Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The flyers feel heavy in Harper’s palms. She shifts them around, her joints awkward and restless and only following because she willed them to. They would stay locked if they had the autonomy.

Fuck shit up. That’s what Emma had amped them up to do in a bout of protagonist-worthy encouragement. If Harper knew that fucking shit up meant stealing Homelander flyers from the walls of the school just to replace them with a sprayed mix of insults and encouragements, she sure as hell wouldn’t have let the inspiration get to her head — she doesn’t even fully understand how that idea came about.

Oh, Harper forgot that they’re planning to burn the flyers, too; Ally made the daring choice of holding the lighter and the spray paint can in her hoodie pocket at the same time, two items of evidence in the exact same place.

Also, spray paint and flames don’t go well together. It’s like using hairspray by a bonfire; solvents are no joke.

Fuck. This is what Harper gets for seeing sad, tear-filled eyes the size of two tapioca pearls and letting the resulting tug in her chest lead her here — and, she doesn’t even regret it. She’s only concerned because she wishes she did.

No, damnit, that’s a lie. Nothing in Harper wishes to regret trusting Emma, because trusting Emma got her and Ally out of their matching comfort zones. They have a shot at actually doing something in retaliation to all the bad shit going on right now, even if the plan is a little stupid and supremely risky and likely won’t do even anything but rile the other side up. They’ve already seen the cult-like hive of Homelander’s dogmatically hateful devotees crawling in every crevice of this fucking school — what’s more, right?

But Emma doesn’t seem to be scared of the risk. She doesn’t seem scared of anything.

Another lie. Two strikes, Harper — dark eyes made even darker with betrayal flash in the stream of her head. Insults hurled at a shocked and defensive Justine cause her ears to ring; scared? Angry? Sad? All three, she thinks. All three because it was fucked up — Harper knew it was fucked up. She didn’t stop it because she’s a coward.

Harper’s footfalls stutter out of step for a moment, and she quickly straightens with an exhale that quivers as it exits. Slow down, Harper. The brain shouldn’t be running faster than the legs in active motion.

She corrects her earlier statement: Emma isn’t scared of a lot, but that doesn’t make her fearless. Everyone is scared of something, Emma just carries her fear with a fury that overpowers whatever caused the amygdala to freak out and pump the brakes. Harper wishes she could overcome her fears as easily as that — like it’s a habit, or a common skill. Like drinking water.

She wishes her fear was paired with anger, but no. It’s paired with even more fear — tenfold, if you will, because she’s a hurricane of paranoia, and being a hurricane of paranoia won’t get her anywhere as an activist.

No, shut up. Emma believes in this — believes in Harper and believes in Ally. Harper is tired of being the stereotypical coward that gets nothing done. She can try this and not psyche out.

She shrinks herself deeper into the hoodie swallowing her frame, anyways.

Co-leading the disguise-adorned pack down the dormitory corridor, Ally stalks cautiously after a carefree Emma, steps uncoordinated. She carries her own stack of flyers close to her chest. “Are you sure that this is a perfectly good idea and not something that’ll get us flayed by the public?”

Emma sways and faces Ally, brows pinching together. “Everything gets us flayed by the public,” she replies simply, tone light. “That’s why we’re doing this.”

“I don’t think adding fuel to the eternal flame is the best route,” Ally argues, grumbling and kicking a stray beer can out of her path and towards the wall. Emma shrugs, gesticulating oddly with the hand gripping her load of flyers.

“We’re just pulling the same punches that they pull,” Emma tacks on a toothy grin. “If they wanna fuck our shit up, we’re gonna fuck theirs up even harder.”

Emma abruptly looks back; frowns when she finds Harper at an unusual distance. In response to this realization Emma slows her pace, leaving room for Harper to catch up despite her slow stride, and Harper’s brain buffers and shorts at the gesture. Since when was she walking at a snail’s pace?

Grimacing at herself, Harper accelerates a little and quickly levels with the other two, landing about two inches behind them, trailing after like a shadow even with the reduction in proximity. Harper looks between them nonsensically and freezes when Emma catches her eye with a smile that Harper thinks is trying to be comforting but instead causes a deep skip in Harper’s quiet pulse.

Well, maybe it used to be quiet, but now it’s a little loud in her ears. It resonates like a jackhammer to concrete, ricocheting sharply. Harper bows her head against the sensation, swiftly paying rapt attention to the patterns in the tiled flooring.

To Harper’s relief, Emma seems to let it go. “Besides, it’s always been fire versus fire. Peacemaking has gotten our asses nowhere, because some people don’t give a single shit for cordiality, so why should we?”

There’s an unwavering dedication in Emma’s voice, and she carries it loudly; unashamed and fairly pissed. Harper hears another beer can being kicked even more aggressively than the last, and Harper genuinely can’t tell if it’s frustration or restlessness that charged the strike. It depends on who it was that did it: Ally is simply a frustrated person by nature while Emma seems to be in nonstop motion — hands gesturing for everything she voices and body unable to stick in one place for more than ten seconds.

Ally scoffs, and Harper looks back up; Ally’s looking at Emma with an expression that reads both irritation and understanding, like it’s an annoyance that she is in fact picking up what Emma’s putting down. “Can’t we just — like, do something that’s still bold but isn’t so fucking risky —“

Having apparently listened to enough, Emma interjects with a brassy, discordant hum, causing Ally to peter off.

“You can’t do the whole activist schtick without risk,” Emma lifts the flyers and gives them a rough shake in emphasis, brows lifting to her hairline. “Activism without risk is just sitting on your ass and liking posts and articles that do all the ass-kicking and risk-taking for you.”

“Or painting useless words and putting up useless flyers,” Harper blurts out, smiling wryly to play off the sudden humor.

Anxiety eats at her as the two turn to look at her — Ally with shock and Emma with interest — causing Harper to freeze again, like a deer caught in headlights. The group comes to a stop in the middle of the corridor.

“Yeah,” Emma slowly nods, smile lifting into something big and wolfish. Her dark eyes brighten with a proud thrill directed right at Harper with the force of a spotlight turned up to a thousand watts. “Like painting useless words and putting up useless flyers.”

Ally, however, groans at Harper’s poor attempt at a quip. “This is betrayal of the highest degree,” but the quirk in the corners of her mouth signifies a subdued smile, so Harper takes it as a win.

They laugh among themselves for a moment, sucked into a high of humor after a long period of semi-serious bickering — leave Harper out of that, though. All the bickering was between Ally and Emma; Harper isn’t fond of arguing, even if it’s entirely satirical. If someone tells you otherwise then they only know of the pseudo-Harper that loves drama and loves even more to start it.

Not so much pseudo if it’s just who she pretends to be… more so facade-Harper, or whatever the fuck that means — Harper with a facade, she puts together.

Because of course the girl with chameleon powers needs camouflage to hide from the predators of a corrupt government system, and… social media, she supposes.

Pseudo insinuates she isn’t real when she’s pretending, that she’s false. But she guesses that’s true, in a way, because the Harper that’s okay with gossiping and harassment and sucking up to freaks is a Harper she doesn’t want to be real. She shouldn’t be as tangible as she is.

Ally has been helping her feel real apart from the facade for as long as Harper’s known her, and though she’s only truly known Emma for a day and a half, Emma’s starting to as well. It’s the contrast in Ally’s wavering but candid affection; Emma’s loud but burning way of loving. It’s a balance of calm and boisterous.

Harper doesn’t think she’s had a friend group like this before. The easy jokes and open conversations are two things she’s entirely unused to, lacking the venom of envy or the underlying threat of using a flaw or a vulnerable trait as blackmail. Greg hangs around as another trustworthy ear to grip and rant to, but he’s almost always too busy to help Ally and Harper out with their rebellious endeavors. Harper would be busy, too, if it weren’t for the fact that she’s ghosted practically all the “friends” she had for prestigious purposes.

She never really saw those kids as her friends, anyways. They were people she used as a giant wall to keep the flack from reaching her — if you’re popular and keep to yourself with a power perceived as pointless, you’re left entirely alone. But Harper’s power isn’t pointless. She can copy literally fucking anyone, and even if she’s limited by a minute that sixty seconds nonetheless gives her an advantage over a whole lot of people.

Letting people believe that her power is just having a tail that annoys the fuck out of her is the safest cover-up she has, and it’s not her fault that everyone believes it; gullible is written on every ceiling in the school. That isn’t her problem, and that not-her-problem is something she’ll manipulate until the day she dies.

But Emma doesn’t seem to want her to manipulate it anymore, she wants Harper to see her own quiet dedication to change things and wants her to take it to levels deemed unreachable by every written syllable in society’s ledger; she wants Harper to look at the coward’s way out and for her to block it off with nailed boards and caution tape; she wants Harper to take the world by the neck and wants her to absolutely pulverize it —

Okay, woah, slow down. That both is and isn’t what Emma wants her to do; Harper’s desires are bleeding a little heavily into the part of her mind that conjures ideas.

