Us Against The World

"Change the channel, will you?"

"Change it yourself."

"You have the remote."

"Hence why we're watching what I want."

Cyrus pouted from his place on the opposite sofa, vaguely reminding me of a child who hadn't gotten his own way. Actually, that was exactly what he was. "It's absolute clichéd teenage crap." For me, to hear him say such a word close to a curse was an absolute novelty. The nearest he had gotten so far was a muttered, undertone use of 'bloody irritating' whilst scratching one of his many blooming pox spots.

"Pretty Little Liars is not crap! It's the best show on at the moment, seeing as House's next season isn't airing for a few more months."

"Blah, blah, blah." He mimicked, even bothering to act out the two arguing sock-puppets with his hands. "Someone's died, someone else is going to die and they're all getting texts from some letter of the alphabet. Why don't they just take their phones to the police? Any number can be tracked from that."

"You're not meant to think that deeply into it." I told him, slightly irked that he had talked over a possibly vital piece of information.

"That's precisely what I hate about these types of shows - they're not realistic."

"And I suppose that Star Wars is?"

"At least Star Wars doesn't have four wannabes who prance around in an entire different outfit every five minutes."

"Yeah, they just wear the same smelly cloaks again and again and run around waving lightsticks of death."

"They're not lightsticks, they're -"

"Shut up!" I broke over him. "Ezra and Aria are about to-"

"Don't tell me to shut up!"

"I'll tell you to shut up if I think you need to shut up!" Four very long days into our illnesses, he was already driving me up the fucking walls with his annoying ability to turn anybody insane. Somehow, he was the real life case of Benjamin Button and was ageing backwards. Mentally, that was. Already, he had the maturity of a six year old. Long gone was the sophisticated language and in its place was left an irritable fully-grown man whose favourite phrases were 'I hate you' and 'Leave me alone'.

"I think that you should shut up! You're the one that's been making all the noise and now I don't even know what's happening. What's up between them, anyway? All the sneaking about?"

Deciding that the best course of action to actually make him be quiet was to lob a sofa cushion at his head from across the room, that was what I did before answering his question. "He was her English teacher when they got together."

With a miserable scowl, he pulled the pillow back from his face and looking at it considerably, as if he wished to throw it back. I swore that if he so much dared to, his testicles would never be the same. Or his nice-but-not-so-nice ass. Luckily for both of those body parts, he decided against it, chucked it onto the floor and then replied to me with a frown. "That's just weird."

"Well, actually, they made out in a bar bathroom before they knew he was her teacher."

"I'm glad to know that their relationship is charming as well as weird."

"I suppose that your view upon relationships is that they must be arranged by parents and love isn't a factor."

With a snort of sarcastic laughter, he kicked back his blanket from around his legs and stretched fully-out across his sofa. "If my parents had ever told me who I was supposed to marry, I would have told them to go and screw themselves."

'Screw themselves? Ding, ding, ding! Cyrus just made a new swearing personal best.

"Aw, you believe in love. How cute." I wasn't entirely sure if I was teasing jokingly or harshly. To be honest, I wasn't sure which one I wanted it to be, either. Being ill does that to you.

However, all my thoughts upon that matter were in vain, for he could only give me a surprised look. "Love? I'm not sure whether such a thing exists."

If moving my head hadn't caused an avalanche of pain, I would have raised it to look at him more directly. From my position of lying out in my own chair, I could see him staring up intently at the ceiling. "Really?"

"Of course. I'm a man who likes proof, and so far, I've not seen any of that."

There were a few moments of silence before I could think up anything to respond to that with. "You're what... Twenty six?" A shake of his head. "Twenty-five? Twenty-four?" A nod on the last one. "Right, twenty-four and you're saying that you've never loved anyone?"

"Love, if it does exist, is something which should be reciprocated. Otherwise it's just a longing lust - like a crush on a celebrity; entirely pointless. I'm simply stating that I've never been loved in return."

"Not by anyone?"

"Not as far as I know." His reply was nonchalant; factual, as if emotion wasn't a factor in it at all.

"What about your parents?"

He chose to ignore my question, as his frequent habit was. "Did your parents ever tell you that they loved you?"

Ouch – that was painful. Well, actually, it would have been if I gave two sods about them. "How harsh; you know that I never knew my parents."

"Harsh, yet true." He turned his head to look at me across the room, his eyes a somewhat darker colour than I recalled them being. "I was taken into care at the age of nine. Before that time, I cannot recall either of my parents ever telling me that I was loved."

"You were in care?" I couldn't help but blurt out.

"Yes, until I left for university and became emancipated. So don't ever tell me that I don't know what it's like to be a child without a family, because I do – better than most."

"At least you knew your parents."

"And I very much wish that I didn't."

His bitter tone couldn't even keep back my curiosity that he was one of us – the kiddies of the state. "So did they die?"

"And I thought that I was being blunt."

"You never get anywhere if you don't ask or demand."

