gt oneshots

sad bitch hours

I want to hit something. I want to cry.

I want Percy.

Percy is sitting at his desk with a book propped open on his knee.

He does this almost every night when he comes back from wherever he goes after school. First he makes a cup of coffee. Then he picks a random book off the shelf and reads for a few hours. He'll probably fall asleep at his desk again.

Sometimes his dad comes home. Sometimes he stays away on long business trips. They always look happy to see each other though.

So maybe I've been stalking him. A little.

But it's not like there's anything else to do in this boring old house.

I know it's dangerous. I shouldn't be sneaking out to see him in the first place. Mom doesn't know, and I don't plan on telling her. Just another one of her lectures waiting to happen. She'll go on about how irresponsible I am for about an hour and a half. Then she'll throw her arms up and say that she doesn't know what to do with me, that I'm putting them all in danger by being reckless and acting selfishly. That I only ever think about myself.

You're putting us in danger, Lydia. Then she'll stamp her foot. If I can't trust you to take care of yourself out there, then maybe you shouldn't be going out there at all.

If I'm lucky, the conversation ends there. Though it's usually less of a conversation and more her going on an angry rant that lasts for a little over an hour while I stare up at the ceiling and try to blink the tears from my eyes.

She always brings Dad into it though. She says that being reckless was what got him killed, and that if I want to go down that route with him, then I should pack up my stuff and leave. She doesn't want my "self-destructive behavior" rubbing off on my little sister as well. Even though Henny is too sick to leave the walls anyway.

Then I go to my room. Usually little eight-year-old footsteps are quick to follow, and Henny pokes her frizzy head in and asks if I'm okay.

If I'm crying, she usually climbs up onto the bed and lays her head in my lap. We sit like that for a while, until one of us falls asleep.

Then I get up early and scour the kitchen for whatever got left out the night before. It usually isn't much, but if I'm fast enough, I can score a piece of bread or fruit or something. Chunks that are small enough to fit in my bag that don't weigh me down too much so I can get back home before Mom wakes up. If I don't come back in time, she gets worried.

That's how Percy and I started talking in the first place.

It started out as nothing, really. I had a sprained ankle, but Mom still made me go borrowing because Henny had gotten sick and she needed to make sure she didn't slip into another one of her episodes.

Sometimes Henny seizes. Neither of us know how to stop it, but she isn't allowed to leave the walls anymore. If she had an episode while she was out borrowing and fell, it would probably kill her.

So I was out borrowing with a sprained ankle, and I wasn't really paying attention to where I was going, so I was making a bunch of noise in the kitchen.

Then Percy came and found me.

Honestly, it was terrifying. Mom has all sorts of stories about the other houses she lived in before she met my dad. Being found by a human never ends well for anyone.

I remember the way my heart dropped. I froze up completely, which, okay, that wasn't very responsible on my part. Mom always taught us that if a human saw you, you were supposed to run. No matter what. You run and don't look back.