warning: Self-harm, talk of eating disorder, talk of past child abuse

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Alex couldn't handle it.

He felt Jefferson's breath on the back of his neck as soon as he stepped outside at the end of his class.

"I'll meet you back at the dorm, okay? I just have to grab something first." John gave Alex a quizzical look before nodding and heading off.

"What's your problem?" Alex asked, whirling around to confront Jefferson. Jefferson sneered at him.

"I don't like little runty immigrants on my campus, homo," Jefferson smirked. He leaned against the brick wall of the building, his magenta coat a bright flouresent against the muted red.

"Don't call me that," Alex said, his voice tight.

"Why shouldn't I? It's what you are. I've seen you with your little boyfriend. You two are practically drooling over each other."

Alex rolled his eyes. "And why should you be concerned about my sexuality? From the look of your outfit, you have better things to worry about," he said, gesturing to the offending coat.

Quick as a flash, Jefferson's hand slammed into Alex's windpipe. He was thrown into the wall, his breath catching in his throat.

"Stay out of my way, you little bastard," Jefferson growled, and he let Alex drop to the ground before marching off.

Alex gasped and clutched at his throat, sucking air. He shakily got to his feet, anger boiling in his veins. Who did Jefferson think he was?

He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and pulled it out. It was a text from John: Where are you?

Alex was hit with a rush of guilt. Poor John had no idea what was going on.

I'm heading back right now, he texted back, and then put his phone back in his pocket.

"Where were you?" John questioned when Alex got back to their dorm. He slammed the door behind him and dropped his bag onto his bed, and went immediately to his desk. The words were buzzing in his head; he couldn't seem to think straight. It didn't help that he was fuming. Alex got this way sometimes, where he just couldn't concentrate, where the voices in his head wouldn't shut up.

"Alex?" John sounded worried.

"It's fine. Nothing to worry about. Just a spat with Jefferson."

John about nearly fell off his bed. "Are you okay? What happend?"

"Nothing. God, just leave me alone, will you?!" Alex exploded, whirling around to glare at John. His boyfriend shrank away, taken aback by his outburst.

Alex sighed and rubbed his face. "Look, John, I'm sorry, okay? But I really just don't want to talk about it."

"No, whatever," John muttered. He got up and grabbed his room key off the hook by door. "I'm going over to Laf's for awhile."

"Um, okay, do you want me-" the door slammed shut, "-to come with..." Alex trailed off. He sighed again. "Great job Alex, you fucked another thing up."

John didn't come home that night.

So when Alexander woke up screaming, he was alone with the ghosts of his past.

He got out of bed and began to pace. He clenched his hands unilt there was half-moon marks in his palms from his fingernails, until he was sure there was a track walked into the wooden floor of the dorm.

Alex couldn't seem to calm down. His breathing was fast, his heart pounded in his chest, his head was whirling.

He found himself in the bathroom.

He had promised himself he would never be in this position again.

Promises are made to be broken.

He dug around in his stuff until he found what he needed.

Alex sat on the lip of the bathtub and turned the razor over in his hand. It glinted in the light of the bulb above the sink; a new razor he had brought with him just in case of a situation like this one.

When Alex had been bumped form foster home to foster home, it had just made his anxiety and panic attacks worse. The flashbacks came at random times, it felt like there was nothing he could do to control his life.

But he could control what happened to his body.

Pushing up his sleeves, Alex forced himself looking at the thick web of scars on his arms. There was two that really stood out: two thick, jagged red lines, each the length of his forearm, one for each arm.

They had been put there when he was 15, when his life was the most hectic. He was still adjusting to living in the States, the flashbacks were around every corner, and he could barely take a shower without having a panic attack.

Alex had been sick of everything. He was tired of living without his mom, he was tired of being uprooted from a home just about every week; he was tired of life in general.

So when his foster mom walked in on him laying in a pool of blood on his bed, the white sheets turning pink under his wrists, she had screamed and called 911. The last thing Alex remembered was the face of a disapointed paramedic staring down at him while they loaded him into the ambulance.

He had been released from the hospital the next week and put back into the foster system.

Two years later here he was. And there was a reason he always wore a sweater or long sleeved shirt.

He shook himself out of his thoughts. There was no need to dwell on the past. Nothing could change it.

He pressed the edge of the razor down on his wrist, and in one quick motion dragged it across. Blood welled up immediately, crimson against his pale skin. Alex let out a sigh of relief. Already he could feel himself relaxing, his brain focusing and clicking back into where it needed to be.

One more cut.

And another.

And another.

When they stopped bleeding, he tugged his sleeves down. He'd have to hide this from John-if John even wanted to talk to him anymore.

Alex exited the bathroom and climbed back into bed. He stared at the ceiling and thought the thoughts he promised himself he would never think again.

Promises are made to be broken.

He didn't sleep for the rest of the night.

John walked in the next morning, carrying two coffees. Alex was sitting at his desk, looking extremely disheveled, the sleeves of his sweatshirt pulled over his wrists.

"Alex-I want to apologize. I shouldn't have left like that, I'm sorry."

Alex turned towards him and shook his head. "No, John, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have taken my anger out on you. There was just- just a lot of stuff in my head. And it was hard to concentrate on one thing at a time."

John held one of the coffees. "Truce?"

Alex gave a small smile and got up. "Truce," he agreed, and he hugged his boyfriend before taking the coffee.

John sat on his bed and sipped his drink, watching Alex work. He knew they were still not exactly out of the woods of their fight yet, and that it was delicate ground that he needed to tread lightly on. But still... he was curious.