Emma wants her to fuck shit up and bite back, and weirdly enough, Harper thinks she wants that, too.

Emma’s also one hell of an anomaly — a really hot anomaly, but an anomaly nonetheless.

Wait, what? Hot? Where the actual fuck did that come from?

With a jackhammer once again in her ears and an unfamiliar rolling in her stomach Harper tries to mull over what her brain had just forcibly spat into her consciousness, but it’s ultimately futile the moment she registers the sound of a door being opened and then closed somewhere slightly off in the distance — far enough away to reduce a chance at quickly eliminating that space.

But close enough to see what they’re holding.

Close enough to see who they are.

Wait a minute, someone’s coming into the corridor —

“Yo, hey!”

Shit.

“What the hell are you three doing with those flyers?”

Shit. She knows that voice.

Rusty Barlowe.

A very angry, quickly approaching Rusty Barlowe. Fuck.

Of all people, why Rusty? If Rufus didn’t exist as a constant knick in her spine, Harper would crown Rusty the title of the most irksome Hometeamer of God U — the red hair and the constellation of freckles make him look cuter than his flawlessly memorized and broad list of derogatory dialect.

The decision to go for the conservative, sister-kissing mullet instead of the metalhead mullet definitely puts a damper on the objectively attractive appearance, though.

Harper sees as Ally pales and abruptly mutters a slew of curses under her breath, having noticed the exact same thing and taking a subconscious step back.

But Emma? She’s technically still new to a vast majority of the students here, so of course her only reaction is a tilted head that causes her hair to flop and migrate to one side — it’s dreadfully endearing.

No, shut the fuck up. There are more important things to think about.

Like how deeply ass-fucked they are.

Emma leans back towards Harper a comical amount, stage-whispering by her right shoulder. The proximity causes Harper’s skin to prick. “So, seeing Ally’s reaction, am I supposed to know who this guy is?”

Harper exhales sharply, leaning half an inch forward in return. “Rusty Barlowe.”

“Powers?” Emma asks.

“Electrokinesis,” Harper replies, voice lowering an octave.

Harper feels as Emma freezes where the top of her spine barely meets Harper’s shoulder, but she recovers quickly and dips back even further, and Harper has to harshly suppress a flinch at the sudden decrease in distance that was already a shred of lint away from being flush.

“His parents missed the opportunity to rename him Sparky,” Emma mumbles, blunt and deadpan, and Harper could kill Emma for the tacky one-liner actually managing to get a small, crooked smile from her despite the fear actively clouding her head; a sunbeam in a rainstorm.

But this small moment of brightness is promptly ripped away as Rusty finally gains on them — why he jogged over rather than running is a question Harper can’t answer nor is it one she wants to answer. Maybe he knew they wouldn’t run at the feeling of being cornered.

Okay, cornered is dramatic; the dormitory corridor is intensely sparse at this time of day and Emma had said not too long ago that her dorm is in this particular area.

Though, Harper did in fact consider grabbing Ally and Emma and sprinting off into the opposite direction, but she knows Rusty would’ve either closed the distance with one of them immediately given his unfortunate speed or simply zapped their feet, efficiently tripping them.

And before it’s asked, no he isn’t against torching people — he’s a sadistic, insecure fuck-boy terminally hiding behind a soft face and an even softer ego. Make one hole in it and he’ll curse you and your entire family through one of those Etsy witches that aren’t even witches, but expecting him to know that would be overestimating his extent of common sense.

So, in short: he’s Rufus but dumber.

A feat thought to be impossible.

Rusty sets himself an arm and a half’s length away from the trio, face stony with thinly veiled accusations that are likely scraping at his teeth to escape. His feet shuffle with the clear urge to step closer.

“I’m gonna ask again: what the hell are you three doing with those flyers?” Rusty sternly questions. By the reedy baritone straining his voice, he’s trying to be assertive.

He’s not exactly succeeding.

His eyes flicker between their faces, and the more he recognizes, the more he seems to boil with a suspicion he’s struggling to keep pocketed.

Emma blinks, feigning confusion and pointing with her empty hand at the flyers in her other. “These flyers?”

Harper mentally face-palms. At Ally’s heavy sigh to her left, Harper assumes she’s in the same boat.

Rusty’s face twists with confusion. “What the fuck else would I be talking about?”

When Emma simply continues to eye him innocently, Rusty scoffs.

“Yes, those flyers. Can you answer my fuckin’ question now, bug eyes?” Rusty crosses his arms, finally giving into that chained urge by taking a small step forward.

Zero stars, man. Oldest intimidation tactic in the book: look so big and scary that it looks like you’re following a bear survival guide you found in the dregs of YouTube.

Also, bug eyes? That’s more so Harper than it is Emma — at least, that’s what Harper’s been told.

Emma blinks once more at this before a tiny smile crosses her lips, slightly devilish.

“We’re just putting more up for the school to see, because who would get tired of routinely looking up and seeing this face?” Emma answers, now pointing to the portrait of Homelander on the forefront flyer of the stack in her hand, smile widening a smidge.

The statement is soaking with sarcasm and Rusty seems to pick up on it, hand flexing on his bicep as he grins through gritted teeth. Harper can feel her tail itching to thrash with unease, but it’s suppressed and tucked under the hoodie swallowing her frame.

“There’s been kids reporting a whole bunch of flyers that went missing all over the school,” Rusty remarks. His fingers are drumming impatiently against his arm and his eyes are fiery with a determination that Harper so desperately wishes to snuff out.

“You sure you’re puttin’ shit up?” He questions, but it sounds more akin to an interrogation they can’t get out of.

“What? You think we stole them?” Emma coughs out a laugh at this, face morphing into something bright with teasing — mocking, even. From a certain angle.

Emma’s smile falls coy and faintly wolfish as a metaphorical lightbulb flashes behind her eyes. Harper’s spine goes rigid with a feeling she can only call dread, because she knows whatever is going to be said is going to completely blow their cover.

Is she going to stop her? No, honestly. Ally’s wide, pleading eyes are practically begging her to, but something in Harper is curious, because surely it can’t be that bad —

“There’s enough prints of Homelander’s face in these three stacks alone to be in a neo-Nazi’s wet dream,” Emma slowly says, voice strangled with smiley disbelief, “and you think we stole them? Why the fuck would we do that?”

The three stare at Emma, shock etching into the ridges of their individual expressions in three very different fonts as silence completely consumes the moment.

Whatever Harper thought low was, Emma might’ve just surpassed it.

Rusty flounders, utterly horrified. His face is red and his mouth is opening and closing like a beached fish trying to swallow the oxygen it can’t consume. “Neo — who the fuck do you think you’re talking about?”

He takes a larger step forward this time, now only half an arm apart with his voice booming, and Emma automatically backs up to keep some distance. Her face remains obdurate, but there’s an undercurrent of fear blotching in the glow of her eyes; a tenseness in her jawline that Harper recognizes with a sharp pain in her chest. Ally has stepped a little further back compared to the other two, entirely unwilling to be involved if this escalates, and Harper can’t exactly blame her. Being electrocuted isn’t fucking fun.

The patches of carpet beneath Rusty’s feet spark as he glares at them with his hair standing up from the increase in electric friction surely coursing through his veins, fingers twitching at his sides like a live wire waiting to be pulled. Emma audibly swallows; she blinks rapidly, like she has a plan in mind but doesn’t know what to do with it now that Rusty’s one word away from turning into a cumulonimbus cloud.

Ally’s scared out of her mind, Emma’s at an uncharacteristic loss for words, and Harper’s just… standing aimlessly with a heap of flyers crumpled up and jagged in her palms, fists having apparently tightened around it an unhealthy amount; if her palms start bleeding from the sharpened corners, she wouldn’t be surprised.

But Harper is just as tired of doing nothing as she was when Emma pitched this whole idea of stealing the flyers and incinerating them with a cheap gas station lighter; just as tired as she was when Emma cut her and Ally’s careful plans off in trade for a speech about being heroes and handling things with a healthy awareness of the risk.

Emma hates it when Harper and Ally cower, because she insists it means letting the bad guys win. They want to rob the Starlighters of their dedication to fortifying the society that’s rapidly being capsized by dictators and megalomaniacal citizens that think an imbalance in power is the only way to balance the average way of living, like imbalance is the only way to balance anything; balance isn’t balance because of inequality, it’s literally the opposite, and it’s been that way since the universe was created.

Harper locks back into reality to see Rusty practically in Emma’s face, gesturing wildly with his hands, but the words leaving his mouth are coated in a white noise that makes everything but the audible fuzz indistinguishable to Harper’s eardrums, and when the anger in her stomach simmers and burns like acid in her system at the shrunken, hollow look on Emma’s face —

Okay. Fuck it.

“We’re talking about you,” is all Harper can get out. The words waver as they leave, and panic fights with white-hot rage in her head as Rusty stills. His eyes flicker up to stare past Emma and right at Harper, their light blue complexion turned stormy with unchecked mania, and Harper has to bite down on a wince at the phantom feel of it burning a brand into her skull.

