"Dismissed." The professor giggles to the class. Her good wishes are washed out by bags being zipped and textbooks being slapped shut. (Y/N)'s strong gaze, however, remains stilled on the pouring rain outside; thunder shudders in through the shut windows... She would rather avoid driving in this kind of weather. It makes her hands shaky, tongue swell, and sweat collects on the surface of her skin... Sometimes the scars littered across her back even start to hurt. "(Y/N)?" The professor softly calls, her round glasses glaring because of the white light shining from the large lights above. Her slack mouth twitches, brows nearly melting off her face; (Y/N)'s stomach begins an acidic burn at the look she is giving her...
"I'm fine!" She put a smile on her face as well as she can.
"It's raining pretty hard out there..." The professor slowly speaks, "Want me to drive you back?" The students hands are soon in a flurry in front of her, heat popping into her cheeks.
"No!" She clears her throat and folds her hands in front of her, trying to collect the frantic thoughts swirling around her head, "No," Her soft voice comes out smoothly, "I have an umbrella." The old professor watches her with blinking eyes, waiting for (Y/N) to fill the silence. "Not a single drop will touch me." Her head begins to bob in acceptance, her back stiff and shoulders slouched; the young girl put it up to the teachers age, which is higher up in the numbers. "Have a good one, Professor Bennett."
"Good night, (Y/N)." The girl steps from the classroom, into the large, empty hallway. Through the doors she can see the glare of headlights passing by and can just barely hear the rain tapping the glass gently. From her black bookbag she pulls an umbrella out, and then takes to stuffing her headphones into her pierced ears and turning her music up loud enough to drown out all possible sound. The black metal of the door is cold on her clammy hands; she should put her hood up just in case - she even pulls at the ends of her hoodie to try and cover her hands from possible rogue raindrops.
"Hey." Is purred from her right, she closes the door that she'd begun to open, to meet the brown eyes of the boy wiggling his eyebrows at the hooded girl. She pops one of her headphones out with a twitch in her brow. "What are you doing tonight?" (Y/N)'s skin crawls as she tries to piece together what hiccup of a pickup line he's going to use this time.
"I'm..." Her (e/c) eyes dart to the left, "Going to study... I have a test in history this week. Skipped class too many times this chapter." Watching the way his eyes turn down and the color in his cheeks fade away would make any sweet girls stomach rocket into hell; lucky for (Y/N), she's a terrible human.
"Oh, well... Maybe we could study together?"
"Charlie, you're not in my class."
"I'm good at history."
"Then, maybe some other time." (Y/N) taps his shoulder in an attempt to be comforting, "Just, not tonight." Offering him a hesitant smile, she says her good-bye to him with a flimsy, "Goodnight Charlie."
(Y/N) isn't a big fan of liars. She's had too much experience with them, knowing all of the reasons, the tactics and strategies, and most of all, all about their consequences. It's obvious that while honesty can be a little more difficult, it's somehow way easier. That being said, she should also mention that she is a hypocrite, because she just blatantly lied to Charlie's poor face. Study? It probably would have been more believable if (Y/N) would have just said "Generic excuse" to him or something. She knows damn well what she's going to do tonight; it's almost a ritual at this point.
Unlocking the door to her car, she plops down into the seat and screeches about the leather seats of her car for about two minutes; summed up, they're bad in the winter because they're so cold and they're bad in the summer because they're too hot - all around they're bad. After turning her car on and letting the engine warm up, she finally works up the strength to pull the headphones out of her ears.
This time, for sure, (Y/N) won't have a flashback.
She clicks the car into drive and putters from the parking lot, leg pulling back from the gas peddle several times. The corners of her mouth bury themselves into her cheeks, stretching her dry lips into a concentrated line, and her brows stitch together. (Y/N)'s eyes never stutter from the lane - barely checking the lights - and every time a car hisses by, she turns her radio up louder and louder. Living so far away is a menace, especially for a girl like (Y/N); on rainy nights like this, after her classes, she turns into a danger to society and should be off the road at all costs. But, (Y/N) is stubborn. Determined to be self-sufficient... Anyways, there's nothing she should be afraid of.
