Just a Game - Birdy

"What do you mean they fired you?" Sierra says, opening her umbrella and giving it to Luke. She takes Petunia's leash out of his hands instead.

"Most of the projects we've done weren't successful, and they just can't afford to have another crew member on the team." Luke replies as his body relaxes to the sound and smell of the rain. He looks over to Sierra, who, on the contrary, seems tense. "Darling, listen," his hand covers hers with the leash, and he leads all three of them under a tree. "I still have my savings, and if we calculated everything correctly, it'll be enough till the end of the summer. I'll find something, and you'll graduate soon, it's only a month left, you can get a part-time job or whatever you want, and you'll be alright." he reassures her, still holding her palms in his. "When we move in, your dad won't pay the rent of your current flat anymore and maybe he'll be able to help you with the money a bit." Luke has already thought everything through. He's too scared to stress Sierra any more than she already is. His last idea is not the best solution for Sierra because she really doesn't want to be dependent on her dad anymore, but it is an option.

"So it doesn't interfere with our plans?" she can't let another plan of hers break into pieces.

"No, no, we're alright." he nods.

The rain is getting heavier, and seeing how uncomfortable it makes Petunia, Luke picks her up while Sierra takes him by his bicep and they all try to fit under the umbrella. He loves this stormy weather and it saddens him that he doesn't have anyone to share this interest with. Cory loves rain - however he loves everything Luke loves - but Calum doesn't allow the boy to spend too much time in the rain.

"How's graduation going?" Luke asks after washing Petunia's paws. Sierra is sitting at his desk with her laptop - she's always carrying it with her these days. He can see that she's rearranged his desk a little so it's more comfortable for her constant studying, and his lips turn into a soft smile instantly.

"It's too early for that. I need to pass billions of tests and exams first." she sighs deeply as her fingers hover over the keyboard. "It's not going great, to be honest." she adds, her voice quiter.

"Are you failing?" he frowns.

"No, I- maybe only a few subjects?" she turns to him. "Fuck, this is so embarrassing, I don't usually fail." her hands go up to cover her face, but Luke catches them in motion.

"It's alright to fail." he gets lower to face her.

"But I don't want to fail. I want it the way it was." The desperation in her voice makes it clear that this is not what she imagined her graduation would be, at all. No one said it would be perfect, but she's planned everything so well - as always - and it hurts her to watch it fall apart.

"Did.. did I do this to you?" he can't ignore the obvious signs that she was doing much better at university before they started dating.

"What? No!" she doesn't see it, of course. "There's just too much stuff, and it's all at once, and-"

She's interrupted by Luke kissing her, and her body relaxes and melts into his gentle touch immediately.

"Thanks. This calmed me down." she sighs with a smile. He keeps kissing her, and when she turns to her laptop to continue working, Luke's lips are still on her skin.

"I need to finish this project." she says as he brushes her hair away from her neck.

He looks over her shoulder, "Methods of teaching? I can be your student."

"Is this some kind of role play to get me into bed?" she chuckles.

"Yeah right, like I need to get you into bed." he scoffs, "I just wanna help." he kisses her again, and she gives in, closing her laptop. His skin feels really hot to her touch, and the smell of his perfume makes her head dizzy. Luke gets up, holding her by the waist so she gets up from the chair too, and he sits her on the desk. Sierra smiles into the kiss, caressing his cheek, and gets more comfortable on the desk, shoving some notebooks away. She isn't careful, so they fall on the floor loudly, and she breaks the kiss to pick them up, not noticing Luke muttering 'it's okay' and trying to get her back.

She bends down to pick up the notebook only to see that it's full of papers that are now all over the floor. He gets down to her too, just gathering everything in one pile of papers while Sierra is folding everything carefully. One piece of paper catches her eye as she notices a familiar handwriting. It looks like a grocery list, but a very long one. Too long. The paper looks like it's been folded a lot, even torn on the sides. As her eyes start involuntarily going through the list, her mind is ready to explode from what she's reading.

not caring
not sincere
not a good friend
not interested in anything
too fucked up
boring
tiring
not exciting
not able to show that I care
manipulative (?)
empty
don't care about people
don't care enough about anything
too fucked up
obnoxious
self centered
annoying
whiny/complain a lot
indecisive
childish
too anxious
too fucked up
don't communicate
overshare but still don't tell people anything valuable
not ambitious
pull people down
negative
bitter
no desire to learn, be better
get irritated by stupid things like someone touching my stuff
picky
controlling over certain things
too fucked up
too fucked up
too fucked up

"What is this? 'not caring, not sincere'?" she keeps reading it again and again while Luke looks at her, his eyes wide. "Is it.. it's you? You think this is you?"

