Everyone has dark thoughts sometimes.
At least, that’s what I tell myself.
I snub out the remains of my fourth cigarette on the damp concrete curb of the sidewalk. The cold and the wet is soaking into my jeans, and I let the sound of the infrequent passing cars distract me from the noise in my head.
It’s not words, exactly. It’s just noise.
I pull out my fifth cigarette, tuck it between my lips, and draw out another match to strike and light the end of it. I never smoke this much all at once, but then again I’m almost never this stressed out.
I thought I’d have more time before Wallflower dropped me, but I guess not.
All this time I thought she wanted to be around me. I thought she liked staying with me, even if the accommodations weren’t what anyone would call ‘five-star’. Still, it had to be better than sleeping on the streets or on one of those hard and unpleasant shelter beds at Saint Easel’s.
Go home, Sunset.
Go home.
I take a long drag, filling my lungs with smoke before blowing out a stream of grey as I wrap my arms around myself and rub at my arms to get some warmth into them.
Maybe Wallflower finally realised just how much I’ve been babying her. Sabotaging her, almost. I mean, not really. I haven’t ever tried to stop her from getting her place or anything like that I’ve just been sort of… encouraging her to take her time. There’s nothing wrong with that! She’s fragile and after the prescription thing I…
I just want her to be safe.
Another lungful of smoke, another stream of grey. I pluck the cigarette from my lips and tap the ashes out before putting it back and drawing in another breath.
This is bad. I shouldn’t be smoking this much. Wallflower will be back soon and I know she doesn’t like the smell of smoke.
“Shit.” I spit out the rest of the cigarette, stamp it out, then pick it up and pitch it into the trash nearby before getting up.
I walk over to the little sandwich shop down the street and order a coffee. This place’s brew is crap compared to Cuppa’s, normally they just drown out the burnt flavor of the beans with creamer and chocolate, but I can’t stand the stuff.
It’s too sweet.
I order it black and slug down half of it the moment it’s in my hand. It’s hot, burnt, and nasty, but it also washes the taste of smoke out of my mouth.
Nursing the rest of the coffee, I walk back to the apartment doors. I haven’t gone in yet. I can’t bring myself to. Wallflower told me to go home, but that apartment has been feeling less and less like home when it’s just me.
Even though I promised her I’d help her get her own place, I’m actually starting to regret that a little. I know it’s not a realistic option, but I wish she could just stay with me. That’s selfish, though, because Wallflower deserves to have some agency in her life for once.
She doesn’t need me hovering over her for the rest of her life. She made that abundantly clear today.
Wallflower doesn’t need me.
So I pace back and forth in front of the apartment. I don’t want to go up the stairs, I don’t want to go back into the room where her mattress is. I certainly don’t want to lie down in my cold, empty bed, and think about how lonely I’m going to be when Wallflower finally leaves.
I’m not sure when it started, but a light drizzle of rain has begun to soak into my hair, and I cuss as I retreat back to the awning over the apartment entrance. I shiver as I shake the water from my head, carding my fingers through my hair to try and free the knots and snarls before they get unmanageable.
It’s all I can do not to reach for another cigarette. That would kind of defeat the point of the coffee though.
I’m waiting for better than half an hour, but I spot her before she spots me. Wallflower is walking as if in a daze, her head bowed and her arms wrapped around herself, and I start to call out to her.
I don’t though.
There’s something wrong.
I know that look on her face because I’ve seen it before. It’s the look she wore in the brief moment between distance and recognition when we met by chance at the cafeteria of Saint Easel’s.
The look right before Wallflower Blush runs away.
She steps out of the rain and joins me under the awning silently, and leans against the wall beside me. I stay where I am, afraid that if I do move it will spook her, or that whatever I do it will be the wrong thing because right now I know that something is wrong but I can’t quite account for what that is.
“I got approved.” Wallflower draws out a folded sheet of paper and lifts it up.
She fits her thumb between the folds and peels it open, and sure enough, right there on the front in bold red letters, is the word ‘APPROVED’.
“That’s great,” I say with a smile. “You… aren’t you happy?”
Wallflower shakes her head as she closes the paper and tucks it back into her hoodie pocket before wrapping her arms back around herself and going back to silently staring at the ground.
I don’t like this. My stomach is twisting and my heart feels like it’s about to beat right out of my chest.
“Wallie?”
“You knew, didn’t you?”
I blink at the accusatory tone in her voice. It’s soft, like every other time she speaks, but there’s an edge to her words that I’ve never heard before.
“Knew what?” I ask.
Wallflower looks up at me, and there’s a weight to her gaze… a hardness that catches me off guard and puts me back on my heels.
“She knew,” Wallflower says in that soft-edged tone. “Doctor Hive… she knew I missed my prescriptions.”
The bottom falls out of my stomach.
