tenji

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*~* @aeriyism @runm3over @d1yearner @chocolatierrai @meimeionthebeat @justanotherqueer064 @marvelwomen-simp @roryspariss @mei-trccios @kianthegirlkisser @urwavvy

an: first chapter finally out oml

you shift beneath the weight of your quilts, blinking at the ceiling canopy above. the fire in the hearth has long since gone out, and the room is chilly in a way that settles in your bones. “is it today already?” you murmur, voice still caught in sleep. esther smiles softly. “the winter ball, miss.” there it is, again. the same phrase you've heard repeated all week. tucked into every conversation, wrapped in silk and expectations.

you rise, and esther moves wordlessly to help you dress. your corset is pulled taut against your spine, the ribbons binding your waist like duty. the gown your mother selected, a soft winter blue with white embroidery at the hem, waits atop your dressing table. you hadn’t chosen it, but you hadn’t protested either. you've grown used to yielding.

downstairs, the drawing room smells faintly of dried lavender and ink. your mother sits near the hearth with a cup of tea in her hand, posture perfect, and her expression as composed as ever. “you’ll wear your hair up tonight,” she says without looking at you. “with the pearl comb, the one your grandmother wore when she was presented.” 

“yes, mother.” “and you will be agreeable. smile when addressed, dance if asked.” 

“of course.” her eyes meet yours then, cool and assessing. “the warwicks will be there. lord william has returned from oxford. his father says he’s grown into quite the young gentleman.” you lower your gaze, feeling the familiar weight settle in your shoulders. the kind that isn’t from fabric or from expectation, but something deeper. “i will do what is expected of me.”

the hours pass slowly. hair is curled and pinned, unpinned, and pinned again. perfume is dabbed along your throat. you practice your smile in the mirror, but each time, it feels like it belongs to someone else. your younger brother pops his head in at one point, grinning in that irritating, knowing way boys do. “try not to scare off every suitor, y/n,” he teases. you say nothing, it’s easier that way.

when evening falls, the carriage ride to the rutledge estate is quiet save for the sound of the horses’ hooves against the damp stone. your mother sits across from you, humming contentedly. your father dozes lightly beside her. the manor looms ahead, all warm candlelight and trailing ivy, windows glowing like watchful eyes. you step out into the cold, velvet cloak wrapped tightly around your shoulders. the night air bites, crisp and still.

inside, the ballroom is a flood of colour and sound. laughter, violins, the faint rustle of silk. chandeliers sparkle overhead like frozen stars, and every corner seems filled with perfume and movement. you stand near the edge of the floor, gloved hands folded in front of you. smiling. nodding. doing as you must. someone approaches. a gentleman in plum velvet offers his hand, bowing low. 

you accept, you dance.

then another.

and another.

you cannot remember their names.

you excuse yourself after the fourth dance, murmuring something polite about needing air. the ballroom feels too close, too smelly, too perfumed, too bright. slipping between glittering gowns and laughing guests, you move toward the edge of the hall near the corridor. the crowd thins, but not enough. you’re not watching your steps, not really.

then, a shoulder catches yours sharply, sending you stumbling back a pace. you gasp softly, reaching for the wall behind you. “oh!” a voice exclaims, warm and immediate. “i am terribly sorry! i didn’t see you there.” you blink up, breath caught, and your words dissolve. the girl before you is radiant, though not in the way others in this room are. she wears a gown of soft, buttercream yellow, delicate and regal, with lace spilling from her sleeves like blooming petals. her bodice is fitted with perfect symmetry, embroidered with pale pink threading, and atop her head rests a crown of pearls. subtle, but unmistakably noble. her hair falls in dark, coiled braids, gathered and styled to one side, with a few soft curls trailing down past her shoulder. there’s something effortless about her elegance, something composed and striking that makes you forget where you are for a second too long.

you realize you’ve been staring. she tilts her head slightly, a smile curving just at the corner of her mouth. “are you alright?” you straighten quickly, gloved hands folding instinctively in front of you. “yes, i’m alright. it was my fault, truly. i wasn’t watching where-” “then we’ll both take the blame,” she interrupts kindly. “fair?” “fair.”

she holds your gaze for a moment longer, as if she is about to say something else. but then the music swells behind you both, and someone calls her name, too faint to catch. she dips her head in a graceful, practiced motion. “until next time, miss…” “l/n,” you finish for her. “y/n l/n.” her smile turners knowing. “miss l/n,” she repeats, as if trying it on. “i’ll remember that.” 

and just like that, she disappears into the ballroom, leaving only the soft scent of rose water behind. you stand there, heart unexpectedly quick in your chest, staring after a girl whose name you do not even know. but you want to.

more than anything, in that moment, you want to

you wake later than usual. not by much, just enough for esther to raise an eyebrow as she draws back the curtains. “is something the matter, miss l/n?” she asks softly, settling your tea beside your window seat. “you look sickly this morning.” you shake your head, brushing your fingers along the edge of your sleeve. “only tired.”

that is not a lie. you are tired. but it isn’t the kind of tired sleep fixes. 

all morning, you go through the motions. tea, toast, embroidery, conversation, all of it tinged with a quiet humming beneath your skin. because you have not stopped thinking about her.

the girl in the buttercream gown. the pearl tiara, the curls, the garnet warmth in her voice.

the moment plays on repeat in your mind, over and over, like a memory too soft to touch directly. it had only been a bump of shoulders, a brief exchange of words, polite, even, but something had pulsed beneath it. something that didn't belong in ballrooms or between strangers. you didn't imagine it, you know you didn't. still, you didn't get her name. she vanished into the night as if she had never been there at all. you don't know if she was a guest, a debutante, the daughter of someone significant, or just someone passing through, like a mist.

but she said she’d remember your name.

and you believe her.

by midmorning, your mother summons you to the drawing room. she’s seated with your aunt, sipping a sharp lemon tea and sifting through invitations. you sit as instructed, folding your hands neatly in your lap. your mother speaks in her usual clipped tones. “the warwicks were very pleased with your demeanor last night.” you nod. “lord william asked after you this morning.” you nod, again. “his family is visiting the manor next week. we’ll host them for a luncheon.”

you don’t nod this time. you feel your stomach pull taut, like a thread catching in embroidery. “i see.” your mother peers over her teacup. “you will wear the rose dress.” you murmur, “yes, mother,” though it barely reaches your throat. they go on talking, but the sound fades beneath your heartbeat.

you shouldn’t be thinking of her. you shouldn’t be wondering what she’s doing right now, or whether she lives nearby, or if she remembered the way your name felt in her mouth. and yet, you do.

later that afternoon, you retreat to the solarium with a book you’ve read too many times before. your fingertips trace the gold lettering on the spines as you lean back into the pale cushions by the window. outside, the snow has begun to melt. tiny rivulets of water slide down the glass, casting shadows across your open pages.

you’re not reading, not really. instead, you remember the weight of her gaze. the slight tilt of her head. the way she said your name like it wasn’t just a name, but a question.

“y/n l/n” she had repeated. as though she were testing the sound of it.

your name has never sounded like anything special before. but from her lips…

you close your eyes, breathing in the faint scent of dried lavender. and you wonder what hers might be.

meanwhile, in the hills above roselane, manon bannerman was not supposed to be at that ball. not technically. her cousin beatrice had forged the invitation, or rather, stretched an old acquaintance with the rutledge eldest into something resembling permission. beatrice was always dragging manon into trouble. and manon rarely minded. but something about last night stayed with her.

she wasn’t sure why.

it wasn’t that the girl she bumped into was the most beautiful in the room, though she was certainly lovely. it wasn’t her gown, or her posture, or her dancing. manon couldn’t even remember seeing the girl dance. 

it was the look on her face, like she wasn’t sure she belonged there either. like she was waiting to come undone. 

manon liked people like that.

she’d bumped into you by accident, truly, and expected the usual reaction. a tight smile, a quick apology, a glance away. but you had met her eyes instead. really looked at her. and then you smiled, just faintly. not for show. that smile had stayed with manon through the end of the night and into this morning’s frost. she now stood at the edge of her cousin’s estate garden, breath curling in the air, cloak clasped around her. the pearl tiara was tucked into her coat pocket, too precious to leave out but too absurd to wear again.

“y/n l/n,” she said aloud. just once. the name sat easily on her tongue. she didn’t know if the girl lived in the village, or in the countryside. she didn’t know if she’d ever see her again. but manon wasn’t the sort to leave things to chance.

the next day, a bouquet arrives in the late afternoon, just as you’re stepping down from the stairs.

snowdrops.

a small, quiet bundle. no flourishes. the bouquet is tied together with white ribbon. esther intercepts it, blinking in surprise before handing it to you. “there is no card, miss.” your heart starts hammering before you can even undo the ribbon. but folded between the stems, pressed into the space where a leaf meets lace, is a note. handwritten. swooping, unfamiliar script. you unfold it with fingers that shake.

miss l/n,

there is a little stone path behind the rutledge chapel.

sunday afternoon, if the weather allows.

i owe you a proper apology.

– m. b.

the paper smells faintly of rose. you read it. again, and again.

you have no idea what her full name is, but you do not care. you press the note into your chest. the snowdrops tremble in your hand. for the first time in days, you smile, truly smile

and you think, yes. i’ll go.

the sky is undecided. 

clouds hang low and soft over roselane, not quite grey but not promising sun either. you wrap your shawl tighter around your shoulders as you step from the carriage, boots sinking slightly into the damp soil that lines the edge of the chapel. the driver asks if you would like for him to wait. you shake your head. “if i need return, i'll walk,” you say. “it is not far.” the moment you’re alone, the silence becomes louder. no voices. no carriages. just the faint sound of the rustling of wet branches, the chirp of a single bird too early for spring, and the steady thud of your own heartbeat.

you find the stone path easily. it curves behind the rutledge chapel, just as the note described, narrow, cracked with ivy, flanked by low hedges gone brittle int the winter air. it smells like damp earth and the last of the snow. you’re early. or she’s late. either way, you’re standing there, alone, for nearly ten minutes, long enough for your nerves to turn into doubt.

what if she changed her mind?

what if someone saw the note?

what if this was some sort of sick joke?

you are about to turn away when you hear it. footsteps. slow, measured. you look up, and there she is.

the girl in the buttercream gown, though today she wears a deep forest green cloak, her braids swept loosely behind her shoulders. no tiara, no ballroom gown. but somehow, she still looks… impossibly elegant. like something one pulled from a painting.

“i thought you might not come,” she says, slowing to a stop a few feet from you. you try not to stare. but you fail at doing so. “i nearly didn’t,” you admit. “but i…” you pause. “i wanted to.” a beat passes. she smiles. it is smaller than last time. softer. “i hoped you would.”

you don't know what to do with your hands. you clasp them in front of you. “you never told me your name.”

“manon. manon bannerman,” she says easily. “my cousin beatrice pulled me to that ball. said i looked too serious. she forced me into the gown, the tiara was not my idea…” you blink. “you looked beautiful.” the words slip out before you can catch them. they hang in the air, suspended. manon does not flinch. “so did you.”

your breath catches. there’s a pause, not quite uncomfortable, but thick with something else. something waiting. you speak again because the silence feels like a thread you’re scared to pull. “you sent snowdrops” manon shrugs gently, her hands tucked into the folds of her cloak. “they grow along the road to my cousin’s estate. first flowers i saw this week. i thought they were fitting.”

“they are.” another pause. she tilts her head at you. “do you often flee the ballroom mid dance?” you glance away, just a little. “not often. but often enough…” “that makes two of us.”

something about that cracks the air between you. you both laugh, and it feels real. the kind that slips past your ribs and blooms in your lungs. manon takes a step closer, just enough that you can smell the faintest trace of rose water. “i hope this isn’t improper,"she says after a moment. “meeting like this. but i didn’t know how else to see you again.” you swallow. “i don’t mind” she looks at you like shes trying the memorize something. “you seemed… different. that night.” you nod, slowly. “so did you.” silence again. but this one doesn’t need to be filled. not right away.

the clouds part just slightly, letting a faint shaft of light spill across the stones. you glance down, then back at her. “what happens now?” manon’s voice is quiet. “that depends. would you like to see me again?” you are almost afraid to answer, but you do.

“yes.” her smile this time is wider. something flickers behind her eyes. relief, maybe. or hope. “then you will.” 

and somehow, you knew she means it.

you see her again the following sunday.

and the sunday after that.

always at the same place. always behind the rutledge chapel, tucked away where ivy climbs the stone and dead garden beds lie waiting beneath frost. the path is narrow, half forgotten, and you tread it with your heart in your throat each time, though you wouldn’t know it by the way you walk. you keep your back straight. you don’t look over your shoulder. you’ve learned to move like a secret.

sometimes she is already waiting, one boot balanced on the edge of the stone bench, arms crossed, expression unreadable until she sees you. then she smiles. and something in your chest settles.

today, you sit beside her on the bench instead of standing across from her. the silence is not uncomfortable anymore. it has grown into something companionable, even familiar. you hand her a small square of paper wrapped cake you saved from your morning tea. she raises a brow. “smuggling, y/n?” “i told them it was for the birds.”

she laughs, a real one this time. not sharp, not guarded. her mouth softens as she takes the square from you and peels back the paper slowly. you don’t watch her eat. not directly that is. but you feel her beside you, the way her shoulder dips when she leans forward, the way her boot taps faintly against the stone when she chews. you notice too much now. it’s becoming a habit.

“what else do you smuggle?” she asks. you pretend to consider it. “pride, opinions, spoons.” “spoons?” “i like to keep them.” she turns her head fully towards you, incredulous. “you steal spoons?” 

