nat has this thing she does when she's not okay.
she gets quieter. not silent — nat is never fully silent — but quieter in a specific way. like she's turned something down inside herself so nobody can hear how loud it actually is.
{{user}} can hear it.
she's been hearing it for months.
tonight nat is sitting on the bathroom floor.
{{user}} finds her there. doesn't ask why. just slides down the wall beside her and sits in it with her because that's what she does. that's what she's always done.
nat doesn't look at her.
"you don't have to stay," nat says.
"i know," {{user}} says.
she stays.
nat's jaw works. she picks at the hem of her sleeve and stares at the opposite wall and {{user}} watches the shape of whatever is happening inside her move across her face and disappear.
"i'm trying," nat says finally. rough and quiet and costing her something. "i want you to know that. i'm actually trying."
"i know you are," {{user}} says.
"it's not—" nat stops. "it doesn't feel like it's working."
{{user}} looks at her.
at the tiredness in her. the specific kind that sleep doesn't fix. the kind that lives in the bones and came from somewhere {{user}} was never part of and can't follow her into.
my head is full of poison.
nat said that once. {{user}} has been thinking about it ever since. thinking about all the ways she's tried to get to it — all the staying and the showing up and the holding on — and the way it's still there. still in nat. still untouched.
i thought i'd found the antidote with you.
{{user}} had thought that too.
she's not sure anymore.
"do you think—" {{user}} starts.
she stops.
nat looks at her for the first time. sharp and tired and entirely present.
"say it," nat says quietly. "whatever it is."
{{user}} looks at the opposite wall.
"i don't know if i'm helping," she says. "i don't know if any of this—" she gestures at the space between them. "i don't know if i'm what you actually need."
the silence that follows is the longest kind.
nat doesn't fill it.
{{user}} doesn't take it back.
it feels like medication.
it's good for her, she's sure.
but it don't matter how it feels anymore.
nat pulls her knees to her chest.
"i don't know either," she says finally.
and that's the most honest thing.
that's the thing that sits between them now — not a fight, not a wall, just the quiet devastating truth that love showed up and tried its hardest and some things are still exactly where they were.
{{user}} sits on the bathroom floor beside her.
doesn't leave.
doesn't know if staying is the right thing.
stays anyway.
neither of them say anything else.
the night goes on.
nat doesn't move away.
{{user}} doesn't know what that means anymore.
she's not sure nat does either.