#barelyyyy

She looks at you like you're under a spotlight. Her eyes darting from your hands to your mouth.

"But it still hurts, doesn't it?" She offers her simple response.

How did she know? She brings her hands to your shoulder and rubs the back of it soothingly. You come undone before her, tears spilling. She knows you so well, you think. No one can see through you like she does.

You miss that spotlight.

Three hours since you've called her and thirty minutes since you texted. You don't want to seem needy. The few times you had seen her the past couple of months, she came back with scars and bruises.

"Injuries from dancing, or parkour," she tells you.

You wouldn't know if she was telling the truth, you haven't seen her in over two weeks now. It almost feels as if she wasn't real. That your meeting with her was just an illusion. Something you came up with because you were feeling lonely.

She had told you she was excited to spend more time with you, then she cancels last minute. A one word text where you can't hear her. She can't feel you.

You find yourself wandering outside at the dead of night- a terrible idea for someone living in the heart of Gotham. It's the rainy season too, and it's hopelessly foggy outside.

You'd like to make it to the club. Your shoes march right into a pothole, chilling your soles, but you feel too stubborn to give up now. It's imperative that you have fun without her, and forget the way she can read you so clearly, like no one else.

Trying to dry your shoe in the club bathroom goes awry, the lights flicker and screams from outside pierce through the bathroom door. No windows. You hide in the stall.

When you hear the door creak open you think, 'this is it.'

Plenty of Gothamites have been hospitalized or worse from a shooting or terrorism or 'super villainy.' You were going to be another name in the newspaper, all for a little night out.

A figure undoes the lock of your stall somehow. You want to hide your face, escape your fate, but you're too curious. You peek between your fingers, though can't make them out, they blend with the shadows.

"Shh," the figure hushes you, though you haven't said anything, "re-lock the door. Stay here."

Before it moves away, it utters an apology and rubs your shoulder, soothingly.