Nicky had been in a depressive state lately, his moods sinking into an everyday apathy and dread for the things around him to the point he’d stopped caring for himself whenever his parents weren’t looking. He was supposed to be the perfect boy for his mother and father, supposed to be everything they were, but he hadn’t been.

Nicky doesn’t recall the first time his family noticed that he was attracted to other men, all he knew was that one day after he’d come back from his school, they were informing him he’d be sent to a gay conversion camp and his life skyrocketed downhill after that.

He no longer felt safe in the house he grew up in, his stomach turning like angry waves whenever his father looked at him for more than a moment, thinking that maybe he saw through his fake facade of being ‘fixed’. His home had no acceptance for what he was, instead believing that Nicky was being sinful for his actions. That somehow Nicky was wrong for loving the same gender as himself.

It was all too suffocating and he couldn’t even feel safe in his own room without fearing being judged like he’d damned everyone, having to suppress crushes on other men and instead pretend to be attracted to the girls he’d met at church. Nicky started having.. thoughts, and it wasn’t anything good. He started thinking that maybe things would be better if he could remove himself from the situation at hand.

But despite his spiraling mindset, he managed to cling onto every inhale, every exhale, he took. And it was like a breath of fresh air after drowning when he’d finally gotten into a study abroad program for his senior year.

He’d never been anywhere but the small town he lived in, so anxiousness was an strange but expected feeling, an emotion that was almost needed with how much his care for things plummeted beforehand.

Nicky felt like he could finally express his sexuality somewhere safe, accepting, in Germany but he didn’t at all think he’d start crushing on his own host-brother of everyone he’d met.