Hush

Alex Gaskarth is... Well, he's a special boy, to say the least.

That is, of course, only according to his mother.

You see, Alex is... To put it quite simply, Alex is schizophrenic. It had all started about a month after his eleventh birthday. He'd been hanging out with his two best—and only—friends, showing them the few chords he'd managed to learn on his new guitar. Really, even just those few sloppily strung together notes sounded absolutely horrendous, but to the young, very easily amazed boys, it was by far the most fantastic thing they'd ever been so blessed to hear.

All three had been sitting on the ground in his room in a huddled circle, and as soon as Alex had finished his mini set, his friends, Rian and Zack, were pressing ever closer, wanting to catch every last detail glinting off the polished cherry wood.

None of them said anything, Alex just sitting there as proud as could be while Rian and Zack ogled at the beautifully carved instrument, occasionally reaching out to carefully run the pads of their fingers along the sharp curves and twists.

That's when he heard it. It was quiet, almost completely inaudible, but he could make out someone calling his name. He thought maybe he'd zoned out and his friends were trying to regain his attention, but they were still there sitting in front of him in awed silence, admiring his guitar.

He heard it again a few seconds later, just a little louder, and it didn't particularly sound like one of his friends, but he'd been too busy gazing down at his instrument to pay attention to whether their lips had moved or not.

Of course, he began to get frustrated. If they wanted to mess with him, couldn't they come up with something clever, something original? He decided to watch them closely after that, and when he heard his name being called again, he noticed that neither of their lips had moved. That confused him, obviously, but he was young. He didn't think there was anything wrong. He marked it down as him just hearing things; that happens to people sometimes, right?

It stopped then, and therefore every thought on the subject also disappeared. Why should he concern himself with such a thing?

Things continued on just fine for the next few days, but then the voice came back. This time, however, it wasn't alone. There were two more, now one girl and two boys, all calling his name, hissing and snickering at him as he darted around his room, peeking behind doors and under his bed before venturing towards the window. No matter where he looked, though, he saw nothing.

It stopped again, and Alex felt no more than frustration. Most people would've been scared at that point, but not Alex. He was eleven, therefore he was a man, and men don't get scared.

Of course, eleven-year-old boys can only concentrate on something for so long, and as before, he soon stopped troubling himself over it.

It was only the very next day that the voices came back, doing the same routine they'd done before. This time, however, they didn't stop.

"Alex," they'd whisper, drawling out each word in a less than admirable manner. "We know you can hear us, Alex; come play with us, Alex."

The young boy did his best to ignore them, and after about an hour or so, they faded away almost completely.

Soon enough, though, the words became more advanced, more brutal. They threatened death, killing everyone he knew and cared for. Alex didn't know what to do about any of it. How could he stop something from hurting others if he couldn't even see what that something was in the first place?

He tried to tell his mother, thinking that since she was an adult, she'd know exactly how to handle whatever was happening. She attempted to laugh it off, but she quickly came to the conclusion that her son's talk of death was brought upon by playing violent video games, and he lost all of those within the snap of his fingers.

The voices persisted, sometimes whispering menacingly and other times screaming, fighting for his attention against the other two who were also howling like banshees. When it became too much, Alex would argue back, and that would often lull them into stillness for just a bit.

------

By the time Alex was fourteen, he still didn't know what was wrong and why he couldn't see the things he heard. Part of him thought he was partially blind, but his rational side shut that thought out rather quickly. He didn't know who to go to, though, and he was at a standstill. His mother would only tsk whenever he tried to bring up the subject before jumping into a story about how 'you've been reading too much about death, sweetie,' or 'I should write a letter to those people who rate the TV shows; they're obviously doing a terrible job if all of this garbage is being put into your head.'

However, there was one exception to the 'no more garbage, Alex,' rule, and that was The Corpse Bride.

Alex had never been so excited for a movie to be released, and he'd not only begged, but stopped trying to continually bring up the constant argument going on in his head. It was with utter reluctance that Mrs. Gaskarth agreed to take her son, but the way Alex's face lit up in his joy told her that she'd made the right decision.

It was no more than halfway into the movie did Alex realize what was wrong with him. He, just like Emily, had maggots in his head. It all made perfect sense, and he'd been more than eager to express this new revelation to his mother.

She finally, finally, realized that something was just not right, and knowing that her son thought he had maggots in his head, whispering nonsense to him, was enough for her to call up a doctor.

