Big Salmon Lake Ordinary people, who make themselves extraordinary

wc:465

To be fair, had Wraen offered to be the sort of friend who blindly sympathized with their miserable, self-pitying friend and took them out on a bender, he would have definitely ordered all of the girly drinks off the menu before insisting that they spend the rest of the night singing heartbreak songs at a dingy karaoke bar before passing out in a cab on the ride home. And who wouldn't want to be a part of that?!

Regardless, while it might have been what Bronco wanted, it probably wasn't what he actually needed, and fortunately for him, Wraen usually seemed to know which role to step into, and when she should do it. Unfortunately, he was not prepared just yet to be told to toughen up, and to admit that his problems weren't as overwhelming as he felt they were. Considering the fact that she didn't even know what'd happened, he felt it was a bit unfair of her to assume that his problems were, in fact, capable of being solved simply by talking about them. This wasn't the first time his heart had been broken- but he'd learned by this point that the more his heart got broken, the more it hurt.

He bristled slightly at the word 'coward,' though, and though it was Wraen who spoke it was Niamh whose voice he heard, and he felt a pang of shame. He didn't want to be a coward and he felt himself resenting Wraen a tiny bit for even calling him that. It felt like a betrayal; she was the one who accepted the fact that he didn't want to always be a big, strong fighter. She was the one who was supposed to allow him to be soft, gentle and caring. To hear her imply that he might be a coward wounded him. Like a stern nanny, she pulled away and straightened up, prompting him to answer her the way one might ask a child to fess up to a lie they'd told. But Bronco wasn't a child.

She referenced some sort of fairy tale and he rolled his eyes. “This isn't one of your stories, Wraen, stop....Treating me like I'm just a kid. I'm not.” Yes, one moment he had been more or less curled up at her feet the way a child might- but that was simply how he showed his affection. When he cared, he was all in, and didn't care how silly he might've looked. He was completely comfortable being used as a body pillow or a punchbag, if it made someone else feel better. He gritted his teeth together, and the betrayal showed in his gaze, though when he spoke, his voice was faint-

“And I'm not a coward.”

-and tinted with a hint of denial.