Bonnibel had to stare at the ceiling for almost half an hour before she remembered why the room was so unfamiliar. The main reason was that it wasn't her dorm, the other that she had never actually seen Lucy since Ooo. And really, all the better for it.
LSP was a major fucking bitch.
Perhaps that was the source of her confusion. Crocheted pillows and the smell of French pastries wafting up from downstairs did not exactly match the memory of the girl she knew. But when she came down, Lucy was frowning at her, and she knew nothing had changed, and that they would always share a mutual hatred.
At least, she thought so. But then Lucy opened her mouth, "I... um, made you breakfast?"
"Thanks?" sheepishly, she took the extended plate and sat down at the table. She lifted a forkful to her mouth, chewed thoughtfully - huh, Lucy actually wasn't too bad a cook- and froze when she realised that the other girl was still frowning at her, "What?"
"You're, like, totally robust for someone who could barely walk last night."
"Piss off," she hissed.
There was a short pause; not so much awkward as uncertain.
"Is this a new habit of yours? Going to bars and getting absolutely hammered to the point of forgetting basic bodily functions?"
"Shit. Did I void my bowels or something?"
"I mean walking. Forgetting how to move."
Bonnibel nodded, "Yeah. Pretty much."
Lucy blinked at her, leaned back into her chair, and sighed, "God. You've really changed, haven't you?"
"The both of us."
The other girl was more relaxed now, both in her character and her aesthetic. Her chestnut hair fell in two straight curtains around her face, which was clear of any make-up. It wasn't just that she seemed to have dropped her former routine of painting herself over, she had also filled out a little. Her hips had grown to balance out her bust, and her fine and delicate fingers were no longer bony. And she was smiling. Lucy looked gorgeous when she smiled. Ten times better.
(And Bonnibel was ten times more lesbian than before, so she couldn't exactly ignore her own character development either)
"What happened to your hair, anyway?"
"I dyed it. You hated it ginger anyway. You'd constantly antagonise me about my carrot hair."
"Maybe I was jealous?" Lucy smiled, sheepish, "It was a nice shade of carrot, but I guess the pink, like, suits you really well."
Bonnibel smiled back as she took another bite, looking around the room. It didn't seem like the home of a heiress to a beauty corporation. Quite pokey, containing only a table and a piece of art that was most certainly not highbrow. The canvas just a vertical stripe and a couple of melting polygons that were probably representative of something, even if that something was that the artist had motor neurone disorder and that, god, she had really become a judgmental arse recently, hadn't she?
Lucy saw her looking round and raised an eyebrow, "Any comments you'd like to share?"
"No, nothing important, I'm just silently judging you is all. Can you make me some coffee?"
The other eyebrow joined the first up on her forehead, "No. Shouldn't you be going?"
"No."
"Don't you have any seminars or classes or assignments you need to do?"
"No."
Lucy, understandably, frowned. Last time they'd met, Bonnibel had been an incredibly conscientious, studious girl- frankly, bordering on workaholism. The unsaid question lingered in the air: was she even going to university? College, even?
"Well, yeah," she amended, "I'm going to university, I just don't go to many classes. I practically always turn up late or forget to go all together, but the teachers are fine with it. Not at first, but they've got used to it. Say it's fine, as long as I catch up, and my grades are good."
"Are they?"
She glanced out the window, pretending she hadn't heard the question.
Lucy sighed, "Let me guess, this is, like, all a result of your alcoholism?"
"I'm not an alcoholic, I just appreciate the occasional drink."
"The occasional drunken stupor, you mean."
"Lucy, you have known me- reknown me- for about a couple of hours now, and you have somehow decided I have major life problems. And you have deduced that from what, exactly?"
"I'm studying psychology."
Bonnibel rolled her eyes to the ceiling, "Oh lord help us all."
But the lord obviously wasn't in a helpful mood, as Lucy went on to tell her entire life story since the two had parted. She'd gone shopping once, realised that she had body image issues, and she'd looked around and it was suddenly so clear to her that half of the people in the shop did too. So she'd told her dad she wanted to major in psychology- he was fine with it, thought he could use her newfound mind powers to bolster advertising standards or something. In reality, she wanted to leave the business and start anew. When she announced this, surprisingly, he wasn't angry. Bought her an apartment, funded her course, and even gave her a priceless Picasso- the one hanging on the wall, and now so dauntingly expensive that Bonnibel didn't even want to look at it. And then Lucy had met a guy, fell in love, got engaged (cue ring and sarcastic cooing on Bonnibel's part) the wedding was in twenty days time, Bonnibel was more than welcome to come.
