#chenwich

Steph is…more person than I think I’ve ever felt, before.

She’s nothing like the poster that used to hang on the back of Dr. Lynn’s office. This carefully organized, clinical depiction of feelings.

I thought colors were always so simple. That what people felt was dynamic, but focused—singular. Overwhelming. I never knew how…subtle emotions could be. That colors don’t just fit into a carefully organized box, or a clinical classification or diagnosis.

No one is just happy. No one is just sad.

No one is just one anything.

Steph is all of them, sometimes, and I wonder how I never saw it, before.

I wonder…how much of that is knowing her.

“You have a superpower?” Slackened fingers hang from the edge of the scratched wood of a familiar bar chair, the way she’s dipping down showcasing a careless ease that stiffens for only a moment, shoulders curling tight like a taut bowstring. And then, a quiet laugh. A spreading smile. Almost a psh like a rattling cymbal at the end of a drum kit from her own lips, because there’s nothing else but emptiness in her lungs. “You’re both fucking with me, right?” 

Alex’s head dips only enough for hair to cascade in front of eyes and Steph’s back straightens.

“Do Ryan and I look like the fucking with you type? It’s all true.”

Fingers slacken.

Alex has superpowers and Steph immediately believes her. 

It’s the sort of thing that makes no sense. She doesn’t know why—she laughs—tries to rationalize it away—but the moment Alex says it, she believes her.

It’s stupid, right? The moment Alex says it, Steph just—

Just—

“Fine, then tell me what I’m feeling right now.”

The curve of Steph’s back slouches over the chair, the soft afternoon of the bar creating the sort of ambiance din that coffee shop youtube streamers love to take soundbites of and play for three hours straight, idle conversations lost beneath the serious weight of Alex’s nervous, steady eyes, and Ryan’s calm smile.

“You’re feeling disbelief,” Ryan twiddles fingers in the air—

But Steph barely spares him a glance, fingers flexing and curling and flexing again in the air so that they don’t stay so stiff—so that they don’t nervously bounce like a drum beat against wood—before they settle once more, watching Alex.

Just Alex. Who takes in a swell of breath through parted lips and tips barely to the side as her eyelashes flutter closed, listening like Ryan looking out for a particularly rare bird in the forest. Nails curl into biceps like she’s drawing the very energy from the ground up into flexing muscles and her lips part. Her brows knit.

The guitar trembling from the jukebox fades. Duckie’s story around the corner about the time he did a civil war reenactment on a showboat fades. The din and the gin and the world just fades away…to Steph watching Alex listen to nothing but the air.

And Steph’s stiffer than a set of sticks left out in the snow, chest tight.

“You’re…” A wistful, quiet laugh—the same noise her mom used to make when she looked around the entire house for her glasses before realizing they were on her nose the entire time. Like she’s found something that’s been there all along, just out of sight—out of mind—but always in reach. Like Steph’s is Alex’s glasses on the edge of her nose. “Actually a little annoyed.” Alex smiles, a little, like she’s got the whole world pegged in a few sentences and Steph swallows, dusty and dry— “You feel hurt that we didn’t tell you until now. Whether it’s true or not, you don’t like being left out.” 

She says it so plainly. So factually.

Steph feels like one of those kitschy tourist trap telescopes they put on the edge of the Seattle harbor, rusted but somehow still too loose, heavy edge flopping its overweighted top over every time a kid scrambles over to look across the cold, frigid waters towards the boats on the river, no spine left to keep it upright from years of voyeuristic abuse. Her bones rattle like a coin’s rolled down her very spine and her eyes flick up like a sharp snap of that cold telescope towards Ryan—towards Alex—before they finally downcast.

“Well…” Brows knit—lips part—and Steph wonders why her throat feels like sandpaper when she finally makes her way back up to Alex, again. “…okay.”

What else is there to say?

Because…really? The crazy idea that Alex has superpowers makes a lot of shit make sense. 

Steph always used to laugh anytime Ethan gave her some weekly comic about a superhero whose best friends were utterly oblivious to the people they spent all their time with being heroes but…in reality? Why the hell would anyone logically wake up one morning and think, ‘Oh, the girl who I saw spit milk out of her nose while watching cartoons when she was high obviously has the capacity to read other people’s emotions’?

It’s not a logical leap. It doesn’t even cross the mind—

“How much am I going to regret existing tomorrow?” Alex’s giggling laughter is muffled by the thin veil of a paper towel Steph has so graciously nabbed her from the kitchen, leaning over the couch to watch Alex stare up at the small little television from the floor. At least her legs are on the ground, now. Kind of progress. The milk soaks through its white scratch.

“Dude, you’re probably not even going to remember tomorrow.” It’s an honest reply and Alex just beams up at her before she snorts through her nose, again, this time milk-free. It’s probably a little telling that Steph finds it kind of cute.

Noticing Alex was freakishly observant? Okay.

