vanillajello | Overland Park, KS, Early Wednesday Evening

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Overland Park, KS, Early Wednesday Evening

It was kind of funny how weirdness never stopped being weird, no matter how much you were exposed to different types of it.

Kate had felt weird since the complete disaster that was Monday night. She'd felt weird through Tuesday's family breakfast, and the stuff they did during the day, and the dinner with the gay neighbors and Charmaine and Nick (which Kate and Marshall and Bod hadn't even attended), and through whatever random crap they'd done today. She could barely remember. It was all kind of hazy. But at least she was pretty sure she'd kept her inner confusion hidden pretty well, for the most part.

She hadn't spent all that much time actually alone with Bod, though. That could've led to talking and she didn't want to do that, so she didn't.

And tomorrow, they'd be back in Fandom. Some other kind of weirdness would take this weirdness' place and this would be forgotten. Hopefully.

Right now, though, they were still in Overland Park. Kate was lying on her stomach on her brother's bed with Bod sitting beside her, Marshall's latest yearbook from glamorous Butterworth Senior High open in front of her, and a black marker in her hand. Marshall himself was currently standing on his bed on Kate's other side, fixing a lamp he had hanging from his ceiling.

Kate drew horns on some random freshman's picture and blacked out his eyes. "I don't miss any of these people."

[For the boooy. NFB due to distance, contains stuff nabbed from USoT S02E01 'Yes'. ETA: Warning for discussion of suicide.]

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Bod looked over at her, saw those eyes and his stomach clenched tight enough that he thought he might double over. He didn't though. He watched her steadily but didn't move closer to her.

"That was a long shower," he said, just going with idle words to start. "Do you feel better?"

"It was a hot shower."

That wasn't an answer to his question, but she didn't know what to say. So she said that, and adjusted her towel to get it tighter around herself.

Didn't move, either.

"So I see," he said, looking down for a brief moment. "You've been crying."

Yes, he was going to call attention to that.

Kate wanted to flinch, but didn't.

"So?"

Not the best response ever, but the best she had to offer right now.

"So?" he repeated, standing up a little straighter now. "Kate, really? So? You don't think I'm going to be concerned when you're crying in the shower? Kate. Please."

She was standing up just as straight as he was, almost looking a little defiant.

Foolishly, pointlessly, but still.

"People cry. It happens."

[Niight!]

"Yes. It does. I know that."

He still didn't want to see her cry though. Ever.

"Why are you crying, Kate?"

[Good night! Sleep tight!]

She tilted her head to the side a bit. Kind of like she didn't care. "Stubbed my toe."

There was enough sarcasm in that to mark it not as a lie but an indirect way of asking 'why do you think?' instead.

Bod pursed his lips for what felt like the hundredth time today and tried, really tried, to stay calm.

"Why are you treating me like this?" he asked, managing to remain calm even if he was anything but.

"Like what?" she asked, and now she did finally move away from the door.

Only towards her closet, though, to open the doors with the the painted sunflowers on them, and look for something wearable even though most of the clothes she likd were in Fandom.

Effectively turning her back towards him, for the moment.

Bod closed his eyes and took a quiet breath. Maybe he should have just gone to watch that movie.

"You're treating me like you don't want me here anymore," he pointed out, watching her back. "I have been invisible to you for nearly two days now. You're treating me like I'm the worst person on this planet and like you don't care about me at all. So, why?"

Kate stared into the closet for a moment, not replying, not acknowledging the question, though she was tensing up again and knew he could probably tell if he was looking.

She forced herself to shrug a shoulder. Didn't know, didn't care.

It was a horrible thing to do and she felt horrible for doing it and it was almost as if she was outside herself, watching herself act like this.

She wasn't the only one who felt horrible at seeing that. He might have seen the tension if that reaction hadn't coiled in his stomach and made him feel like screaming.

"Right, thank you for that," he said, a lot less steadily than he'd sounded before. "So, perhaps I should just know it all since your feelings seem to be that fickle lately. Do you not love me anymore either? Is that gone too?"

That stung. She was almost surprised at how much that stung. There was a heavy feeling inside her chest.

She'd already been crying earlier, so it was no surprise when a few tears rolled freely now. And she couldn't even wipe them away, because then he'd know she was crying. And she couldn't reply because... Well, he'd know then too.

So she stood, frozen.

Bod didn't know if no answer was good or bad. He didn't know what was going on right now. His mind was getting weighted down with his own emotional reaction to this and he could barely think.