“i rescue them,” you say, straight faced. “from terrible china sets.”

manon blinks once, then tips her head back and lets out a laugh that shakes her whole frame. you feel it vibrate through the stone beneath you. “i think i’m frightened of you,” she says once the laughter subsides, her voice lower now. “you don’t act like anyone i’ve ever met.” you smile without looking at her. “neither do you.” 

another pause. this one feels different. like both of you just stepped slightly closer to something you have yet to name. she shifts beside you, and her arm brushes yours. you don’t pull away. she doesn’t either. “what did you want to be?” she asks suddenly. “before they told you what you had to be?” the question steals your breath for a moment. you glance over. her expression isn’t teasing now. it’s open. sincere. 

you think about the question for a little. “i wanted to be a cartographer,” you admit. “i used to draw maps of places i’d never seen. i’d label them with made up names. i liked the idea of getting lost on purpose.” she watches you with something unreadable in her eyes. “i can’t imagine you being lost,” she says after a beat. “you always look like you know exactly what you’re doing.” you scoff. “that’s the trick, isn’t it?” you both fall silent again. but the silence crackles. not with absence, but with everything unsaid, hanging just beneath your tongues. 

you’re both leaning back now, shoulders pressed just enough to feel the shape of each other. the sun is low, casting a pale gold light across the crumbling wall in front of you. neither of you moves. neither of you says the things you’re thinking. but your fingers twitch faintly in your lap. and you feel hers do the same.

no touching, not yet. but close enough that the nearness speaks for you. like dusk leaning towards dawn, never quite touching. 

the next few meetings are quiet. careful.

you sit beside her with a polite distance between you, hands tucked into your skirts, lips pressed into a ladylike line. you speak of safe things. the texture of the snow, the sound of the sparrows, the way candlelight flickers differently on rainy evenings. but she always finds the little things between your words.

“you hate the opera,” she says once, after you mention an upcoming evening in london. you glance at her in surprise. “how could you possibly know that?” “you wrinkle your nose when you say it.” you blink. “i do not.” “you do.” she grins. “just barely.”

another time, she brings a book of poetry, german, though she offers to translate. you sit with her for over an hour as she reads from the worn pages, voice low and steady. you barely remember what the verses were about. you can only remember the way she sounded reading them. the way your shoulder brushed hers each time you leaned in to see the lines for yourself.

she bears the scent of rosewater and winter’s slow retreat, as though spring itself had taken form beside you.

you don’t ask about her family. and she doesn’t ask about yours. this unspoken rule binds you just as tightly as your gloved hands.

you learn how to lie.

not the bold, scandalous sort. just the kind that easily slips from your mouth.

“i’m taking a walk.”

“i need some air.”

“i have a headache.”

it becomes routine. esther helps you lace your boots without question. the driver is told not to wait. you make sure to return before the warmth in your face betrays you. your mother remarks on your “cheeks coming back.” you nod and say nothing.

she thinks you’re beginning to blossom, finally behaving like a girl ready to marry.

you want to scream. instead, you meet manon in the garden.

it’s colder. the frost has turned the edges of the stone bench white, and manon brings a blanket to share. you sit closer this time. not touching, but close enough to feel the heat of her.

you talk about everything and nothing. she tells you she once swam in the seine in the middle of the night. that she broke her cousin’s window sneaking back in. that she hates oranges and has a scar on her knee from falling out of a tree as a little girl. 

you don’t know why she tells you these things. but you remember every word. “do you always break rules?” you ask quietly, picking at a thread in your gloves. manon glances sideways. “only the ones that deserve it.” you smile.

you don’t ask what rules she thinks this breaks. neither of you says it out loud.

the next meeting, it rains.

not heavy, but steady enough to soak the shoulders of your cloak and weigh down the ribbon on your bonnet. you nearly turn back. but you’ve never wanted to see her more. she’s already there when you arrive, standing beneath the stone arch that juts out beside the chapel wall.

“you’re soaked,” she says, taking you in with a sigh and a half smile. “you should’ve waited for better weather.” “you came,” you say, stepping under the arch. your fingers are numb. your breath clouds between you. “i always do.”

there’s water droplets on her lashes. a curl stuck to her cheek. you reach up before you can stop yourself, just to move it aside. your glove brushes her skin. she catches your hand in hers.

neither of you moves.

you forget how to breathe.

“i-” you start, but you don’t know what you meant to say. that you’re sorry? that you’re afraid? instead, you whisper, “i think about you more than i should.” manon is quiet. but she doesn't let go. she steps forward just enough that her forehead almost touches yours.

“i haven’t stopped thinking about you since the ball.” and then she kisses you.

you feel it everywhere. like snow melting in your chest, like a fire that’s been waiting for someone to strike it. it isn’t rushed. it isn’t desperate. it’s reverent. 

her hand slides to the side of your neck. yours finds her waist. you lean in at the same time, like you’ve both been leaning your whole lives, just waiting for this moment to finally tip. when she pulls away, her lips are pink and parted. her eyes are still closed. you don’t say a word.

you don’t have to.

you return home with wind tossed hair and a heart still thudding in your chest. everything feels louder. brighter. the world has shifted a fraction on its axis and only uou seem to notice.

esther meets you in the front hall with your gloves already unbuttoned. she doesn’t speak at first, only tilts her head slightly as she helps you slip them off, her eyes narrowing at the colour in your cheeks. “you look,” she begins carefully, “as though you’ve just remembered something rather sweet.” you blink. “do i?” 

“mhm,” she hums, folding your gloves with unnecessary precision. “and your fair is windswept. did you go riding?” “no,” you say quickly. “i walked.”

“in the cold?”

“i needed air.”

esther raises a brow but says nothing more. only presses her lips together in that knowing way of hers.

later, upstairs, you stare at yourself in the looking glass for far too long. you trace your lips with the tip of your finger. they still tingle. you still feel her there, in the quiet places of your skin, in the hollow of your throat where her breath once touched.

you don’t write about it. you don’t say it out loud. but when you sit at your desk, you pull out the pressed snowdrops manon sent weeks ago and smooth them carefully between your palms, like a prayer.

the next morning, a fresh bundle arrives.

snowdrops again. tied neatly with dark green silk and no note. just as before. just as always. but this time, the silk matches the ribbon manon had worn in her braid the day before. 

you keep them on your windowsill. esther notices them too. of course she does. she lingers by them when tidying the room, her fingers brushing lightly over the petals. she says nothing. but you think you see her smile, just faintly, as she turns away.

the days that follow feel longer.

you catch yourself drifting during conversation, stirring tea you do not drink, staring out the window like something waits for you beyond the hedgerow. and it does. she does. you nearly trip over your hem in the front hall and laugh aloud, which earns you a startled look from your mother. “you seem well,” she says, tilting her head at you. “i am,” you reply, perhaps too quickly. “i feel-”

but you stop yourself. because how do you describe this? the fire in your chest? the press of her hand behind your neck? the soft, sudden way she kissed you again as if she couldn’t help it? no. you only nod.

sunday feels an eternity away. you count the days by how often you think of her.

the way she leaned in.

the way her eyes flicked to your mouth.

the way her lips tasted like something holy and forbidden.

you lie in bed and recall the bench. her laughter. her hand in your hair.

you ache.

and when the sun rises on sunday, you are already awake. already waiting.

already wondering what she will say when she sees you again. whether she’s thought of nothing else, too.

manon doesn’t speak to anyone when she returns home. she doesn’t need to.

not even dinah, the maid who’s known her since childhood, asks a thing as she hangs up manon’s coat and places her gloves near the fire. there’s something about manon’s face that evening. too calm to be normal, too distant to be troubled. that warns against it. she goes straight to her room and closes the door gently.

not a slam.

a hush.

her hands are still cold when she unlaces her boots. her fingers fumble at first, and she swears under her breath, though the words come out softer than usual. everything about her is softer.

her spine is not so straight. her breath, not so shallow.

she lights the candle on her desk with shaking hands. then, she just stands there. not pacing. not sitting. only standing, as though her body hasn’t caught up with the memory of being touched. not in passing, not in pretence, but truly.

the kiss replays behind her eyes with excruciating clarity. not the surprise of it, but the inevitability. she remembers how it felt to lean in. the moment when tension gave way to certainty. the first, searing touch of your mouth against hers. not cautious, not demure. hungry.

she swallows hard. her mouth still warm. she lowers herself slowly into the chair at her writing desk, like she's afraid the shatter the moment by moving too quickly. then she reaches for a page. but she doesn’t write yet.

her fingers tremble. there’s a part of her that wants to go back to the chapel. right now. barefoot if she must. just to see you again. just to look at you. she doesn’t. instead, she unties the green ribbon from her braids and winds it slowly around her fingers. the same one she used for the snowdrops. the same one she left, on purpose.

she imagines you noticing.

she lets herself imagine you smiling.

she writes. she doesn't know what she’s writing, only that it comes quickly and spills out like a breath. no title. no plan. just the ache of memory translated into ink. she writes what she remembers.

how you laughed.

how her fingers curled into the collar of your coat.

how you kissed like you’ve done it before in another life.

how you kissed her back as though you knew it would have to last you forever. 

she doesn’t reread what she’s written. not yet. she simply folds the paper, presses it between the pages of a closed book, and tucks the book into the bottom drawer of her writing desk.

out of sight. but not forgotten.

that night, manon sleeps with her fingers curled under her pillow. as if she's still holding something delicate. as if she's still holding you. and when she dreams, she dreams of the chapel.

and of a girl in gloves, with wind in her hair, walking towards her like she belonged to her.

manon had arrived early, again.

she didn’t mean to. she never means to. but she always does.

there’s something about the silence before you appear that steadies her, though she would never admit it aloud. she’s seated already, one boot perched on the edge of the stone bench, gloved hands tucked in her lap, spine straight against the creeping ivy. but her eyes flick towards the bend of the path far too often. her breath fogs the cold air in slow, measured exhales. she’s been thinking all week. too much, too often. and not always wisely.

she shouldn’t have kissed her. not there, not then. but god, she couldn’t not kiss her.

the moment had begged for it.

and you had begged in silence too, with your eyes, with the tilt of your mouth, with the breath you held like a secret between you both. and manon had answered.

now, every moment since has ached with the echo of it. not regret. never regret... just longing.

she turns her face slightly to the sun, letting it wash over her cheekbones. it’s still cold, but not the bitter sort. the kind that feels like it’s preparing to leave. just like the frost clinging to the corners of the garden wall. and then, she hears footsteps. not loud. measured, familiar.

she doesn’t stand, but her chest tightens with something closer to relief. she crosses her legs at the ankle and tries to look unaffected. she’s never been very good at it where you are concerned. 

–

you feel it before you see her again. the shift in the air, the stir beneath your skin.

all week you’ve moved through your days like a dreamer, your mind slipping again and again to the chapel, to the way her lips felt against yours, to the warmth of her hands when they cupped your jaw as if holding something precious. you’ve memorized the moment in silence. replayed it behind closed eyes. now, the ache of wanting has softened into something sweeter. not frantic, not wild, but steady.

you don't know what you’ll say when you see her again. only that you must.

the garden behind the chapel is thawing. winter is still thick in the air, but the stone bench has warmed just enough to sit on without shivering, and the sunlight lingers longer on your sleeves. there are tiny white flowers beginning to push through the earth beside your boots.

manon is already there when you arrive, she always is.

you slide onto the bench beside her and don’t speak right away, you just breathe in the stillness. she doesn’t speak either. she only shifts slightly, enough to let your shoulder brush hers.

then, slowly, your head finds its way to rest on her shoulder. it feels like coming home. she hums once, low in her throat, and lifts your hand from your lap gently. she doesn’t take off your glove. she just plays with the tips of your fingers. tugging lightly at the seams, tracing the curve of your knuckle with her thumb.

it is thoughtless, intimate. you’re not even sure she notices she’s doing it.

“what did you do today?” you murmur. “read,” she says. “stared out the window for a century. nearly fell asleep before tea.” you smile against the fabric of her sleeve. “so the usual, then.” she nods. “and i wrote.” that perks your head up just slightly. “wrote?” she glances at you. “poetry.” you blink. “you write poetry?”

“when i’m bored,” she says. “when it’s raining, when my thoughts are louder than the house.” you sit up a little straighter now. “will you read me one?” “no.” you frown. “why not?”

“because they’re mine.”

“that’s unfair.”

“it is completely fair.”

you turn on the bench to face her. “you can’t just say you write poetry and then not share it.” “i can. i just did.” you raise an eyebrow. “manon.” “y/n,” she says mockingly. you gasp. “you are proud of them, aren't you? you just want me to beg.” 

“i wouldn’t mind it,” she says, smiling now. you swat at her shoulder, but her laughter is warm, unguarded. “please?” you try again. “just one.” “no.” 

“one line?”

“absolutely not.” you pout. “i won’t stop asking.”

“i know.”

you scoot closer. “you’re really not going to let me see?” she leans back slightly, just enough to meet your eyes directly. “not even a verse?” you whisper. the air changes. because your faces are too close now.

you both know it.

her smile falters just slightly, like her breath caught without warning. you blink once. and then you’re both still.

her eyes flick down to your mouth. yours do the same. 

neither of you moves. neither of you looks away.

the space between you is so small it might not even exist. and then it happens.

the kiss is sudden, but not surprising. like you both knew this exact moment was coming. like you were both waiting for it. its not cautious this time. it doesn’t ask permission. it’s full and deep and hungry, the way silence turns into thunder when it finally breaks. her hands are in your hair. yours are on her collar, pulling her in. her mouth opens slightly and you taste something like longing, like months of what ifs finally being answered by touch. you shift onto your knees on the bench, needing to be closer, and she pulls you in deeper. your nose bumps hers and she doesn’t care. she kisses you harder.

when she finally pulls away, just barely, her eyes are glassy. her lips are flushed. your chest rises and falls like you’ve run a mile. you stare at each other. then you kiss her again. slower this time.

like thank you

like i missed this before it ever happened.

like stay.

you part ways before the sky darkens, fingers brushing one last time like a secret handshake. neither of you speaks much. there's no need. but when manon returns home that night, she doesn’t go to the parlour. she doesn’t light the fire. she goes straight to her room, sits at her small desk, and pulls out a clean sheet of paper.

her pen hovers for a moment, then she writes. she doesn't date it, doesn’t yet title it either. she just writes. her handwriting is sharper than usual, more fluid. her ink runs low halfway through and she refills it without stopping. she doesn’t read it back, she doesn’t feel like she needs to. and when she finishes, she folds that page and slips it into the drawer beneath her mirror.

she doesn't label it, yet. 

but she knows who it’s about.

your mother calls you into her private sitting room.

she’s holding a letter sealed with dark blue wax. her expression is smooth and bright in a way that makes your stomach twist. “there’s been an offer,” she says. your pulse slows. your breath forgets how to move.

