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The sky is black squid ink, the stars golden glitter, and Stella’s tongue is loose, her mind a blur.
She turns to see Beatrix’s face: it’s upside-down, her dark brown eyes blissfully dazed.
The two of them are lying on the grass outside the school, top and tails like they’re two kids crammed into a single bed. And the grass, it’s wet – she thinks it was raining before they came outside. Or maybe it’d still been raining when they’d wandered out here, second whiskey bottle of the evening in hand.
“I can’t remember how we got here,” Stella confesses.
She also can’t remember why they’re lying down like this. There’d been a reason for it, she’s sure of that much.
Maybe it had something to do with that movie scene Bloom had made them watch. Something about a man with arachnid powers kissing a woman upside down.
“It’s romantic,” Bloom had insisted, when all of them had pointed out the inconvenient logistics. Her mouth had twisted into a pout. “You’re ruining it,” she’d whined.
“Me neither,” Beatrix replies now, eyes shining in the moonlight, mouth curved like a bow.
Stella stares at Beatrix’s mouth and thinks about how easy it is for the girl to wound with her words. She shoots venom and draws blood as deep as the crimson painted on her lips.
Oh, god. This alcohol is doing something awful to her stomach. It’s twisting, mixing something ugly with the fluttering wings beating around.
“I’m drunk,” Stella says, because her tongue is loose and it’s true, and maybe it’ll distract her from the vaguely sick feeling. Then, “I can’t get caught. Mum’s already pissed at me.”
Beatrix’s head swivels to look up at the sky, her jaw marble white and sharp in the dark. Or maybe it’s just the angle she’s looking from.
“We won’t get caught. Don’t worry,” Beatrix says. Her arm reaches back, a little awkward in their position, to push at Stella’s shoulder. “I’ll walk you back.”
Beatrix doesn’t look at her when she says it.
Stella wishes she would.
Her back is damp now – she shouldn’t have lay down, her clothes are going to be dirty – and her hair feels flat and awful. The whiskey’s doing something terrible to her skin, too; she can feel her face is clammy, hot and pink.
“Will you hold my hand up the steps?” Stella asks.
She can already tell, lying here, that her head is going to spin something dreadful with her feet on the ground.
But she’ll be okay, she thinks, if she’s got someone to steady her. She needs Beatrix to be that person. There’s nobody else.
Had there ever been?
Beatrix hums, her vocal cords vibrating in her throat. Stella sees it because she’s staring.
“I suppose, if you insist,” Beatrix drawls, with just enough warmth to let her know she’s not actually being a dick.
Beatrix’s hair smells like pomegranates, her skin like tangy perfume. It’s familiar, and it settles the rolling in Stella’s stomach as much as it makes it twist.
Beatrix is looking at her now. Stella notices that the world behind her head is wobbling, uncertain and pliable as warm plasticine.
Fucking hell, she’s pissed.
“I ought to walk you back now.” Beatrix’s voice is low and scratchy, softened by the alcohol. “You’re going to pass out soon and I’m not lugging you and those Abercrombie and Fitch chinos up the steps.”
Laughter shakes through Stella’s mouth, uninvited and glorious. “These were made on royal commission, you bitch.”
Beatrix’s face disappears and reappears. Now she’s standing above Stella, her head half-way blocking the moon.
Stella blinks at the sight dumbly, the moonlight shimmering like sugar across Beatrix’s cheek.
Beatrix’s hands swing down, poorly concealed fondness in her eyes. Stella reaches up and meets her halfway, finding her hands are cold, as usual.
But it’s okay. Stella’s hands are always warm.
They walk back to the school, their steps uneven as they walk side-by-side, so close that one might think they were one. Beatrix’s fingers stay entwined with Stella’s, and if either of them thinks about the fact that Stella doesn’t need the help yet – not with walking across this flat section of grass – neither of them mention it.
Stella, just as she’d feared, stumbles on the steps.
“Careful.” Beatrix’s whisper is harsh in the dark. “Don’t drag me down too. Unlike you, I don’t have a team of royal medical staff to patch me up.”
“Oh, please.” Stella snorts, inelegant as it is for a princess. Whatever. Who’s going to tell? “With how I’ve been acting lately, Mum would probably let me bleed out."
"The crown breeds assholes.”
“Clearly.” Then, “Hey.”
“Not you. Obviously not you,” Beatrix says, her voice floating through the night like a phantom.
