Day Seventeen. Jack - 5:37

I regretted nothing more than setting foot inside that kitchen.

I regretted nothing more than the sight that came to my eyes.

I regretted nothing more than the ignored words of Flyzik.

I regretted nothing more than simply letting this happen.

But I had, and there was very little I could do now, except look; I couldn't peel my eyes away, in fact. I wished I could have put Flyzik's intimidating demeanour past me and simply listened to what he said, but no I had ended up out here, a witness to this and Alex... and what surrounded him... those where the things I didn't want to think about- not that any of the situation was particularly enticing at all.

Alex... Alex was alive.

But barely and I think that was quite possibly worse, not that I was awfully keen upon finding my dead boyfriend's body in my kitchen, yet this was hardly the best of alternatives.

It was only the shaky rise and fall of his chest that reassured me of this fact, the fact that he was still alive; the rest of the scene led to other implications entirely. He looked like a dead man, but he was just a man who'd brushed fingertips with death himself, and now the two of us had been left to deal with the fallout.

Well, our kitchen - his kitchen, the marble kitchen that was quite frankly exquisite in all architectural forms, not that I was at all experienced in that field; our kitchen was ruined. And in fact that marble was stained and more reminiscent of a crime scene than the place we'd stood and talked less than twenty four hours ago.

It hurt to think that there were no clues, no hints, no warning as to the happening of this event; I'd just been left a warning I did nothing but foolishly avoid, and Alex... laying there, barely Alex anymore.

The stains of crimson against once pearly white marble were painfully obvious, like crayons melted against paper, but this hadn't been a packet of crayons... this had been Alex's skull colliding far too fast and far too hard with cold, unforgiving floor.

As I stepped closer, my breathing rate only increased, my eyes lighting up with nothing short of pure horror as my gaze connected with the pills; empty bottles, and pills on the floor, the medicine cabinet open, with little uncertainty as to where the pills could have gone.

He swallowed pills; lots of pills, well by the looks of things, a hell of a lot of pills. I couldn't connect this together, because it just wasn't the Alex I knew, although when I thought about it, when I pushed throw the facade of placid and content, I realised that this was very much Alex: irrational, stupid, destructive, and psychotic.

My heart was nothing short of broken, because Flyzik was somehow right and Alex just wasn't okay in the head, well not really and it fucking hurt like hell. Just to see him like this shook right through every nerve in my body.

I didn't want to believe that Alex, my boyfriend and my kidnapper wasn't any bit not okay in the head, because I’d been stupid and I'd goddamn stupidly attached to the most dangerous and reckless of people, and now I had nothing but to stand and suffer the consequences.

And I felt guilty; in fact I felt more than guilty, because somehow I just felt downright responsible... like all of this was nothing short of my fault. Because I'd been the one to do this, hadn't I? I wasn't sure as to how, but somehow I had caused this, because there could really be no other explanation to the boy lying in a mess of pills and his own blood on our marble kitchen floor.

I wondered as to how long he'd been like this. He'd have to have saved the file on my laptop after I'd fallen asleep, yet still after having planned this- was this a suicide attempt?

Could it possibly be after how good he'd been doing... well lately... things hadn't been all that 'great' to say the very least, but this was something I didn't quite want to accept... he was reckless but I never imagined that he'd do something quite so drastic, especially when he knew it'd hurt me as much and perhaps more than it hurt him.

Things just didn't quite add up and I hated how I hadn't expected this at all. Everything seemed to be perfect in my eyes, but I guess Alex had other ideas entirely... and now... I guess I got what I deserved as I was left with the aftermath, counting the seconds as I stood paralysed over Alex's body and waited for Flyzik to arrive sooner, because no matter how much I decided I hated the guy, he seemed to be, well by Alex's word, the only guy who could fix the situation.

I wasn't sure as to how a mess like this could possibly be rectified entirely and I was now just stood there praying that Flyzik was secretly a wizard or something else exactly as mind boggling, because right now all I wanted was for everything to be okay again, but life didn't quite like that... it was apparent.

Suddenly, my thought stream was interrupted by the sound of a key turning in the lock; I panicked at first, before slowly relaxing into the fact and the blind certainty that this would be Flyzik, and as I remained in my paralysed state, eyes now fixed upon the door, I just let myself accept that I was well and truly screwed if whoever lay behind the door wasn't Flyzik.