“from lord william warwick.” of course. “he’s fond of you,” she continues, like she's reading a script. “his family has land in kent. your father has agreed. the announcement will be made at the grantham’s gathering next month. he’ll begin visiting formally by the end of the week.” 

you say nothing. she studies you. “you should be pleased.” you nod. because what else is there to do?

that sunday, you don’t go.

you sit in your window seat all morning, watching snowflakes melt against the pane, hands clenched in your lap. you imagine her waiting.

you imagine her turning around slowly when she realizes you’re not coming. your stomach aches. 

you want to scream.

you want to run.

but you sit still. because this is what is expected of you.

the next morning, you find something on your windowsill. a snowdrop.

fresh. white. still went from dew.

no ribbon this time. no hidden note. just the flower. your breath catches.

she’s never sent one on a monday before. never outside the quiet rhythm of your sunday's. 

which means…she’s asking. now. and something in your chest tightens like a pulled thread. so you go.

you run, this time. boots splashing through puddles, skirt soaked at the hem, shawl thrown over your shoulder in haste. the wind cuts your cheeks, but you don’t feel it. not really. you’re too full of something frantic, something broken wide. the garden is empty when you arrive, but only for a moment. 

she’s there. her hair is windblown. her cloak unfastened, caught on one shoulder. she stands as if she’s been waiting on the edge of something. uncertain if she’ll leap or turn away. and when she sees you, something in her breaks open.

you don't speak. neither of you do. you walk towards her like the ground might vanish beneath your feet, and she meets you halfway before she even knows she’s moving. the ache between you is thick, swollen with everything unsaid. your breath catches. you try to speak, but no words come.

“i-” you begin, but it crumbles in your throat, and your voice starts to shake. “please. kiss me.”

her eyes soften, and then flood with something else entirely. 

grief

love

knowing

and before you can say anything else, her hands are in your hair, and her mouth crashes into yours.

it is not soft.

it is not gentle.

but it is everything.

it is months of longing wrapped into seconds. it is all the letters unwritten, all the glances held for too long. it is the pain of stolen time and the joy of having found each other at all. she kisses you like she’s trying to learn the shape of your soul. her hands shake at your jawline, but her mouth is certain, hungry, reverent. her lips move with a rhythm that borders on desperate, gasping between each breath like she doesn’t know when she’ll be allowed another.

you kiss her back. harder. you pour everything into it. every wish you whispered into your pillow, every dream you never thought you’d be brave enough to live. you fist your hands in her cloak, press your body against hers like you’re trying to crawl inside the moment, to never leave it.

the world disappears. the cold, the chapel, the fear. all gone. it’s just her. her breath, her warmth, her trembling mouth.

you both begin to slow. 

not because the kiss runs out, but because you do. because the ache beneath it catches up to you. 

she parts from you only barely, just enough to breathe. but her hands don’t fall away. her nose brushes yours, and her breath ghosts across your lips like a promise and a farewell all at once.

your foreheads touch. you stay like that, suspended, motionless. as if moving might break something fragile between you. her thumb strokes the corner of your mouth once, gently, as though memorizing you. neither of you speak, there is nothing to say that would not break you both.

you sit beside her. you don’t explain. you don’t say what your mother told you or what the date of the letter said or how many days are left before you wear white for a man you do not love.

she doesn’t ask. she just reaches for your hand, and you let her hold it. because you don’t know how to say goodbye yet. but you can already feel it coming. it hangs between your joint palms like fog, like dusk, like the very last line of a poem neither of you is brave enough to write.

when you return home, your mother is already waiting in the drawing room, a half embroidered handkerchief lying folded in her lap. “ah,” she says, setting her needle aside. “there you are. i’ve something to tell you.” you feel your spine tighten, just a little. she doesn’t smile. not exactly. but there is something in her eyes, a hopeful flicker, the sort you’ve come to recognize. that makes your stomach twist. “lord william has written,” she says. “he’s asked to call on you tomorrow. for tea.” you blink. “tomorrow?” “yes,” she says. “he’s eager to get to know you further. i think it’s quite promising, don’t you?” you nod because you are meant to. you smile because it’s expected. but your chest feels hollow, windblown.

you wear pale blue.

your mother says it suits your complexion and ties a ribbon into your hair herself. you sit straight during tea, your gloves folded in your lap.

the tea is bohae. fragrant. slightly over-steeped. you try not to think of how manon would wrinkle her nose at the bitterness.

you and lord william sit across from one another in the small parlour. the fire crackles softly behind you, and the light is pale gold through the lace curtains. too soft to banish the ache in your chest.

he is polite, and warm. a gentleman.

he asks after your favourite novels, your preferred composers. you mention mozart, though you must admit, you have a soft spot for the stormier pieces of beethoven.

he mentioned he likes charlotte smith, answering his own question. “i find her sonnets rather moving,” he says, sipping his tea. “her imagery, the sea, the ruins. i suppose i’ve always liked a certain kind of sorrow.” your fingers go still on the teacup’s handle.

charlotte smith.

you blink. and suddenly, you’re not in the parlour anymore. you’re back behind the chapel again.

the stone bench is cold, but manon is warm beside you. her cloak is wrapped around both of your shoulders, and the fabric brushes your cheek every time you shift, soft and worn and smelling faintly of cedar and smoke. your gloves are still damp from where you’d run through melting snow to meet her, skirt muddied at the hem, breath still catching in your throat. not from exertion, but from the ache of anticipation you can no longer name.

the book rests in her lap, spine softened by years, corner frayed. she reads slowly, her voice low and deliberate, like she’s not just reciting charlotte smith, but conjuring her. each syllable is touched with care. she doesn’t look at you as she reads, but you feel her attention all at the same time. stretched like thread between your shoulder and hers.

“...yet still I sigh to think how soon that power, 

shall also vanish like the morning dew…”

you stop hearing words. not because her voice isn’t beautiful, it is, but because you cannot stop looking at her. the curve of her jaw. the flutter of her lashes. the way the light catches at her temple where the wind has undone a few unbraided curls. you want to memorize her, not the shape of her, but the feeling. 

there is a tenderness in your chest so large it aches. you’ve never loved anyone before. not like this, not with a devotion that makes your fingers twitch and your throat tighten. but here it is. clear as breath. terrifying as fire. you shift slightly, your head rests more fully against her shoulder.

the scent of her is everywhere now. her cloak, her skin, her hair. and it makes you feel as though you’re dissolving. you close your eyes for a moment, breathing her in. and then, you look up.

she’s still reading. eyes flicking over the page, but there’s a softness at her mouth. like she knows. like she feels it too.

you stare at her, helpless to stop yourself. there’s a look in your eyes that would give you away if anyone else were there to see it. but it’s just you, just her, and the garden. and the frost, soft grass. she pauses mid-line, sensing your gaze. she looks down at you.

“what?” she murmurs, a smile just barely forming. you shake your head. you can’t say it. you don't know how to put it into words, that you think you might never recover from this, from her. from the way she looks at you like you’re something to be remembered. so you kiss her. softly, reverently, but with intention.

she inhales sharply. surprised, but not unwelcoming, and you feel her smile against your mouth a heartbeat later. her hand lifts, grazing your cheek, your neck, the edge of your jaw. she kisses you back, fuller now, and the warmth of her seeps into you like sunlight after snow. you think you could cry from the way it feels.

when you part, she doesn’t go far. her nose bumps yours, her breath is still mingled with yours. her eyes, bright and amused, search your face like she’s trying to memorize it in return. “you’re smiling,” she says softly. you drop your forehead to her shoulder, heart thudding wild and loose in your chest. “you make it difficult to not.” she lets out a sound, half a laugh, half a sigh, and folds her arms around you, pulling you in until your ribs are pressed to hers and your legs are tangled awkwardly beneath the cloak. and you both sit other, grinning like fools into each other’s hair. unable to say it, unable not to feel it.

the chapel bell tolls somewhere in the distance. neither of you moves, not yet. not while the world still lets you be hers.

“miss y/n?”

lord william’s voice calling you, brings you back. you blink. realign. swallow. 

“i- i apologise,” you say, smoothing your skirt. “my thoughts wandered.” he smiles, unfazed. “no need to apologise. it’s a poet’s trick, i think. pulling us away like that.” you nod, and smile faintly. 

but your hands twinge again.

your chest is full of her laughter.

and no matter how kind lord william is, no matter how gentle, he will never smell like rosewater and storms.

you don’t speak of the engagement, not at first.

but you keep meeting her anyway. behind the chapel, along the half frozen garden paths, sometimes by the edge of the woods if the weather allows. the silence between you is softer now, like everything has gone quiet so you can hear your hearts more clearly. but manon knows.

she knew the moment she saw your face that morning. she knows every time your hands tremble before they reach for hers. still, she doesn’t ask, not directly. instead, she walks beside you in silence and presses her shoulder to yours when you sit. she steals glances when she thinks you aren’t looking. she laces your fingers with hers beneath the folds of your shawl as if pretending you are just two girls with nothing to fear.

you let her, because you don’t know how to say the words out loud. and you don’t know how to let her go.

some days are quiet. she reads to you, her voice curling around phrases from old books that smell like candle smoke and pressed flowers. you lean against her arm and close your eyes.

other days are louder.

like when you kiss her against the garden wall, hands tangled in her coat, breath hitching as the snow begins to fall around you. she lifts your chin with gloved fingers like you’re something fragile and sacred. you kiss her like you’re drowning. she kisses you like she doesn’t care who’s watching.

even when no one is.

especially when no one is.

but the world is catching up.

the warwick family sends a package of silk samples. your mother calls them “generous” and says she prefers the ivory. 

there are whispers in the drawing room about your “good match.” lord william begins to send letters. short, gentlemanly, appropriate. you don’t respond. your mother replies on your behalf.

manon never asks what they say. she only holds you a little longer when you arrive.

one afternoon, as you sit beneath the bare arbor behind the chapel, she finally speaks. her voice is soft, but it cuts straight through you. “when?” you don’t pretend not to understand. “the announcement is next week.” she nods. her jaw is tense.

you reach for her hand, but she draws it back into her lap. “you said you didn’t want to marry,” she murmurs. “ever.” “i don’t.”

“then why?”  “because i have to.” 

that hangs in the air like a noose. she stares ahead at the crumbling brick wall in front of you, blinking slowly. “you’re not a prisoner.” you almost laugh. but it catches in your throat.

“aren’t i?”

manon looks at you. really looks at you. your eyes sting. “i would run,” you say quietly. “if i could. i would run.” manon’s voice is nothing more than breath. “then let me take you.” the ache in your chest becomes unbearable. you shake your head. “it would not work.” 

“you do not know that.” “but i do.”

she doesn’t argue, not really. she just closes her eyes for a moment. when she opens them, there’s something colder behind them. like she is already building a wall to keep herself from shattering.

you hate that you’re the one putting the first crack in it.

you don’t say ‘i love you’

but you think it, louder and louder with every step you take away from her that afternoon. and the next time you see her, it will be for the last time. you both know it. neither of you says it. not yet.

you don’t tell anyone where you’re going. you leave a note on your vanity, vague and neat, just in case someone goes looking.

but no on will.

they trust you to be proper, to be good, to be theirs. 

they don’t know what you’re choosing instead. 

the sun has returned after days of grey, hanging low and cold above the hills, but it feels like a gift. the frost on the windows melted before morning, and the air carries a stillness that makes your breath catch as you step through the chapel gate. she’s already there, waiting.

manon stands just off the path, gloved hands folded in front of her, eyes steady and unreadable. she doesn’t smile when she sees you, but she doesn’t look away.

you don't speak. you just walk to her, and she holds her arm out silently. you take it and you both begin to walk. away from the chapel, away from the garden. up past the hedges and into the edge of the trees.

she doesn’t ask how long you can stay, you don’t ask what time it is. 

it doesn’t matter.

none of it matters today.

you walk until your boots are soaked and your cheeks sting with wind. you follow the path where the trees part. tall, bare limbed, racing out like they’re trying to hold you both still, trying to keep you from falling forward into what comes next. the sun filters through in thin gold slivers, brushing your skirts, your collarbone, the side of her face. 

you find a clearing. small, secluded, untouched. like it’s waited centuries for this. 

there’s an old stone bench in the center, half swallowed by moss. she sits first, then pats the space beside her. you sit in the empty space. and for a long time, there’s nothing but the sound of wind in the trees and the slow rhythm of your lungs trying to breathe.

her voice, when it comes, is soft. “will you remember this?” you turn to her, barely holding it together. “every part.” she nods, but her throat works like she’s swallowing glass. 

she’s trying not to cry. so are you.

you reach for her hand, this time she lets you take it. you slip your glove off first.

skin against skin.

it feels warmer than it should. like safety. like something forbidden and real.

“i used to think,” she says after a long silence, “that i wasn’t made for this kind of thing.” “what kind of thing?” her fingers curl tighter around yours. “feeling. all of it. i thought i’d be fine without it.” “and now?” manon turns to you fully. her face is open. unshielded.

