☪ fairly local;

Everything he did was unexpected to her, it seemed. From the very beginning when he came in and made her question everything she once thought as ‘normal’– whatever that means – and now, for the first time in a long time, whether she could admit it out loud or not, there was a tiny speck of a light growing inside her that had been blown out for so long. Being haunted by her past of unhealthy relationships and toxic people constantly surrounding her… she just wanted to be around Alfie. That was it. But what if he ended up being just as bad? What if she was the one who would end up ruining everything? She hated testing the waters or getting sneak previews to things that could she taint before they ever have a chance to grow. 

After he dropped her hand, her eyes fell on his arm for moment, not knowing what to think at the given time. She softly exhaled, and then lifted her hand to gently rest over his on his arm, where it seemed like he was trying to shed his own skin. “What’s going on, Alfie?” she asked quietly, while looking up at him, not entirely expecting an answer but the quiet wouldn’t be able to silence her concern. 

And he had her now, kind of. He had some aspect of her. He had that he had given all the warning he was sure he’d be able to manage and yet, still, her hands would touch his, still her words promised she wanted to try. She wanted to know for herself. His heart would break when she found out that after she had tried for herself, after she had seen the worst of him, she couldn’t handle it. It was not an out for only now, this conversation. It was not an out for the once he warned her because nothing about him could be phrased properly enough that one out would be enough of a chance to not feel so fucking guilt-ridden for leaving. He’d leave him, too. He had left himself, in fact. And he only expected the same from everyone around him. If he wasn’t even whole, how could anyone love the whole him?

Yet, still, his romantic heart strived for someone that would love him. He didn’t need kisses and sex, he didn’t need cuddles and constant reassurance. But if they could understand him, if they could possibly see, maybe they would love him. And that was what he wanted. That, the understanding. More than anything else, he wanted someone to understand him with the words he could provide, so few and discordant, but there and indicative. He wanted it to be her.

He looked down at her hand, eyes glossing over the nails that were painted and chipped and then he took her hand with his free one, moving it away from what she tried to cover up. That was normal, that was what everyone did. Cover up the problem, pretend it doesn’t exist, and it’s not a problem for them. Which he understood, which was okay. But she was asking and he felt he had shaken his head and said, “no” enough for the night. So this time, he would simply answer her question. “I do drugs... sometimes,” he told her, voice quiet as if every word out of his mouth was a new word to leave him for.

She just wonders how she could possibly do it. Over time, maybe, but even that wasn’t a given. She just couldn’t see how she could actually love someone well enough, not when the word had been so foreign to her life for so long. Above everything– she was afraid she was just thinking about it too much. She didn’t know what he really meant by it all anyways, this was just her imagination running wild and jumping to conclusions before anything had a real chance to begin. A twinge of panic washed over her but she tried to stifle it– she was growing real tired of being the only reason for her own head spinning, but with the rush and heightened emotions that ran into her like a freight train in a matter of minutes, it was getting hard to see straight. 

If anything, she was the one who was hard to love. It had been proven to her time and time again, she had come to accept the fact. “Then.. just stay,” She finally says after what seemed like an eternity of staying silent, and it was all she really wanted to say, all she had left in her at the given moment. If she could have one thing in life, it would be to have someone around her who didn’t make empty promises and ditch her the next day because they felt like it. She couldn’t tell him to not leave, though, she could only ask him to stay, and if it seemed worth it, he would.

It felt sick and dizzy and wrong to say yes. It felt cool on his skin like a shower. And God, would he give anything to share this shower with her. Maybe she already felt it. Maybe her skin tingled with promises he couldn’t make. Maybe her skin tingled because he couldn’t make those promises. And maybe this was ultimately a bad decision.

