Wasted Space
Who: Kenzie and Lance Where: their house When: afternoon
Lance had gotten home just before dawn and went straight to bed. Then he hadn't gotten up again. Most of the day had passed and he was still there, buried under blankets, lacking the ability to do more than lay there and wallow. He felt miserable. He was useless. He didn't have a job. He didn't have a real life. And he'd depressed some girl by having sex with her. He was a complete and utter fuck up. He wasn't even worth the effort to try and kill himself.
Rolling over he pulled the blanket over his head, one arm hanging off the bed, tingling from all the blood rushing to it. But it was too heavy to lift. Everything was too heavy.
Kenzie had slept in for a lot of the morning, feeling like she was hungover from her night with Mannix. It wasn't a bad feeling, necessarily, and she was a lot more relaxed than she had been in weeks. Without bothering to do much with her hair, Kenzie slipped on her clothes and left the brothel to walk back to the home she still technically shared with her cousin. She yawned a few times and rubbed her hands over her face,before wiping the smeared mascara from her palm to the thighs of her jeans.
When she walked into the house, she called for Lance. She had no idea whether or not he was home, but she figured she would find him eventually. She always did. Kenzie started back toward his bedroom. "Lance."
All she got was a muffled noise, sort of a groan. Inwardly he hoped she didn't need anything. He didn't want to have to do things. That was where he was. He wasn't moving. Moving hurt. Everything hurt.
"Lance," Kenzie said again, pushing open the door to his room. She heard the groan beneath the blankets. He was still in bed, which could be a bad sign, all things considering. Toeing off her shoes, Kenzie wandered over and sat down on the edge of his mattress, her hand coming down on the lump that was her cousin. "You're under there somewhere, aren't you?"
Lance made a muffled noise again and wanted to kick her off the bed, but that took too much effort. Instead he expended what little energy he felt he had and peeked out from under the covers. "You look like hell." Not that he was much better, curls a massive mess from being in bed all day.
She snorted loudly. "You're one to talk." Kenzie looked like hell because she'd had an incredible night. Lance looked like hell because he probably felt like it. She reached in to try and poke at his nose. "Stop hiding from me under there."
His half assed attempt to swat her away didn't hit the mark. "I'm not hiding. I just don't want to bother with living." He rolled, flopping more on his stomach, but not really under the covers. "Where were you?"
So it was one of those days. Kenzie didn't move, but crawled up onto his bed to flop down beside him. Whether he wanted her to or not was irrelevant. "I was at the brothel with Mannix," she explained. "What happened?" Because there always seemed to be some kind of trigger for when Lance got like this.
He made a noise of protest when she crawled into bed with him, but that was it. Anything else was too much work. "I thought he had a girlfriend." He shook his head, burying it in his pillow before speaking again, muffled, but here. "Nothing. Just a waste of space."
"I don't know," Kenzie said, not caring one way or another if Mannix had a girlfriend or not. That was his business, not hers. "Didn't seem to care much about his girlfriend last night, if he did." She smirked and reached over to run her hand over his hair. He didn't always like her trying to soothe him, but Kenzie couldn't help it. He had always tried to make her feel better when her dad had gotten particularly violent and left her hurting, so she had always tried to do the same for Lance, whenever he felt down. "What makes you think you're a waste of space? There's gotta be something."
"You were just bitching about him being soft," Lance said, hating her soothing touches and needing them all the same. Pussy. "Homewrecker." He don't move when she touched him, but didn't stop her either. "Just am. I don't do shit. I'm useless. And I made some poor girl feel like shit." Which normally wouldn't bother him but he was already low. How much worse could it get?
"Yeah, well, things changed for a bit." And Mannix liked to bite now. Really bite. "He wasn't soft last night, at least." Kenzie wanted to tell him all about what had happened, but it was hard to talk to Lance when he was in one of his moods. "What girl? And since when do you care?" Kenzie asked, brushing her fingers up through the hair at the nape of his neck. "You know you're not useless. And you don't have to do shit, Lance. Not while we're in here."
"Good for you. Doin' better than me."'and he was supposed to see Lily tonight. That wasn't happening. Not a chance. He'd have to get up and do things. Like shower. "I don't know. She was sad. Something. I feel bad. I have a soul." Which was aching. "I should be doing something."
"You have a soul," Kenzie repeated, though her dark brows drew together curiously. "But why do you feel bad? I don't understand...what did you do that made her so sad?" Girls and their emotions, honestly. She was already irritated with this nameless girl who might have been the trigger to put Lance in his bed, bemoaning his existence. "Just tell me what happened, 'cause it might make you feel better."
"She wants a boyfriend. And I remembered that I fucking suck at being reliable. And I'm supposed to go fuck around with you favorite hook up's sister, but I don't want to. I don't want all that responsibility." Lance sigh and pulled at the covers. "I just want to sleep. And maybe not wake up."
Sighing with him, Kenzie reached down to grab the covers so he couldn't pull them back over his head. "Stop... don't shut down on me, 'cause I need you. If you don't wake up, then I'm here all by myself. I don't want to be alone, okay?" Scooting in closer to him, Kenzie curled herself against his body. "You don't gotta be anyone's boyfriend if you don't wanna be. And you don't have to fuck Mannix's sister either, if you don't wanna do that. You and me don't do responsibilities, remember? You don't owe anyone anything."
Lance knew he couldn't leave her. As much as he wondered why the fuck all she wanted him around, he knew he couldn't leave. "You won't be alone. Someone's always gonna want you." Him on the other hand, not as much. " I know I don't have to be, but god, I'd be such a shitty boyfriend."
Kenzie snorted loudly, though the sound was muffled against his blanket. "C'mon, Lance..." She lifted her face a bit to look at him. "No one wants me. That's why we only have each other. And you don't know what kind of boyfriend you'd be, 'cause you've never been one." She had no idea if anything she said even mattered. All Kenzie could do was say what she felt was the truth, because she didn't like lying to him if she didn't have to. And a part of her didn't want him to have a girlfriend at all, because then he would have no time for her, and his girlfriend would hate Kenzie on the spot and it would just be all around horrible.
"They do. My own father wishes you were his daughter instead of me as a son," he said, shaking his head. There was no good away to snap him out of things, not when he felt like this, but distantly he got that she was trying. "I know I'm a shit friend."
Kenzie knew Lance and his dad didn't always get along, but she would never really think her uncle would prefer Kenzie over his own son. In a way, Kenzie had become like a daughter to her uncle, only because she had lived with them for so long. "A shit friend to who? Why didn't you tell me you were going out and getting friends? I feel left behind," Kenzie said with a faint smile.
"You have friends. And make out buddies. I don't really have any." Except Zania maybe and probably Lily before he wound up here.
"You're... no. I don't have any friends. I have you. I don't have anyone who cares about me like you do." Kenzie frowned and draped her arm over him, squeezing him tight, as if he might suddenly disappear. "Why'd you think I'm always walking around by myself? How many people have come here looking for me? No one, Lance. It's me and you, and it's always been that way."
Lance wasn't sure what to do, but he wound up clinging to her like she was a life boat, his only safety. "Okay. Just me and you." He paused. "I don't think I'm up for going anywhere."
"You don't have to go anywhere," she said, clinging just as tightly to him. "You can stay in bed as long as you want. No one's gonna make you do anything you don't want to do." Especially now that they were inside the dome and her uncle was locked outside. They both had a bit of freedom, and maybe they were just unsure as to what to do with it.