Steaming waters [Syd]

[Sydney Emerson]

His surprise at her reaction might as well have been rubbing salt into the wound. He didn't even know why she was upset. Well, she didn't know why she was upset. But he didn't even know what she was upset about! That only made matters worse of course. Even his calling her princesa didn't do anything to make her feel better. It was just like she had thought at first in the library. He probably had dozens of princesas around. She was just some other girl to him.

Why did she even care what some clueless jackass thought?

Because he had made such a big deal about wanting to kiss her. Wanting to keep kissing her. Wanting to do more than kiss her. She had thought it mattered to him, but it didn't. She was just some other girl. Hell, he was probably laughing about how inexperienced she was when she wasn't around. Could the whole thing have been some twisted joke or was he seriously just that selfish?

"Well, if that's how you feel about the whole thing, then we are. I'm finished," she huffed as she slung her bag over her shoulder and began walking away.

Honestly, she was surprised when he called out to her. This time though she winced as he called her princesa. It had always seemed like something... well, between them. But now... now it just felt like a slap in the face to the few things she had thought she had understood. She was even more surprised when he caught up with her. Why was he trying so hard? It didn't make any sense how he could say something like that and then be so confused why she was angry with him. What did he expect?

"Let go of me!" she exclaimed, trying to wrench her wrist from his grip. She didn't want him to touch her right now. Not after what he'd just done and said. She looked at him with a furrowed brow as he asked his questions, seeming completely clueless about the whole thing. However that quickly changed as he added the last part, her expression turning truly offended.

She didn't think, she just did. Sydney slapped him - not hard really, but enough to sting a little. "I cannot believe you just said that," she said in shocked awe. "That is the most sexist thing I have ever heard. First you complain that I'm so cold and emotionless. Now that I'm being emotional, suddenly the only reason can be because I'm hormonal?" Her voice grew louder and more outraged with each word she spoke. "You really are a complete and total ass, Rod," she said, her hurt flashing just slightly in her eyes for a moment.

"No, I told you, I'm upset because you are a moron and a jackass. It's just like I said. If our little arrangement is so damn troublesome for you, then fine, there is no more arrangement, so you can go have your fun with whoever the hell you want to! Just leave me the hell out of it!"

[Rodrigo Santos]

Feel how about what thing? He didn't know! He stared at her with wide eyes, kind of like one does a fire one cannot control. In fact, that was exactly how he was feeling. He'd never seen her this upset, not event the day they'd started all this. The day they met. Was it that horrible of him to think they were just having fun if they just jumped right into kissing and making out the same day they met? It wasn't like either had made any promises, so why was she so angry?

"Finished what?" He asked, still very confused about the whole thing. Was she done studying? "I haven't finished studying." He added, thinking that would lure her into calming down and staying.

She struggled against him and he growled under his breath. "Calm down, woman!" He yelled, his frustration starting to show. Women! Why was she being so difficult? He'd done NOTHING wrong! Not that he knew of. And he'd tried. Really, he tried. But he also didn't know much about respect and women, particularly women with brains, considering he'd dealt only with easy chicks who were looking for a quick snog. But Sydney? She didn't act like any of those girls... much to his frustration.

So she slapped him and his face turned at the force. "Hey! What the hell was that for?!" He yelled at her, raising his free hand to rub the red mark she'd left on his cheek. He still refused to let go of her wrist though, stubborn to make things right and kiss her again. That was until she talked. Sexist? How was that sexist? She was SO overreacting! "I was just concerned. Gah!" This was so frustrating. Why couldn't just say what she meant and tell him what to do to make it better?

She called him an ass again and he was about to yell at her when he noticed he'd truly hurt her this time. He let out a breath, still feeling confused and frustrated but gently let go of her wrist. He'd really done it bad this time, hadn't he? He was still mad though, but couldn't do anything about it, just in case he would make matters worse. The moment he'd seen those brown eyes he liked full of pain made his chest suddenly contract, as if his heart had just decided to shrink. And it was totally messed up! Because he had done NOTHING wrong!

She was yelling at him again and he glared right back at her. Troublesome? Oh, so that was because of that? "Well, excuse me for getting all worked up!" He yelled at her, not caring if they were still in a public place. "Ye tell me about troublesome when ya start having random boners!" Again, all sensitive. No more arrangement. His chest hurt again. Fine. If that's what she wanted, then fine. He didn't need her. Let her find some guy to make out with who DOESN'T get worked up in the middle of it all.

"Good luck finding a GAY guy who wants to kiss you!" He yelled at her, though his sentence made no sense without the context of his thoughts. He didn't care though. He was a mess of hurting, frustration, and confusion and that meant little care for how well he was explaining himself.

