#shawn mendes angst
Y/N’s inability to talk about the death of her former lover drives a wedge between her and Shawn
Word count: 4K
Angsty
-
“I mean, you’re interested in her, that’s all that really matters, right? We all have shit we like to keep to ourselves, maybe she just has more of it than most people do.”
Brian downs a large gulp from the amber pint of beer sitting in front of him. His eyes are starting to get a bit glossy, mind lagging behind his actions as he slaps another 2 fives on the counter.
“American money is all green, weird.” Matt mutters besides him, sipping on something a similar color, but probably much stronger as his glass is made of crystal pieces.
Shawn sits at the bar, his only pint of beer he had in the entire night only halfway done. Legs dangling below the wooden counter of the overpriced mar, his palm squishes against the soft cheek of his porcelain skin, dark creases forming on the vanilla surface from the furrow of his eyebrows.
“I just feel like she’s hiding things.” He admits, eyes not meeting anything other than the two sparrows on his hand that sits outstretched in front of him on the wooden panel.
“I mean like, what if she’s cheating on me or something?” He pathetically presumes, a presumption all too extreme to be even slightly realistic, but nevertheless he can’t help but think about it to himself.
“Bro, relax.” Brian says, hand slapping abruptly onto the button of on Shawn’s back, “I’m sure you’re just overthinking things.”
The bartender hands Brian another frothy mug of beer, and he quickly removes his hand to grab at the handle of the cloudy glass.
“You all have only been dating for like a month, man.” Matt elaborates, smile plastered to his face as a side effect of the heavy liquor, “Megan and I didn’t get into the deep stuff until like three months in.”
And with his friends tipsy words of affirmation, the pounding of some old country song glued to his ears, he chugs the remainder of his beer and decides to forget about it.
-
“I heard this movie is supposed to be really good! We’re not gonna be able to get good seats if we don’t leave now.” Y/N whines, lips pink and droopy in a pout as Shawn takes his time (In her opinion, far too long) to lace up his combat boots. The leather material folds slowly as she hears him chuckle from below.
When he finally stands, she twists the handle to the door, ready to speed out of it and climb into the passenger’s seat of his Jeep, but he grabs the sleeve of her shirt to stop her.
“It’s below freezing outside, you need to put on a jacket.” He sternly reminds her, and she feels herself growing impatient, eventually coming to the conclusion that he’s right.
“I’ll go grab you one.” He smiles, kissing at her forehead as he takes a whiff of the strawberry shampoo she always uses. He jogs to the room at the beginning of the hall, admiring the perfectly made bed with unstained, crisp white sheets that he slept in last night.
He twists open the door to her closet, and just as he expected, everything is completely orderly. There’s a variety of dresses on one side, professional clothes on the other, and on the left side of the center section, he spots a thick winter coat that’s perfect for the weather.
With his tall height, however, he sees a small box sitting on the top shelf above the counter, maybe half a foot above all of the hangers. There’s a small bit of sloppy handwriting that labels it as ‘Adrian’, and he can tell it’s hers by the way the ‘i’ is dotted with a circle, rather than a dot.
Curiously, he reaches his arm up and brushes the lid up a bit, puffy coat in the other hand as he tries to make out what exactly it is.
“What are you doing?” He hears a voice squeak from behind him, he jumps up a bit, clothes dangling as his large frame crashes into them just a bit. He sees Y/N, hair up now instead of splaying across her shoulders, with her eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
“I’ve just never, been in here before?” He states more like a question. She sighs, eyes flashing up to where the box is (the lid had fallen back into place after he’d lifted it) and her demeanor changes. She grabs the coat from his hands, and they don’t speak as they ride to the movies.
-
“Darling, i’m playing at the venue next to Mario’s next weekend, do you want to come?” Shawn asks first thing when he walks through the door. Plastic bags with takeout from their favorite Indian place rustle the sound of the room, and Y/N turns down her speakers so she can her him.
“I’m so sorry, what?” She was immersed in writing the paper she procrastinated for weeks, and so she hadn’t exactly heard what he said. He just laughs, admiring the messy fragments of hair that fall out of her bun and decorate her forehead.
“I’m playing at Gordan’s on 7th next weekend, do you want to come? It’s right after finals so it’s a good way to celebrate?” He suggests, one eyebrow raised as he watches her ponder her options.
