teacher's pet

secret whispers

𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘨𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘦𝘳

≛

"i'm gonna go get some water."

karl doesn't even bother with a verbal response. he simply nods, offering his best friend a non-commital hum as the ravenette gets up and sees himself out.

karl keeps his attention focused on his phone, reading tweet after tweet about some internet drama that he frankly doesn't give a shit about. he just finds it sort of amusing, how bothered people get about something that doesn't concern them in the slightest. so what if some celebrity slept with a married man?

karl gets enjoyment out of people's responses, watching how they argue. he hates arguing in his personal life, but he has a certain respect for the trolls of the internet who go out of their way just to piss people off and work up a reaction.

a minute or so passes before karl takes notice of the silence in the room around him. he looks up from his phone, glancing around his empty bedroom and basking in the staleness of it. it seems almost deserted, with only him in here, unseeing to his own eyes with most of his body under the covers and his attention shifted elsewhere.

powering it off first, karl drops his phone onto the bed beside himself.

sometimes he likes the quiet.

other times, he hates it.

it feels like it creeps slowly upon him, sneaking into his mind and space until it completely takes over. karl would like to think he knows his limits of solitude, and that he understands when he's been alone for too long and his thoughts are starting to stray, but sometimes it just happens so suddenly he doesn't have time to catch himself.

when karl was dating alex, his now ex-boyfriend, there was hardly ever silence. with the two of them in a room, there was almost always noise, and it was almost always loud. shouting. fighting. if there was silence, it was even worse.

because of that, sometimes -just sometimes- the quiet can feel sort of... eerie. unsettling. like he's waiting for the anvil to drop.

karl sits up in his bed, pushing the sheets off of his lap and moving to stand. he leaves his phone on the mattress, not needing it, and slowly exits his room.

the whole house feels quiet.

resisting the shiver that tries to crawl over him, karl makes his way downstairs. he feels a bit stupid, going to look for his friend when the ravenette only went to get a drink, like some damsel in distress, in need of constant attention. but karl thinks that, in this moment, he would rather be embarrassed than alone.

he'd rather avoid his thoughts, and the way that they like to fill the silence with memories. with no one around to shout at karl anymore, his brain seems to shout at him instead. as if it's trying to fill the void.

he became so accustomed to the cruelty that it became a part of him.

he steps into the kitchen, pausing in the doorway as his gaze flicks over the space.

his mother turns to face him from where she's standing over the hob, her long brunette hair falling over her shoulder with the movement. it looks like silk, perfectly untouched and moveable. she could've spent hours trying to get it to look like that, but karl knows it's natural.