Mess You Made

26.

TW's for this chapter. difficult one.

May 14th 2020.
One year ago.

I pick at the pistachio ice-cream that Rafe's holding because we could only afford the one scoop instead of two. The shop's closed now and we got there just in time — I don't get why he likes pistachio so much, but he always has so I settled for the flavour.

I glare a bit, "An hour late. Cris is an hour late."

Rafe takes the spoon, taking some of the ice cream and looking outwards. He's wearing Cristian's puffer coat because their clothes always get mixed up anyways when Rafe stays around. He looks outwards to the quiet street in the dark — the streetlamp catches onto the new lip laceration.

I already cleaned it as much as I could despite his protests when I woke up to him having arrived again. He'd been MIA for a day, or two, which only means he'll end up slipping into our house in the middle of the night. Drop down onto the couch, basically pass out. He only ever lets his body energy finally deplete and let himself finally collapse from the endurance of pain, or beatings when in the confines of our home. Never his own. Never in public. Never anywhere else.

It's either me, Cris or papai that ends up cleaning him. Countless times I've woken up to his bruises being cleaned at our kitchen table but I woke up first today so I was the one to find him on the couch, blood-stained. Got him up. Did my best. He won't ever talk about it after. We stopped trying a while ago so we wouldn't lose him.

"An hour." I complain.

Papai's on the other side of the city, buying new supplies for the shop and Cristian went to the store for formula for Marci, but he has to go farther to find the right one. He's stuck in traffic though, said he'd pick us up as soon as he can.

"Don't be dramatic."

"I'm not." I look to him, so focused on his freaking pistachio— the only food he likes, "I don't do that."

"Get dramatic?" He raises an eyebrow, still looking outwards.

"Yeah." I say, shoulder to shoulder with him.

His eye twitches in pain a bit— the one with the black eye, before he rolls his neck around, "What else do you ever do?"

I roll my eyes because he's said the same thing since I was four—

He tastes a bit more ice-cream, "Still remember you throwing a paint can at Ty's mom because she called you a whore last summer—"

"And it was deserved." I refute.

Bitch.

He thinks, runs a hand over his jaw in amusement, "Fucking almost chopped the woman's head off. That's not dramatic to you?"

"The woman was thirty." I look at him, widen my eyes so she gets my point, "Thirty."

Rafe looks at me then, the greyish blue of his eyes catching light under the bruises and he's in one of his more complacent moods. Sierra says he only gets them for me and I'd protest if it wasn't true— but it is. It's been that way since we were children because we found comfortability in each other early. It's the way it's always been. Not like Cris and Si, they're blindly in love. We've never been them. Me and Rafe — we're inseparable, and he's who I go to first. Can't help it, neither can he.

He gives me a bit of a look, "Other methods than a paint can, Mali."

Says the car thief.

"Like what, Rafael Kafziel Christos—" I make a face, "It was exceptionally heated, and she said I was trash—"