Okay, so in this chapter there's a bit where Ducky gets shoved into a locker and locked in. Do not do this. My friends did that to this one girl, and we legitimately had to get bolt cutters because the lock wasn't working. Of course, I didn't lock her in. It was my crazy friends. I was the innocent bystander who went and got bolt cutters. Do not be my crazy friends. Be me.

also y'all like the cover? took me a while but all I draw are these characters so it wasn't too difficult haha. full cover in better quality is available on my deviant art page! my username is ghooostexe, I don't upload much though lol

Reviews!

MoonTheMagical: Oo, light rain is nice yeah. I like being inside when it rains so I can listen to it. It's been pretty rainy where I live too, but hopefully summer will clear it up! And yeah who needs sleep?

Lydia-From-Limmet: Yeah, good for Henry. Too bad he'll notice more too late. And yeah, Michael needs to learn to…not do that! As for the muffins, idk why I chose them for dinner, I guess I just like muffins LMAO

SomeRandomRobo: That's funny that you mention wind, because we had crazy wind a week ago! My cat was going insane LOL. And nice predictions!

Qxr: Yeah, Henry is noticing some suspicious stuff about William…

Penguimom: omg you're catching up! also thank you, I'm glad that's your favourite chapter. and YES I'm drinking my tea!

special thanks to mixsii and damon for texting me whilst writing this

anyways this chapter is a positive vent of happy emotions so yeah it's fluffy :)) enjoy!

Chapter 76

April Showers Bring May Showers

"Marlee! Pass me the straightener, class starts in ten minutes!" Some girl with already perfectly straight brown hair screeched at her friend, who whipped the cyan straightener in a hurry.

Other girls swarmed the mirrors, swiping on layers of mascara, sweeping on blush, or debating which top to wear. Some were even sitting on top of the counters! A girl with bright purple hair etched some writing into one of the full beige walls, and a pair of blondes banged on one of the stalls, making the girl in there shriek in annoyance. It was absolute chaos, complete calamity and discord.

And then there was Ruby, just trying to wash the applesauce off her hands.

Which was a long and messy story involving two cats, a broken alarm clock, and one very screamy four-year-old. So Ruby eventually decided that hygiene was less important than potentially losing a limb or two in the chaos, so she left the bathroom to go to Science - maybe they had some paper towels in there or something.

I wonder if the boys bathroom is as chaotic? Ruby wondered to herself. And then she remembered the milk incident. And the shepherd's pie incident. And the Jordan incident, which was by far the worst of the unholy trinity of boys bathroom incidents.

Oh, how she pitied Ducky and Josh.

~lll~

"Alright, class! Like I said yesterday, today we are going to be dissecting a sheep's eyeball!" Ms Clarks cheered in a tone much too enthusiastic for this.

"I think I'm going to be sick," Ducky mumbled in horror, looking down at the glassy yellow eye on his tray. There were clumps of grotesque pink-and-purple flesh stuck to it. Ruby raised her eyebrows at him.

"You know you don't have to do this, right? There's a few other kids doing a different activity in the other classroom."

"No, no. I want to do this. I don't wanna be one of those kids that skips out because they're grossed out, or something." Ducky said, rolling up the sleeves of his bright blue button-up, printed with oranges.

"I for one am very excited for this," Ruby said with an evil grin. For some reason, she'd always been sort of fascinated by gory stuff, ever since she was little. When she was eight and learning how to read, she'd check out all the horror books in the library, much to her teacher's dismay. It probably explained her current choice of job.

"Good for you. Oh my God, I swear it just blinked at me…" Ducky gulped.

"Weakling." Ruby taunted. "Pass me the scalpel."

Ducky picked it up with two fingers, placing it gingerly in her plastic-gloved palms.

The teacher continued with her lecture. "Now that you have the scalpel, make a careful incision and split the eye down the middle. Be careful not to put your face too close to it, or else some of the vitreous will squirt in your eye-"

"Ulp." Ducky looked green. "Is this even legal? This seems traumatizing."

"Come on, Quackers, we're nearly adults. Man up." Ruby squinted, wanting to get a clean cut. She angled the scalpel just right, and made a slice right through the eye. She had to saw at it a little, but eventually she reached the inside.

"Ew, ew, ew ew ew!" Ducky gagged, turning his head away. "How are you even looking at that right now?!"

"Dunno. Maybe I'm just a bigger man than you," Ruby teased, leaning close and examining the split eyeball. Using a tiny spoon, she carved out the inside to reveal a little turquoise sphere.

"Its like carving a pumpkin!" Ruby chirped excitedly.

"How festive," Ducky muttered, one hand clamped tightly over his mouth.

Ruby giggled, picking up one half of the eyeball and pressing into it with her index finger. "Ha! It's like a Pop-It!" She held the two halves in the palm of her hand and turned to Ducky. "Hey Ducks, will you marry me?"

