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Valentine's Day was Kiff and Barry's holiday. Not even their favorite, but it was theirs, by virtue of being the only kids who still handed out cards to others.
Walking around the cafeteria, Barry handed out valentines to everyone. What made it a whole lot easier for him was signing them to: you, from: Barry :)
Barry approached his usual table, spotting his best friend already sitting there.
However, his expression dropped upon seeing the odd sight.
Kiff could write, Barry knew this. That wasn't what was odd.
But she was very intensely writing. Rapidly. Violently. As beads of sweat ran down her head.
"Kiff?! You okay?! Did you forget to do your homework?!" Barry asked as he sat beside the squirrel. No response from her. "...Kiff?"
She, meanwhile, continued to exaggeratedly hunch over the table as her hand moved at the speed of light. Eventually, she set her flaming pencil aside. Holding her finished, heart-shaped sheet of paper with a wildly overjoyed (if a bit deranged) smile. After admiring it, she—
—tore it up with a tired expression. Crumpling it into a ball and tossing it behind her.
Kiff then slinked into her seat with a pathetic sigh. "I got writer's block."
Barry looked at where the pieces of paper landed under the table, finally seeing just how much Kiff had started and then discarded just now. "I can see that."
"I gotta write a valentine for Candle and I'm kinda stumped." Kiff scratched the side of her head with the pencil's eraser. "We got so much history together, y'know? Lotsa ups and downs. Dunno how to capture that here."
"Maybe just wish her a happy Valentine's Day?"
"It can't be generic, Bare! I wrote hyperspecific notes to everyone! Even people I've only talked to once! Candle's one of my closest friends! And closest enemies! Both at the same time! Somehow!"
"Gosh, I never put that much thought into my valentine's cards. I usually just get ones that already have a message on them." To show an example, Barry held up a card of a dog wearing sunglasses while on a skateboard, announcing 'YOU ROCK!'.
"You know me! Go big or go home! Now, if I could just..." Kiff continued to scribble down on the sheet, looking at it for a second, before defeatedly throwing it into the failure pile. "Nope."
Barry thought the situation over, starting to eat his lunch to multitask. "If you gotta be honest, maybe something like... 'I know we have our ups and downs, but you're still pretty cool'! That's basically what you said earlier, so why not just put that?"
Still holding an unsure frown, Kiff gave it a try and wrote just that on yet another sheet. Staring at her work, Barry gave her a thumbs up, but Kiff didn't see it the same way.
Instead of ripping it to shreds, she calmly placed it to the side with a sigh. She crossed her arms over the table and rested her head on them.
Barry hated seeing his favorite person in the world like this. It almost made him lose his appetite. Almost.
He spoke through a mouthful of PB&J. "You've given her a valentine before, why's it so stressful now?"
"...I dunno!" Kiff's posture stiffened as she threw her arms in the air. "It just is!" Her ears flat against her head.
"Uhhh..." Barry considered any other ideas to offer. "Maybe you don't have to give her anything...?"
Kiff gasped as loudly as possible, deeply offended. Her voice was quiet. "...How could you?..."
"I-I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I just meant, like, if you two're friends... kinda, maybe she already knows how much you value your friendship-thing...? You don't need to give her something to prove it..."
"That's the thing, Bare! She doesn't know! At least, not all of it..." Kiff started. "She knows we have a weird thing going on, and we've had it for years! Like, among other things, the time we got paired for a drama project and we acted like a married couple, or this one time in kindergarten she let me borrow one of her crayons for a dollar! How do I begin to cover all we've been through and how much it means to me, even if she probably doesn't think much about those moments?!"
Barry didn't know what to add, not that he had time to think about that as Kiff rambled on: "The way that we're not even that close, but I always wished that we were! Like, sure, I appreciate our healthy competition! We sorta balance each other out without going too far! But I wanna spend more time with her in a friendlier way, learning more about what she likes and dislikes, her hopes and dreams for the next five-to-ten years, and what shampoo and conditioner she uses because man, her fur is soft!"
The squirrel still went on, "maybe that's weird to say! I dunno, but I notice a lot about her! The way she plays with her tail when she's nervous, her tendency to want more clarification and avoiding misinformation, the way that she lights up the room, her fangs and her cute 'lil laugh! She's the whole package deal! She's the girl of all time! And I could go on!"
Kiff didn't notice she'd been standing on her seat as she declared her passionate stance. She immediately sat back down.
"...So, you get what I mean? Kinda hard to boil all that down into a tiny note."
"I think you already did?"
Kiff looked down at the table, where she was unknowingly holding her pencil again, and the piece of paper was filled front and back with words upon words written down.
"Oh."
Barry smiled wide, proud of her. "That's great! Now you can-"
"Nope!" Kiff ripped it up, her face burning. "Nopenopenope! Can't show all that to Candle...!"