Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time Clive laid eyes on Jill Warrick, she was topless.

And no matter what she or anyone would say about it, it was an accident. He was not that kind of guy.

It was early in the morning—too early, in fact—but Dion had woken them all up to go for a run before classes. Clive, still bleary eyed, was brushing his teeth on his balcony, in hopes that the cool, morning temperature would shock his senses to a more awakened state.

He caught sight of her from across the street and had to do a double take.

Their gazes met and his jaw dropped to the floor, along with his toothbrush.

Astonishingly enough, she did not move to cover herself up.

Instead, she scowled, stuck a middle finger up at him, and sharply drew her curtains shut.

Joshua was meandering about in his older brother’s room with little purpose other than to aggravate him, as younger siblings tend to do.

He was recounting his latest antics with Dion and complaining about their overbearing mother, and Clive was hardly paying him any mind until he said, in the midst of his dictated stream of consciousness:

“Huh. You didn’t tell me you got a new neighbour?”

The occurrence was significant, because since Clive had moved into this room in his first year, the one directly opposite and across the road had remained unoccupied.

Not that Joshua made a habit of staring over at the girls dormitories often, of course. It was just that the bare window had been noticeable against the others either side of it, personalised by its occupants by the colours of their curtains and boy band posters tacked onto their walls.

Now, the room had a string of twinkling fairy lights dangling across its curtain pole and pale blue drapes. And as if on cue, they parted, and a girl emerged onto the balcony, absentmindedly plaiting her hair.

“Oh, and there’s the new tenant. I wonder why she moved in the middle of the school year—?”

“—Joshua, come away from there,” Clive startled him with an urgent tone.

He turned to his brother, now staring steadfastly down at his textbook whilst the skin on the nape of his neck boiled to an unnatural shade of red.

“Oh…?”

For a minute, the younger Rosfield glanced bewilderedly between his brother taut shoulders and the girl across the road; her pretty profile now visible to him as she tucked a strand of her silvery hair behind her ear and something clicked.

His lips stretched into a knowing smile.

“Oh…”

“Gav—”

“—Fuckin’ hell, Rosfield!” the boy leapt up from his desk, slamming his laptop shut. “You can’t just be bursting in like that! What if I—what if I had a girl in here or something?!”

Joshua took a moment to survey his friend’s adequately empty room, before placing a solemn palm over his left breast and bowing deeply.

“Then you must let me express my deepest apologies to you and your hand.”

He manages to tamper down Gav’s innately violent reaction by disclosing his urgent news: Clive was in love and was obviously in need of their help to do anything about it.

Gav folded his arms over his chest, his lips thinning in an expression of doubt.

“Ehh, are you sure about this?”

“Of course I am!” Joshua professed. “He’s pining for his pretty new neighbour who’s just moved in across the street! Come, see!”

The duo were soon clambering over each other out on his balcony to catch a glimpse but their view was obstructed, as Gav’s room was five doors down from Clive’s.

“Even if you are right, how do we get ‘im to talk to her?” he asked and Joshua shrugged. Apparently, his grand plan for action had not developed any further beyond its inception.

Collectively, they lamented, already somewhat defeated due to two, important factors:

The first, was that Clive Rosfield—despite being the most handsome motherfucker Gav has had the pleasure of having to stand next to for the past five years—had absolutely no game whatsoever.

It was as if the creator had put a hundred percent of his stats towards his attractiveness and left absolutely zero for self awareness.

And it wasn’t that Clive was dull personality-wise either: his upper class upbringing made him charming and charismatic, and he was a naturally sweet, hard working young lad who just happened to also be so utterly oblivious when it came to the opposite sex that it physically hurt to watch.

The second was their unique setting. Rosalith Boarding School was a co-educational institution, but the male and female students did not have classes or spend any significant time together at all.

The founders and faculty were of the belief that keeping the two separate during class reduced any cause for distraction, allowing only scheduled and stilted interaction between the sexes in controlled environments such as in study halls or school wide social functions.

The dormitory buildings were, of course, also segregated. They consisted of two, identical stone brick buildings on opposite sides of a narrow, private street. Surrounding each of the buildings was an eight-foot tall wall and an iron gate, accessible only by key-card and manned by campus security 24-7.

Adding barbed wire and flood lights to the scene would not have looked out of place.

Dion was on a health kick, which apparently meant that everyone else was on one too, and for about a month now he, the Rosfield brothers and occasionally Gav had been getting up at six in the morning to join him for a run before class.

They ran a route four or five times around the perimeter of campus, toward the manicured grounds and through the woods, which meant that they could not avoid passing through the private road between the student dormitories at least a couple of times.

During one particular session that Clive had complained was going on for far too long, he stopped, doubling over to catch his breath unintentionally beneath his new neighbours balcony.

He straightened up and tipped his head back to get more air into his lungs and his gaze fell directly in line with the silver haired girl from across the street, leaning on the metal railings with a mug of something hot in her hands.

She looked down at him without expression and his immediate reaction was to launch himself into a full sprint in the opposite direction.

Dion watched on as he tripped over his feet with some amusement.

“That her?” he asked, tipping his chin up at the girl as they passed at a more leisurely pace.

Joshua grinned.

“Yeah. That’s her.”

They asked around about her, figuring it would be easy enough to learn her name at the very least, what with her main-character hair colour and the usual buzz that came with the arrival of a new transfer student.

Unfortunately, between the three of them, they were not able to find out much else other than the fact that she was from the North and that she kept largely to herself. No one they asked had much to offer on her movements either: what classes she took, or what clubs or extracurriculars she had signed up for.

Convincing Clive to introduce himself to her was turning out to be near enough impossible if they couldn’t even track her down.

So, one morning, Gav arrived at their running congregation wearing a backpack, which was odd but not enough for Clive to bother questioning it.

They went about their usual route, and by the third or fourth lap that passed through the private road of the dormitory buildings, Clive chanced a look up at that balcony again and sure enough, she was there and she was laughing.

At him, apparently.

Like hysterical, clutching her sides laughing.

Confused, Clive self-consciously slowed his pace, a sense of panic settling in because—was there something on his face?—only for his friends to cannonball into the back of him at full speed.

“Hey, what the fu—?!”

And that was when he realised that Gav, who had been running directly behind him, was holding open a large notepad that said: ‘CLIVE ROSFIELD’ on it, and an arrow pointing at his head.

He contemplated skipping out on the run the next day, partially because he was so embarrassed that he could die, but mostly because he decided that it was time to find new friends.

“Aw, c’mon Clive. Don’t look so grumpy, ey.”

“Yeah, Clive, we were only trying to help.”

He cast them all a withering look and decided that they did not deserve to know the truth.

“It’s…it’s not what you guys think…”

They set off the next morning with Clive straggling behind, eyes fixed on the ground ahead of him.

Passing the girls dormitories with his head bent low, it took only Joshua’s excitable: “Clive, look! LOOK!” for him to glance up, alerted by his urgent tone.

He was pointing up at the balcony, practically bouncing rather than jogging, with Dion next to him and pondering out loud: “huh? What does she mean by that?”

That was what prompted him to finally look up, finding that the girl was holding up her own sign for him today.

‘JILL WARRICK’ it said. ‘DID YOU LIKE THE VIEW?’

There was no avoiding it: he had to tell them what happened.

And instead of understanding, sympathy or a fucking apology, he was accorded with their cackling laughter.

He grit his teeth as Gav clapped him so hard on the back that he almost spilt his drink.

“Christ alive, Clive. Only you could get yourself so worked up like this after seeing a pair of tits!”

The next morning, Clive had prepared his own sign.

As inefficient as the mode of exchange was, he needed to clear some things up, and with what little they knew about the girl so far, he saw no other way in doing so.

This time, she was reading, elbows perched over the railings with the wind blowing through her hair and ruffling at the pages.

She seemed to be an early riser, and seemed to not mind the cold because she wasn’t wearing much else but a camisole top and a pair of pyjama shorts.

His throat flashed at the sight of her.

He waited until his friend-traitors passed and were out of his line of vision to wave awkwardly to get her attention. She dropped her book away from her face to look at him with a slight tilt to her head.

‘I’M SORRY. IT WAS AN ACCIDENT,' his sign read, with a smaller message underneath that said: ‘I’M NOT A PERVERT.’

He held the sign up long enough for her to read it, before lowering it back down and smiling sheepishly.

She shook her head in amusement, trying to stop a grin from stretching across her lips and somehow, Clive knew that he was forgiven.

This carried on for about a week; simple innocent exchanges of: ‘GOOD MORNING, HAVE A GOOD RUN TODAY :)’ and: ‘WHAT ARE YOU READING?’ and: ‘OMG I LOVE THAT PLAY!’

Unlike before, Clive seemed to look forward to their morning runs and the others were genuinely happy for him.

It was progress—it was just really fucking slow—and for a man of action like Dion Lesage, it was excruciatingly painful to watch.

Even though it was obvious that Clive was infatuated with the Warrick girl beyond the fact that she had a nice pair (if you were into that kind of thing), Dion had to know if those sentiments were returned.

Most people were attracted to Clive, of course. Even people who disliked him couldn’t insult him without commenting on how handsome he was, remembering once being in PE with him when they were playing a game of dodgeball and hearing the rival team shout:

“Get Rosfield! But…try not to aim for his face…!”

With their distance, physical attraction was all they had to go on for now, and given that Clive had already gotten an eyeful of her goods, Dion thought it only fair that Warrick should be given the opportunity to see the full package too (pun very much intended).

One morning and during their usual route, Dion asked the group to stop whilst he refilled his water bottle at a drinking fountain.

Clive was conversing with Joshua, paying him no mind, when he—air quotations—‘tripped’ and spilt the entire contents of it onto Clive’s front, making no effort whatsoever for it to look like an accident.

“Oh noooo~” he said in a monotonous tone. “What have I done~?”

Clive shrieked.

“Dion, what the hell?!”

“My bad, my bad…”

Dion watched, pleased with himself, as Clive fruitlessly tried to wring out the material of his shirt to see if it was somewhat salvageable.

“…Yeah, you should probably take that off before you catch a cold.”

In reluctant agreement, Clive pulled the shirt over his head and used whatever part left of it that was dry to pat himself down.

Gav looked upon his perfectly chiselled abs with disgust.

“God, I hate you so much.”

“I should go get another shirt,” Clive went to leave, but Dion stood in front of him to block the way.

“No need, Rosfield, no need,” he insisted. “We’ve only one more lap to go, anyway.”

Finishing up, they were making their way back to the dorms when Clive couldn’t help but notice how Dion and Joshua were snickering to themselves as they passed underneath Jill’s balcony.

By the time he looked up at her himself, the girl was bright red with a hand over the lower half of her face to cover an impending nosebleed.

Joshua had his own sign the next day and the moment Jill saw it, she turned tail and ran back inside before Clive could tackle him to the ground.

‘HEY JILL,’ it said. ‘DID YOU LIKE THE VIEW?’

Gav was lacing up his running shoes as Clive prepared his daily message to his beloved. 

From where he was sitting, perched on the end of Clive’s bed, he could see that the boy was writing something unbearably mundane about the recent weather.

He shook his head to himself, in a mixture of amusement and frustration.

“Clive, this is cute as hell but how do you expect to get to know her better this way?”

Dion hummed in agreement and Clive didn’t even have the decency to look up at either of them.

“What do you guys expect me to do? Scale up the side of a building, jump up onto her balcony and introduce myself?”

“That would be incredibly romantic!” Joshua gushed.

Eventually it was decided that, if the written word was his preferred method of communication, Clive should write her a letter.

They started their run a little later today, so that Clive could scribble her a quick note: beginning it with an excuse about his notepad being hard to carry whilst he runs, and then asking how her week was going; what exams was she sitting for and if she would be visiting Eastpool on the weekend.

He hesitates before signing it off, and hands it to Dion before he could change his mind. His friend scanned the letter quickly before making a bored face, but decided not to push his luck.

“This is stupid,” Clive sighed, disheartened by his reaction. “How would I even get it to her?”

But he should have known that Joshua Rosfield—warrior of love—always has a plan.

Returning from his room, his younger brother proudly presented their vessel: a plastic ball procured from one of those vending machines that spit out cheap toys and opened up in halves.

He folds the letter into the tiniest square, stuffs it in and clicks it shut, and is waving it triumphantly in Clive’s face despite the sceptical look on it.

They make for their usual route, stopping outside of the girls dormitories where Jill was already out on her balcony to greet them with a sign that said: ‘GOOD MORNING. LOVELY WEATHER TODAY :)’.

Gav groaned when he saw it.

“Fuck me, you two are made for each other.”

Joshua goes to hand his brother the ball, but Clive shied away from it.

He pressed it into his chest, “c’mon Clive,” he goaded at him. “It’s now or never.”