“Alex, okay, seriously what are you—” Steph grunts, shifting from behind the car where she’s been dutifully propping up the torch on her phone to shine into the murky street below, sunlight above eclipsed by the rust on the car’s frame. The light hovers above the drain and the gutter (both of which are about as clean as the grease trap in the Lantern) and eyes squint at the barely-visible, totally scrambling profile of Alex’s face, concentration incarnate. Digging like a really cute Indiana Jones through the muck and something glints beneath her palm— “…are those someone’s keys? How the hell did you even—”

Sure enough, Alex pops up from behind the gutter with a dangling set of twinkling keys, an ecstatic dude immediately materializing at the noise like some Pavlovian experiment in the wild, rushing over from around the corner.

Elated. Ecstatic. Overwhelmed.

Steph hadn’t even noticed him when Alex halted mid-conversation with an apology and started digging around behind the rust bucket parked on the side of the street.

“My keys!”

Noticing Alex…also picked up on other people’s emotions? Definitely.

“You’re sure you’re okay, Steph?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, not to pry, but if you ever need to talk—”

Noticing a million other things—

The feeling of Alex’s nose brushing along her shoulder—her neck—the faintest whisper of a smile that probably wouldn’t stay particularly long in the sun hidden in the shadow of Steph’s neck.

Yeah, cuddling definitely wasn’t so bad—

A million small clues—suddenly, with knowledge and possibility of actuality to fill in the blanks—

“How about a quick match?”

Feet turn along creaking wood, hearing Alex come into focus like the twining upkick of a long note on the bass. Unexpected and perfectly inbeat. Most people don’t pick up on the bass in a song, but they’d miss it, if it was gone—

“Did Gabe tell you we played?”

“Oh, yeah. He also told me he kicked your ass.”

“Asshole.” A strangled, distracted laugh that threatens to suffocate the thin bobbing fabric of her neck, shaking her head—turning away, because the last thing Alex needs is for Steph to load this on her after that shit-show downstairs. But there’s something selfish, too. This unbearable weight. This emptying pit deep in her chest—this crawling coldness that frosts from her chest to her shoulders to her curling fingertips— “I don’t think now’s a good time.”

Alex pushes. Steph doesn’t know her well enough to know the difference, the sound of that rattling little foosball handle whirling in the afternoon sun that feels so cold outside, even when it isn’t.

A huff through nostrils. The words eat away, just a little at her. The challenge. The distraction. Just a minute. Just a minute. She can fake it, right?

And she can totally kick Alex’s ass.

It all just—

“Fine.”

Alex’s smile is soft. Steph doesn’t know her well enough to know the difference about that, either.

—makes sense.

“Oh shit.” The chair squeaks as Steph leans back into its familiar weight, laugh caught on the edge of that tight, dry throat, “The foosball game! You knew exactly what to do.” 

“You needed to focus on the positive memories, not get lost in the sadness.” A nod. A quiet, nervous laugh. An explanation: “I thought it would help.”

The feeling of fingertips sliding warmth down ears, the storm rattling outside, steady and there. Alex is always so steady and there, eyes clear in the murky haze of the night, constant and calm and caring—

Alex looks up at her through her eyelashes and Steph reminds herself it’s not the weirdest thing she’s ever heard about a person. Actually, it’s not even in the top ten for oddest claims. Living on the road in a ratty old makeshift tour bus (that was actually just a van bought off of craigslist and littered in enough stickers to make it aerodynamic) sort of amps up the median for weird behavior from the average person met in the world.

“It did.”

Steph, in this second—this actual moment—tells herself a lot of things and tries to think about none of them.

Does Alex know her well enough, now, to know the difference in the smile that softly tucks up the edges of Steph’s lips? Can Alex…feel her, even now? Or is the rest of the world still too loud—is all of what composes Steph practically a bird of a noise fluttering away in the trees to a woman who’s spent too long honing her ear to the empty sound a drummer’s chest makes? Is the tightening ache of Steph’s chest like a bird call lost beneath the wind?

Maybe she’d be more comfortable, that way, if Alex couldn’t hear her, at all. If Steph just disappeared into the background din that feels so far away, now. Maybe it doesn’t matter.

Maybe…this is a lot to wonder about this early in the day.

Steph won’t understand the full nature of what she readily accepts for months—for years—but she’ll learn loving someone is accepting every inch of them—that you never fully learn someone until you’ve loved every inch of them you thought you’d hate.

She’s not in love, today, but she’s brushing her feet along the waters of it. She’s looking down into a pond she’s absolutely aware she’s about to be pushed into.

By the time she understands anything at all, Steph will learn she’s fallen in love with Alex a thousand times over and cracked her rib cage open against reckless palms a thousand more than that.

Today she just smiles in a way she’s not certain Alex understands even when she thinks she might.

Today, she thinks it makes a lot of sense that Alex can pick up on things others can’t. That Alex is more extraordinarily different than anyone she’s ever met, before.

Today, another piece of a puzzle she’d thought she’d solved but isn’t even close just slots into place.

“Just…warn me next time, okay?”

The relief in the air is palpable from the bartender’s side of this scratched wood top but kind of…tentative—like how Alex reaches across distances towards them, sometimes--and Steph’s hand curls on the chair.

“Deal."

“Never thought I’d have a freaky empath friend. Pretty wild.”

This is the closest Steph’s pretty sure she’s gotten to making Alex actually blush, at all, and her knuckles rap against the bar, just along the edge.