[Sydney Emerson]

His mention of studying only angered her more. He didn't care about studying. He'd made that perfectly clear by now. The only way she ever got him to study was by promising him a break. So the fact he was bringing it up now just meant he was trying to pacify her. How could he just say something like that and then act like everything was normal? She didn't even turn back to look at him.

Once he caught up to her, he only yelled at her to calm down. She rolled her eyes. "Well since you put it like that... No!" she shouted back. She didn't want to calm down. She didn't want to be rational. That was surely a first for the girl. But it was true, she didn't. If she was rational, she would just end up feeling like a fool for getting upset in the first place. So for once she took his advice and just felt, just reacted.

Truth be told, she was surprised at herself when she slapped him, though she did believe he deserved it for being so sexist and asinine in the first place. It seemed he was just as shocked about it though. More than anything though, what caught her mind was that he was still holding onto her. She was acutely aware of that touch and she hated herself for that. She hated that she thought it might mean something, might mean that she was wrong. She hated it for reminding her how his touch usually made her feel and how insignificant it all was to him.

"Concerned? That's what you call concerned? Making assumptions that I need to be bleeding and hormonal to get upset with you? Well gee, that makes it all better," she said sarcastically.

He let go of her wrist then and she didn't understand why, but she wasn't about to complain. She felt sick truly, sick to her core. It didn't make sense to her, any of it. It wasn't supposed to mean anything, any of it. It was an objective experimentation, that was all. That's what she had thought. But the way she felt didn't feel distanced or objective. It felt hurt and angry and betrayed. Logically, she was wrong, she knew that. But that did nothing to sway her emotions.

"You're making absolutely no sense!" she screamed back at him as he shouted at her about getting worked up and her needing to find someone gay who wanted her. "What the hell are you even talking about?" Now she was just confused, though that barely even distracted from her anger. "Why are you even acting like you care? Like you said, you have plenty of other girls who are so much easier to deal with than me. So why don't you go and find one of them?" Her words were said in anger and yet these were serious questions. Sydney barely even noticed the way she was shaking now or if it came from anger or hurt. If this is what emotions did, maybe she would have been better off the way she had been before - cold and distant. Unfortunately, it was far too late to go back to that.

[Rodrigo Santos]

She snapped at him again and he growled angrily. "I ain't liking this side of you, ya know?" He said. She was being completely crazy! Why was she all nice one moment and the next, the NOW, acting like a complete freak. "Is it the powers that's making you all loca?" He asked, really finding no reasoning behind her attitude. They were fine! She'd been fine! And the moment he pushed away she got all mad and started yelling. Was it because of that?

"I didn't keep kissing ya 'cause I didn't wanna push ya like last time!" He explained, "I still think yer hot!" Was that it? How could he even know how to fix this if all she wanted was yelled at him and get all angry. So angry in fact that his fingers were now bleeding and his nails were out.

So she slapped him and he was left without words. He WAS concerned, but it seemed that was the wrong thing to be. "Fine, I don't care then!" He replied back, thinking maybe that was what she wanted. Gah! Girls were so difficult! They were angry but not hormonal, yet irrational but was that their usual state? He didn't even know how periods worked! He just knew girls went all loco when they got them.

"Fine, so you ain't perioding!" He added with a roll of his eyes, really getting tired of this argument. "I don't even know why we're yelling! Why YOU'RE yelling. Just tell me what I did wrong and we can get over it!" Why wasn't she even trying to meet him half way there. He had absolutely no idea what he'd done wrong!

What was he talking about? "What are YOU talking about?! I don't even know!" He was so confused! Why was he getting all scolded and yelled at and slapped at if he had done nothing wrong! Not that he could tell. So why was she being all yeti on him?

She asked her own why questions? Why did he care if he could go to other girls? Well, duh! "Because I like you!" He yelled at her right back, annoyed that she would even ask him that. Why else would he endure studying or getting yelled at! "But fine! Whatever." His fingers hurt, so he looked down at them and winced. More blood. She was going to be the death of him if she kept up with her stupid tantrums. Or worse, she was going to get herself hurt if she kept pushing him like that and that would only end up with him blaming himself for it when it would actually be her moods what would get them there.

Rod walked away from her, not even turning, still fuming in anger. "Fine! If that's whatcha want! I'll go find a girl who doesn't get randomly CRAZY at me!" He totally could too! He snorted. Easy as cake. Yup! Plenty of girls to choose from in Hammel.

[Sydney Emerson]

He didn't like her like this? "Well that's funny that you would say that, because that implies that you like something about me, and you've made it more than clear that is not the case." He thought she was crazy? Part of her was insulted by the implication, but a smaller, more reluctant part of her was thinking he might be right. It turned out that being so unfamiliar with emotions meant being prone to overreaction a bit. Of course admitting that would only make her feel silly.