Emma turns her head to look at Harper as well, albeit slower, and the awed surprise swimming in big, teary eyes is enough to make Harper preen against the sensation threatening to swallow her whole.

Rusty’s nostrils flare. “Say that again for me?”

And Harper isn’t an idiot, she knows he heard her. He just wants a reason to snap.

With a set in her jaw that likely looks more confident than she feels, Harper supposes she might as well give him one.

“I said,” Harper exhales, forcing herself to maintain eye contact, “that we’re talking about you.”

Ally leans back into Harper’s peripheral, watching her with wide eyes that scream “you’re fucking crazy, Harper,” and Harper knows. But Emma’s looking at her with so much encouragement that it could refill the Earth’s ocean if it was completely drained.

Harper figures that it’s hard to be deterred when Emma believes in you.

“Yeah?” Rusty asks, but it isn’t a question. His words slur due to his low tone.

Harper doesn’t care much for pointless filler. “Yeah.”

Rusty grins, backing away from Emma, who releases a subtle breath of relief, but the smile is wrong — it looks uncanny, like an expression made from melted plastic.

“I’m a neo-Nazi? Or do you mean everyone that rightfully supports Homelander?” Rusty prods, inching closer to Harper, now. The carpet is sparking once more, and Harper holds her ground in a way she doesn’t think she ever has.

Harper lets a microscopic smile stretch her features, nervous but trying. “If the boot fits.”

A pause, and then Rusty’s vexing expression breaks up and into a deep, raucous laughter. His body bends forward with it, moving his arms to hold his stomach, and Harper holds her breath; the white noise is long gone. The only evidence of its existence is the faint ringing it left behind.

“You know,” Rusty chokes out, wiping a tear from his eye and grinning madly. “Looking at your reputation as the girl who’s never past pleasing a dude with a tail fetish and having no other personality outside of it, I would’ve never guessed that you’re so funny!”

A sick chill rolls down Harper’s spine, and her senses dull at the drop of a hat, like she’s drunk off a substance she never took.

The white noise fades back in a fraction, and a sharp stinging hits Harper deep in her chest, because — oh. Yeah. She almost forgot about how laughable her reputation at this school is.

By the time that Rusty falls back into wading closer, face returning to that void of damn near nothingness, her ears are completely lost to the sound of static again. Maybe this is her body’s way of protecting her, because even though her body is rigid and vulnerable in response to Rusty’s current screaming match, she can’t hear fucking anything.

It’s like when you put an old television on mute and listen as that awkward, chalky buzz gradually infests the speakers, piercing your ears as you try to unmute it and stop it — but this isn’t unpleasant. It wouldn’t hurt to hear this all the time.

Harper watches for about ten seconds as Rusty shouts at her, the static manifesting into a physical sensation as he gets closer and closer with his rage simultaneously reaching a point that would be commonly considered unattainable, hair spiking and resembling a possessed hedgehog. But right as he lifts a hand to grab and probably jostle her shoulder, his weight and everything causing friction against the cloth of her hoodie vanishes.

Harper blinks; the static leaves like an easy exhale, and the first thing she sees in her revived clarity is Emma Meyer grabbing Rusty Barlowe by the back of his shirt to mercilessly tug him away from Harper before using this leverage to punch him cleanly in the face — the unattractive sounds of bone material cracking along with a pained and staggered cry fill the empty air.

What the fuck.

“Wait, wha — what the fuck!” Ally shouts, hands on her head and motioning aimlessly like a person on several drugs at once, and it’s only then that Harper realizes Ally had swayed in beside her during her depressive episode centered on how shitty old technology is.

As Rusty’s occupied with holding the nose that Emma had one hundred percent decimated in one strike, leaking blood like a broken faucet, Emma takes the distraction as a chance to swing once more — and before Harper can even consider the thought and concept of stopping her, the fist in active motion nails Rusty’s right temple with yet another sickening crack and he falls victim to it with not a single sound, folding like a marionette losing its strings as he collapses onto his left side, the other end of his head ruthlessly smacking into the hard, tiled ground, causing a loud thwack to ring out.

Harper’s fingers twitch around the flyers as she watches the blood carve a path down Rusty’s face from two separate points, both lines eventually connecting to form one stream; his nose bridge is bent and mangled. The liquid crimson flowing smoothly across his closed, unconscious expression quickly pools below the part of his face that’s smushed against the ground, almost matching the reddish-orange of his hair color, but it’s a shade too dark to be fully identical.

Joints jammed with shock, Harper hastily turns her attention away from Rusty’s crumpled form to instead focus on Emma, who’s still standing over him with violently trembling hands and a frame that’s breaking up with rapid, heaving breaths; her knuckles are smeared and ruined with the same red that litters Rusty’s face.

“Oh my god,” Ally mumbles, breaking the silence with a mortified slur muddying her voice. “We’re so fucked that it’s not even funny.”

“No, no, it’s okay. We’re just —“ Harper pauses, looking from a stressed and distressed Ally to an unresponsive Rusty, who’s still very much limp on the floor. “Fucked. Yeah, fucked is a word I’d use.”

Fucked is an understatement, actually.

Ally groans longly, dragging her hands over her eyes. “We’re fucked.”

Harper inhales shakily as she looks back to find Emma still staring down at Rusty, no doubt in some kind of haze, and concern sinks into Harper’s chest; it breaks off and leaks into her hands, causing her to fidget with the flyers before she ultimately decides to shift them to one hand rather than both, and impulsively takes a few steps forward with her heart sharply pulsating in her throat.

Harper approaches Emma carefully, empty hand opening and closing in a constant pattern; Emma’s breathing is still ragged, but it’s gradually easing. “Emma, are you —“

Emma whips around before she can even finish her question, and it causes Harper to jump with a clipped shout that stutters as it leaves her throat, flyers threatening to take their name literally by soaring right out of her hand. Emma continues to simply stare desolately, eyes glazed over as they rest on Harper’s face, and Harper’s brows furrow.

Harper opens her mouth to ask again, but then Emma’s expression clears with no warning and gives way to something Harper can only describe as —

“Ow! Fuck, holy shit, ow —“ Emma suddenly cries out, face closing in on itself and twisting in pain as she lifts her hands and shakes them at a speed that only alarms Harper further, no doubt trying to somehow shake the searing pain in her knuckles off. Harper’s head pounds.

Harper drops the flyers as her own hands bolt forward to firmly grasp Emma’s wrists, aiming to stop the shaking. She pushes against her own power’s need to steal, willing them not to mimic Emma.

“Emma, stop. It’s —“ Emma chokes on another reedy string of curse words, and Harper snaps, “that’s only going to make it worse!”

When Emma only keeps thrashing and wheezing at the raw and weathered feeling in her knuckles that’s only just now being registered as pain and agony, Harper moves to instead grip her by the shoulders, shaking her vigorously enough to get her attention; carefully to avoid stirring her brain until it’s just a weird, pink soup in her skull.

Emma keeps her hands idle in the air by Harper’s forearms, but the whimpering has died down and Emma sucks in a breath through her teeth as she focuses back on Harper, eyes beady and once again filled with tears — physical pain is the reason behind them this time around, and Harper doesn’t know why that hurts less than when it’s emotional.

Emma’s voice wobbles with a mix of panic and confusion, shaking like her vocal chords were left in the cold. “Did I seriously — was that —“

She points an incredulous finger behind her and towards Rusty, words failing her as she watches Harper’s expression, which is definitely not a comforting one.

Harper opens and closes her mouth a few times, considering her options, but it doesn’t take her long to realize there’s no nice way to go about this. Harper sucks in a deep breath through her nose, filling her lungs; they feel punctured, and Harper feels winded.

“You knocked him out —“ Emma’s face pales as her mouth drops, and Harper panics, rushing to continue, “but it’s okay! He should be back up in, uh —“

Her eyes flick to the area past Emma’s shoulder, and when they circle back to Rusty’s halfway comatose condition she swallows. Harper returns to Emma’s pale complexion, and she smiles crookedly. “A… few hours?”

Emma blinks. Harper blinks.

Emma slowly lifts her hands to look at her knuckles. Harper watches as every color in her face drains.

And then Emma sways in place, throat flexing. Harper reaches her hands out — not quite touching, but leaving the option open.

“Hey, are you okay?” She slowly asks, and when Emma’s eyes flutter and flood with clouds, a stab of panic races down Harper’s spine — it cools her body until its temperature is in the negatives.

Emma squints her eyes at Harper, brows furrowing as she sways again, like she can’t clearly see her. “Harper?”

“Emma, are you okay?” Harper repeats, eyes traveling feature-to-feature across Emma’s face, and then it dawns on her.

Her knuckles.

The actively bleeding, should’ve-been-carefully-monitored knuckles.

The knuckles that are now seconds away from dripping all over the floor.

