b r e a k t h r o u g h

"Dealing with stuff," he mumbled, "head's full, I don't really want to be back home," he doesn't dare look up to meet her this time, "s'lonely".

Raib gives him an undestanding look, with just a little bit of sadness tinged in  those pretty dark eyes. She sighs and looks around once more before focusing back on Ali, "wait here," she says before she steps back from the window and rummages through her room.

Ali leans back into his seat in the ship, fiddling with his thumb and is now regretting the fact that he didn't bring his stress ball with him when he obviously needed it. The sound of rustling snaps him out from his descent back into his thoughts, turning back his head to the window he finds Raib perched on it ready to jump. Her hair was tied in a low ponytail that has stray hairs escaping it, dropping to frame her face and messing up the supposed tidiness, she was wearing an old sweatshirt over her pyjama top that seemed a bit too big for her. She looked tired and lazily put together, Ali can't help but stare.

"Well?" She quirked a brow at him, "let me in dude, I don't have all night".

And who was he to refuse her orders, as the door opened Raib jumped in and slid herself into her seat, propping up a leg on the seat to rest her arm on.

Ali just stared at her again for what feels like the tenth time tonight like an idiot, unsure on what to do. Raib catches him and maybe it's just in his head like most of everything else is right now but he felt like he saw a light brush of pink on her cheeks to her nose.

"What? You're lonely and you don't want to be in your house right now so I'm here to hangout with you somewhere until you tire yourself out and call it a night," she says as if it's a matter of fact and shrugged.

He blinked almost owlishly at her, "yeah," there's a weight lifted off of him as he breathed out, finally, " yeah, okay," he reaches for the steer and gets ILY to move again with a giddiness to it.

"Okay," she echoes back, "well, lead the way Sir Ali".

They take off somewhere into the night.

•••

They're on a hill not too far from town and the stars are out, Ali is alone with his bestfriend slash longtime crush and the stars are out. On another day or night he would hyper fixate on this fact more but tonight he has other things on his mind that makes this more like a minor thing to him. It feels calmer now, his thoughts and all the riot in him had died down enough for him to have one coherent enough thought. It calms him, just being there with her presence grounding him like that.

He unbuckled his seatbelt and hears Raib do the same, when he steps out into the night the chill of the wind catches him off guard but he welcomes the cold that bites at him because it made him feel a little bit more alive.

Raib moves next to him and plops down on the grass, which he takes as a signal to do the same. Neither of them start talking right away, they let the crickets and cicadas chirp and sing their song for a little bit more.

"You want to talk about it?" She's the one who breaks the silence first, though her eyes still stay on the certain pattern of stars that decorated the sky.

Ali grimaced at the thought of explaining himself like that, he trusts her, he really does, when you trust someone to not let you die in some kind of battlefield you're bound to trust them with almost everything else. He just doesn't want to talk about himself tonight, "not really," he settles instead.

She hummed and the wind carried the sound, "then talk about something else," she waved the hand that was popping up her chin, "distract yourself, I'm here to listen".