Soteriophobia and Snark

sound and fury, a high school au


I'm hanging out by the punch bowl. Equius is watching me like a hawk, frowning. He probably wants me to spike the punch just so he has some duty to do. He seems hyper, though, looking around until he sees Aradia. She looks very pretty, and grudgingly happy (for one who calls herself an emo, anyway), in a pale green dress. The corsage on her wrist matches the one pinned to the tall boy's chest. I decide they make an adorable couple when I see Equius lift his hand and wave shyly at his date.

"Come dance," she grins, and he nods, sweeping her up and twirling her around. He's actually really good. He probably took lessons out of nervousness. I giggle to myself at the thought.

Butterflies stir in my stomach, then my head begins to actually pound as I spot Tavros entering. He cleans up nicely, and he seems bashfully smiley in his suit coat and tie. On his arm is Vriska.

...I feel like I have been put in one of those terrible romantic comedies where the girl walks down the stairs and the guy nearly faints.

Vriska is the only thing in the room that matters because she emits light. She is radiant, and her lips are pursed in a little smile as if she knows this. The music should be dreamy and swoopy, and it is, some acoustic sweet tune that carries her along as she walks. I can't not stare at her smooth, pretty shoulders, the way the straps fall just slightly down. I made her this dress, but she must have influenced my thoughts while I was making it, because it suits her almost unfairly well. Oh my God, I almost murmur in awe. My masterpiece is white and a falls little past her knees, made of shiny fabric as bright as her eyes, and featuring a blue zodiac symbol is on the front: an M, supposed to represent her birth month's sign. Right now, it could mean anything, including Mystery. Every head in the room angles toward her, and, attention seeker that she is, she tilts her head and sways slightly, the dress hugging her hips and legs. Her hair is down and she must have made it more wavy than usual. It flies everywhere, as wild and impossible as she is.

It takes me five full minutes to realize her left arm is still in a cast. I'm too distracted by everything else.

Her eyes, swirling and blue, meet mine under the lights. I feel hot, a specimen being x-rayed by laser beams and scanners.

"Hello," she mouths, and I fall under her spell. I feel my legs moving, carrying me toward her. Music begins blaring louder, and the gym is dark, steamy with emotions.

"'You look nice' doesn't do you justice," I whisper breathlessly, and her smile becomes a smirk.

"Nor you."

"I'm going to get some punch," Tavros stammers, and stumbles to the table with refreshments.

"Okay," the goddess of the Valentine's Day dance tosses after him. She leans close to me, her teeth bared. Smile or death threat? One never knows with Vriska.

"How are you tonight, Maryam?"

Sweat drips down my neck and I feel cold chills burst from somewhere deep inside of me. My answer is given in mostly a cough.

"I'm good."

I realize I forgot a pleasantry.

"And you?"

Vriska winks. I catch my breath finally, just as she murmurs in my ear.

"I am splendid looking at you in that outfit."

"Ha-ah," I probably say.

She whirls around to speak to the apathetic DJ. He's pimply and bored-looking, maybe a senior in college, wearing too much hair gel. His eyes bug out when he gets a look at Vriska, and who could blame him? The girl whispers something in his ear, her lashes fluttering seductively, and he clicks through his computer program nervously.

What is she playing at? I wonder.

I understand when music, loud and somewhat badass, starts to blare from the speakers. The student body's general reaction is head-tilting and confusion, as they don't know this band or song.

Vriska is the queen of bribery tonight.

She grabs my hand and she twirls me around, beginning to move to the rhythm of the song.

"What is this?" I ask.

"It's called Black Sheep, and it's by Metric."

"Okay," I shrug.

As Tavros socializes with his friends who are not dancing, Vriska presses closer against me. The music slams through my heartbeat, the wooden floor throbbing, and I feel like I'm floating on a cloud, albeit loud, that only contains the two of us. Her hair brushes against my bare shoulders, and she's practically grinding her hips against mine, creating hot shocks of something in my lower abdomen. A new song, some popular thing from a few years ago, comes on, and it has the same low, pulsing beat. We keep dancing. Vriska is achingly sexy, tossing her head and making this look effortless, and I have a hard time not arching my neck and begging for... for what? Desire is reckless and impulsive and scary, I've been told, but in reality it feels so good to be in over my head with want. It's a new sensation, and I have no doubt she senses it too, because she moves faster.

"I thought you said you couldn't dance."

"I never said I couldn't fast dance. Besides, I'm improvising."

"Your improvisation is amazing," I groan hoarsely, and she winks again.

"That's the point, baby."


Kanaya is extremely attractive.

