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It was just more practical, Sherry told herself as she followed her pretend-boyfriend down the train’s aisle, clinging to his arm. They were one their way to visit Lyon’s brother in Magnolia – well, Lyon was visiting his brother, Sherry was visiting Juvia – and as it had turned out, there was some kind of event going on, one that allowed them to stay in a nice hotel without having to sell their souls for the privilege. However, this entire thing was just open for couples – Lyon had muttered something about the discrimination of singles and Sherry had nearly agreed – and so they were once again posing as a couple.
By now, it was feeling nearly ridiculously easy and she refused to think about what this might tell her about herself and her ever-growing affection for her friend. Maybe Sting was right when he teased her about her crush which in itself would be shocking. But she was still somewhat dating Ren although they were, once again, on a break. She knew that she should end things because whatever affection she had felt for the man had been fading for quite some time now because she was generally furious with the way he kept flirting with everything that had a heartbeat and wore a skirt.
Sting had threatened her with an intervention if she kept it up, telling her that she deserved better than this. All she had been thinking about was that she would have to have a word with whoever had been idiotic enough to put her childhood friend into the same room as Rogue Cheney – it had proven to be a bad idea.
“Here we go again, girlfriend mine,” Lyon muttered and she had to smirk as she dragged her suitcase along as they kept looking for their seats which were supposed to be close.
“If you plan on breaking into a dramatic musical number, warn me,” she replied as she turned her head to look at him. “Because, frankly, that just sounded like a first line.”
He faked a cough to mask that he was about to laugh and she smirked, feeling rather satisfied with herself once again. “You know,” he said as she was still mentally patting her own back, “there have been quite a few dramatic duets in my family in the past.”
After having met his family over the summer – back when she had posed as his girlfriend for the first time, for different reasons, however – this did not come as a surprise to her because there was some sort of vibe that surrounded them all that had told her that these were the people who turned up the radio’s volume when a good song to sing along to came on.
(Where her family was stiff and all about decorum, his was more about laughter and having a good time and this was why she had rather liked it to meet them when she had visited.)
“Did you sing along?” she asked, her eyebrows raising on her forehead. It was sometimes difficult to imagine that Lyon who was so stoic whenever they were in class – and generally most of the time – could let go of all that made him who he was and just sing.
“Ur would never have forgiven me if I hadn’t,” he said as he shrugged and a part of her brain tried to conjure the image. It was easier than expected, actually. Although Lyon’s mother had appeared to be rather stoic – Sherry had decided that Lyon took more after Ur than after her husband – she had been surrounded by an air of lightness which had surprised the younger woman because Ur Frost was a surgeon and she had seen people die in the past and this made it weird to think that she could be this light after all this time.
“I can imagine,” Sherry said as they finally got to their seats and stored away their suitcases before they sat down, silently agreeing that she would get the window seat on the first train.
It should not be this easy, she decided as she looked out of the window for a moment but it was. Pretending to be a couple was something that usually happened in movies – Sting had been right when he had said that she was on her best way to become a walking trope – but she doubted that the outcome that occurred in every single of these movies was the same outcome that was waiting for them at the end of this because it could impossible be that easy. Sherry was not used to life handing her things she wanted on a silver platter; she had worked hard for everything and she was content with this because it seemed right to her.
“You know,” Lyon said as he reached into his backpack to get a hold on the textbook he had been planning on reading during the trip – something that was weird, she knew that he was ahead of his schoolwork, “with all the pretending we do, it’s kinda weird that no one thinks that we are really dating.”
A part of her nearly snorted because apparently, he had not listened to the gossip on campus. Nearly everyone was convinced that they were at least sleeping with each other. And sadly, this included Sherry’s former roommate. Jenny Realight was persistent and while this trait could be seen as positive, Sherry had come to loathe it after she had not been able to get chocolate from the store close to her dorm without being interrogated by the blonde and this had ruined her night – especially since she had been too focused on the other woman to notice that she had bought the wrong chocolate.
(She really needed to get some kind of dirt on her or it would get difficult, sooner or later.)
“You haven’t talked to Jenny lately, I assume,” she said as she scoffed and leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the window, something that made her brain feel like it was being shook. “Well, I’m not eve sure yet if she really thinks it or if she has decided to mess with me,” she added as an afterthought, wondering what kind of goal the other woman had.
“I haven’t even seen her around lately,” Lyon replied and this took Sherry by surprise because only a few days before, she had seen Jenny sitting in the library at the same table as Yuuka Suzuki – otherwise known as Lyon’s roommate – and she had assumed that Lyon had been studying with them.
“Well, according to her – and she always got one ear in the gossip,” Sherry said as she sighed briefly, “I’m cheating with you on Ren – which is nearly ironic.”
Because Sherry would never cheat on anyone. Not even on someone who could not remember that she was not particularly fond of stereotypical nicknames. Hell, she preferred the way Sting still called her ‘Blender’ sometimes over each ‘babe’ and every ‘honey’ Ren threw her way. But even this was not enough to convince her to cheat on him – it just made her feel like she really should end things soon.
(But she would wait until the exams were done; everything else would be unfair on Ren and sadly, she had been taught to value the importance of the fair play.)
“You think Rin heard about this?” Lyon asked, a vibe of concern in his voice and she did not feel like correcting him again; she had tried this when Sting had picked up the habit of calling Ren by any name aside from the one he called his own because with Sting, she had known that he had wanted to rile her up, that he had meant to annoy her. With Lyon, on the other side, she was certain that he was just bad with names and that this was why he kept messing it up, again and again.
“Jenny now lives at the same dorm as him,” Sherry said with a shrug as she turned to look at her pretend boyfriend, “so I guess that yes, he has heard about it … he didn’t say anything.”
Which had failed to make her happy because it had implied an arrogance she could not stand, not at all. Ren seemed to think that just because she was – most of the time – his girlfriend and did never make a scene when he flirted with someone else, he did not have to worry about their relationship, that he could take it for granted. And although she had never been the spoiled little princess of her family, Sherry did not take too kindly to being taken for granted.
Like Sting and Juvia and Yukino and basically everyone else kept telling her: she deserved more, she deserved better – she deserved to be appreciated.
She supposed that it said a lot about her life when she considered playing Lyon’s girlfriend to be better than hanging around with her actual boyfriend.