"Isn't it a little early?"
"It's in January, so technically it's next year-"
"You've been together a year, tops. Haven't you considered that maybe you've kind of rushed into things?"
Lucy was quiet for a moment, "No, not really. I've been with guys before, you know, and with Brad, it's different. We don't, like, need sex or anything else extra to compensate for feelings we don't have. It just all happened so soon, it wasn't long before we fell absolutely head over heels. Being apart for more than a day just drives the both of us crazy."
"Imagine not seeing him for a year and a half."
"Huh?"
"Nothing," she smiled wryly, "It doesn't mean anything."
"So, what do you think?"
Marceline glanced up, bleary eyed. Something about the set of her face amplified the emotion, and it looked almost like her skin was sagging with the weight of her exhaustion. When she spoke, the syllables were made of moans rather than letters, "About what?"
"Have you even been concentrating at all for the last minute or so?"
"It was three minutes," she corrected, "You're ruddy brilliant at monologging, you know?"
Bonnibel couldn't help but smile. 'Ruddy?' Had Marceline forgotten her long list of expletives somewhere, or had she simply aged fifty years overnight? "Do you want me to go through it all again?"
"Fuck no."
There. A sign Marceline was slightly more awake. She smiled, "Then maybe you should participate."
"How about you do all the work and I just sit here, occasionally nodding and pretending I understand?"
"How about no?"
"Well then… shit, okay. Lead on, general tightass."
Bonnibel ignored her, flicking open her notepad and writing a heading in her cursive script. Her handwriting was a skill cultivated from since she could hold a pen and the neat calligraphy still made her proud, "Alright. This time, I'll spare you the entire works. In short, we need to develop a business model for developing, managing, or reimagining this forest. Any ideas?"
"We could just leave the trees to their own goddamn tree business."
"Seriously."
"I am being serious," she protested, "Redeveloping the land will enrage the tree community, and keeping it as is would save council funds and reduce negative profit."
"Yeah. No. So, what doesn't the community have enough of?"
"Gay bars."
Bonnibel rolled her eyes.
"Bronchial homosexuality is a budding social movement, and we should probably cater to it before a rival corporation does."
"We are not building a gay bar in the middle of a forest."
Marceline shrugged and turned back to her phone, 'u think trees cud b gay?'
Ash's reply came quick, 'u drunk?'
'answer the q'
'high?'
'fukin piss tired is what'
'were u chasin me in ur dreams or smth?'
She was in the middle of typing a sarcastic reply when, "Marceline?"
She looked up, "Yeah, sorry. I guess I wasn't listening."
"Do you want to leave?"
"More than anything."
"Then go."
Marceline frowned and slid her phone into her pocket, "But we need to do the thing, so-"
"I'll do it, it's fine. I'll catch you up on what I've done tomorrow. Might as well do it on my own if all you'll do is support the nonexistent LGBTree community."
"Like what you did there. The wordplay and shit," the corners of her mouth curled up into a half smile, "Anyway, thanks. See you later."
As Marceline walked out, someone else walked in, stepping aside to let the girl through. His blue eyes shone clear with joy when he laid them upon Bonnibel, "Hey."
"Ricardio! How are you?"
"Good, yeah, it's going good. You?"
"Alright," she shrugged, "Though I guess I'm going to have to do all my work by myself."
"Marceline being uncooperative?"
"Unmotivated is the word I'd use."
He sat down, looked at her searchingly,"Then find her a motivation."
"I don't know anything about her. How on earth am I supposed to work with her?"
"By fooling yourself into believing that she isn't deliberately antagonising you and just doing it all yourself?" he smiled, rolled his eyes.
"That's exactly what I'm doing," she sighed, and quickly changed the subject, "Your partner? Jake? You guys get along well?"
"Good enough."
There was a moment's pause. Bonnibel jotted down an idea, the sound of pen on paper scratching the air. She dotted the line, looked at the ink a second, and satisfied, put down her pen. The nib withdrew with a click.
"I don't think she's antagonising me."
He looked up, drawing a finger across the stubble on his chin, a self-conscious action she'd noticed he did whenever he was thinking, waiting, watching. There was something about that movement that hinted at intelligence beyond his years, of cunning and allure.
"I think she just has other interests. She's just the sort of girl who can't feign concentration. She's not a bad person, you know. Despite her language, and all."
His hand left his face and relaxed on the arm of the chair, "If you say so."
