BAD APPLE

@bcdapp1es

he was staring again, because of course he was. orion always felt his gaze as a perpetual weight against the nape of her neck. a heavy and localized heat that did not merely brush against her exposed flesh, but seemed to permeate beneath the dermal layer, saturating every inner inch of her being with a terrifying, invasive familiarity. it was a relentless, inescapable atmospheric pressure that had descended upon the room the moment he crossed the threshold of marcus’s home. though, in the quiet honesty of her own mind, she knew that the ghost of that pressure lingered in her periphery even when he was nowhere in the vicinity.

she had arrived hours earlier, driven by her compulsive necessity to render herself useful. she drifted through the kitchen like a morose little specter, trailing in marcus’s wake with a devotion that bordered on the monastic. there was a desperate, hushed comfort in this proximity; and she was the ever doting acolyte seeking the silent validation of a mentor who doubled as her solitary anchor. she had even managed a strained, surprisingly diplomatic rapport with valentina. there was a strange, shared frequency in their mutual grumpiness that allowed for a civil, if jagged, conversation.

orion had been under no illusions regarding the guest list. whether or not this gathering served as a formal collision of the auto shop and the swept away crew, julian was an inevitability. a fixture of her social orbit she could neither eclipse nor ignore. his presence, punctuated by that dark, piercing stare, was not an unexpected intrusion, nor were the physiological consequences of his cocky, pestering persistence. she had long ago mapped the territory of just how his attention agitated her spirit, and the way it ignited a clandestine fever in her blood; even if she systematically denied those feelings a seat at the table of her conscious thought.

watching him now, it was the first time she was seeing the sharp edges of his personality soften into a playful, magnetic charm amongst his peers. but now, she found her usual defenses failing to gain purchase. for months, she had clung to the word tolerable as if it were a shield, a way to categorize him that kept her heart safely barricaded behind a wall of disdain. and she had persisted in performing that ritual of forced hatred, nurturing it like a dying flame. but as she caught his eye across the crowded room, his expression dark, unshielded, and maddeningly certain. she could no longer claim to merely endure him.

the bitter architecture of her false loathing had eroded, leaving behind a terrifyingly smooth surface of awareness. and the thin veneer of her indifference had been stripped away, exposing a truth she could no longer suppress; she didn't just tolerate him, and perhaps the word hate had always been a misnomer for this specific brand of suffering. instead, she was beginning to crave the very intensity she had spent so long trying to extinguish. not in some safe, diluted portion, but in its most absolute, overwhelming, and full measure.

"i’ll take the plates to the sink," she abruptly announced, the words cutting sharply through the air mid conversation. a dialogue in which she hadn't even been a participant, but rather a silent, brooding witness. it was probably a transparent maneuver to him, a desperate excuse to sever the invisible tether of the staring contest they were locked in. and to escape the steady, intoxicating rise of heat that his unwavering focus was eliciting from the very marrow of her bones. she needed a breather to gather the scattered fragments of her composure. with her pulse hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs, she sought the sanctuary of the kitchen.

steading her breathing, or at least attempting to regulate the frantic rhythm of her heart, orion carefully lowered the stack into sink. the sound of approaching footsteps immediately triggering her defensive instincts, an excuse perched precariously on her tongue, ready to be deployed as a shield. "i said I had it, don't worry..." she began in a low murmur intended for marcus or perhaps valentina. but the words trailed off into the damp air of the kitchen, dying in her throat as she registered the sudden, sharp escalation in body heat that accompanied the presence now looming behind her. it was a caloric shift that felt intimate and invasive, a familiar warmth that seemed to pull at the very fabric of her resolve. she didn't have to turn around; the specific gravity of julian standing there was written into the very atmosphere of the room. but she kept her back to him, her hands still gripping the edge of the basin as if it were the only thing keeping her upright, and forced a tone of cold, practiced indifference.

"do you need something?" she asked, though the question felt hollow and thin, a paper thin barrier against the absolute intensity of the man she had spent the entire evening trying, and failing, to ignore.

julian was familiar with the concept of soulmates. a person, a mate, a companionate soul which by some cosmic design recognised your own, all from a simple glance across space and time as this giant floating rock orbited further toward a dying star. and against his better judgement, there had been a time in his life in which he'd believed in soulmates. in which he believed beyond the trivial and abstract elements of such a concept. a time in his life in which he believed to have found his soulmate. but the fragility underpinning julian's theory became glaringly obvious at several pivotal moments throughout his past relationship. all of which pressurised over time, converging until the relationship inevitably reached the destruction of their own personal supernova.

the illusion of a soul tie between them dissolved faster than it had formed. rendering the remnants of his relationship exposed for what it had truly been; an artificial love connection. smoke and mirrors projected upon the psyche and spurred by raging hormones and an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex. julian had taken the death of this relationship to confirm he was in fact, doomed by the narrative. cursed to suffer alone like the fragmented, desecrated soul he was.

