The Sapling
Summary: Courtney likes Gwen as more than a friend. And really, it should be as simple as that, but it's not.
Pairings: Gwen/Courtney, past Trent/Gwen and Duncan/Gwen, past Duncan/Courtney and Alejandro/Courtney.
Warnings: N/A
Disclaimer: The Total Drama series and all related characters do not belong to me.
Author's Note: A long overdue Secret Santa gift. My apologizes to this person, who seems to have changed their url on Tumblr. If you catch this, please contact me so I can make a formal apology. (I'm pretty embarrassed, you see.)
College AU. Perhaps two to three parts long. As of this publishing date, incomplete.
Part 1
·
Courtney pinpoints it during some mundane event, probably over brunch or in the middle of a study circle, sitting beside Gwen in serene quiet. It is abrupt, and violent, stealing her air and leaving her breathless until her heartbeat flutters painfully and she feels cold sweat draw over the entirety of her body. Gwen and Trent walk her home, and she peels off her jacket just inside her apartment and inhales sharply.
She assures herself that it will only wane with time.
And it swells and blossoms, pulling the full expanse of her thoughts into its shadow.
Gwen accompanies her to a clothing store the first time her feelings run clear. Courtney asks Gwen to zip up her dress and she brushes the curtain aside, presses close in that confined space. When Courtney looks up at Gwen in the mirror, a lock of turquoise hair fading into black falls against her friend's lips. She breathes out a laugh as Gwen seals her dress shut and says she's pretty in green, and the thought isn't spontaneous or unexpected or strange, simply drawing itself from the depths of her mind in its entirety.
I'm in love with this girl.
She has captured her attention once before only for Courtney to find her intentions along her ex-boyfriend's lips. Over a year and the pangs of it sometimes catch her laughter even now. But through that ache lies another throbbing, one that cuts deeper, presses on blood running thick along her heart.
It's private. A sort of intimate like the curve of Gwen's smile, the one she gives to people she likes. And so Courtney guards it.
·
Trent is there on a regular day and quietly bearable on a better one. All tension she expected faded within a day of knowing him; he and Gwen fell into a pattern of friendship long before she rediscovered her.
They spend the weekend before Thanksgiving at his parents' house, and only when they share an ivory piano is Courtney marginally impressed by him. Gwen sits at the velvet couch, carving charcoal into her sketchpad. Courtney glances back more than once to check on her. Light filters in from the patio's screen door, and surrounded by off-white walls and cherry-wood floor paneling, Gwen tucks a lock of hair behind her ear, twitches her nose against rising dust, and she's so beautiful that Courtney fumbles against the keys, damaging Fur Elise beyond repair. Trent sighs, and though he doesn't sound frustrated, Courtney tosses him a withering look.
In the middle of the night she wakes up to another body hovering over her. She yelps and slaps at whatever skin she can find, and the figure hisses in pain and cringes back, but not away.
"Courtney! It's me."
She pauses, hand still raised, then exhales loudly, rolling her eyes before she can help it. Then she tugs a fistful of blanket toward her and curls away, but Gwen places a hand on her shoulder, warm at the palm.
"Hey, I got an idea."
"Gwen…" Courtney lifts her head, at the analog clock above the guest room's door. "It's about one in the morning. Can't it wait?"
In the corner of her vision Gwen smiles, rubbing at her arm, where Courtney blindly aimed earlier. "It only works now. Trent's a heavy sleeper."
That sobers her enough, a flush of cold followed by wafting heat along her scalp. Gwen isn't blushing, though, and her eyes contain nothing short of mischief, but she told Courtney she looked nice in green when forests thickly populate her insides, roots bleeding jealousy from their very core. Courtney shuts her eyes and the color flits across her vision: Trent and his jade eyes, Duncan and his stupid mohawk.
…No.
She swallows, a solid click resounding in her throat, and manages a smile.
Gwen told her she's pretty in green.
And that soft thrum in her chest becomes a steady fist against the air. She sits up, pulls the left strap of her tank top back over her shoulder, and says, "I'm listening."
They go through four rolls of duct tape and Courtney has to shove her nose into the crook of her elbow at one point to conceal her laughter. She comes up with assaulting the fridge; Gwen decides to block access to a few rooms downstairs, using the tape like police lines over doorways.
On the last stretch, Gwen seals the toilet seat by its cover and Courtney works on the sink. She catches the creaking of floorboards and Gwen takes her wrist. They huddle behind the door of a nearby closet, Courtney pressing the sleeve of a coat against her mouth, and after some shuffling, light spills into the hallway.
"What the fuck?"
A snort and she dissolves into muffled giggles, catching her side when full-blown laughter tickles at her throat. Another hand falls against her waist and Gwen's face meets her shoulder, body heaving with chuckles. Courtney brings her in close, and Gwen looks up at her, faint traces of blue along the soft folds of her lips.
I love you, mouth curled in amusement, flashes across her brain so easily, as if by nature, and it holds so much in her mind though it never reaches her lips.
·
The first thing Courtney notices about Gwen's mom is her hair color, an auburn sort of brown with traces of red in direct sunlight. She has found traces of the same color at Gwen's roots more than once. But her mother wears it a little long, full but not curly.
The second is her clothes, jeans and a pink blouse that Gwen would never be caught wearing.
Gwen's brother goes pink when she sits at the table with them and she is reminded of that kid who crushed on Gwen for a good portion of high school. Gwen teases him while her mother sets out tea. When her brother denies it, Gwen laughs and says, "I wouldn't let you, anyway."
She should be angered, but Gwen is close under the dining table, their thighs almost touching.
It's a small table, but still.
Courtney draws from her chair more than once, offering to help, but Gwen's mother insists she stay. Gwen leans into her, their knees bumping under the table, and murmurs that it's for an unimportant but long reason and she can explain later if she wants.
