Hell was just like Alex had imagined. Hot and cold at the same time, loud and seething, bright and blinding, wet and strangely comfortable and with a large veiled figure leaning over him.

What he hadn’t expected to be a part of hell was a shorter, pink figure leaning over him as well. Then again, it may have made sense. That Margo was part of hell. That her worried cold eyes would be the first thing he’d see after dying.

“Motherfucker.”

Alex blinked at her, slowly. His vision became a little clearer as he tried to focus on her face, her eyes, filled with annoyance and anger and maybe something like sadness. Oh, and relief. A shit ton of relief.

“What?”

“Stay awake, okay?”

“What?”

“Try to keep your focus on me. Stay with us.”

Maybe he hadn’t died. Maybe he was about to. Maybe the black shrouded figure looming behind Margo was Death herself. Holy shit. Alex couldn’t believe it. He was actually dying. He’d wished for it plenty of times, so he felt like he couldn’t be particularly mad about it now, but still. Kind of shitty.

But at least he knew what it was like now. At least he knew what dying felt like. Not that bad, honestly. Warm. His body was floating, gently being massaged, and some kind of strange large death angel was already waiting to take him away. That would’ve made a great story. Too bad he wouldn’t survive to tell it.

And once he’d gone to hell, he wouldn’t be able to even tell the story to the others, because they’d seen the same. It’d just be an old story. How many times had the souls down there heard the story of an angel submerging them in warmth before reaping their soul? Or maybe it was different for everyone. Everyone just sat there waiting for the next crazy story of how someone died.

“Alex.” Margo’s voice was firm, snapping him back, her small hands laid on his shoulders shaking him ever so gently. “Do not fall asleep.”

Asleep? That was one way to put it. She should’ve let him, though. Pass. Leave. Have it end. He’d already stopped feeling gravity on his body, and now all there was left was for his mind to follow.

He did want it, didn’t he? He wanted it a couple of days ago. He’d been wanting it for all his life. He didn’t get to change his mind now, that he got what he wanted. He couldn’t suddenly refuse this gift he’d been begging for this entire time.

Or did he actually want it? Like really? What exactly was it that had made the thought of death so- well, not appealing, but also not terrifying. Apathetic. If he died, well, he’d die, and maybe he’d kind of deserve it, and if he didn’t, then he’d die anyway sooner or later.

Sooner, in this case. So Alex decided to wait for it to end.

It didn’t end. Alex was alive. And awake. Still. Maybe death had gotten bored by his musings and let him off.

“Are you awake?”

“I guess.”

“Good. Fuck you.” Margo sighed, her hands sliding off Alex shoulders, her body moved away in a strange fluid motion. “Do you know where you are? How much do you remember?”

Remember? Was there anything significant to remember? It wasn’t like Alex could really focus on looking back into the past. He was too occupied with the sheer discomfort of his body.

Despite his limbs floating weightlessly surrounded by warmth, his back hurt. The usual. And his head hurt. Also the usual. And his face really, really hurt, the left side of his face, his cheek, his nose. And his mouth was dry and tasted disgusting. And his throat burned. And his stomach hurt and rumbled and cried out, and everything was extremely shit.

And through all of that, he was supposed to remember anything? He just hadn’t- existed up to this point in time. Nothing had ever come before now. Yet the weight of six painful weeks pressed down on his chest.

“I don’t know shit,” he concluded, and Margo sighed.

“Where are we right now, Alex?”

Where was he? Not hell, apparently. He blinked slowly, then looked around. Light, and dark, water around him and the night sky above him, the moon, not quite full, staring back at him.

Not hell, certainly. Quite the opposite, actually. A familiar place, surroundings he’d seen a million times before, because he’d been spending summer nights and snowy afternoons here for years. The first place Alex had ever been able to call something of a home.

The backyard of the Villanueva family was spacious, big enough for three kids (four, if you counted the basically adopted Alex) and the ambitious building projects of their father. One of these projects was a lovely fire pit, then there was the pizza oven built from clay, then the swingset, and lastly, the hot tub.

So he was alive. He was real. He wasn’t dead, he wasn’t dreaming, he was right here and alive and still a broken mess.

“What happened?” His voice had begun shaking as soon as the realisation hit him. That things were real. That he was real. That something must’ve happened, and he still felt the aftermath.

“Some idiot knocked you into Min’s pool.” The feared angel lifted her veil. She, too, was real, she existed, was familiar, was a relief to face. Beneath thin fabric and a painted on skull were Lani’s eyes, glistening like emeralds, a sight Alex had believed to not see again so soon. “You can say thanks to Margo, she jumped in and pulled you out.”

