Silence and Sound

At first, Echo thinks that her mind is playing tricks on her. The feeling of being alone is getting to her and messing with her. This isn’t real. It can’t be. This is like a scene out of a manga or movie or just anything like that. This doesn’t happen in real life. Any second now, he’s going to vanish, and she’ll be alone for good. The only problem with that thinking style is that he doesn’t disappear.
“Are you alright?” Niall asks, and unknown to her, his voice is laced with worry.
Brown eyes widen for a second in realization that this moment in her life is like some kind of romantic fictional story. Then once she takes it in, she finds herself putting her head down and basically curling in on herself. Taking that as an answer, Niall sits down on the bench next to her. He isn’t really sure what to do since he doesn’t know her all that well. The blond ends up just watching her and waiting for her to do or say anything. During this time, he almost thinks that she’s going to cry, but no tears form. Echo looks like she’s getting close to the verge of letting it out, but she never falls off the cliff. She holds it all in. Niall isn’t sure what to think about it. Coral told him about her wall, but it appears that it might even be taller than Echo’s friend had thought. He wishes that he could get into that pretty little head of her’s, but he doesn’t have the power to knock a hole through the brick and cement. He’s going to have to get acquainted with the guards before he will be allowed inside the city. Of course it will take befriending before he can even step foot inside the castle, but it’s worth a try.
The two of them sit there for a couple of minutes, but to them, it feels a lot longer. Finally, Echo turns to face him and finds him leaning against the back of the bench and looking up at the sky. The urge to draw him starts to creep into her fingers, but she fights it back because not only does she not have her sketchbook, but this isn’t the time or place for that kind of thing. Then Echo notices a bag at his feet. It’s sky blue with rainbow tissue paper. Her eyebrow raises, which he doesn’t notice until he turns to face her again.
“What?” he questions.
“I just now realized you had a bag with you.”
Niall looks down. “Oh, I almost forgot. I got this for you.” He hands it to her. “You didn’t really look like you wanted to go out with me, so I thought that I’d make it slightly better by getting you something.”
Echo pulls the paper out and finds some pencils and a rather nice looking sketchbook. In order to examine it more, she takes it out. It’s a decent size and bound in what looks like leather. Surely this couldn’t be real leather, but the longer she looks at it, the more it becomes clear that it is. Why would he go to the trouble to get her such a nice gift? If he wanted to make it easier on her, he could have just gotten her a simple little book to draw in.
“You really didn’t have to.”
Niall shrugs. “I wanted to. So, do you want to talk about what happened? Coral didn’t tell me much.”
“You talked to Coral?”
“Yeah, she came and told me that you two got into a fight and that she dropped you off here. I tried asking her what happened, but she kept saying how dense you were and stuff like that. She said that I should come over here to see how you were and then left.”
“She basically kept pushing that this was a date and going was for my own good even if I didn’t want to go.”
“I figured you weren’t going to see it as one.”
“Did you?”
“I wanted to.”
Echo kind of feels bad for the guy. It’s a strange feeling that she isn’t used to, but it’s there, and it doesn’t seem to be going away. “I’m sorry about the ‘date’ being ruined.”
“It’s not ruined. We could always do something else.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Is there anything you want to do?”
Echo starts to think about it, and of course, this causes that itch to creep back into her hands. “Would you mind if I drew you? Just a quick sketch of how you were positioned.”
“Go ahead. We just have to make sure that we don’t stay here too long. There’s no one on the street right now, but some people might come, and I don’t think you want your picture being taken.”
That’s right. No one knows who Echo really is, but everyone certainly knows who Niall is. “I’ll go as fast as I can.”
The blond gives Echo a smile before he goes back to the way that he was. The younger of the two opens the gifts and gets to work. Speed drawing comes quite in handy as Echo puts it to use. Yes, the image isn’t as good as what it could be, but it’s good enough for her to not be embarrassed when she calls it her own. Lead meets paper as it creates the outline of the face and body before moving on to turning the skeleton into the boy sitting next to her. So far, everything is going alright.
She’s putting the details into the clothing when Niall suddenly moves which causes her to stop what she’s doing. Echo turns to see what he’s looking at and finds two giggling teenage girls with phones in their hands. Now knowing what’s going on, she puts the sketchbook and pencils back into the bag and then stands up. With a slight nod from Niall, she understands what to do. They run. The two of them really don’t need to be running as fast as what they are, but Echo is starting to feel rather excited about all of this. She’s not sure if Niall feels the same thing, but she knows he’s doing just fine when during the middle of this, he takes ahold of her hand. Normally the brunette wouldn’t stand for this, but right now, it fits the moment perfectly. Echo starts to lead the two of them when they near her place. She leads them to the door, and then they both go inside. The brunette makes sure to look outside to see if they followed them. At first she doesn’t see them, but then she does notice a couple of people looking around. Luckily they didn’t see what building they entered. With a sigh of relief, Echo starts walking over to the door to her flat. Niall follows, but he doesn’t go in. She walks over to her couch and turns around to face him. That’s when she realizes that he’s still standing right outside. Echo goes over to him.
“You can come in. I’m sure that they’ll be out there for awhile, and I don’t mind.”
