#stepril fic

Sterling's hands gently glide the glossy black cover, before opening the book and letting herself fall into it. She loves it here, loves taking the stray lunch to sit in this chair with the company of only a book and absolutely no one else.

“Twilight? Have some standards.”

So maybe not absolutely no one else.

Sterling puts her finger in her place and grins up at April, who is looking at her with an acute combination of judgement and amusement.

“Hey, it’s romantic!”

“Is it?”

“I mean, it’s supposed to be. I don’t know, right now she’s kind of just describing how pale she is.”

“Groundbreaking literature.”

---

"It’s 9:22 am and April Stevens is late. She was supposed to leave nearly ten minutes ago to get to school on time to catch the bus for the annual Senior Ski Trip. Instead, she’s staring at her suitcase trying to decide if she should pack the baby-blue sweater with the cute neckline or not and it’s all Sterling Wesley’s fault.

i’m on the outside looking through - ch. 7

sterling throws her head back and laughs, loud and bright, and when you turn to pick up your drink from the table, you spot april’s face.

the first thing you notice is her jaw, oddly enough. usually it’s clenched tight enough that it makes your own jawbone hurt just by looking at it, but now it’s relaxed and borderline gaping. her eyes are wide and solemn and locked on your sister’s bare neck. you step into her view and her dazed expression snaps back into her usual haughty one.

she stands and offers sterling her hand. “april stevens,” she says. “i’m assuming you’re blair’s sister?”

sterling beams and does an awkward little bow. “sterling wesley at your service.”

;;

a fake dating au where relationships are strained and others are formed

excerpt:

sterling throws her head back and laughs, loud and bright, and when you turn to pick up your drink from the table, you spot april’s face.

the first thing you notice is her jaw, oddly enough. usually it’s clenched tight enough that it makes your own jawbone hurt just by looking at it, but now it’s relaxed and borderline gaping. her eyes are wide and solemn and locked on your sister’s bare neck. you step into her view and her dazed expression snaps back into her usual haughty one.

she stands and offers sterling her hand. “april stevens,” she says. “i’m assuming you’re blair’s sister?”

Sterling found herself drawn to the anonymity of the letter writing. No one made her sign her own name, so she didn’t. Just like that. She wasn’t Blair’s sister or Luke’s girlfriend or the girl with the second highest grades in the fifth grade, she was just a person writing a letter. She signed it TS on a whim, because, well, she was still deeply in a Taylor Swift phase and ever since April had just - well, she just didn’t have anyone to talk to about it anymore. So she wrote letters to some random girl miles away, bent over a big wooden table with a curated variety of gel pens. It was fun, freeing, and something that was solely hers.

And then, even better, she got them back. ___

Or, there's no way in hell that the two girls with the years long anonymous friendship who wrote letters to each other at camp and now frequently email could be the same two girls who are sworn enemies at school, right?

Outside of Instagram, though, Sterling hasn’t seen April in a year. Even then, they didn’t speak. She waved at April, actually, last year outside church on Christmas Eve. April just sort of furrowed her brow and turned away.

“I don’t want to come over to your house,” April says into the phone, not bothering to try to keep the excitement out of her voice, “I want you to come over to mine. Where no one else will be there.”

She hears a sharp breath, then a thunk through the line that she's 95% sure is Sterling dropping her phone. April grins to herself until Sterling’s voice is back on the line.

“Yeah, uh, yes, I would definitely like that, yes,” Sterling fumbles, sounding slightly out of breath and April has to sit down to manage the wave of affection that courses through her.

--