ammi, ammi

“You stole my look,” Leo whined, stuffing her hands into her pockets before smirking at Romeo and facing opposite him, leaning her shoulder against ornate ancient wallpaper. Casual demeanor aside, her heart thudded against her ribcage as she looked at him, and for more than a single reason. Of course, the usual butterflies were floating around in her stomach – that was common practice at this point – but there was something else, something anxiety-inducing as she noticed him in a way she wasn’t sure she had before. For one thing, he was sober. And somehow, in the past few days, there was a dusty white line haphazardly crossed, snowflake-like particles drifting every which way. Things were hardly ever clear for the two of them, this wasn’t new, but they were awkwardly stumbling through the after-effects of words half-spoken, one toe dipped in the swimming pool. She took a step back, never sure if she was standing too close before clearing her throat and shifting her weight. “How are you feeling? About being here, I mean. Honestly… or not honestly. Your call, really.” @romeosokolav​​​

“I was like two seconds away from making the same joke.” Romeo attempted to feign irritation—a downturn of his lips, scrunch of his nose—but gave up biting back a smile when he reached out to tug on the collar of Leo’s jacket. “How am I feeling?” Leaning hard on the last word, he scratched at his chin while letting his eyes flit between her features, wandering from her collarbones upward like he’d just been roused from REM sleep and was still coming to terms with the confines of his bedroom. “Better, I think. But I’m distracted now, so take that with a grain of salt. I’m just living vicariously through you. Do something stupid for me, please.”

                    He looked up to see who had starting speaking, recognizing the face immediately. Romeo had been someone he’d had numerous classes with over the years, someone he’d had discussions with; likely a few projects, and so rather comfortably small talk came. He noted how the other was simply dressed in a suit, nothing tailored for the theme, and how he wore a morose look. If he was any closer to him than one would be to any other pupil perhaps he would’ve ventured into asking what was such a bother. Instead, Harry simply nodded, smirking, finding humor in what he was saying about the pianist— an animatronic looking man. Harry half-expected there to be a button by his feet, and if he were to stall and spew sparks he wouldn’t be surprised. He looked over at the other, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a drink, “I can almost see the rigor mortis seeping in from here. Almost.” The male capered, sardonic, and then shifting slightly tone, “… Has anyone tried talking to him yet? The man has lived through wars, after all, I’m sure he has a few wise things to say.”

“So you agree that we should talk to him? Incredible. As Charli XCX would say, let’s ride.” With far more theatrics than necessary, Romeo beelined for the piano, propelled by violent boredom and the blind faith that Harry was scampering along behind him. “Hello, sir,” he said to the pianist, who simply twitched an eyebrow in response. Aside from a single tuft of hair at the back of his head, the man was horrifically bald. Repulsed by this, Romeo swept a hand through his own hair to make sure it hadn’t gotten any ideas, then cleared his throat. “My friend Harold wants to know if you can play Super Bass by Nicki Minaj. He actually won his school talent show with an acoustic rendition of Get Low. He was in the paper and everything. A real performer. Oozing talent, like, damp to the touch at all times. Anyway, he wants to sing.”

Leo was, in fact, at Alderidge, perched on a tiny chair with itchy upholstery as she sat on long legs folded underneath her, pen hanging out the corner of her mouth like an old man with a cigar when her phone vibrated against the wood of the table. It was face-up, and she would’ve ignored it had it been face-down, entirely off the assumption that it was Felix or her father or even Darby. But it wasn’t, and the name Leo did see flash across the screen was one that elicited a flip of her stomach and prompted a hard swallow as she blinked twice, then adjusting her glasses and wondering if she had imagined things. Finally, she rose and made her way towards the entrance, not even announcing herself before Romeo noticed her. Her expression was unreadable when she looked at him, but she was really clouded with feelings of hurt, relief, anger, other things she couldn’t name. Only nodding in response as she stuffed her hands further into the pocket of her jacket, she scuffed the heel of her boot on the pavement. “Yet here I am,” Leo said plainly. “Um, welcome back.”

