It's quiet and dark. The numbers on your alarm clock are blinding, baringly red: 3:59 AM. It's clear you won't be sleeping much. You roll over and feel the soft touch of fabric and the coolness of the empty part of your bed, stingingly comfortable. You're sweating, but not because of the sticky mugginess of the summer.
There is nothing wrong with me, your mind says ferociously. There is nothing, nothing wrong with you, Kanaya Maryam.
When you close your eyes, you can feel her hands on your waist, fingertips burning holes like fire through the fabric. You feel your heartbeat in your throat and you want to cough it out as her pretty brown-blonde hair falls over her shoulders in wild curls and you notice the blue, blue, blueness of her eyes behind her glasses. Instead, you wrap an arm around her waist and the cool metal of the studs on her belt presses into your arm like little points of diamond. When she breathes into your mouth it is not the scent of strawberries you have come to love, but the sharp bitter smell of alcohol on her breath.
"What's the matter, Kanaya?" She throws back her head and laughs stupidly, like a cartoon villain. "You're all red, just let loose a little...it's not every day a pretty girl wants to kiss you, is it?"
I wanted it to happen, you want to say. But not like this.
You wake up to the raucous sound of your alarm clock. 6:00 AM. You slam a fist to the top of your alarm clock, silencing the harsh beeping. Hunching over the sink you splash freezing water on your face, taking a hard look in the mirror. Pale, sharp features, bright green eyes. Faded red hair with an inch or so of dark brown roots at the top of your head. Dark bags under your eyes betray your long night, and you rub a thick line of concealer under each. Still the same Kanaya you have always been.
Hands on your back are the first thing you wake up to, rocking you gently from side to side. The world blurs into existence and a face you would know anywhere focuses: Pasty white skin, soft orange hair, and a generous dusting of freckles over the bridge of a crooked nose. An almost comical scowl permanently fixed on his face. Books line the walls behind you and the cool feeling of wood and paper digging into your skin pull you further into reality.
"Sorry, Karkat…" You sit up straighter, stifling a yawn. "I haven't been getting a lot of sleep lately."
The stocky boy sits down across from you, looking carefully into your eyes. When he speaks, it's still strained and angry, but there's a note of concern. "Alright...well...try to get some more then, I guess. Who else am I going to get the homework from if you aren't doing it?"
You laugh a bit. "Gamzee?"
"Oh come on. Don't even joke about that!" He hisses. You laugh. "I haven't seen him in ages, actually."
You smile at the ginger boy. "It's Gamzee. I'm sure he's fine." He can't seem to meet your eyes.
The door to the library swings open and a girl with hair like a beam of sunlight walks in, curls dancing over her shoulders and cascading down her back. The faded blue dye on the tips is a washy greenish color now, but the shade of blue on her lips is striking as usual against her olive skin.
"I-I have to go," You manage to whisper, shoving books and papers into your bag. Karkat looks at you curiously but knows better than to say anything.
"Kanaya! Is that you?" You freeze in place, praying that if you look up she will be gone. When you do look, however, the girl is still beaming down on you with the smile of snake.
"Hi, Vriska." Your voice comes out painfully weak, even to yourself.
"Oh, it just feels like forever since you gimped out on me at that party!" She slings an arm around your shoulders, the scent of her strawberry scented hair flooding your nostrils.
"You...remember that?" You say quietly, desperately trying to catch Karkat's eye. I have to get out of here. Please just leave. Please.
"Oh noooooo!" She laughs loud enough to draw the attention of the table nearby. "I was so fucking smashed I hardly remember walking through the door!"
She doesn't remember. You idiot. Of course she doesn't.
"-But enough about me, Kanny, it feels like it's been for-ev-er! Like, a month? Why haven't we spoken?"
"Y-" She cuts you off.
"You have your reasons, I'm sure. Call me when you're done sulking, 'kay?" She runs her finger tip between your shoulder blades as she leaves, and you shudder slightly.
Vriska doesn't remember. You don't know whether to be relieved or hurt, but you feel a strange hotness on your cheeks. You realize you're trying not to cry.
"You haven't been speaking to her?" Karkat asks quietly.
"No. Not, not lately," You say, suddenly very interested in the wood grain of the table.
"Good," He says, glaring over his shoulder. "Vriska is a fucking bitch." You laugh, but it sounds forced and strangled. There's a dry sort of feeling in your mouth and a stinging loneliness you had never felt before.
"Homosexuality is a sin."
Stained glass windows rain color over the priest's arms, rainbow fractals dancing over his arms and dusting the pages of the books in his hands in shades of purple and red.
"The only place for those with homosexual relations to go to is hell - where the souls of the damned must burn for eternity."
Your eyes trace the shapes, green over his cheek, a blue circle like a spot over his eye. As his arm raises to the heavens yellow and turquoise run like rabbits over his skin.
"...And it is us who must pity, who must allow them to repent for their crimes against God. Amen."
Your mother leans her head up from where it is tucked to her chest and unfolds her hands, a triangle of jade falling over her features.
"Amen," she says.
You have always been afraid of hell. As a child, it was because of roaring demons and fiery monsters tearing you limb from limb. Now, even as you're unsure whether the God your mother's heart beats for exists, you are still afraid of devil and what he stands for. You are afraid of the disappointment that your mother would not find you in heaven in the off chance it's real. You're afraid of leaving your body in a grave, of your headstone praising a God who would live to see you bathed in sin.
It is because of this you didn't want to kiss Vriska Serket. It was not because you wanted the first time you kissed another person to be special and full of love. It was not because you hated the way she acted when she was drunk. It was simply because you didn't want to rot in the depths of hell.
No matter how intoxicating her fingers had felt running over your shoulder blades, no matter how lovely and striking the shade of blue in her irises complimented the cerulean of her lips, no matter how you imagined the curve of her hip would fit the contours of your hand, you told yourself that was the reason why.
You could have gone the rest of your life believing that that moment, so alone despite there being so many people it was hard to breathe, the mingling of body heat and the smell of alcohol strong in your nostrils, was simply a test by an almighty man you cared not to believe in, until Rose Lalonde walked through the door to your first period class.