"True." His jaw set, a frown setting on his brow as he deliberated whether to answer me or not. Never one to break a gaze, he eventually obliged. "Yes, they're deceased."

"Cool. How?"

A faint smile appeared on his mouth, most likely from my sadistic comment. Swinging his legs down off the sofa edge, he stood up, stretched and made his way over to the door. "I don't wish to talk about it."

What a miserable git. He was practically the only human interaction that I'd had for a week, and he had the nerve to randomly walk out of the room and not come back for long intervals. If I had had a bucket and several gallons of custard, plus some energy, I would have happily rigged the door for his return.

Five somewhat boring and argument-less minutes later I was somewhat surprised to hear my phone begin to ring from the side-table behind me. It was the first time that it had made a sound since I'd first gotten the crappy pox – what great friends I had. Upon reading the caller ID of 'Ceri' I was sorely tempted to reject it… But I was very lonely and socially deprived, only having had Dr-Quincey-Poncy-Annoying-Git to talk to, who had really nothing interesting to say other than snippets about his past, none of which he cared to elaborate upon.

So, I answered it, but not without a miffed attitude. "Hello, bitch. It's nice for you to finally call."

"You're lucky that I called at all. I'm only doing it now because I'm bored and Em was worried that you'd died or got taken by snatchers or something."

"I'm glad to know that you care."

"Yeah, yeah. Now that I know you're alive, I'll be going now – "

"You are not going to hang up on me! I've been stuck here for days with the bloody chickenpox, and I want to talk!"

She started to laugh, her voice sounding tinny over the phone line. "You have chickenpox? That's hilarious!"

"No, Ceri, it is not! They're everywhere! I even have them in my crotch."

There was more laughter, coming to a sudden stop as I realised my phone was no longer in my hand, and a deep, gravelly voice spoke from behind. "Miss Manson, whilst it is lovely to hear from you, I must insist on cutting your social call short, for I believe it time that you were in class." Twisting round, I faced the sight of Cyrus standing there, looking down at his watch. "Actually, as it two-thirty, I do believe that it is my class that you should be attending. Ciao for now." Hanging up, he held the handset out to me, an expression of nonchalance upon his face.

Now, normally, I would have let rip on him, about how could he have been so inconsiderate and impersonal etc. etc. But it was not a normal situation, for his t-shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, exposing his forearms for the first time to me. Again, in any other case, this wouldn't have been a great deal, but I was then still learning that Cyrus was never normal. Extending down from his sleeves to over most of his lower arms ran pink, shiny, almost raw-looking scars, twisting around much like that one just visible on his neck, only slightly less knurled and severe-looking. Almost immediately, he seemed to know what I was staring at, hurriedly pushing his sleeves back down.

However, after no receiving answers from him for long, I was more certainly not going to step down again. "What happened to your arms?"

The customary frown appeared momentarily on his brow, as was customary whenever I asked him a question, but was quickly replaced by a mischievous smirk. "Do you really, really want to know?"

"Yes! Would I have asked if I didn't?"

"Well," Sitting back down upon his seat, he began to speak, wearing a peculiar and rare playful expression. "back in the day, when I was still a Shallax warrior, I was sent by the great king Alstrando on a mission to rescue his long-lost daughter from a tower where an evil witch was keeping her hostage-"

"This is sounding an awful lot like Shrek-"

"Be quiet, I'm telling the story. Anyway, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, the princess was guarded by a barbaric dragon - the most viscous in all of the land. I wasn't very well acquainted with dragons, there aren't very many in existence, you know. So, rather sadly, I'll admit defeat and say that the dragon swallowed me. However, a dragon is big, and on the way down to its stomach, I had a short time to think. Stretching my hands out in front of me, when I reached its stomach, my hands planted into the bottom, stopping most of me from entering. My arms were burnt from the acid and in the end, the dragon went so berserk from me being stuck, it hurt itself and I was able to cut my way out from inside it with my sword. I rescued the princess, was given wealth from the king as a reward and retired as a warrior, settling down and becoming a maths teacher. The end."

There was a moment were I just observed his smirk. "So, if that were true, surely your hands would have been burnt as well?"

"Um... They weren't really touched by the acid - they sunk into the semi-undigested food at the bottom."

"That's disgusting."

"It was."

"You know, if you were going to make up a story, you could have at least made up a realistic one."

"Yeah, I realised that after I had begun."

"So what actually happened?"

He heavily sighed, pushing his glasses up on top of his head and rubbing the marks on the bridge of his nose. "Evangeline, if I asked you to please drop this subject and never bring it back up, you wouldn't comply, would you?"

"Of course not, we established this earlier - you will never get anywhere in life if you don't ask, demand and if you just take what you're given without an argument."

"Which is a good philosophy of life in most respects."

"It is in all respects. What's yours?"

"My philosophy?" He lay back once more, simply staring up at the plaster swirls on the ceiling, hands clasped upon his stomach. "That love, if it does happen to exist, is a cruel and heartless bitch."