Insert usual warnings.
Insert disclaimer.
Bailey is Private Hive, Karen is Bumble Bee.
"Hey, hey, do you ever talk?" Jinx asked the girl who had followed her to the school. The winged girl had spent almost a week of classes without speaking and Jinx was getting sick of it.
Angel bowed her head respectfully and nodded, once. Angel was courteous and that was all she knew how to be.
"Well, let's hear it then. Let me see how good your voice is." Jinx waited expectantly.
She couldn't speak, she would be sure to say something wrong. She always said something wrong.
"Hey. Hey look at me." Jinx took Angel's chin and moved her head so the girl was looking her directly in her pink eyes. "People would rather hear what you were thinking and be insulted then not know what you are thinking at all."
Angel thought, opened her mouth, and the words came pouring out. It was really Jinx's fault that she never stopped speaking again.
At the Hive, people went out of their way to talk to Angel. She knew fashion like the back of her hand, she knew obscure bands and popular bands as well, and she was happy. For the first time, she was happy.
Angel loved Jinx with all of her heart; she was everything Angel thought a girl should be. She was tough and bold and strong. Jinx made Angel feel safe.
Angel had never had someone in her life that made her feel like that. She grew up in a church that had separated her from everything and people were careful not to get to close to her. At the Hive it was different. She went out of her way to culture herself and learn about what was out there. She went out of her way to be experianced.
She became everyone's mother at school, despite the fact that she came from such a sheltered background. It made her feel safer still, she was necessary, she was loved, and she was needed.
She always thought of Jinx as the most strong though, a mother above the mother. But soon, even Jinx started to come to her more frequently, to ask for advice and help. Angel wondered when in their friendship she had become the mother figure. It didn't really matter though, because she would protect Jinx with all of her heart.
"That girl is a raging bitch!" Eleven year old Jinx whined, gnashing her teeth and stamping her too tall boots around the room.
"Who, Karen?" Angel asked.
"Yes! Freaking teacher's pet. No no, no, a teachers insect!" Jinx growled and then spoke with a sugary sweet voice dripping with sarcasm. "Can I copy these papers for you headmistress? Are you sure you don't need help sir? Maybe I can get you something to drink Mr. Arther? Can I kiss your ass Brother Blood? There is a way more subtle method to kissing up!"
Angel wrinkled her nose, keeping the knowlege that Jinx was a bit of a suck-up to herself. She didn't like the Karen any more than Jinx did, but still…
"Hive girls have to stick together." And that was the end of that.
"And then Bailey gets this really puzzled look. Like he's trying to figure out what's going on right? And he asks us what we're doing! So Steve goes 'Oh, I am helping Angel rehearse for a play.' What a joke! But Bailey believes it because he's sweet like that, takes a drag, and walks off!" Angel cackled with glee.
Jinx snorted into her soda. She had heard the story of Angel and Steve getting caught before, hell there were more than enough of those sorts of stories going around, but picturing Bailey's confused expression was always funny.
Karen frowned. "Wait, when did you and our Science teacher hook up?"
"Kitten and Fang broke up again?"
"You're surprised?"
"You know who annoys me?" Jinx didn't wait for a response, she never did. "Brother Blood. I mean he's not even the headmaster yet and he's all appraising us to see our "potential". What bull!"
Angel nodded. "And calling himself Brother Blood? What a laugh! He's certainly not my brother!" She paused a moment, then snickered. "Imagine having that as a relative."
"You guys should be nicer to him though." Bee grimaced, "He is going to be headmaster some day, should anything happen to the headmistress."
Angel and Jinx looked at each other. "As if, the woman's a dinosaur, she's never going to die."
Karen's eyes clouded. "You'd be surprised. Things tend to go Brother B's way."
"Alright, I like him." Jinx's face flushed. When Jinx blushed it was painfully obvious.
"We knew it."
"I can't fucking concentrate anymore." Karen slumped over the couch, a bottle of beer dangling from two of her fingers. "All this school shit, all this drama, Brother B, it's all a load of crap. I can't work with it anymore."
She glared at the bottle in her hand accusingly, willing it to respond.
"Then leave." Jinx didn't mince words. She never had even as a child. If Billy made her mad, which he did frequently, she called him a jerk right away. Jinx was straight and to the point and Karen needed that after all the tip-toeing around secret operations the Hive was getting into.
"I don't want to." Karen pouted hazily.
"Then what?" Angel asked, taking a sip of her own beer. "Shit Bee, there aren't many other options. Just scat, y'know? Fly away. You could be a civilian or something, heck I dunno' just do something!"
"Would you all miss me?"
"Yes." The answer was swift and the same from both of them. Of course they would miss her, how could they not?