"Kid..." A guy stepped in, shutting the door behind him as he turned his attention towards me, scrutinising me from behind two, narrowed, brown eyes, laced with a stern and skeptical disposition. "I told you not to come in here. He told you not to come in here too."

He had dark brown and eyes of a similar shade that didn't make contact with mine, drifting straight around the room, almost scoping out the place, yet always far from making contact with the floor where Alex was.

I presumed this was Flyzik.

"I know you did. I know he did." I sighed, avoiding having to look at Alex, but somehow, eventually, I had to. And it was horrible; possibly even worse the second time, because now I'd noticed things that I never had before, like the grey tinge to his face as it stoned other, looking devoid of both blood and emotion.

He didn't look alive. He didn't even look real. And that did nothing short of make me sick; the thought made me want to empty the contents of my stomach all over the kitchen floor, but Alex had already made quite the mess and I didn't want to put myself in for more cleaning.

Flyzik walked to my side, almost grasping my shoulder to steady himself as he caught sight of Alex. "Holy shit!" And suddenly Flyzik wasn't quite so intimidating anymore, which really was a perplexing thought entirely.

"Will he make it..?" I threw the question out there that I didn't want to, but it was the question that most definitely had to be asked, regardless of whether I wanted to or not.

Flyzik shrugged, his shoulders moving with half hearted, empty movements that almost made me feel sorry for him, because it was rather clear that this was affecting him too. "Kid, I don't know."

I hit him with an aghast expression, petrified at the thought of being without Alex; the emptiness, the loneliness, the nothingness, and the great big hole in my chest where my heart used to be. Because Flyzik couldn't not know; Flyzik was supposed to know what to do and here I was unable to function because goddamn Alex was going to make it - he'd have to, for my pathetic sake at the very least.

He noticed my response, with widened eyes and a guilty smile stretched across his lower lips. "Let's just be optimistic and assume he will-"

"Should we take him to hospital- are we going to?" I barely managed to push the words out because this all be so weird - I wasn't sure how we'd even manage to carry Alex into a hospital in the state he was in, and what were we supposed to call an ambulance? That was most certainly off limits, because as soon as anyone official walked in, Alex would probably be arrested for several hundreds of charges.

And then again there was also the stupidly forgettable fact that I was actually a missing person, and the authorities were probably looking for me... or at least a stupid attention seeking part of me very much hoped so.

There was also the fact that Flyzik, whoever he was, he was probably wanted by the police to some degree, simply because he was the kind of guy who was kind of closely acquainted with Alex, well close enough for the guy to know where he lives - I doubt serial killers give out information like that particularly easily.

"We'd probably all get arrested for the shit he's taken-" Flyzik was right, and my idea was nothing short of a plain stupid one, but I was desperately holding on to Alex because he couldn't die.

He. Couldn't. Die.

"Doctors have a confidentiality thing for medical reasons." I butted in, hating my pretentious inability to never shut the fuck up as I caught a perfect view of the eye roll that shortly followed. Flyzik wasn't having my shit - we weren't leaving this house, but thinking about it, that was really probably for the best.

"Not with the kind of shit I'm supplying him with-"

"You're his dealer... You're a drug dealer?" Fuck. Alex had a drug dealer - that wasn't something I particularly wanted to think about in detail, but fuck, just fuck. It really didn't seem odd at all considering the kind of person Alex, yet there was something about the whole ordeal that I really just didn't like. It was probably the drug part.

"Kid, I prefer to think of myself as a one man black market. I have everything you could want that the law doesn't like."

"Oh." Alex had some dodgy acquaintances but I wasn't quite sure I expected this of all things there were to expect. I guessed right when I said the police probably wanted Flyzik to some degree, but I didn't account for him being quite this important or big of a criminal, but then again Alex didn't look like the type to put up with novices.

Flyzik stepped forward, crouching beside Alex after what seemed like far too long, and firmly gripping his chest. "The heart's functioning... irrationally, but at less some blood is getting somewhere."

"That's good... right?" I joined him beside Alex, glancing over my boyfriend's limp body, focusing almost obsessively upon the steady rise and fall of his chest as if it were the one thing to keep me alive, and in a situation like this, it probably wasn't quite that far off.

"Not necessarily, but in our situation yes."

"Oh." I wasn't quite sure how to react to that.

