chassé en avant

Devan doesn’t know about anything. She doesn’t know about Julian. She doesn’t know about Anna. She doesn’t know about Emma. Pangs started in her chest the moment she started thinking of it all, but she pushed it away in favour of focusing on this current whatever-it-is - conversation? Argument? An emotional beat-down? Megan didn’t know. All she knew was that she wanted her best friend back. Needed her best friend back.

"Yeah, no shit, I deserve better than that, but apparently no one other than me has figured that out yet. Go figure."

She then closed her eyes for a moment, hoping that her empath would be able to read something, anything, that could help her through this conversation - and all she could read was hurt. Not anger. Hurt. And she started to feel it, herself. Megan swallowed and looked up, unable to meet Dev - Devan's eyes. 

"I, uhm - tried to write you," she managed to say timidly, "It’s just…I’m - "

Goddamnit, Frasier. Get it the fuck together.

She paused, though, when her old friend seemed to find her backbone. 

I needed this.

Megan sits on the floor of her living room, looking around her apartment. She had leased it to a fellow student for the year that she was gone, and now, she was back - and she feels about as hollow as ever. She stands and walks over to the window, tucking a strand of her now-red hair behind one ear, and observes the campus that she once loved. 

She could contact people and say she’s back, yes, but then what? Would she catch them up on how her trip was? How gorgeous Italy is this time of year? And ignore the catalyst of her leaving Hailgrove? Megan doesn’t know. She isn’t entirely sure if she even cares.

Devan. Her name had crossed Megan’s mind a few times while she was away, but Megan has no idea where Devan is - in fact, Megan doesn’t even know if she’s alive. But Devan is resilient. Devan is resourceful. She’s alive. 

She’s also the only one I have left. 

Megan goes and rummages through her bag, pulling out her phone - a new phone with a new number that she had bought right after leaving Hailgrove - and looks through her contacts to find Devan’s name. 

She’s hesitant - if Devan’s alive (she’s alive), she won’t be happy with Megan, but Megan hasn’t had any connections with anyone for the past year. Loneliness is a numbed pain that she’s learned to ignore over the time she was gone, but being in such a familiar place, a place she used to be able to call “home” with people that she could call “home” - suddenly, the loneliness becomes unbearable. 

Once she texts Devan, it’s clear that Devan isn’t happy, but she’s alive. Anna Novotny didn’t get to Devan. Relief and anxiety simultaneously fill her stomach, and she half considers running away again, but she swallows the slight lump in her throat and takes the walk to Devan’s apartment, looking straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge any familiar place - she refuses to acknowledge the cafe Megan and Julian would frequent, refuses to acknowledge the pub Megan and Devan would go to and get shitfaced and dance, refuses to acknowledge the bench her and Emma sat on at 3 in the morning where Emma first told her she loved Megan, and refuses the acknowledge the existence and memory of the one person who caused all of this. Now is not the time.

A boy with black hair happens to be leaving Devan’s building as Megan arrives, and he holds the door open for her. She smiles and says a polite “thank you” and walks in, looking back to make sure that he isn’t watching her, and that he’s walking in the other direction. (She’s safer at Hailgrove, but that doesn’t mean she’s safe.)

She'd never felt lonely though. There had always always someone for her to text or call or drop in on, someone to pull her out of her thoughts when they got too harrowing or too invasive. All of a sudden, though, it seemed like there was no one. Sienna was out of the question, and Meg had disappeared without so much as a "k bye" text. Sam had Tay and, as annoying as it was, Dev didn't want to get in the way of her best friend's happiness, so she kept her distance. She liked being alone, but hated being lonely.

It wasn't rare for her phone to light up randomly, unsaved numbers asking what she was doing or where she was with some semblance of a flirty connotation behind the messages. When she glanced over at her phone from where she lay on her bed, the message caught her eye.

Hi, Dev. It's Megan.

Was she hallucinating? Was she so subconsciously desperate for a familiar face's company that she'd imagined her once-friend texting her? She answered back quickly--much faster than she usually answered any other unlisted number, and after what felt like mere seconds, she was staring up at the door to her room where Megan stood.

She looks down at Devan, and raises an eyebrow. Everything about this night is really just a huge mess to Lauren—she wouldn’t be able to tell this story to anyone properly, if they asked. How would one be able to say, ‘I was attacked by a bunch of pervs, and then me and an acquaintance fought them off, got drinks, and relentlessly hit on each other while I got drunk with a bad concussion’, and not be seen as a total maniac?

She takes Lauren's hand and pulls her down on top of her. Dev might start feeling guilty if she lets her thoughts wander, but she won't let that happen because she's good at this. She knows it. She's good at making others feel good, especially when she isn't feeling... the best. "If you didn't want to watch a movie, you could've just said so, Lauren."