They’re navigating blind, winding through the pitch-black corridors. If Stella couldn’t feel Beatrix’s cool fingers entwined with hers, she easily could’ve believed she were utterly alone.
After another ten steps navigated in the darkness, they reach a flat landing. Back on a straight surface, Stella’s mouth activates again.
“It’s so dark,” Stella complains.
And even she, admittedly, is aware that she sounds like a whiny princess. Perhaps Beatrix isn’t entirely out of line with her intermittent barbs.
“You’re a light fairy, Stella,” Beatrix sighs.
“Oh.” Oh, yeah. How embarrassing.
Stella opens her hand – the one not holding Beatrix’s – and summons a small orb of light. It glows pure white, dazzling and dancing across her palm.
She looks up to see Beatrix smiling, her eyes more tired than drunk.
Or that could just be the alcohol making her see things. Stella’s never very trustworthy when she drinks. Just ask Sky.
Actually, don’t. Don’t ask her ex-boyfriend anything about her. Not that he ever seemed to know her that well in the first place, she’s realised lately.
“I don’t think Sky and I were very good together,” Stella thinks aloud. It’s the whiskey. It makes her say everything. Her tongue has never felt so free and desperate to talk. “He’s better with Bloom. And I’m better…”
Her words die, the train of thought escaping on the air as quickly as it’d come.
“You’re better…?” Beatrix prompts. Her voice is tinted with something, and Stella thinks it sounds like curiosity, but not quite. It’s something else.
Something…
Oh, she doesn’t know. Her head is beginning to hurt.
She wants her bed.
“I’m better now,” Stella answers.
“Pissed out of your mind on a Tuesday night? Sure seems like it,” Beatrix snarks.
“Not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
Stella forces herself to think. She can feel her brain inside her head right now. Like, she can actually feel it. It’s heavy and warm and part of her wishes she could open up her head and massage it.
“My brain is sore,” Stella says. “It’s really heavy.”
“God, you’re drunker than I thought,” Beatrix sighs.
“I think I drank most of that second bottle,” Stella admits.
Speaking of, where is the bottle? Did they leave it out on the grass? Oh, shit.
“We have to go back outside,” Stella says urgently.
She stops without warning, and it makes Beatrix’s arm yank back as she’s forced to halt.
“What? Why?” Beatrix questions.
“The bottle. We left it on the grass,” Stella explains.
“No.” Beatrix lifts up her free hand, the glass bottle neck hanging between her index and middle finger. “It’s here.”
“Oh.”
“You’re so wasted,” Beatrix quietly laughs. She pulls on Stella’s hand, encouraging her to start walking again. “Come on. You need to get into bed. The sooner the better, I think.”
Stella has just enough cognitive awareness to wonder if she’s being annoying. Sky had always said that she was a terrible drunk. It was probably one of the few things he’d gotten right about her.
“Am I being awful right now?” Stella asks.
Because she has to know. Her brain feels too big inside her skull, pressing against the bone edges, and Beatrix’s hand is cool and refreshing and she wishes that somehow, she could take her palm and press it inside her head.
“I want you to cool down my brain,” Stella shares, the thought tumbling out before Beatrix even had a chance to reply to her question.
Beatrix rolls her eyes, but her thumb swipes across the back of Stella’s hand. Her skin tingles. Stella imagines the movement leaving an imprint, a residual smudge of cool blue glitter.
“Extremely awful,” Beatrix tells her. “I’m regretting my decision to walk you back. I should’ve let you sleep outside.”
Adverse to Beatrix’s words, Stella’s heart thumps something warm and wild. It feels like sudden delirium, unexplainable happiness. Because –
“That’s a lie. You’re lying,” Stella realises.
“You’re drunk,” Beatrix replies.
“Yes.” Stella nods. “And you’re a liar.”
“Shut up.” Beatrix squeezes her hand, a smile playing at her lips. Stella notices this through her hazy eyes, the curve of Beatrix’s mouth swimming in and out of focus. “We’re almost to your suite now, thank god. Please try not to fall at the last hurdle.”
"Hold still."
It’s the third time Beatrix has ordered her to do that.
No, fourth. Her memory is getting spotty. Has been for a good hour or two.
They're in the bathroom, and Stella is sitting down on the closed toilet lid. She’s got her bare feet pressed underneath against the toilet body, and she’s acutely aware it’s disgusting and a behaviour not at all fit for a princess, but she’s hot and drunk and the porcelain is cold.