Margo nodded, pretended to put a proud look on her face. It was easy to tell how much pain laid behind it though.

“And they say HRT makes your muscles shrink!” She then cleared her throat, her act dropped immediately. “Also, I mean, a couple of people helped to actually pull you out of that pool.”

“And?” What else did Alex want to hear? What else was there to explain?

“And? And then we tried to keep you from passing out, didn’t work by the way, and then we stuffed you into my car, and then you threw up in my driveway, and then we dunked you in here because you looked like you were freezing to death.” Lani exhaled, anger still filled her voice as though it had never left her after the argument.

“Sorry,” Alex let out, sinking deeper into the hot tubs bubbling water.

“Alex, don’t-“ Lani exhaled, stared down at her legs that she had only dipped into the warm water, unlike Margo who sat opposite to Alex almost fully submerged, still fully clothed. After a couple of seconds of silence, she looked back up a second time, eyes brimming with frustration. “How are you feeling?”

He’d fucked it up last time she’d asked him this question. Alex hadn’t learned. Never would. Never in his life would he ever learn anything.

That was his curse. That he’d mess things up, and then repeat to do it. The same procedure, the same result, and yet Alex always expected something to change. To bend. To go out well for him. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe fucking up was all he wanted.

He could’ve just come to terms with it. That nothing ever worked out and that he didn’t want things to work out. He didn’t care about himself, he could’ve just finally accepted it. For nineteen years he’d just existed and let everything around him crumble because when the fuck had he ever cared?

When had he ever actually enjoyed and cherished things, moments, people? He’d always just existed, and sometimes he’d been able to taste what life could be like, just to become scared of it again. Like a beaten dog terrified of gentle touch.

Alex had always been fucking miserable and never once cared enough to fix it, never expected anything to ever be fixed. He’d planned to live like this. Or to die like this. He’d felt the pain, and decided to ignore it. Decided to get used to it.

He wasn’t used to it. Would never be. It took nineteen years to understand, but right now, in this second, on this drunken night inside his best friend's hot tub, he did. He hurt. Everything did.

Alex sank further, warm tears mixing with hot water.

“Alex?”

“I feel really fucking bad.”

“I don’t think it’s very spicy.” Lani placed a bowl of soup in front of Alex, hot, orange, smelling like heaven. “But also, I know you and your spice tolerance.”

The skull makeup on Lani’s worried face had smudged, lines that were once sharp and precise had turned into a melted mess. Her usually perfectly straight hair had been left messed up from the veil she’d only now taken off, while the rest of her costume hadn’t yet been disassembled. A bone-like corset still hugged her torso like a rib cage. She hadn't had the time to free herself from accessories, had to take care of Alex and Margo first, both of them ice cold, sopping wet, and one of them still drunk and probably fighting some kind of alcohol poisoning.

As it was meant to be. Lani who cared for everyone, Margo who tried her best to not let things go to shit, and Alex who fucked things up again.

At least some things had returned to normalcy.

Really, this might’ve been the very definition of normalcy. Alex sitting in Lani’s kitchen, sad and drunk and single. Like nothing had ever happened. Too bad that things did happen.

“Eat,” Lani ordered, looking at Alex, then at Margo, who was served a bowl of soup as well. Margo wasn’t one to not comply with these orders, at least not anymore. Alex didn’t feel like it, however. He didn’t feel like doing much at all.

“Come on, it’s good.” Lani sat down at the large table herself, her own bowl in front of her. “Plus, you really need to eat, get something into your system. And drink some water too.”

“You’re back,” Alex only managed to say, and Lani looked up, her brows raised.

“I didn’t go anywhere?”

“You don’t hate me anymore.”

Now Lani’s features softened, at least as far as Alex could tell. She let out a sigh, averting her eyes.

“I never hated you. I wouldn’t even know how to hate you, even if I wanted to-” She stopped in her tracks, then: “Not that I’d ever want to.”

“I’m… sorry?” Alex didn’t mean for it to sound like a question. He was sorry. That was a statement, a fact. He was sorry for lying to his best friend and pretending to be in the right when he knew he wasn’t. He just had no idea how to actually say it. How to make sure that she really knew that he was sorry. Except that this was Lani, and she knew anyway.

“It’s fine. I’ll forgive you if you eat that damn soup.”

Alex sighed, tried to put on a smile, and nodded slowly,

“If that’s all we need to fix this friendship.”

