Title: Trust that Transcends

Author: Chantrea Johari

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: non-explicit m/m slash, suicide

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He made me promise when we got together almost two years ago that if he ever wanted to kill himself, I wouldn’t stop him. I made that promise to him with little hesitation. I regret that now that he’s dead.

He called me last night and told me that that day had come; the one that I had grown to fear but also slowly begun to believe would never come. He had made me make that promise years ago, but it seemed dim and distant, so when I was finally forced to face it, I hated myself for speaking those words. Yet I knew that I would hate myself even more if I broke a promise to him. I couldn’t let that be the last thing that he remembered before he died.

So instead of telling him not to do it, of telling him that there was a reason for life and that I loved him, I asked him if I could come over. I said that I wanted to be with him in his last moments, but I was really hoping that seeing me would somehow change his mind about the decision he had made.

I was wrong of course; he agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to let me come over, to let me see him in his darkest hour. The fact that his trust for me extended that far meant more to me than he could ever know. Yet it didn’t change the circumstances, and I still hated myself for having made that promise those years ago.

The trip over to his house was a solemn one, and I commended myself for not crashing the car as I drove. There were tears in my eyes, but I ignored them when I parked at the curb, trying to banish them before getting inside. I was afraid of the effect it could have on him, and I didn’t want to make matters any worse than they had to be. I didn’t want to make this any harder on either of us.

I walked up to his house and used the key he had given me to let myself in. His parents weren’t home, as usual, but I hadn’t expected them to be. I knew that this had to be planned around their presence at the house, since a foiled suicide attempt could never be permitted. That would just be unacceptable. That’s what he would say anyway.

I found him lying in his bed, the open bottle of his antidepressants sitting on the nightstand beside the bed. I went to him, and I was unable to keep myself from crying despite my earlier determination not to. He put his arms softly around me and let me cry, whispering soothing words into my ear about how it would be better this way. Yet I couldn’t see how it would be better this way; nothing would ever be better if he was dead. But I couldn’t disagree with him now.

“Shh,” he whispered soothingly. “I love you; you know that, right? But I’m miserable. You’re the only thing that makes me happy anymore. Do you want me to keep being miserable? Wouldn’t you rather just let me die than have me live an unhappy life?”

“Yes,” I sobbed into his shoulder, even though I didn’t believe it. He had told me before that I was not reason enough to live for, but the selfish part of me wished that I was. I wished that I could convince him to live just for me, but I knew better than to ask. I had learned long ago to agree with this proposition. There was nothing else to do.

He had kissed me then, and I had cried still, but I knew that I couldn’t stop him. I had always said that I would do whatever it took to make him happy, and if this life didn’t make him happy and he thought death would, then there was no way I could deny him that because of my selfishness. It was the first time that I prayed that there was no God; as long as that was true, he would not go to Hell for taking that which only God had the right to take: life. An irredeemable sin.

I then watched him take the pills, watched him lie back into the pillows and held his hand. He seemed perfectly lucid at first, but after a while began fading and looking lethargic, and when I watched his eyes fall closed and not open again, it finally struck me that it was really happening. I was really losing the only person that I had ever loved, and I was really just sitting back and watching it happen.

Yet betrayal seemed worse; I would go though the pain of losing him a million times before I would subject him to the pain of being betrayed by someone he thought he could trust. I watched his chest move up and down in earnest, encouraged by the fact that was still moving, as if he would suddenly sit up and this would all turn out to be a big joke.

It wasn’t a joke, though, and I knew it. It became all the more apparent when his breathing began to become uneven and his heart rate followed suit; I could feel the beating of his heart faintly from the pulse at his wrist, for I refused to let go of his hand until he was gone. And things became that much more serious when his breathing began to hitch until it finally began to fade.

Tears ran down my face as I watched the rise and fall of his chest begin to slow. I sobbed uncontrollably, clutching onto his hand as if that could keep him anchored here, keep him from moving on after the fatal dose of the drug that he had just taken. And though I knew that that was not going to happen, I continued to grip onto his hand as he breathed one last breath, and died. And I realized that I had just sat silently and watched someone’s death, all because of a promise I had made before really understanding the consequences of my actions.

But part of me was almost at peace with it; he had finally gotten what he wanted, and hopefully he was at peace at well. I prayed that he could find happiness now that life had so surely denied him. I hoped fervently that I had made the right choice.

Quiet tears still running down my face, I let go of his hand and let it fall gently to the bed next to him. I let myself out of the house silently, leaving the dead body of my lover in his bed, a bottle of antidepressants lying empty next to the bed.