((Trigger warning; this contains dark themes that may trigger some readers. Read at your own risk))

He rolled over as his phone vibrated. It was heckin four in the morning! Who was calling him!? "Hello?" He mumbled into the phone groggily and then sat up quickly upon hearing the person's voice and what they were saying.

"Stay there, I'm coming to get you..." He looked at the girl in the bed next to him and then sighed, moving over and kissing her shoulder gently. "I'll be back, need to go take care of something." He whispered. She slowly nodded, obviously tired and half asleep. He smiled and brushed his fingers over her hair for a moment before he got up out of the bed and got dressed, making his way to the front door and grabbing his keys from the hook by the door and making his way out of the apartment.

He quickly moved down the stairs towards his car to go pick this kid up. He drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, obviously driving safely along the roads but at the same time, going a bit faster than he should have been.

He pulled off to the side of the road as he spotted the kid sitting on the steep hill to the side of the road.

"You should be in bed..." He greeted as he made his way over to the kid.

He'd known this kid for maybe a year, met online through some art thing, had grown pretty close. The kid was seventeen, while he was twenty two,so there was a decent age gap between them,regardless, they had been talking a lot and this kid seemed pretty mature for his age, making him pretty chill with the older guy.

For the sake of this we'll say their names are Roger and Hiro, Roger being the older, and Hiro being the younger.

Hiro was curled up in a small ball, his knees pulled up to his chest, his cheek resting on them but he was looking the opposite direction of Roger. "I know..." he mumbled.

"What's up? Your call made it sound like an emergency." Roger continued, sitting in the grass next to the younger boy, who still hadn't even looked at him yet.

"It's not a big deal, so don't treat it like it is." He replied as he turned his head over, looking to Roger. There was a moment of silence as they stared at each other.

"Who did that to you?" Roger asked as he examined the black eye the boy had, along with the scars along his cheeks, as though someone had been clawing at them, his eyes were red, not as though he had been crying- but as though a lot of pressure had been placed on them, like someone was trying to shove his eyes into his skull. Though it was also obvious that he had been, in fact crying.

And now that Roger looked, the boy's clothes were covered in blood, some places it was just dots, like it had just dropped from his face, or he had wiped it off, but in other places it was obvious that the skin under the clothes was where the blood had come from.

"Nobody, it's not a big deal Roger. I just need a ride home." Hiro said, moving to look away again.

"What's wrong with you? You never hide anything from me- what's up, Hiro? Seriously." He urged the boy, reaching out and putting a hand on his shoulder, causing the boy to wince.

"I don't know what's wrong, ok!? I'm just tired... Take me home..." He snapped at the man. Oh.. Never once had Hiro ever gotten upset with him. Not that he had noticed at least. They barely ever saw each other in person. They mostly talked online and just saw one another when it was by accident.

"I'm not leaving until you tell me what's wrong, don't try lying to me." Roger continued to urge the boy forward. He wasn't going to just give up on him.

He had known this kid far too long for that. He knew that he just needed to be pushed to let things out, and he always felt better afterwards. So pushing him to open up was going to be the best option.

Hiro was silent for a long while, they could both see small glimmers of light coming across the sky as the sun began to rise. "You're not going to understand... but..." He paused. Then he shook his head again.

"Hiro." The man said firmly. "You already know I'm here for you, always have been, always will be. Just let me help. It's why you called me here isn't it? Just let-"

"Please shut up, I can't stand how appealing your voice is..." He mumbled.

Now that kind of took Roger off guard. But right as he was about to say something, the boy continued. "A year ago today, we met. We spoke every day. Online of course. It was just casual talking, then it progressed to where we would get on calls every day, and then we would facetime. And when we realized we lived ten minutes from one another, we met. It was great. We were best friends. We were everything anyone could ever dream of. We were literally everything I could ever ask for." Then he paused. "I started developing feelings for you. and I know that's literally the most stupid thing, you're five years older than me and you like girls. I got that. I never expected anything from you. Never. I knew it was pointless. But hey-" He let out a huff of hair that almost sounded like a chuckle. "Feelings are feelings. There's no stopping them once they start. But... you started pulling away. Your friends that were closer to your age became more important, people you could go drinking with, talk about work with. Adult things that you always said I didn't understand. People you could... be yourself with... and then you got your girlfriend... And slowly, I was forgotten..." He whispered.

