slow_burn | it's all just raging disappointment

Aiden wasn't seen for the rest of the session.

It was a few hours later he was finally released from the room in the house that was basically just a room with a lock on the outside, a quiet room of sorts. It might as well had been Aiden's second home.

He didn't kick the door or bang his head against the wall this time, though. Instead, he thought. And waited.

It was night when Aiden found her, gently knocking on her room. They had a lot more freedom here than they did a hospital, that was for sure--no nurses patrolling, anyway.

"Hey," He's opened the door somewhat ajar, peaking his head in but not looking directly at the bed (it's the same setup for all of them). Tracy's asleep, anyway. "Heather. Get up, I want to show you something."

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From:

sweetmotherofgod

When he speaks, she flinches.

She should leave. Slip back through the window and crawl into bed. Crawl into Tracy's, maybe, and warm away this chill. She should leave.

She should, and she doesn't. She lays back, twists onto her side and curls up, mirroring him. There's nobody around, nobody to hear, but she still speaks in a whisper.

"How do you know that?"

From:

slow_burn

"'Cause." He leans backwards, and for a moment all that's left is the light on his cigarette, burning like an ember.

He extinguishes it, almost at once, chipping it on the tile. Darkness engulfs them. Aiden feels at peace.

"I do it, too."

From:

sweetmotherofgod

She lays silent for a while. There's just the night and the sound of their breathing and the smell of his cigarette while her eyes adjust until the curves and angles of his face swim out of the darkness.

"How?"

Quiet. So quiet.

"It's making me so tired."

From:

slow_burn

"It's that or more medication," He points out. Not for Heather, maybe--or a temporary fix. Poison pills and little lies. Aiden decides maybe--just maybe--she deserves a real answer.

"This world is full of fucked up shit and people are monsters, Heather. Sometimes you gotta accept you're one of those terrible things choking the world and do what you can to hold yourself back."

From:

sweetmotherofgod

"It's not-"

No. She has the sense at least not to say it's not fair, because nothing is and whining about it has never changed that, ever. But it's all still so fresh, and in between the days when she thinks the best thing she can do is grow into someone her father would be proud of and the days when she wishes she just wouldn't wake up, there are days when she wants to burn the whole world down just to see if she feels it.

She reaches for his face, catches herself and drops her hand to the tile beneath them. Watches, watches, watches.

"Help me."

From:

slow_burn

Aiden sits up. It's not bolt upright, not really, but he's looking down at Heather with an odd look in his eyes, masked by the darkness.

i
n
t
e
r
e
s
t
i
n
g
.
.
.

The word bleeds out of him like it bled from his sister, and it nearly escapes his lips before he catches it and gently scolds himself.

"Normally I just ask what's in it for me. You're lucky you're beautiful."

From:

sweetmotherofgod

Oh.

She rolls onto her back, eyes seeking the moon again. There are stars out here - clearer, bright away from the smoke and the light of the city. Out where they put the fuckups so they won't interfere too hard with the people whose masks haven't slipped yet. Maybe that's a metaphor. Or maybe she's grasping.

She wants to tell him that if he doesn't want to help he should just say so instead of making fun of her. Because she's not beautiful, she knows. She's a cracked vessel, tainted and broken.

But maybe that's why he thinks she is. Like why -- in spite of every instinct she has telling her to run as hard and as fast as she can -- she thinks he's beautiful, too.

"Beauty's overrated."

From:

slow_burn

"Yeah." Aiden's over her now, not quite looming but definitely looking down at her, smile surprisingly gentle.

"We're all mummified zombies, anyway. But still, you want to know something, I got it." He extends his hand, nodding slightly.

"S'promise."

From:

sweetmotherofgod

How does he do that? Go from scaring her to seeming so warm, so kind so easily?

"You wanna be careful with those," she says. "I've never made a promise yet that didn't get me into trouble."

But she takes his hand, pulls herself up. Holds it for a moment, watching him closely.

"Thanks."

From:

slow_burn

"Come on, I'm in a home for the mentally fucked up and the only reason you got shipped here is 'cause there weren't enough spaces in normal orphanages."

Aiden's grin cuts through the moonlight more than the cigarettes ever did.

"I'm made for trouble."

From:

sweetmotherofgod

"That's not-" she pauses, wonders if she should think better of this - "that's not why I'm here."

His smile is a knife edge, a sharp slice of silver in the dark. She wants to press her fingertips to it, feel the sharp cold of if, see if it'll cut her.