Alarm bursts behind Harper’s eyes like a blinding firecracker, and she rushes to cradle Emma’s hands in her palms, preventing them from bleeding out — nobody needs the corridor looking like a scene taken from a horror film.

Harper doesn’t need Emma bleeding out and dying in fucking Godolkin, of all places.

Is it even possible to die from severe knuckle wounds?

No, never mind. She doesn’t want an answer to that.

Harper swears to cuss herself out in the mirror later for being so fucking oblivious, because of course the wounds Emma sustained from bluntly hitting two bony points of the face back-to-back would bring her chances of passing out to an intensely high advantage.

“Fuck, uh,” Harper blurts out, and Ally bolts to her side. “Blood loss.”

And squeamishness, Harper conceptualizes. The swaying only started when Emma saw the state of her hands, and then the blood loss kicked in and only made it worse.

So basically, Emma’s own body tag-teamed her.

Ally’s eyes snap to Harper, widening a fraction. “Shit. Did she ever say what her room number is? Because —“ her eyes dart from Rusty to Harper in a worried back-and-forth, gnawing on her lower lip, “while I’d love to rub this in Rusty’s face, having two unconscious people in the same place at the same time isn’t a good look.”

Harper shakes her head, and Ally winces, pressing a finger to the bridge of her nose.

“Who’s unconscious?” Emma echoes as she continues to sway, getting clumsier; words starting to slur. Her eyes never leave Harper’s face. “‘S it a secret?”

“No, it’s just —“ Harper trails off as Emma stumbles again, but this time Emma’s body entirely fails her as her weight folds in on itself, causing her to stagger forward and directly into Harper, who barely manages to catch her on steady feet, arms instinctively locking behind Emma’s back.

Emma’s chin is resting on Harper’s right shoulder, and though she valiantly attempts to push off with a grunt, her legs are practically made of jelly at the moment and she just ends up right back where she started.

No, this is totally cool. Everything’s fine. Harper can work with this like a normal person.

Emma’s injured hands are locked in the middle of their embrace, knuckles facing herself and likely getting blood on her own hoodie — it’s fine, though. They’re all colored in black.

Harper clears her throat, all too prepared to act as if this proximity isn’t singlehandedly murdering her psyche. “Where’s your room at?”

A reply is given, but it’s an unintelligible string of sounds to Harper’s ears, so she carefully pushes Emma off so that she can grip her shoulders again. Emma’s eyes are basically closed at this point, and she makes a noise of complaint at being denied a place to rest her head.

“Which of these rooms is yours?” It’s rephrased to make it easier for Emma in this state to answer, whether it be verbally or through the simple point of a finger. Ally steps in closer.

After a few seconds of nothing, Emma’s head tips back and slightly to the left, pointing very vaguely in a single direction. Ally tracks this and hesitates before pointing to a room in the general area of where Emma’s head is motioning, subconsciously looking to Emma for confirmation.

Emma smiles, and Ally smiles back, discreetly pumping her fist in victory.

Harper nods, maneuvering Emma until she’s attached to Harper’s right side. She carefully grabs Emma’s left arm and lays it over her shoulders as she wraps her own arm around Emma’s waist; Emma’s head tips forward and she giggles, and Harper would assume she’s blackout drunk if it weren’t for her awareness of the current situation.

“Alright. Let’s go,” Harper instructs, kicking her legs into motion and trying to acclimate to walking with the weight of a whole other person dragging her down.

“So, we’re just… leaving Rusty on the floor?” Ally asks, and Harper pauses, casting her gaze back to her. Ally’s shifting her weight between her feet, paranoia written in the ridges of her stiff posture.

Harper blinks, twisting her body enough to properly face Rusty’s form, considering; she’s surprised at just how unconcerned she feels.

An exception is Emma’s condition. That’s concerning her quite a bit.

After a moment she turns back to Ally, deadpan. “Yes.”

Ally lets out a strangled noise, giving Harper a hard look of disapproval as her body slumps dramatically, but Harper’s already swiveling away and continuing her stride. 

“Hey, Har — wait!” Frantic, hurried footsteps hit the tile as they quickly work to catch up, and it only takes a couple seconds for Ally to level with her.

“It’s just —“ Ally exhales sharply through her nose, looking around with rapidly blinking eyes, “if we leave him here, he’s eventually gonna wake up and then he’s gonna rat us out for stealing the flyers.”

Harper huffs. “Is he even alive?”

It’s a completely theatrical, a-plus display of flippancy, but Harper’s far too focused on getting Emma into her dorm to care for what’s an exaggeration and what isn’t.

Ally pauses, steps slowing as she thinks, but then she’s speeding back up as her posture flies into a frenzy. “It’s even worse if he’s fucking dead!”

Harper closes her eyes with a gritted sigh and stops walking. She shifts Emma around, who grumbles faintly, and the ache in Harper’s body from being so heavily depended on for so long is becoming a deadweight to her bones and muscles alike.

She rotates her and Emma to face Ally, and this dynamic switch is weird — it’s often Ally doing the irritated leading while Harper tremulously follows along, preferring to merely dash around with a speedster’s skillset, staying completely under the radar.

But realistically, Ally’s even more paranoid than Harper — I mean, it took Harper reassuring her for her to even consider hearing Emma out on doing something a little more drastic. Carrying yourself with fire doesn’t make you immune to hopelessness. The fire could be small; easy to stomp out.

“Trade me,” Harper vaguely states. Emma’s head lulls onto her shoulder, humming something inharmonic.

Ally’s teeth click as she closes her mouth, efficiently cutting her own oncoming rant off and blinking owlishly. “Trade you what?”

Harper gestures with her head towards Ally’s hoodie pocket, bringing her empty hand out, palm up. “Give me the paint can and I’ll give you Emma,” she smoothly clarifies. Ally narrows her eyes.

“This trade is unfair as hell,” she points out with a grimace, but her hand is already reaching into the aforementioned pocket and pulling the can of spray paint out — white, this time.

Ally tosses it over to Harper without thinking, failing to remember her very immobilized position, and it clutters to the ground, oblivious to Harper’s patiently outstretched hand.

Harper and Ally speechlessly stare at it as it sways on the floor in a wide, straight line, comically silent. Harper notices in her peripheral the exact moment that Ally swiftly presses a fist to her mouth, shielding the smile that’s slowly growing on her face.

Harper scowls deeply, fingers twitching around nothing. “Dude, are you kidding me?”

Ally grins with every tooth on display. “How did you not see that coming?”

“I don’t have future vision,” Harper replies in an irritated grumble. “Take Emma to her dorm, please.”

Ally mocks a salute, still grinning as she reaches out to grab Emma’s untangled arm, carefully maneuvering her off of Harper, and Harper lifts the arm off her shoulders. Emma falls into Ally once the transfer is fully stabilized, and Ally lets out an oof at the impact. Ally quickly adjusts her, mimicking the hold Harper had her in moments before.

Emma’s head rolls to the side, blinking owlishly as she observes Ally with unfocused eyes.

“Who’re you?” She mumbles, squinting suspiciously. Harper swallows down a snicker that threatens to break loose, but a small grin surfaces regardless.

Ally throws Emma a pursed, coy smile as she turns to start walking in the direction of Emma’s dorm. “Your eye-shadowed savior.”

Emma stumbles through an attempt to match Ally’s pace, ostensibly processing the response, before she gasps longwindedly. “David Bowie?”

…Close enough.

Ally chokes and barks out a peal of laughter, tripping a bit as Emma follows, soon falling into her own bout of drunken giggles. Harper shakes her head with a smile as they continue on their trek.

Emma would never know, but Ally actually loves David Bowie — “Let’s Dance” is a worm in Harper’s brain at this point, having heard it played in their shared dorm about a bajillion times; being forced into rewatches of Labyrinth at least once a month is practically tradition, now.

They’ve had multiple disputes over which character is the best: Harper bats for Ludo while Ally bats for Jareth. Ally’s biased, Harper’s right, and that’s been the core of the argument ever since the night they first watched it together.

Harper crouches to retrieve the fallen can of spray paint, standing back up when it’s cradled in her palm. She turns to Rusty, who’s still knocked out, and a strong bitterness stirs in her chest as her grip unconsciously tightens. Right, get this over with.

Harper hastily closes the distance between them, stalking until she’s directly above him. She uses her foot to nudge him onto his back, and she admits it’s more of a kick than a nudge as she watches his limbs sprawl out like a mannequin made from cotton. She already wants to kick him again.

Harper shakes herself off and crouches once more, shaking the can and listening to the rattle of the metal bearing tucked away in the neck of the can. She tears the lid off and pauses, finger resting pensively on the cap.

Resist feels too cliche and telling of which side did this, and any other insult is too indefinite.

But, if she wants this to really beat his ass later down the line, it should be something that puts him in a compromising position. Something that frames him.

