Allen finally did it. As much as he didn't want to. As much as he wanted to make things work,
again
. As much as he didn't like it,
again
. As much as he truly wanted to make things work,
again
.
Cleo went too far.
So, Allen finally broke up with Cleo.
For good
.
He pulled himself up from the floor, using the table that had braced him against the immensity of Cleo's Underfolk strength. He thought now that it would have been better to just hit the wall instead, given that his back hurt almost as much as his ribs.
His girlfriend -- former girlfriend -- dropped her furious tone as she registered he was in actual pain.
"Oh, oh fuck Allen I didn't mean to! I'm so sorry. Are you okay?" She sounded sincere, like always.
He pushed her hand away. "Don't touch me!"
"Let me just help you up."
Allen fumed. "Fuck off Cleo! I said don't touch me!"
Cleo knew she fucked up. She had yelled at him before and threatened to break up. Sometimes she had actually gone through with it for a few days. But it had never been like this. As an Underfolk, the sheer amount of strength she possessed could devastate him. Between and Below had a smaller difference than Cleo and Allen did physically.
Allen's now ex-girlfriend tried to backtrack, like she always did. "Look, I don't know what happened. I just-"
"You fucking hit me, Cleo!" Allen winced, ribs protesting like someone had shoved an ice pick up and between them. Every breath opened up new avenues of stabbing pain he didn't know could exist. The pain made his head spin. "Fuck, Cleo, you really hurt me."
Seeing her personality so artificially shrunken down to win sympathy made his hands clench in anger. The seven-foot Underfolk who could break him over her knee, whose horns could touch the ceiling, who could bench press a car, was trying to act
small
to manipulate him. It was more insulting than it was funny. It made his hands clench into fists.
"I'm sorry," she said in a small voice.
Allen's body went rigid to yell, making his ribs flare and his breath catch, but he forced the words up his throat like a growl. "No you're not! You fucking hit me! And you say
I'm
unreasonable? I don't want to be walked all over and you hit me?! No, fuck you Cleo."
"Allen." Her voice held a warning tone. She always got like this when he fought back. There had always been the implicit threat that they would get into it physically if things went too far. But until tonight that line had never been crossed. Her stare hardened as he brought himself up straight, ribs screaming with pain. He ground his teeth together.
Fuck this bitch
.
"Allen what?" he growled back in a tone more hostile than hers. "What are you gonna do, hit me? Again? You can go back Below if you're gonna act like this."
She broke as she realized he wasn't backing down, even injured. Despite the seventeen-inch difference in their stature, Allen had never felt bigger than in this moment. Cleo seemed so much smaller when she didn't think she was going to get her way. "Look, I'm sorry."
"No you're not; look at you. You just fucking warned me to shut up."
"Yo-"
"No, that's it Cleo; we're done.
For good
."
She scoffed. "You don't mean that."
Allen set his jaw. "I do. I'll come by for all my stuff this weekend. I'm going to the hospital now."
Cleo leaned forward and put a hand on the table at Allen's back, bringing her face close enough for him to feel the heat of her body. "Oh, the hospital? What, did your pussy little body get its ribs broken? Wonder how that happened, huh?"
"Below, what is wrong with you?! Fuck off!" Allen tried to push her away, but his side flared with searing pain and he sucked in a sharp, painful breath. Cleo just smirked, coming back to her full height to tower over him with a smug expression.
"Well, seeing as we're broken up, I don't have to sugarcoat everything. You're a fucking pussy. And you like getting pushed around." She emphasized her point by pushing his shoulder with two fingers. Allen shied away from her touch, but wasn't in a position to avoid it.
"No, Cleo, I don't. I don't mind on most occasions because I really thought you respected me deep down." He brushed her fingers away. "But today proves you really fucking don't and I'm done with you. This is finally,
really
, goodbye."
She shrugged. "You can come pick your shit up in the street tomorrow. That's where it'll be."
Allen turned to leave. "Please don't do that."
She held an arm out to stop him. "Oh 'please' now is it? And just a minute ago you were all 'fuck you' and 'rabid cunt' at me."
Allen threw a hand up half-heartedly in exasperation. "Fine. Do whatever the fuck you want with it. I don't care. I'll just come by this weekend and get whatever you don't destroy."
"Fine by me." She raised her arm like a toll gate and he started for the door. "See you then. Maybe with a new boo thing with a big cock this time."
Allen spun around on heel and felt an ember in his guts rise into his throat as a roaring flame. "You know, Cleo? You know what! You're a-" He stopped.