By the time she pulls into her secluded driveway, her dinky car is about to fall apart because her music is so loud, and she look like she's been through ten world wars. Shaking hands spend a long while trying to unlock her front door. The longer she spends trying to unlock the door, the sound of the rain hitting the ground gets louder, and the harder her hands shake; (Y/N) puts a whole new meaning to trying to run away from the rain. Some girls run from it like it's life or death - for their hair, for their outfit, whatever it is - but for (Y/N), it is. Finally, finally, the door swings open, and she tumbles in like she's just barely dodged a bullet. The girl sheds her wet jacket, hanging it up on the coat rack, her last name engraved on the top of it with some weird looking ducks on either side of it; (Y/N)'s mom has an obsession with them.
She smiles to the familiar faces saying their welcome homes, "I'm home, Mom, Papa." She heads for the living room, finding it surprisingly dirty for her tastes; she picks up the empty wrappers and the two plates on the end stand. "Gosh, we've kind of let the place go, huh?" (Y/N) calls. She starts the dishwasher and wipe up the kitchen counters before snatching a bag of chips from the pantry. Marching down the hall with a little less passion in each step forward, she stops in front of the thin table lining the downstairs hallway.
"You should be proud of me, Pops. I made it home tonight without a flashback." (Y/N) calls a little above a whisper. "I learned about show versus tell in creative writing today." She babbles, lighting an incense, and watching the smoke rise to the white ceiling, parting at the brown beams running horizontally across it. "I'll show you just how well I'm doing now. Watch over me." She stares at their smiling faces, stuck in that simple brown frame. Almost a minute passes in silence, until she whispers again, "I wish you could have made it home with me too." She swallows the knot in her throat and nods, forccing a smile to take hold of her trembling lips. "Goodnight, Momma, Papa."
"Sebastian!" She calls, clicking her tongue, and turning sharply from the table. (Y/N) shake the bag of chips, hoping he'd take it as a bag of treats. She didn't hear his bell tinkering towards her as she usually would for a minute, so she shakes it again. "Sebastian! Here kitty kitty! Let's go to bed," Peaking into every room as she heads upstairs to her bedroom, she grumbles under her breath, "Where the hell are you ya little shit?" She stomps up the stairs, opting out of tearing the upstairs apart looking for him quite yet; she should get in her battle uniform. (Y/N) steps into her cluttered room and pulls a new pair of floral pajama pants and a random t-shirt from her small dresser and then dresses sluggishly.
Chirping from the cage hanging in the corner of her blue room draws (Y/N)'s attention up. She smiles to the sweet blue bird staring at her with those endless eyes. His food must be out; he did eat a lot for such a tiny little thing.
"Hi, Ciel." She did get a little kick out of her dry humor every time she would snuggle into her bed with a good book in her lap, and Sebastian sitting on top of the dresser staring hungrily at Ciel. "Speaking of Sebastian," She begin, pushing his small bowl back into its place, which he flutters to instantly, cocking his head at the girl, "Have you seen him?" He squeaks back incessantly, to which she backs away with half lidded eyes and a lift in her upper lip. "Okay, you don't have to be such a brat about it." She steps into the hall and cups her hand around her mouth, calling for the black cat. The quiet girl checks all the rooms, but to her disappointment, her kitty didn't show up in any of them. Clicking her tongue again and glancing around as if he were hiding in plain sight, she finds herself at a loss of where her cat could've gone. And, just out of the corner of her (e/c) eye, she sees a little black dot sitting in her back yard. Her body is plastered to the window within a second, staring in the orange eyes of her soaked feline, sitting outside on her uncut lawn.
Panic soared through the entirety of the girls body as she tumbles down the stairs, nearly skipping every step and shoot through the back sliding door. "Sebastian!" She screams at her annoyingly calm kitty. His head flicks to look at the girl like she's disturbing his bird watching, and yet she still hustles to embrace him. "What are you doing out here? You scared me!" (Y/N) hugs him to her small chest as she turns away and looks at the library window, left damn near wide open. "That's how you did it, huh?" He meows up to her as she begins to head inside.
"I swear, mister, if I didn't know that that story was just a fairytale I'd almost insist you are Sebastian. It gives me the heebie-jeebies, ya know?" She babbles to him. "Still, I'm-"
Boom. It feels like someone punched her in the back of her head. Every muscle in her body tenses as her legs stop moving before she begins to fall forward. Blinding light is all (Y/N) sees in the reflection of her back door. Time seems to be slowed down as she watches the lightning retract from the ground behind her, and her kitty scrambles inside. Hitting the ground, the girl watches those orange eyes of Sebastian's turn back around and eye her in wonder.
What a weird cat.