Ryan changes the subject and it’s not long until Alex moves on to go finish up her shift and it’s enough of a reminder that both Ryan and Steph have bigger fish to fry, anyways.

Namely the woman who is probably responsible for their best friend’s death whose heels click through the door not even a full jukebox track later. She barely gets a chance to even start asking Ryan about Alex’s empathic mic-drop before they have to come up with a plan.

(Her plan’s killer, by the way).

Because that’s the thing about life. It just keeps moving. It doesn’t wait—it never waits. It keeps moving faster than Steph can keep up with it, sometimes—it moves so quickly that she goes with it, because she always goes with it. Moves with it because there’s no choice not to. It moves and moves—

Right onto Alex calling her a hotter distraction than Ryan.

(Fuck yes.)

So she flirts and she’s pretty close to sealing the deal (not important, but good for the ego) and it’s not until they’re both upstairs laughing that she lingers because she has to go back to work and Ryan has got to finish whittling and Alex…

Soon it’s just them in the apartment and when the sun dances over fingers that shift glasses, Steph looks up to see Alex smiling at her and Steph…smiles back.

She knows Alex’s different smiles, now—can pick them out like deep drops on an obscure EP playing on the radio—and this one…is new.

Amazingly, Steph’s smile doesn’t falter as she shifts on the touch to fully look at her. Doesn’t worry if there’s anything in her hair, this time. Doesn’t wonder why Alex is looking at her like this, at all, not today.

All Steph wonders if Alex knows the difference in Steph’s smiles, now, too, and life just moved on too quickly for her to pick up on when the change happened, at all.

I’m starting to realize that just because I know what someone’s feeling, it doesn’t mean I know them. Not really.

I always knew that what I expect to happen isn’t always what’s going to—I’ve learned that lesson the hard way more than…I really want to remember. But I’m starting to realize that there’s just…a lot more to a person than what they’re feeling.

There’s so much behind those feelings that I only get a snapshot of, like a faded polaroid hanging on someone’s fridge. They’re this small little piece out of thousands of other memories I haven’t seen and can’t reach. I do see into people—I can see their souls and their wants and their desires—but only a moment of them. Only this fraction. Only this small little piece.

I don’t think I’ve ever known people from anything more than snapshots of the things they didn’t want anyone to see. I used to think it was because it was because I didn’t have a chance. Now?

I don’t know.

I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone fully, at all.

The wind rustles through a cracked window, curtain fluttering in the soft Spring breeze, the sound of Ryan talking right outside of the door disappearing into descending footsteps and the clicking of an apartment door, tucking them away from the rest of Haven not so far away.

An apparently encrypted USB still dangles from the edge of a laptop littered with at least a dozen stickers she recognizes as having gifted Gabe. It’s like a dangling carrot at the end of a dungeon. Like someone just turned the final chest into a fucking mimic.

And now that the afternoon sun is easing away on her busy day of espionage and subterfuge (and clear sexual awakenings for Diane) all before noon, all Steph can think about is the literal thousand-bullet-point list she has in her apartment of minutia details to take care of for tomorrow.  

“You should let me help you with the LARP stuff, Steph.”

It’s a quiet offer to Steph’s right from where both of them are sprawled out on the floor, their legs tucked up on the couch cushions, laptop and desk slightly pushed to the side. Steph had claimed that this was where she did her best espionage thinking and, unsurprisingly, Alex had joined her on the floor with a look and a shrug.

She only had an hour before she had to go back to the store to do the afternoon DJ shift, and there wasn’t anywhere else she really wanted to be, before then.

Eyes flick over to take in the way Alex is…looking at her, now. Relaxed. Totally relaxed. Like a thousand burdens have gently released from Alex’s barely-healed fingertips up into the sky like a lit lantern, yellow bracing against pitch black clouds. Like even with all the shit with Typhon going on, maybe Alex feels…a little lighter, somehow.

Steph rolls over onto her side, arm tucking beneath her ear, legs curling back up on the floor. 

“No way, participants aren’t allowed into the inner sanctum. You’ll just have to leave the mystery and intrigue up to the NPCs, Alwynn. I can handle it.” Brows barely knit— “Which…is something I didn’t say anything about. Which means you did the mind-reading thing, again, didn’t you? The mind-reading thing which is…apparently more than just the textbook definition of empathy because the only emotion I’m feeling about the LARP is mild stress?” That’s not true—Steph feels a lot more about the LARP than even she knows how to decode—but it’s not exactly fiction, either, and from the way Alex winces Steph shifts up on the floor to look down at her.

(This at least cuts off Alex’s completely logically fallible argument that she has no idea what she’s doing, anyways, and isn’t going to remember any of it because that’s total bullshit and the GM in her so isn’t going to stand for any outside interference).

“Kind of?” After a long moment, Alex blinks beneath that thin layer of glass between them, teeth chewing on the edge of her lip. This sort of stillness falling over her cheeks—her chin—her lips. This tightness there that Steph wants to ease away with fingertips and—

(Holy fuck, she really hopes Alex can’t actually read minds. Not because Steph is scared of it, but because now is not the time—)

Alex’s voice is quiet and even and suddenly Steph feels every single inch of distance between them like a cavern.

