so it goes in one ear and right out the other
people talking shit but you know I never bother
it goes in one ear and right out the other
people talking shit, they can kiss the back of my hand
killed you with kisses
part ii. in which he knows
She is long gone by morning.
To be frank, she always is. When she falls asleep so innocently at some point through the movie, he gives up on whatever plans he'd had for the evening and carries her sleeping figure to one side of his bed and he tucks the blankets around her. He has always thought that her frame was far too emaciated for a personality such as hers. Her faultless words couldn't be reflected in her gaunt limbs. Her causes couldn't be echoed anywhere in her ethereal figure.
He goes off and reads his books after he leaves her there, but reading is a heck of a lot harder, even for him, when he has her on his mind. She is the queen of oblivion, and simultaneously the ruler of everything that he knows. He will finish his book before scolding himself for staying up so late, and then he kind of crawls onto his bed silently and lies on top of his uncultured, red bed sheets, uncovered. He lulls himself into a more thoughtless train of thought than the one which usually accompanies his mind, thanks to the rhythm of her serene breathing.
And maybe she is hoping for a fairytale, too. She always holds up her shell; her armour which not a single person could penetrate. He knows that he wants to break through those walls, but she is too smart, even for him.
That is the entire problem. He is in love with her.
He does not really know what love is, however. Of course, he had the casual high school date-for-three-weeks-and-then-avoid-each-other episode, but that does not provide him with a definition of love.
He has been in love with her for about three years now. He is apparently too good at hiding it, however, and not even she, who is the master of investigation, has picked up on it. He knows that his apparent marble façade helps him in this endeavour, but he will not be able to hold it in forever.
He knows that he does love her, but people like him have known things, too. He has pride, and a reputation to uphold, but he knows that doubting his own emotions will lead him into his own type of conflict.
He does not know what love is.
He does not know how to love.
He does not know why he is in love.
He only knows that he is in love.
He wakes up at roughly nine o' clock on that Sunday morning, one hand stretched out to where he had lain her down last night. Of course, she is gone, but the bed still holds her faint warmth, meaning that she left later than she usually did. The room still smells of her cheap but sharp perfume, and he breathes as much of it in as he can before he surrenders to the morning and actually gets out of bed before ten o' clock.
He sees it there, of course: the tea that she leaves behind every time she leaves. He walks to the kitchen bench where it sits innocently, in his favourite mug, with the bright red handle. Only she knows that it is his favourite mug. Only she knows a lot of things about him. Only she knows that he plays the classical guitar. Only she knows that he has a secretly incurable obsession with musicals. Only she knows that he has never used an electric blanket. Only he knows that he loves her.
He knows a lot of things about her, too, that no one else knows. He knows that she has never been out of state, but she would kill to go New York, because she really uncharacteristically shares his love for musical theatre. He knows that she was actually taught how to switch between being an open book and being ambiguous, by her mother. He knows that she has never bought a CD, although she has an impressive collection of vinyls and always picks at him for not owning a DVD player.
He looks into the mug, or the abyss, as he would take it, seeing her face reflected in the swirling liquid. It is still warm, he notices, as he puts his hand to the hostilely red handle. He drowns his throat with the liquid, as he drowns his thoughts with the heat, and thinks of drowning his head in the crook of her neck. And he wants to stop thinking: he thinks that he thinks about things too much. But as he is quite ironically thinking about not thinking, he gives up, lowering the mug back to the table as he notices the note underneath for the first time.
to open your eyes in the right way.
Of course he knows that it is her handwriting, and the fact that it is written on a crumpled receipt only supports the fact that the note must be from her. The thing is, he thinks, again, is that she never leaves notes. She is not one to leave more information than necessary, but then again, her message was not the most direct thing that he could imagine. He succumbs to the heat from the tea that washes though his head eventually, allowing it to finally let his thoughts sink away.
Discarding the mug by the kitchen sink, he turns to the note instead. He runs his fingers lightly over the imprints left by her black pen, feeling the grooves left in the places which he thinks should be left vacant between the letters: he is one for printing, whilst she has always pursued the use of cursive. Why he notices these little things, she does not know. He notices that the receipt is from Walmart, and she buys a packet of coloured pencils for a brother. The receipt is three days old, and has imitated perforations from where she has poked the pen in the side too many times. The message is written in between two rectangular advertisements on the reverse of the thin paper, and her handwriting is nowhere rushed, but the pen almost runs out of ink by the last time the words stretch to the last character. He decides that everything, aside from her font, reflects her personality almost perfectly: Walmart's coloured pencils, the stab marks on the side, the blank smudge of ink between the printed cashier name and the subtotal.
He turns away, both physically and metaphorically, but leaves the receipt on the countertop instead of crinkling it further and shooting it towards the bin, as he would any other piece of paper. At 11 o' clock, he decides that he does not feel at home in his, and after stealing his favourite red jumper from its hanger, decides that a walk would clear his mind, upon the fact that he does need a few fresh groceries after what his friends did to his kitchen on the night prior.
He opens his door, and he closes his mind.
"Eponine, would you please go? You know, it would really be a great thing for both of us and for the guys an-"
"Cosette, you have no goddamn idea." Musichetta cuts off her friend. "This is how you do it," she adds, turning away from the brunette to face the girl with auburn locks draped over her forehead.
"Eponine, you will get your goddamn ass to the deleted kingdom concert tomorrow at seven-thirty pm, or I will personally fucking drag you there. Got it?"
Eponine groans, puffing a lock of hair off of her upper lip. She pushes herself up off of where she had been lying on Musichetta's bed while the trio of girls had quarrelled. "Fuck you," she mutters, leaning her back against the wall, "I'll go. Happy?"
Cosette squeals, jumping enthusiastically before falling back into the desk chair, while Musichetta curls a strand of ecstatic ginger hair behind her ear, already having predicted the outcomes of the entire conversation.
Eponine has not been in a good mood all morning. She knows that she stayed too long without outstaying her welcome. She blames it on her being tired, as per usual, but she knows that she can't use that excuse against herself for much longer. She does not want to fall, and she does not want to break, and she does not want to burn all of those fairytales she yearns and longs for.
She does not love him. Of course she does not love him: he is her best friend. She mocks the thought, shunning the fact that it was one of the first to come into her head. She knows that love is the fool's board game. A game of monopoly – the locations as those whom she knows, the houses as moments that they know, the die as her, and the die's decisions as her decisions. It's all a game that she's the champion of that she never wanted to play in the first place.
And now Musichetta has got her to see him while she loses her mind.
She has the dice in her hand, even if she doesn't want it.
A/N: so this chapter was shorter, and thank you for the lovely reviews! sorry about the filler sort of style, but every ff needs some deep quotes eventually. next chapter will be the concert where eponine 'loses her mind,' and i'll try to keep the chapters over 1.5k words. i'll probably be able update once a week unless i either die under schoolwork or i have some type of typing spree okay bye thank you!