Work Text:
This is the hardest part of living, this, the act of just breathing, of continuing to inhale and exhale once more, it’s the hardest thing you think you’ve ever had to do. You struggle with it all day, every day and yet, you still haven’t given up, for now. Jimmy watches you, you know he does, and when he’s watching you have this way of acting like you’re fine, like you’re okay, like nothing’s wrong. When Jimmy’s watching, you breathe deep, smile widely and just keep your head up. But when Jimmy’s not watching?
It’s those moments that are the hardest for you, the moments where you don’t have to push yourself to breathe, don’t have to keep reminding yourself that if you slip, Jimmy will never leave you alone again. It’s these moments that you hate the most, but, in a way, you kind of like them, relish them in fact. It’s in these moments that you don’t have to pretend anymore, don’t have to act like things are fine and that nothing’s wrong with you when everything so clearly is but you won’t admit that, not to him, not to anyone. So you breathe deep, smile widely and keep on keeping on, because you’ll be damned if you ruin Jimmy Carr by forcing him to look after you when he can barely look after himself. You’ll kill yourself before you ever become the baggage that drags Jimmy down, the drug he can’t let go of, the weight of the world that never falls off his shoulders.
You’ll never admit it to anyone but the reason you love swimming so much is because in the water, you don’t have to breathe until the last minute, until the moment you can’t hold your breath anymore and your reflexes kick in and you find yourself breaking the surface of the water, gulping in air. Then you’re under again and breathing’s not as essential anymore. You love swimming because it’s the one moment where needing to breath constantly is a weakness, a memory and not a necessity.
And breathing, you think, is the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do in your life, because you constantly have to remind yourself to do it. You forget sometimes and you know how stupid that sounds, even to you, but it’s not stupid, not really. Breathing just isn’t as important when you start to lose sight of what it is you’re breathing for, and your vision has been growing blurrier for a long while now, Jimmy is the only thing you can still see clearly, so you breathe deep, smile widely and keep on keeping on, for him, only for him.