“I can…hear you, sometimes. I’ve never told someone what I’ve heard them think, before, so I don’t know how accurate it is, but a lot of times I just…know things that I shouldn’t be able to know. It’s almost like I can…hear you, like for a moment you’re right—” Alex’s hand idly reaches up to rest over a yellow-plaid covered heart before she looks away and Steph swallows that sandpaper, again, eyebrows raising. But Alex seems to catch herself somewhere along the line from saying anything other than that—catch herself so swiftly, lips pressing tightly as her hand falls back down to her side, curled inwards and away from Steph. “Like I can hear what you’re thinking.”

“You…can actually hear what I’m thinking?”

“Not all the time. Just…sometimes. When you’re really feeling something, or if I listen hard enough. I used to have to really focus—to touch someone, or they had to be really worked up--but I’ve…I don’t know, I’ve gotten really good at picking up on you and Ryan, I guess. And…a few people in town I’ve been around, too. I don’t know why it’s getting easier with you guys, but it’s not all the time. I don’t even know if what I’m hearing is what you’re thinking but…I think it can be. Sometimes.” It’s a lot less elegant than Alex usually is when she speaks—like she’s never vocalized it, at all.

“Woah.” It’s a murmur, Steph wordlessly easing back down onto the floor. “That’s…a lot.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You said…” Steph’s tongue darts out over dry lips, searching the familiar dusty ceiling that houses a garden up above. “You feel it more when you touch someone.” It’s a murmur, arm draping over her stomach, idly running fingertips along the wood grain of a river between them as she thinks. 

“Yeah.” 

“Is that why you’re so careful about touching people?” 

Alex blinks, surprised, and Steph can feel her eyes on the high rise of her cheek, head slowly lolling on the floor to search familiar eyes, turning fully onto her side to scoot closer to her. Just a little. Just enough so that she can actually look at her. Alex doesn’t shift away. 

“I feel mildly called out.” Alex’s smile is slim, but she doesn’t deny it.

“That’s a yes.”

“I never really thought about it, but I guess it’s a yes.” Alex agrees.  

“So you can’t always hear me, but can you…feel what I’m feeling all the time?” 

Alex seems to think over the question like she’s tasting it on her tongue, eyes closing, “...kind of? It’s sort of like–this really muted sensation. Like background noise, I guess. Or like…walking into a room and there being a faint…perfume from someone that was there an hour earlier? If I focus on it–like if I really focus on you, I can always feel it, now, but…I try not to. It doesn’t—it feels like I’m violating something, if I press too much.” Alex’s eyes open, looking up towards that garden, too, but Steph watches the way she murmurs, “But if I do feel you, I always know it’s you.”

Steph doesn’t know what that even means, but it makes her stomach tighter. 

“So…it’s not intentionally.”

“Only recently. Only if I thought I could help.”

“Like…with the Foosball” 

“Right.” 

“So before then, it would just…”

“Before then, I could only feel really, really strong emotions. I mean, I could feel people’s energy—it would affect me, sometimes—but I couldn’t…it’s different. It’s stronger, when I feel someone’s emotions. And…usually I couldn’t help but feel them when they were bad. Bad emotions are always the strongest. They would take over me. Suddenly, it was all I could think–all I could feel–all I could taste–”

“Is that…what happened with Mac?” 

Alex’s eyes flick away. A long moment before she nods.

Steph shifts, hands flexing in the air by her hip as she leans over Alex, the hair that’s escaped a beanie dancing along her chin, eclipsing the sunlight from the nearby cracked window in shaded hues of blues along Alex’s eyes.

“That’s what happened that day with the fight in the street.” It’s a quiet realization, resisting the urge to lean down and run fingertips along the reddened ridges of knuckles, “…Alex. Come on, look at me. We don’t have to talk about it, I just think I…kind of get it, now.”

Alex finally looks back up at her, jaw rolling enough that Steph realizes she’s trying to keep herself composed. Trying to hold something back.  

“I was…scared I was going to hurt you. Like I did with Gabe. I hit him after that fight with Mac, you know. I’m the one that gave him the black eye.”

“I didn’t know.” Steph’s voice is so quiet, now, but so is Alex’s—so quiet that the sound of the wind might threaten to swallow it whole.

“That’s why I ran.”

“So that you wouldn’t…hurt me?” Steph tries to piece it together and just like that, it all slots, “Alex, you didn’t—”

“I could have.” Alex cuts off the sentence like she’s heard it before and for some reason, it ties Steph’s stomach into knots.

“You didn’t.” Steph sits up, voice serious as she shifts closer, reaching forward without nearly enough thought as her hands fall down to Alex’s, thumbs running along those puckered edges of skin, feeling hands stiffen but curl beneath her, clenching on. Holding tight.

Steph swallows.

“Steph—” 

“It didn’t ‘take over you’,” The recollection tastes like such a foreign concept on her tongue, “You controlled it. You helped them. You broke it up. You’re…are you learning how to control it? You’re talking about things like they’re kind of different now.”

All of Alex tightens up like a coil beneath Steph’s palms before, miraculously, fingers break free like vines and curve around the edges of the stone of knuckles that were never scarred like her own, not just holding on but holding, slotting fingers so easily into the empty spaces of Steph that it’s such a cliché that it feels so natural.

