Title: 005 – Gloves
Author: schyra
Rating: ?
Pairings/Characters: Cattleya, Haru
Warnings: ...Vague.
Summary: No, he thinks, he won't wear gloves with this one.
Author's Note: Bahahahahha. Arghs.
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005 – Gloves
No, he thinks, he won't wear gloves with this one.
When he walks in the door, the first thought Haru has about him is, 'He's a bastard.'
His arm around her waist, his loud, high laugh, the slick curving fringe of his hair.... it makes him sick. But Cattleya is smiling, laughing... if a little awkwardly, and nervous.
He puts up with it.
She comes home with a bruised eye and cuts on her lip and hands, limping with a sprained ankle. She smiles warmly at him, pets him on the head and says, "Don't worry." He watches anxiously as she enters her bedroom and closes the door. He waits, but she doesn't come out for a while. When she does, she is smiling brightly again.
Like nothing happened.
The third time she comes home, bruised, cut and bleeding, he says nothing. Oh, he worries alright. It's clear in his eyes. But he has learnt not to talk, not to protest. Handle with care. She might break. Padded contact. He grabs the first-aid kit from the bathroom, and waits with it outside her door.
When it opens, he helps to fix her up. It's weird, he thinks. He's never learnt how to patch himself, but when it comes to her he grasps the ropes very, very quickly.
The greasy bastard walks in again, laughing and jovial as usual. He has someone else with him, another woman. She's older than Cattleya, and bossier. She asks for milk, and tea, and all sorts of drinks. He makes Cattleya get them. Haru wonders why he never sees the asshole with other guys.
The other girl he brings looks at their house and says stuff like, "Strange curtains." and "A little dusty." They'd just cleaned yesterday morning. The other girl tilts her nose in the air, scrutinizing. Her air is of disdain, her tongue flicks, almost but not quite, scathingly.
The woman looks at him oddly. Shrewdly. He doesn't like that look. Calculating, he thinks.
He wants to go up the stairs into his room and shut the door on their loud, boisterous laughter. He wants to drown out their senseless jokes with a pillow stuffed over his head. But she is down here, and smiling, strained, as she brings out the tea and biscuits and smiles, flickeringly, reassuringly in his direction. He can't leave. He has to stay by her side.
Afterwards, Cattleya smiles and says that the woman was one of Branch's friends. She hadn't known she was coming, but Branch brought her along, and it would be mean of her to be angry about that. It's good to be welcoming to everyone, Haru. I shouldn't be mean.
How do you see the world? he wonders.
She smiles as they wash up and vacuum the crumbs off the floor. The smell of perfume permeates through the house for days, and they both feel like suffocating.
The second time the bastard does this, Haru wants to grind his fingers into gravel.
They talk, they laugh, always with that thin layer of tension in the air. Like a wire, ready to snap between the two women, and he, laughing jovially. Carelessly. Loud. His sister laughs when Branch places an arm around her shoulders. Haru chokes down on his jealousy and grinds his teeth in silence.
When they finally leave, his sister is quiet. Haru puts away the dishes and cups, washes them and sets them away. She still doesn't move from her seat, doesn't speak. He comes up to her then, and hugs her, without saying a thing.
Don't speak. He knows now to handle everything gently.
She comes back one day crying. She sits on the steps, rubbing at the tears on her face and, laughing, tried to explain away her sadness. She smiles like it's no big deal. She smiles even though she's crying. You're a child, you wouldn't understand. She blames herself.
Wrong.
Something forms and settles beneath his heart, like a deep, black stone. He had known it. The bastard had been a problem, and now... now... and now... No, he thinks, he won't use gloves with this one. He's going to handle this little issue just as he likes it, consequences be damned. He's going to be selfish, for her sake.
Because nobody should ever, ever hurt her.
No one should ever have made her crawl like that.
He wants to kill him. He wants to find him, hunt him down and kill him. He wants to smash him into nothing, rip his arms from their sockets and tear out his spine and beat him with it. Fist clenched, he makes up his mind.
He won't kill him.
But the bastard's gonna wish to be dead.
- - -
END.