Matt picked up the pill bottles, examining them one by one, his expression contorting further as he went through the bottles. "This was meant to do some damage." He said with a sigh. "Alex isn't stupid, as stupid as what this makes him out to be. He knows what these things do."

"Can you reverse the effects or whatever...?"

"Not with more pills, this isn't fucking science, kid. This is Alex has been a stupid bitch and sent half his organs and a lot of his muscles into overdrive or hibernation mode." I shot him with an unintentionally confused expression.

"His heart and lungs are moderately okay at the very least. His brain, I'd need to assess once he wakes up- he could be pretty fucked up okay... I'll warn you... and with the level of sanity he was at prior to this..." He trailed off, his mind probably wandering with him, fucking off into a state of reality where Alex was the slightest bit sane.

"Don't." He grimaced at me, but stifled a nod. "How do we ugh... wake his brain up?"

"Like this." Flyzik winked at me, before increasing his voice into a yell that made the hairs on my skin prickle up. "Gaskarth get your head back here! What the fuck do you think? How is this acceptable? Get yourself together, asshole!" I shivered a little, knowing I surely would have found a nicer way to put it.

Silence. Nothing.

"It didn't work." I noted, glancing down at Alex's body and watching juts how motionless it remained apart from the steady rise and fall of his chest.

"Wait a moment, kid." He snapped at me behind gritted teeth, his tongue laced with arrogance.

"Fuck!" There was a spluttering cough as Alex tried to move, only to be pushed back down again by Flyzik.

"Don't fucking move, asshole." Alex rubbed his eyes, adjusting to the light and the fact that somehow he was still alive - a fact that I was stupidly glad of and one that Alex didn't seem to appreciate quite enough at all. "You've fucked yourself enough already, you don't need to break all your fucking bones."

"By holding me down like that, it's you that's going to break something, Flyzik." Alex grumbled, again trying to move, but Flyzik continuing in his quest to hold him down. Flyzik was fucking strong by the looks of it and I was just kind of selfishly glad I wasn't Alex right now.

"Don't threaten me when you can already barely breathe, Gaskarth." Alex simply teared his gaze away from Flyzik, his eyes eventually locking with mine, widening instantly, because he'd told me not to come into the kitchen, not to be here, not to witness this, because Alex still cared about me and he didn't want me to see him like this.

"Jacky..." His name trailed from my lips, nothing more than a heavy sigh matched with fluttering eyelids.

"Alex." I forced my best fake smile at him; I didn't know why I bothered - I just did. Maybe it was in an attempt to try and lift his spirits, but if it was, it was hardly the best of attempts by any means whatsoever.

"Jacky, am I dead? Will I die?"

I hazarded a glance at Flyzik, whose eyes were elsewhere - Alex's.

"D-Do you want to... is this an... at-tempt?" I stumbled out the words in an entirely pathetic and helplessness manner, because I didn't want to face this topic at all, yet with Alex I'd been plunged head first into it.

"Jacky?" He met me with those stupid, big brown eyes.

"What the kid means is did you try and fucking kill yourself?" Flyzik came and put it in an entirely more direct and horribly brutal manner, but it was one he couldn't escape, with no amount of flattery at all.

"Not kill myself... I was trying to fix myself." My breath hitched, my windpipe clogging entirely with the sensation of chocking on my badly held back tears.

"You're fucking insane." Flyzik snapped, inhaling far too much air and almost choking on it. "Dude, the only kind of fixing you need is extensive therapy."

Alex scoffed as if Flyzik was the insane one here, which despite his demeanour, compared to Alex, he really wasn't. "You and I both hate hospitals and the doctor bastards."

"I hate seeing you in this state more, Alex." And there was the only compassionate sentence that left Flyzik's lips.

"You just don't want to be held responsible for the body, Matt." Matt. Flyzik was his last name, I assumed. Matt Flyzik. That sounds okay, not that seemed to be the kind of name that seemed to fit someone like him; my brother knew a Matt, but that Matt was nothing like this.

"Well I know for sure that this kid ain't gonna do shit about it." He glanced at me, encasing my cheeks in a terrible blush.

"Fuck off, Flyzik. Don't touch Jacky." He was awfully protective over me even in this state and it broke my heart.

"Alright." Matt Flyzik sighed, possibly giving up on the both of us at once. "Kid, do you think he needs sorting out properly?"

