*Content warning- Please be advised that the following chapter contains a rather graphic depiction of rape and abuse. I beg you, if you are a younger reader or a sensitive reader, please skip the parts in bold.*

"What's this?" Hoori asked, tracing a barely there white, raised line running along the back of his shoulder.

"What?" He lifted and turned his head just enough to see what it was she was pointing to. "That was Ilhaam."

"Ilhaam?"

"Ya." He mumbled. "That psychotic bitch headbutted a window I was leaning against and it shattered."

Ilhaam?

Ilhaam!

That Ilhaam?

Prissy, snobby Ilhaam?

Nine West, Prada, Jenni Button Ilhaam?

A headbutter?

Headbutter Ilhaam?

She covered her mouth as soon as the little snort escaped from her but it only seemed to make it worse as he shoulders began to shake with the torrent of giggles that began to pour out of her at the image of it all. She was sure she would never, ever look at her the same way ever again and Hoori was definitely sure that she was perfectly okay with that.

Mikaeel could only look at her; his lips curled to the side as he took in her state. She was clad in his navy shirt while her cheeks looked as if they were near bursting point with her peals of amused laughter. He was had never heard her laugh like that before and he was only too fucking thrilled to know that it was at Ilhaam's expense. He couldn't give a shit about keeping that little incident a secret no matter how fervently Ilhaam had begged him to.

It was her fault anyway. Who told her to try to scare him like that? With her damned fat head, he was surprised she didn't take the whole window frame with her. But he had never seen his mother as pissed off as she was that day. He was sure she gave Ilhaam the spanking of her life because he remembered her sitting on a pillow for almost 3 days afterwards.

His hands were still aimlessly skimming over the bottom of her shirt, where skin met material but she didn't seem to mind.

Actually, he knew she didn't mind.

When he had made to move his hand earlier to rest against her side, she had grasped his fingers in her own and moved them back to where they were, drawing careless lines over the top of her thigh and the bottom of his shirt. How could he possibly say no to a request like that?

"The mark goes up into my hair."

"Ya?" She sat up slowly, tracing the thin white line from the back of his shoulder and up his neck but it seemed to have gotten lost behind his thick black hair. "I can't see it."

"Probably means I need to get a haircut."

"Probably." She laid back down, turning her head to the wall besides her as she enjoyed the way his fingers ran lightly over her skin. They were content just to lie in the little hazy bubble they had created around themselves where nothing and no one else existed besides them. It was almost peaceful to just lay there. With him, running his hands across the bottom of her shirt and her, drawing lazy patterns over his shoulder blades.

"Hey."

"Hmm?" Her skin prickled as he ran his finger lightly along a spot just beneath her ear.

"I gave you a hickey." He sounded incredibly self-satisfied at the idea.

"Only one?" She asked, her eyes flicking downwards towards the open collar of her shirt.

"More?" His eyebrow lifted at her inference.

"Maybe." She shrugged, turning before he could make out the sly smile playing out on her face.

Just how opposed would she be to the idea of him looking for each and every one of them?

His head was still running in circles over what had just happened. It was different and it was crazy. They had slept together before but it was never like this. Neither was afraid to touch or kiss or to explore and...

And what she did just then? With the hickeys and the shirt...

She was just driving him fucking crazy.

"Will you tell me about them?"

It was nice to block out the world but there was a reason why they had needed to. Why he had needed to forget everything for just a little while and they couldn't just ignore it and pretend as if nothing had ever happened.

"Why?"

Just."

He turned around to lie on his back as he tried to find the little pictures hidden in the grooves of the mesonite ceiling. "Would it surprise you to know that it was Dahlia who got us involved in everything?"

"Ya, it would." She turned to face him, her eyes tracing the little lines that began to form along his forehead.

"You thought it was Ihsaan?" He asked plainly.

"Ya actually."

"So did everyone else..."

They were celebrating Ihsaan's 20th birthday in the best way they knew.

The music was loud and the song was awful but there was something about the dark blue lighting that appealed to him. The music was soft and slow and sensual and he could make out the smooth gyrating movements of the dancers in the pit below them.

But they didn't join in just yet.

"Hey." Dahlia tapped him on his shoulder, causing him to turn away from the railing he was leaning on.

"Hey." He watched her sit uneasily on the table before rubbing her temples with her forefinger. He was worried about her. She was more drunk than sober these days and he didn't like watching what happened afterwards. She had lost something like 30 kilos in 2 years and she never hesitated to show it off with her skimpy outfits.

 But it was more than that.

