A/N: Found this little gem on my hard drive today; I wrote this piece probably 6 years ago while I was in college but liked it so much when I reread it and thought it was worth sharing. Enjoy!
Some days she calls him, some days she doesn't.
He holds her gently, pressing a hand to the back of her head, wraps his other arm around her frail body, and pretends not to notice when his shirt becomes slightly damp. She doesn't like it when anyone asks her why she is crying, so he says nothing. He already has a good guess on why she's like this.
"How silly," she says. She turns away from him to wipe surreptitiously at her eyes, and he averts his gaze to a nearby tree. When he feels that sufficient time has passed, he looks at her, and she is smiling; it's a watery smile, but it's something.
He touches her cheek with a gloved hand, but she flinches at his touch.
"Would you like to go somewhere?" It takes all of his effort to smile at—for—her, but he's rewarded when her smile becomes genuine.
He takes her ice skating. The air nips at their cheeks and turns them red.
She's never gone before, and she clutches to the railings on the sides of the rink, shuffling forward at the pace of a snail. At this rate, she will probably be able to circle around the entire rink in two hours.
He doesn't even try to hide his laughter when she slips and falls, banging her head against the wall. "Do you need help?" he asks, skating over to her and holding out his hand.
"No," she snaps. Her brown eyes are very bright under the harsh fluorescent lighting. "I don't need any help. I can do this by myself."
"All right," he says, shrugging, and skates away, scarf trailing behind him. There isn't really much to skating here, really. Just once, twice, three times around the rink. The view is always the same. Nothing changes.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he can see her on the ground, a fierce and determined look on her face.
This is always how it is.
He circles around again until he is behind her, and she senses his presence before she sees him.
"I don't need your help," she says, crossly. She hasn't brought any gloves with her, and her knuckles are raw and red as she tries to pull herself up. She isn't very successful.
"I know," he says, but he wraps his arm around her waist and hauls her up. "I just think it will be more fun this way."
They don't really say much as they skate. He modifies his speed to match hers, and she absentmindedly tucks her hand in the crook of his arm.
Afterwards, they stand at a street corner and shamelessly gobble up hotdogs that they have bought from a street vendor.
"I never get to do this anymore," she says, half apologetically, and he wonders if that is regret in her voice. "You know what he thinks…" She trails off, bites her lip and blinks rapidly.
She doesn't need to finish the sentence because he can already hear the overbearing voice in his head, accompanied, as always, by an unattractive sneer: This is what commoners do, or, I honestly think I'd rather die than eat something that was prepared right in front of you.
"Well, he's missing out," he tells her. He hates it when her brown eyes fade, and they always seem to do that when she starts ruminating.
Her eyes snap back to his, and he can almost see the wheels turning in her head as she locks a particular thought away, determined not to think of it anymore. She's very good at partitioning her thoughts and firmly placing them out of the forefront of her mind if they might cause her any discomfort. It's almost a necessary mechanism now, but he wonders sometimes if it's healthy.
"Well, I don't want to think about him right now." She finishes eating her hot dog in three enormous bites, as if excessive chewing will provide her with an excuse for not talking.
He isn't really hungry anymore, so he tosses the rest of his hot dog in the garbage, and only half listens when she chides him about starving people on the streets and how food is valuable.
Her body is tired, and she is physically almost unable to keep her eyes open, but she clings to his company, as she asks him to walk to the park with her.
He dutifully trudges along beside her, and the silence settles over both of them gloomily. She is likely thinking about him; her eyebrows are rushed down in anger, and, if he looks closely enough, he could probably see tears lurking in her eyes.
He is thinking about himself. He feels like a beggar sometimes, begging for scraps and morsels of her time, planning his schedule around hers, waiting for the days that she says she can meet up with him. He will always drop everything that he has planned for the day, and he despises himself for that, but there are some things that just cannot be helped.
"It's hard," she says, suddenly, in a moment of weakness.
He looks at her with some surprise; only the lateness of the hour and the exhausting day would make her actually express what she has been thinking.
This is the point where he would normally parrot a cliché—"it wouldn't be worth it otherwise" comes to mind, presently, but he keeps his mouth shut.
"I know relationships aren't easy, and that you always have to work at them, but…" Her face contorts into a grimace and she puts her head in her hands.
"What happened between you two?" he asks her, finally.
She draws a breath, shakily. "It's really nothing." She doesn't sound convincing at all, and she realizes that. "It's nothing… he's just… really tired and upset lately. And stressed. He always acts like this when he's stressed. And I suppose I was partly to blame."
He doesn't say anything. He never does.
She turns towards him, and her eyes are desperate. "He said he was sorry."
To him, the words mean nothing; they have lost their meaning long ago. He remembers a time when the words 'please,' 'thank you,' and 'sorry' were magical words; the very act of uttering the words caused something to happen. With those words, something would change.
The words have been overused long ago. He always says that he's sorry, and she knows better than to believe him. But she does anyway, for some inexplicable reason.
He knows that as surely as the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, she will always forgive him. She will always go back to him. This is always how it is.
"Shouldn't you be getting back?" he asks. His soul feels weary, like the spirit of a ninety year old man is residing in his twenty-two year old body. "He's probably worried about you."
"He's out with his friends tonight." The words are laced with bitterness. "He won't miss me."
He has always considered himself a thief. Although he knows that there is nothing illicit or inappropriate about their meetings, he considers the time that he spends with her to be stolen from the times that she would otherwise spend with him. But every conversation between the two of them and every thought eventually will eventually lead right back to the source of her problems. Even when she says she doesn't want to think about the whole matter and that they should think about something entirely different, the task is impossible. It is just like telling a person not to think of red cars; all that she or he can do for the foreseeable future is think about red cars.
"Things will work out somehow. They always do," she says. Her voice is steely with determination, and she slams a fist against the park bench, as if the physical action will prove a point.
All he can think is that in the moonlight, her eyes are like little burnt holes in a blanket. There was once a time when he would have admired her loyalty, but all she is doing now is strapping herself to the mast of a sinking ship. He knows that she recognizes it to be a lost cause, but she dedicates her life to it anyway.
He doesn't know whether to applaud this resolve or curse it.
He walks her back to her apartment later that night. At the door, she turns around and embraces him and doesn't let go for a while.
An iron fist clenches around his heart and for a moment, it's difficult to breathe.
"Thanks for today," she says. "I promise, next time, I'll stop bringing him up. We'll have a lot of fun."
"Of course we will," he tells her, although he knows that it isn't true. She only calls him when she has reason to be upset, when she needs someone to lean on for a little while.
He extricates himself from her hug and abruptly leaves. When she calls "goodbye," from her doorstep, he lifts a hand in a farewell salute, but doesn't turn around.
When he is safely out of sight, he leans against a wall and watches the lights turn on in her apartment. She will likely stay up, waiting for him to come home.
Lucky bastard, he thinks, then takes himself back home, where he will wait, as he always does, for her next call.