Within two hours, Alex was sitting in a hospital room. He'd been forced to change into a gown and had gone through a few different CT scans, MRIs and numerous other tests and X-rays. He and Mrs. Gaskarth were simply left to wait in the room he'd been given, and for once Alex gave in to listening to what was being said; he'd never been bored enough to do that before.

It was a bad idea, of course, the voices all screeching, telling him how stupid and worthless he was, how he should just kill himself, how if he didn't do it, they would. It became so loud, persistent, that when he tried to tell them to shut up, he started screaming back, hands flying up to tug at his hair fruitlessly.

His mother, in a complete panic from witnessing such an episode for the first time, tried to get him to calm down on her own. Nurses, upon hearing the commotion, were quick to rush into the room. It took three of the bigger male nurses to hold Alex down, and yet he still thrashed, screamed and cried, demanding the voices just leave him alone already.

They stopped talking, instead just cackling away, sometimes becoming louder or quieter, as though they were running in his head from one eardrum to the other and then back again.

Alex had to be put under and strapped down gently to the bed. When he awoke, it was to his mother crying, her fingers combing gently through his hair.

"I'm so sorry, baby," she'd choked out, stroking his cheek lightly. "I'm so sorry I didn't listen to you; this is my entire fault."

For one of the first times in years, Alex didn't hear anything unnatural. His shallow breaths and his mother's strangled sobs filled the air around him, but it was the nicest sound he'd ever heard. The sounds of the imaginary were gone, and it was fantastic.

Alex’s mother didn’t say anymore, didn’t ask him to talk to her, and he appreciated that. He just wanted to hear the world for what it was, even if it now mainly consisted of nothing more than beeps and the muffled voices of the staff rushing through the hall just outside his door.

A doctor came in not too long after, though, and she gave Alex a sad smile, asking the typical, ‘how are you feeling?’ Alex merely shrugged in response, cocking his head slightly to the side as a way to convey that she could go on.

“We’ve already talked to your mother a bit about what’s been going on,” Dr. Mora said, gesturing to Mrs. Gaskarth, “and she’s told us all we need to know. Alex, from what we’ve been able to tell, you have schizophrenia. Do you know what that is?”

Alex shook his head, eyebrows scrunching together on his forehead.

“Well,” she started, glancing down at the chart hung on the foot of the hospital bed. “Schizophrenia is a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.”

“What,” was all Alex could say because, really, he was only fourteen and he was in the hospital, for God’s sake. He could definitely not be bothered with such big words at a time like this.

“What I’m basically trying to say,” Dr. Mora said slowly, pondering her words. Most people already knew what schizophrenia was when she gave them the diagnosis. “The voices you hear? They aren’t real; they don’t exist, and only you can hear them.”

“So I’m crazy,” Alex deduced, his eyes going wide with realization.

Dr. Mora bit her lip, deliberating his words and whether or not that was the right thing to say. After a moment, she shook her head no. “You’re not crazy; you have a mental illness,” she decided to go with, and Alex really didn’t see the difference. “Can you hear anything now? The voices?”

Alex shook his head no immediately, and Dr. Mora smiled.

“That’s good. We weren’t sure if the medication we mixed with the narcotics we had to give you worked. There’s only one problem now, really,” she trailed out, looking down at his charts again.

“What is it?” Mrs. Gaskarth demanded, leaning closer to the doctor, eyes wide and pleading.

“The good news is that the medication works,” she started, holding up her hand before either of the other two could interrupt. “However, the fact of the matter is that it’s only used legally in hospitals. We aren’t allowed to give you a prescription for it or anything. We do have other types of medications to battle the illness, but they aren’t as strong and might not help Alex as well as what he was given earlier has. That leaves you with only two options: admit Alex to the hospital, where he can go through more tests and therapy to hopefully cure him completely or try your luck with the other medications on the market that are legal.”

“There isn’t any way at all we could get what he was given?” Isobel pushed, not really believing what she was hearing.

“No, I’m sorry, ma’am, but I could lose my job if I permitted it to be given to a patient outside of these four walls,” she said, shaking her head sympathetically.

Isobel Gaskarth had never felt like such a terrible mother before, and even though she knew she should’ve decided on Alex’s fate, she figured she’d screwed up enough. If Alex was right before, then he should be given the chance to decide for himself now.

And, of course, being the typical fourteen-year-old he was, Alex figured the other medications would work just fine and decided that he would much rather just take those in place of everything else. Isobel did attempt to reason with him, but he was firm with where he stood on the matter.

That night, Alex went home with a bottle of pills and a piece of paper with his next prescription order on it.