She thinks to herself, which is strange to Shawn since he’s almost positive she’s free that day and she usually agrees quickly.
“What day is it?” She asks him, eyes now not at all focused on the paper as she faces her torso towards him.
“It’s…” Shawn trails off, whipping his phone out to check the exact date of the day, “The 17th” he curtly replies.
Y/N immediately turns around, head turning up towards the poster of some cartoon character in her bedroom. She’s silent for a bit, and because she can feel him still standing in the room, shoulder pressed against the doorway, she finally replies, “No.”
“No, I can’t go” She shakes her head, and from behind her all Shawn sees is her messy bun flop from side to side as she rubs at her cheek and then continues to write her paper.
Sighing, Shawn wonders in his head if it was wrong to trust her. She was strangely secretive at times, and weirdly protective over certain things. It wasn’t necessarily the fact that she was, either, it was the fact that she refused to elaborate to him why she was the way that she was.
He turns around, and exits her room.
-
“I just know I shouldn’t drive right now.” Shawn concludes, hand practically glued to the tiny shot glass as he tries to tip it up to his mouth again. The empty glass is seconds away from clattering to the ground as he grabs the wall to prop himself up against.
“Hold on, i’m calling an Uber.” Y/N declares, fingers tapping against her phone as she tries to type in the address of the bar as the pickup location.
“Just drive.” Shawn says impatiently, boosting himself off of the wall, and using his hand to dig into the pocket of his tight jeans. He forces his fingers into the black denim, dragging out a metal ring with a few keys on it and holding it out for Y/N to take.
“No” She immediately says, google pulled up on her phone as she tries to find the bar address. She remembers the night five years ago, and there’s a metallic taste that creeps into her mouth at the thought of it.
“Y/N, i’m not leaving my car here overnight.” Shawn whines as he balls his fist like a toddler. His lips are jutted out in a pout as he tries to stand firmly, swaying a bit while he does so. There are a good amount of people in the bar, most of the older, but some of them still young enough to know who he is. Y/N tries not to draw attention.
“Shawn, i’m not driving.” She pushes the keys in his hand towards him as she taps the black button, finally having called the Uber. Shawn sadly stares down at his keys in his hand, his intoxicated mind overthinking all the bad things that could happen if he leaves his car at the lot overnight.
“But, but you didn’t even drink!” Shawn exclaims a little too loudly. Y/N spots a group of girls near the wall of the bar whispering and pointing at the ‘famous’ boy screaming like a kid due to the effects of alcohol. She’s quick to pull him behind her, his tall frame sticking out obviously but hopefully less noticeably.
“I know” Y/N lowers her voice, gesturing with her hands so he gets the point, “But I don’t drive, especially at night.” She specifies, and there’s a small chill of nostalgia that runs through her, a feeling of deja vu creeping up on her as she swallows thickly and shakes her head.
“You’re so difficult.” He breathily speaks, and Y/N feels a shot of hurt run through her, as her phone buzzes and she drags him out of the bar. The chilly wind smacks her in the face, and she’s brought back to the night that’s growing increasingly similar to this one. Her boyfriend bops his head to the beat of the music leaking out of the bar, and she stands on the sidewalk, arms crossed in front of her as she tries not to break into tears once more.
-
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Y/N pulls at the roots of her hair, stacks of papers and litters of flashcards in a mess in front of her. She’d accidentally knocked them over, and given that they were in a specific order, she doesn’t feel like rearranging all 300 of them for her Accounting exam.
“Oh god.” She mutters softly, eyes blurry as they well up with tears at the mess in front of her. A flash of white paper and colored pens dances across her vision and she drops her head down into her arms.
“Oh, honey.” Shawn assures, hands skimming up and down her back as he tries to make her feel better. Her breathing is heavy, and her baggy t-shirt is wrinkled from the amount of times she’s balled it between her fists.
Abruptly, she gets up, and walks into her room quickly. Her cheeks are flushed, and Shawn’s arms have dropped down into the chair where she was sitting. His eyebrows furrow, and he’s slightly irritated at her actions.
Shawn wants to help her, he wants her to be able to confide in him, but as the relationship continues, he can’t help but believe that she’s pushing him away more than she’s trusting him. It bothers him to know that she has so much that he doesn’t know, and it also bothers him that she has a box with someone else’s name on it.