She flushed a bit as he shouted that he had stopped because he didn't want to push her too far, like the first time. That was enough to make her reconsider for a moment. It was so contradictory to everything else though. He acted like this was nothing to him and then he said something like that, like he cared. But then he went and said that he still she was hot and it made that anger flare again. "Because being 'hot' is so important to me," she replied sarcastically, though her voice had softened somewhat and was quieter than before. Her mind was still trying to puzzle out how he could both care and not care at the same time.

He just kept talking and talking. Saying that fine, then he didn't care. He didn't understand why she was mad, why they were yelling, why they were fighting. Her hands clutched her head. The emotions were only getting stronger and she felt as though her head might explode. Anger. Confusion. Pain. So many others. She wished she could just shut everything out for a moment, hear her own thoughts over all of it. Maybe then she could make sense of this mess. Maybe... but no, instead she only seemed to feel worse.

Then he shouted that he liked her and she didn't even know what to make of it. "What is that supposed to mean?" she asked. At this point she was just confused. She was a social person, but that was in a capacity bordering more on professional. When it came to personal stuff, she just didn't have a clue. So when he said he liked her, she genuinely didn't know what that meant. "Stop contradicting yourself!" she exclaimed finally in frustration. "Can't you just say the truth and leave it at that?" After all, he couldn't simultaneously care and not care, so one of them had to be a lie - that was just basic logic.

Rod walked away then, still fuming and yelling. If that's what she wanted? When had this ever been about what she wanted. The whole thing had started when he basically said she wasn't good enough so he needed to find someone else. How was that not about what he wanted. That mark reignited all her anger and in that moment she hated not just him, but herself as well, especially as her eyes started to water.

"Fine! You do that then! See if I care!"

Apparently she was as much a liar as he was.

[Rodrigo Santos]

"I do!" He yelled back, completely flabbergasted about her behaviour. It was so random! He'd made it clear that he liked her, right? What was the problem? Why was she yelling? He felt like punching someone and since she was the only one around and he couldn't very well punch her, he was pretty much screwed.

Okay. So it wasn't the hot thing. "That ain't why yer all mad?" He asked with a frown. Okay, he was lost! Like completely blind in a dark void of nothingness. No idea what she wanted from him or what she expected or whatever. "Yer mad woman." He said with a sardonic smile, "And not in a 'haha' way either. Whatcha want from me? Really?!" She wasn't answering any of his questions! Why wasn't she answering! It was so maddening and she was just so angry and that made him angry and he just didn't know how to deal with this girl anymore.

"What the hell do you think it means?" He asked back incredulously. Was she trying to play him? "It means I like ya!" What else would it mean? She was so confusing. And now she was calling him a liar! "I AM!" He roared out, angrier than ever. He was panting now and his fingers were killing him. Fine! If that's how she wanted it. "I ain't NO liar, Syd!" He was, but not to her. Not now. "And I ain't contradicting ANYTHING!" He was done. They were done.

He was walking away, moving quickly, half expecting her to stop him like she had last time they had a fight. Hell, that'd only been the last time they saw each other. She didn't stop him though. She yelled at her and it made him snarl back at her, shaking, unable to control his anger. So he did the most logical thing he could think of right then and flipped at her the finger. Keeping it classy, Rod. And with that display of immaturity, he left.

[Sydney Emerson]

He kept insisting that he did like her and yet, she couldn't quite believe it. "All you do is tell me how annoying and weird I am and all the things you hate about me. How does any of that mean that you like me?" she asked, her brow furrowed as she looked at him in confusion. None of this made any sense to her at all.

"Of course not! I've never cared about appearances before, why would I start now?" she shot back. Of course then he went about calling her mad. "Oh yes, insulting me is definitely the way to make everything better," she said with a roll of her eyes. She didn't want to fight with him, but he was making it so hard not to. How was she supposed to deal with him when he kept acting like this?

"I don't freaking know!" she shouted back. "If i knew, I wouldn't be asking!" How did he not understand yet that she had no idea how any of this stuff worked. "No you're not!" she protested. "You can't say that you like me while you're insulting me and you can't say that you do care when you say that you want to go be with other girls because I'm not good enough for you!" Of course by now she had forgotten the last reason had come from her own mind. "Both things can't be true!"

Just like that then, he was walking away. So much for caring. For liking her. Whatever the hell that meant. So it had all just been a line of bullshit, hadn't it? Rod turned around then and for a moment, she dared to hope she was wrong. That he was going to say he'd been wrong. That he was going to say something that would make all of this alight again. Instead, he flipped her his middle finger - a gesture that she knew was meant to be quite insulting. Sydney just shook her head, blinking away the tears that had begun to form there. What an ass.

"Fine, be that way! Real mature! Asshole!" she shouted after him, partially because she needed to have the last word and mostly because if she kept talking... maybe this wouldn't be over. But it seemed that wasn't enough. Just like that he was gone and she was left alone, feeling more lost than ever.