I Wrote This Down for You

He doesn't know how it happened. He doesn't know how he let it come about.

Keith sits silently on a bench outside as the wind whips by, white flecks of snow matted into his unevenly dyed hair. It's colder than he thought it'd be and he didn't take the time to grab his coat from the back of his desk chair as he left his room. There was only enough time for Chris to stumble in and smile sheepishly as girly giggles came from the hall and the girlfriend stepped in, cheeks red and hiding her face against Chris's arm when she saw they weren't alone.

The urge to laugh suddenly rattles persistently in Keith's throat and he opens his mouth to let it out, but all that comes is a clouded cough, crystals of cold floating before his eyes. He doesn't even know her name. Chris talks about her sometimes in passing, telling about their dates and their time spent together holding hands in public. Chris brings her up to their room on nights like tonight when it's cold and students drunk and dizzy stumble past Keith as they lean on the shoulders of friends or lovers, reminding Keith of just how alone he really is. Still, her name doesn't come to mind but he's sure Chris must've said it once or twice. After a moment he gives up trying to remember and leans back, staring up into the streetlight above him.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. They were just supposed to be roommates, invisible to each other if needed. But there was one thing that ended up bringing them away from being just roommates and toward being friends. It was those black printed words, harsh, beautiful stains on white pristine paper. It was a cast of characters with their quirks and their faults and the uncomfortably admirable way they came off as real. It was world after world created from nothing promising something better than the one they occupied now. It was fiction. It was the lack of reality. It was something better.

His thoughts are interrupted as fur-trim boots hurry pass, stop, and then backtrack. Keith raises his eyes to see her standing in front of him, hair tousled and skin glowing. The girlfriend. She smiles hesitantly at Keith, bringing up a hand to self-consciously smooth down her curly hair.

"You're done then?" he asks her, leaning forward to rest painfully bony elbows on equally bony knees.

A blush spreads over her cheeks and she looks down to her boots. "What're you doing out here? Were you here the whole time? Aren't you cold?"

She can't be nice. Keith can't stand her being nice. He can't stand her anyway, but he'd never admit it.

"Where else would I be? My room?"

"Keith, please don't be like this," she says in the way mothers scold their difficult children. Keith isn't sure what's more surprising: the fact that she knows his name, or that she cares how he acts toward her. He's just the silent roommate that leaves the room when she comes in. He's just the empty bed across the room from Chris's.

He stands silently, shoving red, cold-stiff hands into his jeans pockets. "You should probably get going. It's getting late."

For a long moment she holds his stare, almost silently challenging him before a drunk girl stumbles down the sidewalk and runs into her, dislodging her gaze as they both tumble into the bench. Keith steps away, leaving them both behind.

Up in their room, Chris sits clothed in a baggy sweatshirt and boxers at his desk, laptop spread open in front of him, the bright white of an empty word document lighting up his face. He glances up over his shoulder as Keith enters and offers a small smile that Keith accepts but does not return. The small room smells like sex and perfume and Keith immediately cracks open the window. Stretching with his arms over his head, Chris watches him.

"I saw your girlfriend outside," Keith says in slightly belated greeting. "She talked to me. She knows my name. I don't know hers."

Chris looks mildly surprised at the revelation, eyebrows inching up to hide in his mussed bangs. "Really? That's funny." He doesn't provide her name but just watches Keith peel of his boots and socks and stand awkwardly beside the window. "Sorry," he finally says with a sigh of resignation. "We were going to go up to her room, but her roommate was there."

"So was yours."

"If you're pissed, say so. If you don't want to leave the room when I bring her up, don't." There's an edge to his voice, a harshness in his face and then it's suddenly gone as he cocks his head to the side. "I don't think it'll be happening often anymore though. I'm thinking of breaking up with her."

Keith sits on the edge of his bed, arching his eyebrows. "Why?" There's a fluttering feeling of hope somewhere in his chest, the same one he gets when Chris smiles at him, compliments him, or hands over those carefully stapled packets of paper that lay out all of Chris's thoughts all warped into a world where thinking and feeling them is perfectly okay. He's almost on the edge of hating himself for it. He doesn't know how it happened. He doesn't know he let it come about.

"She's nice. She's a good friend. I don't know if she's more than that. She wants a lot more than that. I'm not sure if I want to give her that at this point. You know?"

In response, Keith nods his head, but he doesn't really know. He can imagine giving anything it'd take to make the person he was with happy. He's never had anyone. They fall into silence, Chris turning back to his computer to tap at his keys in a sudden frenzy as Keith pulls a worn composition book from beside his bed and opens it to a clean page. Watching Chris from across the room, he begins to write, his pen shaking in his hand. His words come out, jittery and nervous to match the tangled mass that his belly wound itself into.

"What're you working on?" he asks after a long moment once Chris's typing has died down and his roommate's fingers are interlocked above him as he stretches once more.

Chris grunts. "Just... I don't know. Some sci-fi kind of thing, I think. You know how twins are basically just...a clone of each other? Something with that. I'm not really sure yet. Could you read it when I'm done with this chapter?" Keith nods his assent. "You're in it, you know. The brother of the twins. I made you noble and muscular. I hope you appreciate such a gesture."