despite the deadly end, he still found it a bitter pill to swallow. as an innate characteristic, julian has always struggled to admit that he was wrong. a quality his grandmother often attributed to placements in his astrological chart, namely his capricorn sun. although, jules had struggled to conceptualise her attempted matriarchal wisdom at the time — subconsciously she had given him a framework that he would, in due time, use to better understand himself and the world around him. therefore, julian knew intimately that he was incredibly stubborn, judgemental, and an ambitious ergophile with an understated need for controlled chaos. who at times, was prone to a certain level of overt cockiness and emotional distance that portrayed itself as a total lack of compassion to anyone who didn't know any better.

perhaps, such a deeply introspective apprehension of his own constitution was the exact reason julian saw orion for exactly who she was, and the way her essence was not too dissimilar from his own. she too was stubborn, judgemental, obviously dedicated to her craft, and all too confident for her own good. even if she preferred to masquerade such a virtue beneath the veneer of self-assuredness — it wasn't actually all that different. in reality, they both used confidence as a crutch. a mechanism by which you presented a finely tuned version of the self, one that told everyone exactly who you were and how little you needed anyone around. then, all you to do was wait as the predicted outcome always came to fruition. self inflicted loneliness.

orion had done as she always did, presented a version of herself to julian, only this time it appeared his version of her came complete with added self defences. a lethal, poisonous tongue, a defiant and unwavering scowl and searing apathy — but orion had miscalculated. she hadn't anticipated that anyone, let alone julian, might actually be masochistic enough, in his own way, to risk being stung, cut and pricked by the garden of thorns she had transformed herself into, just to see what might be hiding underneath. orion hadn't anticipated the resilient and tenacious nature of his character. to him, anything as beautiful as orion was always worth the pain.

they had been engaging in this exact kind of casual confrontation, such as this evening, long enough for julian to predict the patterns of her elusive stare, and the way a soft quiver of her lips betrayed her icy surveil each and every time. although the man was perceptive enough to clock the undeniable progress made, as he could practically count the chinks in her continuously deteriorating armour; julian remained unwavering. he just couldn't ignore the axiomatic gravity of how he felt about orion, and certainly not when in proximity to her.

her move to stack the plates and clean up was self-explanatory. having been locked on to her all night, even when displaying such a playfully spirited demeanour, julian saw the cogs turn in her pretty head. he'd also long already detected the surge of fervor manifest between them over the course of the night, intangible but predictable. julian felt her absence as orion wandered away from the group and inside marcus's home. the man maintained a straight face, all the while the invisible thread which had knotted itself around the visceral beating of his heart brutally wrenched in her direction. julian then rose from his position to silently and without much concern for those around him who remained in deep conversation, to follow in orion's footsteps.

jules was capable of navigating his way around the home he'd grown familiar with long before orion's arrival in pinehaven. he took long strides and skipped steps on the way inside. the closer julian got, the less he felt such a violent constriction of his most vital internal organ. standing behind orion at a distance that he knew would have been too close for her, and yet for him was not close enough, he watched the back of her head and felt the beating of his heart finally wane. it eased back into the familiar rhythmic pulse of her name — answering her question before the words ever even left her lips.

once she had then posed the question, julian gave a contemplative look. his dark gaze narrowed at the crown of her head and he hummed, "hm." his lips pursed inward while sharp canines pressed into soft flesh. this look gave him room for pause, not only was the obvious answer to her query on the tip of his tongue, but it was coursing through his veins. you. orion fucking kish. julian drew in a sharp and sudden inhale, he couldn't say the quiet part out loud, not yet anyway. "why don't you define something... maybe then i'll tell you how much i need it."

predictably, juniper offered no more than an upturn of her nose and dismissive hmph towards the twist of marcus's features and his aversion to the beverage that complimented almost all of her meals. ever haughty in her convictions, this truly did feel like a diametric clash over something as mundane as choice of beverage, but had almost become an inside joke between the pair as opposed to any grounds for real ire.

she enjoyed the banter and the provoking, a sickly sweet smile directed at marcus as she lifted her tea to her lips. "marcus," she purred, her tone deceptively gentle, masking the mocking beneath that was anything but dulcet. "i will not pay reverence to affronts of nature, especially not schematically. invented, discovered, conjured out of thin air, i couldn't care less." and the first slurp of tea a defiant act and the very unladylike.

despite her persistent bait and tease, juniper was grateful that marcus continued to visit her. even if the latent agoraphobic tendencies that had confined her to her property line for the majority of her life had now stretched to encompass the town lines, she found her greatest solace within the familiar embrace of her home. safest from that ever ominous ambivalent force she conjured. and thus, marcus's willingness to come to her as opposed to enticing her elsewhere was a relief.