Harper shakes the can a bit more just in case before moving to lean over Rusty’s body, pressing down on the cap and letting the white mist stain his conveniently dark shirt; she’s particular about her handwriting, ensuring difficulty in tying it to the rest of the words she’d formerly written on the school walls, making it appear cursively askew.

Once she’s finished she reels back, moving the can away and putting the lid back on, pointlessly dusting her pants off as she moves to stand back up. She stares proudly down at her work with her hands on her hips.

Traitor in a harsh and fulgent white blurs into the wrinkles of Rusty’s shirt, his face bloodied but drying over with time. The side of his face that cushioned the earlier landing is bruised to an extent that even Harper winces at.

Shoving the paint can into her own hoodie pocket, Harper turns towards the strewn number of flyers that had long since been abandoned, stepping forward just to start haphazardly kicking them all towards Rusty; Harper swiftly realizes that she most likely looks fucking insane, kicking around flyers in the dead of night in the dormitory corridor — it’s like, 1:00 a.m, or something.

Whatever. Her a-plus framing is done, anyways —

She rotates her body in the direction that Emma and Ally had gone in about two minutes ago and freezes when she sees a small trail of blood; splotchy and inconsistent, but noticeable enough, and Harper closes her eyes with a groan, tipping her head towards the ceiling. Fuck.

She deserves a paycheck for this shit.

Sighing, Harper rips her hoodie over her head and off, letting the long-sleeved t-shirt below and her tail breathe for the first time in hours as she drops it to the floor; the weight of the paint can slams into the ground as the hoodie lands.

Kicking it to the start of the trail, she drags it along using the bottom of her foot and lets the fabric absorb the blood, only a little queasy at the sight of it smearing as she goes, occasionally changing the angle of her scraping to keep the blood in the hoodie from smearing it further.

She’s truly never been happier over the existence of the color black.

After cleaning it up enough to appear invisible to the naked eye, she picks the hoodie back up and quickly speeds off towards Emma’s dorm, grasping a part of the fabric she knows didn’t touch the ground as her tail thrashes behind her.

Once she reaches the door she knocks, and it only takes a count of two seconds for Ally to crack it, staring out with cautious eyes before opening it entirely at the realization that it’s Harper at the door. Harper hurriedly steps in and immediately throws the hoodie to the floor, like it’s diseased, and Ally eyes her strangely.

“You good?” Ally asks, shutting the door. “You were gone for a while.”

Harper rubs at her forehead with her palm, plastering on a strained smile. “Just some clean-up, nothing major.”

Ally simply stares, blank and waiting, and Harper sighs.

“You were worried about leaving Rusty behind, so I dealt with it,” she confesses, avoiding eye contact, and Ally hums confusedly, if not worriedly.

“Aren’t there cameras, like… everywhere?” Ally questions nervously, and Harper’s eyes swivel back to her.

The words are bordering on an indistinguishable whisper, as if Ally’s worried about a camera in the room they’re actively standing in, and Harper breathes out a laugh; shakes her head.

“The day kids stop covering the cameras with chewing gum and tinfoil is the day I drop out,” Harper shrugs with a soft smile, like it’s common knowledge.

But it really, really isn’t. The widening of Ally’s eyes is living proof that it really isn’t.

Reeling her head back disbelievingly, Ally fumbles for a response. Harper picks up the slack. “I know because I watch the cameras all the time.”

Ally continues to stare with barren eyes.

“You know, because I’m a mimic… hiding the fact that I’m a mimic?” Harper drawls with raised brows, palms up and gesturing slowly, trying to somehow help Ally process the information she should have already pieced together.

And then, lightbulb moment: Ally straightens and gawks, but her face still reflects a quiet look of cynicism.

“So, we’re in the clear?” At Harper’s nod, she purses her lips and stiffly returns the motion. “Good, because your girlfriend won’t shut the fuck up.”

Harper nods again, releasing a breath that feels like it takes a weight off her chest the second it leaves, because at least Emma’s —

Wait.

Girlfriend?

Harper freezes, eyes practically bulging out of her head as she mentally rolls the comment around in her brain, stomach swooping so hard that she almost swallows her tongue. She takes an unintentional step back, letting loose a garbled string of sounds that don’t even make sense in her own head.

The jackhammer is back, knocking into her eardrums; it shakes up and scrambles the bones of her ribcage. Harper immediately wants to kill the power so that it never returns.

“What the hell are you —“ Harper strenuously starts once the incoherency clears, voice sounding punched, but Ally cuts her off with a raised palm.

Her expression is endlessly smug, and Harper distantly considers strangling her.

The palm morphs into a pointed finger directed at Harper. “She’s been asking about you nonstop, and it’s getting on my nerves,” Ally complains, jokingly accusatory. Her eyes gleam with a knowing that Harper doesn’t know the meaning behind.

Why the fuck was Emma asking about her? That’s — what the hell. Harper feels as her tail starts thrashing about again, and her neck flexes against a twitch. Where even is Emma?

Using this as an excuse to look away from Ally’s curiously sly expression — because its weight on her skin feels like molten lava — Harper busies herself with searching the room until she finds Emma simply laying with her legs crookedly sprawled out on her bed, staring up at the ceiling as her eyes glisten with a wonder that’s more commonly reserved for witnessing some kind of natural phenomenon and… not your dorm room ceiling. Harper’s just relieved to see that Emma hadn’t passed out on the floor, or something hypothetically worse.

It doesn’t take long for Harper to notice that Emma’s hands are flat on her chest palms-down, two small bags of ice resting over her knuckles. Harper turns back to Ally, furrowing her brows as Ally simply shrugs up to her ears and brings her frown deep into one corner of her mouth.

“She wouldn’t cooperate with the disinfectant, so I looked around for a compromise and found a bunch of ice packs in the mini-fridge by her bed,” Ally explains. “They’ll at least cool the swelling.”

Ally’s tone falls into something faintly haunted in the midst of her explanation as she seems to recollect fighting a lightheaded Emma over some disinfectant, and Harper snickers into her hand.

“She’s more awake, now,” Harper notes with a hum, dropping her hand and shifting on her feet. Ally nods and gently swings herself side to side, a tick that Harper knows only occurs when Ally’s impatient about something.

Harper squints at her, wading closer. “Are you —“

“Harper!” Emma’s voice calls out from behind the two of them, and both Ally and Harper jump like two alley cats hearing the sound of a garbage disposal for the first time. “You’re back!”

Harper wheels around to find Emma now sitting on the edge of the bed, ice packs abandoned to the sheets as her face glows with a renewed brightness that simultaneously fills Harper with dread and warm familiarity.

Harper’s stomach drops with horror. How the fuck did she move so fast?

“Hey — Emma, wait, you shouldn’t —“ and this is familiar.

Harper’s voice stutters as she stumbles closer with raised and ready hands that yearn to shove Emma back to the safety of the pillows and everything soft and gentle, but Emma treats this with no regard whatsoever and tries to move to get off the bed.

Harper dashes forward with footfalls that threaten to capsize her, and Emma pauses, eyes now fully trained on Harper with the kind of heat-seeking precision you only see in militant weapons. Pins poke and prod at Harper’s skin at the warm void slowly consuming brown irises the longer Emma regards Harper, and Harper looks away like it hurts, insects gnawing at her insides.

A loud cough interrupts the tense silence, and Harper looks back to find Ally nearing the door with her arms crossed, only uncrossing them to grip the door handle. “I don’t know about you two, but I’m off. It is way too fucking late for a sleepover.”

She looks between Emma and Harper for a long moment, and then she smirks. “Thanks for wrecking my life just to fix it right after,” she says, nebulous and ambiguous in its intent, eyes alight with mischief.

“And: please don’t stay out too late, Harps,” Ally adds, and then she’s gone; the door clicks shut behind her.

It echoes in the room, and it resonates the same way a bomb going off would.

The realization that Ally being gone leaves Harper and Emma completely alone hits with the force of a freight train going at full speed, and Harper’s joints lock up.

It’s silent again, this time only interrupted by the sound of Emma benignly patting the part of the bed below her hands, intentional in its rhythm.

Maybe Emma will break up the awkwardness with one of those dumb facts she always seems to have on her.

Harper waits, eyes still locked onto the door.

The rhythm merely continues.

Fuck, is Emma seriously waiting on her to talk first?

Shoving one of her hands into one of her pants pockets, Harper turns her head the other way, and perks up slightly at the sight of two things: sitting on the long desk by the window is an abandoned bottle of what Harper thinks is hydrogen peroxide alongside a halfway opened bag filled with circular cotton pads. Bingo.

Harper sucks in a breath and nods towards the medical supplies. “Have you used that yet?” She asks, stupidly.

The patting stops and Emma hums a long, unwavering note. “Nope.”

She pops the “p” and Harper reels in enough courage to crane her neck, leveling with Emma, and she instantaneously regrets it.

Because Emma’s already looking at her. Her eyes are ablaze with inquisition, head tilted as she smiles at Harper for what looks like no particular reason. Harper’s breath hitches in her throat and she rushes to cover it with a cough that’s essentially the opposite of casual.