It was sad, the way he thought it, or the way anyone thought it, but he never deserved these things -- a bed, a home, regular intake of anything, so he strayed from them. Because people got used to having what they didn’t deserve. He had his paint supplies and luckily, thieves didn’t tend to take them. No pawn shop wanted half-empty tubes of paint. He knows because at his lowest point, he tried to trade it all in so he could score twenty dollars. He’d have sold it all for ten, the bulk of his supplies worth a few hundred, at the very least, but all half used and so much less valuable. And he had grown too used to them, the luxuries of having his paint, his paper and few canvases. He refused to be so careless in attaching himself to anything else she might have.

Including her.

But Alfie did not have the heart to say, “no” to her again. So he breathed, nodded, and, because he felt so utterly non-entitled and he wanted to be, he took her hand to, again, pull her to him. His arm itches very suddenly and he remembers why. He tries not to let the sudden tick of a shock pull him away, but his free hand reaches up to itch, his other hand dropping hers. She noticed. And if she looked, she’d have finally saw the marks, mostly scars, but two new ones. His eyes glossed over, despondent, and waited for her to kick him out, a deep inhale as they landed on a lock of deep blue near her shoulder.

She was just caught off guard, a little confused, to hear words that would make it sound like he cared at all. Not a lot of people did nowadays, not to the point where it would make a difference, anyway. Trinity had always been disposable, she was already afraid of being the one that people would regret– so maybe they had more in common than they thought. Two negatives always made a positive. 

“Why would I…—-” She interrupted her own thoughts while crossing her arms, less in a defensive way and more in a way of making herself smaller. “You don’t know that I will..” She answered, blinking slowly, feeling almost drowsy and worn out, but kept eye contact all the same. She wanted to tell him that their worlds probably weren’t that different, and that she came from a world where goodbyes were too consistent and overpowered everything, and that world left her terrified. Terrified of sticking around and terrified of messing up something that, for once, she could almost look past the fear and not give up so easily, because she started teaching herself to leave before she was left. “Let me decide that for myself.”

There was a part of him that was convinced that the worst that could happen was that she would fall for him and become heartbroken when she found out who he truly was. She would maybe slip into a new sadness he had created by existing in her general direction and then he would feel that guilt. But it wouldn’t feel worse than how he felt now, surely. It couldn’t.

Maybe it was the drugs talking. Maybe Alfie was thinking clearly in the presence of someone so distracting. But he breathed out a soft sigh, a surrender, almost and stared down at his fingers, crossing themselves shakily in nervous habit. He just didn’t understand how he would tell her what he was, what he did. He’d already showed her parts of his mind most didn’t have the liberty of seeing.

“It won’t be easy,” he warns, not looking at her for fear of seeing rejection and final understanding in her eyes. He fears, so much more than hurting her, that she’ll hurt him. Not as if he wouldn’t deserve it, but it was only natural to not cause another pain. But truly, he knew there was nothing more beautiful than giving another person your pain. Would she want it? Would she cherish it and hold it fragile the way it was? “I want you to love me,” he tells her, but this time there is no catch, there is no “but.” He hopes she catches that, hopes she understands. He doesn’t tack on the extra “you shouldn’t” or the time-conscious ;“eventually,” he just tells her what he wants. And he expects she’ll act on what she does.

But Trinity also knew how it felt to pull someone into something, only for them to end up begging to be let go, but were being held back by her own doing. Maybe it was never intentional, but it happened on multiple occasions when people convinced her that she was a ticking time bomb who would end up just like her father– but she was no murderer, literally, and neither was Alfie, metaphorically. If he says he’s poison, she wants to say that she knows that feeling all too well. Any darkness he warns her about was already there, possibly buried within the skeletons that make up who she is, but it was there. She wasn’t a stranger to being suffocated and she wanted to tell him that, but she couldn’t find the words– and she wasn’t about to go searching for them, because she was always terrified of what she would find.

So she just shakes her head, not moving from where she’s standing, a bit of desperation building up in her eyes that she wants to fight back. “You’re not— you won’t,” she says, still not quite able to find the words to complete her thoughts. She almost wanted to tell him to go ahead, to let her suffocate because she wouldn’t mind that much, if she was being honest. “I can handle it, Alfie,” She tells him, meaning it in a way that covered all grounds to her, in every sense of being able to stay above ground when it came to everything he meant to her.