“...yeah. I think so. That’s how I helped Ethan. That’s how I’ve helped a lot of people, here. Eleanor—Riley—You—Ryan. I’m…I think I’m getting better at it, but I’m still—I’m still so scared of—"

“You know you’re not the only one who has the trademark on hurting people you care about, right?” It’s a blunt, knowing question, “My M.O. is to historically run away when people are trying to help, and lashing out to make them fall back. We all do shit that we work at being better at.” It’s not a thing she expected to tell her, today, but it’s the truth, nonetheless.  

(Then again, anything Steph’s told Alex wasn’t exactly something she planned for, it always just sort of comes out, so she’s gotten pretty good at running with the punches.)

Alex searches her eyes so thoroughly that Steph wonders what…emotion it is that Alex sees in her–what she knows of her, looking at her, like this. It’s a little unfair. 

It’s a little unsettling, being seen so thoroughly.

Steph’s not certain anyone’s ever known how to look hard enough to try.

“You haven’t pulled away from me.” 

“Yet.” It’s serious and quiet, lips pressing thin. Eyes flick down and settle on the hands she’d stolen before settling back on the eyes behind those thin frames of glass, “You…haven’t made me want to.” Teeth tuck away lips, trying to stay chill because now is totally not the time for Alex to know she–

Steph definitely—

Not the time. It’s never the time.

“I can’t promise I won’t.” Steph continues, because Alex…deserves to know, doesn’t she? After everything? “But I try not to. And you tried not to hurt me. And so far both of us? Pretty successful. And…if we’re not successful…I don’t know? We cross that bridge when we get to it.” 

“Just like that?” Alex shakes her head, smile small and hesitant. “Cross the bridge when we get to it.” A heavy, rattling breath as those stiff bones of Alex Chen sink a little into the floor, “Now who’s giving all the advice?”  

“Hey, I’m fantastic at advice. Radio show, remember?” A little more serious, “Friends should stick by through the hard stuff.” 

“Not to sound completely depressing but I’ve…never really had any that did.” But Alex, brave and quiet and sincere, doesn’t look away. “I don’t really know what it looks like.” 

“I’m not a very good example. But I’m pretty sure between Ryan and I, you’re stuck with finding out. You can’t get rid of us, now. We’re too dependent on the free drinks.” 

Alex smiles and it’s the most beautiful thing in the world. 

“What am I feeling now?” Steph asks when she lays back down and when Alex squeezes her hand, she realizes she never let go. 

“Maybe I’ll tell you later. Right now? I’m kind of just enjoying it.” 

“Yeah…okay.” Steph shifts just to make her back a little more comfortable on the floor, again, and stiffens only a little when she feels Alex hesitantly shift to rest her head on her shoulder, heart beat quick before both of them settle into the spaces that used to be between them.

“Steph?” Alex breathes into the thin fabric of a baseball tee like she’s absolutely determined not to look up and Steph fights down the ridiculous twittering swallows fluttering around in her stomach and smiles down at the crown of floor-messy hair and the tip of barely-visible, askew glasses that are buried into her, right now.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.” Alex tips her head upwards and offers a smile so small and quiet and genuine that the world shifts beneath Steph’s steady pulse—something shifts in her lungs and her back and her smile, quietly falling into something serious—something different—something new.

There’s this puzzle of Alex, whose cardboard cut-out image of possibilities has full shades of tone behind it, now, so real that Steph can no longer see the lines of the pieces that slotted her together in her mind in the first place—those lines of knuckles of red and smile of sunlight and heart of so many shades of color Steph’s never seen, before—all Steph can see is Alex. This woman whose spine is made of impenetrable oak that shapes into a door that Steph stands on the outside of, cracked. A sliver of light shining inside to the deepest places Steph has never seen—a sliver of light showing how endlessly vast a person can be in the slimmest sights she’s seen of her.

There’s so much more.

Alex, who Steph keeps thinking is someone Steph knows, but who she finds out each and every day is more complex and different than anything that’s ever existed in her world.

Here’s Alex, who feels what others feel and holds Steph in storms because of it; whose eyes had only been hidden in the thin fabric of Steph for a moment before looking up, not truly hiding, at all—fearless and brave and independent; who makes Steph feel…nervous and unsure and fantastic all at once, without doing anything, at all.

Alex, who Steph doesn’t want to leave behind to see the world…but feels like she would never truly leave, at all, for once. Maybe she’d find a way to stay in touch. Maybe she’d find a way to—

To—

Steph wonders how loud a dice would rattle against the floor next to their settling knees.

You thought you never told her. You thought she only knew because she knew you but you didn’t know how right you were.

You wonder how many times you’ve told her you’re falling in love with her and you wonder how little it matters. You leave and you keep her close to you like your father keeps a polaroid tucked away in his beaten wallet. You leave and you wish you’d asked her to leave with you, and you’ll spend your whole life missing the future you let yourself imagine in the deepest spaces of the night before you fall asleep.

A future where you’re not so scared of her knowing you, because you know she’s the only one you want to know you, at all.