"You are the most important person in the world to me and I've had to watch you pretend I don't exist for two days, Kate. I've been an afterthought or a grudging addition to whatever might be going on. I don't know why. You won't talk to me. I'm stuck thinking you just don't want me anymore because we had a night where things went wrong. I thought I was giving you what you wanted that night. You didn't -- "

He stopped talking just so he could get a breath and reorder his thoughts. Everything was coming out now that she couldn't really ignore him. "All I was trying to do was to help you. It didn't work how I wanted it to work but my intentions were good. I just wanted to help you. I just wanted you to feel better. And this is what I'm getting for it."

After he'd gotten about halfway through what he wanted to say, Kate could barely even hear him. She was just trying so hard to stay impassive, cold, distant, anything to keep her from just collapsing on the floor.

But her defences, hard as they were, couldn't stand the weight of all of that.

The knuckles on her hand that held on to one of the closet doors were white from gripping it so hard, and she shuddered with a quiet sob.

This time, Bod did hear her and he stopped talking almost immediately. Any other day, he might have stepped closer to try and hold her and comfort but he was still raw from the past few days and felt wariness and hurt of his own. He stayed still.

"Kate, talk to me," he said, softening his voice, at least. "Tell me something. Tell me anything."

She'd cried so much around him or because of him lately and it was just scraping him raw and making him ache even more that he couldn't just soothe it all away.

Kate leaned against the closet door a little more heavily. She was still standing, almost steadily, but... Maybe her legs would buckle from under her. Maybe she'd topple over straight into the closet. She didn't know.

There was so much she didn't know.

Her voice sounded strangled and teary, and weak. And she hated that. "I don't know what to say."

Everything had gone way too far, and she wanted to take it all back, she really did, but she didn't think that was possible. And if she'd been pushing him away for two days was it too late to let him back in, anyway? Or would she let him back in only to do this to him again? And to herself? Was it worth it? Should she just keep pushing?

She didn't know. She didn't know anything.

Bod rubbed his eyes and ran a hand through his hair, still trying to keep a rein on his feelings and on the reactions that wanted to lash out and be known. He wasn't going to do that though.

"You need to find something," he finally said, shaking his head, "because I'm doubting you right now. I'm sorry but I am. I don't want to but I don't know what else to do. I don't know what you'll have me do. You're shrugging me off carelessly and you might not even love me anymore. You don't want to be alone with me and I'm beginning to wonder if you're scared of me. Maybe you do think I'm a monster. I need to know. I want to fix this but I can't keep doing it on my own."

"I do love you!"

Kate? Kate could do some lashing out for them both, mustering up some anger at the suggestion that she didn't. She knew why he'd think that, though, because she'd made him think that, and that hurt, and just made her more angry. At herself, really, but he was there and talking so he got to be the target anyway.

And she was still staring into the closet, still hanging on to the edge of that door. Didn't even see it: her vision was blurry from tears. And the spike of frustrated anger had dissolved already when she continued.

"And you're not a fucking monster."

The anger was almost welcome after two days of either being ignored or being talked to as an afterthought. At least that told him she was still in there.

"I love you too!" he said, not quite shouting it but saying it with enough feeling that she'd know he wasn't just replying to reply. "And I want to be with you! Kate, I want to fix this. I want to hold you again and I want to feel your heartbeat. Please."

He wasn't going to rise and match her momentary anger though. He didn't want to spiral the situation away from the original issues.

"So, please. Just...tell me something. I know you know. You have to know if you just said that. Please."

Kate's head turned some, but not enough for her to actually see him. Maybe just enough for him to catch a glimpse of her wet cheek. The tears hadn't stopped.

"I don't know, okay?" she hissed, but it sounded a little more tired than her previous outburst. "We fucked up and I don't know! I don't know how to fix this!"

Never had to deal with love like this before. Or whatever this was really all about.

Something about that made his stomach turn and he felt the momentary urge that he was about to get sick.

"I'm sorry." Maybe that could be a start. "I'm so sorry for what happened, Kate. You have to know I had the best of intentions and it just didn't happen the way I wanted it to. We've both been through so much lately, I think we just took it out on each other."

In a way that they shouldn't have. "It was -- it was something we shouldn't have done. And I'm sorry."

"Well I know that!" They shouldn't have done it. Really shouldn't have, and they had two days worth of tension to prove it. "And it is not your fault."

Had to say it, mildly angry as it was. It wasn't as if she hadn't come close to begging for him to do what he eventually did. He'd given her exactly what she'd thought she wanted.

Not his fault it was the wrong thing to do.

That quieted him for a moment. His hands hung loosely at his sides and he had to reach deep to keep himself motivated and determined to see this through.

"It's no one's fault," he agreed after a moment, "but I still participated and I'm still sorry. And I want you to forgive me because you do love me."

He was inches from just laying his heart out there but he kept it close for the moment. "If you can't forgive me, well, then I'll deal with that. You know what I think about that night. Maybe you should tell me what's been going on in your mind."

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