For the first time tonight, a real laugh slips from Keith's lips before he can stop it. "Thanks. I'll be sure to return the favor." They smirk at each other for a moment till Keith's sobered by a worry he didn't even know he harbored. "Is she in it?"

"She?"

"Your girlfriend."

Chris's eyebrows bend together as he cocks his head to the side. "Nope."

"Does... Does she read your fiction?" Keith tries to picture her in her own dorm room, the papers held in her neatly painted fingernails as her roommates peers over her shoulder and they giggle and talk about his words. The fear that they'd understand more than he does - that they'd see farther beyond the words than he does - tears at him, gnawing away at his stomach. He pushes himself up to sit Indian-style in the center of his mattress, pen gripped in one hand, stomach in the other. He watches Chris carefully from the corners of his eyes, not blinking or breathing as he waits for a reply. He doesn't know how it happened. He doesn't know how he let it come to this.

"Nah. I don't think she'd like them or get them or whatever... Hey, you've been talking about her a lot today. Do you want her or something? 'Cause if I break up with her, she's all yours. It'll probably be relatively awkward but...you've liked her for awhile now haven't you?" His lips twist into a knowing smirk that knows nothing at all and Keith forces a laugh.

"What? No."

"I don't give a shit if you do. It just makes sense. You got really quiet and moody when I started seeing her. If you had your eyes on her before I asked her out, why didn't you just tell me?"

Keith stares down at his notebook, his slanted scrawls spiralling and blurring as he blinked his eyes. "No. That's not it. Just must be the winter weather. Seasonal depression or some stupid shit like that." Another laugh bubbles from his mouth and he wonders if it sounds as mechanical as it feels. Without another word he looks back to his notebook and picks up his pen again, holding the point to the paper and waiting for Chris to start typing once more. When the familiar, comforting staccato rhythm starts back up, Keith exhales, his hand shivering till he has to set the pen down just long enough to take another deep breath.

When his arm starts to hurt, tense and still with pen held tightly once more, he carefully shuts the notebook and shoves it back beneath his pillow, silently lying down on top of his comforter and closing his eyes. The sound of Chris's fingertips touching hard squares instead of the soft spans of Keith's skin sends him slowly into sleep.

--

Keith wakes to the quiet hum of Chris's computer, the screensaver shifting pictures across the screen, and cold air coming through the window still cracked open above Keith's boots and socks. He lies in bed a moment longer, staring at Chris where he sleeps across the room, curled up beneath his blankets, a ball trying to curl away from the cold. Silently, Keith stands and tiptoes to the window, easing it shut and then backing up against the wall, cold brick biting against the back of his head.

For a long while he stands, eyes still on Chris as his roommate loosens the tangled ball he's in after heat begins to settle throughout the room. He walks to the side of Chris's bed and kneels down as if about to say a prayer and maybe he whispers one to himself as he leans forward and gently touches his lips to Chris's. His roommate sighs deeply in his sleep and Keith backs away, tendrils of shock curling down his arms. He tries to figure it out, but decides he doesn't know how it happened. He doesn't know how he could let it happen. He pictures Chris's girlfriend outside, nice to him as she said his name and he feels sick.

Stumbling back to his bed, he fishes the notebook out from beneath his pillow and slides into his desk, flicking on the overhead lamp and waiting for it to shudder to life. When the light stays, he flips open the page and locates a pen, pressing it to the paper so hard it tears. He hardly breathe as he drags it above the thin blue lines. He creates characters to stumble around a world more perfect than the one he finds himself in and when the morning comes he still sits, circles under his eyes and a cramp edging along the top of his hand and into his wrist.

Chris groans and Keith jumps, staring down at his paper, the last period bold among the scribbles. With a deep breath he gently tugs the pages free, flinching at the ripping scream they make as they come loose. He crosses the room and touches Chris's shoulder, feeling the warmth of the bare skin till his roommate rolls over in his sleep and opens tired eyes.

"What? Fire alarm?"

"No. Here. I wrote this down...for you...last night. Could you read it and tell me what you think?" he whispers, holding the papers in front of Chris.

Chris's head falls back to his pillow, morning light making his bedhead shine. "Yeah. Yeah, sure... What fucking time is it...?"

Keith shrugs and backs away. "I...I'm going to go get some breakfast or something. Tell me what you think of it later, okay?" He leaves the room before Chris can utter another word. Out in the hall, he pauses to press his head against the brick wall as the distant sound of an alarm clock further down the hall comes to life. With a shaking hand, he rubs at his eyes, runs a hand through his hair, and realizes he forgot to put on shoes.

He laughs humorlessly, reminded of last night when he left without his coat as he stalks off down the hall. Out on the fire escape, he stops, curled up as he watches students already heading to classes in the early morning sunlight, walking side by side and hand in hand and he's reminded of how alone he really feels.

--

When Chris's alarm clock goes off, he has a vague remembrance of a dream...of Keith shaking him awake. He slaps at his alarm clock and sits up, finding no sign of his roommate but spotting a spattering of papers beside his bed. With a yawn, he scoops them up and begins to read.

"He doesn't know how it happened. He doesn't know how he let it come about..."

End.