вlood & peтalѕ [ ĸoтlc - тιana ]

ch. xlv

pretty sure y'all have guessed, but now is a Linh-and-Keefe moment to make y'all cry again.

Yes I am indeed evil. How did you ever find out~?

Jk, jk. I wuv you all.

[yes, I'm probably boring you with this way-too-long a/n. But here's a fun fact: my phone now autocorrects 'long' to 'linh'. Yee.]

Linh didn't want to talk, which was why she was perfectly content with staring hard at her fingers and doing her best not to cry in front of Keefe. She snuck a peek at him from under her eyelashes, and nearly jumped out of her skin when she saw that he was looking straight at her.

Keefe let out a massive sigh. "I wish I could say something other than 'I'm sorry'. Pretty sure you've heard it enough by now."

"Yeah." Why can't you just let me be sad all alone, boy?

Almost as if he had read her mind, the end of his mouth quirked up. "I can tell you don't want to talk about it, obviously, but...if you do, I'm going to be cliche and say that you can trust me. I mean, you and I have both had a pretty hard time with life in general."

Her head snapped up in astonishment. This was probably the first time Keefe had admitted that he had it bad. Sure, they all knew about it, but it was pretty much an unspoken rule to not mention it in front of him.

The blond boy's smile was too sad to even be called a smile. "Yep... that's literally the only thing we have in common. And the empathy is pretty helpful in these kind of situations."

Linh nodded, trying to process whatever he'd just said.

"You know what? I'm probably making a nuisance of myself," Keefe said suddenly. "I'm really awesome at being a complete idiot, and you're too nice to tell me that, but I'll shut up if you-"

"No." The answer was quiet, but she know he'd heard. "Listening to someone else doing the talking is...weirdly soothing."

"Awesome." Linh didn't need to look at Keefe to see that his smile had a bit more happiness in it now. "So how about I tell you a story?"

Wow...not too angsty at all. But sort of weird.

Hopefully y'all liked it.