Chapter Text
The overcast sky hung low over the small provincial town. Thick clouds painted the sky grey, like wet ash, heavy and smudged. The air was still, except for the occasional soft gust of wind that brought the cool smell of upcoming rain. The stone wall of the bench by the cemetery gates felt slightly damp beneath Lif’s legs as she sat cross-legged, her sketchbook open on her lap. Her pencil moved in gentle arcs, shading a tree branch and the hollow eyes of something half-seen, invisible to any other eyes aside her own.
Beside her, nestled in a little pouch stuffed with tissues, Roach shifted lazily, her tail poking out as if to test the breeze. Lif glanced at her once, pleased. The little rat always seemed to enjoy the quiet atmosphere of the cemetery, or maybe that was just her projecting.
They were both waiting, but not impatiently. It felt good to just sit there and enjoy the breeze and the calm, occasionally lifting up their gazes to admire their surroundings, contemplating the creaking gate or the distant tombstones leaning under the slow weight of time.
Dee arrived ten minutes late. His boots scuffed the gravel as he rounded the path towards the gate. His hoodie was zipped all the way to his throat despite the mild weather (for its wearer ran cold even when the weather was not), and his earbuds were firmly tucked in, blasting music into his ears.
His expression was unreadable at a first glance, closed off the way it usually was. But when his eyes landed on her — a slim figure dressed in black, hunched over her sketchbook, her pale face framed by cascading black hair and the overcast light — something in his gaze softened, if only slightly. Like a string loosening.
“You’re late,” she said, not needing to look up to recognize who those steps belonged to. The corners of her mouth barely curled upwards as her pencil continued to glide over paper.
“Was fixing Heavy’s busted speakers,” he muttered, taking a seat beside her with a faint sight. He looked down at Roach, “Is this where she was the whole week?”
Lif glanced sideways at him, amused. “I think she likes me.”
That made him huff, barely a chuckle, but a real laugh nonetheless.
They fell into silence. Not the awkward kind, but the kind of silence that settles between people who don’t need to fill every second. Lif sketched on, her pencil whispering across the page, as Dee sat beside her, elbows on knees, pretending to look anywhere but at her hands. He watched the way her fingers moved, how her brow slightly furrowed when she concentrated on a particularly intricate detail. He wanted to ask what she was seeing in her mind: what strange beauty or quiet horror was currently revealing itself in graphite. But the words wouldn’t come out right in his head, so they wouldn’t come out at all.
Instead, he said, quietly, “I found this paper about hallucinations and patternicity. I thought of you.”
She paused mid-stroke, the pencil stilling on the page. One eyebrow arches slowly, her gaze sliding to him with equal parts curiosity and amusement. Then, she smiled at him, one of those real, bright smiles that never failed to make his breath get caught in his lungs.
“You’re weird, Dee.”
He didn’t need to hear them to know the words that hid behind her joking remark. Thank you for acknowledging me. Thank you for trying to understand me better. Thank you.
They spent the rest of the afternoon trudging through the mossy paths of the cemetery, the gravel soft underfoot, damp leaves sticking to the soles of their leather boots. Roach took her usual spot on Dee’s shoulder, tucked under the edge of his hoodie, her eyes closed with a pleased expression. The sun never broke through the clouds, but neither of the two teens seemed to notice it. They exchanged music recommendations, chatted about the lyrics of their favorite songs, and shared headphones. At one point, Lif told him a ghost story she insisted was true, her voice hushed and dramatic, and he countered it with one of his own, deadpan but unnervingly specific.
Their conversation flowed slowly and easily, like the autumn wind rustling the leaves above them. Dee kept glancing at her whenever he thought she wasn’t looking. Watching how she walked, how she pushed her hair behind her ear whenever it fell in her face (that one little strand always seemed to escape her grasp, however), how the muted light painted her skin. As he listened to her chatter on, he memorized the way she gestured when she talked, the way her voice dipped and rose, the way she laughed.
Lif pretended not to notice any of it. But she did.
She always did.