"Oh my God, Ruby, you're sick! I think I'm actually going to throw up!" He wailed, pretending to faint on the table and gagging in an overly dramatic fashion. Ruby wheezed with laughter, setting the eyeball back down on the black tray with a pair of silver tweezers.

"Yikes. Look outside." Cody, one of Josh's friends on the team muttered from behind them, pulling his safety goggles off his head and pointing to the window.

Ruby's hazel eyes widened in astonishment when she saw. Outside, rain was dumping buckets of water down, splashing and crashing and making waves in murky puddles below. It was thundering down on the staff parking lot making rat-a-tat noises on the metal roofs of their cars. Jeez, whatever happened to 'April showers bring May flowers'?

"I guess this is why they call our town Hurricane," Ducky joked.

Ruby rolled her eyes. "Okay, just for that I'm making you label the eye on both our sheets." She passed him the two worksheets and an orange pencil.

"Weren't you already making me do that?" Ducky questioned, picking up the pencil and erasing the mass amount of doodles on Ruby's page. Ruby frowned, but she knew Ms Clarks had a thing against doodles.

"Yeah. And you were going to do it either way." She surmised with an air of finality. Ducky rolled his eyes, but he knew she was right. "Okay, fine. So this is the cornea, and this is the optic nerve…"

~lll~

"I think there's a Hurricane in your locker, Ruby."

Ruby spun around. "Oh my God, Ducky, I'm going to skin you alive and use your blood for ketchup and put it on a hotdog made of your mashed up brains and feed it to you through your exposed intestines." He'd been making Hurricane jokes all throughout the day, and Ruby had had the urge to strangle him…more than twice, that was for sure. And besides, her locker wasn't that messy! (Okay, maybe it was, but did everyone seriously have to comment on it? They should mind their own business!)

Ducky blinked. "Jeez. Violent."

Ruby turned back to her locker, grabbing her bus pass from the top shelf. "Yeah, well, it's going to get violent if you don't-"

Arms encircled her waist like a stylish belt, slender and bony. Ruby could faintly smell the pleasant scent of strawberry shampoo. Myah. Call it a sixth sense, but Ruby could always tell when her girlfriend (it still felt surreal calling her that) was behind her. Of course, it was a little obvious, because who else would do that? But still, Ruby could always tell.

"If Ducky doesn't what?" Myah's voice, silky smooth and dripping with saccharine sweetness, asked from behind her. Her chin rested on the roughness of Ruby's shoulder, covered by her leather jacket. Ruby knew she had to be standing on her toes.

"Uh…" Dammit. What was I thinking again? Myah could always manage to turn her brain into soup, both a blessing and a curse at times.

Myah giggled, and she took a step back, releasing her arms and her chin from Ruby's body. And with the removal of Myah came the clearing of her head. "Oh, Ducky's been being stupid all day. We have way too many classes together, it's kind of ridiculous." Ruby laughed.

Myah made her mouth into an O of surprise. "Ducky?! Being stupid?! I've never heard of such a thing!"

Ducky gasped. "C'mon, I'm hilarious! Here. What does a duck like to have for a snack?"

Nobody answered.

"Milk and quackers! Get it?"

Ruby and Myah shared a glance, nodded, and proceeded to shove Ducky into her locker and locked it.

As Ducky's muffled voice protested from the inside, Myah turned to Ruby, her expression suddenly becoming shy. "So, um, I was wondering if you wanted to come over to my house? Like, it doesn't have to be for forever, but like, maybe a couple hours? We could bike, it's not too far away. And we could watch a movie or…something…" She trailed off, blushing.

Despite the rapid pounding of Ruby's heart, she managed to stay cool. "Yeah, sure! Lemme just text my mom."

After a brief discussion, Ruby's mom agreed to pick her up in two and a half hours.

Myah smiled when she saw the text. "Yay! Okay, let's head down to the bike rack."

"Mmmf," said Ducky from inside the locker.

"Oh. Right." Said Ruby, spinning around and freeing Ducky from the confines of the locker. "Sorry, I kind of forgot about you."

"Gee, thanks," he muttered, running a hand through his dark curls.

Ruby turned back to Myah, interlacing her long fingers with her small, slender ones. The smaller girl giggled in a dumb, lovestruck way, and Ruby couldn't help but feel warm as she realized that she probably had the same brain-mush effect on Myah.

The pair ran down the stairs, stumbling and laughing like idiots as they dashed through the hallway. A few people gave them odd looks, but the two paid them no mind.

The second they stepped outside, it was like someone had dumped a bucket of water on their heads. Cool liquid splashed onto Ruby's hair, soaking it into sodden clumps and turning bright raspberry to a deep merlot. Her short brown eyelashes darkened to black and clumped together, freshwater tears rolling down her lightly freckled cheeks and off the worn leather of her jacket. Ruby was suddenly very grateful that she'd been too sleepy to bother with makeup that morning.

