Being Me

Chapter Ten

(tw: accidental Self harm)

Half a minute is waisted by Dante delaying picking up the phone, as soon as he does I speak hurriedly into the receiver, "I'm at the station now, I don't have any money left so I won't be able to call you back, please call me a taxi now!" I blurt rapidly.

"alright, alright, Séan. Ok, I'll do that, I'll tell him to meet you up at the entrance alright? So go up there." Dante replies calmly.

"Okay."I reply before hanging up the phone and walking out to the entrance.

It's raining,lucky me.
I stand under the overhang of the roof, eying the road for a taxi, of course it's a train station so they're not exactly rare, but when a blue one drives up, dismissing the people who wave money at it, I walk over, bending down at the open window, "Is this a Taxi for Séan Walsh?" I ask, almost shouting over the storming rain.

"Are you him?" The driver shouts back, I nod, "Get in then! "He shouts, which I hurriedly do, clambering into the back of the car, doing my best not to absolutely soak the seats with my drenched clothing.
"It's awful out there." The driver comments, no longer having to shout as he rolls up his window and pulls away from the pavement. I can now hear a strong Dublin accent that I hadn't been able to distinguish before.

"Yeah, wasn't raining at all where I got on the train." I reply, pulling my seatbelt on.

Twenty minutes later, the taxi pulls to a stop and I start to get out, "Oi!"
I glance up at the driver's shout, he's watching me through the rearview mirror, "You need to pay first." He explains in a warning tone.

"My brother has the money, he's just inside." I say, pointing at the big house we're parked outside.

"I'll come with you then." The driver decides, following me out of the car and up to the house where I ring the doorbell.

We don't have to wait long before the door is swung open to reveal Dante, "Séan!" He exclaims, pulling me into a hug then glancing at the taxi driver who's stood behind me, "Oh yes, you need to be payed." He brandishes two tens and a five euro note at the driver who snatches it, muttering his thanks before pegging it back to his car.

"Come on Séan." Dante says, pulling me inside allowing the door to swing shut behind us.

I'm lead up the short hallway and into the comfortably furnished living room, Dante eyes me for a second before gesturing for me to sit on a wooden stool off the carpet with a sorry expression.
I smile lightly at him and carefully sit down on its hard surface, swinging my bag off my shoulder and onto my lap.
"Just the day for a nice stroll aye?" Dante jokes light-heartedly, taking his perch on the arm of the particularly plush sofa, facing me.

"Bloody colder than a witches bloody tit out there." I grumble.

Dante laughs at that, a loud belt that relives the slight tension that had been hanging in the room.
Once he's stopped he turns a serious face on me, "What sort of argument did you have?" He says in a concerned tone, "because obviously it's serious enough for you to leave the house in such a hurry, that you don't even tell mum or dad."

I sigh and hunch my shoulders in further defeat,"it's more like one long argument, if you can call it that, it's been going on for days." I paused for several seconds, realization setting in, "how do you know I didn't tell mum or dad?" I stare at Dante.

"Mum called me," he explains, before adding,"She was really worried."

I grunt, dismissing the last sentence, "Did she tell you?" I ask, fixing my gaze with his,despite the anxiety that's currently coursing through my veins.
Dante's face turns into a frown.

"Tell me what?" He asks, absolutely miffed.

I shift in my seat, I want to tell him, but the words freeze in my brain, like a tv screen, I hit it, I want it to unfreeze, I want to tell him, why can't I just tell him?
I hit harder, trying to send the words back into motion, trying to unfreeze the tv.

My hand is grabbed. I can't hit the tv anymore. It's still frozen.

A low murmur comes from nearby, I blink and everything slowly comes into focus, Dante, Dante crouched before, staring at me with further concern as he holds my hands, the hands I'd been using to hit my head, my head, not the tv.

I don't know what it is that makes me break, maybe the cold of my damp clothes had finally got to me, maybe it was the stress that had been pressing down on me for years, maybe the anxiety that had been filling every waking moment for even longer. What ever it is,it causes my to collapse into a shaking pile of tears and sobs, a wreck.

I can tell Dante doesn't know what to do, I can tell by the way I'm allowed to fall off the Stoll, by the way I feel so alone on the hard wooden floor, like I'm world's away from Dante, not just a couple inches.

It's several minutes until I feel warm arms wrap around me, pulling me up from my sprawled position, into a sitting one. I feel myself being held gently against Dante's chest, listening to his slightly irregular heartbeat as he cautiously rubs my back in small circles.
It feels strange,not a bad strange though,not really,more of a relaxing strange,a strange that makes me feel safer,calmer.
Dante and I were never particularly close, none of us were, maybe it was the age gaps, but we never spent much time together and we definitely never needed to reassure and calm down another in the middle of a breakdown.

I wish we did though...
It's nice.

(A/n: bloody hell, it took like, forever to finish this chapter, would've finished this chapter sooner and probs also the next few but yk, mah phone had other plans.
Anyway, trying to build MC's and Dante's relationship so....this is the result ig ╥⁠﹏⁠╥ ✧⁠*｡✧*｡)
[27/10/22]