"I don't know." I said after what felt like the longest silence, because both of them intimidated me to hell and I didn't want to chance disagreeing with and therefore upsetting either of them.

"That's just sweet talk for saying no - he's scared of you." Alex butted in. The second part was true, but I myself wasn't sure of the first.

"Alex... why did you...?" I glanced down at the pill bottles that were now stacked in an organised manner besides Flyzik.

"I'm fine." He protested, despite the irony that came with his words in his current situation.

"You're lying in a pool of your own blood." Flyzik snapped and Alex grimaced, glancing at the crimson liquid that had pooled out dangerously close to his head.

"Clean it up, Matt?" Alex contorted his face into a disgusted expression, clearly not impressed with the conditions he'd ironically put himself in.

"Not until you give us a straight answer."

Alex sighed, turning to me. "Jacky... it's you."

"What?" I panicked, turning to Flyzik almost as a source of comfort, but by the look he shot me I knew that it was nothing short of a terrible idea.

"You're fucking ugh- I'm in love with you... but I can't be... this is going to get us caught and I can't deal with emotions, you understand me, right?" I didn't understand him... not at all.

"You can't love me because you need to be a psychopath..." The words trailed off my tongue as if they were toxic, because I didn't believe them and I didn't want them to be to true, not ever, not at all.

"Exactly!" Alex exclaimed all too fucking eagerly.

"You're sick." I didn't use the word as an insult... it was more of a fact, or at least that's what I justified it to my conscience with.

"Will you listen to your boyfriend, huh?" Flyzik snapped, glaring at Alex's limp body.

"I'm not going into a fucking hospital - it's risky, okay." Alex groaned out, stretching his arms a little, only to have Flyzik move them immediately back into place.

"You shouldn't have killed people - it's fucking risky, okay?" Flyzik mimicked, snapping at him.

"You don't understand." He protested, again doing a typical Alex Gaskarth thing and trying to justify the unjustifiable, and annoyingly he'd probably end up succeeding in the matter.

"No, we don't." I butted in, causing his gaze to lock with mine. "We don't get why you need to be like this and we can't help you... we need to find someone that can, Lex."

He scoffed. "Good luck, good fucking luck."

Flyzik sighed, grabbing a bandage and stretching at around the injured area of his skull. "It's not bleeding now, but just to be sure." He then pulled Alex up and carried him bridal style to the sofa, it was kind of amusing to watch, Alex Gaskarth being all babied up, but the situation removed any humour from the situation within in an instant.

"Nothing hurts." Alex almost complained, his words making very little sense at all, well at least from my perspective they didn't.

"Your muscles will wake up soon, don't worry." Flyzik snapped, beginning upon mopping up the blood and making it look less like there'd just been a massacre in our kitchen, you know, just in case the police popped round or something.

"Jacky." Alex mewed as I neared him, snuggling up into his limp frame. I couldn't help myself, and I knew how much of a bad idea the last seventeen days of my life had been, I just couldn't help it; I couldn't help myself at all.

"Are you honestly okay?" I whispered in a hushed tone, twisting my neck awkwardly so my gaze met with his.

"No...” He replied and I nodded, expecting that answer entirely, but that still didn't affect just how little I wanted to hear it.

"I thought so." I paused, exhaling loudly and against Alex's chest. "I'm glad you didn't lie to me, though."

"I'm glad I didn't either." He admitted, his words barely audible, so I could barely hear them and generally ensuring that Matt didn't. "Promise me something?"

"Yeah?" I asked, widening my eyes as they met with his.

"You won't ever let Matt hate me, okay?" I said, the promise not being entirely what I expected. I think the stupid part of me wanted some stupid fairy tale I love you soppy bullshit, but this was Alex Gaskarth - he'd killed six people, but not me, and that was a mystery the world would never quite understand.

"I doubt he'll listen to me." I admitted against his chest.

"Mmm..." Alex sighed out, letting his aching head whiz around with a thousand thought. "I l-love you-u." He stammered out, almost scared of the words themselves, which I thought was entirely stupid and awfully juvenile.

"But you don't want to."

"There are some things we can't help though, and maybe we just have to learn to embrace those things."

Break Down, You've Always Been So Proud And Just Look At You Now. You're A Bad Smell In This Room. I Don't Wanna, I Don't Wanna Be Bad News. But You Are, But You Are.

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