Work Text:
Cedar Wood is alive.
She frowns down at the paper, and writes it again.
Cedar Wood is alive.
Cedar sighs, leaning back in her chair in the library. It’s long deserted, with it being long past midnight. She dares to sigh louder, getting to her feet.
Even her truth curse doesn’t count her as alive, which bothers her almost as much as a pebble in her joints. Cedar sighs louder, trailing a finger over the books near her back corner of the library. She eyes the mirror that hides the room the Evil Queen used to go to the Monster Realm, where Cupid, Draculaura, and Raven set up the fog door to travel between the two for common use.
Cedar looks around, steps into the room behind the mirror, and looks into the fog. She clenches her fist, and reaches for the fog door. It swings towards her before she touches it, and someone steps through, blinking at her with mismatched eyes.
“Oh! Cedar!” Frankie grins, electricity running down her arm.
“Frankie!” Cedar smiles back automatically, waiting for the sparks to fade before pulling her into a hug. “How have you been? I haven’t seen you in forever after!”
Frankie sweeps Cedar into a hug, washing away the grit in her brain, giggling a little in the quiet. “I’ve been fangtastic.” Her voice is muffled by Cedar’s hair, and she’s still somehow relaxing into their hug, despite how uncomfortable it is to hug her.
Cedar pulls back to spare Frankie the pain, still smiling up at her uncontrollably. Frankie keeps holding her shoulders, smiling just as brightly back at her. They stand there, staring and smiling before Cedar makes the effort to blink.
“We should sit!” She steps back, twiddling her thumbs as she leads Frankie to the table she claimed earlier in the evening. She sweeps her books into a pile, knowing that if she was human her face would be burning. Frankie helps gather her papers, brushing her hands against Cedar’s, just a bit too often to be accidental.
“What’s this?”
“Hm?” Cedar pats the pile of books, and looks up, at the piece of paper Frankie dangles between her fingers. “Oh.” She folds the parchment, and tucks it into her pocket. “It’s just- we had this assignment in Tall Tales to write our favorite parts of being alive, so we could write a story about it.” Cedar picks at a splinter, and frowns. “Professor Nimble wanted us all to start with the same sentence, but I can’t write it properly, because it’s not true.”
“Who told you that?” Frankie snorts, sitting on the table next to where she stands.
“Most people, and my truth curse agreed.” Cedar keeps her eyes on the table. “So it has to be true.”
“But you are alive!” Frankie almost shouts, sparks flying off her hands.
“I wasn’t born-“
“Neither was I.” Frankie puts her hands on Cedar’s shoulders, and maneuvers her so she’s standing in front of Frankie. “I was built in a lab, remember.”
“Which isn’t that different from being carved in a woodshop.”
“Exactly, and you consider me alive, right?” Frankie gives a lopsided grin, stitches pulling as she does so.
“Yeah, I do.” Cedar smiles back, tilting her head back to look at Frankie better. “And I can’t say you’re alive because you have a heartbeat and stuff like that, because a lot of monsters don’t, and they’re still alive, even if they aren’t alive.”
“By those standards I would be alive, wouldn’t I, but I can’t say I’m alive. I can say I’m living.” Cedar looks down to frown, before picking at another splinter. “Which is somehow different from being alive? But it shouldn’t be, not really.”
Frankie hums, like what Cedar says makes complete sense. Maybe it does, but Cedar’s busy watching her eyes go all soft as Frankie watches her talk.
“What do you-?” Frankie blinks. “Why’re you looking at me like that?”
“Oh, no reason.” Frankie lies, tapping her fingers on Cedar’s shoulders, pulling her just a little bit closer.
“Are you sure?” Cedar braces her hands against the table. “I’m not bothering you, am I?”
“You couldn’t ever.” Frankie grins, eyes softening again at the smile she gets in return.
“There you go again!” Cedar wrinkles her nose. Frankie’s gaze somehow softens even more, while Cedar studies her. “You’re looking at me like I put the stars in the sky, or something incredible like that.”
“You’re alive.” Frankie says, watching Cedar blink, slow and deliberate like she always does. “That’s extraordinary.”
“But-“
Frankie shushes her, leaning their foreheads together. “You’re extraordinary.”
“I’m really not.” Cedar mumbles, but she doesn’t shy away, even as sparks of electricity start to crackle around Frankie’s bolts.
“I thought you couldn’t lie?”
“I can’t-“ -but I don’t think my opinion counts as a lie, she starts. Frankie leans closer before she can get to the point, a tiny spark running through her. “Um.”
“Um?” Frankie grins.
Cedar giggles, feeling a spark arch down her spine. “Frankie!”
Frankie kisses the tip of Cedar’s nose, pulling her in closer by the straps of her suspenders, watching Cedar’s eyes sparkle. “Cedar.”
Cedar lifts a hand and skims a finger over a patch of stitching on Frankie’s cheek, leaning into her a bit more. “You’re strange.”
“I’m monstrous, Cedar, get it right.” Cedar rolls her eyes, wrapping her arms around Frankie’s neck.
“Absolutely frightening.” Frankie holds her breath, trying to tamp down the volts flying from her neck. Prolonged electrocution isn’t good for anything.
They could kiss, right now. Frankie just could lean in, and kiss her. How clawsome would that be?
“You’re making that face again.” Cedar whistles, scanning Frankie’s face with narrowed eyes. “And I didn’t do anything this time.”
“Not yet.”
“I don’t ever do anything!”
Frankie rolls her eyes, putting a finger over Cedar’s mouth. Cedar stares back at her with what would be an eerie expression, face blank as she waits, if Frankie weren’t Frankie.
“You don’t need to do anything for me to think you’re fangtastic.” Her finger twitches as Cedar smiles. She really could just kiss her.
“I mean, if you wanted to.” Cedar grins a little wider, uncaring of the hand basically covering her mouth. “I wouldn’t mind.”
Thankfully, Frankie cuts her off before she says anything embarrassing like saying I’ve kind of been wanting to kiss you this entire time and I started matching my accessories to the color of your eyes, which was hard because they’re such specific shades of blue and green that I had to make my own suspenders, isn’t that silly?
And kissing Frankie is way better than saying all those words, so she doesn’t see why she’s thinking so much.
Cedar pushes herself onto her tiptoes to kiss her better, a detached hand holding her steady until Frankie pulls back with a wheeze.
“I need to find a way to stop breathing.” She mumbles, while Cedar opens and lowers her eyes.
“I’m-“
Frankie swallows the apology with a sharp smile, sending both a metaphorical and literal spark down Cedar’s spine. They get it down to a science, fingertips spreading harnessed lighting through Cedar carefully, kisses lasting just as long as they can without causing Frankie pain.
Cedar Wood is not alive. She likes art, and cooking with her grandfather. She likes trying new teas, and playing games with her friends. She really likes kissing her ghoulfriend, and likes doesn’t mind the feeling of electricity spreading through her grain. She is not alive.
But she is living. And that’s better.
Also, Professor Nimble, my ghoulfriend said I am alive, so suck it.