Alex’s brows knit and her fingers tighten, only a little, on Steph’s hand, and that tight feeling is back in her chest, again, eclipsing and eclipsing until she lets out a quiet huff of a breath through parted lips.

She’ll find a way to stay in touch. Life will move on. It always moves on in thin sheets of ice, so many people buried beneath its surface.

Steph’s always been better at focusing on the now than the future, even when she’s planning it.    

Alex thanks her and Steph doesn’t have to ask why.

Instead, she just shakes her head and smiles.

“Your secret’s safe with me, Chen.”

In a rare display, Alex looks almost a little…nervous for the second time today when she offers, “You…don’t have to stay, Steph, I know that you have to get back to the station.”

“Yeah, I do. But…I can hang out here for a little bit longer, my alarm’s set. So…enjoy that feeling of mine, I guess? I still don’t really know how this works, but it sounds pretty awesome.”

“Yeah.” Alex settles her head back down and closes her eyes, glasses pressing into the soft part of Steph’s neck and after a moment Steph’s hand wraps up around her shoulder to lightly hold her close, Alex shifting closer. A smile softly curves along her neck—the soft breeze dances through the curtains by the window, underlining the soft puffs of Alex’s breath—that faint scent settles into her chest like a breath of fresh air—and life moves on around them, like it always does. “It’s pretty great.

People feel so much more than I’ve ever seen.

Seriously, I feel like I traded my glasses for a set of EnChroma lenses because somehow, now, when I look at everyone…I don’t just see this one, loud, overwhelming color, anymore. I’m starting to see…all of them. I’m starting to see the blue and the red in the orange and the yellow and blue in purple. I’m starting to see violet in shades of red and blue. I’m starting to see that there’s so much more beneath those heavy emotions on the surface.

I’ve never noticed that yellow can be like sunlight in someone’s eyes, curving around the green of them like the set of an expensive ring—this quiet happiness that’s there, that doesn’t burn as brightly. I’ve never noticed that sadness and joy can cling to people like…rain after a heavy storm. That fear can do that, too.

Colors compose people and constantly shift.

I’m starting to see people for more than just those snapshots of emotions I feel. It’s…amazing. It’s amazing how everyone’s so different. How subtle the red is when Ryan stubs his toe compared to the vibrant red when Steph does. How quietly the purple dances off of the vibrating drum of Diane’s nails along the edge of a bar table when she thinks no one is looking, perfectly calm and still whenever she notices someone does. This…purple that lingers on the shine of Jed’s shoulders that I don’t think I’ll ever understand that he wears like a raincoat in the snow, so thin I can barely even see it.

And I think…I’m like that, too, deep beneath the surface. I’m more like an impressionist painting of colors, a thousand dots blurred together to make…Me.

Just like everyone else.

The thought of feeling all of it—of recognizing it—it used…to be terrifying. It still kind of is.

The thought of someone knowing me well enough to pick out the way the yellow curves down my cheek when I hear a song I really like on the radio—or the way my blues mix with reds when I look up at the picture of a plaque on a dirty bar wall—of someone seeing the passion in my hands and the energy in my steps.

I don’t know what colors I’m made of, but I know what colors light up Steph when she walks. Most of them, anyways. I wonder how much more there are to see.

When I think about what colors I see, I always think of Steph. Maybe because she’s so expressive, but maybe…there’s something else there.

No, there’s definitely something else there.

I know what Steph’s colors look like, for the most part, even as I start to see more and more of them, everyday, filling out this…picture of her that’s full of gaps that I still don’t know how to read.

But what do those colors look like on me, to her? What does she see of me, if she doesn’t see colors?

“Okay, so…that only looks mildly complicated.” Steph notes from behind Riley’s shoulder, Ryan’s head bobbing, assessing with a total nod next to her.

“Oh, yeah, and only mildly…super illegal.”

“Getting second thoughts, Ryan?” Riley calls from her hunched position, darkness outside only causing a stark contrast from the blue light from her laptop, fingers moving way faster than Steph has seen anyone type. Even Mikey, and she’s pretty sure if there was an Olympics for typing, Mikey could be in it.

She can’t wait to take a video and send it to Mikey, just to let him know someone else would totally mop the floor with him.

“Pfft, no.” Ryan side-eyes Steph who shoves his shoulder. Mumbling, “…maybe.”

“Come on, it’s fine. Riley doesn’t even want to know what it is or where we got it from, not if it’ll help Gabe, right Riley?”

“Totally.” Riley immediately offers.

“And she’s going to crack it like the awesome tech-chick she is, right, Riley?”

“Totally.” Another swift series of key strokes before Riley finishes setting up…whatever it is she’s doing with the USB before turning back towards the both of them. It’s oddly reminiscent of those fake breaking in scenes in movies like Hackers, but Steph knows way too little about any of this to even hope at making a sly comment about it. “Although you guys do know this is definitely not admissible in a court, right?” Riley’s eyebrow hikes upwards and Steph and Ryan nervously look between each other to Riley to the USB. “Seriously…am I the only person who watches CSI?”

“Probably not since it’s been on for like…four decades? People have to watch it.” Steph shakes her head.

“I’m pretty sure that’s Law and Order.” Ryan scratches his beard. “Or maybe…what was the one with the Air Force—”

“Stargate?” Steph’s brows knit. “What does Stargate have to do with this?”