“now i think i’m ruined.”

you don’t answer with words.

you kiss her, and it’s not like before. it’s not desperate, not hurried. it’s reverent, heartbreaking. like a promise and goodbye pressed into one another.

you kiss her with the ache of every night you’ve spent dreaming of her, and every morning you’ve woken up pretending you haven’t. she kisses you like she’s memorizing the shape of your mouth. like it might be the last time she ever feels it. 

and it might be.

your hands slide up to her collar, trembling as you clutch the folds of her coat, pulling her closer. her breath catches. audible, fragile, and her fingers move to your waist. tentative at first, then firmer, like she's trying to memorize the curve of your body by feel alone.

she leans into you, slow and sure, until there’s no space left to give. her other hand finds your hair, and you feel the way she gathers it, gentle and slow, guiding your face as her lips deepen against yours. your breath stutters when she shifts, aligning her mouth more fully over yours, and you part your lips instinctively. the kiss grows, just slightly, hungrier. like neither of you meant for it to. like you both forgot where you are, what time it is, what the end if this will mean. you gasp softly into her mouth when her thumb brushes just beneath your ribs.

and still, you keep kissing her. like you want to disappear into her. like you would rather burn here, in this moment, than go on living without it.

she draws back, barely, only to kiss the corner of your mouth. then the other. then the hollow beneath your cheekbone. her mouth is warm. devotional. as if she’s trying to bless every part of your face she’ll never get to see grow older. when her lips finally return to yours, you exhale a soft, broken sound. your hands find the edge of her jaw, skin to skin, and you tilt her towards you. you kiss her slower now. like you’re lingering on each second. like this is something to be grieved before it’s even over. and she lets you.

she lets you have every second.

until you both go still. forehead to forehead. eyes closed. lips parted. breathing, like it hurts to stop.

her voice is hoarse, like it’s coming from somewhere deep and bruised. “i wish-” she begins, but you cut her off. “i know.” because you do.

of course you do.

you lie with her on frostbitten grass for the rest of the afternoon. tangled in her coat, her hand in your hair, your face is pressed into the hollow of her neck. her heart beats slow and steady against your cheek, and you wish you could be kept there, where everything still feels like yours.

no one speaks. 

you both listen to the sky, and pretend it’s not getting darker. pretending the night won’t end. pretending tomorrow isn’t already written.

by the time you return home, dusk has nearly gone. the wind has lost its sharpness.

your mother is waiting in the drawing room. she rises as you enter, hands clasped like she’s already rehearsed what to say. she doesn't scold. she only says, “the tailor will be here early in the morning. lord warwick expects you to stand with him at the announcement.” you nod.

you don't trust your voice.

you don't meet her eyes.

you walk past her without a word and head up the stairs, down the corridor, fingers curling into your skirts just to feel something solid. when your bedroom door closes behind you, the world softens. but it doesn't relent. not really.

you sink to the edge of the window seat, still dressed in the cloak she held you in. her scent clings to it.

rosewater.

cold air.

her.

you press your cheek to the sill, the glass is cold. you stay like that for a long while, unmoving. still. the kind of stillness that only comes when something is breaking

your eyes blur, but you don’t cry. you just feel hollow. like something has been scooped out of you.

the snowdrop is still in your pocket.

you pull it out carefully, finger trembling as you cradle it in your palm. its petals are slightly bruised now, the edges curing. it doesn’t look like how it did that morning.

you wish you didn’t understand that metaphor.

you press your cheek to the sill. the glass is cold, but your skin is colder. for a moment, you think you can hold it together. that maybe if you stay very still, if you breathe evenly, the pain will pass over you like weather.

it doesn’t.

the tears come fast and without warning. and this time, they are not quiet.

they come like a break. like something shattering inside your chest with no hope of repair. you lurch forward, hands gripping the edge of the window as if it might keep you from collapsing entirely. a sob claws its way up your throat, and when it leaves you, it sounds like grief. like a name you’re afraid to speak aloud.

manon.

you cry harder. 

your whole body trembles, heaves with it. it’s not delicate. it’s not pretty. its ugly, raw, and real. you gasp between sobs, like you’re drowning above water. you try to breathe, but it won’t come out right. you curl in on yourself, forehead pressed to your knees now, hair falling around your face like a curtain. you’re shaking so violently it rattles your bones. the sleeves of her cloak are still wrapped around you, and you claw at them like it might bring her back. like if you hold tight enough, you won’t have to let her go.

but she’s not here.

and no one is coming to save you from what’s already been decided.

you cry until your throat aches. until your mouth tastes like salt and sorrow. until the sobs grow hoarse and uneven and so deep that they no longer sound human. 

that’s when the door creaks open.

esther steps in slowly. her footsteps falter when she sees you, crumpled at the window like something broken.

“y/n…” your name leaves her lips like a prayer, or a curse. she rushes to you and kneels beside you without hesitation. you try to say something, anything, but your voice is gone. all that comes out is a noise, guttural and sharp and helpless. and when she takes you in her arms, you collapse fully. wrecked. 

you clutch at her gown like a child, sobbing into her chest, gasping like your heart is breaking because it is. it is, and there’s nothing to be done. “i can’t-” you choke out. “i cant- i can’t-” she hushes you, her hands stroking your hair. “breathe, my darling. i’ve got you. i’ve got you.” you want to tell her about the forest, the kiss, the promises too dangerous to be named. instead, you just whisper, “i don’t want to marry him.”

it breaks something in the air.

and still, esther doesn’t flinch. she moves closer and wraps her arms around you. she holds you the way no one else has held you since you were a child. like she means to keep you whole. but she can’t fix it.

no one can.

and so you sob. for the girl who kissed you like a promise, for the chapel garden that won’t bloom again, for the life that could’ve been.

and for the ache you know you’ll carry into every morning that comes after. 

the dress is ivory.

not the one you would’ve chosen. 

it’s stitched with lace that scratches the inside of your elbows, and the satin gloves you wear are too tight around your knuckles. you want to rip them off. you want to scream. you want to run.

you smile instead. that’s what’s needed. 

the engagement announcement is held in the warwick family’s winter garden, where brittle roses still cling to leafless vines and the floor is marble that chills straight through your slippers.

lord william stands beside you like the world already belongs to him.

you don’t dislike him, that’s the worst part.

he is kind, polite, tall enough to be admired, quiet enough not to be arrogant. his hand at your waist is steady. gentle. rehearsed.

he looks at you like you are already his wife. and you smile, because you know how to.

everyone claps when your names are spoken together. champagne is poured, and toasts are made. someone calls it a “perfect match.”  you hear your mother laughing behind her fan. you taste bile in your throat and force it down with a sip of lemon tea.

your fingers are cold.

you wonder if manon knows. you wonder if she felt it the moment the words were said aloud.

you think ‘she must have. of course she did. of course she did.’

you don’t see her again. not for days

not until the carriage is waiting at the foot of the drive, your trunk loaded, your handmaids finishing their farewells. you’re leaving for the warwick estate in kent. you’ll live there now.

you’ll be mrs. y/n warwick.

your title tastes like someone else's name.

you slip away just before dusk, waiting past the hedges behind the garden as if you’re just in need of air. no one follows. 

you find your way to the chapel. you round the path behind it one last time, knowing, hoping, she’ll be there.

and she is.

standing with her hands in the pockets of her coat, her curls wind blown, her cheeks flushed like she ran to get here.

she already knows, and somehow, she still came.

she looks at you like it hurts just to breathe. 

“i waited,” she says softly. “i thought maybe you wouldn’t go.” you walk to her.

step by step.

your throat is so tight you can barely speak. “i wanted to stay.” she swallows. her voice breaks. “then why didn’t you?” you shake your head. “because i am a daughter. and a duty. and a wife before i am a person.” she steps closer.

“you were mine before you were anything else,” she whispers. 

you let the words hit you full in the chest. she reaches up, her hand shaking, and touches your cheek like it’s already a memory. her voice barely holds. “i would’ve given you everything.” you take her wrist and press your face into her palm.

“you already did.”

and then she kisses you. it's the kind of kiss that holds weight. that says ‘i’m angry you’re leaving and i love you anyway.’ that says ‘i hate that we live in a world that would do this to us.’ that says ‘if i could set fire to this future, i would.’

her mouth moves like she’s trying to brand it into memory. like if she kisses you deeply enough, she’ll taste you for the rest of her life. you match her. breathless, desperate, hands twisting in her coat.

you pull back only to breathe, only to look at her, and then you’re kissing again.

she backs you against the stone chapel wall, both of you shaking, with the raw ache of holding on to something that’s already slipping through your fingers. she kisses down your jaw, your throat. her cloves hand brushes against your ribs, like she wants to remember exactly how you feel beneath all the fabric and constraint.

“i would have kept you hidden,” she whispers into your skin. “i would have run with you. i would have married you in the woods, in secret. without a priest. without anything but your name in my mouth.” you feel your whole chest shatter.

“i would have said yes,” you breathe. 

when she hears those words fall out of your mouth, she stops. and for a moment, the world doesn’t spin.

she closes her eyes and presses her forehead to yours. her lashes are wet. “we could’ve had a life,” she whispers.

you can’t answer. there's nothing for you to say. so she says it, for the both of you. 

“we loved each other too late.” you nod, and your tears fall silently between you. her hands slip to your waist. her fingers tighten, memorizing the shape of you, the warmth of you.

you kiss her again, slowly this time.

like forgiveness.

like an apology.

like a goodbye.

when you finally step back, neither of you want to move.

then manon says, barely audible, “don’t look back. if you do, i’ll chase after you. and i know you’ll let me.” you nod.

you turn and find the strength to walk away. you feel her still, behind you, not calling your name. because she promised she wouldn’t.

the carriage is waiting when you return.

you get in without speaking. your mother comments that your cheeks are flushed, you only nod. you don’t look out the window. you don’t look at anything at all. 

your hands rest in your lap like they no longer belong to you. and when the wheels begin to turn, carrying you away from roselane, from the chapel, from her, you keep your eyes forward. you don’t look back. because if you do, she’ll chase you.

and you’ll let her.

and you can’t.

manon watches you go, each step quieter than the last, until the trees begin to swallow you. 

the blue and grey hem of your cloak vanishes behind the frost covered hedges. the soft echo of your boots fades. and then… you’re gone.

really gone.

and manon is left alone in the clearing, still holding the shape of your warmth against her body like an afterimage. she doesn’t move. she stands frozen, hands curled at her sides like they’re supposed to be touching something. like they remember holding you. 

the cold rushes in slowly. at first, it stings her throat, then her nose, then her eyes. but that isn’t the wind.

it’s grief

it rises in her so quickly she doesn't have time to steel herself. doesn’t even have time to take a breath.

she collapses to the earth like she's been undone. her palms are braced against wet moss, her shoulders shaking, hair falling forward and cloaking her face. a sob tears free from  her chest before she can stop it.

she cries like she’s never cried in her life. it’s sharp, broken. the sobs leave her breathless. there’s no elegance to them, no poise. her hands fist the ground like it can hold her together, like it can stop the way her body fractures around the hollow space you used to fill.

she stays there long after the sun has dipped low behind the trees, long after the frost has begun to return to the grass. until her hands are numb. until her throat is raw.

there’s no more hiding it. no more pretending to be the strong one, the careful one, the one who didn’t need.

she needed.

she still needs. 

that night, she doesn't sleep, she doesn't speak, she doesn't change out of her coat. 

she lies on her side, atop her bed, staring at the wall, clutching the corner of the scarf you had once left in her hands. the scarf that still smells like you.

she stays like that until morning. and still, the ache does not pass.

sunday, your day.

the chapel garden.

the narrow gate only you used.

the sky is pale and unkind. manon dresses before the sun has risen, pulling on her best gloves with slow, thoughtless fingers. for a moment, she forgets what she’s doing. she almost ties her hair in the way you liked. she almost gathers her books, the slim volume of verses she’s promised to read next. then she stops. it hits her.

there's no meeting today.

there will be no soft footsteps on the path behind the chapel. no shadow moving through ivy, no smile, no gloved hand brushing hers, lingering just a little too long.

not this sunday.

not ever again. 

manon stands in the middle of her room and lets the truth crush her. no tears this time.

this time she just sits. and she writes.

y/n, 

i do not know if i have the right to write to you.

i do not know what i expect from this. nothing, i suppose. only that the stabbing in my chest refuses to quiet, and words are the only thing i’ve ever had to offer.

so i will write what i never said aloud.

i love you.

there. i’ve said it.

not with breath, not with lips, not with the press of your name against my mouth in the dark, but with ink. with something that might last longer than i will.

i love you.

i love you, y/n.

i love you for how you looked at me like the sky was something we could touch.

i love you for how you kissed me. not with fear but with devotion. like i was real. like i was yours.

and god help me, i loved you for leaving. even if it broke me

because i know why you did it. i know the weight you were born under. i know the coldness of expectation, the velvet cage, the needle fine stitching of duty into your skin.

but i also know how you looked at me the last time.

i know your hands on my waist.

and i know that if you had turned around, even once, i would’ve chased you.

i would’ve burned down the world for you.

i still would.

i do not know what your house in kent looks like.

i do not know if you sleep soundly.

i do not know if he kisses your forehead when you cry or if he even knows that you do.

but i know you love me. even now. even still.

and i will carry that love in my body until it rots away from me.

until i am nothing but earth and ash and the echo of your name.

you-

manon stares at the letter with shaking hands. the tears come again, slower this time, silent and scalding. she presses her knuckles to her mouth to keep from sobbing. she bends forward, folding herself around the weight of it. and when she can no longer look at what she’s written, she tears the letter in half.

then again.

and again. 

until there is nothing left but paper shards and a silence far colder than the one before. when she could breathe again, barely, she fed the paper into the hearth and watched the flames take it.

she watched it burn slowly.

like her love.

like the memories.

like the life she’ll never have.

you wake before the house does.

not because you’re restless, but because your body is used to this. the quiet stirrings of habit. the low, familiar ache of anticipation that once felt like hope. your hands reach for the gloves before your mind catches up. you stop yourself.

you sit back on the edge of your bed, staring at your palms. you are not going.

there’s nowhere to go.

you told her goodbye, and you didn’t look back.

god, you didn’t look back.

you dress anyway.

esther says nothing when she brings up your tea. she just watches you carefully, her eyes flicking to the window and then back to your too-still face. you think she knows. at least… enough.

your mother sends for you after breakfast.

there are many details to discuss. what lace to use for the sleeves of your wedding gown, how many guests will attend the ceremony at the warwick estate, whether your hair should be down or pinned beneath the veil. 

you nod at all the right moments, but you aren’t really there.

your body is in kent, in the drawing room of the new house with its high ceilings and cold, blue wales. but your soul is still behind the chapel in rutledge. 

you excuse yourself before tea. you say you’re going to write letters, though you bring no parchment.

instead, you sit at the window with your knees pulled to your chest, watching the trees sway under the pale sun. you rest your chin on your arm as you stature out the window. you see the cloudy sky and imagine that manon is there. at the chapel

even though, you know, she isn’t.

still, your eyes blur.

you try not to cry. you try to be good.

but you're not good, not really.

you’re a girl who kissed another girl in secret gardens. who held her hand like a promise. who tasted snowflakes from her mouth and whispered dreams into her collar.

you’re a girl who ran through frostbitten fields for a love she could not keep.

when the first sob comes, it's silent. just a breath caught too hard.

then another. until your chest is heaving and your teeth knit the sleeve of your dress to keep from wailing. your sobs are sudden and full bodied. your hand clutches the windowsill like it might jeep you from falling. you gasp through it, chest stuttering, jaw tight.

you miss her.

you miss her so much it feels like a punishment.

you are not ever going to stop missing her.

not even after the dress is fitted, not even after the vows are said.

not even after you wake beside a man with a kind voice and a library full of the same poems she once read aloud.

you will not stop missing her.

not when the last snowdrop blooms

not when spring comes.

not ever.

you curl in on yourself, burying your face in your arm. you cry for the garden, for the chapel, for the kisses you’ll never steal and the poems she’ll never finish and the future that was never yours to keep.

you cry because sunday has come and she is not waiting. because you did what you were supposed to do.

and it wrecked you.

esther finds you like this. collapsed at the window. her hands are gentle when they touch your shoulders, her voice soft. “oh, miss…” you don’t look up, you can’t. you just let her hold you. and for the first time, you admit it aloud. voice thick and ruined and barely a whisper.

