Stokely wears black because it's comfortable. A plain color. She gets up in the morning and puts it on. She doesn't have to worry about whether her moss shirt matches her desert sand khakis, or whether she should wear her caramel slides or her tanned leather pumps. She can't stand everyone else's colors, their blue and green and yellow and – God help her – their pink and orange. Stokely's rather fond of red and she doesn't mind gray, but anything else feels burned into her retinas. Black goes with black, and it feels cool and comfortable against her skin. It feels right.
Stokely hates small talk for the same reason. It's hateful because it's so goddamned pointless. Asinine words in ineffectual sentences about boy bands and the latest episode of Dawson's Creek. There's no meaning in chitchat, there's only pretending; a pretended point, pretended interest. Too much smoke and all the mirrors are shattered, and the pieces cut her to ribbons.
Stokely doesn't have a death wish, contrary to popular opinion. All she wants is to get through life with a minimum of pain. Stokely is all about survival. She's built herself a small, dark place, a little box of darkness she can just fade into whenever it all gets too much. She tries to make the world ignore her, but when that doesn't work she ignore the world.
She tried for a while. She painted those walls lilac and powder blue, and tried to pretend that a different color meant different. She walked in the sun and tried to pretend it didn't hurt. She held Stan's hand, she talked, she laughed. She cut her nails so that when she smiled and clenched her fists her palms wouldn't bleed.
Delilah doesn't mind Stokely's dark spaces or her dark clothes or her dark moods. She knows what Stokely needs – to be pushed to the edge of everything, away from herself and everyone else too. A place so dark that even Stokely's little box of sanity seems gray. A place where Delilah's eyes don't reflect anything. Not even Stokely.
Stokely sleeps with her head on Delilah's stomach, Delilah's breasts brushing the top of her head, her arms around Delilah's waist. They sleep without covers and without clothes. Stokely wears darkness like she was made for it, but Delilah's skin shines, and when the moonlight hits it Stokely doesn't even have to close her eyes. Because she's safe here. She's small and dark and surviving. Sometimes the best place – the darkest place – is just behind the light.