Clive looked up at Jill, her head tilting as she tried to make sense of their loitering longer than usual.

It was a long way up.

“I can’t,” he shook his head, in one last futile attempt to abort mission.

“Why not?”

“I wouldn’t be able to throw it that far,” he reasoned, adding after they exchanged an incredulous look between them: “look, if I was good at ball sports, I wouldn't be on the fencing team!”

“I’ll do it then,” Dion announced, gallantly stepping up to the task.

For some reason, this put everyone else in a state of unease.

“Dion—”

“—Relax, Rosfield,” he said, patting him on the shoulder. “Didn’t you know? I threw javelin for my county in Sanbreque for years.”

He plucks the ball from Joshua’s hands, deftly tossing it up and catching it a couple of times as he paced backwards a few steps to assess the trajectory.

“Watch the master at work,” he winks and releases the ball with a cocky smile.

He misses, of course.

He doesn’t even make it close, only managing to get the ball as high as the floor below Jill’s, three whole windows to the left of where her balcony was and land it with a sound of shattering glass.

Jill spread her hands over her mouth to suppress a delighted kind of yelp, her eyes shining with a mischievous gleam.

Clive is struck dumb, for more reasons than one.

Oh shit. She’s so cute.

“Hmm…” Dion was, astonishingly, unperturbed. “…It appears that I did not account for the wind.”

Gav gaped at him.

“The fucking—wind?”

In his stupor, Clive didn’t seem to register a campus security officer approaching to investigate the commotion, not until Joshua was urgently tugging at the sleeve of his jersey and yelling:

“Clive, what the hell are you doing?! RUN!”

Unfortunately, Mr Murdoch, Head of Campus Security, had been witness to the entire affair and by that same afternoon, all four of them were summoned to meet with Byron Rosfield, Clive and Joshua’s paternal uncle and Headmaster of Rosalith Boarding School.

He asked them: “what in the world were you boys thinking?” and answered Joshua’s passionate proclamation of: “but he’s in love, your honour!” with a weary sigh.

Punishment was relatively light because of, well, nepotism.

In the end, all they got was one week's worth of detention and a thousand written lines between them of:

‘I will not damage school property in the pursuit of love.’

It was a free period and the group were in the senior students library, which was one of the few places on campus where the genders could mix—under the close and watchful eye of Charon the librarian, of course.

Jill Warrick was, despairingly, nowhere to be seen and they all had at this point resigned to the fact that either her class schedule did not coincide with Clive’s, or that she preferred to study in her room.

Clive was, once again, the only one doing actual school work whilst Dion, sitting next to him, was folding paper aeroplanes and testing their flight path across the room (apparently he had something to prove).

In the meanwhile, Gav and Joshua were conversing quietly with Tarja, a friend of Gav’s since primary school who had since been indoctrinated into their friendship group as a disgruntled and unwilling observer of their shenanigans.

She was caught up quickly, flipping through Clive’s notepad and reading their correspondence as Joshua relayed their failed attempt in delivering Jill a letter.

“…So now we’re just looking into other ways to get it to her that doesn’t involve breaking windows,” Joshua concluded, motioning to Dion whose latest paper aeroplane did a disappointing loop in the air rather than make any significant distance.

Tarja sighed and held up a page that Clive had written in block capitals, wishing Jill luck in her mock exams.

“I don’t understand why you won’t just ask for her number?” she said, and was met with collective silence.

“Oh…”

“Idiots.”

But, of course, Clive wasn’t going to do that.

He wasn’t going to stand underneath her balcony, holding up a sign with his number on it, expecting her to call.

He might as well turn up with a boombox above his head playing ‘In Your Eyes’ by Peter Gabriel like John Cusack did in Say Anything.

“I mean, that would be incredibly romantic—”

“—Joshua, I love you but please die.”

Clive would not budge on this, and because Joshua would not stop whining about his brother being a stubborn bastard, Tarja decided that it was about time to take matters into her own hands.

They were all hanging out in Clive’s room again, for reasons that he could not comprehend, when Joshua’s phone began to ring with an incoming call from Tarja.

He wedged the device between his cheek and his shoulder, unwilling to pause his game of Mario Kart against Gav and Dion, especially when he was in first place.

“Hey. What’s up, T?”

“I can’t find her,” came her irritated tone. “She’s an enigma. A figment of your imaginations, created by the single brain cell you all seem to share.”

Even as she said this, they could all quite clearly see Jill’s profile through her window across the road, sitting at her desk.

Joshua paused their game—Rainbow Road could wait in such circumstances—and put her on speaker phone as he, Gav and Dion crowded onto Clive’s small balcony.

The man himself glanced up from his book at the movement, but was too resigned to their overbearing interest to bother to protest anymore.

Leaning over the railings, they spotted Tarja on her own balcony on the first floor across the street, looking up at them with an exaggerated shrug.

“I can’t work it out,” she continued. “Is she on the third floor or the fourth floor?”

“Fourth, clearly,” Joshua replied, and Dion did a quick count.

“Six windows from the right.”

“Your right or my right?”

“Ours.”

“But I looked everywhere on that floor!”

“Well, look harder…!”

Joshua groaned. They were getting nowhere.

“Gav, you have a nose for this sort of thing,” he said, in a eureka kind of moment. “What do you think?”

Gav hummed as he held his chin in his hand, surveying the building with a ruminative look.

“Well, if the layout is similar to ours, those windows there—” he pointed, “—would be common areas. And I’d guess that window there’d be the stairwell too.”

Tarja craned her neck up to see where he was pointing and was silent for a drawn out minute.

“…Shit, you’re right.”

Gav snorted.

“Now who’s the idiot?”

When Tarja knocks on Jill Warrick’s door—for real this time—she is met with the girl with blonde hair, tied into a long braid that went all the way down past her waist.

“Jill…?” she peered at her.

“Nah, it’s Mid,” she replied and Tarja wanted to hit her head against a wall.

“Right,” she sighed, heavily. “Sorry for disturbing you—”

“—If you’re looking for Jill Warrick though,” the girl jerked a thumb to her left. “She’s next door.”

Less than an hour later, Clive receives a text from Tarja that says nothing else but: You’re welcome, and is instantly plunged into a state of crippling anxiety.

It doesn’t help when the four of them start flapping about in his room yelling at each other:

“Oh my GOD—!”

“—It’s happening, IT’S HAPPENING—”

“—Stay calm! Stay FUCKING CALM!”

Disappointingly, she does not call straight away, or for several hours. By the time they are told to return to their rooms for lights out, Clive has to practically push them out of his door.

As a means of a distraction, he takes to his desk to study his history books, something that he usually enjoys and can get immersed in with no issue, but finds himself having to read the same page at least twenty times to get the information to stick.

Finally, and just as he was on the verge of giving up to turn in for the night, his phone comes to life with a call from an unknown number and he almost topples out of his chair.

He tries to remember what Dion told him to do: to wait until it rang at least five times and then to sound distracted—like he had not been waiting around all afternoon and into the evening for her to call—and then to oh-so-casually mention that he had just got out of the shower to encourage the mental image.

He does none of this and answers halfway through the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Clive?”

“Jill…”

The tension in his shoulders released at the sound of her voice. He had spent weeks wondering what it would be like and it was better than anything he could have imagined.

“Um, hi,” she says, her tone a little softer, a little more bashful, and he practically melts. “Have I caught you at a bad time?”

“No, never.”

He slaps a hand over his forehead the second the words left his mouth.

Be cool be cool be cool be cool.

Jill laughs like she heard the contact. The sound is like music to his ears.

“Great. Well, can you come out onto your balcony? I want to show you something,” she said, then adding as an afterthought: “and it’s not my chest, this time.”

Clive coloured, “I wasn’t thinking—”

“—I’m just kidding around, Clive.”

The sun had long set by now and the only sources of light outside were the stars and Jill’s desk lamp, a faint gleam seeping out onto her balcony from the inside of her room outlining her in a pale, yellow light.

As he steps out, shutting the door behind him, she gives him a tentative wave in a greeting and he manages a small “hi” over the phone when he sees her.

“Hey,” she replies. Then, she tilted her chin. “Look up.”

In his shameless fixation on the girl, Clive hadn’t noticed the full moon that hung above them which, in the clear and cloudless night, looked larger than he’d ever seen it before.

“Wow,” Clive breathed. “It looks closer than usual, somehow.”

“Yes, it’s called a supermoon,” Jill explained. “It happens only when the moon’s orbit is the closest to the earth. It’s rarely at its fullest when it does, or even on this clear a night. It’s quite beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Clive said, looking straight at her. “It is…”

And if he could see a little better, he would have noticed that she was blushing.

“…It’s nice to be able to finally talk,” Jill admits, after half a minute’s silence. “I’ve wanted to ask you some things for a while.”

“Oh, like what?”

“Well, first,” he could hear the smirk in her voice. “About that broken window?”

Clive cringed and messed with the hair on the back of his head.

“Yeah, about that,” he cleared his throat. “I’m sorry about my friends. They—um, well, I was trying to get a letter to you.”

“A letter?” Jill repeated, pleasantly taken aback. “Then I’m disappointed I didn’t get to read it. It went through the window of a girl called Astra, who might be in love with you now, by the way…”

They laughed at this, whatever awkwardness melting away as they spoke, for hours it seemed, making up for lost time in their weeks of limited interactions and growing curiosities about each other.

Clive did not want the call to end—he could speak with her until morning, he thought—but eventually he heard her yawn and apologise in the midst of it: assuring him that it was because it was late, that she was more of a morning person, and not because she wasn’t enjoying their conversation.

“You're right. I guess it is getting late,” he replied, straightening up himself from where he was leaning on the railings of his balcony. “We should probably go to sleep.”

Neither of them move, however, one waiting for the other to speak again until Clive built up his resolve and swallowed down his doubts and asked:

“Can…can I call you tomorrow?”

“I’d like that,” Jill smiled. “Goodnight then, Clive.”

Art by multiakimo.

Art by puppetbomb.

Chapter Text

They are meant to be studying, but Clive was at his desk, leaning precariously on the back two legs of his chair, staring at his phone and muttering: “surely that’s not a word…”

Gav rolled his eyes, and Dion arrived shortly after, tossing him an energy drink to get them through a night of cramming. 

He grinned and nodded at their friend, who hadn’t even looked up at his arrival. 

“Texting Warrick?”

“Eh, kind of,” Gav shrugged. “They’re playing Words with Friends.”

The information made Dion groan loudly, tipping his head back to project the noise into the ceiling. 

“My god, Rosfield! Just send her a picture of your dick like a normal person!”

Almost a week had passed since Clive had established daily communication with Jill Warrick, and though he was pretty content with their steady stream of messages and evening calls, his friends were unable to comprehend, now afforded the perfect opportunity, why he still had not yet asked her to meet in person.

In hindsight, they should have known that Clive was not one to take initiative, let alone break the rules by trying to meet up on campus. He would not pressure Jill to do the same either, especially in the lead-up to exam season. 

When pushed on the topic, Clive reasoned with them that as soon as they were over and the summer term began, there would be a whole host of mixed-school events where they could finally meet. 

There was the Sports Day and the Summer Ball too, even though both would be conducted under the watchful eye of faculty members—the latter, in particular, meticulously monitored to ensure that the students ‘left room for Ultima’ when they danced.

There was one other place, however, that held potential.

Once the students entered the Senior school at Rosalith, they were given the privilege to venture outside of school grounds on scheduled trips to Eastpool on the weekend. And, if timed correctly, there was some overlap between the boy's school and the girl's school’s visits.

They had already been hopeful to run into Jill there in the weeks they had first been acquainted, but Clive and the others had yet to see her and concluded that she had opted out of the excursions.

“Have you asked her to meet you there this weekend at least?” Joshua asked, anticipating his response by the way Clive averted his gaze to the corner of the room.

“Ah…well,” he faltered. “N…no, not yet.”

His admission was answered with a chorus of frustrated wails.

“Clive!”

“Why are you like this?!”

“Look, I’ve only just started speaking to her properly,” he immediately came to his defence. “I’m building up to it, alright?”

Clive said this with a tone of finality, telling them that he needed the time because he was terrible at talking to girls—a fact that they themselves reminded him of at least once a day.

His excuse was followed by a contemplative silence, which he interpreted as their understanding and decision to act reasonably for once in their lives.

Without their reaction, Clive was gateful that they appeared to have dropped the subject. 

That was, until Dion lunged at him. 

“Give me that fucking phone—”

“—Fuck off, Dion!”

The decision to move to Rosaria was all too sudden for Jill to come around to the idea before it even happened, so she wasn’t quite sure of what to make of Rosalith Boarding School at first. 

Her father relocated them off the back of a new business venture, which she did not understand and therefore did not have a say in the matter, and sooner than she could ever have thought, she was packing up her bags and leaving behind the only home she’d ever known.