"Don't read it, please." he takes it away from her, but she feels like she's already read it at least a hundred times.

"Is that what you think of yourself?" she looks up at him from where she's sitting on the floor. She starts feeling drops of rain landing onto her skin from the window she herself opened when she first walked in. Making Luke's room smell like rain usually makes his mood so much better.

"It's- it's just what makes me a bad person." he confesses quietly. He never meant for her - or anyone - to find that list.

She stares in front of herself blankly as the words on that paper go around her mind again and again. She closes her eyes, going through that list in her head, and as she reaches 'controlling', her breathing stops for a few seconds as she thinks about how Luke considers it a bad trait. Does that trait make her a bad person in his eyes..?

"Most of these start with 'not'. Why is it more important for you to know what things you aren't than what you are?" she asks. The way he always only focuses on the negative sides makes her think he'll never see anything good in himself.

"You already memorised it?" he looks down. The worst thing about this is that he's been trying so hard to convince her that he's doing better only for her to find out that he's been lying. Again. And it's a neverending cycle, because he will continue making her believe he's fine until something slips and the lies get revealed again. He can't not lie to her - it's like telling a 3 year old that the drawing they got you for your birthday sucks; they've been working so hard on that drawing and it seems like a really great thing to them, and no one would break a kid's heart like that. Just like Luke can't break hers.

"You're none of those things." she crawls closer to him and takes his face in her small palms to make him look at her. He closes his eyes into the touch.

"That's what you think." he shrugs. "I don't want you to see me the way I see myself."

"Will you see me the way I see myself?" he frowns at her and Sierra's eyes move to his lips that formed a pout. "As a control freak who won't let people do anything if it's not her way?" the thought won't leave her mind.

It's a rhetorical question, but he answers it anyway, "Of course not. You're not like that."

"I am to me." she whispers. "Everyone has different perceptions of people, and they may change, but they'll never be the same as someone else's."

"You're not a control freak." Luke says, hugging her tight. His arms go around her waist and she gets up a little to bury her face in his embrace.

"And you're not a bad person." she replies quietly and her lips slightly touch his neck.

"No one is a hundred percent good, though. We're all evil to some extent." His mind just can't comprehend the possibility of something being in the middle - not completely good, not completely bad, just okay. In his brain such things don't exist.

"I know I can kill a person." Sierra blurts out as a confirmation of Luke's words. What a great way to open up to someone, isn't it? Just like Calum advised. But she still feels the need to do that and be more honest and vulnerable with Luke. It feels wrong to know every corner of his mind and not open hers to him in return.

"What?" he breaks the hug slightly, but still holds her hands.

"If I get too furious, I- I get these vivid images in my head," she points to her temple, "of m-me killing the one who got me angry." she whispers, trembling. "In v-various ways."

"Does it happen often?"

"No, I always suppress my anger so I never get to the furious point." she's always felt like there's too much rage inside of her.

"I don't think it's very good to do that."

"I don't know how else to cope with it." she shrugs. "These images scare me. I can almost feel myself do it." As a kid, she would often get these episodes of anger. Uncontrollable ones. And she would rather throw herself against the wall than hurt someone again.

"Will you kill me?" he smiles.

"I can never get that angry at you." she chuckles at him, twirling his fingers in her hand.

"Sorry you found it." he says as his smile drops.

"No, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have- it's yours, I shouldn't have read it."

"It's okay, I trust you."

"Doesn't mean I can do whatever I want to you and your trust." she shakes her head.

"You can do whatever you want to me." he smirks at her again as his fingers slide from her hands and fall onto her thighs, caressing them.

"Can you stop making jokes?" she smiles but it's not funny to her.

"Sorry," he smiles, looking down. "I'm never serious, but I'm always too serious."