“Will you fight me if I do it for you?” Harper asks, and Emma’s smile only broadens.

She hums again, even longer, though this time it’s pitched and stringy. She invitingly pats the empty spot to her right.

“Nope,” Emma repeats, sounding almost giddy as she kicks her legs up and shuffles herself back, eyes steadfastly remaining on Harper’s face. Harper fights against the itch telling her to look away again.

Harper nods with a pursed, ungainly smile, walking over to the desk to grab the aforesaid items. She passes her eyes over the bottle of antiseptic as she saunters back to the bed, drumming a finger on the bag of cotton pads. “Where did this even come from?”

“One of my drawers,” Emma replies, and then her voice dips into an irritated grumble. “Ally ransacked my shit to find it.”

Harper can only imagine how psychotic that must’ve looked in Emma’s previously hazy, muddled perspective.

Grinning, Harper looks back up. “I heard a bit about that,” she mentions coyly, watching as Emma’s brows lift. “Ally made it sound like you two were in a catfight.”

Emma’s face sours, letting out an exaggerated groan with a slump in her shoulders. “It fucking hurt, and she has terrible bedside manners.”

Harper laughs at this, placing the stuff in her hands onto the bed before resting her palms on the edge. Her eyes flick between Emma’s two sets of knuckles for a moment, unable to help the nagging urge to check and see if any extent of blood is welling to the surface again. 

They remain raw and beaten, but not so raw that blood insists on escaping, so Harper moves on.

“Ally isn’t patient enough for shit like that,” Harper explains, scuffing her foot awkwardly along the floor. Emma twists her fingers into the bedsheet; squints at Harper.

“And you are?” She asks, and her tone makes Harper pause.

Blinking slowly, Harper scrutinizes the opaqueness of it. It’s intentionally impenetrable and Harper wants to pick it apart, but it’s curling into itself like a bunch of tangled wires before she can even properly read into a drawled syllable or two.

Harper hums and wades onto the bed, keeping a respectable distance between the two of them as she settles. She lifts her legs into a crisscrossed position and rotates her body towards Emma, grabbing the bottle and uncapping it. Harper uselessly scans her eyes over the chemical contents again.

If someone were to assume she’s stalling, they’d be right.

“I am,” Harper responds at last, barely a mumble in the air between them. “I’m still here.”

Her eyes reconnect with Emma’s as she reaches out to grab a cotton pad from the bag, and she notices that Emma’s still facing the room — aside from her head, which is turned to accommodate for Harper. One of her legs is pressed to her chest, arms curled around it as the other remains dangled over the edge of the bed, and her eyes are alight with something that Harper can’t read; her brain scrambles like a sizzling pan of eggs when she tries.

Harper looks away to instead focus on covering the cotton pad with some of the peroxide, pressing it to the opening and flipping it over so that it seeps in well enough.

“A phenomenal point,” Emma declares, and there’s a smile shining through her voice. Harper unwillingly mirrors it, stomach warm.

Harper caps the bottle and tosses it near Emma’s pillow. “Thanks,” she replies, and then she looks up; feels her own smile grow into something so innocent that it really isn’t. “Now, hand.”

Harper holds her palm out, and Emma’s crookedly content expression falls. She exhales deeply, giving Harper a look that silently pleads “do I have to?”

At Harper’s nod, Emma groans, hesitantly rotating her body to face Harper. She brings her other leg into her chest and slowly, slowly stretches her right hand out and towards Harper, like it’s traveling through syrup. It’s so cartoonish that Harper can’t help but breathe a chuckle through her nose, and Emma throws her a glare.

After a moment that’s far longer than necessary Emma’s palm finally lands in Harper’s, and Harper’s fingers twitch at the barrage of sparks the contact sends flying down her arm. Hurriedly brushing it aside, Harper takes a moment to study the bloodied bruising — though the blood is dried, the sight still sends a sick feeling through Harper’s veins, and she knows it isn’t due to squeamishness.

Harper lifts the hand holding the cotton pad and looks up to find Emma with her eyes squeezed shut and her face angled slightly away, cheeks puffed out and filled with air. Harper sighs.

“Holding your breath isn’t going to make it hurt less, you know,” Harper points out, matter-of-fact, but still damp with an extent of understanding.

Emma pries an eye open, and Harper softens at the swirling amount of stress flooding brown.

Fuck. Way to cave under zero pressure, Harper.

Sighing once more, Harper drops Emma’s hand and opts to lean to the left to grab the pillow by the headboard, balancing it on her knee and trading the pad off for her opposite hand. Emma slowly lowers her hand onto it, palm down, picking up what Harper had silently insinuated — with a conflicted look on her face, but it’s still cooperation. Harper will take cooperation.

She offers the now empty hand to Emma, and she latches onto it with a speed that could put a hummingbird to shame. Emma lets go of the air in her cheeks in one breath and allows her other eye to open, and Harper notes with relief that the anxious swirls have largely dissipated.

Clearing her throat, Harper gently shakes their intertwined hands in emphasis. “Squeeze this when it hurts too much.”

Emma blinks, looking between their hands and Harper’s face, and then she smiles devilishly. “That’s what she —“

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Harper grimaces, cheeks heating. Emma’s smile doesn’t leave.

With no forewarning whatsoever Harper brings the pad down and just barely presses it over Emma’s knuckles. Emma immediately hisses, body flinching and coiling, threatening to pull back, but ultimately thinks better of it and instead chooses to go the route of crushing the fucking bones in Harper’s hand. 

Jesus fu — how fucking strong is she? This feels equivalent to an orangutan giving her a hug while simultaneously failing to keep its own strength in check.

“Okay —“ Harper grunts, and the stinging in her hand oozes into her wrist, “maybe not — that hard.”

“Sorry,” Emma wheezes out, voice pinched as her grip loosens slightly, hands trembling. Harper flexes her hand to wake the nerves in her fingers back up, exhaling sharply through her nose.

“It’s alright. I didn’t warn you,” Harper says. She lets a smile stretch her face, chest warming when Emma shakily returns it.

Harper brings the pad closer again, and Emma’s eyes snap to it, but it’s not as hectically paced this time around.

She presses again, gentler still, and though Emma hisses through her teeth with squeezed eyes at the pain she stays relatively frozen, taking refuge in the hand holding hers — it’s intensely intimate, but she supposes this kind of thing would be by default.

Her chest flickers restively at the thought. It’s easy to ignore the feeling.

Once every knuckle is disinfected Harper taps Emma’s hand, signaling to her that she’s done. Emma opens her eyes and looks down; releases a breath so heavy it seems to erase every stiff notch in her body.

Emma carefully wiggles her fingers, eyes brightly tranquil with relief. “Thanks, doc.”

Harper shrugs, but her face feels warm. “It’s no problem,” she insists. “Do you have bandage wraps sitting around here somewhere?”

Emma pauses, looking off to side as she considers the question. “Same drawer, I think.”

Harper glares blankly, unimpressed, and Emma sheepishly clarifies with an apologetic grin. “Bottom drawer.”

Giving a thumbs-up, Harper gets off the bed to stride back over to the desk. She crouches to open the correct drawer, scanning over its contents.

“Hey, Harper?” Emma calls out.

“Yeah?” Harper answers, half-distracted — oh, there it is. She swipes the roll of bandage tape up.

“Why didn’t you bring the other stuff with you?” Emma questions. Harper pauses.

Frowning, Harper knits her brows together as she turns to face Emma. “You have another hand that’s still at risk of contracting, like, fifty infections from this school alone.”

Emma pales. Harper drags a palm down her face.

Yeah, they’re not getting any sleep tonight.

“So, you only get lightheaded at the sight of your own blood?” Harper asks, fidgeting with the bottom of her shirt as she traces her eyes over the patterns in the wall across from her.

In her periphery, Emma nods; she taps her finger against the White Claw grasped in a bandaged hand. Harper had advised against drinking one so late, but Emma had insisted, saying that she needs the energy to process all of what had happened today.

Harper gave in, because she couldn’t really argue with that. Not with Emma staring at her with a set of eyes that are painfully identical to a puppy’s.

“I can deal with anyone’s blood but mine,” Emma explains, voice darkening subtly. She sniffs indignantly.

The two of them are off the bed and on the floor, but still leaning with their backs against it. The process of disinfecting Emma’s other hand thankfully didn’t take as long as the first, but then Harper had to Google how to properly wrap a hand using bandage tape, and that alone took approximately twenty grueling minutes.

They’re both tired, but they’re also strangely unwilling to end the time they’re spending together — it’s becoming familiar, and that familiarity is psychologically welding itself to Harper’s brain the more this bonding session drags on.

“Wants to be a hero but can’t even stomach the sight of her own bodily fluids,” Emma bitterly mumbles. Harper looks over, and the insecurity hardening the edges of Emma’s face gnaws at her insides.