“All we need to fix this friendship is the friendship, dumbass. Now eat. Your stomach is empty, you’ve left all its contents in my fucking driveway.”

“At least tell me what soup this is.” Truthfully, it didn’t matter. It looked good, it smelled good, and it was going to heal every pain in Alex’ body in an instant.

“Pumpkin Curry. Now eat. Mango already finished hers.”

“So is that sp-”

“If you don’t want it.” Margo reached for Alex’ plate, pulling it back just a little to taunt him. “I’ll take it no problem.”

“No- Fine. I’ll- Yeah. Thanks.”

“I can get you a glass of milk. For the unbearable spice.”

“Shut up.”

It’d been a while since Alex had last woken up on the couch of the Villanueva family’s living room. It’d been even longer since he woke up next to the household’s most important family member, Miss Lucina Buttercup Lizel Villanueva. Or Lu. A black and white cat with a mean face and a hate-love relationship with Alex. That was, Alex loved her, and Lu hated him. Sometimes she didn’t, and on those rare days, she’d lie next to him and let him pet her until his fingers were starting to feel numb.

Maybe today was one of those days. Maybe she’d pitied him, and that’s why she was closely cuddled to his body, purring as soon as Alex’ hand found its way to her head, scratching her behind her ears.

Hm. If it weren’t for all the awful things, life could’ve been so lovely. But it was not.

Alex’ head had never hurt more in his life. To be fair, he’d ever been this drunk in his life. He wasn’t planning on doing it ever again, at least not for now. The alcohol didn’t even do anything. It didn’t even work. Well, it worked, it did what alcohol did, but it didn’t do what Alex had wanted it to do.

His memories were foggy. Worse than that time he woke up in Youngbin’s bed after a party. He knew that, at some point, he had sat in Lani’s hot tub and cried, and he knew that before that, he was at Min’s and did stuff, though unsure what kind of stuff that was exactly. Everything else was blank. Except for the knowledge that he was miserable.

When Alex drank, it was to become brainless and thoughtless and clueless. It was to stop thinking and start acting. But he was pretty sure that he was both thinking and acting and that both of these things were horrifyingly separated from one another. His body didn’t belong to himself. His mind, regrettably, did.

And though he couldn’t remember exactly what kind of things his mind had produced, the leftover pain still lingered in his chest. It’d probably stay there for a long time.

Alex massaged the bridge of his nose, just to feel a sharp pain. The living room had been darkened, the curtains pulled shut, yet sunlight was still shining through the gaps illuminating the room just enough. He saw movement through the glazed door leading to the kitchen, and his stomach responded accordingly. He needed something to eat, and to drink, though torn between craving a huge expansive breakfast and only being able to nibble on a dry piece of toast.

Lu jumped up and left his side as soon as Alex decided to move and stretch. His legs hurt. What part of his body wasn’t hurting, though? He felt like he’d been working out nonstop for the past week, and also like he got punched in the face like a million times.

He still hadn’t quite found his balance when he finally managed to stand up from the couch, and with unsteady steps, he walked into the kitchen. Light was flowing in as if it had the specific intention of blinding him, and he shut his eyes.

Oh, but it smelled really fucking good. Like bacon. Alex was somewhere between throwing up thinking about all that fat, and desperately wanting a piece of it. He opened his eyes again to see who he had the honour of meeting that morning.

“Did you vomit into our driveway?” Zander Villanueva didn’t need to look up from the pan to know who had just entered the kitchen.

Lani’s younger brother was the definition of “seventeen year old boy”. He was tall, though not as giant as his sister, lanky, with awkward proportions and curly hair that’d always be messy, no matter how hard he tried to tame it. Not that he really ever tried that in the first place.

He looked a lot like Lani, and yet the youngest of the sibling trio, Brian, looked even more like her. Except that he was twelve.

“I might’ve.” Alex scratched the back of his neck, vaguely remembering Lani scolding him.

“You’re lucky mom loves you.” Zander flipped the bacon in his pan. Alex didn’t know the boy even knew how to turn on a stove. “If I would’ve done that, she-”

“She would’ve ripped your head off. Yeah. I get special treatment.”

Alex grabbed a glass from one of the cupboards, filled it with water, then took a look into the fridge. As if this was his house. It kind of was, sometimes. He practically grew up here, had crashed here countless drunken nights, found refuge whenever things got bad at home. Or, well, back at the place he used to live at with his parents.

“Your face looks hideous.”

“Gee, thanks.” Alex rolled his eyes. “That’s just my genes, okay?”