She shuts Devan’s door behind her and walks in—her room smells vaguely of perfume (big surprise there), and it’s in a bit of a state; not the kind of messy that all university students are subject to when it comes to dorm rooms—the kind of messy where it looks like she tried to clean it, but gave up halfway because of…something.

There’s a wall of photos, and Lauren glances over at them, immediately recognizing the face of Megan Frasier—Devan’s got her arm around her in the photo, and they’re both very obviously drunk, a red solo cup in each of their hands. Frasier’s pressing a kiss to Devan’s cheek, and Devan looks a lot younger in that photo than she does right now. Lauren checks the timestamp to see that it was only a few weeks ago.

She knows the basics of the story from Novotny’s report, but she’s only allowed pretending like she knows what everyone else ‘knows’—Frasier went off the rails after her best friend died, and she left the state.

Frasier was powered. Lauren knows this because she’s got a file on her, labelled as more or less ‘untouchable’ by Novotny herself. If Frasier is powered, then…

Then again, she doesn’t really care.

"Huh?" She spins around at Lauren’s question, her eye catching that picture of Megan that she had planned on taking down after she found out her friend was gone. "Oh. Yeah, I do." Dev hasn’t really come to terms with it yet, the abruptness of it all—the way Megan didn’t even say goodbye, not even a text from her friend, it hurt. It hurts.

Well, it’s not like the real intention was a movie in the first place— 

Lauren, no. 

She’s really fucking hot.

Lauren, no. 

What about Rachelle?

What about her?

Don’t do it.

Too bad.

"A movie. Great." She beckons to the bartender, who has been giving them free drinks all night, with a finger and says, "Another four tequila shots, handsome.Two for her, two for me, please." She adds a lilt to her voice and reaches over to place a hand on his forearm, smirking. "And thank you."

He nods and quickly pours them the shots, and once she’s cleared both of them, Lauren gestures to Devan. 

She nods at Lauren and slides off the stool less-than-gracefully, hooking her arm around her... friend's(?) in another swift-yet-clumsy movement before she throws a wink over her shoulder at Max.

(She doesn’t want to know, but drinking buddy rules says she has to ask.) 

She’s about to ask ‘What’s up with you?’ but to her relief, Devan’s asking her a question instead, and Lauren doesn’t have to subject herself to listening to something that she probably won’t really care about. 

She's at least kind of tipsy and Lauren is kind of hot, so Dev kind of has an idea of what she wants to do with the rest of her night. "Definitely entertaining," she nods, props her head up on the palm of her hand. "It could involve more alcohol if you wanted." 

This is all still very strange—Lauren still has no idea who Devan Channing is, and where she came from, or why she’s so good at fighting, but she’s still too dazed to be able to care enough, and Devan Channing is extremely attractive, and if Lauren gets drunk enough…

"Often enough" means Dev reaches for the bottle she keeps in her room anytime her mind travels to Sienna, Megan, or to her brother. She looks down at her hands, then shakes her head. "Often enough" means she needs another drink in her hand as soon as possible, and she whisks around to call Max over. "Another rum and coke, Max."

She watches Devan effortlessly turn on the charm with the semi-attractive bartender there, the bartender furiously nodding and almost tripping over his own feet to get them their drinks. Devan doesn’t even seem phased. Hot. 

It's nice, she thinks, to have someone to sit at a bar and bullshit with again. Though the memories of Megan laughing so hard she almost falls off the stool, or turning as red as she possibly could after knocking over her drink somewhat haunt her and her smile falters only a bit. "Uh, I used to do karate when I was a kid," she teases, then shakes her head. "Seriously, though, I've done a little training. Basic self-defense stuff. A little knife work. Nothing crazy."

She furrows her brow with Channing asks her for drinks. They’ve just been attacked by a group of men, and Channing is acting like nothing happened and doing this flirtatious hair-flip thing—

Is this girl hitting on me? 

Lauren hesitates, her head still not quite right. She’s not entirely sure how she got from meeting up with one of the hunter goons to being faced by some near-unrealistically attractive blonde girl asking her for drinks. “I was supposed to meet up with a friend before those guys…”

Lauren. Awkward talk with one of the idiot hunters that she’s supposed to give a game plan to, or drinks with a hot girl? 

Training for being a hunter never covered making that decision.

She takes Lauren's hand--loosely, but just tight enough to hold onto--and pulls her across the street. Just the right amount of people litter the bar, and Dev goes right up to the counter with a smirk. It's good that she knows the guy tending because it means more free drinks than paid.

"Max," she slides onto one of the barstools and rests her elbow on the counter, propping her head up on her hand. "I need two..." She looks over at Lauren, then turns back to Max. "Two rum and cokes. Pretty please." It's more fun than she'd like to admit to watch her guy friends fall over themselves to get a smile out of her, but there hasn't been a time where she's regretted her flirtatious nature.