never is a lonely little messed up word

[2ndineverything]

Day: 41
Characters: BELLA (isdazzled ); HARRY (2ndineverything )
Summary: Harry promised Bella he'd stop over and visit; they have an agreement to shake on, after all.
DAY/NIGHT & Time: End of the day
Status: Closed | Incomplete

Comments

[isdazzled]

Bella jumped at the voice coming, for a change, from behind the door and not from the intercom. When she'd come in from seeing Nagi and his... baby boy, Gary had been waiting for her, all tense, twitching, overwhelming energy; it was suffocating to be in the same room with him, and she hadn't even had the luxury of a moment to get her bearings before being confronted by him. With Harry -- it would be different, and she didn't even realize how much she had wanted and needed that comfort until she opened the door and saw him there

[2ndineverything]

The door opened, and Harry swallowed; for a moment he completely froze up, his mind went blank. He had guessed from her voice that she would be pretty, but somehow this was a whole different kind of pretty from what he saw at school every day. It was maybe just that extra quality, that sweetness he already knew about, that made her different. Like Gwen; who wasn't necessarily the most beautiful girl in school or anything, but she was more special to Harry than any of the others. He realized that more here, now that he couldn't see any of them every day.

"H-hi," he managed, mentally congratulating himself for regaining his power of speech. He smiled nervously, coming into the room, which was dark, cold -- it looked more like a prison cell than anything else. Not that his own room was the Ritz or anything, but...

"Jeez, you'd think they'd put you somewhere nicer." He said without really thinking about it, just looking around the dank room. It didn't seem right, but then, maybe that was just the rich kid in him disapproving. "I-I

[isdazzled]

"I wish, right?" Bella said with a small laugh, one arm crossing her body as she clutched her upper arm. Crossed arms was a defensive posture and a rude one, but Bella felt ugly, dowdy in wrinkled clothes, her voice hoarse from talking herself to exhaustion with Gary, Nagi, Edgeworth, and she didn't want Harry... to see her like this, pale and weary with exhaustion and grief and fear, and showing, she was sure, every single mark of it, all the tear tracks and the trembling and the halting, damnable stutter

[2ndineverything]

Grief and fear were things Harry was used to, although not so much on other people. He could take comfort in the fact that he at least wasn't quite as far gone as Bella was; although just thinking that made him feel like a jerk, and he stopped.

Each hand rubbed the opposite elbow, folded behind his back; an anxious habit he'd picked up here, no doubt, since he'd been keeping his arms hidden when he could. And if he could think of other things, it kept the shivers, and all the other things at bay.

"I doubt that," he said, because he couldn't imagine a girl like her deserving a room like this. But he smiled again, shaking his head of that topic. "But yeah, uh, likewise. Guess I could have stopped by sooner, but uh--"

He paused for a moment, frowning briefly before he shrugged his shoulders and laughed it off. He didn't want to go into any of that stuff, not right now. "Well, I guess things have been hard for everyone lately."

[isdazzled]

Bella gestured to the bed. "If you w-want to sit," she murmured, unsure of whether or not he wanted to do so. For her part, she was fine standing here across from the wall with the intercom. She uncrossed her arm, just to fidget at the ends of her sleeves some more. "Th-things have been, I guess," she said hesitantly, and glanced down at her sneaker-clad feet. "I feel like I d-don't keep up very well, even with p-people I care about, here. There's always, always s-something... not that th-that's an excuse, I mean..."

She shrugged and glanced over at Harry. "How -- how are your hands?" she asked. "C-can I see?"