If You Miss It

18. darius

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

DARIUS

—

Tariq was nervous.

It was so obvious, right from the constant tapping of his feet against the floor of the car, the cracking of his knuckles despite the fact that he hated the sound, and the way his eyes were flitting from the blank screen of his phone to his watch every other second.

Maybe his nervousness wouldn't have been that obvious to anyone else. But it couldn't be more obvious to Dmitri.

His biggest tell, however, was the incessant groaning. Every five minutes, he would hunch over and let out a groan, saying something along the lines of, 'What if something is wrong?'.

"Everything will be fine," Dmitri murmured, his eyes focused on the road in front of him, the Friday afternoon sun beating down on him, causing him to squint slightly as he drove. "It's just a doctor's appointment. You've been to so many of those, this is just another one."

Exhaling deeply, Tariq rested his head against his seat, closing his eyes and muttering a weak, "What if my doctor tells me that something's wrong? Like, more than just deficiencies? What if she tells me that I have a fucking neurological disorder, or something? That would explain a lot of things, the shaking hands and shit. Or what if she says that I have—"

"I'm going to stop you before you go any further and spiral into a whole bout of overthinking," Dmitri interrupted, rolling his eyes at the annoyed glare that Tariq shot in his direction. He began to drum his fingers against the wheel, completely off beat to the song that was playing because he knew that it would piss Tariq off. "It's going to be fine."

Tariq shook his head, hands reaching up to toy with his necklace, painted fingernails contrasting the gold of the chain. "You don't know that, Dmitri," he stressed and rubbed his eyes, the nervousness sending his voice a pitch higher than it normally was.

If it was anyone else, Dmitri wouldn't have had a single clue on how to help them. Thankfully, this was Tariq, and he had seen Tariq panic before every single one of his appointments, no matter how trivial they were.

"I don't," he agreed, making his best effort to maintain a steady tone so as to not send Tariq into a state of further panic. "But I know that each and every one of appointments have been the same. In the two years that I accompanied you to your appointments, not one has been any different, apart from the occassional addition of a supplement. Okay? It'll be fine."

While his words weren't the most comforting, he knew that that was exactly what Tariq needed to hear. Just a reminder that every appointment before the one they were about to go to went smoothly. And that this one was no different.

"I'm fucking terrified," Tariq muttered, as if Dmitri didn't know that, couldn't see it by the way he was mumbling each word instead of saying it with his usual confidence.

It was still a little weird— spending time with Tariq. It had been exactly four days since they had 'made up', actually come clean with everything, and things were going so smoothly that it felt foreign, almost.

Nice, sure. There wasn't a single moment where spending time with Tariq and not fighting wasn't nice. But still, foreign.

The whole plan of Dmitri taking Tariq to his appointment was a completely spontaneous thing, though.

Tariq had been working upstairs, Dmitri had gone upstairs to talk to him, as he had been doing for the past four days, and had found him in a state of complete panic, because one, he had to go to his doctor's appointment, and two, he had to drive himself to the appointment and he hated driving more than anything.