He anticipated a lot of travel whilst they settled into their new country, so as an interim solution, Jill was shipped off to a boarding school in the capital's suburbs, more so for convenience rather than it being ‘the best and most prestigious educational institution in the Rosaria.’

When she first enrolled at Rosalith, Jill mostly kept to herself. She was not used to being part of such a large student body (the quaint school she attended in the North only had just over a hundred students), nor was she used to the single-sex environment that bred an uncomfortable level of interest on her arrival.

Although discreet, she overheard the many whispered comments vainly concealed behind cupped hands to ears: about her Northern looks and the circumstances surrounding her admission in the middle of the school year.

No one was mean, however, and most were rather welcoming. Still, she missed her home; she missed her friends, her older siblings and her nephews and nieces, and the cooler weather amid hot Rosarian evenings where she would, more often than not, wake in the middle of the night covered in a thin layer of sweat and in a tangle of her bedsheets.

No, she did not know what to make of Rosaria or Rosalith Boarding School—not until she met him.

Jill had first taken notice of his running entourage when the early morning movement caught her eye.

It was rare, besides herself, for anyone else to be up at that hour, so when the four figures ran past her window and through the gap in her curtains, she stopped to watch them as they laughed, bounding down the narrow road between their buildings and acknowledged with a tiny smile that not everyone at Rosalith was as miserable as she was.

Weather permitting, they appeared to run almost every day, and on one particularly mild morning she stood by her window again, waiting to get a better glimpse of their faces and immediately recognised that one of the four boys was that pervert from across the street.

It was difficult to forget his face because he was—quite irritatingly—rather handsome, and though she had been mortified after their brief encounter over the gap between their balconies, Jill figured that she could probably do a lot worse.

After this, it became part of her morning routine to watch him and his friends through her window, noticing after a while that the others were all quite pretty in their own rights, too. 

Soon, their passing by became one of the few things she found enjoyment in her school experience so far and after a couple more days of idle observation, Jill decided that she might as well take a closer look. 

She woke up the following day, made herself a cup of tea and waited for her daily eye candy out on her balcony.

Sure enough, the four of them made their timely appearance, stretching out their limbs briefly before making for their usual route. 

She watched them pass a few times before deciding she had got her fill for the day, but just as she was about to head back inside, she noticed that Pervert From Across The Street had stopped directly underneath her balcony to catch his breath.

He looked up and locked eyes with hers and might as well have taken off with a cloud of dust behind him with how quickly he darted off into the horizon. 

The way his friends glanced up at her and watched on with some amusement made her think that she was the cause of his distress.

The next day, they passed her balcony as usual, but it was only until their second lap that Jill noticed something was off.

One of the boys was rummaging around in his backpack, struggling to do so as he tried to keep up with his friends, and by the time they lapped her balcony a third time around, he was holding up a sign and she burst out laughing. 

She must have been loud, or the movement she made as she doubled over in her hysterics caught his eye because Pervert looked up at her and stuttered to a halt, causing his friends to run into the back of him, one after the other like some sort of chaotic conga line.

“Clive Rosfield,” she tested the name on her tongue. 

It sounded familiar.

“Clive Rosfield? So that’s who’s got your attention, eh?”

Jill considered Midadol Telamon—or just ‘Mid,’ as she insisted—one of the first of the few friendly acquaintances she made at Rosalith, only coming to know each other by chance when the younger girl was relocated from a room on the lower floors into the one next to hers. 

According to rumours, Mid had caused some internal damage to her previous accommodations during one of her engineering ‘experiments’, and the room was now boarded up and cordoned off until further notice.

Mid was infectiously cheerful, outspoken and—despite choosing to use curse words instead of adjectives in every other sentence—incredibly smart. Though Jill did not know her very well yet, she could tell that she was not the type of person who would judge or, at the very least, make fun of her.

Even so, she could not help but try to downplay her interest.

“Well, that’s…that’s not really…” she cleared her throat, steadying her voice to a neutral. “I hear his name around here a lot—” which wasn’t a lie, “—I was wondering who he was.”

“Aw, no need to be shy,” Mid laughed, totally not buying it. “You’re not the first girl at Rosalith to succumb to the allure of Clive Rosfield’s chest-to-waist ratio!”

Jill opened her mouth to protest but decided there was no use in denying it, having been witness to such measurements when the boy decided to run with his shirt off that one time, and being bitterly disappointed that he hadn’t done so since.

Tactfully, she changed the subject.

“Have you met him?” she asked. “Do you know what he is like?”

Mid shook her head, shrugging her slight shoulders.

“Nah, I can’t say I have, and what I do know about him is just hearsay,” she replied. “All I can tell you is that he and his brother are like Rosarian royalty. Old money. Rich AF. Their family founded this school, you know.”

Jill didn’t, but recalled meeting the school’s Headmaster, Byron Rosfield, on her first day and realised that she should have put two and two together. 

Mid surveyed her contemplative expression with interest. 

“I’m sure he’s a nice enough guy, but I have to warn you—you’ve a lot of competition,” she said. “The girls here worship the Rosfield brothers. They even have their own fan club.”

Jill tilted her head.

“Fan club…?”

“Yeah, they call themselves the Cult of the Undying Love for the Rosfields.”

Jill swallowed.  

“Cult…?”

“Or just the Undying, as that’s a bit of a mouthful,” Mid continued, as if it were the most normal thing in the world. “Never saw the appeal in ‘em myself, but I guess that’s just me.”

For someone that her friend regarded as a ‘Prince of Rosalith’, Jill was fully prepared to find out that Clive Rosfield was an arrogant, self-centred brat, but even in their limited interactions, she somehow knew that wasn’t the case.

She was well aware that she was making unfounded, sweeping assumptions, but as far as she could tell, Clive was—for lack of a better word—sweet: when he apologised for staring at her chest, when he held up a sign asking what book she was reading, and when he tentatively waved goodbye to her when he passed her balcony at the end of each of his runs before retiring for the day.

This only made her want to speak to him properly, to get to know him more and make judgments on his character herself; once even contemplating holding up a sign with a number on it and asking him to call but deciding that would be too presumptuous. 

It was not as if he were making much more of an effort to speak to her beyond their little notes either, until about a week of fleeting exchanges, she noticed the four runners gathering outside of her building, suspiciously huddled together and conversing amongst themselves. 

They glanced up at her a couple of times—Clive looking anxious, the others looking exasperated—and Jill couldn’t help but wonder what on earth they were up to. 

Eventually, the one with light blonde hair separated himself from the group, holding from what she could see was a ball and aiming it in her direction. 

She readied herself to catch whatever it was, but he misses spectacularly.

Amused, confused, Jill watched as Clive just stood there whilst his friends dispersed in all different directions, unmoving until one of them came back for him to alert him of the resounding “HEY!” of a campus security guard.

Jill doesn’t see them for a week after that and figures that it probably had something to do with that window they ended up breaking.

She notices his absence more than she thought she would, not realising until then just how much she relied on their small interactions to get her through the day.

“How are you getting on at Rosalith, Miss Warrick?” Byron Rosfield asked to see her in his office to check in after a month or so of her enrolment.

“Quite well, thank you,” Jill replied, unsure why her short, polite answer made the man chuckle.

“I’m glad to hear it,” he said, a curious kind of merriment seeping into his tone. “And I trust that my nephews are now keeping out of your hair?”

Jill startled in her seat, the shift from what she expected to be a serious conversation about her academics to something so personal catching her off guard.

“E—Excuse me?”

“Ah, I am sure you heard of last week's incident concerning the broken window in the girl's dormitories.” The man sighed heavily and shook his head, “I don’t know the full story myself but apparently, one of my nephews thinks himself to be some kind of modern-day Romeo and was throwing rocks to get your attention.”

Jill felt her cheeks colouring, trying her best to stop the smile tugging at the corners of her lips, and the sight was enough to make Byron’s own crease at the corners of his eyes.

“I apologise for their impertinence. Do let me know if they are bothering you again…” he said with a flash of teeth. “…Or don’t.”

There was a knock at her door, and a red-haired girl was standing on the opposite side of it with an alarmingly desperate look in her eyes.

“Jill Warrick?” she panted.

“Yes, that’s me…” she confirmed this warily, and watched as the girl wilted against her door frame with a sigh of relief. 

Taking pity, Jill invited her in and offered her a drink, which she gratefully accepted and gulped down, all before giving her a proper introduction.

“I’m Tarja, nice to meet you.”

“Jill,” she inclined her head. “Though, it seems like you already know that.”

Tarja’s shoulders shrugged with a short laugh that exuded from her arms, folded over her chest.

“Aye. You’re a difficult woman to track down,” she said, and Jill felt the need to apologise for the stress she had unknowingly put her through.

“I’m sorry. I’m new here…” she replied as if it were sufficient enough of an excuse. 

Because it wasn't as if Jill was going out of her way to be unsociable. It was just that it was difficult enough joining a new school as a senior, in the middle of the year no doubt, without the added extra pressure of trying to join friendship groups that had long been established years prior to her arrival.

Besides occasionally hanging out with Mid who was younger than her so was not in the same school year, Jill found herself more often than not, opting to stay in her room only to leave for classes, which was far better than wandering around campus alone.

Tarja regarded her, eyes full of understanding. 

“I know how it is,” she said. “New school, new country, away from friends and family. It’s a bit overwhelming, right?”

She spoke like someone who had been through the same experience, someone who understood her plight, and Jill felt more at ease with her already.

“If you ever need someone to speak to, my room’s on the first floor, and if I’m not in there, I’m in the infirmary.” After Jill’s questioning expression, she added, “I’m going to study medicine at university next year. Trying to get as much work experience under my belt as I can get.”

“Thank you,” Jill said in earnest. “I’ll have to take you up on that sometime.”

Tarja nodded and smiling, shifted her tone to more of a lighthearted one.

“Anyway, the reason why I’m here,” she said, slapping her hands down onto her knees. “I’m sure you’re aware of the four reprobates that have been hanging around your window for the past few weeks?”

“Yes,” Jill couldn’t help but laugh as they shared a rather amused look between them. “I’ve noticed them about.”

“Well, one of them’s desperate to talk to you,” Tarja said. “And if you don’t mind, I’d like to give you his number—if you ever feel inclined to speak to him too.”

“Mid, is that a pair of binoculars?”

“Yeah, made ‘em myself, ain’t they neat?” 

The girl had strode into Jill’s room without as much as a courtesy knock and made her way to the glass doors that opened onto her balcony, beaconing her over. 

“Come an’ take a look at the fuckin’ insanity going on across the road…”

Curiosity getting the better of her, Jill took the device and pointing it at the building opposite, saw Clive’s three friends bouncing off the walls whilst the man himself stood in the middle of the room, frozen on the spot and staring down at his phone like it had come to life in his hands. 

“…Looks like Tarja told him that she gave you his number,” Mid laughed loudly, and Jill couldn’t help but smile as she lowered the binoculars from her face.

“Yes, it seems so.”

Mid took them back to get another look at Clive, now hyperventilating.

“Aww, Jill, look at him,” she said, shaking her head at the ridiculous scene. “Put him out of his misery and call him already!”

“I will,” Jill assured her, but she had already decided that she would wait until the evening to do so.

It was a conversation that felt long overdue and one that she would rather have when they were alone. 

Jill calls him when the sun goes down, asking him to come out onto his balcony because she wanted the first time they spoke to be face to face—or as close to it as they could get. 

In hindsight, waiting until nighttime did not provide the clear enough conditions she had hoped for, but when he emerged and heard his slight intake of breath, she was pleased that she had insisted and that she did not have to be topless to get that kind of reaction from him. 

His voice was deeper than she imagined it to be: a raspy baritone that made her entire body bristle pleasantly at how her name sounded in the fluid husk of it.

She asks him about the broken window and tells him with some amusement about a girl (whose heart seemed to wander every week) who was now boasting in the common rooms about how Clive Rosfield was declaring his love for her underneath her balcony. Reluctantly, he provided the context and told her of the punishment they had received for that little stunt.  

As expected, she had a lot of questions for him and he for her, the first of hers being: 

“So, what are your friends’ names?”

Clive groaned softly like he was reluctant to acknowledge them, despite their very direct involvement in the development of their new friendship.

“The one with longish-blonde hair is actually my brother, Joshua. Gav’s the one holding up the sign with my name on it the first time…” he winced like it was a bad memory. “And Dion’s the one with the terrible throw.”

Not wanting to dwell on the subject too long, he went on to ask her: “How are you liking Rosaria?” and Jill admitted that she hadn’t had the chance to see much of the country since her arrival at Rosalith.

