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Stagger
x Rainfall Complexity x

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Through the haze of nicotine toxins and locks of his hair, he found himself looking for her.

The thought alone made him wince, too, that he was willingly masochistic enough to want to be in her presence, where he would be patronized by her morals and bored to near death – but not quite, because life wasn’t merciful – by her concern; but that he was also impatient at her lack of appearance was a blow to his pride so low it sent his mind staggering. Since life had thrown disgracefully at his feet enough circumstances to sway him to not care about any single person, he really didn’t understand why every time the cigarette in his grip touched his lips he thought of her irrational worry for him.

The redhead was too much of a sap and he could care less about her shallow sympathy, he argued to himself as he growled and pushed off of the tree, and he was leaving because he wasn’t going to be subjected to waiting for her any longer.

A flick of his fingers and a trailing of smoke and the nicotine stick lit onto the ground, only to be crushed into nothing by the toe of his sneaker. Hands shoved into his pockets carelessly, he flicked his blue eyes right, then forward, then down, and he scuffed his footsteps across the grass, carrying himself ahead and not really caring for any destination. Apathy was his God if he had one to begin with, and he followed it devoutly, making it his personal drive to never stray from its path.

In a world – meaning school – so full of drama stirred by gossip, not caring was a means of survival.

So when he bumped into her running recklessly to meet him, and she stumbled to the ground as her books clattered and cluttered about, he merely fixed her with a mute look of loathing and damned politeness to dust his own self off, leaving her sitting on the grass without a single flicker of remorse.

“Hello to you, too, Aiden.” Her words were heavily-laden with sarcasm, and it was almost enough to make him smirk.

But, then, he’d long since conquered the smiling game, mastering the ability to never show the slightest hint of amusement unless he truly, truly felt like it – a thing which was rare, indeed.

“Mind watching where you’re going?” he drawled, running fingers lazily through the locks of brown hair that were quickly becoming tousled by the wind. Autumn, her favorite month, she’d mentioned in passing some time he couldn’t remember, was probably the month he most tolerated as well. If only it didn’t freeze into winter, a hell so diabolical that it managed to defy the norm and sear with cold instead of heat.

“Sorry for marring your godly physique,” she laughed, crossing her legs rather than either pathetically waiting for him to help her or opting to stand on her own. And he was fine with her choice; down there she couldn’t harass him quite so effectively.

He merely tossed a look full of annoyance at her, leaning forward on his legs and keeping his hands hidden in his pockets. When she laughed off his warning and leaned at her waist to gather her books closer to her, he sighed tiredly and tilted his head back, the sky limiting his gaze and stretching stark above the treetops, a wide, cloudless barrier creeping every which way to some appointed horizon.

Sometimes, when the frigid prison-called-house he inhabited against his will had nothing more for him except the view of the sky at night, he let his breath caress the windowpanes and glared up at the soft, dark velvet, because it was the only thing that could remain suspended eternally above idiotic notions such as hope and disgusting displays of human greed such as war, and for that he was jealous.

And it gave birth to tangled webs of lies such as faith and hope and dreams, as well, which he despised beyond all rational reasoning.

And then he thought of her, like he was thinking of her now, and how she tried so foolishly hard – not to care about everyone – but to at least not hate anyone, and he found himself growing frustrated that she was so childish as to wish on a star and think up dreams that would never come true.

She was better than that. He wanted her to be better than that.

And that was when he promptly tore his gaze away and fisted his hair in frustration, because he’d loathed her since his eyes had first grazed her face and he wasn’t going to start going soft.

It was hate at first sight and his heart’s pace quickening with fury whenever she’d been around since, not the other way around.

“Hey, Aiden?”

Eyes slanting slightly into a glare as he matched the sky above blue to blue, he hesitated at the soft call of her voice and then finally yielded, sighing in frustration as he swung his gaze down to meet her.

“Yeah?”

“Sit down and stay a while, hmm?” she asked, patting a space beside her and tilting her head politely.

“Pass.”

Impatience flickered behind her indigo stare. “Aiden,” she warned.

“Kara.”

“Stop being an idiot.”

He arched an eyebrow at her, begging to differ. But she snorted at his look, meeting his stare with a defiance everyone else in their school seemed to lack. She had been the first and last person to try to repetitively wedge her way into his life, throwing hesitance to the wind some time ago to just cut the crap and small talk and give him a piece of her mind.

So if he had to truthfully admit something he liked about the girl, then it was that. She was stubborn beyond all belief, and thus admirable for such.

And because she was so stubborn, he found that his feet moved against the will of his brain, and he ended up sitting beside her, rolling his eyes as she nudged him with her shoulder playfully and teased him about something he only listened to half-heartedly. Otherwise he was just staring at his legs splayed out in front of him and the grass blanketing out before the two of them, once in a while catching with his peripheral vision her feet knocking toe-to-toe and then outward, toe-to-toe and then outward. Seldom did she actually hit him, but when her sneaker grazed his ankle of her hip pressed less than lightly against his, he stiffened and waited for the feeling of her warmth to fade, as well as for the raging speed of his heart to pass.

Grudgingly, though, as she sat there swinging her feet idiotically and laughing over ridiculous portions of text in some assigned book the both of them had to read but utterly despised – yet another one of those rare things they had in common – he had to admit that it wasn’t so much hatred that seemed to make his heart race when she touched him anymore. He wasn’t stupid, after all, nor was he dense. He just chose not to lie to himself.

And if he furthered the thought process anymore that he hated her wholly and completely, he’d make himself a hypocrite.

So, as a half-smirk curled his lip and he rested his palms on the earth, leaning back so that he could read over her shoulder, he found that familiarity, a monster that normally bred contempt, had dulled his barriers enough so that he didn’t mind the girl so much anymore and actually thought of her more than was necessary.

He was falling for her, he found, in the most ungraceful of ways. And the final free-fall seemed inevitable.

Sooner or later, he was going to fall in love.

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For Courtney, because she's awesome.
Feedback is appreciated.