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“Hey everybody!”
“I’m Maia—“
“—and I’m Clary!”
“And this is ‘Reading Your Comments’!”
The women sat side by side, smiling widely. As was typical of their videos, they color-coordinated their outfits. They sat on someone’s unmade bed, the white comforter and sheets blending with the white walls to make an almost monotone backdrop.
“We had Simon compile some YouTube comments, Tweets, and Tumblr captions and tags. Now we haven’t seen any of these, so all of our reactions are completely genuine.” Maia held her phone up, shaking it at the camera.
“So if this goes terribly, we know we can just blame Simon for everything!” Clary said.
“Hey!” An off-screen male voice interjected, affronted. Clary and Maia laughed.
“So let’s get this started!” Maia scrolled through the list, Clary peeking over her shoulder. “Ooo, this is a good one! Hanna Robinson commented, ‘wow, you guys thought that people would watch this? 0/10 super unoriginal.’”
As she read the comment, a picture of the original popped up on the bottom of the screen.
Clary and Maia both stare dead into the camera. Maia stands and brings her face close, causing it to go out of focus.
“You fucking got us.”
It cut to the women sitting again, reading another comment. This one is read by Clary.
“’i cant believ u whiny ass liberal bitchs think u have a following! lol’. Wow, thank you, @jackof144, four your incredible insight into our channel!”
“You know, Clare, I think he’s trying to tell us something.”
“What’s that, Maia?”
Maia looked into the camera. “We haven’t talked nearly enough about the serious issues that plague our society today.”
Clary gasped, mock-serious. “You’re right. We should start doing more serious feminist videos.”
It cut again.
Maia gasped, smiling. “Aww, this one’s actually really sweet! It’s some tags on a gifset of the adogtion video we did for Sadie! @clamaia says ‘i would literally combust if i ever met them i love them so much! i get so emotional remembering theyre out there doin good in the world’.” She looked off camera. “Sims, you did good.”
“I try.”
Clary and Maia leaned against each other. Clary said, “We try too, @clamaia. It warms our hearts knowing sweet people like you are out there, watching our channel. Really, honestly, we couldn’t do this without all of you.”
Simon ‘aww’d. Maia threw a pillow at him. Clary cheered when he ‘oof’d.
They read a couple more comments, some nice, some rude. Most were met with sarcasm. Maia and Clary were constantly touching, hands brushing each other’s legs or shoulders. At one point, Maia put her leg over Clary’s leg, bringing them so close she was almost sitting in each other’s lap.
At the end of the video, they signed off.
“Anyway, that was ‘Reading Your Comments’! Congratulations, Simon! You passed. If you liked this video, like and put a comment down below!”
“We make new videos weekly! So hit that subscribe button.”
“Kiss your partners! If you don’t have a partner, kiss your animals.”
“If you don’t have either, blow yourself a kiss in the mirror because we love you!”
They waved to the camera. Maia turned and zerberted Clary’s cheek, causing her to almost shriek with laughter. The video ended immediately after.
Every Sunday, dinner was held at Luke and Jocelyn’s apartment. Growing up, it had just been the four of them: Jocelyn, Luke, Clary, and Dot, who Clary considered to be an older sister. Then, Luke had taken Maia under his wing, and Clary insisted Simon join them. Occasionally, the Lightwoods would pop in for a couple hours, or Magnus Bane, Dot’s colleague and mentor, would come, but generally, it was the six of them around the dinner table.
“So,” Jocelyn said, getting that look in her eye that meant she was about to be a nosy mom. “Clary, baby, how’s your video stuff been going?”
“It’s been good. Me and Maia have been learning some cool editing stuff.”
Jocelyn hummed, sharing a Look with Dot and Luke. Clary shared one of her own with Maia and Simon. What was she getting at? Clary wondered.
Luke spoke next. “We watched that latest video, the one with your guys reading stuff people said on the internet.”
Simon blurted, “If there was anything offensive, it was all me, I picked out all the comments, they didn’t do anything—“
Jocelyn reached across the table to take his wrist gently. “Nobody’s in trouble, honey.”
“Oh,” he said quietly, shrinking down into himself slightly.
“So,” Maia said, “If no one’s in trouble, what’s with the third degree?”
When she’d first arrived, she wouldn’t have dared ask that, or even speak out at the dinner table without being prompted to. She found that the more she joked with them, the more they joked with her, but no matter what, if she said something off or was out of line, Luke or Jocelyn would let her know sternly but kindly. Simon never seemed to gain his confidence like she had, but then his was a general anxiety, whereas hers was trauma.
Dot took pity on them. “You guys were pretty cuddly in the video. We just wanted to know if something was up with that.”
Maia and Clary frowned, looking at each other. “No,” Maia said, “we were just—“
“—hanging out?”
The adults all just hummed. Maia was confused. Yeah, Clary was beautiful, and her second best friend (aside from Gretel and Simon, who tied for first place), and Maia wasn’t not-attracted to her, but they weren’t dating. She looked to Simon, expecting validation, but instead found him looking anywhere but at Clary and Maia.
Thankfully, the topic turned to other things. But still, the question gnawed at her.
