@troublecome ah shit here we go again
he knows what it’s about, in a process of elimination sort of way. he knows he left her this morning, sleep - grumpy, as she tends to be, but otherwise fine. she was fine texting him up until noon, too, and then he’d sent her a snap from the emergency room and it had all sort of gone downhill from there. it’s not an overt sort of downhill, it’s the kind he recognizes because past teasing and the way they poke at each other, he knows her in her cranky moods and her good moods and her clearly upset but not bringing it up moods.
it leaves a bad taste in his mouth that he recognizes, a look on her face he saw not too long ago that helps fit puzzle pieces together all the more. you could have died. she’d been upset, then, too. he’d joked and pushed her for laughter and in the moment it’d worked. he’d figured they could go along without acknowledging it, hadn’t wanted to talk about it for a reason he can’t really remember, now. laziness, maybe. no one said he was winning any boyfriend of the year awards.
it was always going to come up eventually. jude’s unskilled in handling silence and melody doesn’t seem like she’s going to take pity and just yell at him, like he wishes she would. it’d still suck, but it’d be better. instead, he has to pick a moment they’d usually be talking, or laughing, or something, shrouded in quiet to bring it up. dark, aside from the light off their phone screens, his own easily clicked off and dropped somewhere among covers.
❛ alright, mel. ❜ her back to him makes it no harder to be saran wrap clingy, obnoxious when he rolls over, a leg and an arm around her and chin just above a mess of black hair. ❛ we’ve gotta talk, or fight, or whatever you wanna do. anything that’s not this ignore jude into oblivion thing you’ve got goin’ on. ❜
she’s far from falling asleep when the weight of the bed dips behind her and, all at once, melody’s enveloped in jude’s signature brand of warmth. still, she feels cold. cold in a way that’s not yet familiar, but too far from foreign for her to ignore. she locks her phone, letting the room go dark. ❛ i don’t want to fight. ❜ does she want to talk, though? she’s not sure. mostly, she wants to fall asleep and let him try to prod at this too-sensitive subject over pancakes.
her chin turns up, the crown of her head colliding with his chest, and she wonders what his face would reveal if she could see it. would he be wearing the rare, pinched expression that only comes out when her own brow furrows, a quiet storm brewing behind her eyes? or would it be the easy smile that might make her forget the feeling that’s rooted itself in her stomach?
these words, she knows, are some that are better said in the dark.
❛ there’s nothing i can say that you don’t already know i’m thinking. ❜ with the exception of how much his emergency room snap had made her feel like her mother, addled with worry for someone she knows she can’t control--- someone she doesn’t want to control. maybe she’s harboring a bit of resentment toward him for bringing that out. ❛ why don’t you talk? you’re good at that. ❜