“i loved her.”

esther doesn’t flinch.

she just closes her eyes for a moment, then presses your head more tightly to her shoulder. you can feel the tension in her jaw. not from judgement, not from shock, but from holding herself still so you can fall apart. “i know,” she whispers.

no ‘it’s alright’

no ‘you’ll be fine’

just ‘i know’

because perhaps she’d seen it all along. the way your smiles came slower before sundays, the smile and soft twitch in your fingers when snowdrops appeared on the sill, the way your eyes never quite looked like they were meant to be here, in kent, behind this window. maybe she’d known before you had.

you do not speak after that, there’s nothing left to be said.

she holds you while the sun drifts behind grey clouds again. while the fire burns down, the tea in the untouched tray goes cold beside you. when evening falls, she helps you out of your dress, brushes your hair in silence and pulls the blankets over your shoulders.

you are too tired to weep again, but not tired enough to forget.

you don't forget.

you fall asleep with manon’s name pressed to the roof of your mouth. and for the first time since you left, you dream of her again.

but in this dream, she doesn’t look sad. she’s smiling.

and she is looking at you like you’re still hers.

you’re told it’s a beautiful day for a wedding.

esther stands behind you, fastening the final button down your back with hands that try not to shake.

she hasn’t spoken since helping you into the dress. “you look…” she begins now, her voice barely above a breath. she doesn’t finish, her lips tremble like she’s trying not to ruin your rouge. instead, she lifts your veil, her fingers catching in the lace for a moment, then lets it fall gently over your shoulders. she adjusts it and steps back.

you don't look at her. you look at the mirror.

and a stranger looks back.

and a stranger blinks back.

ivory satin, hair pinned with pearls, lips the colour of cherries, even though you feel ashen. you try to find yourself in the reflection.

you cant.

you are a picture someone else has painted. a body clothed in promises you never made.

a doll.

a daughter.

a bride.

there’s a knock at the door. “five minutes,” comes your mother’s voice.

esther opens it slightly, murmuring a reply, then closes it again. she turns to you, her face caught between pride and pity.

you expect her to say something, but she only nods.

you walk to the door yourself. your legs don't shake, your hands do, your heart does. 

but your feet carry you forward all the same. because what choice is left? what choice is ever left for girls like you?

the chapel doors open.

and for a moment, just a moment, everything stills. 

the crowd turns to face you. heads lift, fans flutter. a thousand eyes fasten their gaze like pins through velvet.

and all you can think is, she’s not here.

manon is not in this room.

she is not at the end of this aisle.

she is not watching from the shadows, waiting to steal you away like some foolish, romantic thought you haven’t yet been taught to fear.

she is nowhere.

you are alone.

except you aren’t.

the chapel is full. of sound, of guests, of petals crushed beneath polished heels, of the scent of lilies you never asked for.

and of lord william warwick, standing beside the altar in a fine dark coat, his hands folded behind him. his expression is neutral, polite. he offers a soft, practiced smile. you walk because you must. because the hush is turning awkward. because your mother’s voice hisses, “now, y/n,” from behind the door.

you take your first step, then the hem of your dress whispers across the stone.

you do not look at william. you do not look at your father, proud and waiting like this is his triumph. 

you look ahead. past the veil, past the crowd. and in your mind, you try to summon her. 

the shape of manon’s eyes when she laughed too hard.

the slope of her mouth when she called you brave.

the feel of her breath at your neck when she whispered your name like it meant something holy.

holy.

there it is again. the ache surges like a wave breaking behind your ribs.

you inhale once. sharply. and then your hand is being offered. you give it, you have to because this is your life now, stitched together by silence and ceremony. 

the vows are spoken. you say i do.

because they expect you to. because william warwick is kind, and clever, and gentle, and he deserves someone who can love him.

but you are not that girl. not now. not ever.

the ring is cold as it slides onto your promised finger. gold, weightless, and final. you smile, just as practiced. soft and demure, chin tilted just so, eyes lowered like a secret. he leans in. his lips brush yours, its gentle and unassuming. 

there is no fire. 

there is no tremble.

just a kiss. clean, quiet, and dry.

its polite.

you hear the sound of applause before you can even register that it’s over. a room full of hands clapping, muffled by gloves and distance. like thunder echoing from somewhere very far away. the light through the chapel windows glows pale gold, pouring across the pews in solemn shafts. it hits your cheekbones, your lashes, the corner of your mouth, and it makes your tears shimmer like joy.

as though this is a blessing.

as though this is what you wanted.

you do not wipe them away.

let them think you’re overcome.

let them think this is love.

let them think whatever they like, because none of it matters.

not now.

not anymore.

the house is beautiful.

grand in a way that feels borrowed. tall windows and tall ceilings, a hearth in every room, the wallpaper is pale green with tiny painted vines, someone left a vase of lavender on the writing desk, a maid unpacks your gloves, your husband calls you dear. everything is tidy. painless. silent.

you thank the servants, you say all the right words.

you move like someone who belongs here.

but when the door closes behind you that evening, when your dress is unlaced and your hair is let down and you sit, finally, by the edge of the bed, you begin to unravel.

the lamps glows low in the corner. there’s a faint scent of tea from the tray left untouched. you sit at the writing desk in your nightgown, the sleeves pulled over your wrists. a sheet of paper in front of you, a pen in your hand. you don’t know what you’re doing until your hand begins to move.

slow, careful and grieving.

manon,

i do not know what time it is.

only that i cannot sleep.

i’ve tried. god knows i’ve tried. i’ve lain beside him with my hands folded neatly and my eyes closed and my chest aching like something caged.

but i cannot stop thinking of you.

i cannot stop seeing you in that last moment. your eyes, the way you did not run after me. the way i did not look back.

you do not know how close i was to doing it. how badly i wanted you to stop me, to pull me back with nothing but my name.

i thought i could be someone else.

i wore the ivory dress, i stood beside him, i smiled when i was meant to, and i did not cry, though my throat burned from holding it in. the words yes and thank you slipped out of me like a thread pulled through fabric, and now i feel hollow, like someone else is living my life from inside my body.

i thought if i smiled enough, if i stood still enough, if i stitched myself tight enough into this life, i would stop missing the sweet sound of your laughter.

but i was wrong.

sometimes i try to remember what your hands felt like, what the garden behind the chapel smelled like, what your voice sounded like when you were not afraid.

but everything is fading. and that frightens me more than anything.

i do not want to forget you.

the house is quiet, so quiet it hums.

my hands are cold, my ring feels too heavy.

and i keep thinking, had i been brave… if i had just asked you to come with me. if i had just said yes to the right person,

maybe things would be different and maybe, just maybe, i would still be yours.

i wanted to write something beautiful, i wanted to tell you that i made a mistake. 

that i still love you.

that i always will.

but that will not change anything, will it?

it will not unfasten the buttons down the back of this marriage, it will not undo the papers signed, it will not unteach me obedience.

and even if i had wrote it all, poured every last bit of myself onto this page and sent it to you, what then?

would you come?

would i leave?

would i be brave enough?

no. 

you deserve more than a memory.

you deserve someone who could have loved you out loud.

and i am tired of pretending that person is me.

you don’t sign it.

you fold the page once, then again, then slide it into the drawer with your gloves and close it like a secret.

no one will read it, no one ever will.

but you had to write it.

but manon would’ve said it all, out loud.

and for a moment, you pretend you're still beside her, in the garden, the frost beneath your knees, her hand against your cheek. for a moment, a final moment, you let yourself cry. the kind that leaves your ribs sore and your breath torn in two. the kind of crying that ruins you.

because you already are.

the next morning, you wake before your husband.

the light is soft through the curtains, brushing the edge of the four poster bed. your gown is folded neatly on the chair where the maid had left it. the house is already awake. you can hear the creek of floorboards, the clink of dishes, the slow rhythm of a household returning to its order. 

you lie there for a moment, staring at the ceiling. your chest feel empty and full all at once. like a room where something used to be. when he stirs beside you, you smile automatically. effortlessly. “good morning,” he says, voice still rough with sleep. he’s kind, gentle. the kind of man your mother would call steady. and maybe he is.

maybe you’ll be, too.

you dress with careful precision. high collar, tidy cuffs, hair pinned smoothly, pearl earrings. you look every bit the proper lady of the house. in the mirror, you barely recognize yourself.

at breakfast, you laugh.

you sit across from him at the long dining table, a single vase of fresh hyacinths between you. he asks how you slept. you say, well. you butter your toast, you sip your tea. 

you tell him the house is beautiful. 

you compliment the jam.

you ask him questions about his work, to which he answers kindly, hands folded, posture easy. he tells you a story about the stables. you smile at the right moments. you even laugh, light, practiced and polite. it sounds almost real. he says, “you seem happy.” and you don't flinch. 

you look up, meeting his eyes across the table, and say, “i am.”

then you take another sip of tea and swallow it like it doesn't taste like regret.

after breakfast, he asks if you’d like to walk with him in the garden. you say yes.

you take his arm and walk beneath the trimmed hedges and manicured rows of winter flowers and tell yourself this will become easier. this will become normal.

this is what you chose.

and if theres a part of you, the smallest part, that aches when you pass the camellias because their colour reminds you of the ribbon manon once wore around her neck, you ignore it. you ignore the way your hand feels wrong in his. you ignore the way your lungs are tight by the end of the walk.

because you are a wife now.

but that night, when the house is quiet, and the halls are empty, and you are alone once more in your room, you light a candle and sit beside the window.

you do not speak. you simply sit with your hands in your lap and listen to the sound of nothing. a wind touches the glass. the moon is thin and far away. 

you reach for the letter you never sent, the one hidden beneath your drawer, folded twice. you press it flat. you trace the creases but you do not open it.

you don't need to.

you already know every word.

somewhere, very far from here, the snow is melting. the frost is loosening its grip from the chapel stone. the garden will bloom again.

she will bloom again.

you close your eyes and imagine her turning toward the light.

you lower the letter gently into the fire and you watch it burn. not as a letting go.

but as a promise kept.

for y/n.

by m.b., winter, 1819.

i have seen beauty in many forms:

in marble busts, in the curl of a rose,

in the snow’s hush upon a chapel roof.

but never until you did i see it breathe.

you move like music left unwritten,

like the thought before the prayer,

like morning sunlight in a shuttered room.

so quiet i almost feared to touch it.

your voice lives somewhere beneath my skin.

a glance from you and i forget.

i forget my name, my station,

my need for breath.

what sin it is.

to live in a time where loving you

must be my most silent art.

my secret rebellion stitched in the hem of my days.

i would follow you anywhere,

through the hedgerows. across the heather.

to the ends of the world

or to ruin.

and yet,

how soft you were when you laid your head to rest upon me,

how gentle your hands when they met mine, gloved and trembling.

you looked at me like i was more than flesh.

more than fate.

more than a girl with no name for what she felt.

i am yours.

not in the way the world permits,

but in the quiet. in the ache. in the poem.

where they cannot take you from me.

you wake with a start, glowing with sweat. your eyes sting with tears. you grip the comforter, trying to ground yourself. next to you, lara tosses her body, her eyes fluttering open at the sudden movement.

"yn?" she says softly, so softly. her voice is raspy with sleep. you rub your eyes with the heels of your palms.

"lara," you reply quietly. the voice reverberates in your mind again.

hey, i need to tell you something.

promise you won't be mad?

"what's wrong?" her hand brushes over yours, pulling you out of your head.

"nothing, baby, go back to sleep," the words barely come out as a whisper. lara sits up and snakes her hand to your cheek, turning your face towards her. your tears glint in the soft light of the moon. she notices.

"yn, talk to me," she says gently. her thumb brushes over your lip and your stomach flips. you hate this feeling of vulnerability. it makes you nauseous.

"it's fine. i'm fine."

"clearly not," she retorts. you take a deep, shaky breath.

"it's.. shit, lara.." your throat closes and tears spill from your eyes. she sighs and holds you close, tucking your head into her neck. you breathe in her scent as you sob weakly.

"it's okay, angel, i'm here." she rubs your back in delicate circles as her other hand plays with your hair.

"lara, i'm scared," you say finally after a few moments. you look up at her. her tank top is stained with your tears, but she doesn't care. she needs to get to the bottom of whatever's going on with you.

"about what, love?" she murmurs. your resolve, whatever is left of it, falters tremendously.

"i.. i keep thinking about it. you know,"

there's.. someone else i've been seeing. i'm sorry, i don't know..

before the sentence could replay again and again in your head, lara cups your cheek with her hand.

"i'm not like that, i promise," she whispers. "i won't just leave like that,"

you choke. 'like that.' you immediately begin to overthink, everything clicks, she's leaving you, you know it.. but then she speaks again.

"you're beautiful, smart, kind, caring; you're everything i could ask for. i want you forever, angel," she breathes. her voice is so soft, you could sleep in it forever. she's so gentle with you, it's suffocating. you miss her and she's not even gone, but there's that feeling that she's already left in your stomach every time you look at her. your heart aches just from the thought of making eye contact.

"i know you mean it, larz, but.." you trail off as her thumb caresses your face.

"i'm here," she whispers. she presses her lips to yours. you welcome the pressure, no matter how yielding the pressure is. you both sigh against each other. she's so careful, so slow with you. she knows you don't want to pretend you're something you're not.

her hand finds yours under the covers.

"you don't have to talk about it if it won't make you feel better," she promises. you heart breaks just a little more. she's so good to you, you don't deserve this. that's what you've convinced yourself, anyway. she can tell from the crestfallen, somewhat lost look on your face what you're thinking. her brow furrows. "what do you need?"