"That's when things started to get bad for me. That's when my mom left, that's when my dad started doing things that I couldn't even imagine. Things I would never dare to utter out loud. You said you'd always be there for me.... so how did this happen? Why weren't you there? I called, I texted you asking to talk, you left me on seen, you left me on read. I'm just a little kid to you. I guess it's always been like that. I fooled myself into believing that we lived in the same world, under the same stars... You didn't call.. you didn't text or anything.. what I needed never came..."

There was another long silence as Roger tried to process all of that. It was... quite a lot for him.

"Am I all you have? Is there really nobody else that you have? You realize you're making me into the bad guy in this situation? You know how much that hurts?" Roger questioned him confusedly. Hiro turned to look at him once more, tears in his eyes once more.

"Did it ever occur to you that you're hurting me too? Every second of every day? You were ignoring me. You went straight from saying we were going to talk every day, and that you were always going to be here, and that we had something great- to nothing. I guess you got bored of me and you moved on. You still think of me as just another kid who just needs attention." Hiro snapped.

"Bud, I would never think that. I would never think that you were just another kid. I told you once, that you were more talented than anyone i'd ever met. And I wasn't kidding. You really have something special-"

"I don't care about that." Hiro interrupted. He shook his head and stood up, moving towards the car.

"Lets get you back to my place, we'll get you cleaned up and taken care of. And we'll talk about all of this more then.." Roger said as he moved towards the car as well.

"I don't need help, I just want the pain to stop... Take me home.." Hiro said as he climbed in the passenger seat.

"Physical or emotional pain....?" Roger questioned as he climbed into the driver's seat and started the car up.

He never answered. The car grew quiet, neither of them saying anything. For one, Roger needed to process all of this. This kid was five years younger than him and had feelings for him. He'd never even known the kid was into guys. The way he talked about girls you'd think that he was a smutty fanfic reader.

Even more than that, he was right. He himself had pulled away from him, ignoring his calls and not replying to his texts. It was honestly something he had felt guilty about. But he was a busy guy. Was that such a crime? He had a full time job, he had friends, he had a girlfriend. And on the side, he worked on art a lot. Hiro knew that. Yet here he was.

Then- his family situation had been revealed. Roger had never heard anything about his family. The kid would always hang up their calls when his parents started to yell in the background, never giving any information on it. Though it seemed like his dad was the one that had been doing this to him. He could take the kid in, he could take care of him. He could do all of that. But would that really make him happy? That would probably only hurt him more.

That and it was only ten minutes from his old house, his dad wouldn't take long to find him.

"Do you really think that little of me..?" Roger asked, breaking the silence.

"I can never think little of you. I have feelings for you dimwit. I couldn't hate you even if I wanted to." He mumbled. Roger glanced at the kid, he was leaning against the window, just looking outside and waiting.

"You're going to be coming home with me. Alright? I'm not taking you to your house. We're going to go to the hospital and get you taken care of. We'll talk everything over. And then maybe we can go to your house and get all your stuff while your dad is at work. You're going to stay with me. He's the one hurting you right?" Roger questioned.

Hiro moved his gaze to the older man. He nodded slowly. "A combination of him and myself-"

With that single word- 'Myself'. Roger slammed his foot on the breaks, stopping in the middle of the road, luckily the road wasn't busy, so any cars just went around him.

Roger took Hiro's wrist and looked at him seriously. "No. No we're not doing that. You're going to promise me, right here, right now that you're never going to touch yourself in a harmful way again." He sternly spoke.

"Why does it matter to you, it's just a stupid cut on-"

"Hiro! You really think I don't care!? You really believe I'm just going to be done with you!? No! I might not have romantic feelings towards you but I still care about you! Now tell me you aren't going to do it again!" He shouted, watching as the boy teared up.

"I won't-"

"You won't do what!?" Roger continued.

"I won't hurt myself anymore!" Hiro shouted right back at him. Roger nodded slowly and let go of the kid, he continued to drive, the car returning to silence. The only sound being Hiro's sniffles and quiet crying.

"You're going to be ok now... I'm going to take care of you.." Roger mumbled as they pulled up to the hospital.