It seemed selfish to think that one person could have all that power to destroy another one person, but he wasn’t just a person. He was a black hole. He was powerful and only in a wicked way, though otherwise nothing anyone knew about or nothing anyone noticed until he might suck them in. And then, by then, he was a monster. He was a tip-toed creep who had managed to peel the flesh off of everyone he loved. Or was that just the heroin?

He needed that, the heroin, so he shook his head, so he put his hand over his face and raked it down, clean down as if it might take his skin off and she would be too terrified of what was behind it all to stay. He just wanted her gone. He just wanted her arms around him. He wanted her hair to slide through his fingers and he wanted to watch a show she loved but he didn’t understand as they laid on her couch. But he didn’t know any of this and he didn’t want to feel so foreign. Love was the only part of this that he felt he knew and it seemed so unattainable, so far away.

“If you want to go, then go,” She started, “You don’t have to do anything.” She felt as if she would start preaching to him, and she didn’t want that, she just really didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t force him to stay, if he wanted to leave. She would have let him stay for as long as he wanted, but that was the key point— what did he want? “But I don’t want you to go, you know that.” She said it because it was true, it had to be obvious. If she was trying to get rid of him, would she have kissed him again when the door was right behind him, or would she have even let him in her apartment in the first place? She would have let him walk out, she never would have texted him because she simply missed seeing him around. 

She was talking more to him now than she probably has the entire time she’s known him, but she had a lot on her mind. How could he say she didn’t deserve this? Or how would he know what was best for her? All he really knew about her was that she had blue hair and worked in a flower shop in a city that wasn’t meant for her. “You don’t know what I do and don’t deserve, Alfie, but I do know what I want.” She shrugged, her voice quiet as she looked him in the eye, either waiting for him to say something or waiting for him to walk away. 

But, oh, he wanted it. It wanted it like the tips of her fingers had felt on him, how her eyes begged what her quiet mouth wouldn’t say. How much did she scream behind her mind? How many mountain ridges had she also climbed? And it made it so fucking hard to walk away to know that her pain might be as beautiful as she was. But what if he added to it?

And then he realised, he hadn’t told her a thing. How could she know any of this if he didn’t tell her? How could she see what he saw if she didn’t know? He holds his hands straight, arms still limp at his sides, and sees he’s shaking and he doesn’t know if he always was (he always was, because that’s what heroin did), or if it’s just exaggerated by what he’s about to say (it is).

It comes in a rush, in a desire to just get it out. “I don’t want to leave but I have to because I am a--- a poison whose darkness and shadows are gonna ---- fill your veins and wrap around you neck. I’m ---- I’m poison, Trinity. And how could I be okay with killing you?”

He essentially knew nothing about her, and she probably could keep it that way, maybe for his own good. And she didn’t know a whole lot about him, either, she just knew he was a walking question mark to her who managed to make her heart beat faster every time he looked at her.. and she hated to admit that she didn’t want that to end. She hated how much she wanted him to stay and how much it would bother her if he didn’t want to. She wanted answers on how she managed to get attached so quickly, but there was always such thing as a magnetic pull that would bring two pieces of a puzzle together whether they wanted to fit or not, so she hoped this was just meant to happen, kind of like fate. At least, it made her feel better about wanting it so badly, as if she needed an excuse to be happy. 

This girl, he’d shown his art to. He’d shown his heart to her. And he realises, during this kiss, it’s the stupidest thing he’s ever done. She awakens him with her want, with her traveling hands, and with this invitation her lips breed that she wants this. Which is why he has to pull away. He has to abandon her warmth and he has to shrink back into himself as if he had finally been escaping. He took a step away and stared into her beautiful eyes, filled to the brim with everything he’d ever wanted and knew.

