Not Normal//Joshler AU

Window

"You can't do that."
"And why not?"
"Because people care about you. I care about you."
"Prove it."
***
(Tyler)
You're so fucking stupid. You don't deserve to live.
Yes I do!
Wrong. You had a chance to leave and you blew it chatting up some asshole.
He's nice! He's a fucking good person! Now shut the hell up and leave me alone!
Kill him
How do you expect me to do that when I'm locked up in here? I'm not going to kill him.
Then kill yourself.

The voices are everywhere. They surround me, sink me in, and do horrible things. They've been taunting me since yesterday after I got back. The guards restricted me to just my room for 'safety reasons.'

"I CAN'T FUCKING TAKE THIS ANYMORE!" I lay on the ground with my hands covering my ears, rocking back and forth, biting my lip until it bleeds. Almost in the blink of an eye I jump up on my bed and reach for the ceiling. I move the panel just above my bed and grab what I need, and then run to the small, pitiful sink in the corner of my room.

I look in the mirror and I see something new. Like I've learned a new emotion.

Longing.

I want him to be here. His dorky smile that makes his eyes close and his abs that show through his shirt. He's amazing, and for a short moment, he made me feel normal. And normal is what I've always dreamed of being.

I look again and I see something else, a pitiful, low life faggot.

I take my razor blades out of the plastic bag and slowly drag one across my skin, sinking the blade deeper as the line gets longer. Right above my elbow crease. I continue this pattern, not caring to wipe up the blood, until I get about halfway down my forearm.

Knock, knock.

Shit. Shitshitshit. I quickly rinse off my arm and wrap it in some paper towels and pull my sleeve down over the mess.
"Coming!" I yell before I quickly clean the blood out of the sink. I stuff the bloody blades back into the bag, jump on the bed, and stuff them in the ceiling seconds before the door is opened.
"You have a visitor, Joseph.
I must have misheard the man.
"What?"
"I said, you have a visitor."
"B..but who would be visiting me?"
I don't have anyone that would visit me on the outside world. Reluctantly, thinking this is a trap to get me to do some stupid shit for them, I follow him, because there's a small bit of hope that someone might actually care about me. I follow the man into the visiting room, and his fiery red hair immediately catches my attention.
"Josh?!"
He smiles a dorky grin.
"Hey Tyler. Before you think I'm stalking you, I saw the name tags on their uniforms and saw the name of this place. I can't believe you ran all the way to where I was! You're insane dude!"

"Well yeah, obviously I'm insane. I'm stuck here. And if I don't get my act together in like, 4 months, I'm going to have to go to an adult mental hospital. Sorry I lied about my age to you, I just have a hard time trusting people."

"Nah, dude. Don't worry about it."

"Josh, why are you here?"

(Josh)
I have to think for a minute on that one. Why am I here? I just saw the name of this place and I had to come here. I...I had to. I decide to tell him that.
"I just had to."
I look at him. Everything about him is desirable to me. His small figure, the way his voice breaks when he talks, his short, messy brown hair. The way he never makes direct eye contact with me. I've just met this guy, and he's insane, but all I want to do is be near him.
Maybe I'm crazy, too.

After a long, somewhat comfortable silence, I notice something brown peel out of his jacket sleeve.
"Hey. What's that?"
He looks startled, almost like he didn't know I was still here.
"Uh, it's nothing." He pulls his sleeve down farther. I get this really unsettling feeling, so I approach him and pull up his sleeve. Thinking back, I probably shouldn't have done that, he is in a mental hospital after all. He could have been dangerous.
But at that moment, nothing felt dangerous.

What I see under the sleeve is brown paper towels, the kind in public restrooms, and seeping through them is a dark liquid. Slowly, while holding him by the wrist, I pull off every single one of those paper towels until I'm left with bare skin. Bloody, damaged, bare skin.

He's still looking down when I look up at him.
"Why?"
Once again, I've startled him, like he's a lost baby deer in the forest, waiting to be hunted. He looks at my hair instead of my eyes and says
"Because the physical pain takes the mental pain away. I didn't want to, I swear. I just had to."
It didn't take me long to realize he's repeated my words from earlier.
"But. You can't do that."
"Why not?!" He says this a little aggressively.
"Because this is bad. You can't do that. If you would've went a little closer to here," I drag my finger across his blood vein visibly poking out of his wrist. "you could've killed yourself."

He thinks a lot about what to say before he responds.
He plus his arm away and pulls the sleeve back down. "That was the plan."
"You can't do that." I repeat my words.
"Why the fuck not?" He turns around to face me, and this time he looks straight into my eyes, straight into my soul it feels like. I look into his eyes and see pain, but not pain from the marks he's made on himself. The atmosphere is intense.
"Because people care about you."
"No they don't. I haven't had a visit, a phone call, or anything for as long as I can remember. I don't even remember ever having a family, or friends, even the other psychos in this ward want nothing to do with me."
"Let me rephrase that. I care about you."
"Prove it."
"I'm gonna help you get out of here. The legal way."

***
I wipe the dried blood off of him with a wet towel, and bandage up the ripped parts of him.
"What's wrong with you Tyler? Why are you here?"
It's a long while before he speaks.
"I have depression and suicidal thoughts, severe anxiety and panic attacks, but mostly it's the voices in my head that have kept me here. They tell me to do horrible things to myself or others." He pulls him arm away briefly to get my attention. I look up at him. "They've been telling me to kill you all day. That's why I had to...stop them."

(Tyler)
...stop them."
I suddenly feel myself being pulled into an embrace. It's been so long since I've felt a hug. He smells nice. Like cologne and chocolate. He pushes me back, holding me by the shoulders, and looks directly into my eyes. I have to focus on something else, so I look at his shoulder.
"I know you wouldn't do that." His shoulder says.
"How do you know that? Why wouldn't I?"
"Because I trust you, Tyler."
"That's quite a dumb thing to say, if you ask me."

After more silence, I finally say something else.
"Ive been told I had a family once, but I don't remember anything about them. All I've ever known are the voices. I think something bad happened and they made me come here. But how can I know they exist if they've never called or visited or anything? You're the first person that has ever visited me in the last 11 years. I've been told I can't feel very many emotions. Mainly compassion. Something's fucked up in my brain."
He pulls me into one last embrace before visiting hours are over and kisses me on the top of my head. He whispers very softly into my hair.
"I'm gonna get you out of here, I promise."
"What's your last name?" I say into his chest.
He giggles at the bad timing.
"Dun. Spelled D-U-N."
"Mines Joseph. Spelled C-R-A-Z-Y."