------

It was a little over two years later, about three months before his seventeenth birthday, did Alex finally decide to call it quits. Not with his life, but with his pills. He’d had enough of them; they stopped the voices, yeah, but he hadn’t heard them in so long that he wasn’t even sure they had existed in the first damn place. Besides, he’d also be transferring to a new school, one where no one knew him so that he could kind of start fresh and finish out his high school career on a good note; a note where he had friends and was liked among his peers, where he wasn’t known as the schitzo-freak that roamed the halls.

He was kind of scared on his first day, of course. He’d purposely not taken his pill that morning, and he hadn’t heard anything unusual, but it was still early.

He went through his classes with an almost sort of ease; no one paid any attention to him, but at least they weren’t mocking him. It was nice, being able to walk through the halls without fear. However, when the day finally came to an end, Alex thought he could’ve exploded with happiness. He hadn’t been bothered by anyone in his classes or by the voices in his head. It was like a miracle in itself.

All good things must eventually come to an end, though.

It had been about a month since he’d moved from Towson High to Dulaney High, and while he was still often ignored, he had managed to make friends. With two boys, to be exact, by the names of Matt Flyzik and Danny Kurily. They were some of the nicest people Alex had ever talked with, and they even knew about the problems Alex used to have.

Alex knew he could talk to them about anything and everything even though he hadn’t known them all that long, but when he heard someone calling his name and no one was there, he just couldn’t bring himself to tell anyone. He didn’t want more pills, he didn’t want therapy, and he didn’t want to go back to the hospital. If he ignored it, surely it’d just go away for good, right?

The days slowly dragged by, and the voices became just as strong, if not more so, as they had been before. Alex could feel himself literally going crazy; it was a constant struggle to not retort back to what the voices said. This time around, they even gave him their names. The girl was Lainey, and the two guys were Slater and Hendowski.

They were ridiculous names to Alex, to anyone, really, but the fact that the voices behind the names were so menacing, so taunting, so endlessly infuriating, made the humor in the joke melt away.

Each day got worse, and each day Alex tried to ignore it as best he could. He needed to vent, to let out all of his emotions, to scream or cry, but he could only cry when his mother went to bed at night so that she didn’t ask questions or get worried. That would’ve been fine had Alex not been so physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted by that time each night to even move.

He started considering going out and checking himself into an asylum. It could be simple, and no one would have to know until he was already settled in. He could leave one night, just after his mother went to bed, and he could get a cab to Circles of Care, the local rehab center that doubled as an insane asylum. He could leave a note on his bed explaining where he went so she wouldn’t worry—she would anyway, though, since that’s what mothers do—and then everything would be okay. Well, sort of okay.

However, there was something in him that told him to wait. He figured it was just his subconscious telling his body that he wasn’t ready to leave home, to be without his mother for such an extended period of time, and his conscious agreed. He stayed, suffering through the hours day in and day out.

About a week after Alex finally decided he would go to Circles of Care, yet still not having the courage to do so, the voices were almost too much. He’d decided to go to school anyway, not wanting Matt and Danny to worry. He wanted to continue to pretend to be a normal kid, and normal kids go to school.

Danny could see something was wrong with his friend right away, though, even at such an early hour, and when asked what was wrong, Alex simply responded with, “I have a headache, don’t worry about it, man. I’ll be fine.” A reassuring, pained smile was tacked on Alex’s face with his declaration, and Matt offered up some Advil. The eldest boy took it, giving another faked smile in thanks before swallowing them down.

The pills did absolutely nothing to help, only assisted Lainey, Slater and Hendowski in coming up with more reasons to taunt him. Lainey was particularly loud, and even Alex wouldn’t hesitate to say that she had a pretty cute voice when she wasn’t screeching about nonsense—which she was doing a little too much that day. Her regular speaking voice was pitched just a bit high, but she also spoke softly enough that it didn’t matter. When she started screaming, though, Alex would’ve thought that his ears would start bleeding at any given second.

Surprisingly enough, Hendowski and Slater were fairly quiet, more so laughing in their deep voices than anything. They were complete opposites of Lainey, in every sense of the word. If she was loud, they were quiet. If she was quiet, they growled as loudly as they could manage, calling him names and filling his head with insults and threats.

It was always painful, no doubt, but he honestly preferred Hendowski and Slater to Lainey screaming. He could ignore comments, but he couldn’t ignore such a pitched tone. It was just past the borderline of being too much.

Right after the end of third period, he was just about to call it a day, ditch campus and run home as fast as he could, so that he could curl up in his bed and sob for once. It was just as he made it to the end of the last hallway, the front doors in sight, did he stop in his tracks. Even Lainey quieted down, Slater and Hendowski’s laughs softening.