“What?” Ryan shakes his head. “Stargate was about…aliens?”

“She’s right, Stargate was Air Force. And I’m pretty sure you’re talking about NCIS, Ryan. But, no, like--” Riley offers with a vague gesture over her shoulder, “We’re getting…whatever you’re getting illegally. They can’t use that.”

“Yeah, but maybe if it’s incriminating enough, it’ll make people look.” Steph presses, looking between the two of them. “Look…Alex needs a lead. Like…any kind of lead, and we need to know what we’re dealing with. She’s pretty sure about…who’s mixed up in all of this, and I believe her.”

Ryan and Riley share a look but nod anyways.

“Yeah, I do too, Steph.” Ryan stuffs hands into pockets, that smile of his softening. Easy. Certain.

“Of course, Steph.” Riley immediately piggybacks. “Especially for Gabe, I just…wanted you guys to know.” It causes both of them to smile, grateful, and Riley shakes her head and shifts on her feet beneath it, blush highlighted by the computer, “Alright, I better get back to it.”

“You sure you don’t need help setting up for the festival?” Ryan double-checks.

“I’ll tell you guys tomorrow after the LARP. If I don’t drown in flowers before then.”

“Well, if you need anything, let us know, alright?” Steph is already backpedaling out of the shop, waving, not hearing the tail end of the conversation between the two as she steps back out into the cool night air, eyes flicking down towards a lone streetlight outside of a barely-lit apartment window, its blinds drawn. It’s not because she doesn’t want to help—Riley deserves a hand—but more because she has way too much to do, before tomorrow.

She waits for a couple of seconds until the door jingles, Ryan stepping next to her.

“So…you seriously knew our best friend was an empath this whole time?” Steph shoves her hands into pockets, too, curling, voice calm and casual but she knows Ryan’s got a lock on her the moment he looks over.

“I didn’t always know but…yeah. She told me. If it helps, I…was having a really bad day.” He says it with all the levity in the world but when she looks up at the way the shadows of the night catch in his eyes, Steph knows exactly how midnight black bad days can be. And wonders how much of herself Alex would give away to help him cope with it. Wonders, knowing Ryan, how much of himself he gave to her, back. And knows that she’ll never know, because she wasn’t there. “I don’t think she’s ever told anyone else, before.”

“Seriously?” Eyes flick back over towards the bar.

“Yeah.”

A breeze rips through the air, chin tipping upwards the watch the wind rustle down the street, dancing up clattering metal signs and street corner marking, the now-closed sign safe behind glass from the wind’s careless twirl in the record store across the cobbled path of a town Steph’s learned to call home.

There’s another sign ready to be plastered over that one in the morning for a LARP Gabe will never see and when she shifts on her feet, her shoulder brushes against Ryan’s bicep.

“It…kind of makes sense?” Her chin tips backwards—away from Ryan and the shop and the bar—to look up towards the cloudy sky. The rain’s passed, but the night air is still thick with the aftermath of it and it makes her fingers curl and her tongue dart out over lips and her laugh, just a little, catch in the back of her throat.

“I’m…sorry if you were hurt that we didn’t tell you—”

“I wasn’t hurt.” Steph cuts off. Sighs, one shoulder raising up and falling like a sack of bricks, “Yeah…okay. Maybe a little. But it’s…well, it’s not yours to tell, anyways, Ry. There’s nothing to be sorry about. Secrets like that—stuff that define us, whether we want it to or not? It’s not the kind of thing only we should ever tell people. It’s Alex’s story, she has a right to tell who she wants to. I…guess I’m just glad to be on the list?”

It’s an ingrained truth. Maybe it’s the queer kid from a small town in her. Maybe it’s the punk. Or maybe it’s the girl with so many secrets Ryan’s never known hidden in the wrinkled crevices of her cold hands. It doesn’t really matter.

Either way, she gets it.

It stings, but she gets it.

“Yeah.” Ryan looks at her like he isn’t so sure. “Well, the good news is maybe we’re a step closer to figuring out what happened to Gabe.”

“Yeah.” Steph looks back down towards the record shop, nodding. Serious, “Good.” Because it is. Gabe deserves more than what he got—but justice is a good start. “Alright, well, you’ve got some whittling to do.”

“I know, I know,” Ryan’s hands raise up in submission, backing towards his own street, “Let me know if you need any help?”

(Oh, Ryan’s definitely going to help. She’s not going to take any enjoyment in telling him just how much tomorrow morning—really. Like, none.)

“You know it.” She’s already across the street, hand flattening on the record shop door when she pauses. Bites her lip.

Valkyrie meows as she curves around Steph’s ankle, a tameless creature of the night, hips bouncing as she strolls down the cool cobblestone towards the lit window across the street. Steph unlocks the door just to replace the closed sign with the Magpie Emporium instructions before locking back up and going the opposite way towards her apartment, hesitating just for a moment as she watches Valkyrie dip into the shadows behind the Black Lantern.

She’s seriously still got a lot of shit to do…but there’s this lingering thought. This lingering taste of maybe in the back of her throat. This itch in her fingers for more than just music—more than just drums—more than just similarity and the things she knows.

