17

It's raining cats and dogs and he cannot stand it. Everything else is so depressing, he doesn't need the weather matching it.

His headphones are barely working and he's finding it an annoyance to get them to try and continue despite the rain. He's turning the corner as he sees the bus going in the opposite direction, and he swears he sees a flash of brown and green hair run and follow it.

Evan shrugs it off and finds his way back to his flat. The entrance stinks of something smelling of bacon that he knows isn't, but it's making him hungry anyways.

He drops his stuff off beside his closed door halfheartedly, and takes out a pan, some eggs, bread, butter and bacon. He makes his sandiwch, crawling into his bed and eats it watching some shitty episode repeats played on the channel he's flicked to.

He scrolls through his phone, occasionally answering a message or two and he feels his heart sinks when he noticed he hasn't seen a single one from any of his friends.

He feels the bread stick to his throat and he swallows like it's a clump of knifes and not a normal meal.

He leaves the rest of it on the side, smokes a quick cigarette and tries to get himself to sleep. It's the only way he has to get himself there and he won't risk drugs on a night like this. He'd need so many there'd be no way he'd be able to go to work tomorrow and he's got to have some thing of an income. Being homeless would be worse than being here.

He eventually finds himself slipping, and inch by inch he does. He falls into such a deep sleep, he doesn't hear the slight knocks on his door, or the small voice coming through the letterbox.

--

The sightings of Barty has stopped and while he feels some relief at the paranoia no longer crawling through his gut, most of what he feels is disappointment. The only hope he had that Barty might still care is gone.

Somehow he thinks it's the push he needed to finally, finally, move on. Not before he gets worse of course.

He needs to go and fix himself instead of trying to fix someone else but that's easier said than done.

And Evan would much prefer to wallow before he gets himself up and dusts himself off. So he does exactly that.

He dances in clubs, sweating, jaw grinding uncontrollably. He's found another person as seemingly lonely as he is and all of a sudden he's buying them a drink and they joining the dance floor.

The way they're dancing is making him come alive, the hips moving side to side is making them all he desires. He's so unsatisfied and they've got what is all he required. It's never going to be enough but it's something. He needs a change of skin.

They kiss messily on the floor, biting his lip so hard it bleeds, pulling their head back so much it feels like he's feeding them air.

He needs that chaos right now. He needs the uknown embrace of someone else. He needs to feel something.

He knows they want the sin and not the sinner and he does too. Maybe this was how Barty felt. Detached from the person, attached to the feeling. It felt like a high to him. That he was going to sleep with someone and never know who they were. They would never know how wrapped up he was in his own addiction, his own self infliction, his lack of benediction. They would never know how weighty it felt owner of his mind. They'd never know how trapped he felt within himself and to himself. They'd never know how much he felt the urge to run or hide or stay where the past ate him up from the insides out, burning his flesh, boiling his blood.

As the ecstasy they gave him peaked, all he could think of was the stain of vomit in his carpet, the reminants of blood that never separated from his bed sheets. He thought of his miserable job, the shitty food he chokes down, the voice of maybe his mum telling him he was worthless in his head. Maybe his parents viewpoint of him was the one he'd been seeing himself through all of these years.

He came home at the end of the night, covered in sweat and feeling like he needed a wash in both the inside and the out.

He had a shower, washing every part of him he could. He towelled himself off, put on clean clothes, did the laundry, washed up, changed his bedding, hoovered, made himself a meal and a cuppa.

He sat in his bed and when he was done, he through away all the bottles he had, all the drugs he had acquired (apart from his stash of weed) and threw them all away. He found his blades and he discarded of them too. The only things that remained where his smokes and his weed. That was never bad for him, mentally that is, so he kept those. He put all photos of him and Barty into an old photo album he got a while back and he shoved it deep into his closet. He'd keep them for the memories but not for anything else.

He was going to change.

--

Evan found it was simpler staying single, all dating ever did was fill his mouth with bile. He thinks he's somewhere on the spectrum of Aromantic. Barty was okay but he isn't much into anyone else. He's okay with that.

He finds meanings in his cat and his friends, the rays of sun on good mornings and the cold tango apples he has in his fridge. He finds it in the kebab he eats when he's high, the lighter Pandora decorated for him, the crotcheting Dorcas has taken up.

He has plants around his shelves, and event fliers everywhere. He finds new music everyday, he tries to read.

He moves forward. No matter how bittersweet the thoughts of Barty are, he moves. And there's nowhere to go but up.