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“Wher’re we goin’…?”
Kris shoves their hands in their pockets, watching their breath dissipate in the air. It looks red in the glow from the festival lights, receding into the horizon behind them.
“Where d’ya think, dipshit?!”
Susie seems a bit on edge. She seemed on the edge during the whole day really, especially the festival, but it’s the worst it has been, and some part of them worries if it’s something they did.
“Just makin’ sure you aren’t gonna murder me in the woods. Don’t want MK to be right.”
They fend a cheeky smile at her, trying to shake the feeling off.
MK had first reacted to their friendship by asking Kris general and not at all suspicious questions about stockholm syndrome and how easily they would hypothetically cave in to threats.
After the initial shock wore off, and after a sufficient amount of anger from Kris and Susie, he and the rest of their class took to conspiring about the nature of their relationship.
They had walked into class one morning to Catti and Jockington having a particularly loud conversation
“Like…what did they do all day in the closet. Noelle said that Susie said they were ‘hanging out alone and touching brooms’…do you think they were..?”
She’d completely missed their entrance, making a prompting expression at Jockington.
“What-? Makin’ out? How would that even wor-”
It was at this point that Susie cleared her throat and dropped down at her desk. Kris followed suit. They did not mention it again.
Another had been a little more direct.
“So, dude..” Snowdrake and MK had cornered Kris during biology, when Susie was dead asleep at her desk “You and Susie spend a weird amount of time together. Me and MK were going to-like. ask you.”
MK leaned over Snowy’s shoulder “You guys come to school together every day.”
“And leave school together every afternoon.”
“And she uses your shampoo. We can smell it even more now.”
Kris prepared themself to prevent them from pummeling Susie with questions about her home life.
“We know you guys are totally together. Don’t even try to deny it.”
They felt their jaw slacken and repressed a laugh. To MK and Snowy’s horror, they leaned back and poked Susie in the arm.
“Hey Suz’, i just found out we’re dating.”
She cracked an eye open “Fuck off.”
“Love you too. Let’s get married.”
MK and Snowy seemed to be thoroughly uncomfortable. Susie was unbothered. She’d dealt with enough of their bs in the dark world.
They grin at her at the memories.
She makes a weird expression, one Kris isn’t sure they’ve seen before.
Weird. She’s being weird. Normally that isn’t something Kris is opposed to, but this time she’s being weird about them .
That isn’t supposed to happen.
In the year and something that they’ve been friends, after their classmates got over the shock of the two loners actually talking, they’d become The Friends of their grade. Annoyingly inseparable and comfortable around each other. Notorious for General Fuckery.
So why would she be acting …almost awkward?
Susie makes a vague noise “Uhh..’m just. tired of all the loudness and stuff. Wanna chill…with you.” She coughs and raises her voice “Alone.”
The way she says ‘with you’ is strangely gentle. Gentle is usually not a thing Susie does. ‘Course, they know better than to think it’s a never. In a rare moment or two, she’s unbelievably kind. Mean and brash when she needs to be, but with a heart of stupidly pure gold.
They walk in silence, well, relative silence. The bushes are rustling strangely loud.
They head away from the town and into the woods— in the opposite direction of the red bunker—towards Their Place.
Kris has always found it funny how she calls it that, like it’s their shared apartment, or something. If you could call a short, crumbling cobblestone wall in the middle of the woods an apartment. After a particularly difficult patch of time, Susie had tried to cheer Kris up by taking them exploring somewhere they didn’t need to be afraid of. Not that she would admit it.
Susie plops down in the grassy clearing surrounding the wall, slumping against it with an exaggerated sigh. They pull their knees up to their chest, balancing on the loose cobblestones.
The edges of Susie’s eyes crinkle. They're yellow, like the golden afternoon light that filters through the school windows in late summer.
“The festival was fun..but uh..” She tilts her head back “I think I like it better out here.”
“...Yeah. Me too.”
“You never answered my question last year, remember?” She’s almost mumbling, her eyes trained on the sky. They wonder if she can make out any constellations. Maybe they’ll teach her how to find them, if she can’t. “Who would you have taken to the festival?”
“…it’s a little late now, this year’s almost over.”
“Oh screw you, you know what I mean!! If we hadn’t gone as a group with Noelle, Catti and Berdly ‘n stuff both times, who would you have invited?”
Kris shifts their legs up onto the wall with them, leaning down to pull a clump of mushrooms from between two of the more uneven stones. The skin is soft beneath their fingers. They rip the stems apart, one by one, pushing their fingernails into the rounded caps.
“You…”
She groans “Kris, that’s not what I mean. Duh, if you’re there, i’m there, but who would you want to go with?!”
They drop the last mushroom to the ground. Maybe the pieces will grow back all spread out like that and get tall enough for Kris to hide in.
“My answer isn’t going to change Suz’…who would I want to go with but you?”
That’s the closest they’ll ever get to a confession. Maybe if it was directed at anyone other than Susie, it would be obvious what they meant.
Considering that it is Susie, though, she has no damn clue.
They risk a look at her.
“Fine, you asshole, avoid the damn question!!!!” She leans an arm around their shoulders. Kris swears they hear someone sigh. ”I’d want to go with you too, anyway.”
Maybe if anyone but Susie had said it, that would be a confession back.
Moonbeams filter through the treetops, overcoming the bittersweet warmth of the autumn sun. It’s a fickle thing, Hometown’s weather, with a climate so temperate nearly all year that no-one knows what to do come the inevitable cold front. The wind blows through Kris’s sweater. Goosebumps prickle their skin.
They press into her side, curling their arms beneath her sweater, into the soft polyester-cotton of her shirt. She rolls her eyes and tucks an arm around their waist. The forest around them sings with the wind.