:January 24th, XX47; Friday.

:RESOLUTION BETWEEN PROTAGONIST AND ANTAGONIST.

•~~~~•

Sage sat on his bed, bouncing his leg, LED lights flowing slowly through the colors of the rainbow. He had his phone in hand and opened to the number of his ex-best friend's dad.

It was a weird day- it was going to be a weird day, and it was around 10 AM or so, which meant Sage had to text Joe's dad and tell him whether or not he was gonna come over to pretty much prevent Joe from trying to murder yet another person. He'd had a whole three days to decide his answer, but that wasn't nearly enough time to think about it.

...This was life or death, really. But Sage wasn't sure how many people that phrase applied to in this situation.

He sighed, and glanced around his room, the playbills hung on the walls alongside random theatre show posters, and most notably, a picture of him and Joe that had been hanging up but was now sitting crumpled in the corner of his room. It had been there for a good week or two now.

He really could've never imagined dying would be that painful- and coming home from that specific sleepover was tough. He never did tell his parents what happened and he probably never would. He just couldn't. And that meant he couldn't talk to anyone about it, he just had to sit cooped up in his room and stare into his mirror for hours at the new birthmark that laid over his heart where he had been stabbed and murdered and born again. Pretty traumatizing stuff.

And that really just lead Sage to think again about his decision- was he going to prevent Oliver from possibly meeting the same- or perhaps a worse- fate, or would going to that house make him wind up dead for good? Would it be better to be dead or live with the knowledge of what it's like to be that light and carefree, yet full of stress and agony? He wasn't quite sure.

But, really, these were his thoughts about each option- for starters, Sage honestly thought Joe deserved to fall into the shithole he dug himself into. Of course he did. And once again, Sage wasn't sure he would make it out alive if he went back to that house. On the other hand, he hated Joe now, but they'd known each other for literally their entire lives and it would be the right thing to do to help keep him home. And he also really didn't want Oliver to die- he didn't deserve that.

Sage knew what it was like to be stabbed. It sucked.

...All three of them were really in some deep shit, weren't they?

And Oliver really didn't deserve the added curse of someone wanting you dead when he was already gonna move far away from the only close friends he'd probably ever had. And now they weren't even close anymore. Sage hated to admit it, but in most friend groups, one person could be called the life of the group and in this case that was Joe. Now that Sage and Oliver didn't like him, it just didn't work. Sage had been trying to keep in touch with Oliver, and Oliver had been doing the same, but after they got done venting to each other about all that had went down, there wasn't anything else to talk about but school.

Sage groaned. He was alone, Oliver was alone, Joe was alone. They were all so fucking alone. But if Oliver got to move to Maryland or Nevada or wherever it was he would end up, maybe he at least could end up not as alone as the rest of them.

And that's when Sage knew he had to step in and save a life... even if it meant damaging his own. If he made it out maybe he could just move to Australia and start new there, too.

With a sigh, he wrote out a quick text, and he hit send. No going back.

•~~~~•

"I'm so glad Joe is feeling better," Sage's pop said as he drove him to Joe's house, it by then being around 9 PM. Sage nodded along from the passenger seat, watching the houses go by out the window and hoping the acting and improvisation skills he had inherited would do him well.

"What do you think even happened with him?" Sage asked, trying to add to the conversation.

"Don't know. Do you know his symptoms?"

"Uh, didn't Uncle Patton mention like- a stomach bug or something?"

"Ah, yeah. I remember he had that and pink eye a few months ago. You don't think it could've stuck around, do you?"

Sage smirked gently. "Pops, viruses only last, like, up to a few days without a host."

"Looks like someone's paying attention in science class," his pop elbowed him gently and Sage laughed a tad.

"I don't wanna be a scientist, though. I thought that was just common knowledge."

"I'm not very smart, my son. Oh- we're here!"

Sage bit the inside of his cheek as his pop's car stopped outside the Croft house. He noticed that the light in Joe's room was on, and he could tell his father was standing in front of the window. He looked down at the car and then back to the room, talking to someone, and after a moment Joe's dad appeared at the door. Sage bid his pop goodbye, the longest goodbye he could manage just in case he never saw him again, and then the car was driving away and Sage was rushing into the house, noticing the frantic look on his Uncle Patton's face.

"Thank you so much, Sage," he told him as soon as he got in the house. Sage nodded a bit, dropping the bag he had brought with him on the ground.

"Yeah, yeah, uh, whatever. Are- where is he?"

"Logan is up there with him, but I don't know-"

"Patton?"

Logan suddenly stuck his head into the room from the stairs, and his husband stared wide-eyed at him.

"...I- honey, there's no one up there with him right now, is there?"

"Well- Sage is here now, so I thought-"

"Okay. Okay, Sage, please-"

"I'm on it."

Sage rushed past the both of them, heart beating out of his chest and him silently praying it would only slow and never stop that night. He wanted so badly to hesitate and to turn around and leave when he got to the outside of that bedroom door, but it was wide open and Joe was already climbing out his window so Sage had no choice but to rush in, shut the door behind him and do what he came there to do.

As the door closed, Sage ran over to the window and grabbed Joe's arm, forcibly pulling him down from the windowsill, not giving a shit whether he got hurt or not. Joe snapped out of some trance and looked him in the eyes, and Sage almost froze, Joe quickly becoming pissed.