She turned to the side, seeing Myah with a huge grin on her face, looking up at the sky with her eyes closed. Her onyx pigtails dripped water onto her oversized tan sherpa jacket, and she flipped the hood up. The hood had two little bear ears on it, and upon seeing that, Ruby's heart felt just like Myah's jacket - fuzzy.

"Okay, we should head to your house before we catch hypothermia." Ruby yelled over the thunderous rain and chatter of their peers. Myah nodded absent-mindedly, midnight eyes hazy with delight.

Clutching her alabaster hand tightly in Ruby's grasp, she led her over to the bike rack, where their two bikes lay, one red and one green, each with brown straw wicker baskets beside the handlebars. Buckling their helmets with a light jab from Myah about finally learning how to fasten a buckle, the two were off, winding their way down concrete sidewalks and around stray worms and groups of kids walking home.

Each crack on the sidewalk made a bump-bump as the wheels went over them. Ruby gazed at her surroundings, the dark gray clouds that blocked the sky, the jade-green pines with their needles covered in dew. And the raven-haired girl riding her lime-green bike in front of her, the spokes spinning as she sped, fast as a cheetah, down the sidewalk.

Ruby had always been one for pretty views.

After carefully wheeling their bikes down crosswalks, they reached a lovely suburban street, void of any people besides a pair of little kids in their slick raincoats, yelling and splashing in the muck. Ruby smiled and gave them a wave, which they both returned with eager smiles. After winding down the empty streets for a bit, the two reached Myah's home.

"You can park your bike under the porch so it doesn't rust," Myah suggested, wheeling them down the cobblestone driveway and to the roofed porch area.

"Is anyone home?" Ruby asked as Myah fished around in her pockets for the key.

"Nope. My parents are off with Lyssa at some overnight camp thing, and Avie's at a sleepover. So it'll be just the two of us."

"Just the two of us," Ruby echoed thoughtfully.

"Yep. All alone. No chaperones. Completely scandalous." Myah wiggled her eyebrows suggestively, holding out a couple beats and waiting for her reaction.

Ruby's cheeks dusted pink, and her heart pounded faster. "O-oh."

Myah laughed, a light, tinkling sound like a windchime on a gusty day. "I'm just joking. Come on, Avie made gingerbread cookies last night and I can heat them up in the microwave. You're not gluten free, are you?"

Ruby laughed nervously as she followed Myah inside, nerves still a bit jangly. "Ha, as if!"

The pair went to Myah's kitchen, which had sleek gray marble countertops and potted plants as far as the eye could see. Ruby took a seat on a stool, and Myah stood opposed to her, rummaging through cupboards.

"Sorry that it's messy, my parents usually do most of the cleaning." Myah apologized, picking up a green container filled with cookies. "I'm not really one for chores."

Ruby chuckled to herself, picturing a very grumpy Myah holding a broom and dustpan. "I can imagine."

Myah popped four cookies into the microwave on a plate printed with flowers and set the timer for fifteen seconds. It beeped in compliance, and Myah was leaning against the corner, huge black eyes wide with interest. "So, what would you like to do? It's…" She checked her watch, "Four thirty, we've still got a few hours."

Ruby drummed her fingers on the counter, shrugging. "I don't know. We could, like, watch Newtflix."

Myah raised her eyebrows with her eyes even wider, and Ruby groaned. "Oh my God, not in that way. I'm not trying to not-watch a movie with you, there's some seriously good shows I wanted to watch with someone and…and you're teasing me again, aren't you."

"Obviously." Myah turned around, tan-and-white crossed tennis skirt twirling with her as she opened the microwave door and pulled out the cookies. She selected one, blowing the heat from it, and took a bite. "You were saying?"

"I, uh, um." God, I despise the brain mush. "Have you, uh, seen Heartstopper yet?"

Myah's face lit up. "I've only seen the trailers. Is it good? Ducky was saying I should watch it."

"It's amazing. Do you want to watch that?"

"Of course!" Myah exclaimed. "Here, I'll get some more snacks."

~lll~

After five minutes of arguing over whether ketchup chips were delicious or a federal crime, Ruby was situated with white cheddar popcorn and some pomegranate Bubbly, and Myah with ketchup chips and strawberry Bubbly. They collapsed on the squishy loveseat with their snacks, and Myah wrapped herself up in a white knitted blanket.

"Take the red one. It's soft." Myah recommended, nodding to a velvety red blanket. Ruby picked it up, draping it over her legs while Myah pressed buttons on the remote and clicked on a profile picture of an astronaut labelled 'Myah!'. Immediately after the red N popped up, it came up with a preview of Heartstopper. Myah grinned, pressing play, and the episode started with the main character, Charlie, getting a text on his phone.