It was just her. She just seemed lost and no one knew how to find her again. She didn't smile or laugh and she had lost what had made her who she was. She had lost the sunshine and the happiness that seemed to radiate right out of her. Instead it was replaced with the stale smell of cigarette smoke and remnants of the vodka that she had seemed to prefer more than anything else.

"Where's Ihs-" His words were cut off as she moulded her lips to his almost desperately, fiddling with the steel button on his jeans.

He pushed her off, holding her away from him. "What are you doing?"

"I just wanted to see what it's like to kiss you." She broke out of his hold, pressing herself against him once again. "Please just once. Just open your mouth a little more."

"No."

"Please... Just a little taste." She leaned closer to him, running her tongue along his bottom lip.

"Dahlia, don't." He tried leaning back but she followed him, running her fingertips slowly over the skin of his stomach as she lifted up his t-shirt. "Stop."

He was physically repulsed by her behaviour but she never let up. Who the fuck was this fucking nympho?

"What?" She shrugged, pulling her towards him before she sat down on the round table behind her, the edge of her dress riding up her thighs to expose more skin than he really wanted to see. "Just try it. I just want to see what it's like with you."

"Don't do this." He tried to pull the hem of her dress to cover up her thighs before she caught his hands in hers, running them slowly back up her dress towards the lace edge of her underwear.

"Just once... Just try it." Her grip was like melted iron around his wrists. "I promise you'll like it. Just one little feel."

"Just stop for fuck's sake!" Mikaeel shouted at her, wrenching his hands out of her grasp.

She sighed sadly as she looked down at her open legs. "That's what I said but he never stopped."

"We were friends since we were 12 years old."

He had been quiet for such a long time that she was shocked when she heard his soft voice echo throughout their dimmed room.

"What were they like back then?" She had never thought to ask about them or who they were or how they became friends. She never knew anything else apart from Ihsaan's wondering hands and Dahlia's constant absent state, as if she was somewhere miles and miles away from where she really was.

When she thought about it, she had never actually bothered to ask Mikaeel anything about his past. She didn't know which school he went to or what he used to like doing as a kid or where he had ever been for a holiday. She didn't know anything about him except what she had seen and it was actually pretty damned pathetic for them to have been married for as long as they were and not know anything.

"Ihsaan was just this motor-mouthed midget. He wouldn't shut up and it used to bug my fucking brains most of the times."

"Hey." she wasn't sure how to pose the question. "What... is he exactly?" He had too many mixed features to actually identify him.

"Uhm..." He thought back to Ihsaan's parents. "Part Indian, part White, part Malay and a little bit of Algerian."

"Oh." Well that explains it.

"Ya..." He bit at the corner of his lip as he remembered what Ihsaan looked like in the hospital. He looked like shit with his two blue eyes and his swollen face and more bandages than fucking skin.

The fucker just had to land himself into such a fucking mess.

"And what about Dahlia?"

"She was chubby."

"Seriously?"

"Uh huh."

Try as she might, she just couldn't picture it.

"It was just easy to be friends with them."

"Why?"

"There were never any expectations."

She smiled lightly at his words.

"She was..." His voice dropped down even lower than before. "She was raped when she was 17."

Whatever music blared around them seemed to have been drowned out by her words. It seemed to him as if the entire club had suddenly gone so quiet that he would be able to hear a pin drop. "What did you say?" He asked her quietly, tilting her chin back up so that she would look at him.

"He never stopped."

"Who?" His eyes flickered towards the bar. "Ihsaan?"

She smiled sadly at that. "No, Ihsaan would never hurt me."

"What did he do to you?" Mikaeel asked but as she spoke he wished he had never, ever asked.

She leaned back, gripping the edge of the table till her knuckles went white as she looked up at the ceiling. "He came home and he wanted to kiss me. But I said no and he hit me."

Mikaeel could feel his heart begin to beat just a little faster. How could anyone ever hit her? She was... sweetness and honey and sugar and no one should have ever hit her.

"I let him kiss me but I didn't like it. I didn't like the way his tongue felt in my mouth or the way he bit my lips or the way he sucked my neck or the way he touched me but he did it anyway. Then he came home and he told me he wanted to put his hand up my shirt. I said no and he hit me again."

She spoke without looking at him, the alcohol loosening her tongue as the words seemed to have spilled out of her.

"So he put his hand up my top," Her hands went to her chest, flattening it over her skin as she recalled the sensation of him hurting her and squeezing her and pulling at her. "Then he came home and he told me to put my hand down his pants. I said no and he hit me again."

She didn't know it but as she spoke, her eyes filled with tears that had threatened to fall down her cheeks.

