What You Did in the Dark

I long for that feeling to not feel at all.

On Friday, Oliver got into a fight in the hallway. He didn’t even know what he did wrong, and he longed desperately to know what he did to deserve this. He never got an answer. Just a busted lip and a shiner.

There he was. Walking down the side of the hallway with a book in hand, backpack slung over his shoulders carelessly and his tall frame hunched over in boredom.

"Hey, Oliver! Tell me what you’re readin’!" A guy called.

Oliver chose to ignore him. He did sort of recognize the voice, one that said something hurtful to him long ago. He tried to keep walking, but was stopped.

"Don’t ignore me," the guy said. "I want to know what you’re reading."

He snatched the book out of Oliver’s hands, reading the cover and snarling. “Emo boy here likes sad books,” he quipped.

A few girls, and even guys, laughed at the bully, encouraging him to torment poor Oliver a little more.

Oliver’s eyes widened when the guy started to rip pages out of the book. “Stop!” He exclaimed. He tried desperately to rescue his book from any further damage. That book was a gift from Tom for Christmas the year prior, and it was one of his favourites.

The guy did stop, though, only to turn to Oliver with a face red with rage and nostrils flaring. He took a swing at Oliver, and then another—tearing his lip open and putting a purpling bruise on his right eye.

Had not an assisstant principal came into the scene, Oliver assumed he would have done more. One girl was nice enough to recite what she had saw truthfully and saved Oliver from any trouble. The bully, though, recieved two weeks of out-of-school suspension and had to buy Oliver a new book. But Oliver didn’t want a new book, he didn’t even want a new copy of the one Tom had given him if it had come from that filth that gave him his injuries. No, he wanted the one Tom gave him himself—it had sentimental value.

Oliver hopelessly gathered the torn pages off of the floor and pressed them into the book, carefully placing it in his back pack before walking off to the Nurse’s. The nurse greeted him; unfortunately, Oliver had been in the clinic several times before and was a regular. She cleaned his lip and told him to hold ice to his eye, giving him a bag with three icecubes in it and wrapping it in papertowel before sending him on his way to his locker.

Everyone was already at their lockers already, shooting Oliver tiny glances and confused faces. The hallways were starting to even clear up. It was dismissal, and no one wanted to hang around school after it had let out.

"Did he get beat up again?"

Oliver winced at those words and flung his locker door open, grabbing what he needed before slamming the door shut.

His mother was already waiting in the car when he walked out to the front. She did the motherly thing, asking what happened, who did it, did they get in trouble, et cetera. After apologizing deeply for what happened to her son, Mrs. Sykes drove him to counseling.

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Meanwhile, Aleria was bored waiting for her friends to come home again. Since Oliver attended the same counseling services she did, Tom would be the one home today, and she was excited to spend some time with him.

So when she knocked on the Sykes household door, she greeted Tom with a full grin.

“‘Ello, Ali,” he greeted. “I think I’m gonna start calling you that from now on. One ‘L’ with an ‘I’—just like ‘Oli’. Oli and Ali.”

Aleria grinned. She had never received a nickname from a friend before, so she felt honoured to have one—especially one that resembled another one of her friends’ so closely. She accepted the hug Tom had for her and retreated to Oliver’s room with him, sitting on the double bed and petting Oskar when he curled up to her.

"Can’t wait for tomorrow," Tom said excitedly, "we might meet some of my mates around the neighbourhood. But anyway, there’s a lot of old people that live around this place that’ll give candy to anyone—we can hit those houses once or twice."

Aleria chuckled at his excitement. To her, it sounded like him and Oliver did this a lot.

"I think Oli’s pretty stoked for this too. He never gets to hang out with birds quite often," he paused, "I think he fancies you."

Aleria hadn’t a clue what Tom was saying. In her world, ‘birds’ were animals or pets and ‘fancy’ meant nice and expensive. “What?” She uttered.

Tom chuckled. “Sheffield slang, sorry. Slips sometimes. We sometimes call girls ‘birds’—dunno why we do, it’s just Sheffield. And by saying that someone ‘fancies’ you, we really mean that they like you.”

Aleria nodded, now understanding his terminology in his previous context before her eyes widened in realization that he just suggested that Oliver liked her. “What? No!” she exclaimed, refusing to believe such a silly theory.

"What? It could happen. He thinks you’re beautiful."

She blushed. Did Oliver really think that? Part of her was hoping so, while part of her was a bit afraid. When two people liked each other, they formed a relationship. As far as the whole world knew, Aleria didn’t even know what a boy was.

She would’ve said something more, but at that moment, Oliver walked into his room with a bleeding lip and bruised eye. “Uh oh,” she groaned. “What happened?”

Oliver slung his bag to the floor and greeted her with a hug. “School is rough.”

Tom seemed beyond furious. “Great. What happened now? Who was it, Oli?” He seethed.

"I don’t know his name. But this," he took out the book that Tom had given him, "needs repair. Can you guys help me?"
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two updates for my favourite readers. comments pleeaassee? you're going to love chapter ten. :-)

if you haven't read my Oliver one-shot Pain, i would love for you to check it out and give me feedback!

Can You Feel My Heart by Bring Me The Horizon