Chapter Text
“Unbelievable!” she says, her head falling dramatically into her hands as she hunches over our table, looking like all the world like someone praying over the poor unsuspecting bubblegum-pink-mug of steaming chamomile tea with sinister magic.
It’s a rather weird thing to imagine her doing, what with the fact that right now she’s the one in bright colors (one of those pretty retro-ish dresses) and I’m the one all kitted out in black, but she’s clenching her hands so tightly that I can’t imagine her looking like she’s doing anything else.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” She says, groaning. “Not again, I really can’t.”
“Hm.” I say, blandly, my lips pausing mere millimeters from the rim of my coffee mug. “What happened this time?”
“It’s a bit of a long story, actually. D’you still wanna hear it?”
“Well...”
Do I actually want to know about this? Or do I want to pretend to want to know about this, so I can then tune her out and focus on how to best get an arrow through those two over there? Decisions, decisions.
Then again, ever since I’ve inhabited this body – that’s around twenty years ago, if anyone’s been keeping count so far – she’s been my best friend. For real. Well. At first I hadn’t been intending to mean it when I said I wanted to be friends with her – my body was five full human years and she had somehow gotten caught up in one of my first ‘assignments’; I’d just needed her rapport back then so she’d get outta my way – but somewhere along the way she grew on me and now I can’t imagine living this human life without her.
I can’t believe I am actually saying this. Who am I and what have I done with myself.
Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, even though it is really tempting to just let her drone on and on about whatever human problem this may be, so I could just aim this smartphone at those two lovebirds so these app-arrows (arrow-apps?) could do their job and make them fall for each other already...she’s my real-life, actual best friend. And she’s at her wits’ end.
...also, I’m worried about her. There, I said it. Happy now?
“...I guess I could spare the time.” I say, taking a sip of my coffee, casually as can be. Never mind that those two lovebirds have just left the café, their shoulders bumping into each other as they try to fit through the door at the same time, their eyes stealing glances at each other when they think the other can’t see them. With how obvious they’re being, I could most probably spot their tension from a mile away; tracking them again and getting the job done would be a cakewalk. “So: what happened?”
She sighs, and it’s a tired, resigned sigh, the kind that would sprout wings and fly away, a hundred-percent done with everything on the green earth. Then she says, her voice barely above a whisper: “Someone left flowers in my locker. Again.”
Oh.
“That’s the third time this week,” I say, trying for a conversational tone, even as cold sweat beads on my brow. This is kinda, partly, my fault, after all. “Did they at least leave a note this time?”
“Yeah. It had something cheesy on it.” she tells me, her face scrunched up, sort of like a human version of Grumpy Cat, or something. “Didn’t they get the message? I wish they’d stop.”
If anyone would have heard us, they’d have thought that she was one of those ‘hard-to-get’ types. You know the ones, who act like they couldn’t care any less about the people who like them, but actually do care and act like they don’t so they get more attention? Those are always the hardest targets to aim at, especially ‘cuz I can’t figure out whether or not I’ve already aimed at them before. (These ‘arrows’ are kinda like human medicine, in a sense – overdosing is always a bad idea.) Yeah, well, you see, she’s really not one of them.
You see, my best friend here, she’s asexual. Aromantic, too. Basically, in the parlance of this one TV show she got me to watch before, love and sexual stuff aren’t really her ‘division’. This isn’t really something spectacular to us – it’s just who she is, and a part of the overall best friend I’ve known and loved. (Ugh I am such a sap.) It’s also a part of who I am, in fact, though in my case it’s more...work-related, than anything.
Not to my actual work, of course. I mean the work where I’m kind of actually, literally, Cupid incarnate. Yup. That Cupid. But no, not the shirtless flying baby.
Basically I’ve been walking the world for...well, let’s just say, as long as I could remember? The years kinda blur into each other as time goes on, but yeah, I’m definitely not just twenty-something, for sure. As an occupational bonus – or hazard, depending on how you look at it – all these centuries dealing with love and all its messiness made me somehow not wanna make love my ‘division’, either.
(If she ever found out about me being an aromantic real-life actual Cupid, I think she’d think the irony behind that would be delicious.)
Anyway! Anyway. Why is this my fault?
Well, my arrows can’t actually force you to fall in love with someone, out of the blue. They used to, back when my powers were still new and guys still went about in armor and fabrics that kinda look like today’s flashy miniskirts, but now they don’t because ‘free will’ is a thing that exists and it frustrates me that it took the bosses eons to realize it. So my ‘arrows’ – the Infrared-like, invisible beams this special phone emanates when I run this app in the background – doesn’t really make people fall for anyone but the people who they’re already in love with, in the first place.
So that means that, despite my seeming interference, all the other kinds of love still remained intact. Puppy love, fake love, head-over-heels love, first love, a whole lot of other loves, true love, unrequited love. The last one of which happens to be a thing this friend of mine attracts, in spades. Which is, like I said, partly my fault. Then again – how was I to suspect that a good half of my current ‘assignments’ are all going gaga over this ordinary girl?
How was I supposed to know that this ordinary girl is kind of actually, literally, Psyche incarnate?
But enough about how we’re both 2015 versions of people who we’re not. Back to the fact that people are leaving flowers in her locker, again, and, from the blister pack of Allerta she’s got under the saucer, her pollen allergy is striking, again. I sigh.
“You can use my locker, for now. Hopefully this person would run out of flower allowance fast, so we can switch back soon – my locker’s really out of the way of your classes, it’d be hard for you.” She walks excruciatingly slow. Take my word on this.
“If it’s not flowers, it’s letters, though.” she says, a shiver passing through her at the thought of the letters. Oh, the letters. You’d think her admirers had decided to cut down an entire rainforest of trees to write letters for her, with how damned abundant they were. “But thanks, sis. That’d be a big help...sorry for troubling you.”
It’s the least I could do for getting you in this mess in the first place, I think, but don’t say – sure this all started with my meeting her when she was five, and three out of the six five-year-old boys in our preschool had googly eyes for her just because her powers had flourished through proximity with my magic, but she doesn’t know this. Shouldn’t know this. Because if I tell her she’s Psyche then I’d have to tell her I’m Cupid which would make me the supreme commander of Awkward Town, what with how they were married and all.
So instead I brush off all those awkward thoughts, get a little bit of a smile to my face, and tell her, “It’s no trouble at all.” ‘Cuz as long as it’s her...yeah, it really isn’t.