From:

slow_burn

"Yeah? Why're you here, then? You're too clueless to be an oldtimer but you're smarter than the average cry-fest they bring us."

He's curious, now, still moving over her, that slow, slow blink prominent.

From:

sweetmotherofgod

"They can't figure me out."

It's not said with pride, it's not gloating. It's flat, a statement of fact.

"There's a gap in their timeline they can't fill. I don't come up crazy on any of their tests, but they know there's something I'm not telling them."

They're close. Too close. She thinks she can feel his heartbeat, the shudder of his breath.

"They don't know if I'm dangerous but they can't prove I'm safe."

From:

slow_burn

"Are you?" Aiden doesn't bother to beat around the bush--it's not his style; it never was. He doesn't think Heather would appreciate it, either. Instead he nestles up closer, really looking at her, really staring.

"Dangerous, I mean."

And he's grinning from ear-to-ear.

From:

sweetmotherofgod

"Not to everybody."

That knife-edge smile is inches from her face, close enough to tear her apart, but she won't move. Won't back away.

"What about you, Aiden? Are you dangerous?"

From:

slow_burn

"Doctors say I am."

Aiden's shrug is small, but definitely there to prove a point. "Says I need to watch my temper."

And the grin is back: "But you know what doctors say. They're all full of shit."

From:

sweetmotherofgod

"They are," she says, and it's quiet, whispered on a breath, an invitation to lean in closer. She can feel her pulse in her throat, hammer-loud and rabbit-quick.

"But sometimes they're right."

From:

slow_burn

"I do what I have to do." Aiden's smile fades, reaching out. Touching a strand of hair from Heather's face and tucking it behind her ear. "I'm sure you did the exact same to survive your little horror-story."

From:

sweetmotherofgod

Her eyes fall closed for a moment as his hand brushes her hair behind her ear, and she nods agreement. It's all you ever can do -- what you have to. One way or another, you find yourself there.

Her eyes open again and she looks up up to him, her gaze big and dark.

"Do? Not did?"

From:

slow_burn

"Things don't change," He repeats his words, leaning forward. Too close, even. Yeah, Heather's a new girl and it's her first day, but it doesn't stop Aiden from leaning in, leaning close, and giving her a brief, chaste kiss on the lips.

"I mean, look at this," He's pulled away now, standing up on the roof. Getting closer and closer to the edge. "It's the same shit everyday, you know?"

From:

sweetmotherofgod

His lips touch hers, and it's both what she's been expecting and not that at all, so fast and so innocent it leaves her more confused than she started. But it breaks the tension, at least, and she rises when he does.

He moves closer to the edge, fearless, until he's right on the edge. Has much as she wants to write it off as posturing he's scaring her, and she grabs for his hand.

"It doesn't have to be."

From:

slow_burn

"Let's jump."

Aiden's looking back, holding her hand. He's tempted to push her off--very tempted. Instead, that slow blink is back.

"Let's just jump, dude. Break our fucking necks. We don't have to deal with the same shit everyday if we just disappear."

From:

sweetmotherofgod

For a slow, terrible moment, she steps forward. Toes of her sneakers flush with the edge, peering over. Does it work like that? A moment of freefall, half a heartbeat to end it and then nothing?

She half expects his hand in her back, a quick drop for her foolishness. And who would blame him? Hell, who would even know? She finally gets that diagnosis - whoops, depressed, shame we didn't catch it earlier - and that would be an end to it. It doesn't come, and she takes a step back, shaking her head.

"Too easy. Cheap."

From:

slow_burn

Cheap, huh?

Aiden considers this, considers her words. The one who walked in on her dead dad, the one who didn't jump because she had stuff to do. She wasn't done, that's why they weren't jumping--that's why it was just them and Heather talking him out.

She's genuine, though. This isn't a trick, this isn't something to get him to settle down.

"When I die," He says suddenly, "It's going to be going down in a blaze of glory. I don't know what yet, but it's going to happen. And everyone's going to think 'there goes Aiden. What a cool fucking kid."

From:

sweetmotherofgod

"They won't."

The words are out of her mouth before she thinks to stop them, tumbling out when she knows she shouldn't.

"People never think of you the way you want when you die. They just make you into what they wanted you to be, turn you into a symbol. The second your heart stops it's like you don't exist anymore. You're just a myth, and it's never the one you would've wanted."

The eulogies they'd written for her dad that had almost nothing to do with the man he'd been. The letters left for her by kids at school, kids she hadn't even known but had been so keen to make gestures, to seize on grief and feel a part of it that they hadn't even waited for her to turn up dead.