Just do it, Allen! Just lay the fuck into her! Tell her she's a piece of shit! Tell her she's a sad, lonely little person whose only redeeming quality is her body. Tell her she'll be alone forever, that she'll abuse everyone who loves her because she's a thoughtless, lying sack of shit! Do it! You said you wouldn't let her get away with this! You swore you-
Shut up.
He looked away in shame. He would never stoop to that level. "You're a really selfish person, Cleo. I don't know what I saw in you."
"A lot more than what I see in you now," she shot back.
He left without an answer of his own.
Three weeks went by. Allen ended up not getting any of his things from her apartment. He didn't want to see her, not with the way he felt about it all. He ended up with three broken ribs, not seriously broken, but enough to make his life inconveniently miserable. It was hard to even lift a gallon of milk, for fuck's sake.
On top of everything, he knew that despite what she'd done to him, there was a strong chance they would just get back together if he saw her again. They had a cycle that usually ended and started where they were now, like an orbit around the sun finally reaching the same place it had been a year ago. It was always the same.
Well,
had
always been the same. Hitting him was a first.
Someone told him once that it took a month to break a bad habit, so he figured that was a good place to start. Go one month without seeing her to let his feelings dissipate some and his head clear. It felt shitty being alone every night. His friends Nick and Evan came over a few times to get him out, but he just ended up at home, alone, wanting to call Cleo and ask how she was.
He didn't expect to feel as angry as he did when Cleo shot him a text out of the blue saying 'I'm sorry.' and nothing else. In response, he wrote a veritable book back to her, shut his phone off, and didn't pick it back up for almost two days.
Probably because of that, she had come to his house in tears, saying she was sorry. He told her to leave, flat-out, not wanting to deal with an enormous crying Underfolk on his front doorstep. Surprisingly, she acquiesced and left without any commotion, still crying.
A week after that, he answered a call from a number he didn't recognize.
"Hello?"
"Please don't hang up." It was Cleo.
Of course
it was Cleo. He didn't get random, unsolicited calls unless it was someone he knew. And this time, it was someone who had been trying to talk to him for nearly a month. The silence stretched on for a few seconds before he finally pulled himself together to make a decision on the issue of their breakup.
Allen let out an exhausted sigh. "Okay, talk."
The Underfolk on the other side of the city sucked in a short breath. "I know you won't believe me if I say I'm sorry, but I still have all your stuff..." He heard another sharp breath, and then a sob. Her voice came close to breaking. "I don't know what to do. Please talk to me, Allen. Please?"
"Look, I said we were over. I cant go through all that again." His tone softened. Even with his ribs still sore and the fresh memory of her looming over him like a titan of malice, he felt bad.
"Can I at least give you your stuff back?" She sobbed once. He could hear her choking down whatever else was coming up after it. Allen felt the urge to console her. A few weeks hadn't been enough to make him forget that he still loved her. Just hearing her cry made him want to reach out and tell her it was okay.
Be strong, man. Tough it out
. "I'll come get it," he said finally.
Cleo sniffled. "Tonight?"
"Sure. I'll be over in an hour. Is that good with you?"
"Okay."
Allen added, "I'm just coming to get my stuff, okay? Nothing else."
"That's fine." She sounded disappointed, but resigned to it. Allen hung up and deflated into his couch, tossing his phone onto the coffee table. This was going to be a rough night. He knew himself better than to believe it. Seeing her cry was going to pull at him in a way that only Cleo could.
She just looked so pathetic when she cried. Her whole body shook. Her face turned bright red. Her voice broke. Everything about it was in such stark contrast to her muscled, seven-foot frame. It just looked so wrong. Allen didn't think he could physically hurt her, at least not with just his hands, anyway. She was strong enough to brace herself against the wall and let him do pull-ups using her horns as handlebars. Making her cry just felt wrong; it made her so weak and vulnerable.
There was no way he was going to be able to just get his stuff if she cried.
And she, with certainty, was going to cry.
A lot
.
Allen didn't want to admit it, but he needed something to disarm Cleo when he went there. Him going over there wasn't just going to be for his stuff. He knew that as well as Cleo did. Especially now that she was guaranteed to cry, he didn't have it in him to just do nothing. But the end of that road led to them stuck together on the bed and a lot of bad decisions.
Allen needed something to break the cycle.
That something, as it turned out, was iath tar. Something from Below that a doctor had given him when he hyper-extended his wrist and it wouldn't calm down. It made him too weak to move, let alone hurt his wrist any more. For Underfolk, it was used recreationally as a tone-down drug. Cleo liked to mix it with booze and then get frisky.
