rhode - d4? [wip!]

this is a wip so i just get to ramble right ~~

WELL THEN

"Why do you always fall for the bitchy ones?" asks a quiet, slightly melancholy voice behind him.

He jumps before he matches the voice to a familiar face and relaxes. "I don't know," he sighs.

"Me neither," concedes his on-and-off best friend Prayer, and sits down beside him.

"How do you always know when to find me?" he asks her.

"I don't know, really. I just get this strange twisting feeling in my gut sometimes, and then I think to myself, 'oh, silly Rhode must have broken that fool heart of his again'. And so I head down to the beach because I'm always right."

He leans against her, almost snuggling. "I'm glad you're here, though."

"Yup," says Prayer, wrapping her arms around him, and waiting.

She only has to wait for maybe half an hour. "She was beautiful," he murmurs, partly to her and partly to himself and partly to no-one.

"Absolutely," agrees Prayer.

"She had a delicate smile and stars in her eyes and hair like the night."

"Did you tell her that?"

"She called me a flake with nothing but pretty words--I was a fantastic lay, but now she's going to get married and she wants a future."

"You can fish?"

A snort from Rhode, and a little smile from Prayer. "I guess not. I suppose she wanted a future." She shrugs. "She sounds like a bit of a bitch, Rhode. You are my fair flower-child. You can do better."

"Yes, Mother," says Rhode, and gets his arm punched lightly.

"I am not your mother," she chides. "Or I would've made sure that you and your fool heart would have settled down one way or another." With a shrug, she says, "I guess I don't love you enough to do that."

"Prayer, you're the best best friend I've ever had," Rhode tells her from where he's resting in her tanned arms. "I wish you could just..."

Prayer's eyes widen for just a fraction of a second before she smothers her reaction--Rhode notices this, but it doesn't really hurt. Too much. She shakes her head at him. "I'm sorry, flower, but I'm a wanderer. I am here for your heartbreaks and sometimes your birthdays, but nothing else."

Now that, that's the part that hurts Rhode most. The fact that even if he settles down, Prayer won't be there to coax and cajole him through whatever jitters he may have, and laugh with him beside fireplaces on cold winter's days. The fact that no matter how good of a best friend Prayer is when she's there, she can't be there all the time.