He wants to trust her, and he wants to love her, but his imagination keeps taking him to places where it shouldn’t be. And she he really can’t help himself when he tiptoes across the wood flooring to press his ear up against the thin doors of her room.
“I don’t know, Max, this week has just been so hard.” She sniffles into the phone. Shawn hears the muffled sound of a deep voice coming from the phone, and his hand rests firmly against the doorway as he eavesdrops.
“Yeah, I know.” She niffles again, “Adrian is just…I can’t stop thinking of him.” Her voice breaks into the phone, springs of the mattress squeaking as she remembers the night. She’d sworn that she wasn’t that intoxicated, they were just at the bar because Y/N wanted to support her friend who had helped her with her work throughout the semester. They were supposed to watch the performance and leave, but he was drunk and she was tipsy, and she could never not blame herself for the crash.
It had been 5 years, and yet the night was still freshly painted in her mind. Bloody fingers grasping onto her favorite leather jacket - the one she’d stolen from him - as she shook back and forth in the waiting room of the hospital. The smell of chemicals and cheap detergent were fresh in her senses as she grasped the phone closer.
“I can’t help but think he’s still mad at me, you know?” She cries into the phone, her therapist trying to calm her down as she holds herself closer than she ever has before.
“It wasn’t your fault, you know that right?” And Y/N doesn’t answer, tears too much for her to control. She hates herself for being the cause of so much pain, not only to herself but also to him and the people close to him. And even moreso, she hates herself for not being able to love Shawn in the way he deserves.
“I just feel so bad, Shawn deserves better.” She cries into the phone, and she remembers how much he’s been there for her. He was the first person she’d been with since Adrian, and he had so much patience, and had shown her so much support. She wasn’t even sure if she’d be able to make it through the day without him.
But when Shawn stands on the other side of the door, listening to Y/N speak about how he deserves better, or how she misses someone else, he feels a wind of disappointment slip through him. He feels as if his imagination wasn’t wild, and he reconsiders if falling in love with her was the right decision after all.
-
“My dress keeps being stepped on.” Y/N giggles, makeup getting stickier as the night progresses. There were lots of people at the event, and many of them wore clothes more than a year of her tuition, but she tried to enjoy herself as she held onto her boyfriend’s arm.
Shawn seems a bit careless though, normally he’d be running his hands up and down her back, or perhaps the heavy weight or his arm would be resting comfortably on her shoulders, but tonight he seems rigid. His jaw clenches on and off, and he replies with short, one word answers to everything she says.
“Sucks.”
Y/N just nods, eyes taking in the sparkly jewelry hanging around the necks of some of the people at the party. She wasn’t one to frequent events like it, by any means, but when Shawn asked her to come the week after finals, she wasn’t going to turn him down for a second time.
The weekend had been hard, he hadn’t spoken much to her, and while he was performing at the bar they went to often, she was sobbing in a poncho (it was a rainy day) in front of what she thought was the love of her life’s tombstone. The flower’s she’d purchased had been blown away more than once, so after planting them in the mud in front of the grave, she’d finally left.
Y/N couldn’t help but feel like things were drifting away though, Shawn hadn’t been speaking to her, and she wondered if her baggage had finally pushed him away. Shawn was perhaps one of the only constant things in her life at the moment, and she needed him to stay more than she needed anything else.
When she snaps out of her second of sadness, she looks to realize that the soft fabric of his suit is no longer woven between her fingertips. His arm is no longer broadly held between her fingers, and she begins to panic.
Not knowing where anything is, she decides to take a seat at the bar, marble counters and napkins placed at each spot as she climbs on top of the stool.
Downing glass after glass of something expensive, but yet the cheapest thing there, she lets her mind wander to all of the moments she’d spent pondering over whether or not she was worthy of someone like Shawn. She thought of it as the universe’s way of giving back to her, of telling her ‘Hey, I know I fucked your life up, but here’s this amazing guy who’s going to make you happy’.
She doesn’t know whether it’s the Hennessey working it’s way up to her mind, or the clattering sounds of people talking amongst each other in the room, but she sees a familiar head of dirty blonde hair merely a few feet away. Her feet work to move before her body can, and she rushes forward so that her body is merely inches away from his. Tears rush up to her eyes, and before she can think she reaches forward and wraps her arms around the stranger’s torso from behind.
