Have some humor and fluff, I guess.
Valentine's day.
It wasn't really something Lilith enjoyed. She had vague memories of cruel children and an empty card pouch whenever she heard the word. That stupid rule in elementary school that forced everyone to give every class member a little generic Valentine never worked. She was always left out when she lived with her family before, and most of the kids in her class in Hawkins had done the same thing.
And Zara would never fork over the cash for a cheap box of the dumb cards, so she always got in trouble. The teacher would scold her, she would tell them exactly what her 'mother' said, then get in more trouble for swearing but most of all; lying. She wasn't lying, though. Zara really would tell her those nasty things, laced with curse words and insults.
Even now, when she's in High School and the Valentine's Cards aren't mandatory but not received, she still hates it. Why people spend so much on Goddamn chocolates and flowers for a single day of the year, giving the overpriced gifts to someone they probably wont even be with in six months to a year, she would never understand.
Then again, she doesn't really understand most of that 'feelings' shit.
Sure, she understands 'anger' and 'fear' and 'sadness' and sometimes even 'happiness', but 'love' and anything like it is completely foreign to her. She understands 'loyalty', doing things for people you are about and standing up for them, never going behind their back. And she can get behind the 'putting others before yourself' thing, whatever that's called because she's sure 'selfless' isn't categorized as an emotion.
But 'love' towards anything besides a pet...
She just can't wrap her head around the idea.
She can't even figure out the difference between 'like' and 'like-like'!
So when the fateful day comes, and everyone in the entire town is being lovey-dovey -or moping because they don't have anyone either- she hides herself in her baggy hoodie even more than usual, trying to shield her eyes from the offensive hearts and roses and happy couples.
In all honesty, it makes her want to vomit.
Steve notices and asks if she's okay.
She ends up going off. Rants about what every Valentine's Day has been like for her and how she's actually clueless about what 'love' even is. She even tells him about the first she found her dumb mandatory card thing empty, and the boy who handed her a card filled with insults from the whole class and laughed at her, then that she pushed him -just not how she pushed him- and pouts childishly when she's done.
She hates sharing that kind of stuff. She's mad that she did, even though it was an accident, and she really doesn't like to talk about the things before she moved to Hawkins.
"I know I'm being stupid-"
"No, it's a perfectly valid reason to hate it."
She sighs, relieved that he isn't all Mr. Judge-y like she thought he would be. It was a weird thought to have at all, considering how little he's judged her for anything. Actually, she's pretty sure he hasn't judged her at all since they started... whatever this is.
At lunch she passes a table in the hall, where some cheerleaders are selling individual roses. The idea is for someone to buy one, write someone else's name on it and either send it anonymously or with their name signed. The roses get delivered during the last class of the day.
Yep, that's Valentine's day for you, she thinks. Just another way for the school to make money and the 'less desirable' students get to feel left out.
She buys three, one for each of the only three people in the entire school she can stand for more than a minute. The people she's sketched to remind herself of the happy moment in life. The people who aren't like everyone else.
The stupid gifts are like an anonymous 'thank you' to them, because she feels like they deserve it in some form or another. You don't have to 'love' someone to send them something on Valentine's Day, right? Probably not.
She leaves the 'from' line empty on Nancy and Jonathan's, but on Steve's she writes 'L'; an inside joke between the two of them. She's sure it'll get a laugh out of him.
When that moment at the beginning of their last class comes, she slides down in her seat and stuffs her hands into her pockets. She wants to be as invisible as possible for this moment. Maybe, if she's luck enough, the floor will open up and swallow her whole.
The teacher calls out names. Some kids get a few of the prickly flowers all bundled up together, others get a single rose, and the last few don't get any.
Lilith ends up in the first category, staring at the tiny bouquet on her desk, willing it to disappear right this instant. It doesn't. She sighs.
She decides to see who sent them later and shoves them in her bag.
She sits on the hood of Steve's car, looking over one of the cards. It's just her name and a phone number she doesn't recognize. She squints at the numbers, as if that will help her solve the mystery.
It doesn't
Steve comes strolling over with the five usual kids right behind him.
"Hey th-" he pauses when he sees the flowers, "whoa."
Max, the one kid of the group who'd really accepted her probably only because they're both women, runs over to check out her haul.
"Holy crap." She says.
"Yeah, it's weird. I didn't exist until, like, December."
That dress.
She will curse it for the rest of her life.
Max takes the phone number rose from Lilith to see what had her looking so confused before they came over, "This is my landline."
It would take an idiot to not understand what that means, and Lilith is not an idiot.
Dustin makes a joke about Max sending it, for which she smacks him, and Lilith sits there trying not to puke. Billy sent her his number, probably hoping to get 'something' out of someone -apparently her- whose face was 'okay enough to screw'. Ugh.
She rips the card off the stem, then tears into tiny pieces and hands the flower to Mike.
"Give it to your girlfriend." she smiles at him and he turns an adorable shade of red before he takes it, mumbling 'thanks' without making eye contact.
She checks the next one. It's from someone she doesn't know and he only wrote down her last name, so she tears that card off too and hands it to the curly-haired comedian in front of her.
The third-slash-last rose she has is sent to her full name, signed by... 'S'.
She raises an accusatory eyebrow at Steve. He mirrors her but with an added smirk, pulling his own rose from behind his back. The one she sent him. Evidently, they had the same idea. They stare at each other for another second before bursting into a fit of laughter that leaves them crying and winded.
They kids watch them like they're a pair of crazy monkeys at the zoo.
See?
Fluffy and adorable, just like a kitten.
A kitten I've decided to name Stelith.
It sounds dumb, but it's the lesser of two evils, so if you have a better ship name comment it!
Bye-bye now~