“That’s a shame,” Clive replied, and he seemed genuinely disappointed at the fact. “Rosalith is nice, but there are some parts outside of the towns that are really beautiful…”

He paused again—something he did often, she thought—like he was overthinking his following words too much. 

“...P—Perhaps I can show you around someday,” he suggested finally, and Jill sent him what she hoped to be her most encouraging smile.

“That’d be lovely, Clive.”

It wasn’t until the Friday before the weekend that Clive had built up the courage to bring up the topic of Eastpool with Jill.

He had never asked a girl out before and it showed, unable to bring himself to say it outright over several opportunities on the phone and resorting to asking her by text like a coward:

Although he tried to hide it, Clive’s disappointment was immeasurable.

They were in the mess hall later that day to grab some lunch where Gav, Joshua, Dion and his boyfriend, Terence, could not ignore his brooding silence and the way he was picking at his food rather than eating it.

“Why don’t you just ask her to skip one weekend and see you?” Joshua whined, but Clive shrugged a broad shoulder, already conceding defeat.

“She misses her family and friends back home,” he said. “I can’t ask her to stick around just for me…” 

Joshua went to insist otherwise but stopped himself when he realised there was no convincing him. This was typical of Clive: always putting the needs of others before his own.

“Besides…” he continued, “maybe she doesn’t like me in that way…” he said, a statement which was answered with their collective outrage.

“Why wouldn’t she like you?!” Dion slammed a fist down onto their table. “You’re sexy as hell!” 

He follows this up with an apologetic: ‘Sorry babe’ to Terence, who had not even looked up from his phone at the disturbance, stopping his scrolling only to reassure him that: ‘You’re just stating facts, babe.’

Unwilling to even entertain the possibility that his affections were not returned, Team Cliji/Warfield/Roswick/Jive (they’d had several arguments about this) went back to the drawing board, but Clive was just as quick to shut them down.

“I told you, I’m just going to wait until the summer term,” he tried to reason with them. “Exams are coming up, and our study schedules don’t coincide. And there aren’t many other places where we could meet on campus without getting into trouble.”

Dion shook his head: “This is why I date men,” he grumbled unhelpfully, and when Clive sent him a boding stare, Gav tampered it down with an assuring clap on his back.

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head, Clive. Leave it with your ol’ pal, Gav. I’ll figure something out for ya,” he said.

Clive was almost grateful for the support, until he realised belatedly and with a sense of impending doom: 

“Wait—what the hell do you mean by that?!”

They send Gav on a recon mission: to look for blind spots to the campus, less guarded areas and corners that obstructed the views of the many surveillance cameras.

Unlike the boy's school, which consisted of several fit-for-purpose buildings, the girls had only one large block besides the dormitories where they attended all their classes. This was probably because it was constructed when the school became co-educational, and therefore required the extra, separate space to accommodate this, and because of its imposing size compared to the other smaller buildings, it was less guarded, less fortified and easier to infiltrate.

Gav’s endeavours yielded some success when he somehow convinced Clive to check out a potential meeting spot (with Dion and Joshua tagging along as well, simply because they didn’t like feeling left out). 

Under the cover of the night, they snuck out of their dormitories when the security guards swapped over to the ones on night shift duty, and made their way to the girl's school where Gav had found a fire escape, out of the view of cameras and in the unlit shadows of the street lamps.

Joshua was delighted — “It’s like a scene out of West Side Story!” — but Clive was sceptical. 

“I don’t know, Gav. It doesn’t look very safe…”

“Don’t be silly, Clive,” Gav said, volunteering to demonstrate its structural integrity himself. “Just tell her to stick around a bit after her last class, you climb up here an’ she can meet you on the—FUCK!”

There had—keyword: had—been a ladder that took him up to the first few floors before they turned into a set of stairs, but it crumbled and broke into four separate pieces when its hinges buckled and hit the ground with Gav’s extra weight.

Panicking, swearing, and near enough shitting himself, Gav managed to hold on and shimmy his way down onto the lowest platform, but it was still too high up for him to risk jumping from there to the ground safely.

Hysteria ensued. 

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit—” (Clive)

“—What do we do, WHAT DO WE DO—?!” (Dion)

“—Should we run—?” (Joshua)

“—Oi! Don’t you fucking DARE leave me up here!” (Gav)

Failing to convince Gav to: “Just jump, we can probably catch you”, which was answered with an outraged: “Probably?!”, they tried everything they could think of, including a manoeuvre that involved Clive hoisting Joshua up on top of his shoulders to reach him, but to no avail. 

“I think I can make it down if I just had something to get me to a safer height,” Gav said, peering over the side of the platform and assessing the potential damage. “Have any of youse got some rope?”

“Oh yes, because I carry rope with me everywhere!” Clive hissed, but the suggestion seemed to inspire something in Dion. 

“I’ve got an idea,” he said, a theoretical lightbulb appearing above his head. “Clive, take off your shirt.”

Clive sent him a severe look.

“Now is NOT the time for that, Dion!”

“I was going to suggest we make a rope with our clothes,” he corrected him indignantly, and Joshua was already stripping.

“Oooh, good idea!”

“It really isn’t!”

“Well, I don’t see you offering up any alternatives, brother!”

And because no one ever listened to Clive, they were soon stringing together their pyjama tops by the shirt sleeves and testing the strength of their knots, when the blinding beam of a flashlight was turned on at them.

Alerted by the sound of the breaking ladder, the Head of Campus security came to investigate the disturbance. At his unexpected arrival, the group froze like deers in headlights and were made painfully aware at that moment of how their situation must have looked to him:

Four, half-naked boys, trying to sneak into the girl’s school.

Rodney Murdoch had no words.

Gav was the first to break the awkward silence.

“Ah, fuck.”

When they were shown into Byron Rosfield’s office the next morning, the man drew a hand over his eyes and fell back against his chair with a defeated sigh. 

“Why is it, that whenever something happens around here, it’s always you four?”

Again, they are let off lightly after Gav makes a case that they had, in fact, pointed out a glaring health and safety violation.

Begrudgingly acknowledging this, Bryon dismissed the boys with yet another warning and a week's worth of detention, but not without asking his nephews to stay behind an extra minute to sternly remind them that:

“This is strike two, boys,” pointing a finger at each of them. “If anything like this happens again, I’m going to have to call your mother.”

The threat is enough to have them all but grovelling at his feet. 

“No, Uncle Byron, please!” 

“Anything but that!”

Clive does not mind the following week's detention as much as the last, because at least he still got to speak to Jill on the phone for the duration of it (though he was far too embarrassed to tell her what got him in trouble this time around, no matter how much she pressed and teased him for the information).

As soon as their house arrest was lifted, the gang resumed their morning runs and the sight of Jill waiting for them as usual was a welcome one. 

Not yet noticing their approach, Clive saw that she was leaning over the side of her balcony and happily conversing with the blonde girl on the next one over. He smiled, an odd sense of contentment settling over him because Jill had once confessed that she hadn’t made any close friends at Rosalith yet, but it seemed like that was no longer the case. 

“Who is she?” Joshua asked Clive who, at first, missed the resonance of wonder colouring his voice.

“No idea,” he shrugged, and Dion and Gav weren’t able to offer much insight either. 

Finally, Jill spots them, and leaning over the side of her balcony to speak to her friend, appears to tell her something that makes her laugh. 

The girl then turned her attention to the four of them with a wide grin and an enthusiastic wave. 

Her voice was loud enough to carry.

“Y’alright?”

Joshua, who had not taken his eyes off of her, immediately dropped to one knee.

“My Lady—”

“—Joshua, get up, you’re a fucking embarrassment.”

When Joshua is late to their run the next morning, Dion is tasked with tracking him down to see what is holding him up.

When Dion himself fails to return for another ten minutes or so, Gav and Clive make their way to Joshua’s room to find the two huddled over his desk. 

For justifiable reasons, this puts Clive into a state of unease. 

“Joshua…” he dragged his name in a cautionary tone. “What are you doing…?” 

“I am going to introduce myself to Lady Midadol,” his brother replied merrily, closing his notepad before he could sneak a peek, and Gav crossed his arms over his chest with a dubious expression.

“So you’re making her a sign? You know you can just ask Clive to ask Jill for her number, right?” he said, but Joshua just flashed him a wicked smile.

“Now, where’s the fun in that?”

They make their way out of the building, and the fact that Joshua was wearing some of his best clothes tells them that the thought of going for a run was the furthest thing from his mind. 

He had been prepared to ask Clive to ask Jill to ask Mid to come out of her balcony but was pleased to see that the girl was there already, conversing with Jill over the railings as they were the day before. 

Sensing the movement of their approach, Jill looks over to them and alerts her friend to do the same. 

When Joshua held up his sign, Clive wanted to die with the secondhand embarrassment.

‘ROSES ARE RED
SNOW DAISIES ARE WHITE
WILL YOU GO ON A DATE WITH ME TONIGHT?’

Groaning, Clive held his face in his hands; Gav doubled over with laughter, and Dion gave him an encouraging thumbs up.

Mid took one look at it and walked back inside.

“Oh,” Dion’s face fell. “What happened?” but Joshua was not as concerned. 

“Clearly, she is overwhelmed by my grand gesture of lo—”

“—Wait a sec, Jill is calling me,” Clive interrupted him, reaching for his phone vibrating in the inside pocket of his jersey.

He goes to answer it, his tone of voice softening considerably.

“Hey, Jill…” 

Their brief conversation seemed to be a serious one, going by the way Clive was nodding as if receiving an important set of instructions.

“…Yes…ok. Understood…will do. Thank you, Jill. Speak to you later…bye.”

He hangs up, turning to his brother with a shake of his head.

“Yeah. Mid says: Not a chance.”

Footwork impeccable, Clive paced backwards along the length of the fencing piste, defending himself against the aggressive attack of his opponent with a clash of steel on steel. 

Not one to be backed up into a corner, he parries their blade, retaliates with a counterattack and, seeing an opening, swings his sabre to land it at his opponent’s neck just as their own makes contact with his torso under his ribs.

He swears under his breath, the red and green lights on the scoring machine signalling the impact on both sides as they flash up simultaneously.

“Halt!”

The challengers looked to the referee, who was glancing between them with intense consideration.

Finally, he decided: “Advantage to Rosfield,” and the final bout concluded in his favour.  

Clive and his opponent raised their weapons so that their blades pointed upwards, saluting each other and then at the referee before ending the match.

He tore off his mask and wiped at the sweat on his forehead with the cuff of his glove, and his opponent did the same, revealing the smirking face of coach Cid Telemon. 

He approached just as Clive was unclipping himself from his body wires, his own mask cradled under his arm and resting on his hip.

“Alright, Clive. You seem—” he paused to find the appropriate word, “—sprightly today.”

“Sprightly,” he repeated, not knowing what that meant, let alone Cid’s reason for voicing such an observation. 

He chuckled.

“That’s right. Something happen?”

“I…I can’t think of anything in particular,” Clive replied, trying his best to appear aloof but apparently failing miserably. 

Cid stared at his face until a blush burnished his cheeks, one he was sure had nothing to do with the match that had just concluded.

“You’re a shit liar, Clive. Joshua… !”

He yelled loudly over his shoulder, still eyeing his star pupil now sweltering under his amused scrutiny.

“…What’s up with Clive?”

Even though younger Rosfield was mid-match in the next lane along, he still managed to shout amongst the collision of swords: 

“He’s in love, sir!”

“Ah, that’ll do it.”

Cid shook his head, simpering as Clive muttered something to himself that sounded suspiciously like an expletive followed by his brother’s name.

Walking them off the piste towards the benches that lined the hall, they discarded their equipment and Cid gripped at Clive’s shoulder before he could run away. 

“If what your brother says is true, I’m happy for you, lad,” he told him. “Whoever she is, she seems to be a good influence. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t practise as hard as you should just because you’re getting your exercise elsewhere, eh?”

Even though Clive could feel his body temperature rise to boiling, he rolled his eyes and decided from experience that he was far better off not to correct him. 

Admitting that Jill was not his girlfriend and that they were not engaging in the activities he was alluding to would just open up a whole ‘nother can of worms.

“Yes, sir.”

“And don’t forget we’ve got the tournament in Tabor next month. You’ll see you’ve a lot of competition out there, particularly in Barnabus’ brood—in fact!” Cid added as if it had just come to his mind: “There’s a student I taught over at the girl's school the other week that I reckon could give you a run for your money.”

Clive was only half listening at this point, unfastening his jacket and removing his gloves.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, new girl from up North,” he said, curious when he noticed Clive’s joints locking into place. “Name’s Jill Warrick, I think.”

“Miss Warrick!” Cid shouted, his voice loud enough to fill the sports hall and bounce it off its four walls. “You never told me you was Clive Rosfield’s girlfriend!”

