is just cutting. It's not."
"I know," Sasha murmured, cuddling Justin, rubbing his back. Hell, his own tears didn't want to let up, but they were easing a little now he had offloaded this stuff. "Since you told me that you've been doing it for as long as you can remember, I started to read more about it. Why didn't you? Why the bridge instead? What happened?"
"I don't know. I can't remember. I hadn't slept in days. I purposefully drank burning hot coffee so it would hurt me when I swallowed it. I... was interrupted, I think. Caden, maybe. Wardrobe. I don't remember episodes in the same way everyone else days. I remember them in a manic fog. It's more like a jumble with a soundtrack of the worst music you've ever heard played on the loudest volume out so it becomes like nails on a chalkboard because my brain is in hyperdrive." Justin shook his head against Sasha's shoulder. "I don't remember. Most of the shit I don't remember in a rational way. The memories, they're all what someone else relayed back to me through their eyes."
Sasha sucked in a breath and bit hard down on his lip. "I know I can't stop it. But can I do anything? Can I... see any signs? Can I do something that makes it not be as bad? Can I..." Have a hope in hell of intercepting what I saw in that nightmare? his brain finished for him, but the words wouldn't come out.
"You already are," Justin told him, not needing him to continue or say anything else. This was one of those moments they had to face together, alone. None of it was easy. In fact, it felt down right crippling to try to understand and process. Sasha dreaming he found Justin dead. The fucking constant shitpile of surviving Bipolar was bad enough, but it was so fucking hard when it hurt the people he loved. He was used to being hurt, which is why he didn't want anyone he cared about to suffer it. "I want to go bed."
"Tired?" Sasha asked quietly, hoping this hadn't drawn Justin back to square one.
"I want to feel close to you," Justin told him. He was tired, but that wasn't it. "Sometimes the best way to push away the pain is do the opposite."
Sasha, then, knew what Justin was saying. Using Justin's knee as a brace to stand up, he took Justin's hands and pulled him up into a kiss. "Show me?" he murmured, stepping back still holding Justin's hands so they could head back downstairs.
Justin nodded, holding Sasha's gaze. "Sash?" He earned an open and attentive gaze in return. "Andi didn't save my life. You did."
LOG, COMPLETE