Her head’s getting worse by the second, her skull pressing in to make thinking even harder.
Oh, she feels suffocated. And this is it. This is the future she’s got, a kingdom she doesn’t want and methods of escape she wishes she didn’t need.
She’s only seventeen and the thought of living without the bottle is already killing her.
"This is going to be the rest of my life, you know," Stella shares.
The words just tumble out, free to flutter past her lips without censorship. She’s not thinking anymore. Her lips and tongue move on their own accord.
"What? Drinking?" Beatrix probes. Then, "Close your eyes, Stel."
Stella does as she's told. A moment later, she feels the cool sensation of the make-up wipe sliding across her skin.
Beatrix wipes at her eyes with the clumsy nature of a drunk person trying to be gentle.
"Following orders. Giving them,” Stella clarifies. “I'm going to be Queen of Solaria one day."
Stella's too drunk to notice Beatrix's movements falter for a couple of seconds. But she's also still got her eyes closed, which doesn't help.
"I suppose so," Beatrix replies in a careful tone.
"There's no supposing." Stella frowns, inadvertently scrunching up her nose and making it more difficult for Beatrix to clean the foundation from her face. "There just is. I'm the future of Solaria. That's what Mum always says, anyway."
Beatrix finishes cleaning Stella's face in silence. There’s the sound of running water, the opening and closing of a wipes packet.
Stella's too ebrious to realise that she can open her eyes now. She keeps them obediently shut until Beatrix says "You can open your eyes now. I'm finished."
Stella's blurry gaze finds Beatrix's face in the mirror.
Beatrix is almost done cleaning off her make-up. She looks younger without the smoky eyeshadow and red lipstick.
Prettier, even, Stella unconsciously thinks.
"For what it's worth, I think you're more than that," Beatrix says.
Stella’s thoughts have already carried away on the wind, fleeting as a late spring breeze. She blinks dazedly.
"More than what?" Stella asks.
"More than what dear old Queen Luna thinks," Beatrix says, and something inside Stella is awed of the fact that Beatrix manages to make the title sound far from intimidating: ridiculous, even.
They stare at each other through the glass. Stella notices that Beatrix has freckles dotted across her nose. She’s never noticed that before. Maybe her foundation had covered them up.
Beatrix's eyes soften, melting like sticky toffee. "Come on.” Oh, and her voice is like melted treacle. “You should go to sleep."
"Wait, are you staying?"
Stella takes in the sight of her friend properly for the first time since walking inside the bedroom. Her awareness had shut down for a minute or two: it’s probably something to do with feeling safe in here.
Or the whiskey is making its second round through her bloodstream. Yeah, that’s more like it.
Stella notices now, that whilst she herself had been getting changed, that Beatrix had peeled off her tights and skirt, and replaced them with a pair of silky shorts. In her hands is the matching camisole.
They’re Stella’s clothes. Stella’s clothes which Beatrix had felt comfortable enough to take without asking.
"Why? You're not going to be so cruel as to make me walk back alone at this hour, are you?" Beatrix replies, the definition of nonchalance.
Beatrix turns her back in a thin attempt at modesty, then pulls off her shirt and bra. Stella blinks dumbly at the fine muscles flexing in a pale back, the skin illuminated even paler by the moonlight through the window, before she becomes self-aware and darts her eyes away to stare at the ceiling instead.
"Flora's, um, I don't know," Stella says, because Beatrix still isn't wearing a shirt and she has the sudden urge to fill the silence.
Her gaze wavers, the uneven blobs of paint on the ceiling swirling into each other. She turns to look at the bed instead.
Her head already feels so heavy on her shoulders. She can't imagine how much a crown will weigh it down.
"Flora was out with some guy tonight, I think," Stella remembers.
"I know. You told me that five minutes ago," Beatrix reminds her.
Stella dares to look back at the girl: she's relieved to see her dressed.
"Oh, right. Because you were telling me to be quiet and I said we don't have to be because Flora's not here," Stella wisely recalls.
"Yes, I know. I was there," Beatrix says, and Stella has just enough self-awareness to hear that Beatrix’s patience is beginning to wear thin.
Admittedly, it’s lasted longer than Stella ever knew it could. Oh, but there’s nothing to be gained by pushing it.
Stella pulls back the bedsheets, her head throbbing terribly now. She slides underneath the covers, rests her head down on the pillow, and refrains from vomiting at the last possible second as the horrible motion sickness sensation begins.
