DAY 8 23/03-18

I really like to draw. I realize I haven't mentioned it these past days. Sorry about that, I tend to be very depressing on a regular basis. I'll try to keep my letters less depressing. It'll be hard, because lately the positivity always seem to be clouded with negativity. 

Anyways, I like to draw. For myself only. If you ask me to draw for you I will certainly resist. I hate it if someone is watching me while I draw. Trust me, Shiro has tried multiple times but he should know better to irritate me when I'm holding a pen.

Drawing for me is kind of a relaxing method, at times. I could draw myself with wings and I would believe I could fly. Or I could draw the ideal meadow with butterflies and shit, but I try to keep it realistic. I don't draw myself with wings because I know I can't fly. I don't draw the perfect meadow because I know that behind there is an industry taking over the nature. That's the problem with being logical. It shortens your creativity until you're just a boring person that relies on facts and nothing beyond that.

° ° °

I turn my hand in my lap, examining my damages. The skin over my knuckles have burst and they're extremely red, bruises forming around them. Once quick glance at the big wall window beside me and I saw that a big purple-greenish bruise had already started to form just under my right eye. My nose is patched up and probably still bleeding. I feel nothing at all. No pain. No anger. Nothing.

Shiro left seconds ago to grab something to eat from the restaurant. He mumbled a faint be right back and disappeared from the room. I haven't said something since I got here. I woke up here totally quiet, and I will leave just as silent. When the doctors see that my condition is the same they will tell me the same things to remember for this to not happen again and they will prescribe me new -stronger - tablets and me and Shiro will quietly drive to the pharmacy and take them out before driving back home and I will quietly listen to Shiro give me the same lecture before letting me think in my room.

I grab my pen again and try to write my name in my notebook but it looks like a five year old just stole my book at some point. I can't even hold the little object correctly. I start to wonder if the nerves in my hand shut down in some point. Maybe I'm going to write like this from now on. I try to read what I wrote today but with effort. It takes me some tries to read the first sentence. I let myself get occupied with the task, until an apple and a chocolate bar appears on the table beside mine. I hadn't even noticed that Shiro appeared in the room again.

"Eat it", he says when I look up at him. When I just stare at him, he sighs and presses out a miserable please.

Without a word I pick up the apple and take an experimental bite. The only sound in the room is the monitor beside my bed that keeps a steady beating and the sound of me crunching on my apple. The monitor tells me I'm pretty alive, but is it perhaps just a distorted sound in my head?

Shiro sits back down in the chair and rubs his face with his hand, rubbing out the tiredness from his eyes.

"You really don't make this easier, Keith", he tells me, running his hand through the longer part of his hair.

I snap. "Well, it was your decision to adopt me, so if I'm such a burden you should just send me to foster care or something." My throat is sore from not speaking but I still manage to get my words out clear. I want him to hear this clearly.

"Keith, what..." Shiro is sitting upright now. "Where the hell did that nonsense come from?"

"I'm just pointing it out for you", I retort. "I'm a pain in the ass, right? You don't have to put up with me if you just send me back. You don't have to go through all of this extra hard work if I was sent back."

The apple in my hand feels heavy so I put it back, closing my notebook with quivering hands and tuck the pen at the side, placing it aside on the bed. There is a new silence in the room. This time I don't hear the monitor anymore - it may have increased in speed, but I wouldn't know. This time I can hear the tension, the unspoken words hanging in the air. I can hear the short breath Shiro takes, as if he would want to throw all the possible words at me, tell me so many things but the surprise took the best of him.

"You know", he says after a while of tormenting silence. I don't dare to look at him. "What really hurts the most is that you would even consider such a thing. And saying it up to my face? It really disappoints me."

We don't say anything to each other form there.

° ° °

The sky has started to shift into multiple dark colors, and the sight of it is the only thing keeping me in check. I'm tapping my finger on my leg with the beat of the music coming out as a feeble sound from the speakers, not because I'm feeling the song, but because I need to get the nerves in my hands going. They can't give up now.

It's the feeling of relieve domanating my other feelings as I see our apartment forming in the field of my sight, having a darker shade of yellow in this evening light. The roads are calmer now, but then again, our neighborhood isn't the most known one. Which is why the apartments isn't the most expensive, meaning it's a plus for me and Shiro. Even though we live with the poor quality of this neighborhood, I couldn't be more happy with the place I'm currently living in. Everything is better than the orphanage. Anything but the orphanage. Or, correctly, anywhere with Shiro is better than the orphanage.

I wish I had the balls to say it to him right now and maybe it would fix things between us, but my arrogance is too great for my own good, or other's good, for that part. I don't want to give in, and I don't want to prove myself wrong to Shiro, even though I know my words were unnecessary. I was just living in the heat of my anger right then - it was never my intensions to hurt Shiro emotionally and state such a thing that I did.

"Is that Lance?" Shiro says, clearly surprised. My head instantly flies up to, indeed, see his blue little car parked just outside our apartment and he's sitting on the bonnet of the vehicle, dangling his legs in the air and throwing worried glances around him.

