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Stan doesn’t know when it started. He’s tried countless times, but has never been able to pinpoint exactly when the thoughts began.
He’s always been prone to depression, he thinks. He knows it’s genetic and his mother and sister both have it, too.
Depression and suicide are not mutually exclusive.
He’s never tried to kill himself though.
He’s thought about it.
He thinks about it all the time. When he wakes up, he thinks of jumping out of his window. If he hit the ground head first, he’d be dead.
When he walks to the bus stop, he thinks of jumping in front of a car or a stray bullet from the hunters in the woods surrounding the farm.
When he walks through the halls at school, he thinks of throwing himself in front of his friends to protect them from the wrath of a shooter – again.
When he takes his meds at night, he thinks of downing the whole bottle and then whatever he can find in the medicine cabinet. He could wash it down with whiskey as his last hurrah.
The issue with this feeling is that he just can’t commit. There are too many factors.
Who would find the body? How would they react? Would he bother leaving a note? Who would he leave a note for? Whatever he wrote could be misinterpreted and then whoever he wrote one too could be left with a fucked up memory of him that he wouldn’t be able to correct.
So, he does it little by little.
He drinks too much. He smokes cigarettes faster than anyone should. He takes unlabeled pills that he steals from Towelie’s room, just to see what they do.
He doesn’t always look before crossing both ways. Sometimes, when he’s driving on the highway, he closes his eyes.
He knows it’s selfish – there are plenty of people who have cried because of him, or for him, or whatever, but he just couldn’t accept their offers of help. He couldn’t allow himself to burden anyone further than he did by simply existing.
Existing was all he was allowed to do. Nothing more, nothing less. He was to live numbly, to barely live at all.
He was so, so hard to love. He was pessimistic at best and aloof. He came off as brash and rude, and once you got to know him, you just realized he was apathetic on top of it all.
He punished the people he loved to deter them. He couldn’t let anyone get burned when he was always burning alive.
Kyle was the hardest to push away.
He tried often, in all sorts of ways.
Once, he accused Kyle of deserving better. He told him not to talk to him until he was ready to say goodbye for good.
Later that night, Stan got trashed alone at Stark’s Pond and called him begging for a ride.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Stan cried into the voicemail. “Please, I don’t- I don’t wanna be alone.”
There was knocking at his bedroom door and he was too drunk, crying too loudly to even hear it. Kyle let himself in and was hit with the smell of sweat and alcohol. There were fruit flies zipping around every so often and the laundry and trash on the floor was piled up to his knees once he got closer to the bed.
“Stan,” He said, shaking Stan by the shoulders. “Stan, wake up. Look at me.”
Stan winced and whined, sobs dying down with the distraction. He cracked his eyes open and frowned at Kyle.
Stan felt nauseous.
He was so bad.
Kyle was here, with him, when he could be anywhere else. He was taking up Kyle’s time. He hadn’t done anything to earn it and even if he had, he did not deserve it.
Stan was ugly and needy like a sick dog. He snarled when you got too close and mourned when you got too far. He shook and cried and begged him to stay. He kicked and screamed and demanded he leave.
Stan rolled over, throwing up over the side of his bed. Kyle flinched and cursed.
“Fuck, Stan,” He said, running a hand down his face to calm himself.
He stayed, though.
“Why’re you still here?” Stan said groggily as Kyle helped lower him into the bathtub.
“Do you want me to leave?” Kyle asked.
Stan huffed and immediately bent forwards, shoving his face into the bath water.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Kyle screamed, grabbing Stan’s shoulder and the hair on the top of his head and pulling him up.
Stan coughed when he was pulled up, and immediately started trying to bend over again.
“Just- just- Stan! Stop, dude!” Kyle shook his head by the hair, not hard enough to injure him, but enough to jarr him. “Look at me!”
Stan stopped and coughed some more, staring at Kyle the whole time. Kyle stepped back and thought he looked like a wet animal.
“Why are you doing this?” Kyle asked, distressed. He ran a hand through his own hair.
The knees of his pants and front of his shirt were soaked with bath water that had splashed out.
Stan thought he looked beautiful.
He shouldn’t have been there, though, because Stan did not deserve him.
“Just- Just go, man,” He said, waving a hand at Kyle dismissively. “You- I-”
“Stan, stop,” Kyle sighed.
“No, dude! You’re- You’re trying to control me! You’re being controlling!”
Kyle, sweet, patient Kyle, just looked at him.
“How am I trying to control you?”
Stan just sobbed, because Kyle knew he was sick.
Kyle was too good for him. He thought that if he fucked up worse the next time, maybe he’d leave. He knew that would be the only way he could actually follow through with anything.
The problem was that every time he drove Kyle off, he came back warbling like a child.
He did sick things like that often. He figured if he didn’t have the courage to kill himself, he could do it slowly.
He died one by one.