“No, that’s not what I mean- Whatever. How are you doing?” Zander’s voice now attempted to hide some worry. “Just because, like- Well, since you-”

“Not great. But I’ll manage,” Alex lied.

“Well, good that you’ll manage. Youngbin seems fine too, I was actually chatting to him on Thursday.” Was he? Was Youngbin fine? Why was he fine, and Alex- “I assume you broke up on good terms?”

“He’s doing fine?”

“At least he doesn’t seem to be very distraught.” Zander transferred the bacon strips from the pan onto a plate which already held a piece of bread. “I dunno, I probably shouldn’t be talking about your ex though.”

Of course Youngbin would be fine. It wasn’t like he’d lost anything. His performance had ended, and it had been so fucking successful that it even convinced his co star. Why would he be anything but fucking fantastic?

And he did a great job, he really did. He should’ve been proud of himself, absolutely. To flawlessly play the role of the most lovable human being on the planet. To perfectly embody this kind of peace and happiness. This level of perfection.

He had every right to be fine.

“Lex? Buddy?”

“What?” Alex blinked, being snapped back into reality. “Sorry. Didn’t listen.”

“I was asking if you wanted some bacon.” Zander furrowed his brows. “You’re not doing that well, are you?”

“Doesn’t matter. Just get me a plate.”

Zander obliged, though with uncertainty written in his face, and handed Alex two strips of bacon and a small piece of his toast.

The two sat down together at the kitchen table, and Alex imagined that this was the closest he’d ever get to a family breakfast. He’d known Zan for as long as he’d known Lani, so he might as well have been Alex’ own brother. He didn’t quite know every piece of Alex’ mind as well as Lani did, but he was pretty damn close to knowing most of it.

Zan was the biggest nerd in a family full of big nerds. He was the gamer and role player and fantasy lover and theatre kid, and now that Alex thought about it, he’d get along with Youngbin fantastically. Too bad that- Well. Whatever.

Their breakfast was relatively silent, mostly because Zander was just scrolling his phone, and Alex was busy staring at the same old kitchen decor. This house had always been a stark contrast to Lani’s own room.

It was comfortable and light and colourful, filled with old crafts the kids had made years ago in school, even some of little Alex’ own crafts. A mother’s day card he’d made for Lani’s mother many years back still hung on the fridge door. After all this time. Admittedly, nothing had even been taken off that fridge, so maybe they’d forgotten that this card was still on there.

“Rise and shine,” Margo’s voice ripped through the silence, though it’d been a rather comfortable one. “Alex’s awake already?”

She stuck her head through the kitchen door, followed by Lani’s head, though she looked a lot more tired than Margo, certainly not like she’d risen. Well, risen from the dead, maybe.

“I was so gracious to share my beloved breakfast.” Zander got up, half heartedly throwing his and Alex’ empty plates into the dishwasher.

“You’re truly a saint, Zan. Alex would’ve starved to death without you.” Margo patted Zander’s back, maybe with a little too much power, as he walked past her out of the kitchen.

Alex remained seated, and Margo and Lani joined him. They looked at him with a look on their faces that was a little too reminiscent of one of his teachers who was kind of the only one at the school that never got mad at him, only sad. Like these two were about to ask him if he was okay, and if there was anything they could do for him, and if he needed help or support.

“You okay?” Margo asked. Called it.

“Do I need to answer that?”

“I think that’s enough of an answer already.” She sighed, leaned back as she looked at Lani.

Lani’s eyes looked tiny without her makeup. Also because she seemed to barely be able to keep them open. She didn’t seem very ready for a serious discussion about Alex, but she pretended to be anyway.

“You remember anything from yesterday?” Her voice was even deeper than usual. A mix of the “we are being very serious” voice and the “I literally just woke up” voice.

“Is this an interrogation now?”

“Dude, we’re being serious. You almost fucking died.”

“You didn’t almost die, but you were pretty out of it and passed out like multiple times, so,” Margo added. “We feel like things need to change.”

“We? Are you guys my parents or something?”

“Alex, don’t start this again.” Lani rubbed her face, a pained expression plastered right on it. “If you wanna waste away for the rest of your life then fine, really, do what you want. Just tell us to fuck off and we will never bother about you ever again. But you are our friend and we do love and care about you, no matter what you think. You’re going to shit and you can’t expect us to stand here and watch from afar.”

Alex fell silent. It wasn’t like he didn’t need the help, or didn’t want it, he just- he didn’t know what kind of help there even was left. What kind of change was needed to fix things. He didn’t even know what exactly he needed fixed, aside from a general “my whole life”. He didn’t know how to explain what parts of his body hurt because all of them did, overwhelmingly so.

