Afraid of the Dark

Banner by Tears for Fears. Definitely one of my favorites so far. Thank you so much, I love it! :D

It was one of those sour, gloomy days when the sky is a solid sheet of blinding gray, and Pete winced against the harsh winter air and the people rushing by us as we made our way to the ice cream shop down the street. All the people we passed on the sidewalk were busy and rude, and there were lots of them--some in business suits, others dressed up in tedious indie-chic outfits. But everyone was bundled up against the cold, their cheeks blazing pink.

It was really cold. Like, really cold. Really fucking cold.

I said so out loud and Pete laughed, glancing over at me with a little nervous smile like I had made some joke he wasn't sure how to respond to. But I wasn't joking. It really was cold.

"Why are we eating ice cream when it's this fucking cold outside?" As if to emphasize my point, an involuntary shiver ran through me and my teeth knocked together audibly.

"It's never too cold for ice cream. Besides," he added as he grabbed the door to the ice cream shop before I could reach it, holding it open for me like the gentleman he sometimes was, "it'll be warm in here."

I stepped inside and realized he had a pretty good point there.

The ice cream shop was slightly larger than the average prison cell, I figured, and so suffocatingly warm that I wasn't sure how they managed to keep the ice cream cold. But the warmth was welcome after our half-block arctic expedition, so I gladly peeled off my coat and hat and smiled back when Pete grinned at me sideways.

"Go sit down," he said, shrugging out of his own puffy coat. "I'll get our ice cream."

Before I could argue, or even tell him what flavor I wanted, he disappeared into the clump of people grouped around the counter on the far side of the room. Deciding to do as I was told, I settled into a chair at the only table open. It sat right up against the front wall, which was mostly made up of a huge window that looked out over the street. I watched all the people and all the cars move up and down the street through the blurry film of the fogged-up window for a while, just observing. I was so lost in thought that I jumped when Pete floundered into the chair across from me noisily.

"Oh my God!" I gasped. "You scared me!"

"Sorry," he said, and he didn't sound sorry at all. "What were you looking at?"

I shrugged. "Nothing."

"You can't look at nothing." He slid a small cardboard cup of ice cream across the table towards me as he spoke. "If you were looking at nothing, you wouldn't be looking at all."

I sighed, simultaneously loving and hating his constant insistance on such idiotic details. I glanced out the window again and he followed my gaze with a feverish jerk of his head, as if there were some scene unfolding outside that he was afraid to miss. But there was nothing there.

"Everything, then," I said.

I had put a lot of thought into my answer, carefully choosing the response I thought he would appreciate the most. "Everything" seemed like a very Pete-ish sort of answer in this particular situation, so I went with that one. Actually, I was quite proud of myself for coming up with it--as was Pete, apparently.

"Good answer," he approved, and something inside of me soared at my tiny victory. He didn't smile, but he couldn't hide the look of pleasant surprise in his eyes as he looked me over like we had just met. And, hell, maybe we had. Every moment I spent with him felt like starting over with a stranger; every conversation was fraught with uncertainty. Thrilling and terrifying, but mostly just terrifying--like feeling for a lightswitch in the dark.

But I was getting the feel for him more and more all the time.

"Your ice cream's melting," said Pete, taking me by surprise, as usual. At my questioning look, he waved down at the cardboard bowl of ice cream before me with his plastic spoon.

"Oh," I said stupidly. Truthfully, I had forgotten about the ice cream altogether. Now the two siamese-twin scoops were slumped down against one side of the bowl, their melted drippings pooling all around them. I picked up my spoon and poked at the ice cream experimentally. It was pale yellow with clumps of crumbly stuff and streaks of some kind of pink-ish goo running through it. It vaguely reminded me of cat vomit.

Pete noticed my hesitation and got all jumpy-paranoid. "Sorry about the cup," he said too quickly, "they were out of cones--"

"The cup?" I stared. He got me Cat Vomit ice cream, and he was apologizing for the cup it came in?

"...Yeah." He looked down at his own ice cream, pushing the disposable spoon around in the disposable bowl, fidgeting with the last remnants of his ice cream. "No cones," he repeated sadly.

