They were watching her favorite movie for what must have been the thirteenth time, though he couldn't say he understand why he was even over there. She was the sort of girl that annoyed him more often than not. She had a tendency to be distracted by shiny things or other men, and she laughed with such abandon that it set him on edge. She was like so many other girls that he turned his nose up at, but there she was with her arm wrapped through his, watching the screen with an intensity he couldn't seem to pull out of her during normal conversation, singing along under her breath.
"It's nothing/They turned off my heat/And I'm just a little/Weak on my feet/Would you light my candle?/What are you staring at?"
Her voice was sweet, sweeter than Rosario Dawson's, even with her quiet accent, a mixture of British and Japanese. But the moment was a bit too domestic for him, so he spoke over Adam Pascal's rocker rasp. "He's staring at her chest."
"Well, in a minute he's going to be staring at her ass," she countered with a wry grin. "And I can't say I blame him. Now be quiet, you're ruining the song."
Of course, he didn't listen to her. "Tell me again why we're watching this... again?"
She reached over and batted him on the chest. "Because it's a wonderfully moving film. I need a good cry, and RENT always delivers. So does Dead Poet's Society, but thankfully I'm not quite that depressed."
"You're also watching it because you have a thing for Adam Pascal," he said dryly.
"Oh, like you're not looking at Rosario Dawson's ass too," she responded, rolling her eyes cutely. He hated that it was cute because it was a gesture that annoyed him, but she made a lot of irritating things cute. "Now what did I say about talking?"
The left corner of his mouth twitched as if to smile. "That you enjoy my witty commentary?"
She shoved a handful of her popcorn in his mouth, silencing him for the moment.
"It's out again," she sang with Rosario—Mimi, for the moment. "Sorry about your friend./Would you light my candle?"
"She doesn't sound sorry," he forced out through a mouthful of kernels. "She sounds like she wants to get him in bed."
She scoffed at his side, laying her head on his shoulder. "You make it sound dirty."
"It is dirty," he reminded her. "It's a dirty, messy, sweaty business. I'll never understand the appeal."
She laughed, blowing her blonde bangs out of her eyes. "You sound like an embittered virgin.”
“And you sound like a restless hooker,” he observed, earning him a harder slap, but no less playful. “Oh, you are testy. When’s the last time you got any?”
“You’re vulgar,” she said with a giggle.
“Don’t act like you don’t like it,” he warned. “And don’t act like you aren’t too.”
She shook her head. “Oh, no. I’m a good girl.”
“Only when you wear the nun costume,” he chuckled. “Kinky.”
She grabbed his hand and started playing with it, holding their arms out in front of them and experimenting with the fingers. He noticed that her red nail polish is chipped. She sighed and said, “Three days ago.”
“Huh?”
“Last time I got any,” she clarified, her voice softening.
He recognized her tone. She’d been disappointed again, so she’d called him. He should have realized. That was usually why she called him. “Is that why you need the cry?”
She nodded, adjusting and melding her body more perfectly to his. She inhaled, as if to breathe in his scent, but it’s really just to make her sigh that much more dramatic. “I sure know how to pick them.”
“Bad men are something of a habit with you,” he mused, but he didn't get hit. In fact, she was too quiet, even as Mimi gets to her favorite part.
“We could light the candle/Oh, won’t you light my candle?”
He heard her whimper quietly. He pulled his arm free of her grasp to wrap it around her shoulders, a gesture she always seemed to appreciate. “Hey, don’t get like that. We’re not even at the sad part. Angel isn’t dead yet.”
She sounded like she couldn’t decide whether she should laugh or sob harder. “It’s just… They’re so--"
“And they fuck it up,” he insisted, tilting her chin up so he can look at her. She looked tired. Very, very tired of looking and failing and being alone. “He runs away and she kills herself.”
“April killed herself,” she corrected, still crying. “Mimi lives.”
“Yeah, for about a week,” he said harshly. “And may I just reiterate what a shitty, cheap ending that is? The only people allowed to recover from death are you guys and Buffy.”
She sobbed again, and he knew that she was crying harder. So he held her tighter, but he didn’t quite know what else to do. Not even when she buried her head into his chest and crawled into his lap. “That’s not the point!” she yelled at him, digging her chipped nails into his shoulders. “The point is that they have hope!”
He opened his mouth to point how obvious she’s made it for herself, but she stilled for a second, receiving the message without his sarcasm. Still, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kept crying, because he was the guy she called when she couldn’t take it anymore. She was the guy he called when she got dumped, when she got hurt, when she needed a ride to the free clinic, and that one time when she’d needed a ride to a different clinic all together. He was the guy who watched RENT with her even though he hated it, the one who held her when she cried even though he hated physical contact as a rule, and the only girl he’d ever really thought of kissing in his entire life.
But he knew that she was never going to feel that way about him because he wasn’t kissing material. Maybe he would have been, once, but he’d been too cold because he’d thought she was the sort of girl he hated. If he’d known she was the sort of girl he could love, he probably wouldn’t have been such an asshole.
It was too late now. He was just her friend, and he would have to be content with holding her when she cried, telling her that everything was going to be all right but never telling her anything more important than that.
She would never believe that he could care anyway.