A couple days later, Maia found herself sitting on the floor in her kitchen, watching old videos. A part of her was embarrassed, watching seventeen year old Maia and Clary crack bad jokes. The video and audio quality was bad, and they barely edited anything, and God, why did she ever do her make-up like that, it’s God-awful—
And the way she looked at Clary, even back then, even when they were still closer to strangers than actual friends, was so soft and infatuated and warm that current her wanted to cry and puke a little bit, but like, in the love way? Because that’s what it was. It was so affectionate it made her stomach hurt. And was it wishful thinking to see that look in Clary’s eyes in these old videos? She didn’t dare click a more recent one to see if it lingered in the way they held each other on camera.
Gretel walked over, still in her pajamas.
“Why are you being gay on my kitchen floor?”
Maia laughed, eyes a little wet from crying. “Last I checked, it’s our kitchen, Grettie.”
“Okay, one, if you call me that again, I’m throwing your $30 lipstick in the garbage disposal, and two, go be gay at Clary’s apartment. You’ll feel better.”
Maia hugged her best friend for about ten minutes before she pulled together her courage and left. Gretel just rolled her eyes, muttering about “useless ass Sapphics making their own lives so damn difficult”.
Clary was barely awake when Maia knocked. “Why’d you knock?” Clary asked her sleepily, letting her in.
Maia shrugged. “I didn’t think about it. Hey, Simon.”
Simon took one look at her and stammered out an excuse, darting to his room at an almost inhuman speed.
“He has got to work on that,” she muttered to herself, turning to see Clary sit back on the couch and curl her hands around her coffee cup like it was her lifeline. Maia sat next to her, perching uncomfortably on the edge. She knew she shouldn’t be so nervous, but she couldn’t help it.
Clary noticed something was off. “Hey, you okay?” She leaned up, setting her cup down and running a warm hand down Maia’s arm.
“Yeah. Yeah, I, uh, I just wanted to talk to you.” Maia took a deep calming breath. Relax, it’s just Clary. It’s just Clary. “I thought about what Dot said at dinner the other day.”
Clary shifted. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Maia repeated, clasping her hands together in her lap. “I thought about it. And I looked through our older stuff, and did a bit of soul-searching and. I like you, Clary. I like you a lot. In the gay way.”
GOD, why did she say it like that! Why did she just open her mouth and insert her own foot! Maia cursed her inability to word things, to be poetic and charming.
But before she could go down the path of self-reprimand too far, Clary grinned, biting her lip in that way she does. “In the gay way? I could get with that.” And she took Maia’s hands apart so she could intertwine one with one of her own.
“Hey everyone!”
“I’m Maia—“
“And I’m Clary!”
Rather than say immediately what the title of their video was, they looked at each other, smiling nervously, a giddy air about them.
“So, uh, we have something we want to tell you guys about.” Maia squeezed Clary’s hand. Their clasped hands rested on Maia’s thigh.
“We’re dating!”
The women spent a moment beaming at the camera and each other, bumping shoulders.
“And some of you are probably like ‘Wait, weren’t you already dating?’ No, we weren’t. And now we are!”
“So, for all the Clamaia shippers out there—“ Maia started, but Clary’s laughter cut her off. “Your ship is canon guys! Congrats!”
It cut.
“Okay, serious time. We just got together, and we’re gonna be pretty private about a lot of the more personal stuff, because we love you guys, but some stuff we just want to be ours, you know?” Clary looked at Maia as she finished speaking.
“Yeah, we really do need to be able to live our lives outside of the internet.”
“Amen.”
Clary explained a little bit of how they got together, leaving out the details about their family and friends. “And, honestly, it just feels like the natural progression of our relationship. Like, I hadn’t thought too much on it, but when Maia came and told me she liked me, it was like—I can’t even say it was a light bulb, it wasn’t like that. It was like, you know that poem that’s like ‘oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you’? That’s what it felt like.”
Maia hid her face in her palms, laying on her back. “You’re gay,” she said into her hands.
“I sure am.” Clary tickled Maia’s stomach, dodging her flailing.
It cut again.
“So I am really bad with realizing I like someone,” Maia said, looking at Clary for confidence. “And when I rewatched some of our old stuff, it was… really eye-opening. I just couldn’t believe we hadn’t seen it before, you know? We’re like, tooth-rotting-cotton-candy levels of fluffy and sweet. It was wild.”
Clary pressed her face into Maia’s shoulder, reaching her arms around to grasp her opposite shoulder. Maia tucked her face against the inside of Clary’s right arm, kissing the crease where her arm bends.
Simon, off-screen, said, “You two are gay.”
Simultaneously, they replied, “True.”
The video cut again. The women weren’t hugging anymore; instead, they were sitting close together, thighs pressed up against one another.
“Thank you for watching our video! If you want to see more gay ass content, follow us on Twitter and/or Tumblr—links in the description below—and subscribe to our channel!”
“Like and comment please! Tell us about your guys’ love stories!”
“Kiss your partner! If you don’t have a partner, kiss your animal!”
“If you don’t have either, send a kiss Simon’s way; he’s lonely.”
Simon popped his head in front of the camera to Maia’s right. “I sure am.”
The women laughed.
The video ended.