ஜ Capricious & Evanescent ஜ Assorted and Mainly Frerard One-Shots ஜ

Our Eyes Fighting The Light, But I'm Not Ready To Say "Good Night"

Eyelids//PVRIS

I started awake at the sound of something crashing in the living room, followed by a loud curse and the sound of ceramic shards clinking together. My ears perked up and I wrapped my arms around myself. The sound of nondescript tinkling and shuffling from the other room crawled under the door of the bedroom, but even though I'd been listening for it, the noise was barely audible against the crashing of rain and the creaking of the apartment complex with the gusts of wind from outside.

The horror story cliché of a dark and stormy night, even though it seemed to creak the building to the point of it feeling as if it would collapse, would've been enough to set me on edge. I loved scary movies, but any night after one too many I was far too familiar with the fear that percolated through my veins and settled into my bones. Normally I would have been scared on a night like this. But on this night in particular, the presence of someone in my home wasn't scary. Maybe it could have been someone with malicious intent, but as I said, I wasn't afraid. Because it was expected. It was what I'd been waiting for for hours before I finally just gave in to sleep. It was what I'd been slipping in and out of my doze for, the person I was hoping I'd catch before falling into the clutches of my own subconscious.

I slipped out of bed, padding across the wooden floors of the hallway. The floorboards didn't even seem to creak as I quietly slipped along on my toes. After I approached the living room, I rested my weight against the doorframe. Frank was bent over a pile of coffee mug shards, and bags were etched into the skin under his eyes. He looked pitiful—but with a hollow realization, I guessed that I did too.

"Where were you?" My voice cracked on the very first sentence I had uttered aloud that night and Frank looked up, lines drawn in the skin between his eyebrows in concern.

"Gee..." He stood up, the side of his thumb against his lips. I took a few tentative steps towards him before I rushed over, clasping his hand and pulling it away from his mouth. A little bead of blood was forming on the side of the digit where I assumed he'd sliced his finger on the ceramic. "I'm sorry, I bumped into the coffee table, I..." He only trailed off as I squeezed his thumb a bit, augmenting the drop with the blood squeezed from his cut.

"Come on, let's get you cleaned up..." I murmured, ignoring him. He set his jaw uncomfortably, nodding and letting me lead him to the bathroom. Neither of us said a word as I turned on the faucet. Warm water gushed out, running over the cut and taking particles like that of dirt, pathogens, old coffee and blood with it. Silently, once I deemed it safe I carefully wrapped a band aid over it. We didn't look each other in the eye the whole time, and we either felt it unnecessary to speak, or maybe the tension bubbling beneath my fragile facade of everything being completely normal between us was just as tangible to him as it was to me. It wasn't until we went back to the bedroom that Frank began to say anything.

"... Why are you still awake?" The fabric of his jacket glided off of his back as he pulled it off and rested it on the foot of the bed. He fingered his tie and pulled it out, looking back at me when I didn't answer.

"Why are you home so late?" I fired back in response. Somehow, today of all days, this one sentence sent a spiderweb of cracks through that facade, causing the emotion to leak out. The moonlight was shining into the bedroom now, strips of the pale light illuminating the bed. It was midnight.

"... I was working late..." he said cautiously, undoing the top button.

"I called you four times," I said. Even I could hear the melodrama, the insecurity dripping into my voice despite the fact that I knew it was ridiculous. He wasn't allowed to have his phone on at work, and he probably got on the train at eleven, thinking I'd be asleep and a phone call would disturb me. But he'd been gone for so long, and it wasn't just today. He'd been doing this for weeks now, staying out until early hours of the morning with his "late shifts," not even bothering to tell me, and I'd been going to bed cold, and alone.