A Wall Between

Chapter 5

Sasha huddled under his blankets and settled in to endure the pain of experiencing emotions. Being a human and having feelings was awful. Just the worst.

He found himself crying because... because he didn't know why. Because he'd embarrassed himself and because Cooper had been so kind and mostly just because all the anxiety that had built up inside him had created chemicals that his body wanted to disperse through tears. Or something like that.

Sometimes it made him feel better to remember that things like crying weren't necessarily logical or justified. Sometimes the human body just needed to do certain things or feel certain feelings for its own arcane reasons and trying to explain them rationally just didn't work.

Sasha wished he had friends. He didn't really wish that very often because, well... he'd had them. Or at least he'd thought he had. In high school he'd had people he sat with at lunch every day and they would talk and stuff, like friends do. Sasha usually didn't say much, but that was just how he was.

The moment high school had ended, though, he had ceased all contact with every one of those people. A couple of them had tried to reach out to him, but he had no interest in maintaining those relationships. They had simply been a means of not sitting alone at lunch.

He'd always assumed the problem was with him, not the people, because... well, because it was. The people were fine. Sasha just didn't connect with others. But Cooper... he felt differently about Cooper.

But maybe that was just lust. Cooper was attractive. None of Sasha's high school friends had been particularly attractive to him. If Cooper were a girl, would Sasha still want to be friends with him? He wanted to tell himself no, that this was just his teenage hormones getting all out of whack, but he wasn't so sure...

How had Cooper known that Sasha hadn't wanted to talk? Even his parents had never really understood the way Sasha would go quiet when he was upset, though it did complicate things that they were usually the reason for him being upset in the first place. They interpreted it as sulking, but every single time he was just incredibly overwhelmed and trying not to cry.

Cooper didn't seem to share Sasha's difficulty with speaking at all, yet somehow he intuitively understood it. He was incredibly grateful towards Cooper for coming into the situation and helping Sasha sort things out, but he was even more grateful to Cooper for seeing and immediately accepting his feelings, no matter how stupid and disproportionate they were.

And Sasha hadn't even said thank you! Even Cooper had thanked him just for carrying the bucket of water back up and Sasha had just stood there awkwardly and then left. Sasha had been so weird and Cooper had been so nice anyway and Sasha needed to thank him.

But there was no way he could do it with words. Even if he waited until he had settled down and found some opportunity to speak to him, he didn't think he'd be able to get the words out properly. Maybe he'd just stumble over them or maybe he'd actually cry, but there was no way he would end up saying what he meant in a way that got his feelings across without just embarrassing himself further.

But he could write it down. Sasha climbed out from under his blankets and went to get his notepad and a pen.

He used this notepad to write down everything he needed to remember, be it passwords or appointment times or grocery lists. It had cartoon kitties down the sides of the pages so it wasn't the most space efficient, but it had been what he'd been able to find when he decided he needed one so it was what he used.

Sasha started trying to write a letter. He did his best to put into words how much it meant to him that Cooper had helped him, that he'd been kind and reassuring, that he had understood Sasha's difficulty with talking. He cringed as he stared down at his messy handwriting. He crumpled the paper up and then tore it into tiny pieces just to make absolutely sure it could never be found.