FUCKIN’ FEARLESS.

✿ INVISIBLEHOWARD: welcome! i’m ems, 23 & my pronouns are she/her. this is an independent, private & selective lexi howard from hbos euphoria! this blog is low to moderate activity that touches on dark themes & may contain nsfw (but will be tagged!) so is strictly 18s and over! 

“You’re here almost as much as I am, @invisiblehoward​,” Arthur can’t blame her though, this bookstore is almost like a second home for him most days. Only a single book stays firm between his hand while he leans against one of the entrances into the cafe. His gaze drops on the book she has open in front of her; could be a fun book, could be a school book, he can’t tell, “Reading for fun or reading for class?” a beat, “Which, can be fun at times, honestly.” 

@invisiblehoward​ sent “so… did you miss me?”

Steve’s hands inch closer as they sit near one another. “Lexi,” he gave her a hint of a smile. “Anyone would be crazy not to miss you.” He wasn’t just feeding the girl a line or saying what he thought she wanted to hear. Robin had told him to be himself, part of being Steve Harrington was that he was romantic, that he actually said what he meant when it came to a girl he liked. “You wouldn’t think that I actually wouldn’t miss you, would you?” 

   Her cheeks immediately redden, eyes casting towards her feet shyly as he spoke. She was just being playful when she spoke first and his answer definitely caught her by surprise. “Oh I’m not sure about that.” Her teeth biting down on her bottom lip. Everybody knew that Steve Harrington was pretty smooth when it came to girls but she hoped that this was different. Her crush on Steve was starting to get a little embarrassing, he made her nervous and slightly giddy. “I thought you’d be too busy to miss me... besides, I was only gone for a few minutes,” her lips turned into a bright smile as she met his eyes finally. “But I missed you too.”

    he’s grown used to  that  kind of  attention ,  he got it back home since  before  he hit puberty;  why  wouldn’t it  be the same here ?   the rest of his beer is knocked back and his  signature  SMIRK  is shot back to lexi while arms raise into a  shrug.    “ that’s the  best part ,  isn’t it ?  “    billy will nod at his own words as eyes look off behind her ,  just  staring  at the crowd ,  mostly all here for the  same thing  as him.  to  FORGET.  a chuckle comes with her words and blue eyes fall back to her with an eye roll.    “ yeah?  you know you’re  right ,  you really looked like you were having the  TIME OF YOUR LIFE  over here. “    his arm will extend out ,  reaching behind lexi for the bottle of alcohol on the counter behind her.  even as the bottle is carefully at his side ,  billy doesn’t remove himself from the girl’s personal space.  instead he just lets his tongue peak out over his lips while looking down to her.    “ you’re  always  gonna  let  yourself be in the background,  huh? “

    her  nose  scrunches  up  at  that.  maybe  it  is  the  best  part  for  most  people,  her  mind  going  to  how  her  sister  and  their  friends  love  to  drink  but  to  lexi  ?  it  leaves  her  anxious  .  she  can’t  control  any  of  her  actions  when  drunk  or  high  and  she  says  things  without  thinking  them  through  first  .  she  cringes  slightly  thinking  about  how  she  asked  cassie  about  hook  ups  at  the  dance  a  few  weeks  ago  .  “  i  don’t  think  getting  drunk  and  being  out  of  control  seems  pretty  great  to  me  .  ”  eyes  narrowing  slightly  as  she  studies  him  carefully.  billy  usually  isn’t  the  type  to  concern  himself  with  someone  like  HER  .  “  well,  i  was  having  a  perfectly  fine  time  before  you  showed  up.  ”  arms  crossing  defensively  over  her  chest  as  she  tries  to  pull  back  ,  the  table  behind  her  digging  into  her  back  now  .  she  wills  herself  to  keep  it  together  ,  not  liking  how  he  is  crowding  her  right  now  .  “  i  don’t  or  want  to  be  the  CENTRE  OF  ATTENTION  .  unlike  you  !  ”

“What were your hobbies?” There was a smile brimming - she listened to him nerd out about stitching together masks by hand for ten minutes, he wanted her to ramble on about what she’d done, “Always a writer?” He couldn’t imagine her dedicating her life to anything but words - she strung things together in a way that he really paid heed to. Words that stuck like glue.

