#( womp womp )

     Tearful eyes snap up to the ceiling, breathing slow, trying to settle down, press his emotions back into their neat little compact boxes on his mental shelf for later. It’s not Carlos’ problem. It’s no one’s but his own.

              “ He— Hey, ” He tries, but his words catch in the back of his throat around the spike of hot tears building up again. “ I’m sorry,   I didn’t,   um, ”  he sniffs loudly, wiping away snot and tears, wondering if it would be too rude for him to snatch his clothes up and run out the door, if that’s still a viable option for the night. He’s silent again for a moment, dark & tired eyes puffy.

                                                                                                  It’s just... HUMILIATING. 

“ I didn’t mean to wake you, I was just— ”

          His voice fails, sighing as he almost collapses in on himself like a dying star,  burning up  SO  BRILLIANTLY  until the moment of absolute destruction, hanging his head with the unbearable weight on his shoulders as if it was just too much effort to kept it held high anymore. He hates it, every last part; hates the concern he can feel digging into him in the other man’s words, if only for the sole reason he can feel how much he desperately needs it, how much he wants to lean into him, to hold him. TO BE HELD. He doesn’t  WANT  to need it, or him, or ANYONE, but it’s just too much to handle for one young man on his own.                                                                              ( YOU WERE JUST   W H A T ,  JAMES? )

He tries his best to wave it away.

    “ I DON’T — um— D-don’t worry about me.                                 I’ll be fine for tomorrow’s case.  My head’s clear,”                                                        He disclaims quickly like that mattered,  ever the soldier.       “  It’s just, um....                          It’s just been . . .      JUST   ONE  OF   T H O S E  NIGHTS... ”

     THOSE NIGHTS, meaning the nights when explosions rang out in his ears like he’d never left — when even in his dreams he swam through the bodies of people he’d never see again, their final calls and pleas for him to send their goodbyes home suck on a LOOP, ending & starting right back over,   e v e r y   time,  WITHOUT  FAIL  — when even a single crash from the residents outside their motel could cause him to fling into a panic, wide awake & gun beneath his pillow pointed, READY TO FIGHT...

     Demons lurked in every last nook and cranny in the young boy’s mind, and the harder he tried to fight against them, the more they clawed their way through.

“  I  just,  um —

                            J   E   S   U  S  . . .   ” James  W E P T ,  that carefully constructed composure gone once again as his mind lingers for just a moment too long on an old friend.

                                               “  I’M  SO  S O R R Y  . . . ”

                                               ( He just doesn’t know if it’s meant for Carlos, or for BEN. )