The salmon is a little tasteless but she likes it anyway.
Courtney sits with Gwen's mom as it gets dark and the siblings are doing the dishes. The television is on but her concentration lies in making some design on a throw pillow. Courtney sees the top of a clock tower over a midnight blue skyline, and then Gwen's mom catches her gaze and grins, needle slipping under the fabric.
"I used to do this much oftener."
"It looks beautiful." And it does, a reasonable, practical hobby with substantial results.
She gives her a warm, patient smile. "Thank you. He would kill me if I told you this, but…" Gwen's mom gives her a playfully mischievous smirk, and she looks so much like Gwen that Courtney, unthinking, returns a too-wide grin, reaching her eyes in a way only Duncan and Alejandro had caused before. "…Dante loves doing this. Makes all these goofy cartoons or whatever you call it. The Japanese ones. I tried teaching Gwen, but—"
"Mom?"
The sink is still running. Gwen's hands are pink, only a shade lighter than her cheeks.
"Dante has his hand stuck in the drain."
Gwen's mom frowns, sets her materials aside, and says only, "Again?"
"He dropped his cell phone charm."
Once she passes them, murmuring that they had a strainer for a reason, Gwen turns to Courtney, dips her head in the opposite direction with a small grin, and heads off. Behind them, Dante whines, "But I won it at a convention!" And so she follows her friend into her bedroom.
"Oh, God, Gwen." Gwen closes the door behind them. Courtney sits in her desk chair, brushing her hair back. "This—No, don't turn on the light." Gwen shrugs, then plops onto her bed, ankle over her other knee as she undoes the laces on her boots. The rest of her shoes seemed to have been juxtaposed at one point, but now they were toppled beside her bed, a mesh of black and the occasional brown. "You sleep here?"
"C'mon, Courtney." Gwen's socks are fuzzy blue. "Not everyone can have real estate homes like you or Trent."
"Don't change the subject. I'm talking about this." With that, Courtney rolls the chair aside, pointing at the landslide of books and papers behind her.
Gwen shrugs. "It looks fine to me."
Courtney rolls her eyes. The wallpaper is a very light shade of peach and Gwen seemed to have counteracted that with as many dark colored posters and drawings she could find. Duncan loved a lot of these bands, just a bunch of screaming and steely guitar chords. Just around Gwen's bed is a canvas painting of a woman's silhouette, gray on black.
She stands and squeezes her way over there. Traces of yellow or green lined the borders of the frame. Courtney sits and looks over to Gwen, who has her own gaze at the door. "I suppose your family is full of artists."
Gwen seems to pause, but when she looks up her lips are pulled loosely into a smile. "Yeah, I guess."
On the other side of the bed is a wardrobe and short table. Gwen's lizards mill about in their aquarium, one mounted on a thick branch.
"I think she likes you."
"That thing?"
"You mean Vampyra? Yeah," and she has a full smile this time. Courtney chuckles and shifts her way onto Gwen's bed. They place themselves in front of her pets and the other lizard raises its head from a pile of bedding, blinks, and lays its head back down. "Angus doesn't really like anyone." She brings her index finger to the glass. Angus raises his head again, draws a little closer, then retracts, as if bored by the effort. "Not for a while, at least."
Courtney bites her bottom lip. The comment fills her mouth but she looks at Gwen first, and her friend's attention is sealed on the reptiles. Her eyes are warm and gentle in the way Courtney so rarely sees, and she swallows back her heart, flicking her eyes downward and brushing her hair back. When her gaze returns to Gwen she says, "Sounds like someone I know."
Gwen laughs, crisp and loud, and Courtney finds herself following suit. Angus jolts under a rock while the other lizard continues to stare. As they grow quiet, Gwen asks, "Wanna hold her?"
"Oh, gross!"
·
She wakes to the dull gleam of moonlight on Gwen's ceiling lamp, frosted glass with a white design. Her left arm is dangling off the bed, and as she pulls it back under the covers, she realizes how cold it was.
Courtney rolls to her side, bunching rolls of the comforter around her frame, then notices how easily they come to her. She sits up, still groggy, and stares into the darkness at the other side of the bed.
Empty.
And so she gets up, trailing her hand along the wall as she navigates out of the room. Worry doesn't guide her, only a half-conscious desire to leave. Teal light seeps in the narrow hallway and she pads across thick carpeting on the way to the bathroom. Just at the threshold she falters, wavers, and rests her temple on the door frame.
"…but that's not exactly smart, huh?"
Courtney rolls her head down the hallway, squinting into the far darkness. Her mind tentatively slips into focus, concentration narrowed to a pinprick that widens with a low chuckle. The kitchen, maybe the living room.
"…Yeah, I guess."
She shouldn't be listening. This is eavesdropping, however light an invasion it might be.
"…Duncan, you are just stupid." Gwen's voice cracks in the middle of the sentence then dissolves into a slight laugh as the last word ends.
Courtney pushes back the branches already in her throat. The roots have pulled themselves from her gut, forcing pain straight into her head, scraping along her scalp and cheeks. She moves back from the bathroom, vision whirling in blues and greens.
"She wouldn't get it anyway."
A pause. She sorts all emotions and tucks them away into a folder. Courtney catches a deep part of herself begging her name not to be brought up, for the identity of this woman to remain a secret.
A long silence follows. Her breath is wet and heavy against her upper lip. "I mean, she's over right now, so…"
Only in the morning does she know that she came back without a single floorboard creaking.
Courtney says goodbye to Gwen's family. Before she leaves, Dante asks if she got in a fight with Gwen or something. His mother glares in his direction when Courtney smiles and says no, not really.
It isn't a lie, after all.
·
End Part 1