Rylie
Matt, as it turns out, is the name of Game Stop boy. The Game Stop boy who is currently sitting at a booth across the room and watching me be pulled into the lap of the guy from earlier. My face burns- I do not want him to see me like this, I do not want him to see me like this, I do not want him to see me like this- and I feel his eyes on the back of my head, scalding and sharp. I intake a breath and drop my head.
"Excuse me, sir," I say, trying to make my voice come out older and wiser than it is. I squirm around and the man tightens his hands on my waist- I don't know who has given him more drinks, but somebody has given him more than what our cutoff is. This fact combined with what I'm sure is just natural stupidity (It has to take a certain degree of stupid to get this drunk in the first place.) has made him kind of sloppy with his hands. He reaches up and pulls the curtain around the booth- the curtain that all the back booths still have, from back when this place was something different. My breath cuts off, and I can feel myself start to panic; the one thing I know I shouldn't be doing. I feel one of his hands reach down between my legs and another one seal over my mouth and suddenly I can't think, I can't breathe, all common sense has flown out the window. This, this has never happened to me before, not when I'm in a place where no one can see me. And I cannot escape in my mind this time, because I am stuck here where his hand is between my legs and his friends are laughing and I'm kicking and yelping and- who the hell put him in a dark booth in an area that nobody notices unless they're looking?- looking around frantically for William, but he is not here, he is never here when this happens- but has this happened before? I can't even recall- and I'm biting at his hands, but he doesn't care, and his friends, they're still laughing and leering, and swaying with drink, and his hand pushes harder and under and searching and this is all happening in a matter of seconds and where have my thoughts gone and- and then, then my defense mechanism kicks in. I feel my eyes flutter. My last thought before I black out entirely is one that runs through my head every fucking day in this place: Just two more hours.
Matt
Matt watches Rylie's eyes blink, once, twice, and then a third time, and then she sits up suddenly. She reaches her arms out in front of her searchingly, and then her gaze turns to him and it is as unstable a look as he as ever seen, her eyes disconnected and blurry with Lord knows what. He quickly hops off the ledge he was sitting on and moves to sit in front of her, kneeling with one arm tentatively outstretched. He wants to comfort her, wants to hold her, wants to be a protector instead of a bystander of destruction for once- but he also wishes that she will wake with no memory of what caused her to pass out in the first place.
"Rylie, Rylie," he soothes, and reaches his hands out before she scrambles backwards away from him, hitting her head on the hard concrete wall behind her.
"Ouch," she moans lightly, rubbing the back of her head, and instantly Matt is crouched next to her, fingers twining into her hair and rubbing circles against the offended area before he even knows what hit him. Good God. What happened to smoky, video game addict, escapist Matt? Who is this tender, caring, gives-a-damn person?
"Rylie?" He questions again, and once again she turns her big eyes onto him- now a little less blurry but just as disconnected.
"Matt…" Her voice trails off and she stares at him, stares at his arm and the hand it connects to, still resting at the back of her head. Matt, quite frankly, is a little in awe of how they ended up in this situation- him watching over her in a dirty, backwards alley after dragging her out of the arms of the little perverted maniac with a death wish that he just barely managed to resist murdering- the little fucker-, and all the same Matt is admiring his self control. He is surprised that he is not rubbing the pads of his thumbs against her cheeks to wipe away the crystal clear tracks of tears, dried on now that she's been out for a little while. He is surprised that he has not pulled her into his arms already, to provide comfort and availability but also just to see how they fit together.
Rylie blinks a couple more times, slowly and purposefully, and the last remnants of cloudiness are gone when she turns her gaze to Matt again. They are not cloudy anymore, but what they are scares Matt a little bit- they are vivid and sharp and blazing, burning with knowledge and an extremely contradicting sense of naivety. She shakes her head roughly for a second, and Matt's hand slips off it.
"Matt…" Her voice is hoarse and hollow, and it startles Matt. He is used only to her sweet, joking voice- not one as sickeningly candy-coated as that Amane chick's, but a thousand times better to listen to- and to hear her speak in a way that shows her in any sort of sadness and pain is something that jolts Matt in a way he knows he shouldn't be jolted.
"Hey," he tells her, softly. He is sure that she has one wicked headache, so he tries to speak quietly. He doesn't have an overly loud voice, anyway- he gave all his extra volume to Mello a long, long time ago, and the only time he yells now is when he is screeching out profanities at the rare times a video game is actually beating him. "How are you feeling?"
"I'm fine," she says, and her voice is clearer now. She sits back a little bit, and she's sitting loosely, like a ragdoll. Her legs are sprawled out in front of her and her arms are limp at her side. She turns her head to look at Matt, now seated next to her, leaning against the wall, and just lets it roll naturally on the stem of her neck. This totally relaxed posture frightens Matt a little bit- they do not know each other well, she should not wake up from oblivion and trust him implicitly enough to let her muscles and mind go completely slack. There must be something wrong with her. "What happened?"
Matt blinks. She doesn't remember- he doesn't want her to, of course, what happened was bad and Matt is so far from comfortable with it that it is ridiculous. But all the same, the fact that she can't remember is bad- bad, bad, bad. He's thinking brain damage, he's thinking bleeding brains, he's thinking all sorts of horrible, horrible things that could be going on inside of Rylie's head- and the genius number three in Matt should know better, none of these things are plausible, she didn't hit her head earlier, she passed out from stress- though he can't help but feel his heart speed up.