He looked away, down at the floor, a bitter smile on his face. Reality hit. And he was a pathetic junkie who sold art from his car. In the real world, that ruined things. And he wasn’t stuck there, in the real world. He was stuck in a world that everyone had outcasted him to; his own world, a lonely world. “I have to go, he announced shortly. “You don’t deserve this. You deserve a lot better.” He already misses the feeling of her in his hands, a girl made of water who slipped through his fingers.

This time he didn’t want to let her go. It didn’t seem right and he knew he would push her away because how could he let this girl kiss a homeless junkie fuck? An artist who sold his paintings on the street so he could pay for drugs was hardly someone she would want to take home to mom. And, truthfully, he was okay with that. He had never wanted that. He didn’t want to be anyone’s anything, he didn’t want to be that person who abided by average moral standpoints because he could never be. And he’d always cut it short before he could be, with anyone.

She just wished she could help– hearing him finally fill the void with his voice and she didn’t want to let herself feel helpless. She wasn’t about to tell him not to be afraid, as she could hear the familiar and predictable responses of past conversations that seemed similar, with the words don’t be, or things aren’t that bad being thrown from insincere places that only made matters worse, never better. Everyone would fall victim to that, but she could talk to him, instead, if he wanted. She would listen to him, if he’d let her in. He said he was scared of everything– the world, life, change, himself, maybe even her. But she wasn’t afraid of him. If anything, he made her feel safer. 

And just one wasn’t good enough to her, so her free hand reached for his other one, repeating the process and interlocking fingers which made her feel more at ease. “Why?” She ended up asking, taking a step or two backwards, away from the door because she didn’t want to be near it anymore, hoping he’d want to come back with her. 

But he couldn’t answer them all. So he shook his head as it hung, looking away from the green haired girl that he did not deserve, the time of hers that he was wasting not going unnoticed. He was desperate for her to want him back, though. And, more so, for her to understand. He breathed out, shaky, and pulled his hands away from her, shaking his head again. Two hands felt too much. “I think I should leave,” he murmured, but he didn’t move back toward the door. “Or --” he shook his head, again, a hand coming up to it to rip through his hair in a crashing wave of anxiety that held his feet in place. “I just want to kiss you again,” he admitted.

She remained quiet as he started to walk away, her breathing almost nonexistent anymore as she felt him almost slipping between her fingers, which was a strange concept to her because there had to be something there initially for her to be able to lose it– but she was still losing something. She finally stood, slowly, without thinking. He was up against the door and he could have turned to leave any second, so she was thankful for each moment she had to try and fix things– whatever that may be, she still didn’t know. She took the few steps necessary to close most of the distance between them, not all of it, but enough. Her hand reached out to grab his, and she gave a gentle tug towards her and didn’t let go. “Please don’t leave,” she said softly, looking up at him with that subtle pout of hers. 

He nodded with tired eyes and let her hand pull his back to her. But he didn’t felt like she moved, so he took a step to her instead. What a dangerous step it was; for her, what a dangerous gesture she made. Didn’t she get it? Didn’t she fear him? She had to see how breakable he was and how he would crumble if he killed her. But he remembered her lips, and while lost in a chaste lust, he remembered how they moved when she asked him her questions. He remembered that he hadn’t answered. Did she still want to know? “I’m afraid--...”

His head shook, almost violently, not in rhythm, not back and forth ---- not “no.” But it shook, and he felt as if so did he. He couldn’t answer what was right. He was a painter, no poet. If she could just understand, he could show her. But she didn’t know him yet. She didn’t know his poison. “Of everything.”

For just a minute, just... one, he had her in the palm of his hand. Not in the way that means he had her, that she was his, but that she finally existed in a tangible way that he could actually grasp. He had problems with that, actually grasping. Everything had its idea, even she, but he could never seem to know or want or grasp or touch. And yet... for a second, he had her. And then she froze. She became a ghost, one that may have succumbed to the shadows that must have wrapped around her neck when he kissed her, the trail of darkness that his tainted hand must have left. She must have suffocated the way he had.