Now, Ruby had already seen this episode. Three times, in fact, once with her mother and once with Ducky. So she blamed simple boredom on the fact that she was watching Myah's reactions far more than the actual show. She couldn't help it, Myah's reactions were just so cute! The way her mouth with fall into that surprised O, or when her eyes lit up or her porcelain face darkened in anger at stupid Ben onscreen. There was just something so fascinating about her that made Ruby want to observe.

"Oh my gosh, those little drawings are so cute!" Myah gasped in referral to the little leaf doodles that floated around on screen.

You're cute, Ruby thought, but kept it inside. "That's kind of what happens to me when I see you."

"You hallucinate flowers? I think you should get that checked out." Myah teased.

Ruby rolled her eyes, adjusting her blanket. "You're so stupid."

And before her brain could even process it, Myah had inched closer, so close that her cheek was resting on Ruby's shoulder and Ruby could feel her warmth on her left side. The show's audio turned into nothing more than white noise as Ruby struggled to keep her brain from turning into a liquid.

"Mmm. You're squishy." Myah hummed in approval, rubbing her cheek against her shoulder like a cat, and Ruby knew she'd be purring if she was one. And she'd been doing quite a good job at containing her mind into a solid, until Myah draped a lazy arm over her waist and Ruby's blood turned to syrup.

Ruby stayed a frozen statue, eyes glued to the screen, as Myah lay there. Am I supposed to do something?

Myah suddenly sat up, but she didn't remove her arm from across Ruby's stomach. Instead, with her other hand, she wound a lock of still-damp pomegranate hair around her milky white finger, staring as if hypnotized by it. "I like your hair." Her voice didn't raise far above a whisper.

"Thanks, I, uh, use good conditioner." Ruby replied, eyes fixated on her.

"It's soft," Myah murmured, then raised her gaze to meet Ruby's. Ink met hazel for a beat of time, the show in the background nothing more than a forgotten blur. Her finger was unwound from the hair, suddenly, running a trail down the curve of her cheek.

Ruby couldn't breathe.

"Your skin is soft too." Myah observed carefully. And Ruby studied Myah's face with the same gentle curiosity. She wanted to learn about each and every freckle dotting her nose, watch her pretty pink Cupid's bow curve up in a smile and reveal dimples on either side.

"Th-thanks," Ruby stammered quietly. "I have a good skin cream."

"Mm." Myah barely seemed to be listening to her. Her small finger trailed further to the left, going and going until she reached…Ruby's lips. And Ruby was sure, positive her heart stopped the moment Myah's index finger touched her lower lip.

Lifting her gaze up, Myah's soft voice asked, "is this okay?"

And Ruby knew her face was red when she responded, "Yes."

The leather of her jacket rubbed up against the seat as Ruby leaned forward and took Myah's lips on her own. And in an explosion of doodled leaves and flowers, they were kissing.

Tingles spread down her spine, and instead of just her brain, Ruby figured her entire body had turned to mush. Myah's hand reached behind her, finding its place in her thick hair, and some sane, solid part of Ruby's mind cursed herself for not properly brushing it that morning.

She could taste bubbly strawberry fizz, blackberry on her tongue, the fuzzy warmth igniting into delicious iron-forged magma as every vein of blood in her body burst aflame.

And then the flames died down, and Myah removed her lips, now a cherry-red, from Ruby's own. They shared a moment of wordlessness, before Myah turned away, cheeks pink and happy, and pressed Next Episode on the show, and Ruby realized with a mental eye-roll that she actually did not-watch a show with her.

The episode started, but Ruby was barely watching, too focused on replaying…previous moments in her head.

"You have soft lips," Myah commented out of nowhere, turning to her with a flushed grin.

Ruby smirked, and in a rare moment of boldness, she threw her arm around Myah, holding the smaller girl close. "I use a good lip balm."

A/N

again, thank you mixsii for your incredible advice.

me: WHAT AM I EVEN WRITING AJSSJSJNS

mixsii: good luck man

and thank you to the everybody group chat for spam-calling so much. Truly grateful for that.

yeah I hope you guys enjoyed that kissing scene LMAO I suck at writing them so I just make them highly metaphorical.

I had like no motivation for this chapter, and then at 11:30 PM I was just like YES WRITE THE GAY.

also I wrote this because I got back together with my AMAZING boyfriend! hi damon you are the greatest robloxian boyfriend ever (edit: GUYS PLS I'M NOT AN ONLINE DATER I WAS JOKINGGG)

Anyways go watch Heartstopper if you haven't already, it's on Netflix or any pirating website you choose. Jail is worth it for that show, trust me.

Question/Challenge: what's your favourite TV show? Mine is My So-called Life, it's a 90's teen drama show that is SO GOOD! It's on Disney+, so if you have that then you should definitely check it out!

Have an amazing day/night!

~Ghost