“Thanks,” he mumbled, and the word hung in the silence like an ugly, dying thing—a neon green, six letter sign a trust-funded art student bent into shape for their final project on an Adderall binge: nothing more than a half-hearted transaction, an empty action for credit’s sake. Romeo bit at the inside of his lip again to find something, anything else to do other than look at Leo; he’d tried that already, if only for a split second, and it felt like pouring rubbing alcohol into an open wound. “I think, um, I realized that I owe a lot of people a lot of apologies.” The detox wasn’t the worst part of rehab, because nothing was ever that easy. It was the aftermath, the hours of clear thinking that painted out just how many things he’d mauled in the name of a few hours of distraction. It was, once he could call them out by name, not being able to run from it. “You, obviously. I owe you an apology.” He used his index finger to tug a hangnail deeper into the adjacent thumb until it was slick with warmth in his pocket. “I’m sorry. For more than you know, probably. And I… um, I feel really fucking shitty for it. Everything. And I’d list it all out—everything I’m sorry for, I mean—but I don’t want to fucking… cry or something stupid.” But he cleared his throat and swiped angrily at the corners of his eyes anyway, eventually prying his gaze up from where it had been stuck to his shoes after a few hard blinks. “Also, I don’t know if this is the wrong thing to say, but I feel like I should—and maybe it’s selfish, or something, I don’t know—but... I think being in love with someone is the most embarrassing thing anyone can do but, like… Fuck. I don’t know. I’m sorry, Leo. That’s all.”

Without the reassurance of a quick pill swallowed to combat the lurch of anxiety sprouting in his gut, Romeo started chewing at the skin lining the inside of his bottom lip before he’d even hit send. After the whoosh that signalled message sent, he slipped into the nerve-induced trance that was looping the same down-trodden path outside of Aldridge over and over, burning through three cigarettes but losing count of how many times he passed the same pair of discarded sneakers on the lawn. He was running and scrapping lines in his head like a beat poet on a coke comedown when he saw Leo and froze, only inching toward her after taking a breath that scraped the very bottom of his lungs. “Hi. And, like, thank you. For meeting me, I mean. You didn’t have to.”

Within moments of beginning, Yates’ own personal Wonderland, in all of its frivolous glory, was already in full swing. And already, Leo, overwhelmed, was seeking a moment of respite away from the white-glitter, red-tulle whirlwind it had swiftly become. She had anticipated that this might eventually become the case and so she orchestrated a carefully thought out plan in which she could escape to her own personal wonderland, away from the chaos of Mad Hatters and Red Queens; she’d even planned out where to hide her Converse in case her feet should blister from the boots she was previously wearing (and they did). It had only been about ten minutes since Leo wandered into a secluded section of the library, thumbing through ancient books with cracking leather spines and yellowed pages before a vice-like grip caught her ankle and for a moment, she wondered if she really was about to get dragged down the rabbit hole. But it was just Romeo. Because it was always Romeo. “Jesus!” she gasped, taking a moment to clutch her chest and breathe deeply before glaring at him. Too startled to even return the banter, she sat on the ground. “You’re a menace, you know that?” she asked as she looked up at him, blue fabric pooling around her.

“Yeah. I’ve gotten that a few times.” Still grinning like a third-grader seconds after successfully convincing his impatient mother to buy him a lollipop at the grocery store, Romeo leaned forward to take the hem of Leo’s dress between his thumb and index. Nodding as if he was––at some point in his 22 years––a fabric connoisseur meandering the streets of Paris, he finally let the skirt flutter back to the floor. “I like this,” he said. Easy and simple. “You look pretty. Even though I, like, hate Alice in Wonderland. The rabbit dissuaded me. His vibes were off.” He’d already tired of his own rambling, cutting himself off when he leaned forward to press his mouth to Leo’s. It was a far cry from their previous interaction: the mix of molly, vodka soda, and his dulled nerves made it easy for his usual demeanor to surface which was, in a word, cocky. Once he was fully free from his table prison––a maneuver executed so hastily that he slammed his elbow into one of the legs of it––he pulled Leo into his lap. “Does this violate your no PDA rule? Won’t lie, still not sure where you stand on the whole concept.”

