Seeing is Believing

Pine and Strawberry

You followed Louis into the dressing room, unsure what his plan was. "So remind me why you need me again? I'm not privy to entering the boys' dressing room without a legitimate reason. I don't know what you people do in there." You mutter as you walk in with him. "What do you expect us to do in a dressing room?"

"Fight club?"

"Why do I even bother," Louis rolled his eyes at your antics. He fully made his way into the room, using a pair of crutches to propel himself forward. "I need you to look over Bill's costume one more time. Everything needs to be right." You mumble something about finishing it already as you think back to earlier today.

Flashback

You were in the drama club's rehearsal room, humming to yourself as you fixed some pieces of costumes that had torn during the fight scenes. You felt someone walk into the room as well. "I know that is you, Bill. You can't fool me." You said as you turned toward the footsteps. "Bengal Tiger, six foot three inches, about 198 pounds." You listed as Bill let out a chuckle. "You got me. Damn, you seem to get better at that every day. You don't have to list everything like that though." He laughs as he continues to walk forward, placing his hand on your head as you turned back toward your work. "Your stitching has gotten better too! You can barely see the times you made mistakes!" You scoffed and pushed his hand off your head. "My stitching has always been fine, and I don't make mistakes. Now, go take your costume and get changed so I can see the final adjustments." You pointed to the Adler costume at the edge of the table.

"Aww, when did you stop being any fun, I remember when you had no idea what you were doing here. It was so easy to mess with you." You laughed a bit and smiled at him "Probably because I didn't know my way around, you can't mess around now that I know where I'm going. Now go change."

"What's stopping me from changing right here?"

"Excuse me?" Your face burst red as the tiger stayed silent, letting your thought "I mean, nothing is stopping you. I can't see what you look like without clothes anyways."

"Great then you just wait a few seconds and I will be done. Unless of course, you'd like to feel me."

"WHAT!?" Your head felt like it exploded. "You shut your mouth this instant or I swear I will stab you with this needle. Don't you test me!" You held up the sewing needle you were holding, pointing it in the direction you heard his voice. "Besides, I would want to have no relations with someone like you, you hooligan!" Bill couldn't help from laughing, a deep bellowing laugh exploding out of his mouth.

"Ouch! You wound me! I was joking. Besides, you don't have any stripes. Not really my style if you ask me." He continued to laugh until he had nothing but chuckles left in his system. "So, if you don't mind me asking, what's it like?" You turned your head in his direction, tilting it questioningly

"What's what like?"

"The whole blindness thing?"

"Oh..." You sighed, placing the costume you were working on down, unsure of where to start.

"You don't have to tell me."

"No it isn't that, I just don't know where to start." You lifted your hand to your face, placing a hand over one of your eye sockets. "My mom said it was some sort of accident during her pregnancy, It didn't entirely make sense to me when they told me about it. Something about a car accident while on the way to the hospital." You stood up, walking towards the vibrations Bill sent off as he struggle to get his arm in the costume. You lifted the arm and helped him fit his arm through it. "They said I was a miracle, that I shouldn't have lived. But there I was, alive and well. Well, as well as you can be in my situation." You felt the fabric of the costume outwards, making sure the length was right for the tiger's arms. "To answer your question, it's like when you first open your eyes when you're in pitch-black darkness. Except for you, I guess you have better adaptability to darkness. The only problem for me is that that darkness never goes away. I can't have thoughts of what things look like because I've never seen them. When people describe things to me it helps me picture them, but I feel like my perception of things is always going to be off, different from the rest of the world." Your body shook a bit, you've never really expressed how this felt out loud to anyone. You didn't want it to be someone else's problem, it was yours and yours alone. You felt tears roll down your face before you were swept up in a hug. Bill surprised you as he held you up. "What are you doing?"