I know Chrysalis Hive well enough to know that if she was aware that Wallflower had missed her prescriptions then she should have reported it. But if she had done that then there’s no way she would have given Wallie the stamp of approval that would let her move on to the next step in the housing program. That basically puts Wallflower right on the doorstep of her own apartment! Now it’s just a matter of finding a suitable low-income project and signing the papers for the lease!
“You knew, too,” Wallflower continues quietly. “You knew what would happen if she gave me the other stamp, didn’t you?”
Wallflower’s gentle brown gaze drills into me and sends a sluice of ice water down my spine.
“You knew what it would mean if they found out I’d…” Wallflower cuts herself off and both of her hands tighten into white-knuckled fists. “You knew.”
“Wallie, I didn’t—”
“Please don’t lie to me,” Wallflower says wetly.
It’s the closest I’ve ever heard to tears in her voice.
I sag against the wall of the Commonplace Apartments and rub my face with both hands. Finally, I swallow thickly and wave a hand for her to follow me as I punch in the door code, open the gate, and step into the vestibule.
It’s a testament to her trust in me, however battered it might be at the moment, that Wallflower follows me in. I move into the lobby and start walking up the stairs. I’m in no mood to wait for the old dinosaur to grind down the elevator shaft to us, and clearly Wallflower isn’t either because she follows without a word of complaint.
Six flights of stairs later we’re both a little winded, but neither of us says a word to break the tense silence as I walk us to our, for now, shared apartment and fit the key.
The deadbolt slides free and I push the door open, step inside, and hold the door open behind me. Wallflower follows me in and makes her way slowly over to one of the stools at the kitchenette counter.
My jacket goes onto the rack by the door, and I brush some of the water from it before I step into the kitchen past Wallflower and start up water for tea.
“So?” Wallflower asks quietly.
I lean forward, bracing my elbows on the counter, and wring my hands as I hang my head.
“Yeah, I knew.”
Wallflower lowers her head and curls up against the counter. For a long moment, no one says anything. The silence is only broken when the electric kettle chimes. Before I can pick it up, Wallflower moves and takes up the kettle to start preparing the tea.
I let her.
I’d probably just burn it again if I tried to help.
“You shouldn’t have done it,” Wallflower says while she sets the mugs out with the appropriate tea bags, Oolong and Matcha, and pours the water.
“I disagree,” I say quietly.
The kettle is set softly back onto its heating element, and Wallflower stares at the gently steaming cups of liquid for several breaths before she finally looks back up at me.
“She approved it because you would have been kicked out of your home, Sunset,” Wallflower says quietly. “Doctor Hive only passed me because if she didn’t then you getting kicked off the program would have made her and everyone else look bad!”
“But you got approved, so…” I say quietly, then shake my head. “It doesn’t matter so long as you got approved.”
“It matters!” Wallflower says in a cracking voice. “Because… because if I f-fuck up again? If I mess up and get kicked off the program then she’ll—!”
“She’ll make sure I get kicked off too, right?” I fill in as Wallflower’s voice fails her, and she nods.
I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this. I’m sure it was the blood test results. I had to do one, so I’m sure Wallie did too.
It would be just my luck that the main Doctor that Bright and Sticky rely on would also be one of the best diagnosticians anywhere. I’m sure the test came back with enough subtle markers that someone as capable as Chrysalis Hive would be able to suss out why Wallflower is still malnourished.
“But she hasn't,” I say quietly, “not yet anyway.”
Wallflower stares at me for a long moment, and I see it the moment the shoe drops and she realises exactly what I mean.
“You knew.”
I can’t look her in the eye.
“You knew she would know I’d messed up,” Wallflower continues. “You knew she’d realise what I’d been doing and you… you…”
Wallflower takes a single step back from me. Just one, but even that one step hurts.
“You bet your whole life that Doctor Hive wouldn’t deny me,” Wallflower says hollowly.
“So what?” I say without looking up. “I was pretty sure she wouldn’t, and if you knew the odds then you’d probably have pulled a runner on me, or at least refused to live here, and then she would have definitely denied you!”
“I WOULD HAVE DESERVED IT!”
I startle backward a step at the sudden crash of volume from Wallflower. Admittedly, as far as yelling goes she still isn’t very loud, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard Wallflower raise her voice at me like that. Not like that. Not since the day we really met out in the parking lot, with the Memory Stone, when she...
Damn it.
“I… I would have deserved it,” Wallflower repeats, breathing heavily as she holds herself up against the counter. “You would’ve— you’d have been homeless, Sunset! If you lost your bet you’d have lost everything!”
“Don’t you think I know that?” I say, finally looking her in the eyes.
We’re both shaking. I’m shaking even harder than she is, but I can’t say that isn’t because Wallflower hasn’t just seized up completely with nerves. Either way, we stare each other down. Wallflower looks madder than I’ve ever seen her, her cheeks are ruddy and there are hard lines etched onto her normally soft face.