Swallowing her nerves, Harper leans towards Emma and taps her shoulder with hers before reeling back. Emma looks up, a crease forming between her brows. Harper wants to smooth it over.

“Even the coolest heroes have dumb fears,” Harper points out, moving her hands into her lap. Emma continues to eye her curiously; her thumb moves in circles against the can in her hand.

Harper takes a breath, shrugging as she ducks her head. “Like,” she pauses, tail flicking. “Like a girl with chameleon powers being scared of peanut butter sticking to the roof of her mouth.”

Harper swallows around the admission, because it really is a dumb fear. It’s so dumb that Ally’s the only person that knows about it, but Harper supposes that Emma now knows, too.

Harper can feel Emma’s eyes burning into her skull, and she eagerly keeps her gaze away from the expression she just knows is fighting the urge to laugh in her face —

A wheezy bark of laughter breaks the silence, and Harper reluctantly looks up just to find Emma keeled over and holding her stomach with her empty hand, but the laughter doesn’t pick at Harper’s skin quite the same way mockery usually does.

Because it isn’t mockery, Harper realizes — the laughter is surprised, and it looks sort of painful as Emma’s smile stretches to the point of showing every one of her teeth as she laughs and laughs, frame shaking with the force of it; it’s directed at what Harper had said. It’s not directed at Harper herself.

Emma struggles to catch her breath under the weight of her wheezes, and Harper feels light as a smile of her own takes over.

“You —“ Emma strangles out, eyes squinting open to look at Harper as she laughs her head dizzy, “peanut butter?”

Holding eye contact, Harper scrunches her nose. Emma momentarily zones in on it. “I got some stuck to the roof of my mouth when I was a kid, and I was terrified it’d be there forever and that I’d eventually choke on it.”

Harper grins at the memory, and Emma’s laughter slows, eyes teary — not due to any extent of pain, for once. Harper’s heart stutters with glee.

“I haven’t eaten it since,” Harper adds, voice dramatically dipping to a haunted murmur as Emma coughs around another snicker.

“‘M glad Sparky doesn’t know that,” Emma comments, taking a sip from her White Claw. Her grin loses its brightness as soon as she seems to register what she’d just said.

With the air thickening, Harper releases a breath that punches its way out of her chest, looking away. She almost forgot that he’s technically the reason they’re here right now.

She would rather kill herself than thank him, even in the safety of her own thoughts.

Harper clears her throat and shrugs, feigning nonchalance, but no amount of it hides the fact that her hands are nervously clasped together. “He doesn’t know as much as he wants to.”

He knows enough, though. Enough to make Harper cower away from new connections and enough to make her yearn for a hollow way of feeling, because if she’s hollow then nothing said about her and to her will chip off pieces of her self-image — it would fall into the void and Harper wouldn’t feel a thing.

But being hollow also means you can’t choose what you do and don’t feel for. You’d become a husk with a gap meant to hold a soul that feels, and that sounds like it’d be awesome if it weren’t for the kick that feeling things gives her. It’s a drug.

Harper scowls at her thoughts, but then she’s stilling when she hears an awkward shuffling to her left, signaling that Emma’s shifting herself closer, and when Harper feels a shoulder tentatively brush against her own she freezes even further. The arm that’s victim to the contact fades into something fuzzy and full of static, and the jackhammer returns to its construction plan in the cavity between her ribs.

This is what Harper doesn’t want to sacrifice, she thinks: this annoying nagging that crawls beneath her skin, wishing to break free at every disturbance, whether it be minor or major. It doesn’t seem to care; it enjoys making an idiot of her pulse and the chemicals that make up her brain.

She doesn’t even know what this is — whatever this is, she doesn’t want it gone, and she doesn’t know why that’s bothering her so goddamn much.

Harper looks to the left out of the corner of her eye just to look away as fast as she looked over, because —

Sad, brown eyes are ducked low with the eager intention to catch Harper’s, and they’re currently filled with far too much knowing for Harper to try and successfully swallow down, and they’re even closer than she’d anticipated. It’s like when the peanut butter was stuck in her mouth: constantly there and impossible to shake. Attached like a leech and threatening to suffocate her.

The fear that physical contact makes you feel too much has to be new; the fear of physical contact while simultaneously craving it like you need it to feel as if you exist on the same terrestrial plane as the others around you.

The phobia of bare minimum care. Harper tenses her jaw.

“He was wrong,” Emma says, low and mumbled and sharply dedicated in its octave. Harper tightens the grip her hands have on one another, opening her mouth to disagree, but Emma’s already hurrying to continue. “No. He was fucking wrong, Harper. I don’t think you heard even half of what that bag of dicks said, and I’m glad you didn’t, because it was all bullshit.”

The tin sound of a can clattering to the ground causes Harper to flinch and look up, finding Emma with her legs sprawled out in front of her and her hands clasped together, mirroring Harper. Her face is twisted with a visceral anger directed at someone not in the room with them, but her eyes are filled with a softness that’s agonizing as they stare Harper down, expectant and determined in their juxtaposition.

Everything about Emma’s body language is starkly contrasting, because she’s clearly simmering with infuriation, but she seems to refuse to channel any of that towards Harper. None of it makes any sense.

Nothing about today makes any sense.

Harper blinks rapidly against the force of Emma’s searing stare. Can something be searing in its softness? So soft that it grates on your skin like sandpaper, the texture blurring into something that makes you want to tear yourself in half.

But no, this just makes Harper feel seen.

God, she hates feeling seen.

She doesn’t want people to know that she’s hiding when she isn’t pretending to care for the latest social media trend or the gossip she heard from the friend of a friend. She doesn’t care for any of that, and only Ally and Greg know that.

Emma had singlehandedly wrecked the walls protecting her heart and insisted she should, too. Harper had let her.

“I know he’s wrong,” Emma exhales, fidgeting with her fingers as she smiles gently, “because I was, too.”

Oh.

Because I was, too.

The backs of Harper’s eyes burn.

“You’re —“ Harper strangles out, and then she bites down on a bitter laugh as it leaves, looking back down at her hands. “I’m sorry about Justine.”

Emma inhales sharply beside her, and Harper subconsciously braces herself, because this is a wound she knows is still raw in some parts.

The rawness only deepens when you forget it’s there.

“It’s fine,” Emma mumbles. Harper could have cried at the sheer lack of venom in the reply.

Because it doesn’t make any sense.

Harper shakes her head with a smile she knows is wrecked with self-directed acrimony.

“It isn’t. I had the power to do something, and I still stood around like a headless chicken,” Harper swallows, eyes blurring for a second. “I stayed doing whatever the hell she asked of me.”

Harper moves to continue, but then her shoulders are suddenly being firmly gripped and she’s being turned at a speed that should’ve knocked her unconscious.

Emma’s staring at her with wide, incredulous eyes that burn like a bonfire fed to be too tall. Harper leans back a fraction at the shock the expression sends through her body, chest surging. Their faces are only separated by six inches of distance — far enough away to see Emma’s face in its entirety, but close enough to send Harper’s eyes into a blur for a reason other than tears wrestling to escape.

“No, that’s —“ Emma sputters, mouth opening and closing like she needs to say something but can’t quite comprehend it in her head as something coherent.

Emma wills her features to soften. “Harper, you saw what Justine did to Jordan’s reputation. All she had to do was spew some bigoted nonsense on a goddamn livestream, and now they’re public enemy number one. What the fuck do you think that means for you if you try to act out?”

“I don’t know,” Harper answers honestly, and when she tries to duck away Emma shakes her, forcing her to maintain eye contact. Harper closes her eyes and Emma scoffs. “I — okay, maybe I was scared. Justine has at least something on everyone, and I’ve doubted for ages that I’m somehow an exception.”

It’s admitted through Harper’s teeth. Justine thankfully doesn’t know that the chameleon tail isn’t just for show, but she’s sly and threatening enough to keep Harper wrapped around her finger.

Anything to keep her business off of social media. It comes at the cost of others.

Harper exhales shakily. “It’s selfish, I know. I was protecting myself and just, watched as other people got hurt.”

And that’s the disgusting truth. If that’s somehow what Rusty had yelled in her face about, then he wasn’t wrong.

“Did you enjoy watching others get hurt?” Emma bluntly asks. Her voice is unreadable.

Harper’s eyes fly back open, and Emma’s face is just as unclear. “No — God, of course not —“

“Harper, there’s nothing to be sorry for,” Emma quietly interjects, eyes full of sorrow.

Sorrow that’s half-directed at Harper.

Harper exhales harshly, stomach feeling winded as she processes that with the speed of a sloth; she feels beaten and bruised, and yet she’s not the one that’d been beaten down with a metaphorical stick and a physical fist.

“Is that why you fucked Rusty’s shit up?” Harper asks, trying to play the weight of the conversation off with humor.

Emma cracks a smile, and Harper internally celebrates.

“He was being a misogynistic prick and you looked like you were halfway to a panic attack,” Emma explains, vaguely, and the strained note in her voice says to Harper that she’s not telling the whole story.