"And I did it. I did it and he told me what to do and I hated it but I was so scared of him. And then he came home..."
She began to choke on her words as she thought about that day.

"He came home?" Mikaeel prompted her gently.

"He came home and he told me that I would like it if he put his hand up my skirt and into my underwear but I didn't want him to. I swear it Mikaeel, I never wanted him to." She said, her voice clogged up with the tears that were stuck in her throat.

"I believe you." He wrapped his hands over hers, watching the tears fall down her cheeks, next to her nose and into her mouth.

"Then he hit me and he hit me again and again until I allowed him to and I didn't like it. I didn't like it... It hurt so much. It hurt so, so much and I screamed for him to stop but he never stopped." She said, leaning over herself, as if she could contain the pain in her heart.

"Then..." she tried to find the breath that had escaped her.

"Then?"

"He came home and he told me to take off my clothes and I didn't. I begged him not to hurt me but he hit me and so I took off my clothes and then he forced me to take off my underwear and then..." She couldn't speak. It felt too painful to talk. Her throat had closed up and her chest had constricted and she was sure she wouldn't be able to breathe.

"You don't have to tell me." He could see how much it hurt and he didn't like seeing that happen.

"No... He..." She cleared her throat and ran her fingers through her hair as she tried to say the words. "He started laughing at me Mikaeel." She looked down at her now flat stomach and thin thighs but she still saw what he saw. "He called me fat and a tubby and a pig and he laughed at me and he laughed at my body and when I tried to cover myself up, he just hit me again. And then..." The words tumbled out of her mouth. Now that she had started, she couldn't stop until it was all out. "He told me to lie down on the bed and..."

He wanted her to stop talking. He wanted to wake up and know it was a dream and that she had never been through everything that she had. She had never had everything ripped away from her in a second.

 She hadn't acted this way because she was trying so hard to drown everything out.

"He started poking my stomach and my thighs and my arms and he kept calling me names and then he was on top of me and inside me and it hurt so badly. I thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to split apart at the seams but he never stopped. And I tried to hit him and I tried to scream and every time I tried he bit me." She buried her face in her hands, hating herself in that second. "He never stopped until..." She swallowed, disgusted at herself for what had happened.

"Until?"

"Until... my body reacted to it. And then he told me that that would only happen because I wanted it. But I didn't want it. I swear I never wanted it Mikaeel. I never wanted it but he did it anyway." She hated the shame that came with admitting such a thing. How could her body respond to his painful touches and his ugly kisses when she never ever wanted it? And every time he had... done what he had, he had never stopped until he got her body to respond to his and he would laugh at her and he would sound so smug as he told her that she must have wanted it or her body would never do that. She would never have an...

How could her stupid, fat, ugly body betray her like that?

She looked at him, biting hard onto her knuckle to keep herself from losing her sanity entirely. "I look in the mirror and I don't see myself. I can only see what he sees and no matter how much I try, I can't stop it. I feel as if I'm losing control and I don't know how to get it back."

She said, jamming the heel of her palm into her eyes as if it would stem all the tears.

"I'm lost Mikaeel."

She looked at him, pleading with him for something that she never knew how to ask.

"Why are you crying?" Ihsaan's worried voice sounded from behind her.

She gasped, forgetting where she was and that she was dressed as she was and that she had almost forced her best friend to put his hands up her panties.

"I was missing you!" She turned around, smiling at him almost dopily. Her words were slurred more than they had been just a moment ago.

"I missed you too." Ihsaan hugged her shoulders to his chest, kissing her quickly on the crown of her head. "Want to go dance?"

She nodded happily, before she took the long stemmed bottle out of his hand and lead him away.

She turned back, just once, raising her bottle to Mikaeel, before she turned around again and disappeared.

"It all happened during matric." He stated pensively, biting onto the knuckle of his thumb as he thought about it. "I didn't even notice because I was too busy studying."

He closed his eyes, tired of searching for silly patterns within in the cream painted ceiling. He was just always too busy.

He felt her gaze on him long before he felt her body hovering over him.

"What?" He opened his eyes slowly, just watching the way she looked down at him as she sucked her lower lip into her mouth.

"You're not a bad friend Mikaeel."

"Really?"

"Really." She smiled down at him, the ends of her hair tickling the side of his face.

"They didn't allow me to go to her funeral." He whispered sadly, watching her as she leant down closer towards him.

"I'm sorry." Her lips pressed softly against his.

"So am I."

He was tired of thinking.

He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her to rest snugly against him as he began to unbutton her shirt once again.

Neither thought of anything else for a very long time afterwards...