She feels an abrupt movement from between her arms, eyes staring at her as she looks up at the person who looks so incredibly similar to the person she was so deeply in love with. His arms raise, as if he’s trying to signal that he doesn’t want her, and she unwraps her arms quickly.
“Who the hell are you?” He cockily exclaims, designer suit ironed perfectly as it fits his arms snugly.
“A-Adrian?” Y/N sputters, frozen in place as people begin to stare at the drunken girl who clearly doesn’t belong. Her eyes are wide as she catches the resemblance, but quickly remembers that the persona is irreplaceable.
“That’s…I don’t know who that is.” And Y/N can’t help but sob at the false sense of hope driven by her stupidity. She’d seen him lying in the casket herself, and yet, some part of her had stupidly believed he could still be alive somewhere.
While she’s clearly causing a scene, sobbing in the center of a ballroom with a cocky boy staring at her in amusement, she feels a strong tug on her arm drag her into the private bathroom just a little walk away.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” She hears a familiar voice boom, and she sits on the small chair in the corner of the stall. Her dress, which was red at some point, has drips of black eye makeup leaking onto it, and her staggered breathing inflates and deflates it periodically.
“I really thought I could just ignore it…but then you just go and embarrass me, like that.” He sighs, back pressing against the heavy sink behind him. One leg is bent as he brings a frustrated hand up to his forehead, fingers pressing into his temples.
Y/N remains cryings, alcohol still prevalent although she sobers up more by the second. Her eyes flash across the tile flooring, and she wishes she could take her entire life back and start it over again.
They both sit like that for a bit, Shawn trying to make out everything that’s happened in the past week while Y/N tries to take it all back. His arms flex underneath the thick layers of the suit jacket and dress shirt, and the silence is filled merely by sniffles and heavy breathing.
“Are you cheating on me?” He asks, and she snaps her head up immediately. She did have lots of secrets, many of them weren’t the best, but she’d never in a million years even think about cheating on Shawn.
“No!, why would you…” She stops for a bit, tears halting out of fear as they finally make eye contact in the weirdly spacious area of the private bathroom, “Why would you think that?” She asks softly.
“I heard you on the phone the other day…” He trails off, “And sometimes, I ask you to do things and you just say no, and you have all these little secrets.” He calls out, and she freezes up at the recognition she’s getting, “And sometimes i’ll say something, and you just freeze and get really weird.” He finally concludes.
Thoughts run through Y/N’s head, if she continued to lie to him, they would inevitably break up, without a doubt. She knew that if she didn’t tell him,she’d be letting go of the most amazing thing that had happened to her, possibly ever. But she also knew that she wasn’t ready for it, for him to feel sorry for her and ask her if she wanted to talk about it. Because that’s what everyone had done, had treated her differently due to something that was clearly her fault.
“Why won’t you say anything?” Shawn nervously asks, voice booming louder than he’d like for it to be as he nervously waits in anticipation.
“You’re right.” She finally says, “I am cheating on you.” She finally sniffles out. She knew Shawn deserved better than her, better than someone who could only love him in fragments, and better than someone who would always have a secret to keep from him.
“W-what?” He stutters out, pushing forwards from the sink to stand in front of where she was seated.
“I’m cheating on you. Please leave.” Y/N simply remarks, and Shawn’s eyes begin to feel wetter as he looks down at where she refuses to look back at him.
“I’m in love with you.” He tells her honestly, and when he sees her composure begin to break, knees falling from where they were twisted together, he understands that she was never being unfaithful to him.
“I want you to leave.” She honestly tells him, and she thinks that it’s the hardest thing she’s ever had to stay. But she knows she’s not worthy of his love, and she knows he would be hurt if he was with her.
Shawn knows there’s something there keeping her from moving forward, he knows that she has something she can’t tell him, and that in no way was she legitimately being unfaithful to him. But with a small grn painted on his face, he takes off his suit jacket, rests it loosely on her weak shoulders, and prepares to wait until she’s ready.
-
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Word Count: 3k
Shawn regrets letting her go.