“Was your dad around?” A support system was noticeably absent from his life after his hospitalizations - the massacres, and what remained of his family chose to believe, his sister, absent too. “My dad wasn’t really present, even before…” his mom’s death, and he clears his throat, adjusting in his seat. “I think he thought we’d find the distance cool. We didn’t.” There were fragments he left unsaid, pieces he let Lexi pick up on her own. Not for lack of wanting to share. But he didn’t like how it strained his voice - so he mostly stayed quiet, or left the hard parts unsaid. “He didn’t come see me. After a while, Trish stopped writing too.” His family wanted to move forward, and he remained fixated on the past, revisiting and reburying. “How are you and Cassie now?” His own relationship with his sister remained estranged, “Last I spoke to Trish, she’d gotten married.” He hadn’t received an invitation to the wedding. There was a laugh that didn’t quite reach his eyes, attempt at levity, “Might even have a kid now for all I know.”

    Not many people ask her about herself but when they do, she appreciates it a lot. She has always been the one in the background and she doesn’t often talk about her own interests. “Reading, watching musicals, I also used to love roller skating at the rink in town. I won a trophy once for it but... my dad couldn’t afford to let me keep going,” she tells him with a shrug. Her roller skating days where cut short, just as Cassie’s had been with her ice skating. It had been hard at the time but it gave Lexi other ways to escape, how she always liked to live her imagination after that because it was better than her reality. “Yeah, always. I love making up stories, thinking of lives that are different to my own and also putting down the way I see the world in my own words. I think there is something beautiful about it and it is also a release of so many feelings.” That is the main reason why she writes, having an outlet for her own feelings and exposing herself to the world in a different way.

      His question catches her a little off guard. She is never quite prepared to speak about her dad much, the wound cuts a little deep and her mind wanders to how he is. He isn’t dead or they’d probably know... but it didn’t make this any easier. “Not really. My mom and him used to fight a lot... then he became an addict. Haven’t seen him since he broke in to steal our good china.” Her shoulders shrugging a little. She still feels guilt about that, not having told anyone like her mom who might have stopped him. She has kept it a secret and it had weighed on her for some time. Her head tilting as she listens to him about his dad, a little relieved that she isn’t the only one. “I’m sorry about your dad. Was he closed off with everyone in your family?” Of course, she doesn’t want him to answer if he isn’t comfortable but she knows that sometimes it is good to talk to someone you trust.

There’s a sideways look ; it matches her sideways smile. Mouth all curled and puckered, there’s a knowingness there. Like the way that Lexi always knew when things were different with Rue, without her having to really say a word. Who ate her denials for breakfast and came back, still, soft and lovely and warm and kind. That’s the Lexi she didn’t deserve, god knew, she didn’t deserve her. SHE KNEW ALL THINGS, Lexi, the girl who blinked twice after she’d slipped guiltily from that laundry room and hissed, a sound that still carried above the din of the music there at the party, “You did it, didn’t you?” that nameless thing. That continuity of womanhood that felt oh so alien. Lexi there again, as she looked at her and took her to the bathroom, how they wiped her thighs down and she didn’t say anything, not Lexi, to anybody.

This is them taking new steps together. It isn’t about their teenaged dreams anymore, it was them looking forwards, to growing up. Still a terrifying, but, you know, a little less so when your best friend of 14 YEARS AND COUNTING was right there with you. “Why would I be?” a slow blink, Rue’s dark eyes, hard to read, even now when glancing upwards, pulling at zippers. It’s so small, what he life packs up into, tongue slick along her lower lip, that quiet laugh. “I’m me. And not me at the same time. Like, being on drugs made me a different person. But now I don’t know who I am anymore? I guess that’s okay though. It’s like. An act of becoming. All of this, here, and now. What we go do. That’s me fucking… figuring it out.” she’s still full of starts, stops, fumbling, messes… but.

With her, her, she’s always been better. Their hands together, the both of them faced off against some grand, giant PERHAPS hanging over them like a promise and a threat, all at once. It was fine. It was them. So of course it’d be alright, a sly exchange in that glance of hers, loaded up. “Well duh. I mean. I’ll beat all of them all.” junkie strength, they called it once from her, when she lost it during a panic attack. Lexi always calms her down. Keeps her focused. She’s like, the only reason her mom’s even letting her do this in the first place. “I’m just praying out place doesn’t end up being some fucking cockroach palace, or is that just in New York? Fuck. I have no idea. I just wanna like. Get there already. Even if our first night is just us hanging out on some mattress on the floor, it’s gonna be ours you know? And you’re going to be… like, fucking amazing. I just wanted you to know that.” Lexi, who always worries about her, she doesn’t spend enough time on herself.