Almost instantly, Jill felt a treacherous heat spread from her neck to the very soles of her feet; unsure whether her reaction was born out of pride or embarrassment to have her name so closely interlinked with his. 

She was unable to articulate the feeling either way when she hears the curious murmurs of her peers from behind her, and was therefore only able to answer Cid with an unintelligible: 

“What—uh, who—? Did he…he—he told you that?”

Cid smirked.

“Nah, but goin’ by both of your reactions, it’s bound to happen any day now.”

Jill wanted the ground to swallow her up whole but managed to mask it with an exasperated sigh.

“What is it to you?” she said, crossing her arms, and watched as he rolled back and forth on the balls of his feet with a deliberately constrained casualness.

“Oh, nothin’, nothin’. I’m just curious as to whether you’ve given much more thought on trying out for the team this year, that’s all…” he said, and the change in subject unsettles her even more.

Her forehead creased, and Cid took that as a cue to continue.

“…I know you said you weren’t looking to sign up for any extracurriculars, but I just thought you should know—considerin’ that you’re new around here and that our boy’s probably been too humble to mention it—but Clive was appointed captain of the fencing team this year…” 

He winked when her mouth fell open to the slightest degree. 

“…So maybe have another think about it, eh?”

Chapter Text

Joshua was livid. 

Even as Clive told them of Jill’s joining the fencing team in the library the next morning, there was a dark aura surrounding him that Dion could sense, but Gav ignored in favour of a positive reaction to the news.

“This is huge, Clive, HUGE!” his voice an enthusiastic whisper accompanied by exaggerated hand movements. 

“It might not mean anything,” Clive shrugged modestly, twiddling his pen in his hand in a nervous gesture. “Cid said she was good anyways so maybe she just decided she wanted to try out for the team after all?”

“Don’t be daft!” Gav cried. “It’s obvious that she only joined because she wants to spend time with you!” he said, and Dion joined him in his exasperation.

“C’mon, Rosfield. You’re texting constantly, you talk to her every night, and she flirts with you all the time—”

“—Well, I’m not really sure you could it as flirting exactly—”

It was then when Joshua, apparently reaching some sort of limit, pounded a fist on the desk between them, startling the group and everyone on the surrounding tables and earning an admonishing ‘shh’ from Charon. 

“—Tell them, Clive,” he was bristling with rage. “Tell them what she said…” 

Earlier that day, Clive got his phone fixed and finally returned Joshua’s to him. 

And because he was nosy—and because Clive was an idiot for not clearing his conversation history with Jill before he gave it back to him—Joshua ended up reading something that was the cause of his incensement that morning; something that he, no matter how things would eventually turn out, vowed would never let Clive live down for as long as they both shall live. 

“I…I don’t know what you mean, Joshua—” 

“—Don’t play dumb with me, brother,” he muttered darkly. “Tell them. Tell them what Jill said, what she texted you after she had a few drinks with Mid to celebrate getting into the fencing team.”

Dion and Gav watched as their friend squirmed like a child caught in the midst of a lie and in any other situation it would have been funny, if not for the serious look on his brother’s face that told them that this was no laughing matter.

“Is this really necess—?”

“—CLIVE!”

Joshua held his pointed stare, and Clive swallowed audibly.

“Jill told me that…that she wanted to, um…‘ride me like a chocobo’.”

Gav and Dion’s jaws dropped simultaneously, rendered absolutely speechless. 

After recovering from the initial shock, yells of ‘fuck yeah!’ and ‘get in there, Rosfield!’ threatened to erupt from them, but they could tell that Joshua was not quite finished.

In fact, he looked as if he were going in for the kill.

“And what did you say back, Clive?” he glowered and all of a sudden, their stomachs dropped and Dion whispered a preemptive: ‘oh dear god please no’ under his breath.

Clive looked down at his textbooks, already anticipating his friend’s reactions and not wanting to look them in the eyes when he said it. 

He flinched when Joshua pounded another fist on the table.

“TELL them, Clive!”

“I…I said…‘thanks’ .” 

There was a long and painful minute’s silence that followed, where Dion looked as if he were screaming internally.

Gav’s reaction, on the other hand, was anger that quickly escalated to match that of Joshua’s.

“How dare you, Clive Rosfield. How fucking dare you,” he seethed. “After everything we’ve been through, after everything I’ve done for you—”

“—Gav—”

“—Don’t you ‘Gav’ me!” 

With grim amusement, Joshua watched on as his brother struggled to conjure up a response to Gav that wasn’t an apology short of offering up his firstborn child.

“Trust me, Gav, when I saw it, I wanted to punch him in the face.”

The threat of physical violence immediately had Clive on the defensive.

“Well, what the hell was I supposed to say to that, anyways?!” he argued, causing Dion to yell in exasperation:

“You send her a picture of your cock and you write: ‘you mean this chocobo’—question mark—winky face!!!”

Clive (as well as everyone else in the room at this point) was appalled. 

“On my brother’s phone?!”

Thankfully, they did not dwell on what Gav described as his ‘astronomical fuck up’ for very long before they reverted back to making fun of him and Clive wasn’t sure which was worse.

When they were just about done ripping into him, Joshua crossed his arms over his chest, pinched the bridge of his nose and heaved a sigh.

“Okay. Now that we’ve confirmed what we’ve all suspected for a while that Clive is a himbo—” 

He said this, whilst making a point of ignoring his brother’s daggering glare.

“—The other thing we can take away from this situation is that our girl Jill has more of a rebellious streak than she’s previously let on…”

He paused to let the statement sink in, and everyone including Clive knew what he was insinuating: that if Jill Warrick was willing to partake in a little underaged drinking of what was probably some illegal contraband that Mid snuck into their dorms, she would have no problem bending the rules when it came to a rendezvous on campus. 

Nevertheless, Clive still mumbled quietly:

“…Well, it doesn’t necessarily mean that she will want to meet up with me… ” 

And that was when Dion threw a pencil case at his face, and this time—he didn’t miss.

“I’m sorry Jill, he’s a fuckin’ idiot and he doesn’t deserve you.”

Mid was saying this, whilst staring down at Jill’s phone and trying her darndest not to throw it against a wall.

In the meanwhile, Jill was face down on her narrow bed, not sure whether it was her hangover, the volume of Mid’s voice, or the embarrassment of reading her message history from the night before that was the cause for her splintering headache that morning.

She let out a groan of physical and emotional pain.

“Mid, you’re being too loud for this time in the morning…”

“Jill, it’s past noon,” Mid said, all bright and chirpy and apparently unaffected by their activities the night before. “You missed all your classes. I had to tell Ms. Ninetails that you were dying of period pains.” 

Jill muttered a quiet thanks muffled by her pillow. That was one good thing about joining an all-girls school. Everyone was much more than sympathetic when it came to such ailments.

Mid, now scrolling through her very PG-rated conversation history with Clive, was still swearing colourfully when Jill rolled onto her side and shrugged her shoulders underneath her bedsheets.

“Don’t be too hard on him, Mid. Maybe he didn’t get it?”

“He didn’t get it?” Mid dealt her an incredulous look. “Is he actually that stupid?”

Tarja walked in on them then, with a glass of water and painkiller that Jill knocked back gratefully.

Despite not being around for the first part of the conversation, she knew exactly who they were talking about. 

“Clive Rosfield? Yes, I can confirm that he is a himbo of the highest decree.”

Although supposed to be reassuring, this only made Mid all the more exasperated. 

“Well, what do you have to do to get it into his thick skull that you like him? Shove your tits in his face?”

“I already kind of did that, remember…?” Jill collapsed onto her pillows again, hands spread over her face. “Maybe he just doesn’t like me in that way…”

“Jill, he likes you, trust me,” Tarja intervened before the doubt could settle. “He was so desperate to get to know you, he’s got in trouble with his uncle twice. He broke a window to try to talk to you!”

Jill went to argue but blinked when Tarja’s words caught up with her, taking a moment to process and then wondering if she’d missed something.

“Wait—twice?”

Tarja explained to her then, that when Gav didn’t turn up for his shifts at the infirmary earlier that month, it was because he and the others had been caught trying to sneak into the girl’s school half-naked when scoping out a location for Jill and Clive to meet.

That explained why Jill hadn’t seen them on their runs that week (and why Clive was reluctant to tell her the reason why). She would have been flattered that he had gone to such lengths to try to meet with her, if not for the overarching question of: 

“...But why were they half-naked?”

Tarja threw her hands in the air. 

“How am I supposed to know what goes on in their tiny brains?!”

Conceding to the fact that this (somehow) might have just been a misunderstanding on Clive's part, Jill made to take her phone back from Mid. 

“Ugh, I should write back and just explain to him that I was drunk…” she grumbled, but Mid wasn’t having any of it.

“Don’t you dare,” she hissed, snatching the device out of her reach. “Leave him on read for a few days. Let him ponder on his stupidity and simmer in the magnitude of his offence—let him suffer.”

Ignoring Dion’s advice of sending Jill a picture of his genitals, Clive decided to take a leaf out of his younger brother’s book to go about making amends.

The following weekend came and went with the curious murmurs making their way around campus of Clive Rosfields’s return from Eastpool with a bouquet of flowers.

Confirming that Jill had returned from her visit home on the following Monday, Clive—and probably against his better judgement—asked his brother and friends for ideas on how to get them to her. 

Having gotten over being brutally friend-zoned faster than anyone could have predicted, Joshua enlisted Mid with the task of coaxing Jill out from inside her room, and to help think up a way to ensure the safe delivery of Clive’s peace offering. 

That morning, they made for their route as early as usual but instead of Jill waiting for them, they were met with the sight of a crudely put-together contraption hanging off the side of Mid’s balcony.

“I call it—the Enterprise!” a grandiose name for something that was essentially a basket on a piece of rope.

(In her defence, Mid was well aware it was not the most sophisticated mechanism and certainly not her best work, but it was the best she could come up with on such short notice).

Mid had her phone on speaker while she manoeuvred the basket down the side of the building, so that Joshua on the other end of the line, could provide unnecessary assistance with the directions. 

The basket makes it down the side of the building without a hitch, but once the flowers are secured and strapped in, the stakes become so much higher—more so with the added extra pressure of everyone else watching on with bated breath.

“You have to pivot it a bit so that it doesn’t hit the wall, Mid,” Joshua was saying.

He could see the girl waving a dismissive hand at him as she tried to concentrate.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ve got it…”

“…To the left a bit now, there’s a tree there.”

“Fucking…I can see it, Rosfield…”

“…Pivot… pivot…PIVOT—!”

“—Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!”

Mid’s increasingly irritated volume and tirade of curse words had Jill emerging from her room to investigate the commotion. 

She stepped out onto her balcony with a: “Mid, what in the world—?” and was there just in time for a great gust of wind to blow in from the east, rocking the basket precariously and dispersing a sea of petals into the sky, all reaching for the sun.

Jill thinks it’s beautiful, even as Clive watched on in dismay.

Dion, in the meanwhile, felt validated. 

“I told you! You need to account for the wind!”

When Jill joined the fencing team, she can’t help but feel as if she had done so on the pretence of false advertisement.  

Because, of course, Rosalith, being the backward institution that it was, did not allow the women’s and men’s teams to train together either. 

“Has it always been like this?” she asked Clive exasperatedly over the phone one evening.

Clive shrugged at her helplessly over the gap of their balconies.

“It’s gotten worse over the last few years, I think. They really cracked down when a girl called Edda got pregnant at sixteen a couple of years ago.”

Nevertheless, they saw each other and got to speak, however briefly, in person more often than they would have otherwise, when the women’s team and men’s team swapped over to use the sports hall for practice. 

They were always asked to wait on the bleachers whilst the other team finished up, though, because—god forbid—they were to breathe the same air, and it was during one of these handovers when Clive and Joshua arrived early just in time to see Jill’s final match conclude, unbeknownst to them at first.

The match captured their attention amongst the others because the way Jill moved in the piste was that of someone with masterful control of her weapon, easily bypassing the defences of her opponent with her attack, and landing the final point with a long and graceful lunge that caught them square in the chest.

“Wow. Whoever she is, she’s really good,” Joshua said out loud what Clive was already thinking.

It was then that Jill revealed herself from under her mask, loosening the ties in her hair and shaking it out, letting the silvery waterfall of it cascade down the length of her back.

As was fencing etiquette, Jill raised her sword in a salute to her opponent, a salute to their referee and finally, a salute to her captivated audience. 

Clive looked as if he had short-circuited.

Joshua raised his hand.

“Uh, Coach Telamon?” he said. “I think Clive’s broken.”

Cid was already chuckling and rounding Jill up towards the changing rooms.

“Alright, Miss Warrick,” he said. “On to your next class now while we try to reboot ‘im.”

When Cid deemed Jill more than qualified to represent Team Rosalith at the nationals tournament, she, Clive and the rest of the team were on (separate) coaches to Tabor the following week.