"you step foot in this house with one and I'll smite you where you stand, and hang your french press in the garden as a effigy of your slight. i've been needing a new bird feeder anyhow…"

something marcus had noticed during his time spent with junie over their afternoon rendezvous' was that stepping into juniper's house always felt, in ways, like stepping into another realm or universe. one which existed on a plane of existence parallel to the pinehaven he knew and loved, but tucked away here in this little corner of the town was where marcus came to find a certain kind of respite. one which offered him a reprieve from existing solely in his own mind, and instead stealing away moments in her very own safe haven. in this way, he understood why she stowed herself away most of the time.

marcus sometimes found himself, usually distracted by the many things to look at in her cottage, contemplating the ways in which he could see the inner workings of junie's mind in her own home. the dark whimsy of her aesthetics. the way every room felt like it could be its own library. even the way the neatly overgrown garden of flora surrounding her home mimicked the lush abundance of her dark curls. there was obviously, a method to the madness of her contained chaos and marcus was grateful for the opportunity to peak inside. even if that meant enduring the fucking tea she served him.

location: vivi & leo's place @bcdapp1es

the silence eased into the creaky bones of her apartment and slowly seeped beneath the soft pastel green wallpaper that curled at the creases. this isn't weird. we're adults. friends who have real lives and jobs which an arguement that's totally cool and nonchalant. except, i still have a a road map of your body imprinted in her my mind and the taste of her lips lingering on the tip of my tongue.. vivienne leaned into the sink, the water running between her open fingers, to drown out the daft maladaptive daydreams that seemed to pour over her whenever she left the comfort of their new routine. she refused to skip any farther into this year as the love lorn puppy or heartbroken sap. the cool, chill, aloof woman needed to step up to the goddamn plate before she exploded in a heap of heart shaped confetti.

"dinner should be ready in a little bit," she tapped out each word as she forced the faucet to run dry. "i figured that you would be hungry after your shift. i made pizza. it's not frozen, i promise, i made some dough before i left for the bakery earlier today. it's totally cool if you're in the mood but if you are -- well you're welcome to it." shut up vivi.

"how was your day?"

leo had made it nearly two whole months at the motel since his move to pinehaven. nearly two months of awful tv dinners, stale vending machine snacks, a leaky shower head with the most abysmal water pressure he'd ever experienced, and the most depressing, lumpy mattress in all existence. he was sure it would glow from the bodily fluids of god knows who under the illume of an ultraviolet lamp given the opportunity. the method he'd chosen to deal with the discomfort of his living arrangements had been to put it all out of sight and out of mind. instead, leo focussed on working hard at the hospital. staying positive about the fact that the motel was temporary, and ever since that night at the masquerade ball, vivienne chen.

from the day they met, vivienne had been the buoy which kept him afloat; and without her, leo had nearly met his fate, drowning in the depths of of his own mind. with vivi in his life again, despite any residual awkwardness which persisted between them, no longer did the man find himself having to exert so much mental energy on merely surviving each day. now they were texting on a regular basis, and leo had even reactivated his instagram account with sole purpose of being able to keep up with her. these were more than just little ways to connect with vivi, they were ways he could stay satiated with daily doses of her and the vital serotonin she brought him.

when vivienne had posed the question of kinda, sorta, but not really moving in with her, or more accurately staying on her couch until he was able to find somewhere better suited, leo would have been out of his mind to turn the offer down. this was his chance to get out of that god awful motel, but more than that, playing house with her was the ultimate life support needed to stabilise his brain chemistry once and for all. and the best way to start was with the smell of the freshly cooked, homemade pizza, as it captivated his senses on his way back to vivi in the kitchen.

leo had exchanged his hospital scrubs for comfortable sweats and his curls were still damp from the post shift shower. finally, sweet sweet water pressure. although, there had been zero expectation on vivi to make dinner with him in mind. like a stray dog she'd taken in from the cold — leo was just happy to be here. "oh wow, no pizza sounds amazing! i'd love that, thank you. i appreciate you going to all the trouble." he affirmed her with a nod and a half smile which awkwardly lingered at the corners of his mouth. "uh yeah, i just had work which was... good. i mean it's usually smooth sailing on the day shift so nothing too bloody and or gorey to report back."

vee ✉︎ j.jhaveri: vada is typing vee ✉︎ j.jhaveri: if i could legally gps tag him, believe me, i would. vee ✉︎ j.jhaveri: i’m not suggesting you’re his keeper, i'm inferring that as friends you’re the most logical lead. vee ✉︎ j.jhaveri: since i refuse to tolerate this blatant disregard for my schedule, you are officially his replacement vee ✉︎ j.jhaveri: where are you? give me a coordinate, not a vague description.