She sighs, looking at him fondly, and he knows in his heart she's thinking about how fucked up he is. The glow of his fairy lights on the windowsill makes it seem like his eyes have some sparkle in them, and as much Sierra wants to believe in it, she knows that light only exists on the outside of Luke and never inside of him. No matter how much it tries to consume him, he would never let it in. No matter how much hope and faith she has in him, he would never prove her right. Everybody's got their demons, but Luke sides with his and helps them win again and again, even if he doesn't do it on purpose.

This week's task is to go through all of the things Sierra owns and to pack those that she won't need in the nearest two months. They can already move these boxes to her new flat so that moving out goes smoother for her.

Today they've decided to each take a different room in her current flat and organise as much stuff as they can into boxes. Luke takes her bedroom - it's small and doesn't have that many things in it. There are a couple of bedside tables, her desk and her closet. All the shelves are covered in books so they pack almost all of them instantly - she can't read them now anyway, so they leave only two that she hasn't finished yet. Sierra takes the bathroom as it has too many things she has to review herself before packing them. She trusts Luke with her closet even though he never goes out and rarely wears more than five t-shirts a year. But he knows her style and her schedule, he can keep the minimum of the needed clothes and pack the rest of them away.

As he's packing one of the last boxes and going through her closet to make sure he's packed everything she doesn't need right now, he finds a package he's never seen before and actually has no idea what she could be storing in it. It's been opened and definetely used before, but it has no labels on it.

As he opens it, his face lights up with a smirk, "Look what I found." he says loudly.

Sierra walks out of the bathroom smiling, but her eyes go wide as soon as she sees what he's holding in his hands, "Oh my god, Luke! You weren't supposed to see that." she tells him as her cheeks are going redder with every word leaving her mouth. "Give it to me!" she tries to take it away, but he wants to tease her for just a little bit more.

"Why wasn't I supposed to see it?" he asks as she tries to reach his hand that is now in the air, "Would've you shown them to me before or after we had sex?"

"Never!" she buries her face in her hands and gives up in her tries to get the package from him.

"Come on, it's just sex toys." he finally gives them back to her. It's not like he was going to take them away. "Don't be so embarrassed." he reassures her and she looks up with a more relaxed face. "Do you think of me when you use them?" he smirks again as his teasing voice sends shivers down her body.

Her eyes go wide again, but she tries to cover it up by rolling them, "Ugh, Luke! Stop." she hides her face again, but this time in his chest. She feels his body vibrating as he laughs at her softly. She mutters a quiet 'I do' and he laughs even more, but still wraps his arms around her and places a kiss on the top of her head. He knows how much she hates feeling embarrassed, but sexual topics are still a bit new in their relationship and of course she's shy.

She smells like chemicals and all the washing products stored in her bathroom, so he turns his head and looks over her shoulder,

"You've been drawing?" he sees sketches all over her desk. Most of them have a very similiar grayish theme, but he can't quite make out what they are.

"A bit, yeah." she nods, happy to change the subject, and turns in his arms.

"What are these?"

"From the day you- when you-" the stuttering doesn't help and she can't seem to find the right words.

"It's the cliff?" it hits him at last.

"Yeah. I can't get it out of my head." she says in a low whisper. She often comes back to that day - in her thoughts, in her dreams.

"These are pretty. You brought beauty to that place." he smiles at her as she's still staring at the drawings. She can never consider that place beautiful, and Luke finds so much allure in any kind of darkness.

After they finish packing these two rooms, Luke cooks them dinner and Sierra just watches him. It really is a nice view. Her eyes follow him - and his damn broad shoulders - walk around her kitchen, making it look like he knows what he's doing.

Sierra is fast asleep on the couch after the meal, and Luke doesn't want to wake her up. He puts the hood over his head but leaves out some of his curls in the front, comes up to the door and quietly unlocks it, but it still wakes her up.

"I'm gonna go watch the sunset." he whispers to her as she blinks at him slowly. "Wanna go with me?" he says and her eyes go wide for a second. They're both completely aware that him watching the sunset is personal to him, and sharing this activity with someone else isn't usual. They keep quiet, just staring at each other, until she nods happily and takes his hand to get up. He kisses her deeply as soon as he gets a tight grip of her body in his arms. She can feel his heart beating fast as she places her palm on his chest to kiss him back.

At the beach, they choose an isolated place to sit down and Sierra snuggles closer to Luke - the evenings are still a bit cool. Their eyes are mostly fixed on the sky - how fast the clouds are floating, what colours appear in different parts of the sky depending on how close it is to the sea. They don't talk and Sierra doesn't start any conversation - it's now clear to her why this activity is so important to him and why he likes to do it alone. They can just observe the world move, and sitting in this silence makes their thoughts just wander around their minds without feeling the need to let them out.