There standing just a few feet in front of him was a tall, lanky boy, his black hair streaked messily with blonde and straightened to near perfection. His nose seemed too big from what Alex could see, and when the boy looked up, their gazes met, and Lainey, Hendowski and Slater stopped completely. Alex could only hear the blood rushing to his ears, the hammering of his heart in his chest as the boy smiled and began to walk closer.

“Hey,” the boy said, smiling a little wider than before.

Alex didn’t know what to do, wasn’t used to not hearing his voices without the help of his medication, and he simply allowed his jaw to fall open and then closed a few times before he finally responded with a stuttered, shaky, “H-hi.”

“I’m new,” the other boy said, “and I don’t really know where I’m going, so if you have some time, do you think you could show me where my next class is? It’s... fuck, it’s, uh... Mr. Turman’s room? Oh, I’m Jack, by the way.”

Alex realized that he had that class next anyway, and though his head was still pounding from only a few minutes ago, he suddenly didn’t want to leave. He didn’t understand what had made Lainey stop, but he guessed it had something to do with the boy stood in front of him, looking him over curiously as he awaited an answer.

“I, um, yeah, that’s actually my next class. I can take you there. And I’m Alex,” the barely-shorter boy said, successfully not stuttering or blushing like an idiot.

“Lead the way, Alex, darling!” Jack exclaimed, hooking his arm through Alex’s as he waited for the boy to point them in the right direction. Alex couldn’t help but blush at that, but he turned and began walking towards the right hallway. “Most guys hit me when I call them darling,” Jack mused as the halls started to slowly clear out, “but you didn’t. I think this is the beginning of something beautiful.”

Alex could only shake his head gently in response.

------

Jack and Alex, by the end of the semester, were constantly attached at the hip. Jack had found out about Alex’s manifestations about two weeks into their friendship, when he’d walked in on the boy rocking back and forth on his bedroom floor, legs hugged tightly to his torso and pained sobbing noises—which were muffled by his knees—filling the otherwise silent room.

As soon as Alex caught sight of Jack, Lainey, Hendowski and Slater all stopped, as they always did. Well, they didn’t completely stop any longer, but they didn’t say any bad things when Jack was around. They were actually pretty bearable when the younger boy was in the room, often whispering quietly about how Alex was clearly infatuated with him.

Alex ignored those words, especially after telling Jack what was going on. He left out the parts about what they said when Jack was so much as within sight, instead just giving half of the truth: they went away completely when he was around.

Alex’s crying had slowed down a considerable amount, and he could hear his heart beating in his ears, sudden fear of rejection making him feel weak. He didn’t want to lose Jack, the one person who kept him all but totally sane on a day-to-day basis.

So needless to say, when Jack plopped fully on the ground next to Alex and pulled the elder into his lap, wrapping his arms tightly around the shaking teen’s frame, the older boy was slightly stunned. He even went so far as to press kisses to the elder’s hair and forehead, murmuring reassurances and sweet nothings as he rocked their bodies back and forth on the floor. Alex had never felt safer and more wanted in his entire life, and though his voices had magically disappeared as soon as Jack touched him, Alex knew that they were right; he was falling pretty damn hard pretty damn fast for the boy he called his best friend.

------

Their first kiss was actually initiated by Alex on his birthday, just a mere month after that day. Jack didn’t even know what was happening; one second they were laughing and joking around like they often did, and the next second Alex was cupping his cheek with one hand, his other curling around the back of his neck as he brought their lips together.

Jack had never admitted it aloud—really, he didn’t see the need to since it hadn’t ever been brought up—but the reason he decided to go up to Alex that first day was because he thought the boy was endlessly attractive. He didn’t think Alex would be interested in him like that, though, so he kept quiet.

In reality, Alex didn’t even know what his sexuality was. He was more often than not so consumed in trying to remain functioning like a normal human every day that he didn’t have time to stop and think about someone being attractive or not. He knew with Jack, though. When Jack was around, when the voices disappeared and he could actually concentrate on what was happening, he didn’t have any doubts about what he felt. It wasn’t love, and he didn’t really think he’d ever be capable of such a thing—if you can’t love yourself, how the hell are you gonna love somebody else, as RuPaul says—but he did have strong feelings for the skinny boy, and he definitely didn’t feel them for Danny and Matt.