Then I felt kind of bad, because he was being so nice to me even after I was a complete bitch to him earlier. I sighed in defeat, knowing that I would eat every last bit of that Cat Vomit ice cream if that was what he wanted. But there was no way I was doing that without at least complaining about it first, so I huffed, "You didn't ask me what flavor I wanted."

"I picked one out for you."

Bravely, I collected a spoonful of the Cat Vomit ice cream and held it up to survey it. "Well, what flavor is it?"

He looked up at me again finally, his gaze even. "Strawberry cheesecake."

I felt my brow crumple with some strange expression as I looked up at him, half disgusted and half bewildered. "You didn't know what I would like, so you picked out...strawberry cheesecake?" I said slowly.

"I know what you'll like," he said, and a little bit of his usual confidence resurfaced in the form of a tiny smirk.

I couldn't decide whether or not to be offended by that, so I just stared at him until I finally managed to splutter, "You do not!"

"Yes, I do." The confidence was growing; he said this like it was fact. He jerked his head towards the spoonful of ice cream I was still holding in mid-air. "Try it. You'll like it."

"I won't."

"You will."

"Will not. It looks like cat puke."

He leaned back in his seat, folding his arms across his chest. He raised his eyebrows at me. "Just try it."

With a melodramatic groan, I shoved the spoon in my mouth and gulped down the bite of ice cream.

And, damn it, he was right. I did like it.

I dropped the spoon back into my bowl in disgust, fighting the urge to take another bite. I eyed him suspiciously. "What flavor did you get?"

"Moose Tracks."

"Have you ever had Strawberry Cheesecake before?"

"No," he said, frowning at me in disbelief, like that was stupidest question he'd ever heard. "I wouldn't like it. I just knew you would." I half expected him to add an emphatic "Duh" on the end.

I glared at the mound of ice cream that was still gradually melting away into a puddle of itself. Damn him. Damn him, damn him, damn him. Why did he always have to be right?

When I didn't reply, he grinned at me in triumph. "You did like it, didn't you?"

I glowered at him momentarily before taking another bite of the delicious ice cream. That was answer enough.

"Ha! Told you." He was positively beaming, and the sheer joy of his smile was unpolluted by the smug look on his face. "I knew you would like it."

"How?" I demanded.

He shrugged, his huge grin shrinking into a small, comfortable smile. "I just knew."

"Yeah, but how?"

"I know you."

I looked up at him then, startled and maybe just a little panicked, but Pete just smiled back at me calmly, like all was as it should be. And I was sitting in a warm room in my favorite city in the world, eating the best ice cream I never would have tried on my own, and what was so wrong with being known, anyway? So I took his word for it.

"Whatever," I muttered, fighting back the smile that was always inevitable at some point when I talked to him like this. "Just get that shit-eating grin off your face already."

He laughed. "You're the one eating cat puke."

-----

It didn't take me long to finish off what was left of my surprisingly delicious ice cream. Pete held the door open for me again on the way out, and then the two of us stepped out onto the crowded sidewalk together. It was still bitterly cold outside, but I was so distracted with my thoughts that I could almost ignore it. Almost.

I rubbed my own arms vigorously as we headed back towards the hotel, partly to busy myself and partly to ward off hypothermia. When I glanced over at Pete, his head was down, his face unreadable. I bit my lip hesitantly.

"Can I...can I ask you something?"

To my surprise, he laughed. "Well, I thought that was sort of the point of this whole interview thing..."

"But we're not doing an interview right now," I said.

"Really?" He sobered up abruptly, turning away from me to stare blankly ahead of us as he kept walking forward with purpose. "I thought this was just one big week-long interview."

I looked away, too, as I considered that. "No," I said, frowning, "not necessarily. This isn't an interview." When he didn't answer, I added uncertainly, "...Right?"

He shrugged. "You would know. It's your profession, not mine."

But of course that was lie. It was just as much his job to answer my questions as it was my job to ask them.

He knew it, too. I knew he knew because he stopped dead in his tracks as soon as the words left his mouth. I stopped walking when he did, and he turned to face me, the intensity of his gaze unfaltering even as people pushed and shoved past him on all sides.

