a boy, his cello and his internal monologues.

Chapter 8: Friction

(hey hi before we start... sorry in advance)

When other people handle things for you, it feels like you need to repay them. Right?
Right?

It's Thursday when Rustica goes back to school. He pretends everything is normal, ignoring the fact he has officially ruined relationships with Finch and now Leo. He expects everything to be normal to at least some extent, he goes through his first class as he usually does, genuinely working on his week and two days worth of homework the entire class. He tries to pay attention to as much vocab as he can since it's French class and he's never been good at knowing more than 2 languages at once.

What he doesn't expect is around halfway through his second class, to be called down to the office AND to be dragged out of class by Sennen Marchioca telling him he took "too long".
Sennen grabs him by the shoulder, rerouting from his original plan to grab his forearm, and he gently yet aggressively drags him down the hall. He somehow has been given a room in the office for a reason Rustica isn't quite sure about. After being pulled into the room and sat down at a chair on one end of a long table, Sennen leaves again, and he realizes Leo is there.

Rustica bites his lip, looking down and avoiding Leo's gaze at all costs, yet Leo seems determined to burn holes into his head by staring. He doesn't say anything, just stares, occasionally tapping his foot.
Rustica takes this moment to actually pull out the work he was doing in Math and actually work on it. It's confusing, math has never been a subject he understood, it all just looks like lines on paper that never add or make sense. He works through some of the stuff slowly, until he's interrupted by the sound of footsteps approaching the door and shuffling. He looks away for a moment and hears the door click, and then someone is pretty much thrown at the table, and it's not Sennen.

It's Finch.

Rustica can see them tense up, but Sennen seems to shoo them to the seat on the other side of the table. Sennen walks behind him, his steps are calm, and he nearly floats while walking. Rustica understands why Leo likes him so much.

It's tense for another moment before Sennen clears his throat, making Finch jump slightly, but Rustica doesn't budge, he just continues working. "So. What happened." he taps his foot twice, and then stops. Neither Finch nor Rustica seem to want to respond, and the room becomes pin-drop silent. Leo lets out a huff of air from his nose, and Sennen cracks his knuckles. It feels like maybe someone is going to get punched, but Sennen doesn't hurt people for no reason.

The knuckle cracking seems to make Finch speak up though. "I-" their voice cracks for a moment "I um... I said something, and.. uhm." they seem to lose the words easily, and Rustica feels Leo's eyes burning into him again, making his shoulders tense. "Care to add on, Rustica?" Leo's voice is almost mocking him, it feels more angry and higher pitched. He feels like he's about to get bludgeoned to death by words alone.

After Rustica doesn't respond to him however, Leo grits his teeth. "I'm going to punch him, Sennen. Then he'll talk." he sees Sennen shoot him a glare. "Do not, Leo." Leo sneers back "I'm going to." and Sennen fully turns to him. "I'm going to hit you first." that seems to shut Leo up. He turns back around, meeting Rustica's gaze before the younger boy tears his eyes away. He's pretending to be focused on his math work, and he can feel his eyes stinging.

Leo groans, murmuring something to Sennen before walking behind Rustica and firmly punching the back of his head nearly so hard he almost slams his face into the table. Leo walks up to his left side, aggressively grabbing his shoulder and whispering "If you don't spit it out, there will be consequences. Got it?" before walking back towards where he was.

Rustica feels the pressure against his eyes build up further and his breathing goes shallow before he chokes out a sob. He can hear Leo click his tongue and then he shoves his face in his hands, his hair falling over his face further, and he cries. He's crying in front of Finch.

He tries to stop himself from crying, but it just makes him cry more. He can hear Leo and Sennen arguing, before Sennen walks over to Rustica and hugs him loosely. Rustica can feel the gauze on his arms getting wet, and it messes with his issues with sensory, so he aggressively unwraps it with blurry eyes. He doesn't care that Sennen tries to stop him, he eventually gets it off of his left arm and he gives up because his sobbing just increases. Leo walks over to Finch, probably talking shit about him and telling them that he's a shitty person to be friends with because he acts like this. It's almost like Leo's gone back in time.

Rustica gets to a point where every sob is a broken up breath, and he shoves Sennen away. Rustica brings his knees up to his chest, burying his head in them and trying to catch his breath as much as possible. He closes his eyes, ignoring the world, hoping that everything that he's ever done won't come to stab him in the back yet, at least not right now.

He doesn't want to be crying in front of the person he pushed into a wall because he didn't show up to lunch in the stairwell one day. This is stupid, he's stupid.

It gets to the point where he's so done with being in the room with his brother and with Finch that he grabs his notes angrily and shoves them into his bag, zipping it up and leaving.

Leo squawks something out and Sennen follows him down the hall. "Rustica listen, I know it was a shitty thing of Leo to do, just.." Rustica lets out a breath. "Please, leave me alone." and Sennen does, he nods, and shakily waves as Rustica walks past his math class into the stairwell, he doesn't think Sennen cares very much.

In the end, he's going to be the unfixable one.