wannabe tumblr title: full stops represent finality and their abscence a willingness to progress

I finally posted the second chapter of something!!

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He was falling from grace, falling out of will, failing at the one thing he was sure he could do. There had been a noise, the first noise in a while that he hadn't blocked out in favour of the constant white noise that never hangs up. It had sounded like a car being unlocked, it sounded like keys being dropped, it sounded like the voice of a person who worried a little too much about someone they didn't know.

Excuse me? Hello, don't jump, please, it's not the answer

There wasn't anything else to play for, no more cards to chip in and he wasn't really sure if anyone had spoken at all. He had yet to turn his back.

Please, for your family, your friends- for me. Don't do it. Whatever is so bad will get better, whatever you think you need to run from isn't worth it, because you're worth it, you're worth everything in the entire universe

That caught him, made him turn around to face blue eyes and a glowing presence. He could have been contemplating life without the thought of ending it, for all this man knew, and they hadn't ever met yet here he was offering the universe. He felt like there should be something swelling in his chest but the words family and friends still stung like asphalt at full force and rejection heavier than any love given with all the means of getting even.

You don't even know me.

It was a simple enough statement and the slight creasing of the man's brows may have said he thought it was as loaded as it actually was, but it would take a miracle and seven weeks to catch the tiny discrepancies in his tone that proved he wasn't arrogant or defensive; he just couldn't get any other words out between holding back tears and not turning around and leaving as he had intended to do before this conversation got anywhere. It was almost like he was scared (terrified).

That doesn't matter; everyone deserves the world

Even mass murderers?

They get that tiny park with the broken swing set down the road

There was a smile, hidden under flashing memories of a time at that park before the swing was broken. Of missing teeth and bright blurs of colour being pushed by beaming parents. Of a cheap wooden picture frame capturing the moment and leaving it in solitary confinement to be diluted like cordial and forgotten like the smile so desperately clawing at the bars.

The stranger was getting closer. Not that he was looking; it was more that he could feel the intensity of another person in proximity, almost willing him to walk away, to back up towards the cliff edge. He felt like a dog with the way he was being approached. All hands out and soft eyes, but the distance between them still stretched cavernous, all his bridges long ago burnt and smoking like flares.

Phil

Words again, blinding through the white noise, and not one he could comprehend.

My name is Phil, what's yours?

Oh. It seemed Phil had come close enough to reach a hand out handshake style. A silent beckoning for companionship. He didn't want to take it.

Dan. We're not friends

There, he could see a shift in this stranger's- Phil's face. A slight bowing of the head, softening of features, upturning of lips. Something like understanding emerged, loud and impending like silence after the crack of a gun at the start of a race. What race was he running now? When had he lost the last one?

Phil didn't know him, wasn't a friend, wasn't an enemy either. He was warm, relieving, an expression of emotion akin to tear tracks down faces soaking shirts that didn't know better. And he felt it. Felt the tears streaking his face- not the shirt, not yet- and was it possible to believe in someone so much for doing nothing?

Maybe as his shoulders hunched and his legs started to give out there had been a hand on his shoulder, a steadying force gone unnoticed; maybe as his chest fell forward with the weight of his breath and his knees succumbed to the temptation of familiarity, the gentle pressure below each elbow his only solace remained unrecognised in its origins. Maybe as he fell in exhalation, sunk in a perversion, drowned in the expectation of a future he'd almost dropped thirty feet under, maybe now he would allow himself to be caught.

The hesitation was tangible but a single look and a thousand words of appreciation made a mutual pact a singularity, a fact undeniable. There was something, some almost-bond blurring the lines of saviour and dependency, carving a path that both knew could end with desperation and both hoped could birth something far more beautiful than they could fathom- but neither were in right mind to make worthwhile investments at that moment, so there was a conversation hanging in the air.

We should meet again, in a time for some ordinary friending. Did- Do you have your phone? Maybe I can give you my number?

Not quite capable of words yet Dan struggles with the weight of living to pull himself upright, slipping his phone, useless damn phone, out of his pocket with the grace of a witness and hands it over to Phil after unlocking it. His inhibitions are guarded by garden fences, and it's not like there's all that much personal on his phone, nothing obvious anyway, and Phil knows privacy well enough. Another phone is pulled out and the process repeated, if a little smoother this time, and they agree there would be further conversation, further conservation, if only as a subtext. Dan had read an essay once about the tendency for people to rely on people who had come to them in times of extreme stress or emotion, and he doubted anything came close to almost leaping four stories in the context of extreme emotion. He didn't want this to be fake, he didn't want this to be a sick survival trick his mind was playing, he wanted this to be real. So he built his fences a little more picket-like, added reinforcements disguised as garden maintenance and cemented something akin to authority at the base of this situation.

Phil, we're not friends.

No, maybe not yet.

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Ta da! I hope I did this justice, concrit is always welcome and appreciated. Lil' Bastille ref cause please.