Delirium

.thirty one

Elliot wasn't one for fear.

Why would he be when everything that happened to him was usually under his control and things that weren't were easy to gain control of. Even as a child, his parents made it a priority to make sure that he learned how to be fearless. The instinctive human emotion was trained out of him by any means necessary, beatings included.

Elliot wasn't one for fear.

His mother had once locked him in the attic with no source of light. It had been his childhood fear, dark small places, and he had cried and screamed for the woman to come and get him. He had been in that attic for two days until he realized that begging the woman to come wouldn't work and he started to examine his surroundings. It was then when he realized that he could control the situation that he was in. He familiarized himself with the stuff up there, memorized the layout, and learned where the creaking came from in the middle of the night. He did this and by the time the woman came back to retrieve him, Elliot had no intention of actually leaving. It was quiet, there was no association with the assholes in his family and it had actually been therapeutic having time to himself. He had ended up loving it, moving his bedroom up there.

Elliot wasn't one for fear...

His father had given him a gun him one time, purposely withholding the fact that it was unloaded, and told Elliot to pull the trigger towards his own head. This had been in his teenage years he had learned not to show fear to his father. So he didn't as he took the gun, pointed it to his father's face and pulling the trigger.

"Why'd you do that Elliot?"

"Because it was idiotic of you to give me the gun while having no weapon of your own. There's no fear when faced with stupidity, just use the stupidity against them."

It was one of the handfuls of times that his father had laughed, grabbing the gun from out of his son's hands and walking away shaking his head.

Elliot wasn't one for fear...

And sure there had been slight worry when Cyan had gone to the hospital after he overdosed but was nothing compared to the deadening fear that overtook him at that moment.

Because the moment that he saw Cyan let go of the root...the moment he saw his head disappear underneath the water and the screams from the other two males reach his ears, the feeling was a blade to the chest. Sharp and quick. His vision blinded for a moment, his voice not even sounding like his own as he screamed the male's name and his movements working before his mind could register them.

Carter didn't even stop him as he headed for the lake and dived in. If anything, Carter was ready to follow after him but not being able to, his feet frozen to the ground.

"Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!" Mason repeated as he let go of the thick tree branch and went for his phone to call for help.

"He's going to get himself killed!" He yelled to Carter about Elliot, not seeing the male resurface. The water crashed against the shore, the wind whipping past him and the thunder still showing its wrath above them.

"He knows."

Mason ignored Carter's words as he paced the ground with his hands trembling around the phone. Seconds felt like hours as they ticked on with nothing happening and by the time that the 911 operator had gotten on the phone, Mason's throat felt as if it had closed.

This was his fault.

And yet if anyone were to ask either Elliot or Carter, they would've told him that it was their fault. This wasn't supposed to happen. None of this was supposed to happen.