The kiss was slow, sweet and gentle, and as Jack wrapped his arms around Alex’s waist, pulling the boy closer, Alex pulled away, keeping his hands in their previous position as he leaned their foreheads together. He was glad Jack hadn’t freaked out on him—he’d been given two chances now and had yet to even once—and he just basked in the silence that enveloped them, waiting for the calm to pass before Jack pushed him away in disgust.

The younger boy didn’t do anything of the sort, though, instead shifting to press their lips together again. The rest of their day was spent like that, and somewhere down the line Alex had even gotten the courage to ask Jack to be his boyfriend. The lanky boy didn’t respond with a spoken ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ merely going in for another kiss as his answer.

Alex couldn’t remember a time when he’d been happier, and the effects of it lasted so long that even after Jack left that night, Lainey, Hendowski and Slater didn’t even return. For the first time in a long time, he got a good night’s rest.

------

Months progressed slowly, and the teens still hadn’t gotten even remotely bored with each other. They were so love struck for the other, lost puppies when they were apart, and most would probably find that annoyingly sickening. The two didn’t, not in the slightest, and craved every simple touch, every look. Lainey, Slater and Hendowski were all but nonexistent, only popping in every now and again to try and make Alex go crazy like before. It never worked, especially not when he’d catch sight of his boyfriend, who’d usually be gazing at him with such admiration, such adoration, that Alex was left a blushing mess.

Their feelings for each other had surely changed, but not in a bad way. It seemed like every day ended with them being impossibly closer to spilling the ‘L’ word, but both were too scared. They weren’t sure if what they were feeling was what the other was feeling, and they didn’t want to screw everything up, not when it was all going so damn perfectly. How would Alex be able to go on with life if Jack wasn’t there to keep him in check? To make sure he didn’t go crazy?

Jack felt the same, in a way. He’d become just as dependent of Alex as the elder had of him, but in a much different way. He didn’t need Alex to make sure he wouldn’t become mentally unstable, but he just wouldn’t know how to go on without his boyfriend. He may have been young, but he was more than positive that he wanted to spend his life with the elder. He wanted it all: the twenty-four hour cuddle sessions, the stolen kisses, the late night talks, and the endless love. And he didn’t just want it; he wanted to give it to Alex, all of that and then some because Alex was his everything and he wanted, needed, the elder to know that.

He just didn’t know how to say so, didn’t want to scare Alex away if he ended up becoming too clingy or pathetic. But in the end, it was all okay. Alex was the first one to make the confession.

They’d been cuddling and exchanging delicate kisses while some movie played on Alex’s TV, the film having long been forgotten. Suddenly Lainey, Hendowski and Slater all seemed to pop up out of nowhere, speaking in near-perfect unison.

“Jack,” Alex said quietly, pulling away from his boyfriend’s lips and nuzzling his nose in the taller’s neck.

“Yeah, darling?” Jack asked just as softly, pressing kisses to the top of Alex’s head as he waited for the elder to answer.

“They’re back,” he said simply, and while it may have sounded cryptic, some sort of creepy Poltergeist shit, Jack knew exactly what he meant.

“What are they saying now?” Jack questioned, wrapping his arms tighter around his beau in what he hoped was a comforting manner.

Alex bit his lip, deliberating telling the truth or not. Of course, looking up into Jack’s eyes gave him the answer he needed.

Leaning forward, he pushed their lips together quickly before pulling back about an inch to whisper, “They’re saying that I love you.”

Jack’s heart just about stopped beating in his chest at those six words, and he had to put actual effort into remaining calm; he’d been waiting for this moment for so long, and he wasn’t going to fuck it up now that it was right there in front of him.

“Yeah?” Jack mused, feeling his boyfriend’s body tense against him. Jack knew he felt like he’d just been rejected, like Jack had just said he didn’t return the feelings, and the only comfort he could find was presented by burying his face in Jack’s neck, nodding as best he could.

“Yeah,” Alex mumbled brokenly, and Jack could hear how upset he sounded, how devastated he was to not have the sentiment returned.

Jack reached up, gently taking the side of Alex’s face in one hand and tilting the older boy’s head up so that their gazes connected. Alex looked destroyed, like he just wanted to curl up in a ball and not ever move again, and that made Jack feel kind of guilty. He hadn’t meant to make his boy hurt like that, he just wanted to make sure he’d been correct in his hearing before he said it back and ended up being wrong and fucking himself over.

Closing the slight distance between their lips, as Alex had done only moments before, Jack copied the previous kiss as best he could. Following Alex’s lead, he leaned away a bit after a few seconds to whisper, “Well, make sure to let them know that I love you too.”