"I drank too much," Stella groans. She closes her eyes, but it does nothing to stop the feeling of rocking side-to-side. "Ohoh, I'm going to fall out of bed."
"You're not. It's just in your head," Beatrix says.
And suddenly she's there, the space to Stella's left occupied by temperate body heat.
Temperate, Stella muses through her delirium. Of course Beatrix wouldn’t run freakishly hot or freakishly cold. Of course she’d find a way to control her body heat to be something perfectly in-between, something neither hot nor cold, a balance between the coldness in her heart and the unforgiving fire in her eyes.
Stella, still with her eyes closed, reaches out to the side. She finds Beatrix’s shoulder, traces the line of her clavicle with the tips of her fingers.
She thinks the skin might tremble under her touch, a shiver racing across to rise into thousands of miniscule bumps. She thinks this but she isn’t sure, because she can feel her body pulling through to the other side of the bed, and knows that she truly is about to fall into oblivion.
“Thank you,” Stella murmurs.
At least, she thinks she does. Her jaw moves, her tongue flicks up to make the vowels, but whether it comes out as anything distinguishable is anyone’s guess.
Then there’s somebody stroking her cheek in the dark. Cool knuckles brush against her skin; a feather-light touch lingers at the edge of her mouth for the briefest millisecond.
And then the feeling is gone, and the dance of sleep entices her fully in, and she’s not entirely sure that she hadn’t already been dreaming.
Later, Stella is slowly pulled back to the edges of consciousness. Her dreams melt away into forgetful oblivion, lost, as she slowly becomes aware of the sheets against her skin, of the pillow beneath her head.
And something's tickling her forehead. Strange.
She's going to ignore it, truly, but as always the sensation grows and grows until it becomes impossible to ignore. Briefly there's a small panic that it might be a spider, and this is what propels her, in the end, to look.
Her eyes crack open, heavy and gummed down with alcohol infused sleep.
It's not a spider. It's the ends of Beatrix's hair.
Her stomach tightens, a flash of nervousness shooting to the tips of her toes as she sees how close they're lying. Beatrix's head had crept over in sleep, and now her face is pressed into the far edge of Stella's pillow.
Beatrix is fast asleep. Her breaths are quiet and even, and she must be dreaming about something too, because her eyes flutter periodically behind the lids.
Her eyelashes are coloured as light and soft as butter, mascara free. Stella gazes at them through the pulsing in her head, her attention soon drawn to the freckles on her nose - she thinks she might've discovered those last night at some point? - and then to the soft roundness of her cheeks. She looks so young and innocent like this. She looks like someone who'd never dream of cutting you down with the electricity crackling at her fingertips.
Stella's stomach does that thing again, the twisting and rolling thing, but she knows - somehow - that this isn't anything to do with the alcohol.
The sun moves outside, and then as the light suddenly breaks through the window, the edges of buttery light streaming through to fall across the back of Stella's head and the side of Beatrix's face, something dislodges in Stella's heart. The muscle moves, something growing bigger. Or something pushes aside to make room for something else.
It’s painful and also not at the same time. No, upon second thought, it might be the easiest thing she's ever felt. It's painfully simple, if anything.
Oh. She really should've seen this coming.
But this kind of thing always seems to happen to her. Everyone she's ever cared about has had to sneak in during the night when her back is turned. They've always had to hang around just long enough until, without warning, they've crept inside Stella's heart.
Because Stella's good at protecting herself - she has to be, as the future Queen of Solaria.
But there's nothing to be done about someone who's already stolen past all the defences. Nothing to be done about someone who's already curled up inside her heart like an uninvited daredevil cat.
The sun rises higher, the light shifting to fall across more of Beatrix's face. Her hair shines auburn in the glow, red glowing like embers in a fire.
Oh, but whereas Stella's heart is burning warm, her head hurts like hell.
Damn the whiskey. Damn drowning her sorrows on a Tuesday night. No way is she making it to class today.
Her thoughts begin to slide from her grasp, stifled by the hangover, and once more she feels her eyelids drooping.
She closes her eyes, the strands of Beatrix's hair still brushing against her skin as a reminder. Soon, she's falling asleep again, awareness sweeping out into the oceans of dreamland.
Not the feelings though. They stay stuck in the shore, too strong to be swept out by the current.
The tenderness remains, sitting safe deep behind her ribs, fermenting like a precious wine.