As if he was simply waiting to hear those words, he enters and shuts the door behind him. The younger goes back over to the couch and is followed this time by the blond, who sits down right next to her yet again. His blue eyes travel around the room as he takes it all in. He didn’t really know what to expect when it came to her living conditions, but this is probably what he would have come up with.
“So what are we going to do?” Niall asks.
“I don’t really know.” What could the do? The only person that has actually ever come over is Coral, and even for her, it’s not that much. When it comes to her friend, well ‘friend’ if everything is alright between the two of them, coming over, they would just sit there and watch anime, and Echo doesn’t take Niall for an anime type of guy. Well, she doesn’t take him for the type of guy to like the same anime that she does. She has to think about this. What is something that they both could have fun with? Then she finally thinks of something. “I’ve been meeting to make the stains on my clothes look deliberate. Do you want to help me with that?”
“Sure.”
“Alright, I’m going to go and get my clothes and paint. Why don’t you get the papers from under the sink and set them out on the kitchen floor.”
Echo gets up and leaves for her bedroom as Niall goes over to do what he was told. There is a quite a selection that she can choose from. Although one thing is for certain, and that is that she needs to change clothes. She grabs one of the stained outfits which consists of a green button-up shirt that has different colored splatters and skinny jeans that are worn at the knees and have a large blue spot on the bottom right left from the time the bottle fell on her. Confident that Niall is going to stay in the kitchen like he was told, Echo goes ahead and changes in her room. With that done, she starts to grab as many clothes as her arms can carry and then head back out to the kitchen area. She sets them down by Niall and then realizes that he might get paint on his clothes. Does she have anything that he could wear? Wait. Doesn’t she have... That’s right. She still has them.
“Hold on one moment.”
The brunette goes back into her bedroom and opens the cardboard box that she keeps in the back of the closet. Inside are the clothes that she wore when she painted at her grandparents’. They didn’t want her getting her clothes all dirty, so her grandfather would give her a pair of his old clothes. A couple of those sets are still in here and covered in paint. The clothes were always big on her, but they should be fine on Niall. She takes out a white T-shirt with yellow stains and a pair of faded out jeans that have green paint speckles. With those in hand, she goes back out and hands them to him.
“What are these for?”
“I use to wear my grandfather’s old clothes when I painted at their house. These should fit you, and that way you won’t get any paint on your clothes.”
“Thanks.”
While Niall goes to get changed, Echo grabs a couple bottles of paint and a sheet of thick plastic to use as a place to put the paint. She also grabs a couple of paint brushes in different sizes. The blond comes back out and sets his clothing on the couch as he walks over to her. Niall sits down in front of her, and Echo grabs a pair of jeans to splatter paint on. Then she gives Niall one of her shirts to do it to. The two of them pick out the color that they want to use. Blue cover the jeans, so she grabs the same color along with a slightly lighter blue. An uneven pattern of yellow resides on the white shirt that Niall is in charge of, so he grabs a similar yellow, a more pale yellow, and then an orange. Paint is poured onto the plastic sheet, and then the two of them get to work.
It’s pretty silent between the two of them, but neither of them are complaining. Echo gets through about four articles of clothing while Niall finishes his third. When he gets to the fourth which needs green paint, he swipes his finger instead of the brush. Echo doesn’t notice this since she’s so focused, but the focus is broken when she feels the coldness of wet paint touch her nose. She looks up in surprise to find a laughing blond. Normally this would probably piss her off, but it doesn’t. Actually she puts her hand in the purple paint and touches his cheek. A devilish smirk appears on his face. Well, Echo thinks it’s the most devilish his face could get considering that it’s rather adorable. A paint war starts up. They put paint on their hands and start to touch the other and dodge when they try touching them. Echo hasn’t had this much fun in a long time.
With all of the laughter and movement, Echo loses control and ends up clumsily falling into Niall, who just happens to be close enough to catch her. Giggles still escape her mouth as this happens, but when she looks at Niall, she notices that he stopped and is just looking at her. A feeling sweeps the room. Echo doesn’t really know what it is since she’s never felt it before. It’s close to being nervous though. Actually, if she had more time to think about it, she would put this with wonder and nervousness. The scene seems almost too familiar to her because of all the manga she has started to read when Niall starts to lean in. Thoughts race through her head as she tries to put everything together before it’s too late. Her mind goes quick enough, and she finds herself putting her hand on his chest to stop him from continuing. Niall quickly goes back to where they were and apologizes.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.” For some reason, she still feels calm around him? Comfortable? She’s not really sure, but it’s a nice feel.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m alright. Are you... Are you going to try that again?”
Niall pauses. “To tell you the truth, I want to. I don’t want to give up.”
The words that then fall from Echo’s mouth surprise her. “I’m OK with that.”

Notes

I literally was going to wait on this, but I just couldn't.
Things are starting to get a bit more interesting. It's still not a romance, but at least Niall is getting closer to being "acquainted with the guards".
Sorry 'bout updating this a later than a week. Although I actually have a legit excuse this time, and that is that finals are going on right now, so I've been trying to not write, so I can study.
Anyway, I hoped ya liked it!