Summary: In which the night before leaves you traumatized and causes your emotionally constipated/emotionally reserved friend to seek you out.
Warnings: Purposely vague descriptions ahead ( no names are mentioned besides yours ). Reader killed someone and is negatively reeling from it. Blood is mentioned but nothing seriously descriptive. All that said, read at your own risk!
A/N: I got the idea to write this after scrolling through @creativepromptsforwriting's sideblog and finding this prompt. I plan to tag characters who come to mind, but this is really an open drabble so feel free to imagine whomever you see fits! :D
Tagging: @nursedflowers and @saioratral
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The high-pitched screech that bounced off the walls was a sound one would typically associate with tea at it's boiling point or maybe a hotpot screaming to be eaten. One thing that certainly would not have come to mind was a running faucet—specifically one that ran water so hot that it made even the durable metal cry out in pain.
The incessant shrieking, as annoying as it was, didn't faze the girl who sat before the sink. It was as if the noise was never there...which actually wouldn't be that far off from the truth.
In reality, she couldn't hear a thing aside from the same bloodcurdling screams.
Her hands worked as if they were trying to create a fire. They slide together at blinding speed, rubbing against one another so hard that a few more minutes of it would surely cause a tear in the skin of her palms.
Part of her wished that would actually happen.
A knock on the door sounds followed by the mellow hum of her friend's voice as he called from the other side, "Y/n. Are you still in there? It's me."
Heavy silence replaces her much needed answer, and if it weren't for the faint sound of running water, he would've been none the wiser in assuming she wasn't in there. Since that wasn't the case, however, he had no other choice but to try again.
"Y/n," He calls only for the same result. He then tries a third time, "Y/n!"
Silence. He sighs. Guess he has no other choice.
"Forgive the intrusion," With that gentle request serving as a small warning, he takes his time to twist the knob, giving her more than enough time to make herself presentable if need be as he swung the door open at a turtle's pace and peered inside.
As he suspected, she was standing at the sink, her back facing the door and preventing him from seeing what she was doing—not that he needed to. The steam, the running water, the uncomfortable sound of her hands sloshing together and sounding like two blades clashing...it all gave him an inkling of what was happening.
But how long has she been doing this for? He was almost to scared to ask. Almost.
"You've been in here for a while now," He said, and unlike his usual tone, his voice was dipped in uncharacteristic gentleness and sounded rather withheld. It was as if he was being held at swordpoint, and even then, it was surprising to hear him sound that way.
Maybe if she was paying attention she would've heard it and teased him about it. Possibly cracked a joke or two about him finally growing soft enough to warm up to her after all these years.
But instead he received silence and that scared him more than any enemy he's has faced in his lifetime.
"Hey," He called out again, but this time more sternly. He also didn't give her nearly as much time to answer. Not that she likely would.
"You can stop now. I doubt your hands are that dirty.." He's slow with his steps, closing the distance bit by bit, "Hell, by now, your hands are probably cleaner than mine."
She doesn't move, flinch, or do anything that would acknowledge that his words had reached her. It was as if she was in a trance, put under a spell of some kind or was a victim to some hypnotism caused by unknown means.
In a sense, what was happening right now was kinda like that.
In the matter of a minute or so, he's close enough to reach out for her delicate wrist. He does just that, but not too long after he snatches his hand away. He then paused, looking at his hand before looking back up at her with horrid shock gleaming off his hues.
This water was hot. Really hot. Hotter than any water boiled for food or tea.. He's surprised that the droplets don't just evaporate as soon as they leave the faucet.
"You don't feel that?" He leans in, getting closer to her face as his brows furrow, "Does that not hurt?"
He already knew the answer—of course it did—but the fact that she wouldn't answer him struck a nerve and in the end he finds himself grabbing her roughly by the wrist and snatching her away from that molten lava altogether.
He shuts off the water quickly after that, putting the annoying whistling it produced to an abrupt end. It seemed only then that the trance she was put under was broken and she was finally able to think and move for herself again.
As he lets go of her wrist, she finds herself opening her palms and staring down at them. She stares for a long while. Just opening and closing her palms repeatedly and rubbing her fingertips together, as if she was examining a foreign object.
The skin of her palms looked as if she had ran them across a rough surface for an hour; puffy with an angry hue of red to them.
