Meraki // Poetry & Short Stories

Clutch Angst WIP

"Dammit Raina, that's not the point!" Axel said, hands fisting his hair in ragged desperation. Raina couldn't help but feel her heart begin to sink.

"What are you talking about?" She asked. The boy's eyes flickered up to meet hers with a stare so hardened and iced over by the stress of it all that Raina felt her knees begin to buckle and her heart to beat faster and faster.

"I can't be the gentleman you deserve, okay?" He was practically yelling now. "I'm not good at the whole talking thing, not even when we were still just friends and things were easier without having to confront these...~" his hands gestured all over the place, "~...these feelings!"

Raina's heart hurt. It felt hot, like it had swelled to twice its size and couldn't withstand the pressure rocking against her ribcage. Each pounding slam of her heart felt like a stab to the chest with each quiver of Axel's lips and each tremor of his body and that sickening way his fingernails dug into his skull when he couldn't help it. She was speechless as Axel opened his mouth again.

"I don't know what to do with them, Raina! These...these fucking emotions I'm getting are so weird and new and I don't know how to deal with them!" His voice came out strained now, each word getting him more and more teary-eyed and all choked up. "I want to make you happy...I really do, but you deserve so much more than what I can give you. I...I don't even know how to make myself smile, Raina. I can't...I...~"

Tears began streaming down his face as Raina finally felt her heart shatter into a million pieces.

"How am I supposed to love you?" he whispered, eyes ever shaded, unruly black hair sticking up all over the place in his grip and in his eyes. "What does that mean? I'm trying so hard, I promise. I don't want to keep neglecting you like this but that's the only thing I know how to do."

Raina shook her head.

"Stop talking," she whispered vainly, knowing in her heart and in her head he probably wasn't able to listen anyway. He was too far stuck in his own misery, and Raina was getting terrified of never being able to pull him back out this time.

"Every time I see you I feel really warm and really distant at the same time, like there's something missing in the link between us, and I hate myself so much for not knowing how to fix it and I hate myself for not being able to fucking get over myself enough to just be there for you."

The last statement got Raina all riled up.

"I don't know who the hell has been telling you these things, but in no speck of the imagination have you not been there for me, Axel Delattre," she said, trying as desperately as she could to avoid sounding angry. She couldn't help the fire erupting from her heart and from the very eyes she now realized with horror were beginning to twinge with a purple hue.

She looked down as Axel continued lamenting.

"I haven't cared enough, Raina. You're the only thing that matters to me anymore and I can't even step up long enough to keep you happy," he choked out.

"Well what about you?" Raina fired back. "I know you aren't happy. I see it every day and it breaks my damn heart that you're still suffering even after all this time. You want to know why you supposedly can't make me happy? It's because you don't take care of your own self, dammit!"

Now Raina was the one with tears decorating her permanently flushed cheeks.

"You can't make me happy while you're still sad. That's not how this relationship thing is supposed to work," she added. It only seemed to darken Axel's demeanor.

"I wouldn't know," he said lowly. "Relationships don't work out for me."

He seemed to re-think his words and tried again.

"I'm sorry. I always make everything about my self-induced problems and that's not fair to you." His voice took on a monotone, almost robotic sound that scared the living shit out of the blond before him. "You'd be so much better off without me, you know? You wouldn't have to try to fix some dead-end, pathetic moon god who should be able to deal with his own issues but can't. Dustin would probably still take you out. You perfect, perfect couple."

Raina didn't know what to say. She was scared — for him, for herself, for the words and ideas he was fabricating from all his small insecurities.

"Do you honestly think I would ditch you like that? Do I look like Moses to you?" She asked before realizing after seeing his entire expression crumble that she had stepped over a line she vowed never to cross.

"Don't say his name," he almost whimpered, tears welling faster at just the thoughts that sprung up from those two syllables. "Please."

She was quick to apologize endlessly and try to wrap a hug around Axel's shuddering chest. He flinched away, most likely due to the memory of the sicko he once held so dearly.

"I'm not like him" she whispered soothingly, opting to rest a hand on his ankle instead. "I'm right here, just where I've always been. I don't want what he wanted."

His eyes flicked up to meets hers one again, lightning bolts of depressive energy translating his pain from a thousand languages into heartsong. He took a deep breath and exhaled, the same or give she had shown him months previously and was selfishly giddy to see he still took use of.

"Axel," she whispered, cheeks flushing, eyes barely able to keep his pointed and miserable gaze. "Can I tell you something?"

He hesitated before nodding, seemingly conceding to her care if only for a short while. She felt relieved and hurriedly continued.

"When I first saw you, that day in the hall on my very second day of the Academy," she began, "and you walked past Reese and me with the most shut off atmosphere I've ever witnessed, I resolved to myself that I would discover why this sad boy I barely knew anything about had the darkest, most void of light eyes I'd ever seen."

She held his green gaze for as long as she could, thin-lipped smile flickering from sadness to mild contentment.

"It's been almost a year since, Axel. I feel like I've known you my whole life and its only been several months. Now I know why you hardly ever smile and why you push me away so fiercely."

She took hold of his hands to stop his trembling and looked him directly in the eyes.

"Now that I know, I have to push further on the subject. I can't leave you alone; I...~" she thought about it for a moment, then decided to go with her head.

"I love you too much, Axel."