think you know everything you really don't know nothing i wish that you were more intelligent so you could see that what you're doin' is so shitty to me
It was raining.
Somewhere, it was raining, Dalit was certain. How else could it be so cold and grey? Lifeless.
The shirt confused him. The voices angered him.
The rest of the day was spent pulling his bones out, replacing them with strands of fury, tendons and sinew twisted and jumbled and spilling over his lips in tangible forms of
hurt.
The rest of the night was spent on his back, a lion's den void of empathy, surrounded by those things that stared at him, whispered and pleaded and
laughed. Mocked.
Dalit covered his eyes, pressing down and down with his palms, searching for that ground his head laid upon.
"What a fool," he muttered, fingers pulling away. And then he was up. and out. and standing in front of that cursed door. Why did he have to fix it?
Hands curled, fists struck the wood. "Stille!"
He was so cold, he was sweating. It had to have been raining somewhere.
She knew he'd come. Knew he'd be around when she couldn't find the shirt outside, could almost feel his footprints in the dirt of her front step. When she heard him yell for her, she stretched.
Showtime.
She was only half dressed but she still leaned out the skylight to stare down at the boy and his angry, sullen features.
God, he looked pissy.
"Do you have my shirt? I've been looking for it."
"This?" He held it up, crumpled, threaded in his fingers. He hadn't the will to tear it. Not yet, at least.
"You want it, you come down here, Stille!" He was venomous, those ocean eyes swallowing that fury that had his heart, that damned magpie.
"Then you were slinking around you fucking creep," she hissed at him from the safety of higher ground. "There's no way I'm going down there-- I know what you heard and I don't reeeeally feel like getting stabbed tonight, thanks." She came to sit on the ledge at least, feet on the roof with knees curled to her chest. Even half dressed she was ready to run if it came down to it.
She knew she could outrun him, even if he knew where she'd return to.
"The fuck is your problem anyways. I'm not your girl, Dal. No matter how much you want me to be, I'm not."
He held to his anger, swallowed it to push down that hurt, that heartbreak he so often hid behind.
"I wasn't slinking around. I was coming to apologize, you --" His teeth snapped, ground. He cut himself on his words.
Dalit turned, paced in frustration. His shoulders dipped forward, back. He looked to Stille once more.
The carpenter had made himself miserable, getting tangled with a silly little bird.
"That doesn't mean you had to--" Had to what? Do what she wanted? Dalit sat, elbows on knees, forehead in hands. "You're my problem, Stille," he snarled, fingers tangled in mane.
"Had to what? Go get fucked?" The girl rolled her eyes. "You made me your problem. I don't want to be your problem-- I want to be your friend. But you're making that really hard with this unrequited love bullshit you keep pulling out of your fucking ass. Don't think I don't know, the way you look at me-- What gives you the right to claim me as a fucking problem? If I make your life so hard, get the fuck out of here."
She stood, then, cocking her middle finger at the carpenter. "And you don't even know who it was. You don't know anything-- He might be good for me, he might be the one that sticks around. All you know is that he isn't you, and you can't fucking stand it."
Dalit's head snapped up and he glared at her, riled at the truth.
He hated the truth.
"I'm not leaving." He turned his head away, attention on the shirt. It was the most important thing in that moment and he folded it, nails trailing over the seams.
"And I'm not good for you? I do a lot of shit for you, Stille." But she was right.
He couldn't stand that it was someone else with her.
"You're a good enough friend, Dal," she said, sparing him a sidelong glance as she took a step back into her room. "Except for like right now. Usually though you're an alright guy, a good friend. But I don't love you. We've known each other for years. If I haven't fallen for you yet, you who are always there, ever present, then it's not going to happen."
She turned away from him, then, steeling her gaze to the inside of her nest.
"So get over me or stop coming around."
"Why don't you give me a fucking chance, Stille?" He stood, gaze sweeping over her back and he hated it in that moment.
And when he breathed, he felt like a fool. "I'm not going to stop coming around. Let me in." He was much softer now, tired, worn from stitching himself up. He was thin and long and sickly inside and how he hated himself.
Stille really didn't feel like getting raped to death tonight. Not that she thought that Dalit had it in him-- but angry men became beasts at the flick of a switch and she was pretty sure his switch was teetering. She was sore from the previous evening, too tired to defend herself, too flatline to be comforting. And why should she have to comfort him? Bullshit.
"No," she said simply. "Go home."
She didn't want to be touched. Didn't want to be looked at, handled, wanted.
She just wanted to be.
And the only way she could be was alone.
"If you get in, I'm going to split. I've already got my boots on. So hurry up and break in or get the fuck out of here."
He was growing frustrated.
Talking to walls was easier than this sometimes.
"I'm not going to break a door I fixed," he muttered, breathless.
Dalit sighed. This was not how he wanted this to go. But what did he expect in his rage?
"At least put your fucking shirt on," he snapped as he threw the garment up to her. He didn't want to frighten her off but, damn, was he bitter.
"I have others."
After the words echoed down, she closed her window.
Fuck him.
Dalit just stared at the window, lips turning into a frown.
Here it was, coming up...
"Stille...I'm sorry, ok?" He didn't care if she heard him or not, not now. But the words still pulled themselves out.
And that pale girl curled into the blankets on her floor that still smelled of Nuru's ghost, that comforting, quiet presence that she found herself longing for. Closed her eyes, fell to roost, and found her way to her surface sleep, her lightened rest.
Fuck him.
Dalit waited in the nothingness of that moment.
He rested his forehead against the door and sighed and closed his eyes and longed.
And overhead it began to rain.
thirty five people couldn't count on two hands the amount of times you made me stop, stop and think why are you bein' such a dickhead.