Maybe there’s magic in the air tonight, after all, and the Mysterious Proprietor spends the whole night writing about it—about magic and faraway lands and Emperors who fall into the trenches of demons in a time of darkness—she writes until her fingers cramp and her back aches and even rolling her neck doesn’t fight the stiffness from hunching over for so long.

The window is cracked open, the heavy moisture of long-fallen rain clinging to the night.

Maybe if Steph can imagine it hard enough, she can pretend she tastes magic in the thickness of it.

Maybe then it’s easier to imagine her familiar in her place, perched in another open window across the street, moonlight highlighting the darkest parts of her fur, tail slinking in a lazy bat from one side to the next.

The thoughts we never want to think are always the ones that find us when the air is thickest with something like magic, sleep so close to sagging shoulders and sighing lips.

So Steph will wonder, crawling into bed and staring up at the cloudy moon, eyes heavy and bones weary—she’ll wonder it, for the first time, the thought sinking into her bones like sand sliding through the thinnest tube of an hourglass—

Can a bard sense the magic in the air and pull it into her fingertips along the steel-woven tines of a guitar? Can a bard tame the music of a witch? If she could…would Steph let her pass the roll-check?

Can Alex sense her, now?

Now that there’s no bar full of people between them—no quiet youtube coffee shop din or other emotions or places or things—now that there’s nothing but an empty streetlight and rain that was so thick even the air couldn’t shake it—now that there’s an empty space where people used to be in apartments once owned by people other than them—now that there’s nothing, at all…will Alex look up towards Valkyrie perched on her window sill and feel Steph wish that she was there, instead?

Can Alex hear the small little swallow in Steph’s chest, twittering like a lost bird in the rain, aching for a reason to stay?

Does Alex know? Does Alex…know?

Steph swallows. Her fingers curl into the pillow as they tremble, just a little, before her brows knit.

And then ease.

Life moves on so quickly and it takes her with it to a dream she won’t remember, sheet half curled along her thigh and bed empty beside her.

When she wakes up, she doesn’t remember anything but the hazy thought of kissing Alex on the scratched surface of a floor that belongs to neither of them and looks towards the window where Valkyrie sits, soundly sleeping beneath the soft sunshine of morning.

I’ve never been…very good with my own emotions, I guess. The girl who’s been in therapy for the majority of my life thinks that’s because my whole life I’ve been told I’m not feeling anything enough while simultaneously being told I should only ever feeling one thing at a time. But the truth is?

Maybe I’m feeling all of those emotions. All the time.

I look at Steph and I feel what she feels and…it scares me.

In kind of a good way, I think?

I look at Steph and I’m…everything at once. I’m…angry about Gabe and angry he left, again. I’m sad for what I’ll never know and I’m scared of Steph and I’m happy to see all of the colors that compose her smile. I’m guilty that I’m feeling any of it when Gabe is feeling none of it. I’m…hopeful, I think, of things I don’t even know how to vocalize and totally, completely, utterly unprepared for all of them.  

But for the first time I think…it’s okay.

I feel…safe? I think.

I feel safe in Haven.

I feel safe with Ryan and Steph and everyone else here.

Steph is totally the opposite of what I expect, every time. Steph is a true drummer punk, I guess, because she subverts literally every single one of my deeply held, probably trauma-infused expectations of what a person should do. And yet, somehow, I feel like I know her enough to know better.

Steph’s…complicated. And kind of emotionally messy. And totally amazing.

Steph looks at me without seriously a single ounce of expectation for me to fit into any mold. I feel everything I never really thought was mine to feel, at all, with her.

And I wonder what it looks like to her.

The truth is, I think I know the answer, and that’s what really terrifies me. I think I just…look like me.

I think she looks at me and just sees me, and is totally here, anyways.

And…at least I know I’m not the only one scared of it.

“Did you go over there, Val?” Steph’s fingertips so carefully curve behind the delicate, curving arch of Valkyre’s ear—the beast that scratched people who scratched all who dared to get too close, but somehow lets Steph stay. A singular green eye cracks open beneath the sun, spine lazily stretching before she eases fully onto the sill. “Do you think all of this…do you think it’s all just wishful thinking? Am I going crazy over nothing?”

Valkyrie just closes her eyes and doesn’t answer and Steph shrugs and gathers up binders and binders of magic lore, pamphlets, and spells and a singular red cap with a feather stuck inside because time moves on.

And so does Steph.

At least I know I’m not the only one alone.

Steph’s kind of uncharacteristically scared about it, but she’s still here. I feel a little bit guilty about that, too.

But I’m also a little happy? How messed up is that.

Is it messed up? I don’t know.

I’d ask Ryan if I didn’t feel guilty about that, too.

Valkyrie came to my window, last night. She only hissed a little bit when I brought her some food Steph left. (Just in case—apparently Valkyrie used to like sitting on the window when Gabe wasn’t around, even though no one has any idea how she got up here). She didn’t let me pet her, but she let me get close enough to drop off the dish.

It felt a little bit like a sign. I don’t know why.

Thumbs hesitate along the edge of the page and a thick laugh quietly dances through the air, thick with tears.

It feels like I’m doing something right.