-
In his newly furnished condo in downtown Los Angeles, Shawn dries himself off with a towel in his marble-floored restroom. He stares at the tips of his toes, a while beneath him due to his lengthy height, and sighs to himself as he shakes thoughts out of his head.
“You know, when I come to you with my problems, I want us to talk about them. I want reassurance, not an argument!” Y/N pleads back as Shawn narrows his eyes. His hair is tousled, a bit messy with his cheeks flushed red.
“So you’re saying the arguing is my fault?” Shawn promptly bites back.
“That’s not what I said, I just…”
“You just what?” Shawn takes a step forward to shorten the gap between them, “You just think i’m the reason we’ve been arguing for the past fucking month?” Y/N flinches, “You think i’m the reason that our relationship is borderline toxic?”
Shawn lowers his arms, weakening his defenseful stance “It’s always my fucking fault, isn’t it?”.
The two linger in silence for a bit, Y/N suppressing tears while Shawn remains heated, eyes scanning across his condo in Toronto. He wonders if it was the right choice, moving into the condo in LA more permanently. The fighting had begun once their time was severed, and while both of them knew it, they could never come to an agreement on it.
After a few moments, Shawn clears his throat, “Are you happy, Y/N?”
She thinks to herself for a bit. All the anger exuded, the misunderstandings, and the arguments.
“Honestly?” She wipes the back of her hand against her nose “No.” She expects him to ask how they can fix it, how they can manage their time to fix the strain that’s been put on their relationship.
“I’m not either.” Shawn admits. He hates to say it, really does considering he’d thought about being with her for the rest of his life.
“Maybe we should break up.”
And Y/N freezes, because she doesn’t want this. She doesn’t want to lose the love of her life over a series of dumb miscommunications on both of their parts. She doesn’t want to let go of something she’s grown to love so much. They weren’t always like this, and they didn’t have to be.
But looking at her favorite boy’s stern face, with his cheeks soft and his forehead wrinkled, she can’t help but agree.
“Yeah, maybe we should”
-
The first month was terrible.
Y/N would wake up every morning with an ugly feeling in the soft part of her chest. She didn’t want to think about it, but she’d wake up and her mind would scream, “He’s not yours anymore.” and she’d be put back into the grave of heartbreak that Shawn had dug for her.
She avoided specific locations, like the pasta place they frequented back when they were together. The clothes he’d given her were in a box, stuffed in the shadows of her apartment where she wouldn’t have to see them.
But now, Y/N watches the Raptors game with her friends somewhere in Toronto. They’ve all gone out for drinks, and there’s a prominent smile painted on her face. The jersey she borrowed from a friend fits her loosely, and she enjoys her night out.
Her phone buzzes, she looks at the caller ID and a wave of anxiety crosses her being, she declines and focuses back on the game.
-
It hadn’t always been this way, two strangers, one of them now lingering onto the past while the other was almost fully recovered. At one point, they were very deeply in love. But Shawn had given up. He’d left, and Y/N needed someone who knew how to stay.
For the first few months after the breakup, Shawn didn’t think much of it. He’d go out, drink, party, and listen to his friends chant at him to sleep with other women (to which he had gladly obliged at the time). He’d wake up some mornings with an achy headache and a girl he couldn’t remember the name of lying next to him, her hair tousled all over his sheets.
But after a while, his mind seemed to wander to how Y/N was doing. Like if she’d gotten the job she’d hoped to get, or if she’d fixed the hole in the wall of her apartment. Or how her classes were going, and how she was holding up mentally.
His mind would linger on things for extended amounts of time. Any girl with long hair would remind him of her, dimples pressed into a strangers cheeks would have him thinking, and he inadvertently found himself scrolling through her instagram sometimes.
He’d thought about it, really thought about the situation. That was when Shawn realized that he fucked up, when all he could do was regret, while she was doing nothing but having the time of her life. Happy without him.
So Shawn took out his phone, punched in a familiar name, and hit the call button.
-
Y/N’s phone rings for the 3rd time that night.
She should ignore it, she has every right and every intention to ignore it. But for some reason, she finds herself excusing herself through crowds of bunched up people to pick up the call.
“Hello?”
“Uh, hey, this is Shawn” She hears from the other side of the line, she scoffs.
“I know who this is. Why are you calling?” She wants to go back into the sports bar, and enjoy her night as soon as possible. With all the suffering she’d endured, she knew she deserved nothing less than that.
