D R O P D E A D {Completed} (UNDER RECONSTRUCTION -- 2018)

(viii) - 'Gordon and I are missing out on quality time together, Andrea.'

Cain Avery didn't get any less annoying, the more you got to know him. I'll save you the trouble, just in case you're wondering.

Being the wonderful boy he was, Cain had treated me to a rousing rendition of 'Mary's Fingernails' the whole night long, and that meant I was practically dead on my feet as I dragged myself towards school the next morning. Being an asshole, he took the opportunity to skip beside me, drawing happiness directly from my pain.

"I'd be forgiven for assuming that you were bothered by my presence, Andrea," he hummed underneath his breath.

God, I'm not going to give you the satisfaction, you asshole. I rolled my eyes at the comment, and choosing not to say anything, sped my walking pace up like it would actually do something. However, I didn't have such a pragmatic attitude later on that night, when there was a History test I had to study for that I was very confident of failing.

Funnily enough, as soon as I got to the school gates, Cain just seemed to... disappear. He seemed to be oddly confident that I wouldn't run my mouth once I met my friends that day – and I had to say, he had me sufficiently cautious at this point in our demonic courtship that I wasn't tempted to let anything slip.

And so began the most... normal school day that I'd experienced, in a really, really long time. I took notes. I chatted with my friends. A surprise, next-day test was sprung upon me. And apart from the soft question from Eli about Cain's absence, I was able to avoid thinking about him completely. That was, until, I got home and opened a stupid book.

Even his very existence was obnoxious – sitting there trying to study, he had Hell's Kitchen blaring from the speakers of my tiny laptop. Nearly snapping my pencil in half as he snorted loudly, I scraped up enough courage to turn around in my computer chair and confront him.

There he was, stretched out on my bed, and using my things, and making my life miserable. "Figment, shut it up."

"Shut what up?" He asked idly.

"The TV show. Shouldn't you be trying to study? Fuck's sake, we take all the same classes!"

"What, for History? Why should I have to study that if –"

"If I was there, blah, blah, blah, whatever. You mightn't have to study, but I do, and if I don't, I'm probably gonna fail, and August is going to start asking questions, d'you get what I'm saying?" My words made absolutely no dent in his conscience, unfortunately.

"Maybe you should try harder, then."

"I can't." My voice cracked. "I'm fucking exhausted, all of the time, and I can't take much more of this." It was true – my defining characteristic these days were very dark circles underneath dead, sleepless eyes. Cain had been successful in depriving me of rest for an entire week and a half, and I felt ready to surrender myself to anything, anything that meant I could just sleep.

"Hell, you're crying again?" He rolled over, off of his stomach, so that he could sit up and eye me with... something that I couldn't identify. That caught me off guard – it was usually derision, or contempt, or amusement. Something along those lines. After a few moments of my sniffling, I'd come to realize that it was discomfort. "Where's your emotional resilience, kid?"

"That's rich, coming from you." I wiped at my eyes with the edges at my sleeve. "I can't. I can't take any more of this. What do you want me to do, throw myself out the window?"

"I thought we tried that." His attention was slowly turning back to Gordon Ramsay again, and I realized that I probably wasn't going to get much more empathy out of this guy. "Whatever. Go to sleep, then."