Luke's hand plays with a zipper on Sierra's jacket as he watches the sea becoming rougher. The memory of him drowning appears in his mind and he shivers a bit, remembering how cold the water was. It's probably not as cold now. Sierra wraps her arms around his torso under his jacket, thinking that he's cold and that's why he's shivering. Her delicate touch brings him back into reality a little, and he's not sure if he's glad. When he watches the sunset alone, he likes to let his thoughts consume him until he loses track of time or what's going on around him.

The wave of guilt covers him as he starts thinking about the fact that he's just had a thought that he's not glad to feel his girlfriend's hug. The most difficult thing about all of this is that he is glad. It's his mind that sends this one little thought and makes it ruin Luke's whole mood. Makes him feel like a bad boyfriend. Like a bad person.

"Can I ask you something?" he says quietly as the wind becomes strong enough to blow his hair gently away from his face. She nods, not looking at him and still admiring the sky, "I'm not too far gone, am I?"

"You're not."

"No, say it honestly." of course he doesn't believe her. He will push her until he hears something that resembles rejection at least a little bit, and will use it to torture himself with every night until he finds something new. "Not as my friend or girlfriend or someone who cares about me. Say it as a stranger." the way she perceives him scares him. He believes that her love for him blinds her. "Am I far too gone?"

She finally looks up at him, tilting her head slightly to the side to look him in the eyes. "A stranger wouldn't know your strength and beauty, and they would never tell you the actual truth. Not because they want to lie, but because they simply don't know the truth. I know it," she smiles and he returns the gesture, "and I know that you're not too far gone. Anywhere you are right now, it's not too far. You can always come back, you can always move forward or in any other direction." her fingers keep drawing circles on his skin under his shirt without her realising. "There's always a choice." she adds quietly.

"But how far is far?" is there a place, a limit he can push himself to?

"Please, give yourself a chance." she says with a sigh.

"Why are you fighting so hard for me?" he frowns because it's not the first time he hears this phrase, and he just wants to understand what it is that people see in him.

"Because we do that for each other." she smiles, but also copies his frown. "You've always been by my side, you've always cared, you've always helped me. You do that for me, so why can't I do the same for you? Why is it so difficult to believe in?"

He just shrugs at her, not knowing how to respond, and turns his face back to the sea. He has no idea why it's so difficult to believe her, but he just doesn't. He intertwines their fingers and pulls her even closer in. She can now hear his heartbeat, so she closes her eyes until she hears his voice again,

"Can I ask you something again?" he chuckles and she smiles, nodding. "What's your dream?"

"You know it."

"Apart from me." it's been two minutes since he felt completely self-loathing, and now he's back to being cocky.

"You're not my dream, I have you." she nudges him slightly. "But you know that getting my master's and getting into teaching fully has always been my priority."

"I still can't believe you're gonna teach these little monsters."

"I'm not gonna work with kids though. My goal is high school."

"Really?" he looks down at her.

"Yeah, all the interesting science stuff is there."

She wants to ask him about his dreams, but knowing that he doesn't have any, she stops herself. It would only make him feel weaker and left out, because the reality is that he doesn't see anything ahead of himself. All his days are the same - although Sierra and renovation do make them at least a bit more colourful - but mostly he sits at home, staring at the wall half of the day. Life does not make any sense to him. And not in a suicidal way, like he has nothing to live for, but in a way that he really doesn't understand why he would even be here. Why are other people here? He feels like a 4 year old, asking why the sky is blue and all the adults just brush it off because they think it's something so obvious that the question is stupid. It's not stupid, and Luke is not a child, he can see that everyone either has it figured out or just don't think about it. It somehow seems easier for others, it seems like they aren't consumed by these endless trails of thoughts that don't let him even breathe. Is everyone just better at resisting those thoughts, or is it only his mind that's trying so hard to make his life miserable? He knows he's not the only one, he even knows there are people who have it much worse. But somehow it seems to him that he's the only one who is such a complete failure.

hiiii, here's the update!! hope you enjoyed it (despite all the sad and bad parts) thank you so so much for reading and please don't forget to vote in the end xx