He could never say no when you suggested going back to the same store you first met him at, even if it was almost two hours out of your way. The excitement in your eyes, the lilt in your voice as you thought of the idea; it was all too adorable for Soobin to ever refuse, even if the bookstore didn't interest him very much. So here he is, roaming the shelves with you, counting down the minutes until you reach the front counter again.

There's a secret he won't admit to your face, even if you've been dating for three years, and it's one he will probably keep to himself for the rest of your life. When you first met at this very bookshop, Soobin wasn't there with the intention of buying or reading anything. He saw a pretty girl from the store window and his heart led his feet to start walking in that direction. He isn't interested in books or reading as a hobby—unlike you who could never let your currently reading pile get lower than three—and while he can appreciate a good piece of literature on occasion, his taste is quite the opposite of yours.

In short, Soobin fell in love with you at first sight in this very store, and you still have no idea.

The shop hasn't changed in the last four years, which makes Soobin's heart swell a little in fondness. Even if it isn't his ideal place to be, there is a certain charm to it. And he does have to give the store its due credit. Without it, he wouldn't have met the love of his life.

Soobin sees you struggling to reach a book on the highest shelf and quickly jumps to use his height to his advantage, unknowingly recreating the exact same scene from four years ago. The details of that day are a bit foggy in his mind. At the time, he had been so focused on your pretty face that everything else was blocked out. He does remember trying his hardest to impress you by carrying your large stack of books and lending you his leather jacket to fight the cold Autumn wind outside. And, of course, slipping his number into the cover page of the top book for you to find later.

It all worked out better than he could have hoped, because here you are grinning like a fool again as he hands you the book you were eyeing. You flip through it excitedly, rambling about how you've been hunting for this edition everywhere since the book first came out and it's an incredibly lucky find. Soobin can only smile, enjoying your adorable rant and knowing that you've completely stolen his heart.

Bookshops might not be his favourite, but you certainly are.

© slytherinshua ── do not repost translate or copy　⸝⸝⸝　join my taglist!

@kstrucknet @onedreamnet

2:03 p.m.

daniela enters the studio and you spot her as she enters the practice room. the music pauses, and she waves. she looks small from the other side of the dance room. the whole group greets her excitedly, approaching her in a big group. vivianne seems especially excited. she's flushed pink and speaking in clipped, jumbled greetings. you smile and shake your head.

"hi, dani," you greet casually. gaia gives you an inquisitive look, like, 'so we're on nickname terms, hm?' and you give her a sideways glance. daniela doesn't seem to notice, and if she does, she simply ignores it.

"hi, yn! how are you? you guys are all so gorgeous, wow," daniela says, all smiles. your eyes trail down to her lips, and — no. nothing. your mind is straying, you can't see any pretty girl that's even mildly talented (though daniela is more than mild) and fall for her. your eyes snap back up to her face and gaia seems to notice this too by the smirk on her face. daniela doesn't notice, again, thank the lord, but.. she seems a little more nervous than before. maybe just the anxiety of meeting so many people that know who she is.. is a little over-bearing. maybe.

either way, she doesn't seem bothered by your actions.

"they're practicing for our public performance," ollie explains. he's sitting over by the speakers with leo. "would you like to see?"

daniela nods enthusiastically. the group falls into position as exes starts playing. zora starts in the center, and then all eyes (hypothetically) fall to you as you take the center. you're locked in, and don't notice that daniela's eyes are exclusively glued to you. vivianne trips over her feet a few more than two times, but the rhythm is there and every beat is hit otherwise. you're always zoned in whenever performing, even at practice, and by the end, you're sweating.

"what do you think?" ollie asks. daniela smiles at him.

"you guys are so talented, i'm shocked. you guys are so synchronized, i'm jealous," she chuckles. you let out a brief laugh with the rest of the group, out of breath and sweating in your sports bra. daniela looks you all up and down, but her gaze lingers on you. or maybe it doesn't, and you're just losing your grip. you reach for your water bottle and hydrate as daniela speaks with ollie, kiara, and leo about the choreographing. you watch them intently. gaia sits next to you, in front of the mirror.

"you're staring," she comments.

"no, i'm not," you retort, a blush creeping up your neck as you tear your eyes away from daniela.

"uh, yeah, you are," she laughs, nudging you playfully. "you've got a thing for daniela?"

"i mean, isn't it obvious?" you return. "she's straight, though, so i'm not gonna go any further. it's probably just a friend crush, she is so cool,"

"yeah, babes, i know you. i don't think you're the type to get friend crushes," she emphasizes with air quotes. you roll your eyes and you take another sip and glance back in daniela's direction. the whole group is gathered around her, bantering and laughing. she seems to be getting along well with everyone. you guess dancers just get along super well. gaia stands up and walks over, and you follow after her. you don't want to seem like you're avoiding daniela.

"— and, so, sophia and yoonchae were on us about it, i mean, it was crazy," she trails off as you approach. the group glimpses at you for a moment before looking back at daniela. it's like you guys have antennae on your heads the way the group stares between you two.

leo is the first to break the awkward silence. "oh, and, we also have a few more pieces in the work, thanks to ollie and me."

"sick," daniela nods. "are you guys alright if i record if you do it one more time? i wanna show the katz,"

the group nods and utters agreement and you all fall back into formation. you take a deep breath as the music starts and you follow the steps once more. it's more than that to you, though. every dance you do is like listening to your favorite song over and over again until you're sick of it. it's addicting, and daniela seems to agree. this time, you notice. her eyes are clinging to you most of the time, though her phone camera goes to follow other people at 15 second intervals. you blush and nearly trip over yourself, being scarcely saved by your muscle memory.

afterwards, daniela gives small words of gratitude and says she'd love to visit again sometime if her schedule ever allowed it. you smile at her and she leaves. gaia gives you a look you can't quite decipher.

2:39 p.m.

everyone has gone home, leaving you to practice by yourself. the place is rented out until 3, so might as well use it while you can. you take a small water/phone break, and look at your messages.

It was never really a question. Not even for a second. Whether you’d fall for Daniela Avanzini was decided long before you’d ever learned her name. Maybe even before you stepped through those doors at Dream Academy. All you knew was that from the second you saw her that day at practice, in the room full of mirrors and polished floors and voices that tried too hard to sound certain, you were already doomed.

You think of that day like a photograph you might’ve carried in your pocket. The edges are a little softened from being taken out so often, there is a crease through the middle where you’d folded it with careless hands, and the image has that strange glow of a memory that has been retold, to yourself if no one else. Yet some parts always stayed the same. 

Her eyes came first. They burned like something that should have been forbidden, a steady, unwavering heat, the kind that carried a sinfulness could not be named and a sharpness that belonged to no one else. Her hair came next, bright and clean, a crown made of light, a halo where there should have been nothing holy at all. And then there was the air. The way it moved around her as if it had been waiting, the way it seemed to lean in. You had not known that air could choose favorites until she walked in, and you took your first breath that did not hurt. Maybe that sounded cliche, but the truth rarely bothers to be original.

You had been leaning against the far wall, half-listening to a conversation you could not repeat if asked, when she entered the room. You remember straightening without realizing it. You remember an elbow digging into you in the rush of bodies, someone asking if you were alright. You do not remember anything else. Only the way hello slipped from her mouth, too simple for what it carried, yet loud enough to cut through every other sound. And when she asked for your name, in that confident, sure way she always did, you gave it without thinking, the act feeling less like speaking and more like a confession you had never meant to give. 

In the stillness between her voice and your next breath, something quiet and irreversible took root inside you, the way a shadow claims its shape. As if the world had chosen its side, and it would never be yours again.

—

It did not end there. It never could have.

Because if Daniela’s hello had undone you, her dancing destroyed you.

You had seen people dance before, of course you had. Dream Academy was filled with bodies bending and breaking to the will of music, each of them trying to prove they belonged. But when Daniela stepped onto the floor, it was as if the world rearranged itself to follow her lead. It was not just the movement, it was something larger. Watching her was like learning a secret you were never meant to know, something that rearranged you in silence: the mirrors, the light, even the music becoming secondary. 

You remember the first time, the way the bass started low, the way her body caught it before anyone else. You remember the hush that fell over the room, though the music blared louder than ever, your chest rattling with bass. And you remember thinking that words like talent or gifted were too small for her, laughable even, struck by the certainty that she was doing something impossible and making it look easy. 

Lara swears she told you to pick your jaw back up off the floor that day, to get your sense in order before someone noticed. But she also swears she’s never stolen your clothes before, so the jury’s still out on that one. Either way, it wouldn’t have mattered if she did. You couldn’t have looked away even if you tried. 

Later, much later into the competition, when you were too tired to care and too drunk off the simple act of watching her exist, you told Daniela what you had thought that first time you saw her dance. That she had made the music look like it was chasing her, that she had turned the impossible into a loyal thing trailing behind, desperate to be enough.

She had laughed at your confession. God, she had laughed. Head thrown back, mouth open wide, hand pressed to her stomach like she could not hold herself together. And for a moment you thought she might fall over from the sheer force of it, a small part of you almost wishing she would just so you might catch her. Instead she tipped forward, hair spilling into her face, eyes alight with something you couldn’t name and wouldn’t dare to, and said between gasps, “Flatterer,” though you had not lied and “Now stop staring and come dance before one of the instructors gets you” like you might forget the way her dancing had burned itself into your eyes.

But you complied anyway. You pushed yourself to your feet, though your legs felt unfamiliar and the ground unsteady. You stumbled once, then twice: the first step slipping, the second nearly giving way, until steady hands caught you. Her fingers curled around your wrist, brushed your shoulder as if it cost nothing. But to you, it was everything. A promise almost too embarrassing to admit. Too small for her to notice, too large for you to forget.

You never took your words back, though. Not then, not ever.

—

When the two of you eventually became friends, it felt inevitable. Like the simplest thing in the world. If you were trying to be dramatic, you would say that knowing Daniela was like stepping into the sun. But the truth was gentler. Slower. You became friends the way the sun rises: first a hush, then a hint, then all at once bright and dazzling, as if it had been waiting just beneath the horizon to finally burst free.

It began with small things. A shared joke during the orientation that stretched into a conversation at lunch. A borrowed hair tie that turned into half an hour on the floor, talking about which instructors played favorites and how everyone pretended not to notice. Nights in the dorms with voices dropping to whispers because the walls were thin and your laughters were not. Mornings that came too soon yet perfectly on time, your shoulder still remembering the weight of her head.

It was easy, giddy, the kind of friendship that made your stomach twist for no good reason at all. And while Daniela might not have known you yet, not really, she said your name like it might already belong to her. 

So maybe, if she could be compared to anything, though nothing ever felt enough, Daniela Avanzini would be the sun itself. Brilliant, constant, impossible to ignore. She rose, and you rose to meet her. She rose, and everything tilted toward her light. 

—

But even the sunlight can burn. Anything can, if you get too close. And Daniela was fire disguised as warmth. People like her belonged on pedestals, untouchable, admired from afar so that no one risked the fall. But she’d never let you.

Because for all her beauty, for all her talent, Daniela was above all, unfairly kind. That was the part you never expected, the part that ruined you most. Beauty you might have resisted, talent you might have admired from a distance, but kindness is harder. It finds you where you are weakest and makes you love it all the more for noticing you at all. And Daniela’s was the sort that found you when you least deserved it.

You remember that day, the one that should have broken you. Practice had been brutal, one of those afternoons when every correction from an instructor sounded less like help and more like confirmation that you did not belong. You had stumbled through steps, forgotten counts, felt the heavy weight of your groupmates’ eyes every time you slowed them down. Like you were letting them down. You were. By the end, the shame in your chest had festered until it soured into something mean.

Your words grew sharp. You snapped at people who hadn’t earned it. Short, bitter replies slipped from your mouth before you could call them back. Even your face betrayed you, carved into a scowl you couldn’t unmake. You hated yourself for it, hated the small wounds you left in others, hated that you couldn’t stop. Sometimes failure rotted you from the inside out, and that day it had eaten through everything.

By the time you left the building, you could hardly stand to be with yourself. The sky had split open, and the rain poured down in relentless sheets, blurring the edges of the world. You let it soak you through, half hoping it might wash you away, half thinking you deserved the punishment. Your phone was dead by this point, your body leaden, and your mind snarled with voices that would not quiet. And in the hiss of the storm, one thought clung like a shadow: maybe the world would have been better with one less you.

Then you heard it: the low growl of an engine slicing through the rain. A red Mustang, bright and alive, pulling up to the curb as if conjured just for you. It did not belong there, in the gray hush of a storm that wanted to swallow everything whole. But neither did she.

Yet the window slid down, and there she was: Daniela, haloed by the storm, her hair damp, though more from the sweat of practice than from the rain that drowned you. Her smile was quick and reckless, like it had never learned the meaning of restraint, and she looked at you as if you weren’t drenched through, as if your scowl hadn’t carved hollows in your face, as if you weren’t already breaking apart from the inside.

“Need a ride?” She asked, like it was casual, like you weren’t standing there with water dripping down your spine.

“No, I’m good,” You lied, rain plastering your clothes to your skin.

She tilted her head, one eyebrow arched. “You sure? You seem like you’re getting drenched out there.”

“Oh, this?” You gestured weakly to the sheets pouring from the sky. “Just a drizzle, don’t worry about me.”

Her mouth quirked, patient in that dangerous way of hers. And then she told you to get in, voice steady in the way that left no room for protest. Said that you were going to get sick, with the same seriousness you only ever saw when she danced. Like the idea of you falling ill might matter to her. Like maybe you did too.

You still don’t know how she found you that day. You don’t know what pulled you to climb in either, when all you’d wanted was to sink deeper into the rot of your own self-deprecation. But you did. You slipped into the passenger seat of a car too fine to meet with your soaked clothes, with seats too tender, too carefully kept, with nothing but a quiet thank you to offer and an exhaustion dragging heavier through your body than pride could fight.

Daniela didn’t comment on any of it all, though. She didn’t even push. She only answered your gratitude with a wink, teasing, though carrying with it something soft enough for you to land on, and asked where you wanted to go.

Lara later told you that Daniela had to get new leather seats for the Mustang, the one she always called her baby. You had laughed, because of course she would give that roaring beast such a delicate name. She always had a way of scattering affection like seeds, letting it take root in the strangest of places. But no matter how many times the story surfaced, no matter how many voices tried to retell it as their own, she never told anyone it had been you who ruined her seats.