Chugging from a bottle of champagne that cost more than her dress, Darby nearly spluttered the liquid out, choking slightly as Romeo shook her, rocking back and forth with limp limbs. Her body was vibrating, fingers shaking ever so slightly. Coughing as he spoke, she clutched her chest, shielding her eyes from him like she was looking at the sun. “Jesus…. who pressed the play button on the story time video? Where’s the volume?” She questioned, poking at different portions of Romeo’s face like she could get him to turn off. Finally catching her breath, she let out a bark of laughter as his statement. “Oh my god, GTM in the flesh? I’ve been wanting to tell him how much I love his work. He around here still?” She questioned, before finally grasping the boy’s face in both of her hands, studying him with glazed over eyes. “What the fuck are you on? Wish I was on that level. Sobriety? Truly boring. I’m considering flashing a tit to the Rabbit Man just to liven things up.”

“No, no.” Romeo shook his head, a violent motion that displaced his curls as a result. Realizing this, he immediately shot a hand through the now chaotic state of his hair with a furrowed brow, hyperfixated on the waste of ten minutes he’d spent in the bathroom earlier. “It’s not Gay Tomb Man. Gay Tomb man has green eyes. Please keep up.” Cheshire grin biting at the apples of his cheeks, he offered a nonchalant shrug. “That’s for me to know and you to find out. And,” he paused, flipping through a metaphorical booklet of ten or so emotions before settling on the right one. “Sobriety... good. However, I think it would be a mega sin if you didn’t partake––dabble, you could say––in some uppers at a Wonderland themed party. So I’m doing it for the people.” A pregnant pause had Romeo struggling for words before he cleared his throat lamely, wading through the various spikes of dopamine shooting through his brain. “So... how have... you been?”

Her eyes were bright and lively as her nose crinkled once again as he tugged on one of her curls before an inquisitive brow raised again and her head cocked to the side, interest piqued as she hung onto a particular word, one that would leave her lips in seconds following. “‘Depends’…” Leo repeated, eyes narrowed as she peered at him. “Depends on…?” She liked this, the back and forth playfulness that she always succumbed to around him, no matter how upset he had made her previously. Really, Leo knew that she simply liked him; an amount so bountiful that frankly, it scared her more than she cared to admit. So, to deflect, she took to poking fun at him with goofy grins and lighthearted jabs accompanied by shoulder-nudges and small touches that only sufficed for so long before ultimately, one would at least kiss the other. “If you know what it depends on, please enlighten me. I’m eager to know.” Leo tore her gaze from Romeo as she also took to scrutinizing a couple nearby, her lip curling before she shook her head and made a small, disgusted sound. She didn’t look long, though, and her attention was back on him before a sly smirk reached her face and she gave another one-shoulder shrug, “Teasing is subjective. Besides, good things come to those who wait, right?”

“It just depends. End of sentence.” An exaggerated eye roll was accompanied by a groan as Leo pressed him further, and he threw his head back in exasperation until––purely on impulse––he wrestled Leo onto her back so that he was hovering above her, stray tendrils of hair he’d painstakingly tugged into place coming loose of their own accord to frame his face. “You’re so dumb,” came half mumbled the same second he failed his own exercise in self-control and leaned down to kiss her. Too focused on Leo’s mouth, it wasn’t until a wolf-whistle came from across the lake that Romeo sat back, borderline-giggling and jutting his thumb in the direction of the sound––another couple, both wearing slapstick grins––and crossed himself in earnest. “I take it back. No PDA.” But he made the mistake of peering down at Leo from just above her knees and succumbing to a genuine smile, tugging her up by her arm and barely giving her time to adjust her position before he kissed her again, this time slipping a hand to rest on her waist. The better half of a minute passed in which Romeo caught Leo’s bottom lip between his teeth before he eventually pulled back and flopped back onto the grass with another groan, hands coming up to cover his face as he shook his head. “I take it back again. I have whiplash. I’m dying.”

