Oneshots {H.S.}

hope

//hope// n. a feeling of expectation and desire for something to happen

Bad days.

Everyone knows how they feel. You wake up dreading the day--dreading life, honestly-- and you feel so overdramatic and pissy about the whole thing but at the same time you know it's justified, you know you have the right to smash plates against walls and scream your throat raw because life just fucking sucks.

And you drag yourself through each excruciating minute, your feet getting stuck in the mud and bogged down by the sludge, your whole body just feeling like heavy lead. Every little thing that has the potential to go wrong during the day does so, and by the time the sun disappears you feel completely and utterly defeated, like nothing will go right ever again. Again, you know you're being dramatic but you're also not. Because the world is just against you, isn't it? That seems to be the fact of the matter, the unchangable irreversable truth.

The world is against you, you're giving up, and nothing will ever go your way no matter how much you pray about it, how much you deserve it.

Bad days. That's kind of an understatement, isn't it?

+

A girl huddles on her balcony underneath a cold blanket of stars. Her sniffles and sobs blend in with the night noises of nocturnal critters, and no one hears her. No one except the boy sitting at his bedroom window with the curtains pushed aside only a crack. No one except the boy whose bedroom window gives him a perfect view into the life of this girl, this broken beauty. No one except the boy next door, with stars in his eyes, the sunlight in his skin, and moonlight in his hair.

No one except him.

He's been there for it all, believe it or not, every monumental moment of her young adult life. She is so alive, so busy and important and he is just there, so bored and irrelevant. So it must not be coincidence that the morning he was going to end it all (just throw himself off the roof of his third story balcony--because he was too much of a coward to fucking tell somebody) he sees her, dancing around in her room, earbuds in and a large grin squishing her cheeks. (He had to awkwardly squeeze back inside his room through his window, wondering if she'd seen him and decided to put on a show for him. It was stupid, he knew. But maybe, just maybe, she wanted him to be happy just as much as he didn't care.)

All he knew was that he wasn't going to kill himself right in front of her, and maybe it all worked out anyway.

But anyway, he's been there for it all. The creak of an open window, and the dangerous task she'd tackle of climbing down the gutter. The large car parked down the street and her quick sprint to the vehicle, plus quick anxious glances back to her silent house. But she would look at the wrong house, if only she'd look at his, the one next door with the ugly green shutters, the one with closed curtains and windows and doors that no one ever walked in or out of. If only she'd look at him...

He's been there for the early morning arguments, the yelling of a scared mother and an angry father, and then the banishing of a tall youth with rough hands and a loud voice out the front door (the boy thinks the youth is the one whose car she so frequently escapes in), only for that youth to be back that night. The whoosh and creak of an opened window, and then her, staring out at nothing for a little while from her balcony, angrily muttering to herself. Then, and it was always after no more than ten minutes, the slam of a closed window and he only has to wait thirty seconds for her small car to peel out of the driveway.

He doesn't know where she goes but when she comes back she's always sad. Maybe she's with him, the tall youth with the rough hands and loud voice, but the boys with stars in his eyes and sunlight in his skin and moonlight in his hair hopes she isn't. Because her bedroom light has a habit of turning on in the dead of night, and usually that means the youth is there.

+

The boy's parents had always warned him when he was little to close the blinds at night, because the light in his room that contrasted with the darkness outside set a stage, one where he was a puppet and the creatures outside and anyone who just happened to be walking by was the audience.

And he thought someone should really tell that broken beauty about it, because every night he was an audience to lustful gazes and even more lustful touches, the desperate and almost animalistic tearing off of clothes, and two distinct figures rolling in the sheets.

And she was the puppet this time, and the boy was the audience. But the youth was the director, the one writing the scenes and deciding how it should play out.

And the boy didn't like that.

And maybe the boy was being creepy. (He knew he was being an absolute creep but he couldn't stop.) Maybe he was a little obsessed. (Or a lot.) Maybe he was in a little too deep. Maybe. But he couldn't stop.

+

He's had his bad days too, more often than he'd like to admit, but it seems to him that the girl next door has them every day. Because nearly every night she's crying on her balcony, the sound blending in with with the night noises of the nocturnal critters, and no one hears except him.

The boy with the stars in his eyes and the sunlight in his skin and the moonlight in his hair.

+

Tonight is different. Tonight he feels something inside him when he sees that broken beauty out on her balcony. Tonight the stars are shining and the moon is gone.

Tonight.

Tonight, the boy with stars in his eyes and sunlight in his skin and moonlight in his hair opens his window with a creak and a whoosh.

Tonight he crawls out onto his balcony.

When she sees him she's almost blinded by his stars and sunlight and moonlight. She smiles, and he's blinded by her beauty.

At first he's unsure, wrestling with the idea that she doesn't want him here and he should really just go back inside, and the more appealing idea (dream, really) that she wants him here, that she wants him.

In the end of it all, he doesn't regret going out onto his balcony. He'd never regret that. Because now their nights are full of risky jumps across balconies, greetings underneath a cold blanket of stars, and warm cuddles on too small blankets. Whispered confessions, quiet laughter, and kisses, kisses that are soft and warm and everything they both need.

And now they're both on stage, underneath the spotlight, but the broken beauty and the boy with the stars in his eyes and the sunlight in his skin and the moonlight in his hair are happy. Because now, now there are no more bad days.

+

hiiiii :) massive thank you (lol) to anyone actually reading this, if you decide to stick around you're in for a rollercoaster of feelings. yeah. and all that shit. read on, and enjoy!

-g