Seriously. Every guy in the room has their eyes on that body. She's smoking hot. I can almost feel it when I touch her. The red dress is strapless, and the sight of her exposed skin makes me feverish with lust.

She is so attractive she puts Aradia to shame, and Aradia is right now being asked to dance by several admirers- admirers who are senior boys.

Kanaya is wantable. Endlessly so.

There's desire in this half-relationship.

I have came to this conclusion in the past, but never as forcefully as now.

"They're playing Justin Bieber," I growl. "Let's ditch this institution of madness."

"What? Why? But... Tavros!"

"He'll live," I shrug, feeling no guilt.

I take her hand and we sidle out a door while Stupid Equius is distracted.

The hallways are dimly lit, and we hasten to the nearest exit. But it's locked, and a policeman with a nightstick prowls right past us, giving us the evil eye.

"Damn," Kanaya hisses. I grin.

"Come on."

I lead her to the bathroom, and gesture to the window.

"Are you insane?" Her eyes are wide, her voice rising to a high pitch in the echoey room. I shush her.

"Justin Bieber, Kanaya," I remind her. "They're playing Justin Bieber. Plus, we already danced, didn't we?"

She nods and tries to calm down while I prop the window open with my shoe.

"Voila." It's a five-foot drop to the ground. I leap out and land easily, then catch Kanaya as she jumps. She's soft and warm and pleasant in my arms.

"I'm not a baby," she grumbles, handing me my shoe back.

"Sure." I take her hand and we skip to the parking lot. It's dark outside, the singular unbroken streetlamp buzzing quietly. The moon keeps silent watch over everything, a dish made of silver in the night sky.

I detach my fingers from hers and hold out my hand impatiently when we reach her car.

"Keys. Give me the keys."

"How many times have you done this? Snuck out via the bathroom, I mean."

"Oh, twenty-five," I smile, feeling like the neighborhood badass.

Soon we are on the backroads leading to our destination. There's something comforting about driving fast in the dark, the headlights bouncing off the asphalt, the wind cool and comforting as it streams in through the half-opened window. I want to yell into the empty, mostly-sleeping world, yell my name to make them realize exactly who I am, but it suddenly feels childish. Maybe I'm growing up. I take Kanaya's hand in mine again, carefully because it's my left arm, and keep driving with my right.


Vriska looks even more splendid in the white moonlight as she stops the car and gets out. We are somewhere I've never been, the empty lot next to an ivy-covered church with a tall clock tower. I want to ask what we're doing, but I'm afraid to break the fragile quiet.

As silent as a shadow- well, one that leads instead of following- she crawls through a small hole in the wall with complete disregard for her dress. I accompany her reluctantly.

Cobwebs coat the inner walls, and even though we're not speaking at the moment, voices seem to reverberate from the dingy altar. Ghosts are everywhere, I think, memories of the people who lived and died here.

"Don't be so morbid, Maryam," Vriska looks at me suddenly. "It's not haunted, and no one perished in this building. It's just abandoned."

She takes me all the way up to the top of the tower. We have to shuffle single-file up an old spiral staircase whose railing is threatening to break off, brush dust from our clothes, and heave a trapdoor out of the way, but we are eventually ensconced in a snug lookout perch.

And what a lookout it is. The entire town can be viewed, or most of it, through the glassless window we're standing on tiptoes to peer through, and we can see the school, where our peers are, dancing and chattering.

"I don't think anything has to be official." My own voice surprises me, and Vriska turns her head in my direction.

"No," she smiles, then adds.

"But it is understood, yes?"

"What is understood?"

Her voice takes a poetic tone as she begins to speak words, words that turn into long beautiful sentences.

"It is understood that I am evil and you are good and we will balance, and it is understood that we can't play cops and robbers at this age because we are too old. But that doesn't make us any less cop and robber, you see. I think you are an interesting creature and I am sure you find me the same, and I think your lack of despicableness is intriguing, and I think that we could get away with a lot of things if we wanted to. But we don't have to."

"I think you are a poet," is all I can say to her soliloquy. She laughs and kisses me deeply, and I have a small moment of enlightenment where it doesn't matter that sticky spiderwebs are covering me or this stone wall is pressing into my back. All that matters is Vriska, and unraveling the threads to find a girl, not a crazed delinquent. She is a human being, like me and like Terezi and like Tavros, and she is a fragile and breakable human being. Vriska isn't solvable. Neither am I. None of us are.


And we were happy that moment of that day. Who's to say it won't be true in a year, a month, a week, an hour? But I'm alive in this moment. And this moment matters terribly.


La Fin

(for the AU, anyway.)