The couple managed to exchange a few words before they were ushered away from one another with reproaching looks, and Joshua was just as frustrated as the both of them.

Luckily, it wasn’t too long before their convoy stopped at a service station, and the students were told to use the bathrooms and stretch their legs.

Clive lost track of his brother for all but five minutes which was, unfortunately for him and everyone else, more than enough time for Joshua to get up to his usual mischief and return looking rather pleased with himself. 

“Well, my dear brother, it appears that my work here is done…”

He said this, with a motion that was as if he were dusting off his suspiciously filthy hands.

“…The rest, as they say, is up to you.”

Clive squinted at him, but Joshua didn’t hang around long enough to allow him a proper look. 

“Joshua, is…is that oil on your face?” he still panicked, tearing after him before he disappeared again. “JOSHUA?!”

Just a couple of miles later, something smelt like burning and smoke started to billow from the engines, not from just one coach, but both of them. 

Everyone was surprised at the coincidence except for one Joshua Rosfield, yet he still made an effort to exclaim: “Ohhh noo~ the bus has broken down~! ” when the vehicles screeched to a halt on the motorway. 

As the students evacuated, Cid ushered Clive over to him, assumingly because he was the captain of the team, to tell him that he would be leaving him in charge of the group whilst he scouted out the nearest service station for a mechanic.

It was strange to him then, why he called Jill over to join them too.

“I’ll be gone probably an hour or so,” Cid said to them both, “maybe a bit longer, depending on what the damage is.”

Clive glanced at him suspiciously.

“Alright…?” he dragged, expecting a reason why Cid was telling them this, but all his coach did was wink and point a finger at each of them.  

“I’ll be off, then,” he said. “You two behave now.” 

Despite the healthy blush blossoming on his cheeks, Clive still managed to roll his eyes at him and Jill gave an exasperated sigh.

Together, they watched in speechless silence as Cid sauntered off down the busy roads and then glanced back at the two coaches with the cluster of their fellow students, otherwise occupied and paying them no mind.

Clive cleared his throat, though he still couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eye.

“Hey, um. Do you want to get out of here?” he said, after a drawn-out minute.

Jill grinned at him and his heartbeat tripled.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Luckily, they hadn’t made it very far out of Rosaria for Clive to get his bearings and figure out where they were relative to the nearest towns.

Jill was more than happy for him to take the lead, though she couldn't help but tease him by asking: “Where are we going then, Clive? I hope I’m not getting kidnapped.”

“Not quite,” Clive grinned at her, happy to finally engage in this familiar banter of theirs face-to-face. “I said I’d show you around Rosaria one day, remember?”

It wasn’t long before they came upon a village called Martha’s Rest and were there just in time to visit the daily farmers market before they closed up shop for the day.

They spent some time wandering the stalls together, sampling food from vendors selling fresh produce unique to Rosaria that Jill, in particular, seemed to appreciate immensely. 

“Oh my goodness, look at all that BREAD!” she exclaimed when they came upon a stall that specialised in baked goods.

Clive watched on as she picked out a selection of big white cobs with an amused chuckle.

“Are you alright?”

“Very much so!” Jill smiled at him, and Clive decided that whatever trouble they would get into for this little excursion would be worth it.

Nevertheless, he was conscious of the time, how far they were from their party and how long it would take to get back to them. 

He checked his phone a couple of times when Jill was otherwise occupied with sampling some ham, and figured that Joshua would surely have the sense to let him know when Cid returned with the mechanic and how long it would take for them to get the coaches back on the road. 

“One last stop, and then we should probably head back,” he decided.

“Alright, where to next?” Jill said when she drew up next to him with an armful of bread to go. 

“Well, I was thinking,” Clive smiled. “I still owe you some flowers.”

It was a smooth line—especially for Clive—so it was a shame that he didn’t check the weather forecast before taking her on a detour to Manns Hill.

In the end, Jill didn’t get to see the snow daisies as he intended but it really didn’t matter, especially when Clive grabbed her hand when it started to rain as they ran for the oak trees together for shelter.

When Cid came upon the two of them, they were both soaked through and shivering.

He lit a cigarette, shaking his head.

“Ah, Clive,” he smirked. “You’re not where I left ya.”

Clive won first place in the Men’s Sabre at the international tourney, but instead of the hero’s welcome he deserved when they got back to Rosalith, he was called to his uncle's office where not only he, but his father, were waiting for him. 

He made his way over like a convict on death row, with Joshua tagging along to say hi to their dad but mainly to provide Clive with some moral support.

“I told you, boys, this was strike three,” Byron glared at them. “Be thankful that I called your father and not your mother on this occasion.”

The brothers nodded gravely, though they both knew deep down that Uncle Bryon would never betray them like that. In reality, Anabella did not care much for Clive since their father divorced her, and that she was too busy creating a demon spawn with her next husband-victim to make the trip back to Rosalith, anyway.

Their father was quickly caught up on all that had happened on the road to Tabor: of Clive sneaking off with a Miss Jill Warrick to Martha’s Rest, and the search party they had to dispatch to find them when they did not return.

When Clive remained silent, neither confirming nor denying the account of the events, Elwin heaved a heavy sigh and clicked his tongue. 

“This certainly comes as a surprise,” he said, disapprovingly. “Honestly, I’d have expected this kind of behaviour from Joshua—”

“—HEY—!”

“—But you, Clive?” he shook his head. “Sneaking off with a girl…?”

Clive ducked his head even lower than it already was, almost touching his chin to his chest. He was preparing his rehearsed apology, ready to beg for forgiveness, until his father clapped him on the shoulder and chuckled:

“…I didn’t think you had it in you, son.”

Uncle Byron snorted, effectively breaking whatever characters they were supposed to be playing and Clive’s eyes snapped up at the noise, his cheeks now razed with heat.

“You wait until you hear about the broken window,” Byron wheezed, and Elwin’s eyes went wide.

“There’s more?”

“Yep, and the flowers too.”

Clive was, understandably, mortified. 

“You…knew about the flowers?” he asked, and his uncle dealt him a stagnant look.

“Of course, we knew about the bloody flowers, Clive!” he said with an exasperated sigh. “Rodney’s just about given up on trying to contain you four. He says it’s a full-time job and it’s hindering his ability to keep the other students in line as well!”

As the older men continued to laugh hysterically at his expense, Clive used that opportunity to try to explain himself, all whilst trying to pin whatever blame there was on him and make a case for Jill’s innocence in all of this.

Elwin listened patiently, almost proudly, to his reasoning yet continued to appear most amused.

“Look Clive,” he said, his tone of voice intended to be reassuring. “I’m not going to give you a hard time because then I’d be a hypocrite. I used to be young and in love, and yes, I did some stupid stuff at this very school to get your mother’s attention—before she turned out to be a bitch…”

There was a pause, and where one would have expected someone to come to her defence, it seemed as if everyone in the room were in unanimous agreement. 

“…But you’re going to university next year,” Elwin reminded him. “You’re at the top of your class and you have a bright future ahead of you. Have fun all you want, but just make sure you work as hard as you usually do and get the grades that you deserve. Don’t give your mother another reason to moan about you, alright?”

He completed this with another fond clap on his son’s shoulder, and Clive smiled back at him like he was almost afraid to do so.

With an encouraging nod, Elwin at last turned to his youngest, looking as if already defeated.

“And Joshua?”

The younger Rosfield perked up in his seat. 

“Yes, father?”

“Just…stay out of trouble.”

“I always do…” he said, with a flash of his teeth. “…Mostly.”

Because a week's worth of detention and a thousand lines of—

‘I will not take advantage of school trips outside of campus to take my girlfriend out on dates ’

—was not enough of a punishment considering the frequency in which Clive found himself in trouble these days, it was eventually decided that all of his electronic devices—except the ones he used to study—were to be confiscated, at least until he finished his exams.

Despite thinking the punishment was rather extreme relative to the offence (as any teenager would), Clive understood why his uncle had to do it. He did not want to be seen as a rule breaker who got off easy just because he was related to the headmaster.

So, he spent the following week in the lead-up to finals with his head buried in a book, exchanging waves with Jill from across their balconies and little messages via Joshua until Gav, out of breath from having sprinted from wherever he was before, burst into his room the afternoon before his last exam, alarming him with his overexcitement.

“Clive,” he said, pointing towards his balcony. “Take a look outside!”

He followed him over, and sure enough, Jill was standing on the street below their buildings.

She was smiling, holding up a sign with a crudely drawn picture of a waving baby Torgal, and a message written underneath that said:

‘GOOD LUCK :)’

Art by multiakimo.

Chapter Text

Exams had finished, the summer term had begun, and Clive realises that it was naive to think that things would get easier for him from then on out.

Although daily contact with Jill resumed after his electronic devices were returned, meeting up on campus continued to be as difficult as it had been before, given his recent track record. 

Clive was on what his uncle described as ‘thin ice’ and was being made an example of to the other students. The privilege of being his nephew and thus security occasionally turning a blind eye was revoked to the point where even lingering a little longer after practice to speak to Jill or simply saying hi as they passed by each other in the halls was met with a belligerent bark of: “alright, alright, break it up, Rosfield.”

Lastly, and probably most irritatingly, his bother and his friends had still not gotten off his back about making his relationship with Jill official, often reminding him that—exam results permitting—he only had one short school term and the summer break before he moved away from Rosalith to attend university. 

“What’s stopping you, Clive?” Joshua whined at him almost daily, to which he replied with waning impatience:

“Because I’d still like to get to know her better as a friend first, Joshua! You shouldn’t rush into these things…”

Though they understood where he was coming from, the trio could not help their continued frustration with him. They knew that Clive was cautious, that he guarded his heart and thought through his actions carefully, but at this rate it’d be thirteen years before they’d get together, and another five to get to the point of holding hands.

Classes had finished for the day when Joshua called the ‘Council of Clive’s Love Life’ for their daily assembly in his dorms. 

Clive had all but checked out at this point, texting Jill intermittently throughout another interrogation, but still managed to report a brief meeting with her after fencing practice where they’d loosely discussed plans for the summer, and how Jill had expressed willingness to meet up for another tour around Rosaria, this time and hopefully without the bad weather. 

Dion nudged him, eyebrows wiggling suggestively. 

“So. What does this mean? Are you guys dating now or what?”

“What?” Clive coloured. “Of—Of course not. It’s not like we’ve made any concrete plans. Besides, we’ve only been out together once and I’d hardly call that a date.”

Gav dealt him a stagnant look. 

“Clive,” he said. “You literally have her number saved as ‘Wife’ on your phone.”

It took only five seconds—enough time for Clive to glare sharply at his friend, and for Dion and Joshua to register what they just heard—before a scuffle for Clive’s phone ensued, escalating to a wrestling match of flailing limbs across Joshua’s dorm room floor.

“You have got to be kidding me, Rosfield—”

“—You’re actually so embarrassing, Clive—!”

“—Fuck off, you two!”

Though Clive had one hand planted on his brother’s face and the other holding the device away from him at arm’s length, the occasional swipe from Dion coming at him from another angle had him accidentally pressing the little phone icon that started a call with Jill which he managed to cancel before the third ring.

He was still fighting for his life when she appeared to be calling him back a few minutes later, her picture and the word ‘Wife’ flashing up on the screen. 

Satisfied and stifling their giggles, Joshua and Dion climbed off from on top of him and urged him to answer the call.

“On speakerphone,” Joshua insisted. “I want to talk to her too!”

However, as soon as the line opened up and Clive said ‘hello’, the noise from the other end of it was muffled with a sound like the receiver was being rubbed up against the inside of a pocket or a handbag.

Clive said her name once before deciding: “she must have pocket-dialled me back,” but just as he was about to hang up, they heard Mid’s distinct voice speak clearly:

“Everything alright, Jill? ”

“Yeah, Clive just called me and hung up,” they heard Jill reply. “It might have been an accident. I’ll call him back later.”

Mid followed this up with a short laugh.

“What is going on with you two?” she asked, Jill seemed to hesitate with her answer.

“Oh, I’m not really sure …” 

“You’re not dating? ”

“I—well, no.”

“Eh?! Why the fuck not? Everyone in school already thinks you’re an item! Don’t you like him?”

“Of course, I do! We’re still getting to know each other, Mid. ” 

“You sure you don’t want to get to know him even better? ” Mid answered with a suggestive edge to her voice, to which Jill replied with a mixture of embarrassment and exasperation to her own:

“I mean, yeah. But Clive is so sweet and respectful. How do I politely ask someone like him to push me up against a wall and make out with me? ”

Clive’s pupils shrunk and he fumbled to end the call before Jill could hear his brother and his friends and their various overreactions.

Gav, who had been taking a sip of his drink whilst he was listening, spat the liquid out everywhere and was trying to contain the spray with his hand.