“Just…” Shawn trails off for a bit, “To see how you’re doing.” He finishes speaking, and Y/N feels a surge of anger and hurt beat up to her chest.
“Why do you care?” She swallows a pebble-sized lump in her throat, “You gave up on us, remember?”
The line goes silent for no more than 5 seconds, and Y/N hangs up. She goes back into the bar, orders a drink, and high fives her friend for the Raptors’ lead in the basketball game.
Shawn feels hurt, incredibly hurt. And, as if this could possibly make things better considering the amount of damage he’s done, he books a flight to toronto and wonders how he could possibly fix the mess he’s made.
Because somehow, even after all the times he’s washed his sheets, they still smell like her. And somehow, even after all of the words she said out of spite, she still feels like home.
-
Y/N just wanted to watch her Game of Thrones.
She just wanted to sit there, wth her bowl of over buttered microwaveable popcorn, and watch her TV show.
But instead, she’s met with a boy, a very familiar brunette boy at her door. With tousled hair and a suitcase behind him, he somehow still pulls off matching a trench coat with sweatpants of some sort.
“Bye.” She goes to shut the door, but Shawn reaches out to stop it before it closes.
After a childish round of push and pull, the door swings in Y/N’s direction and she’s distraught because it’s knocked over the full bag of popcorn that was resting halfway on the counter.
Shawn stares at her in awe. He’s never seen anything like it before, he thinks. The girl he’s still so deeply in love with, with her hair in a messy bun and her body clad in shorts and a baggy tee with her university’s logo on it.
“Leave.” She suggests again, as if she should even try with her knowledge of the boy in front of her.
“I’m sorry.” He immediately blurts out.
“I don’t care.” Y/N shrugs, and she turns around to make another bag of popcorn.
“I miss you, Y/N.”
“Must suck.” Y/N presses numbers into the pad of her microwave before leaning down to clean up the spilt kernels from Shawn’s dramatic entrance.
“Close the door on your way out.” She exclaims, before hopping on the couch to the theme song of Game of Thrones, the microwave making a slight buzzing sound in the background.
-
It’s 2 am the next night.
Y/N is stumbling across the street, shoes drenched in mud and spilt whiskey as she carries herself to her apartment. She remembered locking it, a regretful decision now that she was too intoxicated to even find her key.
But when she walks into the hallway where her place is, she’s greeted by a boy, asleep on the dirty carpet of the hallway with a bouquet of red roses grasped in his fingers.
“Get up fucker.” Y/N pokes his forehead, not having to lean down much from her short stature, “Help me find my key so I can sleep in a bed.” She slurs out, the room spinning around her. She meant to poke his cheek, but coordination proved to be difficult at the moment.
Shawn shuffles, feet brushing against the carpet before he opens his eyes and prop himself up.
“Y/N?” He questions, “You’re drunk.”
“Duh dummy head. Now help me find my key!” She exclaims, just wanting to be in the safety of her own bed.
He finds it rather quickly, tied to the shoelace of her sneakers. A clever way to keep track of it. He laughs a bit at how small her feet are, but stops once he realizes that no part of her is his anymore.
“Y/N?” She rushes into the apartment, opening the fridge and grabbing several containers of food that doesn’t mesh well together.
Shawn finds it amusing, just staring at the girl he loves eating tiny pickles out of a glass jar. And before he can think about any of his actions, with his mind only focused on the fact that she was drunk beyond belief, he says it.
“I love you.”
Y/N chokes a bit, mouth full as she spits some chewed up pickles out into the sink.
She coughs for a bit, but then fails to make any noise. All movement is halted between both of them, and just as Shawn is about to speak to end the stark silence, he hears a small whimper escape her.
Shawn feels his heart aching a bit. It throbs where it is, somehow forging a lump in his throat that makes him want to break down. He watches her crumble a bit, face scrunching as tears begin to drop out of her eyes. And all he can think to himself is that it’s his fault, that no one could be blamed for the damage but him.
“You gave up.” Y/N speaks softly, sniffles interrupting the flow of her words.
“You said I was the love of your life. Then, you gave up.”