—

After that, every moment seemed to fall into place. You could not pinpoint the exact one. Maybe because it was not a single moment, but a slow, almost invisible accumulation of them. The kind you only notice in retrospect, when you look back and realize something irreversible has already happened.

Because somewhere along the way, you went from sitting next to each other at practice to saving seats for one another, from whispering across rooms to whispering under the same blanket. There is a particular closeness at night that cannot be imitated in the day. Daniela’s face would be right there, her breath a warm fog on your cheek, her lashes close enough to count. Some mornings you would wake up and the first thing you knew was her perfume. It would be in your hair and your clothes and the fabric of the pillowcase, and you would think that if you could smell like this forever, you would learn to be brave. It was in those hours, hushed and unguarded, that you began to share more than laughter or secrets. You began to offer each other the fragile parts, the pieces that rarely made it outside the dark. Dreams that slipped out like confessions, traded back and forth as if the act itself bound you closer.

She said she wanted the world to see her move, really see her, not in the way of numbers and views, but the kind of seeing that alters something inside the person watching. You said you wanted to become someone people would know. She snorted, which made you defensive until she explained it was not the desire itself but the way you had said it, as if fame were a coat you could buy if you found the right store. You got quiet then, embarrassed at how grand and foolish you must have sounded. She saw it immediately.

"I only mean that you don’t need fame to be known. I already know you," She said, like truth itself, and it was not casual, instead steady, almost defiant, as if she could hold the truth of you in her hands if you would only let her.

"Do you really?" You asked, trying for a challenge but landing on a plea.

She did not answer right away, instead she narrowed her eyes, doing that thing she always did where she balanced on the edge of mocking and mercy. Then, slowly, she smiled, not with her mouth but with something smaller, deeper, something in her eyes. "Okay, maybe not, but I sweat to keep learning everything there is about you until I do." The words were gentle, but they carried the weight of an oath.

You almost laughed then, but not from humor but instead disbelief. At the way her eyes did not crinkle the way they did when she was teasing, the way her lips did not pull into a grin to signal a joke. The very fact that you noticed those things at all forcing you to turn away, as if the closeness suddenly became too much to bear head-on. There was a moment of deafening silence, before: "Okay," You finally said, letting a slow breath out, her name following soon after like an exhale: half surrender, half prayer.

But you did not say the quiet part aloud. You swallowed it instead, shoved it down into the deepest part of yourself, where all the most dangerous truths went to rot. Daniela smiled beside you at your words, as if she might have been holding her breath too. You tried not to get hung up on the details. But you hoped she was telling the truth. You hoped that maybe, just maybe she would. Because even if you couldn’t say it then, every part of you was already waiting—waiting for her to know you, to see you, to learn you until there was nothing left to hide.

—

Sophia made a joke once that the two of you acted like a married couple, inseparable.

You had laughed far too hard at that, thrown your head back like it was the funniest thing you had ever heard, as if volume could disguise the truth. As if a laugh could muffle the heat that spread across your cheeks, or steady the flutter in your chest that had nothing to do with humor. 

Lara’s eyes flicked to yours at the sound, her brows rising, falling, then settling into a permanent arch that asked more questions than you were willing to answer. You ignored her, if only because by then it had already been too late. You were already in far too deep, too caught in the gravity of Daniela’s to even pretend otherwise.

Daniela, for her part, had not laughed at all. She had only smiled, the same quiet, knowing smile she had worn the first day you met and continued to ruin you every chance that it got. Then she nudged your thigh with hers, casual, careless, yet charged in a way that made you feel like there was a secret threaded between you, one that belonged to no one else. 

She had not known then how much she meant to you. She had not known how many times you had almost confessed. The words I’m in love with you living at the edge of your mouth for so long they feel like part of you, teeth and breath. Always there, waiting, always pressed just behind your tongue, ready to slip if you ever stopped holding so tightly.

The first time you nearly let them out was the week you got sick. You don’t even remember what it was now, only that it had hit hard. A splitting headache that clawed at your skull, a fever that made your body heavy and useless, eyes blurring with tears every time you tried to sit up. You were miserable, of course, wrecked, curled in on yourself and cursing your own weakness. Everyone else had gone out for the day, eager to use the rare night off to breathe air that wasn’t recycled through practice rooms. You would have gone too, if you could have lifted your head without feeling like the world was tearing in two.

But Daniela—she stayed.

She arrived at your door that day like a saint to your prayers, slipping into your room as if it had always been hers too, and lowering herself beside your pathetic, shivering body. You tried to turn toward her, just to greet her, maybe ask her what she was doing still there and not with the rest of the girls, before she stilled you with the gentlest insistence, a hand settling against your temples as though she could hush even the fever itself. You wanted to protest at the touch, to insist you were fine and didn’t need to be babied, but the coolness of her fingers stole the words from you before they could form. Until all you could do was let her hold you there, her form just barely visible under the mountain of blankets Lara had buried you under.

Then she grinned, the corners of her mouth curling in that way that dared you not to smile back, and said, in a voice almost too gentle to have been used on you, “You look like you’ve seen better days.”

You tried to laugh, it turned into a cough.

“Don’t worry, I've seen worse.”

It was her turn to laugh at that, the sound melodic even through the ringing in your ears, and you thought to yourself that maybe being sick wasn’t so bad if it meant you could still make her smile. As though she could read your mind, she suddenly turned serious, her playfulness slipping into something steadier, more intent and almost reprimanding. You straightened up instinctively. Or as much as you could have in your state. 

Daniela reached for the glass of water on your nightstand, long gone lukewarm but still necessary if the burning in your throat was any proof, and pressed it into your hands. She told you to drink before you keeled over for real and she had to explain to HYBE what happened to one of their performers. Though the words told felt more ordered, and the spirit of Sophia seemed to have possessed her in that moment. Honestly, she was terrifying in that moment, calm and commanding, but the way her fingers lingered just long enough against yours erased the fears as they came.

And then she asked you to scoot over, made herself at home on your bed, and stayed. Through all of it. Through your groaning about how you were dying, your melodramatic sighs about the unfairness of the universe, your complaints that the world had clearly conspired against you. She stayed when she didn’t have to, when every reason told her she could have left, when kindness should have had its limits and still she chose not to draw them. She stayed patient and steady, her presence soft and unshakable.

When you finally tired of complaining, she picked up the silence. She spoke to you about things that didn’t matter, then about things that did, her voice moving between the two like water, steady and gentle. She filled the room with her presence, gentle enough to hold you together when you were too weak to do it yourself, and when you at last surrendered to sleep, heavy-limbed and feverish, her voice was still there, lulling you under like a hand smoothing the edges of a dream.

When you opened your eyes again hours later, certain she had left, you were surprised to find her still there. She had moved while you were asleep, but not away like you might have expected, closer : curled at your side, fast asleep, as if you weren’t contagious, as if she would have chosen you anyway. As if, just for that night, she had decided you were worth catching.

The next week, she was the one in bed.

“I told you you’d get it,” You teased, standing over her with a bowl of soup you almost spilled from how your hands shook.

She groaned, tugged the blanket higher, and with eyes glassy but still impossibly bright, whispered, “It was worth it.”

The words were simple, tossed out as if they cost her nothing, but they cracked something open in you. The sincerity was too much, almost cruel in its gentleness. 

That was the moment the confession surged to your throat, the moment you almost let it spill into the space between you, reckless and irreversible.

But you didn’t. You weren’t even sure how you fought it down. Instead, you sat beside her, the way she had sat beside you only days before, careful not to spill the soup, pretending not to notice how she somehow made even sickness look luminous. And you stayed. You tended to her, tried to repay what could never really be repaid.

And when she finally fell asleep, you caught yourself staring, your own words still burning at the edge of your mouth.

After that, the words kept finding new places to corner you, new moments to rise in your throat until you had to bite them back, each one so close it felt like choking.

Like the time the power went out at the Katseye house. The others had groaned, cursed, lit their phones and huddled together in frustration. You had followed their lead until Daniela found you, grabbed your hand, and dragged you into the hallway. “Come on,” she whispered, her voice alive in the dark. The two of you sat on the cold floor, laughing at nothing, making shapes against the wall with the weak glow of your screens.

The game turned into “guess the shadow animal,” though calling it a game was generous. Daniela shrieked that you were cheating when you guessed hers too quickly, though in your defense, all of her animals suspiciously looked the same. “That’s a cat,” she insisted, holding her hands in a configuration that looked exactly like the dog she’d done two minutes before. You doubled over laughing until your stomach hurt, and she threw her phone at you in mock offense, only to snatch it back before it hit the ground.

Eventually, the lights flickered back on. You noticed the way she saw it first, caught the glow in her eyes, the faint buzz of her phone in her hand as a signal returned. And then you noticed how she clicked the screen dark and slipped it into her pocket, as if she had not noticed at all. As if staying there, in the dark beside you, was more important than anything waiting on the other end.

Or the night you danced together. Not in practice, not under the sharp eyes of instructors, but just the two of you, when music spilled out of someone’s speaker down the hall and she tugged you into the center of the room. She decided to teach you a Latin dance, something quick and sharp, and within thirty seconds you discovered you were spectacularly bad at it. She laughed so hard she could barely get the steps out. “You have the grace of a newborn giraffe,” She teased, steadying you when you nearly toppled sideways.

“Fine,” You challenged, out of breath, “dance off. Right now.”

Her eyebrows shot up, eyes sparkling. “Are you sure?”

You broke immediately, throwing your hands up. “No, never mind. I’m not. But only because I respect you. Not because I think I’d lose or anything.”

That made her laugh even harder, the sound spilling into the room like it belonged to no one else. She guided you anyway, spinning you until you lost track of where the floor was, until all you could focus on was the nearness of her: her breath brushing your skin, her hair catching against your jaw, your chest aching with everything you could not say.

But the closest you came, the closet, was the night she cried. You had never seen her like that before. She was not loud about it, not broken, but quiet. The kind of crying that made you feel like you were intruding on something sacred just by witnessing it. She tried to hide it, tried to wipe her cheeks quickly, keep her face turned away, but you caught the shudder in her shoulders, the way her hands curled tight into fists against her knees.

You asked nothing, said nothing. You only sat down beside her, close enough that she could lean if she wanted to, far enough that she didn’t have to. And eventually, she did. Slowly, her head finding your shoulder. Her breath trembled against your skin, uneven, fragile. You stayed completely still, afraid that moving would break the spell, afraid that speaking would shatter what little steadiness she had left.

But no matter how much you try to imagine a confession, no matter how much you replay every moment in your head, of touches that lingered and words that landed just a little too heavy, you knew better than to get lost in the details of them all.

Because there are the words like I’m in love with you that you know will never be said. And then there are the words you wish had never been spoken at all.

It was after rehearsal one evening, both of you stretched out on the floor, too tired to move. The room smelled of sweat and resin, the air heavy with exhaustion and something restless that threatened everything. The floor was cold under your back, and you remember thinking you should have brought a jacket. Then you remembered you had brought one, only it was now draped across Daniela’s shoulders, stolen hours earlier with a grin that dared you to protest.

“I have something to tell you,” Daniela said suddenly, her voice breaking the quiet.

You turned your head toward her, your chest already tightening in a way you had come to accept, “Yeah? What is it?”

She exhaled, a small smile tugging at her lips, hesitation softening the edges of it in a way that didn’t quite feel like her. “I think I might like someone.”

The words caught in your throat and sank heavy to your stomach. Anticipation drumming, “Oh? Who?”

Her grin widened, brighter and lighter than you had seen it in weeks. A small, selfish part of you praying the conversation would end there, unfinished and unsaid. But it didn’t. “This guy I’ve been talking to. It’s new, but… I think you’d really like him.”

You pulled in a sharp breath. Forced out an exhale carefully. 

Because just like that, the ground dropped out from under you. Every almost-confession, every silence you had carried like a secret vow, every laugh and every touch you had folded carefully into your chest collapsing in on itself. Not because it had been rejected, but because it had been doomed from the start.

“Tell me more,” You said, and your voice didn’t break, though it should have.

“I don’t even know. It was a complete accident. I met him—”

You flinched, the word striking like a slap that did not belong. Not in this room. Not next to Daniela, who was beaming with a brightness that stung. Her eyes too bright, her smile too wide, for someone who wasn’t you. Him. Just one word, and still it hollowed you out. Burned into your chest, made you want to crawl out of your own skin, scrub yourself clean of something you could never admit aloud.

Because a part of you had always known, maybe from the start, that the hurt was the proof, not the discovery. That this ache had lived in you far longer than you wanted to believe.

And you could wait. You could watch. You could read into every little thing Daniela did. You could live inside every smile, stretch out every fleeting moment you shared until it felt like something more. But it would never be enough.

Because it was never really a question. Not whether you would fall for Daniela. Not whether you could have resisted at all. That had been written from the start, sealed into you the first time she said your name.

It was only ever a question of how long you could pretend otherwise. How long you could ignore the signs, deny what had already taken root in you. What you had always known: you were destined to love Daniela in a way she could never love you back. And it ached all the worse because even now, with her happiness spilling bright before you, with the word him, him, him striking again and again like arrows to your heart, some selfish part of you knew you would choose the ruin of loving her again and again and again.

“yeah, that’s probably why they cut it.” david hissed.

“y’know what the best part was?” he shot you a mischievous smirk, “megan was invited on set that day.”

user02 omg messy y/n knew what she was doing with that

user03 nicholas hoult certified eyekon confirmed

user04 so megan and jonah at lolla was revenge huh

user05 n/nmei mentioned in a superman interview has healed me in ways i can’t describe my parents are getting back tgt

user06 so the pr team finally gave you the pass huh

the interviewer hummed, eyes in the room falling back on you as the boys chuckled at your reaction. you head fell into your hands as your cheeks flushed, before pushing your hair form your face. “unluckily,” you sighed, “megan is a good friend of mine who happened to be in ohio for an event her and her bandmates were invited to, so i thought i’d invite her onset so she could meet everyone and see what i do at work.”

user07 her calling megan a “good friend” after inviting her onset when only spouses are allowed is crazy work

user08 “good friend” like the afterparty videos don’t exist

user09 come on now you can lie to us but don’t lie to yourself

your “friendship” with megan was a notorious topic amongst eyekonville. the two of you were close, and it wasn’t long before you sparked dating rumours when a particular photo of you being close at a fashion week afterparty in la surfaced.

