#prose log

Ripley’s solace is the woods. It’s always been her favorite place – even as a child. She loves to be outside, to get dirt between her toes and under her fingernails. Weekends were for trips to the parks where trees grew taller than ten of her. They were for pretending she was a knight, lost in the magic wood where she would rescue her brother, the disappeared prince. She would cry when her parents would take them home as the sun sank lower in the sky.

But these days Ripley’s the most dangerous thing in the woods. The night does not scare her anymore.

She tugs her jacket closer around her shoulders. It’s several sizes too big, picked up for ten dollars at a thrift shop, large, black and leather it’s the only belonging of hers she would try to save from a fire. It was the first thing she bought with her own money after she left home. The early summer night isn’t as hot as it could be, nor is it cool enough to really warrant the jacket but she’s not one to leave it behind. The tall grass and short bushes catch at her bare legs, the scratches in the skin heal just as new ones form. It tickles. 

She’s not really paying attention to where she’s going, absentmindedly following her nose and wandering. She has had a long time to get used to the way her heart rate quickens, the way her head tilts when she catches a scent, the way every sound is so much louder. While it’s habitual, instinctual now, should she chose to focus on it, she might be consumed with the anger and hurt that rides just under her human skin.

Whoever said that senior year is a year to goof off and take stupid classes clearly didn't go to Percy's high school. He's studying for his math midterm in his history classes and going over Grover's notes from history in his student council meetings because no matter what he does, he can't seem to get his brain to focus on just one thing at a time and he's afraid he's falling behind. He isn't, not really, because his grades are decent and his mom would kill him if he lost his average halfway through his senior year, but Percy is stressed.

So it's kind of understandable when he doesn't notice his homeroom teacher calling his name Monday morning, though Percy doesn't think his excuse (I really don't think I'm at all prepared to exist outside of high school and I can't stop thinking about it!) is one that she'll accept. He clears his throat and sits up straighter and gives her his most charming smile.

"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Rhodes. I must've been in another world," he says, pouring earnestness into every word. She eyes him for a long moment and then shakes her head, tsking even as she gestures him toward her desk.

"Gather your things, Perseus. Your presence has been requested in the attendance office."

For any other student, that would probably set off a hundred red flags. Percy just does what she asks, tucking his English book into his bag and hoping he's gotten through enough of the reading to answer a few questions intelligibly. There's only one reason he'd be requested at the attendance office.

They've been at the after party at Alice and Frank's for maybe half an hour and Remus is maybe a little tipsy. She's sort of sprawled across James on the sofa, sipping at a pumpkin ale she brought from her apartment (she stocks up every fall and then hordes them until they come around again) and people watching. She's trying her hardest not to study Sirius too hard, which is more difficult than she's willing to admit (and possibly a reason for why she's already feeling so light-headed). It's not until she notices the new girl -- the cute redhead Ted brought to the game and then the party -- that Remus has someone interesting enough to take her mind off of her ex.

She nudges James in the ribcage and leans in to whisper in her ear. "Do you think she likes girls?" Remus asks, nodding toward the redhead. The girl looks to be about their age, a tattoo wrapping up her arm and under the sleeve of her v-neck. She's leaning against a wall and texting, her face lit up by the screen of her iPhone. A drink umbrella is tucked behind her ear, left over from the drink Remus saw Alice shove into her hand when she walked into the party half an hour ago. Remus didn't see the girl drink any of it, nor did she see her get rid of the cup, but it's nowhere to be found now.

He asks her out on a Tuesday, between AP English Lit and AP Economics. Lily is caught offguard by it, though later when she tells Ted, he gives her this look that screams I told you so. Lily says yes, because Severus is cute and Severus is smart and she thinks it might be nice to kiss him.

When they do kiss, two dates in, Lily doesn't feel any of the sparks she expected. But she does feel warm, content to let him kiss her again, so she agrees to a third date and lets Severus call her his girlfriend. (Eventually, the kissing gets better.) They keep going out as winter melts into spring and Lily knows, somewhere deep down, that the hand-holding and easy kisses are nice, but not really what people reference when they talk about High School Sweethearts.