And it hurts because Shawn knows it’s true. And even after 4 months, 4 months of ex communication and closure, she still possesses the hurt the string of words he’d always say to her to make her cry. Because he’d broken her heart, absolutely destroyed her, and he’d expected her to wait until he was ready.
Shawn wants more than anything to grab her in his arms. He wants her tears to soak through his shirt and leave puddles on his chest, he wants to tell her that it can be fixed. But how does he assure her of something that he himself is still unsure about?
“I tried to keep in touch after but you didn’t care, did you? You never did. I meant nothing to you. I tried so hard to fix things and you just - you just left.” Sniffles echo the room and Shawn desperately wishes that he could fix things. He wishes that he could’ve seen things clearer at the moment, but he was too selfish. He cared about himself, and not at all how it would affect her. The same girl he wanted a future with.
“I love you, Y/N.” He steps forward, “I want you back.”
“You’re just gonna hurt me again.” She shakes her head, tears making zig zags as they fall, “I’ve tried so had to fix myself and it’s all gonna be for nothing.”
It’s hard, and Shawn knows it is because he has the overwhelming urge to cry. Because when they’d first ended things he’d somehow convinced himself that being without her was better than all of the arguing, that she was holding him back from bigger and better things. He’d been having the time of his life while he left his favorite person shattered.
Shawn remembered the few texts that had come right after the breakup, Y/N pleading for him to speak to her. He remembered the strings of “I love you”s and “I miss you”s buzzing on his phone. He thought it was entertaining at the time, even showing his friends how needy she was.
But now, staring at the girl he’d broken and humiliated, Shawn can’t stand to think of all the cruel things he’d unknowingly done to her. Silencing her texts, making fun of her to his friends. He feels ashamed at the amount of pain he’s caused her.
“I’m sorry.” He hears her say and he’s confused, what could she possibly have to be sorry about?
“I’m sorry I wasn’t enough for you.” She sniffles, sobbing as her face looks down into the sink. Shawn feels a knot in his chest, and the guilt becomes unbearable as his heart begins pounding loudly in his ears.
“Y/N…”
“That’s why you left, right? Everyone’s left, I just never thought it would be you.” She managing to laugh, breathing heavily through all the tears and snot.
She never thought it would be, but it was, and perhaps that was the part that hurt the most. So when she tells him to leave, Shawn obliges, wondering how to fix something he so recklessly broke.
-
They’re both half naked. Y/N’s bra is still clad on her while Shawn rushes to unzip her jeans. He’s already pulled his halfway off and he can’t help but admire everything about her. The small freckle near her hip bone, the scar she got from falling when she was younger that never fully healed.
And just as he’s about to take off her underwear, she holds his hand back.
“Wait”
“Huh?” Shawn doesn’t seem mad, or impatient, just genuinely confused at why she seems like she’s changed her mind.
“I just… there’s just something I want to know.” She shyly admits, eyes avoiding his as she picks at the lace on her underwear. Shawn stays silent and Y/N knows it’s probably his cue for her to continue.
“How many girls have you slept with?” She asks. “You know, since we ended things.”
And Shawn feels his head swirl a bit. He had to tell her, he knew he did, but he had just gotten an inkling of hope that she’d take him back. And he didn’t want to lose her again. So without too much hesitation, he swallows his pride and answers.
“Fourteen.”
And the moment he says it, he regrets it. It reminds him of the time he’d spent hours building a tower out of wooden blocks as a child, only for one stumble to make them all come crashing down. He sees her freeze, her eyes welling up in tears before she leans down and reaches for her pants.
He wants to time travel to 4 months ago, where he ended things, and just slap himself in the face. Tell himself that he doesn’t know what he’s losing. That watching her walk away will be scarier than any horror film he’s ever seen when time passes. That the love of his life was standing right in front of him, trying to fix the mistakes that he had caused, while he discarded her like she had never meant anything to him.
“Y/N I-”
“I think you should go.” Her voice wavers a bit, and Shawn wonders if he’s ever felt more disappointed in himself than he does in that moment. She slowly puts her clothes back on, suppressing her feelings as she waits for him to leave.
Shawn doesn’t know how many times it’s been, but he finds himself sitting on the carpet of the hallway to her apartment again. Thinking it’s such a shame, such an absolute shame that sometimes, all a man has to offer are the stars, to a girl who deserves nothing more than a galaxy.
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