Whilst he was choking, tears in his eyes, Joshua was running around in circles like a headless chicken, and Dion was on his knees screaming into the void.

“Clive! CLIVE!”

“You have GOT to do something about this!”

“Clearly, she wants you to be more assertive!”

“But how?!” Clive yelled as soon as he recovered from heart failure. “How do you even get into a situation like that in the first place?!”

He wished he hadn’t asked when Joshua sprung into action, taking to his bookcase to inspect his collection of Shoujo manga novels neatly lined and sorted by series and volume order.

He browsed through the shelves with a light finger, like Professor Harpocrates would do with his library of leather-bound history books, before picking out a particularly colourful volume with a cover decorated with flowers and sparkles which, quite frankly, did not inspire much confidence. 

He flicked through its pages, finding what he was looking for.

“Ah, here it is…”

He said, turning the book around to show the three of them a two-page spread of your typical Shoujo manga couple: the girl, short and meek up against a wall with the tall, handsome love interest crooning above her, bracketing her in between his arms.

“…The kabedon pose!”

Clive stared between him and the offending image with a blank expression. 

“You cannot be serious, Joshua.”

“Why would I not be?” his brother replied. “It’s foolproof—”

“—It is not—”

“—No one can resist such a move—” 

“—It’s borderline sexual harassment—”

“—Don’t knock it until you try it, Clive,” Joshua insisted, beaconing his brother over a clear space of wall. “Come on now, you can practice on Dion.”

Without hesitation, Dion sprawled himself across it, offering himself up as tribute. 

Again, Clive stared between the two younger boys like he was questioning their sanity.

“I’m not gonna practice on Dion.”

“Why?”

“Well, first: he has a boyfriend.”

“Terence won’t mind.”

“I mind!”

Joshua rolled his eyes, apparently not appreciating why this was an issue.

“Ok then, practice on Gav.”

“Eh?” Gav protested. “Why can’t he practice on you?!”

“Because I’m the one providing creative direction!” 

As was the case for most of their ideas these days, Clive somehow and for some reason, found himself standing uncomfortably close to Gav who had assumed Dion’s previous position, with his back against the wall and looking as if he’d rather be anywhere else in the world.

Clive appraised him on his approach, already overthinking things when he stammered:

“Gav, can you, uh…maybe shimmy down the wall a little?” and Gav craned his neck back as far as it could go, trapped as he was.

“What? Why?!”

“Well, you’re a bit taller than Jill is so…”

After a moment of contemplation—and an encouraging nod from Creative Director, Joshua Rosfield—Gav muttered a resigned ‘fine’ and bent his knees slightly, sliding down the wall an inch or two.

With Jill’s words still ringing in his ears, Clive pushed past his reserve and did as Joshua instructed: leaning in close and slamming an open palm next to Gav’s head.

The entire room shook, bits of dust and debris fell from the ceiling and a faint ‘what the fuck was that?!’ could be heard from the other side of the wall. 

Needless to say, Gav felt as if he were being assaulted rather than seduced. 

“That was perfect, Clive!” Joshua was starry-eyed nonetheless. 

“Y—Yeah?”

“You nailed it!” he nodded enthusiastically. “Now you need to follow that up with a lean into Gav’s face, eyes all intense, alright? Like you just wanna eat him all—”

—And that was when the door swung open, revealing Terence on the other side of it, mid-sentence about something to do with their Starbucks orders and the store being out of oat milk so he got soya for Dion instead.

He stopped in his tracks and glanced between the four of them bewilderedly, before a look of realisation passed over his face.

Sighing, he put down their drinks on Joshua’s bedside table and rolled up his sleeves.

“Move aside, Rosfield,” he said. “Let me show you how it’s done.”

It was the Friday before the weekend and this time, the four were headquartered in Dion’s room after Joshua’s neighbour had filed a noise complaint.

Although feeling more confident about Jill and her feelings towards him—as if the fabled chocobo text had not already made it obvious—the week had passed with little opportunity or appropriate location to fulfil her desire of being slammed up against a wall by Clive. 

Joshua, however, arrived at their congregation that evening with some promising intel from Tarja. 

“She told me Jill isn’t going home tomorrow and will be staying in Rosalith for the weekend,” he told them excitedly. “Clive! It’s the perfect opportunity to ask her to meet you in Eastpool!”

Although Clive tried to downplay his excitement, the news was encouraging, and with little of it needed from his friends, determinedly told them that he would ask Jill about it when he called her later on that evening.

“NO, Clive,” Joshua yelled abruptly, causing all of them to flinch. “Call her NOW. I want to hear you do it myself!”

“But—why?”

“Because I know you won’t ask her properly,” his exasperation was premature but understandable. “I know you’re just gonna put some sort of friendly spin on it.”

Dion agreed, nodding. 

“Yeah, we can’t have you cock blocking yourself again, Rosfield.”

Clive looked to Gav, the one with the most voice of reason (which wasn’t saying a lot) for a desperate intervention.

“Joshua’s right, ya know,” he said, much to his disappointment. “She needs to know it’s not just a group of us going. She needs to know that it’s a date.”

Realising that they would not back down and would likely barricade him into the room until he did it, Clive cautiously dialled Jill’s number, sweat forming on his brow as his thumb hovered over the green call button precariously.

It wasn’t long, however, and after a glance at the circle of his friends looking at him expectantly, when he lost his nerve. 

“I can’t do it!” he cried, letting the hand holding his phone drop to his side.

There was a collective wail of frustration.

“For fucks sake, Clive!”

“I—I don’t know what to say!” 

“You talk to her on the phone every day! How can you still be so awkward?!”

“We talk about other stuff like school and fencing! It’s a lot less nerve-wracking than asking her out on a date!” 

As the others continued to argue around him, Joshua took a deep and steadying breath, as if to ascend into a higher plane of existence where he could finally find peace. 

He looked as if he were thinking something over, eventually muttering under his breath: ‘ugh, I didn’t want to have to do this’ before instructing Dion to:

“Dion. Write a script for him.”

“On it already,” Dion stood to his attention, taking to his desk and searching for the unused cue cards he bought as studying aids for his exams.

Fully prepped and with a final pep-talk from Gav, Clive held his breath as his phone rang three times before the line opened up.

“Hello?” Jill’s voice came clearly through the speakers.

“Yo, Jill…” Clive began unsurely. “It’s…C-dog…?”

He stared at his friends with an open palm and was answered by Joshua making circle motions with his finger, telling him to roll with it.

He was only brought back to their conversation by Jill’s light and tinkling laugh.

“I know, I saw your caller ID.”

“How are you this fine evening…” Clive cringed. “…M’lady?”

“I’m ok…” Jill replied, already sounding just as baffled by this conversation as he was. “How about you?”

“Yeah—good, thanks. How about you?”

Jill gave another droll laugh.

“You just asked me that, Clive!” and Joshua slapped his forehead and sent him an urgent look that said: just follow the damn script!

“So,” Clive swallowed the growing lump in his throat. “You up to much? Or just…chillaxing?”

“Oh, I guess?” Jill chuckled, obviously trying her best to step over his unconventional choice of vocabulary today. “I’ve got an essay to write for Ms. Harman’s class…” 

They heard a scuffle, like the sound of her chair rolling back away from her desk, and figured that she was moving towards the window of her balcony when she then said:

“…Are you out right now? I can’t see the light on in your room.”

Clive looked at Dion and his cue cards again and had to do a double take, bewildered but unable to come up with anything else himself, nervous as he was. 

So he read off the script that was given to him, word by word. 

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m just at the gym…shirtless and benching two-twenty…”

“Oh, right,” he could hear Jill trying not to laugh. “I didn’t know the boys dorms had a gym.”

“Yeah, I like to um, work up a sweat sometimes before bed…” Clive replied, with forced casualness. “It helps…develop my chest muscles.”

Jill chuckled. 

“Good for you, I guess?” she said, and Clive could feel his very soul shrivel with an embarrassment that he was sure would transcend over several lifetimes.

“Do you know…” he peered at Dion’s haphazard handwriting again, wondering if he was reading it correctly. “…What else I like to do to work up a sweat?”

“No?”

“I like to—”

Clive muted his outraged gasp with a hand over the receiver.

“—I can’t fucking say that!” he hissed angrily. “Get to the point!”

Dion heaved a sigh and shed at least fifteen cue cards onto the floor.

“Clive?” Jill said and he returned to their call, cursing his arrested attention.

“Hi, sorry about that,” he apologised, swiftly moving the conversation from off his chest muscles to something more productive. “So I, um, heard from Tarja that you were staying in Rosalith this weekend?”

“Yeah, my parents are going for a romantic week away to Twinside for their anniversary,” Jill replied. “No point in me going home when no one will be there.”

“Oh that’s cool, that’s cool,” Clive tried his best to sound like it was the first time he had heard this information (it was not convincing). “Do you…um, have any plans?”

“No, nothing yet. I’m not sure what there is to do around here on the weekend. Any suggestions?” Jill asked, and Clive gave the cue cards another quick glance. 

“You could do me—” he caught himself with yet another incensed glare at Dion, “—a favour! And meet me in Eastpool tomorrow…if you want…”

He felt every muscle in his body tense as he waited for her answer, visibly wilting with relief when Jill finally replied:

“That’s a good idea, actually. I haven’t had a chance to visit since I enrolled at Rosalith.”

Not quite believing his luck, Clive turned to his friends with an enthusiastic thumbs up and the three of them started silently pumping their fists in the air in celebration.

Clive pressed a finger to his lips to quieten them down before they got carried away.

“Great! Well, there’s a restaurant there that I’d like to take you to,” he continued, now feeling more confident in himself. “It’s nothing too fancy, but the food is good. Classic Rosarian cuisine. I thought we could share a…pie.”

“That sounds nice. I’d love to share a pie with you,” Jill said back, and Clive couldn’t help the silly smile that was now splitting his face.

“Okay. The boy’s school can leave campus at ten o clock and we’re supposed to be back by before the girl’s school arrives but no one ever checks.” He suggested, “I can meet you at the bus stop at say, half past?”

“It’s a date,” she said, her voice taking on a flirtatious quality and Clive felt his body temperature rise to dangerous, meteoric levels.

“I…guess it is,” he said, then adding lamely, “Only if you want it to be, though.”

“Of course I do,” Jill replied, and he could hear the smile in her voice before she signed off. “I’ve got to go and get a head start on this essay now, so enjoy the gym. Oh and Clive?”

“Yeah?”

“Say hi to Joshua and the guys for me.”

Clive stumbled over his parting sentiments, hanging up soon after and despite the outcome of the call being by all accounts a success, groaned and dragged a hand down his face in despair.

Joshua lowered his voice in the silence that followed.

“Shit,” he said. “She’s onto us.”

Clive was pacing anxiously in front of the doorway of the infirmary, Joshua and his friends with him to provide moral support, when Tarja arrived, early for her shift after hearing that her friend had been rushed there due to an undisclosed accident in Eastpool.

“What the hell happened?!” she demanded, somehow already knowing that the four of them had something to do with it. “I heard that a bookcase fell on her!”

Thankfully, the incident was not as dramatic as everyone had perceived it to be, Clive having managed to hold up the unit before it fell on the both of them, leaving Jill only to sustain injuries caused by the heavy books that slipped off the shelves that he did not manage to catch in the process.

Nevertheless, the boys fidgeted under Tarja’s scrutiny, looking to each other for urgent guidance.

Eventually, she trained her accusing look at Clive who, after a mental conversation with the others, decided it best that he explain the situation himself, stretching the truth if needs be and to be as vague as possible with the details. 

They all, however, seemed to have forgotten that Clive was as terrible as lying as he was talking to girls.

“Well, you see, Tarja…I saw this book that I really wanted, and I kind of—forcefully grabbed it before anyone else could and well, I don’t really know my own strength these days, just ask Jill, I’ve been going to the gym a lot lately and uh…” 

Not believing him for a second and conceding to the fact that Tarja would find out the truth in the end anyway, Joshua put a hand on her shoulder and drew up next to her, lowering his face next to hers as he explained the situation.

The girl closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, visibility tampering down a violent reaction.

“You’re all idiots, get the fuck out of my infirmary.”

Since their illegal excursion across Rosaria on their way to Tabor last semester, there wasn’t a single day that went by without someone asking questions or making assumptions about Jill’s relationship with Clive Rosfield.

She couldn’t blame them, though. There weren’t many other explanations as to why he was throwing ‘rocks’ at her window, why he was sending her flowers via a pulley mechanism instead of just having them delivered to her room, and why he was seen running like a maniac across campus carrying her on his back.