- @invisiblehoward

    DESPITE WAITING FOR THIS DAY, Lexi feels an unsettling anxiety in the pit of her stomach. So much can go wrong in a split second, a reminder that she will never be over seeing the worst outcome in every scenario. It’s been engraved on her brain since day one, when she was meant to be young and careless... Lexi spent those years gnawing away at her fingernails with worry, anxiety about her parents splitting up, about the attention Cassie got, and then about her father. It is like she can never escape her mind for more than a minute, not even when she smoked weed for the first time. She hates that there is no way to escape it but also, she knows that the ways Rue did aren’t right either. It is like a vicious cycle, damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Her shoulders shrug when Rue asks why would she be worried. The list that Lexi curates in her mind isn’t something she can say out loud, knowing that it might all sound pathetic to the other. She can’t even be happy about the one thing she has wanted her whole life, to be away from her home and responsibilities... just her and Rue now. 

      “Don’t mind me, I think I’m just overthinking.” A soft smile on her lips before she is nodding along to the others words. That is true, Rue is herself but she has changed a lot over the years. How could she even know who she was when she was on drugs? Lexi can see where she is coming from. “You’re definitely not alone. I don’t know who I am either... childhood homes shape you but I don’t think they ever let you be your true self. You know?” Lexi wonders as she casts her doe eyes towards Rue. She is just glad to be figuring it out with someone by her side, someone she knows won’t judge anything she does or question her every movement. It brought her a lot of comfort to know that Rue would never force Lexi into doing anything she didn’t want to and the two of them being comfortable was a top priority. The year has changed them for the better, Lexi knows that. She feels secure where they are now, holding hands and going off to do this as a team. It is what she’s always wanted, how they used to talk about getting out together in middle school and before everything happened. It is finally a reality.

@invisiblehoward​ gets a bridgerton starter!

       Of course, he should know better than to have allowed himself to grow so fond of Miss Alexis, how he finds himself awaiting her weekly clandestine visits to the bookshop, spends all his free time getting lost himself within the pages of the books that line the shop walls, squireling away the ones he thinks she’d love, leaving handwritten notes within the margins for her to read. His Grandma scolds him, warning him how he has no business fraternizing with the ton, he tells her how Lexi is different, and she reminds him his place and hers, how they’re from DIFFERENT worlds; how he’s read too many books, too lost within his own imagination for his own good, and maybe he thinks there might be some truth within her words as much as its wounds him to hear.

     They’re JUST friends, he reminds himself every time his heart flutters at the thought of her, how Lexi fast becomes the highlight of his week, despite his Grandma’s warnings. It’s Thursday, and he eagerly awaits her arrival, a copy a Pride and Prejudice set aside for her arrival, only off the presses a few short weeks ago. She arrives a little after 1pm and the two scurry off a quiet space in the back of the store away from prying eyes, god forbid they should be seen talking in such a manner so openly.

      Fez holding out the book for her, “This came in this week, Pride and Prejudice, written by the same author as Sense and Sensibility, I do wonder who she is don’t you? A mystery, like Lady Whistledown.  I digress Miss Alexis but I should think you’ll be rather fond of Miss Elizabeth” a small smile offered as he passes her the book carefully, fingers almost brush causing his cheeks to flush instantly, “I do hope you enjoy it, how did you find last week’s offering? Favourable?” he wonders, he loves hearing he thoughts and opinions on the books they read, their own private book club, unknown to the rest of the world.

     SHE COULDN’T HELP HERSELF, not when it came to fezco o’neil it seems. the buzz of excitement she feels when she knows thursday has finally come around again. packing everything she needs for the visit to the bookstore, bringing some extra cake with her, tucked safely in her bag. she makes her way across the city in her carriage, the deal with the drivers and her maids to keep it quiet. she knows that she shouldn’t be going here alone, especially not as a single young woman... but she longs for their talks together. lets herself imagine what a life with fezco would be like. he is a good man, one that lexi would feel lucky to be courted by but she knows that isn’t the case. she is from a different, upper class. it would be frowned upon, however she can’t help herself thinking such things after their visits. 

      the reality is that she is expected to marry into a family of her own class, one that can provide for her and pay off her father. it has never been lexi’s dream to do that; she loves to read, learn and explore what the world has to offer. men like to stop that, make sure that women know their ‘place’ as mothers or wives. the thought of her ever approaching season leaves a sickness in her stomach. however, she can push it aside for her time with fezco for now. all thoughts of her future on pause as she sits across from the  handsome man, a bright smile gracing her features as he hands over a book. “oh, i’m so looking forward to reading this! i can’t thank you enough.” she exclaims as she carefully takes the book in her hands, running her fingers over the cover before laughing. “i’d love to know who she is. lady whistledown? not so much. ” head shaking as she remembers vile words the letters contain about her family, especially regarding cassandra.