Part of Leo was surprised that Romeo had kissed her again, but she couldn’t quite figure out why; after all, it wasn’t like it was uncharted territory, anything new. Or perhaps it was, considering they were surrounded by other students, and while they were all likely minding their own business, she couldn’t help but conclude that someone was watching. And maybe that was self-important, but for an odd reason, it always felt as though whatever relationship she had with Romeo was under some sort of speculation. It wasn’t that the opinions and words of others mattered – they didn’t – but Leo couldn’t help but feel almost shy. “Immunity, wow,” she scoffed, “good to know.” She was nodding then, her shoulders rising and falling with a shrug. “And you’re right, I could do better,” Leo agreed before resting a hand on his thigh, “but I wasn’t trying to torment you just then.” She was grinning in spite of herself now, nudging his shoulder with her own, “And I would’ve kissed you longer, too. Just… Too many people here. You know, I never saw you as a PDA type of guy,” she chuckled, “just full of surprises.”

But I wasn’t trying to torment you just then. Leo’s hand pressed flush against his thigh saw Romeo quirking a brow, moving then to make a show of dragging his eyes from her fingers and back up again to meet her gaze head on. “You weren’t? Wish you had been.” A laugh saw his lips parting at Leo’s justification, pushing him to tug at one of her curls as a both an afterthought and display of feigned irritation. “Sure,” he said, grin still biting at the apples of his cheeks. At this point Romeo fully knew that––despite how much he loathed the corniness of it––the way his pulse picked up in Leo’s presence was too familiar now to just be a coincidence. And he’d known that for a while, become certain of it in the way that he was now hyper-aware of the most miniscule shift in her expression. “It’s easy to say that. But I don’t believe you.” Leaning hard on the last syllable, he cast a second glance at their surroundings, narrowing in on a vaguely familiar couple who were just seconds away from jumping one another. “PDA guy... that’s a new one. I don’t know. Depends. Doesn’t seem to bother them.” Involuntarily wetting his bottom lip, there was a second where Romeo was so cognizant of Leo’s fingers brushing the inseam of his jeans that he responded with a sharp clearing of his throat, though he only averted his gaze for a millisecond before meeting her stare again. “Don't worry, you’re still a tease.”

The grin she was sporting was close-mouthed and wide and hardly contained as she raised her eyebrows and lifted her chin, her satisfaction with his answer evident. She looked back at him again, her gaze flitting rapidly between his eyes and his mouth before she found herself moving closer to him, the smile on her lips now softer and more intimate, almost as if she had to keep herself from letting him in on some secret. And then she kissed him once, chastely and swiftly before she could think better of it. She pulled away quickly as the presence of their peers reentered her mind and her nose wrinkled, her face becoming pinker by the minute as she gazed out at the lake and away from him, letting out a small sigh as if nothing ever happened. “Sherlock Holmes? That’s high praise,” Leo joked nonchalantly before she let out a little hum. “But I don’t think I deserve the comparison. Still, I’m flattered. Is that two ego boosts today? Jackpot for me.”

Eyes fluttering open a few millimeters wider as Leo leaned in to kiss him, Romeo was only just coming to terms with the fact that there was no longer any space between the two of them when Leo pulled back, her gaze sticking to the few people scattered across the edge of the lake like what she’d just done was an act of rebellion. Looking out at the water and then back at her again, Romeo failed to smother a laugh before he was redirecting her face to his with his thumb and index placed along her jawline. “That was cute,” he said, leaning in to kiss her quickly––though not as quickly as she’d done moments prior––and then pulling back with a grin after lingering long enough that even he couldn’t be certain what he was going to do next, the moment weighing like a heavy question mark until he spoke again. “But you kind of have, like, immunity, you know? A free pass to fuck with me. So,” he paused, swallowing hard in spite of himself and taking a second to let his gaze flit between her eyes and her mouth (as usual, no surprises here). “Maybe I’m thinking too highly of you, but I think if you wanted to torment me... you could do better.”