Jill did not mind it, she just wished there was some truth behind it. But it was not as if she was doubtful of Clive’s feelings for her, that he liked spending time with her, even if it were just snatches of time here and there. The way he seemed to light up when they were together was enough for her for now, his kindness and attentiveness to her often leaving her more flustered delight than she knew what to do with.

He was trying, she knew this, and was probably getting himself into more trouble to be with her than he had ever been in his entire life. Sure, she felt bad and kind of responsible, but if Jill were to be honest with herself, watching whatever convoluted scheme he and his friends had planned next unfold and sneaking around was already half the fun, because the pie they shared in Eastpool was delicious, especially with a side of their insubordination.

Yes, it wasn’t a case of if it would happen but more a case of when.

And with Clive, she knew she had to be patient, especially when it was obvious that his friends were everything but, even if that meant occasionally putting up with people coming up to her and saying stuff like:

“Hey, Jill Warrick. You’re Clive Rosfield’s girlfriend, right?”

A girl she had never spoken to before collared her on the way to her next class and caught off guard, Jill stammered, “Oh. Well, he and I—”

The girl didn’t even wait for her to confirm or deny the fact.

“—Great, I’m Jote, from the Student Council Committee,” she said, motioning towards the lapel badge pinned to her blazer. “I was wondering if you could do me a favour and pass on a message to him. I’ve been trying to get a hold of your boyfriend for weeks, but I suspect that he’s been reluctant to talk to me because my brother Cyril is the founder of that Undying fan club that follow him and his brother around.”

“He’s not my—ah, sure,” Jill replied, agreeing only because it was probably easier than trying to correct her. “What do you need from him?”

“Thank you!” Jote said, looking relieved. “I just want to know what game the men’s fencing team are competing in this year at Sports Day.”

Jill blinked at her, wondering if she was missing something.

“Would it not be…fencing?”

“Ah no, I forgot this is your first year here,” Jote explained with a laugh, though there was no malice behind it. “Once all the other games are finished, we have this round where the clubs compete in other sports. The tennis team try cricket, the volleyball team play the rugby team in a game of basketball, that sort of thing. It’s all good fun…” 

As she said this, Jote looked as if she had just come up with an ingenious idea and rounded herself next to Jill so that she could see the papers on the clipboard that she was holding.

“…You know what, it would actually save me a lot of time if you could just choose one now and let him know.”

“He won’t mind?” Jill was unsure, but the younger girl insisted.

“Oh no, like I said, it’s not a serious game.”

She handed the clipboard to her and Jill flipped through the first couple of pages, looking through the different categories with spaces that hadn’t been filled yet.

“Well, if you’re sure…” she said, and without really thinking it through, picked the first sport that she could think of.

“Football?!”

Since hearing the news from the student council via Coach Cid, Clive had gone into cardiac arrest again and the others had been working overtime on damage control.

“Wait!” Joshua came to a belated realisation, giving them all a temporary false sense of hope. “When Cid said football, did he mean our kind or the Waloud kind?”

“Our kind,” Clive confirmed disparagingly and Dion looked confused.

“There’s a difference?”

“Yeah. The Waloud kind is like rugby, but with padding,” Clive explained. “They call our football ‘soccer’.”

“Oh right,” Dion was still sceptical. “I wonder why they call it football when they use their hands too…?”

Before they got into a debate however, Gav refocused the group on the topic at hand, having not understood their hysteria in the first place.

“Am I missing something? What’s wrong with football?” he asked and Joshua groaned, pressing the palms of his hands into his eye sockets.

“Clearly, you have never seen my brother try to kick a ball, Gav.”

“It’s diabolical,” Dion agreed gravely. 

“He is beyond saving.” 

Clive threw his arms up in the air.

“I’m standing right here!”

Unconvinced that his friend was entirely a lost cause, Gav suggested that with Sports Day still being a week and a half away, Clive could get some practice in so that he would not perform as badly as Dion and Joshua claimed.

Later that same afternoon, the four made their way to the playing fields during the football team’s training session, with Clive feeling very much like a child being dropped off on his first day of school. 

They were met by Wade and Tyler, captain and vice-captain of Rosalith’s champion football team, the Rosarian Shields, and who were more than happy to help out with Clive’s predicament. 

They both stood to their attention, honoured to have been asked and appreciating the seriousness of the task at hand.

“Of course! I am a Shield of Rosaria, and I will do my duty!”

At the end of their session, however, Gav, Dion and Joshua returned to the grounds where the two met them pitchside, both looking as if they had aged several years in the last hour.

“He’s hopeless,” Wade shook his head, appearing utterly defeated. “Absolutely fucking awful.”

“I don’t get it,” Tyler was more baffled than anything else. “Doesn’t fencing require some sort of mastery of footwork? And how does he manage to hold a sword with coordination like that?”

They all looked to Clive then who was still on the pitch, trying to kick a stationary ball only to miss, step over it completely and fall on his arse.

Gav watched on in horror.

“Dear lord…”

“Can you at least get him—proficient in time for Sports Day?” Joshua pleaded, and though Wade agreed to let him tag along to as many practices as he liked, they could tell that he was still sceptical. 

“Why is it so important that he plays well, anyway?” he asked. “No one takes that round seriously, and House Phoenix has got this one in the bag this year!”

Tyler snorted. 

“Well, just as long as House Odin doesn’t cheat again.”

“Yeah man, fuck House Odin.”

“Actually,” Joshua explained, already feeling a bit foolish. “It’s because of a girl. Do you know Jill Warrick?” 

“Oh yeah. In House Shiva?” 

“Yeah, she joined last term,” he said. “Clive likes her and kind of doesn’t want to make a fool out of himself in front of her.”

Wade and Tyler exchanged a look, clearly having heard otherwise when they asked:

“But aren’t they already dating?”

Dion rolled his eyes into the next century.

“Believe it or not, no.”

“What?!”

“Why the hell not?!”

Gav sighed, “that’s what we keep saying…”

As practice came to a close, the three watched and waited as it finished up with Tyler now trying their luck with Clive in goal, but it seemed like half the team were reluctant to kick a ball at him because no one wanted to risk hitting his gorgeous face.

Still one to give it his all despite the dire circumstances, Clive dived for a shot with admittedly admirable enthusiasm, only to collide with a goalpost. 

Wade breathed in deeply to sustain himself whilst everyone else winced as he made impact.

“Look,” he said. “I’ll try my best but I’m not making any promises.”

For a school like Rosalith, whose students had been sorted into four different houses—House Phoenix, House Shiva, House Odin and House Bahamut—since the day they had enrolled, Sports Day was by all accounts a fiercely competitive event and one of the highlights of the school year.

The excitement was punctuated by the fact that the girl’s and boy’s schools competed alongside each other, each side eager to impress, and then the day would end with a school-wide bonfire and fireworks display, to not only celebrate the start of summer but also as a send-off to the students in their final year before they moved on to work or higher education.

It was what Joshua, an unapologetic Shoujo manga enjoyer, described as the ‘perfect conditions for a love confession’.

On the day, Clive, Jill and the others met up outside of the dormitory buildings and made their way to the grounds together, happy to do so without staff and security breathing down their necks.

It was nice, natural even, to be walking side by side with Jill, though Clive thinks he would have enjoyed their brief encounter more if not for Dion humming the tune to The Little Mermaid’s ‘Kiss the Girl’ behind them.

On the way to the grounds, they came upon the pyre for the bonfire, its ample construction headed by one Midadol Telamon who claimed that each one had to be bigger and grander than the last years. 

It was made up of hardwood panels and bales of straw at the bottom where students were adding their own offerings to the structure, namely their workbooks, exam notes and everything that they wanted to burn into non-existence to mark the end of the school year. 

Jill gasped when she saw it, tall and imposing and rather impressive.

“Wow,” she said, raising a hand to her face to shield her eyes from the sun as looked up. “I knew it would be big, but this…”

Clive heard a snigger from behind them.

“That’s what she said.”

“Fucking hell, Joshua…”

Even though there were plenty of chances for them to see each other throughout the day, the couple were still disappointed that they had to part ways to join their opposite teams, separated by house colour and filing neatly across the playing fields.

As the others petered off, Clive and Jill lingered behind, turning to face each other and filling the space between them with a shared hesitance and anticipation.

“Well,” Jill grinned, breaking the silence. “It looks like we’re rivals for the day, Clive.”

“Seems that way,” he smiled, sheepishly. “I guess I’ll…see you at the bonfire and fireworks show later?”

He meant it to be an invitation to watch them with him—at least, he hoped it came across that way—but he was never really sure nor could he bring himself to be more explicit without risking spontaneous combustion. 

“Yeah, that’ll be nice,” Jill said, her cheeks flushing prettily. She seemed to have been on the same wavelength at least, when she took a half step backwards and for the first time, appeared just as bashful as he was. “I’ll see you later then. And good luck with the game later! I’ll be watching!”

The day went by without incident until the fated football match in the late afternoon, where Joshua and Clive were on the pitch representing the fencing team and House Pheonix, with Dion watching on anxiously from the bleachers. 

To his credit, Clive wasn’t performing too badly, mainly keeping out of the way and occasionally passing a wayward ball back to his teammates if it ever came close enough.

All seemed to be going well until Gav in House Shiva colours came pushing past and tripping up over the other spectators to get to his friend, effectively causing a scene.

“Dion,” he was panting. “We might have a problem.” 

“What?” Dion said, suddenly on hyper-alert, immediately assuming Clive had done something dumb again despite being on the pitch and under constant surveillance all day.

“Well, the girl’s fencing team,” Gav said, doubling over onto his knees. “They’ve swapped sports with the cheerleaders…”

“…Why would that be a prob—?” 

Dion began, until something caught his eye and caught him mid-sentence from across the field. 

“—Oh no…” he whispered.

It was Jill, in the formfitting uniform of the cheerleading team: red and white with a large gold ‘R’ for Rosalith stretched across her chest, pom-poms of the same colour scheme in each hand with her hair tied back into a long ponytail, high on her head.

Enthusiastically, she jumped up and down on the spot, her skirt swinging against her upper thighs and her top riding up as she waved her arms in the air.

“Go, Clive!” she cheered and the boy stopped dead in his tracks.

The match ended for him with Joshua screaming: “Clive, watch out!” and then getting escorted off the pitch on a stretcher not long after.

“Well,” Dion said, when Gav was too speechless to speak. “That was embarrassing.”

“Clive?”

Jill’s voice was as quiet as the way she shut the infirmary door behind her, mindful of any other patients behind the curtained cubicles and the fact that she should probably not be in there, despite most of the school’s staff being otherwise occupied with Sports Day, and that Tarja had showed her in without her needing to ask. 

She came upon him on a bed furthest away and by the large bay windows, sitting with his back to her with his shoulders hunched.

“Hey Clive,” she repeated once she was close enough and startled, the boy straightened up and spun his torso around to face her, revealing a large white bandage taped to his cheek on the righthand side of his face where the ball had made impact.

“Jill?”

“Yeah. I came to check on you,” she smiled, taking another step closer to the foot of the bed. 

Clive scooted up towards the head of it and she took that as an invitation to sit down next to him. He felt the mattress sink with their combined weight and felt his throat close up and his voice go hoarse.

“It’s nothing, honestly,” still, he tried his best to appear unaffected. “I’m fine.”

He gestured vaguely at his cheek and then to their surroundings with a short, huff of a laugh. 

“This is all a bit dramatic, really.”

“Dramatic?” Jill repeated, like the choice of word was not quite enough to describe what the last few months had been for the both of them. “Yes, it seems to be that way with you and you and your friends.”

She laughed lightly, perhaps even endearingly, or at the very least in a way that assured him that she was more amused by their shenanigans than anything else, and he couldn’t help but laugh along with her then and at the insanity of it all. 

“Are you guys always like this?” she asked and Clive shook his head with an almost resigned kind of sigh. 

“No, that’s not…” he began. “They have…the best of intentions…”

“Intentions for what?” she dared to ask, and watched as Clive cast his gaze down between them, unable to look her in the eye.

“Well, isn’t it obvious? It’s because I like…”

He lifted his head up just in time to see Jill tilt her head at an angle cutely, and he felt that treacherous heat spreading up the back of his neck once again.

“…Ah,” he couldn’t quite bring himself to say it, especially when she was looking at him like that. “Ignore me.”

Defeated, he leant back on his hands and his fell over hers on the top of the mattress and they both looked down, startled by the contact.

A second later their eyes snapped back up to each other and Jill watched and waited for Clive’s next move. 

He looked hesitant, tentative, hovering in that mental space you land in when you’re new to a situation and awaiting instruction.

Astonishingly, however, when she leaned in to close the gap between their heads, he moved to meet her halfway, both holding their breaths as their lips inched closer and closer, their faces tilting naturally to the side, until they were almost—

“—CLIVE!” 

Gav burst through the door, slamming it onto its hinges.

“WHERE ARE YOU?!”