That uninterested disbelief on her new friend's face was all the encouragement she needed. She was going to befriend Marceline, prove to everyone else that she wasn't just a sarcastic bitch. There was something sweet and funny beneath the rest of her personality, of that Bonnibel was certain. Because though gay trees were implausible and ridiculously off topic, there was something almost endearing about the concept. Or maybe, probably, she just hadn't got enough sleep. But even besides that, Bonnibel had watched her while she'd been speaking, when Marceline had been on her phone, and her face had lightened with a genuine smile, with actual emotion, whenever she got a reply.
Someone whose smile was so beautiful couldn't possibly be all that bad.
Marceline was still firmly in the grip of sleep when the knocking started. Though loud enough to rouse her, the sound didn't shock her awake, and so she lay there for a few hazy seconds, watching the black tendrils unfurl across her vision.
Her sleep-addled seconds were actually minutes, and all that time, the knocking carried on. Sometimes rhythmic, sometimes coming in short, sharp bursts, and sometimes just a single loud rap and a moment's pause, but never really stopping. All the better for it really, as giving up would mean never receiving the questionable honour of her company. If Marceline was anything, it was lazy, and her friends knew there was no such thing as extremes when it came to how to wake her up.
The person at the door was either someone she actually liked, or just plain impatient. Just before she opened the door, she realised there was a chance that her visitor was neither of these things, and was proved right when she opened the door- and then quickly shut it again.
"Marceline, open the door."
"No.
"I want to talk to you."
"Go away, Ash."
Ash sighed loudly. A practising Neanderthal, his grunts, sighs and moans were practically ear-splitting. Once upon a time, Marceline would've gone to the ends of the earth to coax them out of him, but that was when her bed would be made for his sake and they traded sex like air.
Now, they only traded wary looks and the occasional curse.
"I'm sick of going away, Marce. Every single time I try to have a conversation like a decent human being, you tell me to leave. Well, this time, I'm going to stand my ground," his voice softened, "I need to talk to you."
It always hurt her to realise that the sound of his words stilling on his tongue still made her feel something. Legs shaking, she sank down to the floor, "We do talk, Ash."
"'Hello,' is not talking. 'Fuck off,' is not talking."
There really was no excuse for that, and so she stayed silent, tucking her knees under her chin.
"The last time we actually talked, like properly talked, was January. Almost a year ago. And even then..."
"Don't."
"Even then, you were so sad," he finished, not listening to her. He never really listened.
"I'm not sad, Ash. I swear, I'm perfectly fine. Just… get off my case."
"Marce..."
"Why do I even need to be happy anyway?"
Years ago, he'd told her that he thought her smiles to be the most beautiful thing the earth had ever seen. Months ago, another had told her the very same as she trailed kisses down her neck. But now, Ash didn't mention her smile, and didn't even deign to answer the question, "I miss us."
She pursed her lips. She had jeapordised the us. She had forgotten how to face him afterwards.
"Not as a couple, not if that's not what you want. But as friends. We were always friends right? And you'd tell your butt awful jokes, and I'd laugh, and sometimes, we'd make fun of movies or teachers together. I liked that. I really miss it."
"I miss it too," she whispered, hoping and praying that he couldn't hear her through the door and that those weren't tears beginning to form in her eyes.
There was a moment of silence.
"I don't like them."
"You're jealous."
"They're horrible to you."
"No better than we were half the time."
Her name was stagnant and repulsive and absolutely wonderful on his lips, "Marce…"
"You've talked to me, now go."
"Okay. Sorry. Bye."
But his breathing didn't fade, because he was still standing outside her door. She could picture him now; slender body leaning against the wood, lips pressed against it- lips she still thought of more than she should've but hated more than anything- eyes closed, and hair falling across his face. And his clothes would be slightly rumpled, they always were and he himself muted, whispered, against the bright green hallway- the cream in his hair, the peach of his skin, and the cornflower of his eyes.
And her prayers had went amiss somewhere, as those had been tears, and now they fell. She sobbed freely, thinking of a boy called Ash and a girl called Peebs.
A/N: Well, I'm super stupid. I think I finished this part around Christmas, and I guess I intended this is a special seasonal part (?) so I feel rather silly right now, rediscovering this in my documents.
It's all YuzuYuri19's fault (fault, of course, being the wrong word) because email alerts. So while I'm at it, thanks for the review *blows kiss*
And since I'm feeling all teary and emotional, I'd just like to thank everyone who has supported this fic so kisses all around, I guess :)
On another note, my long absences are disgusting. Sorry about that.