"Wh- Sage?! I- why- let go of me!"

Sage blinked, and then he furrowed his eyebrows, pulling Joe further away from the window as he tried to get back to it. "I'm not letting go of you! You can't do this. Why the fuck would you think this is a good idea?!"

"Let me do what I have to do, Sage!" Joe yelled back. Sage side stepped as Joe tried to lunge at him, and the former swiftly closed the window, pushing Joe farther away from it, who groaned and began trying to wiggle his way to freedom.

"Can you please fucking stand still and not try to murder both of the people in your friend group?"

"I have to do this!"

"No you don't. Oh my god, Joe, we're not even friends anymore! Why the fuck-"

Joe stepped down hard on Sage's foot and Sage yelped, but he kept his grip on Joe. "You wouldn't understand why! Just let-"

"We trusted you and now you're trying to do this?! Oliver has done nothing to you!"

"It's your fault I have to do this!"

"How would it be my fault?! You know who's fault it is, Joe?! Your fucking uncle's! You're turning into all the bad parts of him."

"Remy is not a bad person!" He was screaming at this point, still trying to make passes at Sage, but Sage keeping Joe as still as possible.

"Maybe not! But he's done a lot of awful things, don't you think?!"

"You- you don't understand my life, Sage! You've never been so deeply in love with someone just to watch them go and betray you so- so badly!"

"God, Joe, I can't believe you have the balls to say that when I'm standing right in front of you. But- no, I thought you thought that I was in love with him! What happened to that?!"

Joe groaned. "I was wrong, okay?! I was wrong! But now Oliver knows what happened and- I can't bare to see him out there with another person! I love him so goddamn much, Sage, I'm only doing this to protect him!"

Joe ducked out of Sage's arms, but as he came back up Sage planted his hands firmly on his shoulders and looked him dead in the eyes.

"MURDER is not LOVE, JOE!"

And then Joe stopped.

His eyes went wider than they had been, and his eyebrows softened, mouth hanging open slightly. He stopped moving, and he just stared, up into the eyes of Sage, silent, breathing. Sage watched as tears began to form in the corners of his eyes, and then he hiccuped, and suddenly Joe was hugging him right around the middle, whispering through hiccups how sorry he was and leaving Sage frozen in place, terrified.

But Joe wasn't trying to get away. And Sage remembered the reason he was there, so he held his breath and he hugged him back, just barely, just enough to where Joe hopefully wouldn't get the thought to turn and run. And he clearly didn't, his grip on Sage's shirt only grew tighter and Sage sighed, staring down at the crying murderer in his arms.

It was a weird feeling.

After a few minutes it became clear that Joe wasn't going anywhere unless he became angry again, and so Sage began to slowly lead him over to his bed, pulling the covers over him and ultimately being pulled onto the mattress as well, and before Sage knew it Joe was still crying into his torso, but now Sage was laying facing the ceiling with his head on a pillow and Joe's head was right over the place he had stabbed him and Sage's arm was around his shoulders and it was the weirdest feeling in the world.

A few silent moments passed where Sage stared wide-eyed at the ceiling and Joe continued hiccuping into his shirt, but after some time Joe grew quiet, and he by then had cried himself to sleep, and why couldn't Sage recognize what the hell this feeling was?

It was weird. All of it was- Sage had really expected himself to be dead by then if he was being honest. He thought the climax of the situation would be himself getting stabbed again, not Joe... doing whatever the hell it was that he ended up doing. But Oliver was safe now, it seemed, and that was the most important part. Yet it still felt weird, because Sage stared down at Joe and he felt something that he was pretty sure he shouldn't be feeling and it was the weirdest thing in the goddamn world.

And what was it, he had then realized, that he was feeling?

It was sympathy.

"Joe? Sage?"

The door opened a crack, and Sage looked towards it, Joe's dad poking his head in. He let out a quiet, relieved sigh upon seeing Joe was docile, and then he began to walk over, sitting on the side of the bed. Joe's father stood in the doorway, silently.

"Is he asleep?" Sage's Uncle Patton whispered.

"Uh, yeah," Sage whispered back, glancing down at him. Patton sighed again.

"Thank you so much Sage, I- really, I can't thank you enough. I'm sorry we couldn't do this ourselves, it's horrible, I know. I don't think he would wake up if you got up so I can go call your parents and tell them he started feeling bad again since I'm sure you want to-"

"Wait."

Joe's dad raised an eyebrow. Sage sighed, glancing down at Joe once more.

"...I'll stay. It's fine."

"You don't have to, sweetie."

"I know."

Patton stared at him for a moment, and then he smiled gently, before nodding. He leaned forward and kissed both of their foreheads, and then Sage was alone in the room once more, Joe still sleeping soundly in his arms.

He looked out the window, nothing else left to think, laying his head back and hoping it would grant him a decent night's rest.

"I just saved your life, Oliver... but I think I might've saved his, too."

•~~~~•
Y'all if your bsf tries to murder you please drop them immediately just a PSA I do not recommend Sage's tactic here okay thanks

See ya in the next chapter!🚨
    ~Maxx(SanderShipper)