“If you got denied for… for self-destructive behavior, you could’ve been committed!” I say through clenched teeth. “So yeah! I bet everything on keeping you here! Keeping you safe!”
“I would have deserved it,” Wallflower hisses, backing away from me. “I don’t want you to destroy your life for me, Sunset! That’s not fair! You can’t!”
“Watch me.”
Those two words come out harder and angrier than they should have, and Wallflower goes pale.
In and out.
I take several deep breaths as I take my own step back from the counter, force myself to unclench my jaw, relax my shoulders, and just breathe.
“What would you have done if she hadn’t?” Wallflower asks in a tiny voice.
“If she hadn’t approved you?” I ask, and Wallflower nods.
I cross my arms over my chest as I take several more breaths. Then I step into the kitchen, past Wallflower, and take up my mug of tea. The soggy teabag goes in the trash, and I lift the mug to my lips, then take a long, slow sip.
Wallflower really does make it so much better than I do.
“Sunset?”
“I told you what I’d do months ago, Wallie,” I say while still staring at the swirling golden, oolong tea. “I told you… remember?”
I look up at her and she stares at me like I’m insane. That’s fair because I probably am. I’m really… really crazy for Wallflower Blush. I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance to tell her that, but I am. I meant every word of it when I’d told her that I’d help her even if she ended up hating me for it, even if it broke my heart a hundred times.
“Remember?” I say softly.
Then I reach out and take the bag from Wallflowers tea, pitch it, then pick up her mug and offer it out to her. She takes it and cradles the warm mug in her hands before sipping it, swallowing, and nodding with a bitter, half-angry laugh.
“Yeah,” she says finally. “You said: ‘where you sleep, I sleep’, right?”
I nod before taking another drink of my tea.
The rain patters against the window panes of the apartment, and the sound melds with the ticking of my archaic old clock while we finish our tea. We don’t speak while we do, I don’t think either of us has anything else to say.
I’m not sure it’s fair to say that I fucked up. I don’t think I did. I think that I just did what I had to do to make sure I won, and what I had to do wasn’t necessarily pleasant. That’s okay though. So long as Wallflower is safe, so long as she has a roof over her head and so long as she can be taken care of it’s… it’s okay.
“You can’t do that anymore, Sunset,” Wallflower says quietly as she sets her empty mug down in the sink, then looks up at me. “You can’t, okay?”
“I can’t help it,” I reply, passing her my mug which she takes and sets it down beside hers. “Even if I say I won’t do it, I’ll just end up doing it again anyway.”
Wallflower sighs, then turns and steps close enough to wrap her arms around me and hug me. It’s not the tight, desperate hug she gives when she’s scared or anxious. It’s soft and gentle and comforting, and her head comes to rest at that spot in the crook of my neck that I know she likes best.
“I know.”
I hug her back.
I bury my face in her morning-glory hair, and I hug her back. This time it’s me who’s holding on desperately because I know I’m losing.
That bet I took was crazy, but not for the reasons Wallflower thinks. It wasn’t crazy because I could have lost everything if I’d lost the bet. It was crazy because I knew that winning that bet meant I’d end up losing something so much more important to me than my apartment.
But she’s worth it.
“You can’t do that to me, Sunset,” Wallflower says, and she starts shaking as she does. “You can’t just… just ignore me like that, and do whatever you want.”
The taste of copper trickles over my tongue as I nearly bite through my lip.
“You’re not allowed to turn me into a burden.”
I pull back a little, lower my head, and rest it against her shoulder. I’m shaking, and so is she, but she puts her hand on my head anyway and gently strokes my hair.
“I’m sorry,” I say softly. “I didn’t mean to… I just… I— I’m sorry, Wallie.”
“I know you are.”
“I’m doing my best.” The words come out cracked and weak as Wallflower rests her head against mine.
“I know.”
She’s not crying, but I am. Tears are flowing hot and fast down my cheeks as I turn my head and let myself get lost in the scent of storm rain and summer leaves and soft strands of morning glory hair.
“I’m sorry.”
Wallflower nods against me as she strokes my hair slowly, up and down, and then hugs me again with gentle strength.
“I know.”
She says the words like she’s saying them for the last time, and it kills me. My heart is falling out of my chest in pieces onto the floor and I don’t know how to pick them back up again. I know I messed up, and maybe I didn’t make her hate me, but I don’t think she trusts me anymore and I’m not sure that that isn’t worse.
Part of me wishes I’d just stayed outside for this conversation.
Yeah it would have been colder, and wetter, and maybe we would have gotten some funny looks from all the people passing us by, but in the end maybe it would have been easier.
Maybe the rain would’ve washed away all the pieces.