They graduate in May, something Lily has been thinking about since well before he asked her out. In September, she'll move away to go to college and Severus will do the same. She doesn't think he'll ask her to try long distance, but if he does...

Lily says no the first time he asks if he can put his hand under her shirt, and again the second, third, and fourth times. The fifth time, she says okay because she's curious, and she feels safe with him, and when he touches her, she feels warmth pool between her legs and wonders what, exactly, she's been missing.

They don't give into the prom night cliche, because Lily would sell her skateboard before she committed to that kind of stupidity, but they do sleep together the afternoon after graduation practice and it's nice. It hurts, but Lily likes that he kisses her through the whole thing, and makes sure she comes even after he finishes just a few minutes in.

When Remus opens his eyes Saturday morning, the first thing he notices is that his eyelids ache. Then comes the ache in the rest of his body, and the sudden realization that he absolutely cannot breathe through his nose. His mouth is open against his pillow, surely to compensate for the breathing problem, and there's a puddle of drool trailing from the corner of his mouth all the way down to the mattress.

Remus tries to swallow and ends up coughing, hard, loud enough to wake the rest of his housemates (assuming they aren't awake already). He shuts his eyes again and slowly rolls over, curling into a protective ball, groping on his nightstand for the box of tissues he always keeps handy for mornings that he wakes up sick.

Lily really doesn't like being at the mall when she doesn't have to be, which means unless she has to be at work, she does her damndest to avoid the place. But she has an interview next week to qualify her for a really, really important scholarship, and all of her clothes are either school-appropriate, work-appropriate, or wedding-appropriate, but not interview-appropriate. (That's the weird thing about working in trendy mall stores -- she doesn't really own anything that qualifies as 'business casual'.)

She uses her free period to have the counselors in the career center look over her resume and then heads to the mall, parking in the garage and cursing about the idiot girls who nearly ran into her car because they couldn't wait two seconds for her to get through the pay barrier. Then she makes her way up to the third floor of Nordstrom, knowing where the cute women's clothes are purely because she sometimes has to use the Nordstrom escalators when the main mall ones are down.

Remus' brilliant plan to get James to bed at a normal hour and then read for a bit before he falls asleep himself absolutely backfires. James insists on staying up and talking until Remus can't even see straight, and he barely manages to snag a few hours of sleep before he has to be up and headed to the mall to get there when it opens. Remus has pulled all-nighters before, but somehow this is worse, this I-didn't-sleep-nearly-enough-and-also-listened-to-my-best-friend-talk-about-Vans-Girl-all-night level of exhaustion.

He gets to Starbucks early, expecting a line, but then there isn't one so he has his venti quad soy caramel macchiatto in hand well before he needs to be anywhere near the mall. Remus isn't usually a coffee drinker, except on mornings like this, and when he catches his reflection in a store window as he walks through the empty mall he's a little disturbed by the circles under his eyes.

Given that he's already acting like a complete creep and asking Lily's manager whether James has scared her off, he figures it won't hurt his image too much to just sit on the floor in front of Newbury, slowly sipping his coffee while he waits for the next fifteen minutes to pass and the gate to open. 

Remus has never been so sorely tempted to jump off the roof of their house. It's been four days since the Fated Meeting at Newbury Comics and neither he nor James has seen hide nor hair of Lily, which means James is going just a bit batshit. Remus sits at the kitchen table sipping his tea, scrolling through his first paper assignment for mythology, and trying valiantly to actually listen to James as he paces around the house.

He's not really succeeding, which makes him feel like he's probably being a bad friend, but he's known James literally since they were both in the womb, so Remus thinks he'll be forgiven.

James slumps into the chair across from him and Remus gently pushes a second cup of tea across the table, silently urging his friend to drink it. It's a mark of how distraught James is that he actually picks it up and drinks from it; he usually makes a face and calls it "leaf water" whenever Remus offers him a cup. That, if anything, is what makes Remus stop scrolling and actually look at his friend.