They were a deep shade, just like... She clenches her teeth. He's quick to notice.
"If this is about the other day.." He began, his words dying in his throat as he watched as she flinched away at his very words.
He knew this would happen in the end. He tried to warn them all but nobody wanted to listen to reason. They sent this fragile glasswork into that cage of knives and sharp fangs without a care in the world and left him with the job of mending anything that was broken back together.
It truly irked him. More than something like this usually would.
"If... If you were in my shoes yesterday.." She began slowly and quietly, and despite her voice sounding like a mouse's squeak and a part of his blood boiling at the sound of it, he bit his tongue and held back his snapping comment.
Right now was not the time to be reckless. Too hard of a hit—or any pressure at all really—would cause his dear friend to shatter into a million pieces and he can't have that. How would he be able to fix her up in that condition?
"If you were me last night, if... If you had your weapon to that person's throat. ...If they begged you through their sobs and reduced to a blubbering mess...going on and on about how they needed to live.." She pauses, whether that was because she noticed how her voice grew more and more unsteady with every word she spoke or the fact that her hands had begun to tremble was unknown to even her. It seemed that at this point she was unsure of, well, everything.
And at that point, her friend saw no better of a time than to take a risk and speak his mind.
"If you plan to continue on to ask me if I would've still killed them than let me spare us both the time; I would in a heartbeat."
She laughs at him, her giggle sounding like a sick bird trying to sing. It should be comforting to here despite it's raspiness. After all, despite it not sounding exactly like her usual laughter, it's a miracle she's able to laugh at all. He should be sighing out of relief that she still seems to be gripping onto her sanity enough to find humor in such a dank situation.
But he couldn't, and all because of the simple fact that he had grown used to her sounding so full of life. It was truly a pity.
"I suppose that was a silly question of me to ask you of all people."
In all this time, he's noticed she hasn't looked up from her hands once. It was unnerving to see her like this, but there was nothing he could truly do about it. He could direct her attention elsewhere, sure, but that wouldn't stop the swarming of her thoughts or reduce her heightened awareness of what was once staining her hands and forearms. And, it surely wouldn't halt the constant loop of that incident from playing in her mind—that moment of her taking a life with her own hands, in a quite grotesque way at that.
Her mind was stained just like her skin and just like how she couldn't truly rid herself of the grimy feeling of blood sticking to her skin no matter how hard she scrubbed, he couldn't wipe her mind of what happened. They were both truly powerless.
But he had to do something. Now that they've gotten her foot out of the door, she has to walk through it. There's no backing out of this, she knew this when she went on that mission yesterday. There was no way but forward. He knew that better than anyone.
"Nevermind what happened, come on," He slides his hand up her arm, over her shoulder, and dips down to the upper part of her back where he gently pushes her in the direction of the door, all as he tells her, "You should get off your feet and actually rest. You'll need it for tomorrow.."
For the first time that night, she glances up at him. It was for a mere moment, but that quick second was all he needed. Her eyes..were like a starless sky; completely devoid of it's usually glimmer of life. It was as if he was staring at a solider who's spent the last decade at war.
Truly astounding how such a look was formed just after a single night.
Wordlessly, she allows him to push her in the direction of the door as if she weighed nothing. She walked slowly, and as she did she looked back down at her clean, reddened hands. Her eyes sinking even more as she does.
She finds herself wondering if the blood she felt would ever go away—if it were possible that her palms would be capable of ever being truly clean again—and that led her to softly murmur to the only one she could think of turning to; her companion and partner in crime, him.
"Does it.. Does this ever get better?" She asks to which she receives probably the heaviest sigh she's ever heard in her life. It tells her all she needs to know but does little to quell the turmoil in her heart. It has her questioning if she'll be able to handle the path forward. If she'll reach the end or go insane halfway through.
Whatever happens, she finds herself praying that she'll be able to walk this path hand in hand with someone who's treaded this gravel before.
..And it so happens that a person like that is leading her to her bedroom right now. How convenient.
Dividers were made by me, pictures used are from Pinterest, post formatting is inspired by @xxsabitoxx
So is the Dangerous Fellows fandom dead?? I'm writing a fanfic for it and I'm curious if I should potentially be brainstorming more ideas for it in the meantime or do this and then just focus on other fandoms.
