Pacifier

🌹Della🌿

Izzy wasn't sleeping like the lads had thought. She was lying on her side, starring at the window which looked out onto the black countryside.

I hadn't expected to be quite so hesitant to approach. The evening chill biting at my legs as I stood watching her. She hadn't noticed me yet and I wondered if she felt the same disconnect as me. Like we weren't really real anymore. Like nothing had really been real for quite some time.

I was sure that was the only reason I was still standing on my own, sure that was the reason my heart hadn't caved hours ago. Hard to feel anything when you're not sure you're even really there.

I stood like a ghost just looking, hesitant to slip into the bed beside her. I knew I wouldn't sleep even if I tried, I wondered if that was why she wasn't really trying too.
Maybe we'd never sleep properly again.

"Van?" Izzys voice was quiet, a question, she sounded young but then we were. I wasn't sure why I'd been expecting her to sound as aged as she must have felt. As I felt now.

"Iz," I said quietly, "S'me," I said, not sure what else to say to her, not sure how she would be when she rolled over, when she saw who it was in her doorway.

I knew when I'd left the lads would have lied about why, I knew theyd have cut me off and out and I knew they'd have kept the truth from her.

"Della," she yawned sweetly, pushed herself up then a small smile playing on her lips when she looked me up and down her eyes flickering over me more than twice, like she was checking I was who I said I was, like she was checking for inconsistencies.

"Hiya," I said with a little smirk, concious that I was doing exactly the same to her. Checking for inconsistencies and though I saw all the signs of a girl who'd been through the worst of things, she hadn't changed much at all and I smiled to think that perhaps that meant the same for me.

Perhaps you would see it when you looked at me, but it wouldn't stain and it wouldn't change the way people looked at me. They wouldn't only see greif when they saw me.

"Whereve you been?" she asked shuffling to the end of the bed, stretching to grasp the tobacco and the grinder on the windowsill. "It's for my leg," she said rolling her eyes, biting back a grin when she leant on the word, "obviously,"

I liked that she could laugh, liked that she could look as torn up as she did and still wear a smile on her lips. Still smirk and talk ironically as she rolled a joint.

For some reason I still stood, hesitant to sit down. Watching her fingers as she rolled delicately and left me smirking.

"The tyrants really relaxed in his old age," I said trying my hand at humour too, almost as if to check that I still could. My lips twitched a small smile and it felt strange. Felt strange for us to be talking, so strange, sarcastic and quiet in the dark. Neither one of us wanting to say the obvious.

Neither one of us wanting to say "I'm sorry about your brother,"

Like neither one of us really wanted to acknowledge the reality of our disintegrating world when we didn't have to.
The bedroom was cold and quiet and cut off from the world, and whilst we were in it, alone together, we were suspended in a kind of sanctuary.

Neither one of us wanted to break that, neither one of us wanted even to risk touching it for fear it would fall apart beneath our finger tips.

So we didn't and I sat down, took a lighter from my pocket and held it up to the joint between her lips. Looking into her eyes when I flicked the trigger and sparked a little flame, the blue and the orange glow flickering flickered in her eyes and I saw the malaise in her eyes like I knew she could see it in mine.