Suddenly I don't want to get out of the car, I don't want to meet Lance. Not now. Not in this condition I am in right now. I don't want to ask myself how long he sat on the bonnet and waited for me and Shiro to arrive, I don't want to know what his thoughts were when he heard that I got into a fight and was sent straight to the hospital. Because my lung collapsed again, it failed to give me oxygen again.

"Talk to him", Shiro demands me and his voice is stern but still toneless, no feeling involved whatsoever. He parks in the parking lot in front of our apartment - which happens to be three cars away from Lance's, and I can see from here that said boy perks up, jumping off of his car, his face lit up with expectation, hoping that our car is the one he has been waiting for. 

The humming in our car stops when Shiro turns the engine off, getting out of the vehicle in one smooth motion, closing the door softly. As soon as he steps into view Lance is in front of him, looking awfully happy as he's talking to him, asking him questions that doesn't go through our car. I can't hear a thing they're saying, but suddenly Shiro's pointing to my direction, and mine and Lance's eyes lock for one, two, three seconds before I look away, catching a glimpse of Shiro putting his hand on Lance's shoulder before heading to the apartment.

That traitor.

I look down and see that he left the car keys still inside, clearly for me to use when I step out to talk to Lance. He thought this out so fast.

With a final sigh, I step out, awfully slowly, closing the door carefully because I can't use much more of my hands than that. They're overused now. They will be this weak for a while now.

"Keith!" I hear from in front of me and suddenly Lance is standing one meter away from me, stopping in his tracks when he sees my face. "Geez, you look horrible."

"I don't have time for this, Lance", I snap and try to push my way past him, but he stops me with a loose grip on my arm.

"Hey now, where do you think you're going? I just came from school and waited for your ass for twenty minutes and this is your way of greeting me?"

I spin around, shaking his hand of me like it was burning my skin, and I feel my temper rising, again. Slowly, slowly, like the water in a closed boiling saucepan. "I didn't ask you to wait for my ass for twenty minutes, now, did I? Why make it harder for you? You can drive back home now."

He stops me when I try to leave again. "What the hell, Keith? You could at least be somewhat grateful, you know? Even pretend to be grateful."

"Let go of me", I snarl, snatching my sore arm away from his grasp. My muscles have taken a break for now and that includes the muscles in my jaw, so I want to keep the talking to a minimum. And Lance isn't making it any easier. "And I'm not going to pretend. Learn to receive true, raw feelings. I didn't ask for you to come here. You can go home."

"Are you serious right now? Hey! Don't you turn your back on me. You little piece of shit, look at me when I'm talking to you." He turns me around again and the nerves in my fist crackles to life.

"Don't talk to me like you're my mom", I say but how would I know? This is just something I have snapped up on from other's, form series and movies. I wouldn't know shit about how mother's act. 

"How would you know how a mom acts?" Lance shots back like he could read my thoughts. "Bet you don't even have a mom. That's why she couldn't raise you into a proper human being."

This pain that stabs my chest is something completely different than the usual. It's gut wrenching and so sharp that I fear my insides might explode. The thing he just said is a slap of realization to my face, a taunt and a fraud. It's a knife to cut my senses, my feelings in half.

"Careful Lance", I mutter out, my hands shaking at my sides. "You could end up just as beaten up as the guy I fought in the corridor. I won't hesitate."

"You ain't shit, Keith", Lance spits out and his eyes are so dark. It's terrifying how his eyes can change to so many emotions so fast. "You act all tough and shit but really you're just a lost child with anger issues that doesn't know the term feelings. 

"There you go again, talking like you know a thing about me." I start to gesture dramatically, the pain in my body I was feeling gone for the moment. "Fuck off, Lance. Stay away from me. Stay away from my business and stay away from my life. I don't want to see you again. You're just like the other's. Shallow, and a clueless prick."

"You know what Keith? I think I know why nobody wants to be with you", Lance take one step closer to me and I can swear that I see a fire in his gaze, burning his irises up. "You're just a douche to everyone. You push everyone away and act like a dick and that's why you get bullied in school." Another pang in my chest, another slap in my face. "Yeah, I notice how everyone despises you. Heck, I can't even blame them now. I can't even understand how Hunk and Pidge managed to put up with you for this long."

It gets to a point where I just don't know how to feel or what to do. To a point where feelings is overanalysed so I just push them aside for later. To a point where I need to make up my mind whether I should scream or laugh or cry or just punch something.

Lance is there, in front of me, hatred in his eyes. Hatred towards me. But hatred isn't the opposite of love. Apathy is. He hates me now, but that just shows he cares. Cares maybe as much as I do right now. We will hate each other form now on, but we won't show apathy. We will care what the other do, and it will be the worst hatred I have ever felt.

I don't know what to feel or do, so I just leave.

° ° °

You see, being logical is not what the majority of the society wants. They want you to be fun, to draw yourself flying over the perfect meadow. They want you to come with bright ideas and crazy ones and stupid ones because that's what's so entertaining. That's what's so fucking funny nowadays, right? 

Just shut up Keith, and draw your fucking wings and fly over that damn meadow.

° ° °

Here, have this chapter as I go and cry in a corner :)