"Can I read some of your work sometime?"

Alex gave a small frown and gently closed his laptop. "Sorry, John, but... it's kind of private."

Alex wrote everything down. And when he said everything, he meant everything. There was some seriously dark stuff in his computer files, especially from after he had gotten out of the hospital.

His foster mom had made him see a therapist- at least, until he had to move to another house.

But while he had seen a shrink, she had suggested that he get something to write on. Whether it be a journal or a computer, just somewhere where he could put the thoughts running rampant in his head down.

So after his appointment, Alex had gone to the pawn shop downtown and gotten his laptop for a very cheap $100. Sure, it had a few dings and scratches, but it wasn't like he needed something fancy. Just a place to get the thoughts out of his head and onto paper. And he would need one for college and school anyways, he reasoned.

That laptop was a lifesaver. Literally.

There would be days where Alex would write all night to distract himself, where he needed to be lost for a while so he wouldn't hurt anyone-especially himself.

And so his foster parents would get used to the muted blue glow that seeped out from under his door after he was supposed to be alseep. They learned to make sure that he was up for school and not alseep, with his glasses on the floor and the imprints from the keyboard on his face after passing out at his desk.

Alex shook himself from his thoughts. John was staring at the ceiling, looking bored out of his mind. They only had a few days left before classes started; a few days of precious freedom.

"What do you want to do?" Alex asked. John shrugged. Now that Alex thought about it, he didn't look bored. He looked depressed, and not just because of their fight. Alex suspected something else was wrong.

He got out of his chair and laid on John's bed. "Tell me what's going on."

John put his coffee on his nightstand and laid next to him. He sighed.

"Today-it's just...kind of hard."

Alex rolled over so that he could see John's face. "Would you like to tell me why?" He asked gently.

"Today's the anniversary of my brother's death."

"Oh God, John, I'm sorry." Alex wrapped his arms around his boyfriend. "What happened?"

"He was really young. He was playing outside-I thought he was fine. And then he started screaming. He fell out of the tree we had in our yard and fractured his skull." A tear rolled down John's face and landed on Alex's shoulder. "It was my fault. I was supposed to be watching him."

"No, John. It wasn't your fault. It was an accident!" Alex squeezed him tighter. "It was just an accident," he repeated.

"My dad blames me. He hates me already for being... y'know, for being gay. This is just another reason for him to do what he does."

Alex froze.

"John-what does he do?"

John slowly untangled himself from Alex's arms and sat up. "Forget I said anything.

Alex grabbed John's wrist. "You need to tell me if I need to be worried or not."

John gently extracted himself once again from Alex, and moved away from him. "Alex, it's fine," he said. "You don't have to worry."

But there was a feeling in Alex's gut that something in this picture was really not right. That he actually did need to be worried. And before he could stop himself, he opened his mouth.

"I'll trade my secret for yours."

He immediately regretted that those words ever left his mouth.

But John turned around and looked at him. "You would do that?"

Alex nodded. "I need to know that you're okay."

John sat on Alex's bed so that they were facing each other. "Okay," he said warily. "Then you can go first."

Alex turned to face the wall.

"What-"

"If I look at you, I won't be able to do this," Alexander explained. He took a deep breath.

"When I was being moved from home to home, there was a lot of stuff happening. There was one...incident... that I'm going to tell you later because I don't want to scare you off right away," he halfheartedly joked.

"It felt like there was no control in my life. So I starting controlling the only thing that I could-my body. It started out with just a skipped lunch. I was in a hurry to one of my classes one day; I had to turn something in. So I just...skipped. And it felt good. So I did it the next day. I felt like I had a little bit of control. That if I didn't eat lunch, I controlled what was happening to me, even if it was only a little bit. And then I thought, if I don't need lunch... then I don't need dinner either." Alex heard John suck in a breath and forged on before he could say anything.

"It was great, because I was finally deciding what was happening to me. And I felt powerful, because all of these other people complained that they had no control with their lives, that they didn't get to make the decisions. And here I was, finally getting all the control I had been craving." Alex closed his eyes.

"I passed out in the middle of English class. That was when people started worrying. The doctors said that I was grossly underweight for someone my age, that I needed to start eating again. But it was really hard. It's still hard. That's why I don't eat a lot," he added, turning back to face John. "Because when I feel like there's too much chaos in my life, I start falling back into old habits. And college is pretty chaotic."

John got off of his bed and closed the space between them. He took Alex's hand in his and traced the nails, then kissed his palm. "I'm so sorry," he said, and he hugged Alex.

Alex allowed himself to lean into John for a second, then he gently pushed the other boy off of himself.

"Okay. My sob story is over" -for the most part-"it's time to hear your stuff."

John sighed and looked down at his hands. "My dad- he doesn't agree with my 'lifestyle'," he began, making quote marks with his fingers, "he thinks I shouldn't be allowed to like guys. So, when he found out that I was gay in my sophomore year. . . he wasn't happy. Not at all.

"It was little things at first. He would shove me in the hallway just slightly when he was walking past, or he'd grab my arm a little too hard when he was mad. Then when I was a junior, he started hitting me. Just small stuff, like slaps, and then bigger things. He would shove me up against the wall with his hands around my neck. It escalated really quickly after that." John's voice broke and Alex slipped his hand back into John's.

"He can't hurt you here."

John smiled a little and put his head on the younger boy's shoulder.

They stayed like that for a while, two messed up teenagers leaning against each other, counting on the other for silent support.

It felt good to have someone care. To have someone listen.

It felt like love.