Partially elated, partially bitter, he smiles as he stands, as he distances himself. He backs away as if she is poison, but lies always seemed to resonate better with people, especially the ones that refused to see how unclean his hands were. He sinks, he smirks, he sinks. And it seems that the floor beneath him and everything around him swirls into spiders and pain that made home around her now. His skin itches more than ever.

She got less confident every time a word escaped from her, but she’d circle back eventually. She tilted her head a bit, trying to find eye contact if at all possible. Her hands were in her lap, trying their best not to be restless, and she pondered for a moment for something that would allow for some honesty. “— How bad is it?” she asked, finding the question to be more generic, if anything. Less forward, maybe more inviting. If he didn’t answer her then, she felt as if she’d eventually put her foot down and make him talk, because while she had the patience in her, and she didn’t want to be pushy, she just wanted him to say something. 

Trinity is too beautiful to be sitting next to him, too thoughtful and flowery. She’s too existent and real and... tangible. He was utterly terrified of her tangibility, but it seemed like one of the things he loved the most. And her lips, and her eyes, and her hair. He opened his mouth, as if to speak, and he finally looked over at her, peeling desperate eyes from the wall across the room to a face that fell.

And, if only for a millisecond, he stares. He shows her his eyes, worn and tired and full of screaming life and ideas and choices. He shows her windows into his soul and it’s incredibly overbearing, so he lunges forward and kisses her, a quick hand wrapping around the side of her neck, fingers doting at the nape. It tangles in her hair and he touches everything he’s ever wanted at once.

But at the root of it, she also just cared. It had always been so risky for her admit it, and usually it ended in trouble, but she was still allowed to. And she watched how fidgety Alfie was as he eventually sat down, noticing how she could have scooted closer if she really wanted to. She wanted to say something lighthearted, along the lines of I don’t bite, but it came out as a, “What are you so afraid of?” Not harshly, more worried if anything. Because he said something scared him away– and it wasn’t her, that was all she knew. So she sat sideways on the couch, facing him with her legs crossed like a kid, testing the waters for some kind of answer. 

The room was dimly lit and felt filled with his demons. And she sat too close to him, too close to every one of them because when they escaped him in wispy, black shadows, they would surround her, too. If he let her in, she would fall into the pit they created. And sometimes, he fell in love with falling. He knows what she means when she asks what he’s afraid of, but it’s a long list. The night. Himself. Everything. Her. There’s a lump in his throat the size of Jupiter because of the only acceptable response that he can think of. He wants to be scathingly honest with her and she is the first since he first met Ella that he wanted to tell the truth to. But he can’t put words into the shadows that haunt him, less they come alive when he does.

The silence was expected, but it was alright. If it had been anyone else, she might have asked if he had wanted anything, despite not having much to offer– but apparently that was common courtesy for when anyone came over. But she had a distinct feeling that he would say no anyways, so she ignored that tugging feeling for now. She then walked around him. taking the few steps to the small couch that was in in her living room. Everything about Trinity’s apartment was small– that was the only word she could use that defined it well enough, but it served its purpose at the end of the day, she thought. She sat down on one side, and then looked up at Alfie, patting the spot next to her as a way of telling him to come sit down.  

Alfie felt suddenly incredibly uncomfortable being in her home. He felt uncomfortable everywhere. And yet, a home felt like a place he needed to be. Despite his unease with these amenities, he wanted to sleep in a bed and walk out in the middle of the night to a living room. Go get water at three a.m. because he couldn’t sleep and his wife would come out, worried, and wrap her arms around his, rest her head on his back. ---- He saw Trinity when he saw that. But Alfie has only always craved normal things, only always wanted to be an average child who grew up none so introspective and depressed, none so intelligent, but incredibly lacking. No one had time to teach an old dog new tricks, anymore.