He tries to stop it, he really does. So what, he thinks, if something's wrong with her? She's just a girl. A girl I don't give a shit about. But the thing is, he does give a shit, he does give a shit and he shouldn't, he doesn't have the right, doesn't have the right genetic makeup to be giving a shit.
"Well." Rylie's voice breaks him out of his mental dilemma- to care or not to care? And does he even really have a choice?- and she stands up, shakily. And because she is standing up, Matt is standing up now also. "Are you going to tell me what happened or not? I don't want to be rude, but I really don't remember ending up an alley with you, and I'm kind of freaking out about it."
She sways on her feet a little bit, and Matt grabs her by the elbows, pulls her a bit closer to him to steady her. (And it's just to make sure she doesn't fall, of course.) "Um…" he lets his voice trail off, not entirely sure about what he wants to tell her. Of course, he can't lie to her. That would be dumb- Matt's not really the lying type. Sure, he might oftentimes leave out huge chunks of the truth… but direct lying is something he tries to avoid. But how exactly does one go about telling a possibly traumatized girl about a near-rape she doesn't remember?
"Oh, my God," she says suddenly, and Matt looks at her. Does she remember…? "Did you kidnap me?" she exclaims, and her eyes widen to an off putting degree.
"Kidnap you?" Matt repeats. Kidnap… really? Kidnap? And though he realizes that it's probably not an unreasonable conclusion to come to, he thinks it's quite adorable. Kidnap her… Jesus. "Um, no," he tells her, trying not to chuckle at the suggestion.
She just seems takes his word for it, strangely enough, and Matt is not sure if he is happy or sad about this . "Okay, then, I feel kind of stupid now…" she remarks, looking down at her feet. "But if you're not some creepo kidnapper who hangs out in random bars to pick up broke, homeless waitresses, what exactly am I doing out here with you?"
Matt looks down at her. They are standing awfully close now, and Rylie has to tilt her head up to look at him. He smiles down at her- she's still stunning, even with pale cheeks, shiny with tears, and bloodshot eyes with running makeup. And the top of her head just about grazes his shoulders.
"You know, you're kind of short," he tells her, dancing around the subject that was sure to come up.
"Oh, dear lord!" Rylie exclaims, throwing her hands up, and Matt laughs at the gesture. So childish and fitting. "I am so not that short! 5'1 is not that short! And stop avoiding the question." The statement seems so extremely un-Rylie (though really, Matt doesn't know Rylie at all, who the hell does he think he's kidding?) and so exasperated, that it sobers Matt.
"What's the last thing you remember?" Matt asks, and his voice is deadly serious. Rylie blinks once, confused, and her brow furrows in concentration. He watches as she pulls her bottom lip into her mouth once again- and while he could think of many other things he'd like to do to that bottom lip…. Never mind, he should be exiting that train of thought right about now. And then her eyes widen, and she grabs both his forearms with her small hands, and even though Matt is almost 100% sure she wasn't consciously doing it, the contact burns through the fabric of his shirt and sears straight into his skin. "I remember!" she says, and her voice is kind of excited, though Matt doesn't know why. He'd be more horrified, if it was him.
"What, exactly, do you remember?" he questions her. He knows false memories happen more often than people give them credit for- people come up with what they want to believe. Once, back at Wammy's House a long time ago, Mello had "accidentally" pushed Matt off a tree that the two of them were climbing (though considering it was Matt who had fallen and not anyone else, the probability that it genuinely was an accident increased by about 50%) and Matt had lost consciousness. When he woke up, he could remember the branch with perfect clarity- wobbly, knobby, and crooked, a bit too thin for even a lanky ten year old to be climbing. He could remember that branch- dent for tiny dent- but he could not remember anything about the day preceding his fall. And what he thought he remembered was entirely different from reality- in his vision of that day, Mello surpassed Near in the rankings, he was happy, for once, he offered Matt a piece of his chocolate. Roger let him get a puppy. Near mysteriously presented him with a brand new video game.
In point of fact, none of those things actually happened. Matt would have loved for them to happen and since Matt never recovered the real memories of that day, that's how Matt remembered it. Bringing us back to the point… if Rylie was smiling at whatever it was that she was remembering, Matt figured she was probably remembering something wrong.
"What is it that you remember?" he questioned again, pressing a little bit closer to her.
She bit her lip even harder. "I remember…"
Author's Notes: So yes, I recognize that this is totally lame. And scattered. This chapter is necessary, but I couldn't figure out how to piece it all together… And I have major issues writing what would go on in Rylie's head during a sexual assault. I am aware that is a very serious issue, and I am not trying to lighten its impact in any way. I just tried to get that sense of blind panic in there. I have a feeling I failed. So, yeah. You'll hopefully see what actually happened to Rylie and how Matt got involved (cuz some slightly sexist heroics are always nice, right?) on… Wednesday? Probably Wednesday, or by next weekend if I'm being realistic. Next chapter Matt makes a move (go Matt!) and in maybe… hm, three of four more chapters I'm gonna bet on Mello being introduced. Comments and suggestion for the plot (which is kinda sketched out but still pretty flexible) are always welcome and beloved, and they make me update a helluva a lot faster!
-Alice
P.S – Still in want of more deciding votes on the whole Mello/Rylie Mello/OC issue. Kind of getting split ideas…. And I'm halfway torn. Urgh.