"Look," he said apologetically through half-clenched teeth (and somehow the contradiction seemed fitting), "I've just learned that when it comes to the press, anything is fair game. And honestly, you writing an article about my career based on our trip to the ice cream shop is still better than you writing an article based on what you think your readers would like to hear."

For a moment I could only gape at him in wonder and horror. Wonder because he just seemed so resigned and accepting of the one aspect of our culture that usually pisses people off the most, and rightfully so. Wonder because he was sorry and angry and unsure all at once, just because of what I was, what he was. Wonder because he already knew the truth about everything--absolutely everything--that I had wanted to protect him from all along.

Horror because I couldn't protect him from that truth.

"No," I whispered, shaking my head and staring at him, oblivious to the people cursing at us for blocking the sidewalk, seeing only the tired sadness in his eyes. "No. I would never..." I swallowed hard and looked away long enough to collect the nerve, and then I met his gaze again as I said it: "I would never do that."

Pete seemed to tense up and deflate all at once. He shifted where he stood, his dark eyes darting back and forth across my face nervously. Uncertainly. Because as much as he seemed to like me, I was still a reporter, a journalist, a minion of the online-blog-worshipping public. I was one of them.

And suddenly I was desperate to convince him that I was not the one to fear. That I hated those people as much as he did, that I wanted so badly just to whisk him away from all of that. That I wanted to keep him safe from the ugly world we both made our livings in, though I knew it was impossible.

"This--" I gestured clumsily to the two of us. "This is not going in the article. This is just you and me. Me and you. That's it."

He stared at me blankly. "That's it?"

"That's it."

And then Pete smiled at me, and my insides fluttered just a little. "Thank you."

-----

After that, we walked in silence for a long time. As we finally stepped into the hotel lobby and began to shed our many layers of coats and jackets and hats and scarves, Pete spoke first.

"You never did ask me that question."

I looked up and he was standing there smirking at me through a lock of hair that had fallen in his eyes.

"Well," I sighed, "I was just going to ask why you were being so nice to me. But I guess if you thought all that was going in the article--"

At that, all the playfulness left his face; he was suddenly horrified. "No, no!" he insisted. "That wasn't it. I would never..." He laughed dryly--because this conversation was so closely mirroring the one we had just had, or for some other random reason, I couldn't be sure. "Lets put it this way: I'm not a suck-up. Well, I am, but only to people who matter. Not that you don't matter," he added hurriedly, "it's just...well. I'm usually an asshole in interviews, okay?"

"Why?"

"Why?" He blinked at me. Twice. "Well, because...I mean, I'm usually an asshole in general."

Somehow this conversation just kept going around and around in circles. My head was spinning, but I was determined to drag the answer out of him eventually. "So why are you being nice to me, then?"

He fidgeted with his collar, avoiding my eyes, as he said, "Because...I...like you. I guess."

"Really?"I squinted at him, as if I could actually see the truth if only my vision were sharp enough.

"Well...yeah."

"Hm." I studied his face carefully, but there was only complete earnesty there. "Why?"

"Why?" he repeated incredulously, almost laughing. "What, why do I like you? Did you seriously just ask me that?"

"Yeah. Why?" I folded my arms across my chest in a challenge.

But he just stood there gaping at me, his expression caught somewhere between amused and appalled.

"Are you going to answer the question?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because." He chuckled once, humorlessly. "It's absurd."

"What's so absurd about it?"

Pete shook his head at me. "You shouldn't have to ask me why I like you."

"But I did, so answer me," I insisted.

He sighed, squeezing his eyes shut and massaging his temples. He was quiet for so long that I was sure he wasn't going to answer. But, finally, he did.

"I don't know why, exactly," he whispered, so faintly that the words seemed to dissolve into the air around us as soon as they were said.

I said nothing for a while, and eventually he dropped his hand from his face and looked up at me. There was a softness about his face that made me feel sad and happy and lost and at home all at once, and in that moment, the lines in his face seemed more pronounced than I remembered, his smile more effortlessly beautiful. He looked exhausted, in every sense of the word, but something deep inside of him kept on glowing regardless. And still, I kept on hearing his words on repeat in my mind, so small and heartbreaking and lovely: I don't know why...exactly....

"Well?" he prompted.

I shrugged. "Good answer."