“So?” He looked down at the table in front of him, where his plate had just stood. “What do you suggest we do, then? What’s going to help me?”

“Stop drinking.”

“Talk about your feelings.”

Two answers said simultaneously, neither of them sounded particularly appealing to Alex.

“Get therapy, maybe.” Lani answered, somewhat on the same lane as her first idea. “Like actual professional help. Might work.”

“Or you do the full switch to weed.”

“How about no drugs at all?”

“How about,” Alex now said, “I just push away my feelings to get over them and keep on living my life?”

“How about you express your feelings in healthy ways to get over them?” Lani crossed her arms. “How about you find ways to let out your thoughts and feelings in a productive and creative way?”

“I’m not going to start writing stupid breakup songs or like, poetry or some shit, Lani.”

“I never said you should, but now that you’ve said it, that might be an idea.”

“Right. No, thanks.” He rolled his eyes. Well, maybe it wasn’t the worst idea ever. But certainly also not the best. In fact, there were a million better ideas that he just hadn’t come up with yet.

“Okay, okay. Alex. The problem here is Youngbin, isn’t he?” Margo attempted to re-rail the conversation.

“The problem is me, I’m pretty sure.”

“Then the problem is your feelings about Youngbin and the fact that he doesn’t reciprocate them?”

It wasn’t just that, was it? Youngbin had been the last drop in a barrel that’d been filled to the brim since birth. It was a lot of shit. It was a whole life leading up to one big breaking point. It was Alex attaching himself to people that were too good for him. Youngbin was just one of many.

Except that, no, not at all, Youngbin wasn’t one of many. For a couple of weeks, Youngbin was the only one. God, it was too much. Too much to think about. Nothing made sense, not a single thought about Youngbin seemed to make sense or be easy or be understandable.

“I don’t know what the damn problem is.”

“I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that the problem may be the very fishy weird relationship you had with him and the complete lack of communication between you two. Could that be the problem?” Margo raised her brows, pressing her lips together.

“Might be one of the problems.”

“Yeah. There we go.”

“But,” Alex said, “it’s not like we can do anything about that now. I think we’ve communicated our feelings pretty clearly.”

“Clearly, of course. You called him up and then you argued and then that was it, right? Very clear, I see.”

“We didn’t argue, we-“ What could that even be called? Alex didn’t want to label it an argument because that’d mean that someone was in the wrong. Or that someone was being right. He felt like maybe neither of them were anything.

“Did you have a calm honest conversation about your emotions, then?”

“No, but-“

“Then I’ll call it an argument. Now if maybe you two talked in a setting that wasn’t as stressed and rushed and emotional, then-“

“Margo, I really don’t think I want to talk to him. Not now. Not anytime soon, to be honest. Maybe- resolving anything isn’t even what I want. I guess I just… don’t want to think about him at all.”

“That’s fair.” Lani nodded slowly, though in a strangely sad way. “But drinking until you pass out or get punched into an ice cold pool isn’t really the best way to do that.”

“When did I ever get punched into an ice cold pool?”

“Last night. Like that was a pretty nasty hit and then you fell into the pool.”

Alex blinked slowly. He did, in fact, not remember that. But that explained why his face had been hurting the entire morning.

“Anyways,” Lani continued, “if you need time to take your mind off of things, that’s great, but again, you can do so safely and healthily. We’re there to distract you. I have no problem picking you up at any point in time to drive you to McDonalds, we can drive you out of town, we can do movie nights, you can finally get me to play that little video game Zander always plays with you-“

“It’s not a little video game, it’s a highly acclaimed MMORPG with a decade worth of story content-“

“I don’t care what it is, it’s gonna be a healthier way to distract yourself than the shit you pulled last night.”

Alex didn’t want to agree, to be honest. Maybe he didn’t even want to stop being self destructive, perhaps that destruction was all he had. A constant in his life, a way to remember that he was alive, though he maybe shouldn’t be. Hurt that was self inflicted and deserved.

Or maybe having a movie night with his best friends was the better choice after all.

“Doesn’t matter what we do. Just try to promise us that we’ll do it together, and without anyone ending up passed out or bleeding.”

“Hard thing to promise.”

“Hard but possible. Come on.”

Alex sighed, and his two sisters slash therapists slash best friends stared at him with a waiting expression. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t really say no. But he didn’t want to say no anyways.

“Whatever. Promise.”

Chapter 32 - DYING IN A HOT TUB

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