betapile:

There is a tugging in the center of her, a spun-silk thread pulled taught, an ache like some asshole took a melon baller and scooped out her insides.

And Dave is well, he’s more irrelevant than anything.

He’s in her fourth period study hall, he sprawls his legs out and clicks his pen rapidfire, he wears skinny jeans and she’s pretty sure he’s in the photography club or wrote an article for the school newspaper bashing the practice of football or something. And she doesn’t know his last name, he stops existing when she looks away from him. He is the quintessential blonde boy, he’s tall and almost concerningly stoic, a douchebag by any other name in the sense that he reeks of insecurity and layers of cover ups.

But, and she supposes there is always a but, he moves with a weight on his shoulders, otherworldly and obsolete. With an exhaustion and squared shoulders and set jaw that’s- It’s interesting, it’s something worth noting. Familiar.

She doesn’t care about him, she doesn’t look at him, but he’s laughing at something he said to his friends and he’s curling his tongue around his braces and there are crinkles in the corners of his eyes and freckles across his cheekbones, prominent and sculpted, and she’s never really spared him so much as a thought but he glances at her, for a second, and the wind is knocked out of her and she’s grabbing her desk white-knuckled and she feels a jolt of electricity powerful and-

“Dave Strider.” She mouths to herself in English class, wonders why it fits on her tongue so perfectly.

–

He takes pride in his shitty beat up converse and she takes pride in her Necronomicon.

She’s not like the other girls, he isn’t either.

Dave Strider, which is what she decides to call him, listens to cassette tapes and shows up to homecoming in a full tuxedo. Like, with spats, and coat tails, and he doesn’t exactly upstage the homecoming king persay but he does accumulate a bigger circle around him as he makes fun of prom as a concept with his hands shoved deep in his pockets and his wingtips clicking against the polished gymnasium hardwood.

She runs the thin gold chain of her necklace through her fingers, and stares at him with a fierce sort of single-minded concentration. And he looks back at her, he trails off from his tirade with his mouth slack and his hand twitches like he’s been shocked and he really had to pay the ten dollar entrance fee to seem so smart and make his point about fighting the man.

Her skirt rides when she grabs a plastic cup of fruit punch and leans against the disposable plastic table cloth and hears Carly Rae Jepsen pounding out of the speakers. She hums pensively, touches the rim of the cup to her lip and sees Dave drag his eyes from her legs to her hands to her face and she can’t tell if it’s the hazy-purple lighting of school dances but his eyes are watery and he makes a small wet-cement choking sound in the back of his throat.

–

The comfort of his being near her is shocking, it’s the spinning of some cosmic wheel, and gears locking into place, and the three beauty marks on his neck down to his shoulder blades and how his shoes are left half-unlaced and the lazy movements of his hands as he holds his crutches up which he got from tripping over said shoelaces while running the mile in gym class and-

She felt the pain, when it happened, sharp and immediate in her ankle.

Dave Strider has a flighty air about him when she sees him, he has bags under his eyes and sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and he looks at her more vulnerable and fragile than anything she’s ever seen and the way his hips stand out and his collarbones pop is enchanting, hypnotic, when he checks his plastic watch to throw his jansport over one shoulder.

She looks at him, eyelids heavy, and watches his adam’s apple bob when he swallows.

–

“Dave Strider.” She catches him by the shirt sleeve, feels the ground shift underneath her feet and something important bubble up in her, “I don’t believe we’ve met.”