“i think we traumatized her for life.” david joked, “poor megan was just watching us do the same thing for hours.”

user10 omg guys rmb when megan was ranting about how she wasn’t a jealous person through vm on weverse

user11 so this was what she crashed out about that one time

user12 valid weverse crashout cuz if i had to watch my girl get groped by superman i would want to cut a bitch too

“that’s amazing.” the interviewer giggled, “were the rest of katseye with you guys onset? or was megan a vip guest?”

“well, i could only invite one person onset because of nda signing troubles, but i wish the girls got to come see more.” you explained, “it was just a bad day to be on set. it wasn’t at the usual peak of a superhero movie’s excitement.”

“oh, i think the poor girl got her fill of excitement.”

“you are insufferable.” you rolled your eyes at his unsubtle implications. “she was very professional about it, i’d say she surprised me with how well she was handling it.”

“i remember seeing her glare at me from behind the camera. she did not look very happy about the scene. if looks could kill, nick would’ve been the new superman.” david scoffed, pointing at the latter. the elbow-shove you gave him was such a subtle gesture, nobody seemed to catch it until fans began analyzing this interview online. it was almost a warning, the stiff smile you gave him when he looked at you.

“i’m sure it was a huge culture shock like career-wise for her? was she excited to see the difference between a music video set and like a large scale production like dc, or…?”

“i think she was definitely a little awe-struck at first, but i introduced her to david, nick, james, like so many amazing people who make the production process so incredible for me, and i think it was a good way for her to get to see why i enjoy what i do.” your eyes trail off, lip tucking between your teeth. just the thought of megan’s stoic expression made you want to giggle. she tried concealing her shock, but it was obvious she was stunned by the sight of you dry humping another man for hours. “i think she would’ve love to see another day though. maybe one with more action and less… kissing.”

“well, that’s a nice treat!” the woman chuckled, “i’m actually going to be at their asia showcase, i might have to ask megan about her time onset of superman!”

“oh, yeah?” you grinned, “i’ll see you there then. manon’s best friend, sophie and i are flying for korea together next week.”

user13 the katseye wags going to see their girlfriends together

user14 lois lane casually in the audience for gnarly lmao

user15 guys am i the only one who loves n/nmei’s friendship?

user16 @/user15 i’m gonna hold your hand when i say this…

user17 david’s wife and megan hv to be the strongest soldiers

clip two: [ tiktok ] the infamous ny fashion week afterparty

ny fashion week was an absolute success. the guest list ws perhaps the most expensive, diverse sounding chronicle of names the event’s history had ever seen--musical prodigies, greats in film, etc. being a prominent actress in the industry, it was just another invite you added to hundreds of others.

this one, however, was different. in the sense that megan's girl. group was invited as well, meaning you would actively have to work against holding her or being too friendly when so many lensed eyes were trained on the both of you.

you barely caught a glimpse of her throughout the entire event, only smiling at her when you were getting caught up in a reunion with a designer you had worn to a premiere not long ago. the next time you would see her was at the afterparty.

user01 so whoever posted this deserves to get their ass ate

the video floating across the internet was not a short one, much to your dissent. one of you walking up to katseye whilst they conversed with a costar of yours. you knew manon and drew were good friends, it was a good opportunity to catch up.

whilst you gave each member (and the lovely drew starkey) a brief embrace, you let yours with megan linger.

it wasn’t a brush, like the kind you gave the others, but one she could feel the air get pushed out of her body from. you pulled her in by the waist, a rather familiar gesture, as you gave her a european greeting, cheek brushing against hers as you pecked the air. you whispered something in her ear, laughing when she shoved you away gently before letting you sway back closer to her side, where you stayed for the rest of your evening.

whilst the eight of you spoke, her hand found the small of your back, fingers lightly brushing across the supple skin. you didn't seem alarmed, letting her draw her nails along your curves.

user02 ig this is why they don't allow phones in these things

user03 whoever posted this is getting sued lmao don't you have to sign an nda to get into the afterparty?

user04 and we haven't heard from either of them since

user05 everybody so serious about the leaks while i’m thinking about the hand placement idk who i’m jealous of

another moment from the afterparty had to be when you were leaving. paparazzi littered the entrance like blood cells gushing to a fresh wound. some pictures of the two of you in the foyer, getting ready to head out were leaked off some tabloid's cloud, showing you cradling the hawaiian by her cheeks as you both smiled, clearly in the middle of a sweet moment.

then, katseye came strutting out the carpet to their car. the members scattered between each other, but megan lingered at the back of the group, just a step ahead of you.

it wasn't until after, when you featured in megan's post after fashion week, where you were sitting in their limo across the girls' lap did the internet find out you had left with the group. the picture was deleted from the post shortly after, but not before being seen and saved by tens of thousands of eyekons.

user05 another historical moment in pop culture in one photo

user06 rafe cameron and lois lane being friends with katseye is exactly what i needed to see on my tl today

user07 this after megan's pride month coming out is so funny

user08 two bad bitches at the same damn time

clip three: [ fan photos ] little snippets of megan's things

i. in a weverse live of megan and lara in their hotel room, just before manon joined, megan picked at her phone, the split second of her turning on her phone, her lock screen could be seen. your familiar face appeared, a big smile across your lips in what seemed to be your superman poster photoshoot as lois. above your head read the time, and though the reflection was blurry, fans could generally make out the photo.

ii. in a story sophia posted for megan's birthday, it was a 0.5 photo of the girl in a silly face mask, hair tied into a high pony as she stroke a ridiculous pose. in the background was her bed, some miscellaneous items scattered across the floor, and a ripped piece of paper taped to her wall. a fan recognized it to be the cover you did for elle during a promotional tour of dune: part two, where you and austin did a desert themed shoot. you were chosen for the cover over the man, and thankfully, for megan, you looked like absolute perfection from head to toe.

iii. katseye stylists are the absolute best at what they do. they never make a boring outfit, and definitely never let the girls repeat the same outfits for different concepts. megan, though, always seemed to wear a particular ring, one of your birth stone. the fans tracked down the ring maker, and found out it was actually engraved with, “my chaos, my calm” inside.

iv. the vague hoodie megan always wore on travel days, famously seen in the gnarly behind the scenes video, was seen on you when you filmed a vlog for getting ready for the met. same tear in the elbow and everything.

v. in a behind the scenes video of katseye’s lollapalooza set, there was a large bouquet of flowers sitting in megan’s dressing room backstage when they finished their set. there was an envelope attached to it that the editing team blurred out after, but it was obvious who it was sent from, especially when she posts photos of her posing with it on her instagram later, which you were one of the first to like.

vi. in a solo live megan did, she tried rapping superman by eminem, where the fans poked fun at the lyrics she emphasized with gestures at the screen, a knowing smirk on her face. instead of “i can’t be your superman,” megan seemed insistent on changing the lyrics to “i can be your superman.” funny, considering the superman press tour just wrapped.

vii. when megan was asked at a fansign event in japan about who she would love to work with dead or alive, she said she had a couple “friends” in the industry she’d love to work with. megan has only ever been seen with one actress--you.

viii. on an m&m live, megan mindlessly began tracing the back of manon’s hand in the middle of the live. it wasn’t until after did fans notice the apparent figure of your initial being carved into the older’s hand under the hawaiin’s finger. it was too distinct to be mistaken as something else, even though half the fandom insists it’s just a coincidence.

clip four: [ weverse ] the deleted first and last m&m live

“no, lolla was fun. i came out the bathroom and got to see my friends...” megan trailed off, letting her eyes wander towards manon trying not to crack. the two shared a split second of eye contact, before they bursted into a fit of hysteric giggles.

user01 oh come on we can’t be delusional abt all of it

user02 “friends” like we didn’t see the cuddling pictures

user03 imagine being in katseye to tryna crack daniela but sophia’s just whipping megan and manon for not following pr procedures so you know there’s levels to this shit

user04 they’re just mocking us for believing the pr lies atp

“i’m so hungry right now. it feels like i haven’t eaten good in like a week.” megan said mindlessly, scrolling through her phone. manon narrowed her gaze, judging the hawaiian from the corner of her eye. she smiled down at whatever was on her phone screen, and the eldest couldn’t bite her tongue in time.

“oh, you ain’t hungry, girl, you thirsty.” manon corrected, the comment earning a wide-eyed glare from the younger.

user05 ha go manon you clocked her tea so bad

user06 deer in headlights looking ahh expression megan

user07 do you guys miss being around the others?

“i mean, yeah, it sucks not being able to join them for things, but it’s also like a welcomed change of scenery.” manon explained, “we’re together so much of the time, it’s nice to have a little moment of quiet once in a while.”

“yeah, it gives me time to call and talk to my other friends.”

user08 “other friends” we know you texting lois lane hoe

user09 they know they’re job is secured with the way they keep pissing their pr team off lmao

user10 megan have you watched wednesday s2 yet???

“oh, is the new season out?” manon asked, scrolling through the comment section. intrigued, megan raised an eyebrow at the older’s response, leaning forward to read as well.

“oh, wednesday?” she managed to choke out, her lips pursing suspiciously immediately after. “yeah, i finished it yesterday.”

user11 it came out yesterday afternoon megan how

user12 she really said let me support my wife’s shows rq

user13 love how megan’s the enid to y/n’s wednesday irl

user14 real cuz if my girlfriend turned into a black alpha werewolf daddy onscreen i would binge it in a day too

user15 and the n/nmma vs mein/n agenda is alive yet again

“y’know, sophia and yoonchae made me watch the first season with them last week. and honestly, it was better than i thought it was.” manon began, receiving a brief side-eye from megan. “i don’t know, i kinda like the acting. it was like… good chemistry, y’know. like good back and forths.” the older gestured with her hands, but the moment she turned to glance at the hawaiian, she bursted out laughing at the expression she was met with. “stop, babe, you look constipated!”

“shut up!” megan whined, moving offscreen when she couldn’t contain the smile. “what are you even talking about?”

user16 wow just the thought of her got megan smiling fr

user17 it's ok guys i'd be flustered too if i dated an addams

"i don't know, guys, if i was a day of the week, it would definitely be wednesday--" manon pursed her lips, trying to contain her laughter before blowing all the air from her cheeks in one puff. "i just love wednesday, like, it speaks to me."

megan doesn't engage, but the way her smile drew tighter and her eyes fell down to her phone was a

clip five: [ netflix korea ] exploring seoul’s favourite gen z trends w y/n l/n and emma myers | wednesday s2

see, now, if it had been anybody else, megan would have looked at the two of you and went, “look at my girl with her costar, how cute!” but this was emma myers we were talking about, the same costar you had a serious crush on during the filming of season 1, before you had even met the hawaiian.

eventually, you had gotten over the juvenile admiration for her, and you were closer than ever, much to megan’s dismay.

you were transparent with her about your past feelings for the fellow actress when season two’s script finally fell in your hands, assuring her it was nothing more than forced proximity that had you so entrapped with her.

megan never gave it another thought, but something began gnawing away at her internally when production rolled around, and the two of you were together practically every moment of the day. considering you were the main character and emma played enid, it only made sense for the writers to give the fans exactly what they ask for--building further on the romantically-charged passion between wednesday and enid.

it was one particular interview that sparked some interesting controversy online--and in your girlfriend’s group as well.

you were sitting closer and closer to emma at the table with each little gift being brought out for you. you would grab her hand as you spoke or let it fall to her lap out of an anxiety-induced habit, but it read as more to the viewers.

user01 the way they’re literally wenclair reversed in real life

user02 n/nmma is more canon than wenclair wtaf

user03 she can’t keep her hands off emma fr like ain’t nobody tryna steal ur girl damn

user04 i hope the megan thing isn’t true cuz i need n/nmma

when it came to the part where the two of you were taken to an arcade, you were desperately trying to win a goofy-looking toy emma said she wanted. it was almost like the host herself was third wheeling, despite being the one directing you.

“no, do the pink unicorn. it’s a very enid one.” emma lightly patted your shoulder from behind. you had your eyes fixed on said plush, hands working the mechanisms. practically glued to your back, the actress beamed from ear to ear as her hands rested against your hair, before they slid down just too low.

“no!” you whined, watching the unicorn fall from the claw. you heard emma and the host giggled at your failed attempt.

“it’s okay, we can try another machine.” emma suggested, but you inserted another coin the producer handed you.

“no, we’re getting you that unicorn.” you insisted, eyes narrowed in on the toy the brunette had so casually shown an interest in. you felt her hand snake its way under your arm, hooking hers into yours. the host gives the camera a knowing grin from behind the both of you, as if she weren’t there at all. “i’m not leaving until you get what you want.”

“come on, you’re being ridiculous. i didn’t even mean that.”

user05 emma is blushinggggg ya’ll i can’t help but ship

user06 megan crying in her room over this somewhere rn

user07 ik megan hates to see emma coming lmao

after a couple more failed tries, you managed to snag the unicorn by its ear and drag it across the machine, the two behind you squealed as it finally dropped. you reached down, pulling it out before handing it to your costar.

she gave you a hug, beaming from ear to ear. the smile she flashed you was almost worth the trouble. you mirrored her joy. “i can’t believe you actually did that.”

“i told you i would.” you assured, before the two of you were guided towards a photobooth setup.

as if the flirtatious atmosphere hadn’t been enough at the claw machines, the photobooth was an entire other nightmare. the theee of you stood inside, posing. the first photo, the three of you smiled normally, in the second, emma stepped down, hand pawing at your thigh as you made a face. in the third, you hooked an arm around her shoulders, sticking your tongue out as your costar pouted, a finger at the edge of her lips.

in the m&m live from the last clip, somewhere down the road of the media was a distinct moment hinting at a certain thing.

“spirit animal?” manon read out, looking back at megan, who already had an eyebrow raised, like she knew the older was about to say something unhinged just to stir the pot. “well, if you all must know, i love pink fluffy unicorns.”

megan’s eyes immediately widened, side-eyeing the phone before her lips quirked into a cheeky smile.

user08 they really see everything on the internet omg

user09 methinks n/nmma vs mein/n is an inside joke atp

user10 i just know y/n is a hot topic in the katseye household

user11 okay so y/n in a katseye music video when??