Emma continues, face illuminating slightly. Her smile goes faintly toothy. “If it weren’t for her fear of confrontation, I’m fully sure Ally would’ve torn his throat out with her teeth.”

Harper lets the secretive tone go. Sometimes it’s best to not know things, and Emma isn’t showing signs of being eager to repeat it, which is fair.

Emma doesn’t seem to be as physically violent as she is verbally, so to snap and beat someone to a pulp over some measly words? Harper doesn’t even want to imagine what the fuck he could’ve possibly chosen to say to have successfully sent Emma fucking Meyer flying over the edge like that.

Harper grins. “I would pay to see that.”

“Not before I do,” Emma argues, lifting a hand off of one of Harper’s shoulders to poke her right in the middle of her chest. The organ directly below it surges painfully. “Paws off the tickets, please.”

Exhaling to prevent her heart from familiarly jackhammering, Harper shakes her head as her grin grows. “Chameleons don’t have paws.”

Emma’s brows raise as her own smile broadens in response, eyes dipping and then bolting back up so fast that Harper doesn’t notice.

“Hands?” Emma questions. The finger poking into her sternum stays, but then it transitions into a palm resting directly over Harper’s heart.

This is the opposite of amazing. This is extremely terrible. Her pulse is quickening and stumbling in disagreement, and Harper almost wants to pray that Emma can’t feel it.

Upon seeing the slightly smug gleam in dark, curious eyes, Harper knows that prayers are futile. Her body feels like it’s being shoved into a barrel and that barrel being thrown down a vertical highway, so she nervously laughs and pulls back, turning her body to face the wall opposite of her again.

She keeps her eyes on Emma and watches as the hand remains idle in the air before it drops, and Harper almost wishes she didn’t notice the disappointment that curbs Emma’s smile for a missable second.

Harper hums with a shake of her head. “No. They have zygodactyl feet.”

Pincer feet formed by five toes melded into two separate bundles, she doesn’t say.

Emma blinks, facing scowling with disbelief. When Harper’s expression doesn’t move, her eyes widen, mouth dropping. “You’re serious?”

Harper nods, pursing on a smile and another hum. Emma barks out a laugh, eyes crinkling.

“That… sounds like a fucking dinosaur,” Emma states, still not really believing it. Harper raises her palms in defense.

“Blame biologists, not me,” she jokes, chuckling when Emma shrugs.

Emma stares her down, and those dark eyes cloud Harper’s head once more. “You’re the expert, chameleon girl.”

Okay, cheap nickname. There are so many better options to choose from.

She’s thinking it to distract herself from Emma’s eyes on her. They’re not on her for any particular reason other than to stare, Harper thinks, and then that sweeps through her stomach; this and that are becoming annoying to manage.

The eye contact lasts longer than it has this entire day and Harper wants to pat herself on the back, but then Emma’s eyes drop to a spot below Harper’s nose before dashing back up and Harper doesn’t miss it, this time, and the air thickens so fast that she almost chokes; the glance was quick but it wasn’t quick enough to avoid detection.

That takes Harper’s senses into a swamp, and she analytically rolls it over in her head, and she realizes that it almost makes her want to lean forward and —

Oh.

Oh, no.

“Do you wanna just, stay here for the night?” Emma asks, barely a pitch above a murmur, like she’s scared to shatter the moment. But Harper only kind of hears it.

Harper’s heart is too busy dropping into her ass to pay any true mind to it.

A deep feeling of horror cools the blood in her body, freezing it where it flows through her veins. The oxygen in her lungs is turning into lead and it feels like the weight of her epiphany could drag her through every floor of Godolkin until she’s buried six feet below the school, the iron taste of her blood becoming literal as it throws her balance off with its choppy and uneven mass. It feels as if her bones are too big for her skin.

When Emma’s brows furrow deeply with worry at the expression on Harper’s face that’s most definitely worrying, all Harper wants to do is grab her and —

Oh, fuck.

This isn’t good.

This is the exact opposite of good.

Harper feels the exact moment her face overheats and her hands start shaking, and Emma immediately straightens, face twisting. “Harper, are you o —“

“It’s getting late!” Harper exclaims, louder than she intended. She shifts around to get up, movements hurried and clumsy, not even trying to hide the sudden need she has to get the fuck out. “No sleepovers, am I right?”

She laughs nervously, not looking at Emma at all as she frantically moves away from the bed to search the dim room for the hoodie she’d discarded so long ago. Harper hears the moment that Emma gets up, too; she’s just as inelegant, if Harper’s going by the uncoordinated sounds of her steps stumbling along the ground, not unlike a calf learning to walk.

Getting late? Way to fucking go, Harper. Saying that as if it didn’t already get to traditional levels of late hours ago.

She finds the silhouette of the hoodie and immediately clambers over to it, swiping it off the ground and making a dash for the door, acting as if the room is being actively robbed and that she’s someone intensely unwilling to protect it. The can stuffed inside the hoodie’s pocket jostles and Harper hurries to adjust it.

“Wait!” Emma calls, desperate and verbally fumbling, and Harper pauses against her will, swiveling her head around as her hand hovers a few inches from the door handle.

Emma’s still standing by the bed, but she’s about a foot and a half further from it than she was twenty seconds ago. Her face is a ruin of confusion and alarm and a pinch of hurt, and it causes Harper’s chest to roll over and surge again, but this time it only brings her a feeling of terror that burns at subzero.

Emma grabs ahold of one of her biceps, pursing her lips anxiously. Her fingers twitch like she wants to reach out. “I can sleep on the floor while you take the —“

“No, it’s fine. It’s better if I go,” Harper steps back, arm colliding with the door. She swallows at the disappointment that flashes in Emma’s face. “Classes are annoyingly early.”

She has to leave to ensure that she doesn’t do something stupid is what Harper doesn’t say.

Emma frowns, but she nods slowly, face tense with concern. “Right.”

Her eyes drift along Harper’s face, like she’s trying to see through her and see the true reason behind her abrupt exit. Harper grips the door handle and those same eyes hone in on the movement.

It’s like being watched from under a microscope. Harper doesn’t like the idea of being watched so closely.

Harper moves out of the way as she opens the door, sidestepping to avoid getting hit as it swings inward, but she pauses before she can leave, turning to face Emma one last time. She chews on a wince at the sight of Emma watching her with the eyes of a kicked and neglected puppy, big as saucers as they regard Harper with the kind of unspoken question that Emma seems completely unaware of.

Harper’s heart pounds like it wants to say something — wants to make her say something. Her head buffers and turns on its familiar caution blinkers that advise her not to, and she does what she’s been trying to unlearn this entire day.

She gives into that fear. She lets it dictate her actions, and lets it will where she goes; a person restricted by strings that are bound to a metaphysical anchor.

Thank you for finding the answer to what gets me off my ass.

Thank you for hacking into my brain and stripping it of its firewalls.

Thank you for shoving Ally out of her shell and making her feel seen.

Thank you for making me —

“Thanks for protecting us earlier,” Harper mumbles instead, wholly disregarding the barrage of ideas that’d clogged her head, insistent in their efforts.

Harper doesn’t want them to desire falling out of her mouth against her will. She can see even in the dark how hazy Emma’s eyes are, but it isn’t due to tears or a sickening reaction to blood this time.

Emma exhales a sigh through her nose, smiling gently. The furrow in her brows signifies its hesitant sincerity. “Anytime.”

Anytime.

It’s a simple word placed in an even simpler response, and yet it makes Harper feel lightheaded.

Nodding stiffly, Harper wheels around to face the opened door and hastily strides out, not looking back as she awkwardly tosses a wave towards Emma and shuts the door behind her; it slams instead of clicks, and Harper can’t even flinch at just how loudly it echoes in the empty corridor.

Harper stands in front of the door, staring vacantly into the wall across from her as she traces the patterns. Her hand strangles the hoodie gripped in a shaky palm, and she slowly falls back, spine silently colliding with the door.

The jackhammer was so, so real. It chipped away at her will and forced her head to whirl stupidly and dizzily, like the feeling you get when you take a bunch of shots of straight vodka and then spin around in twenty circles.

She’s into Emma.

Like, super into. That level of into.

The kind of into that you only see in melodramatic romcoms.

The jackhammer wasn’t real, it was just a signal trying to tell her that her feelings were changing at a speed that couldn’t be curbed and scuffed out.

They became all-consuming before she even knew they existed.

This and that aren’t unnameable concepts that exist just to make a mess of Harper’s head, they’re the amalgamations of a fucking crush.

She’s into Emma. So into her that it makes her feel like she’s going insane; that it makes her feel illogical.

So into her that the feeling alone makes her want to keep going.

The sound of metal ruthlessly hitting the floor and rolling away reaches Harper’s ears with a sharpness not unlike a gunshot, and yet she doesn’t move a muscle. The hoodie pocket feels empty.

She’s into Emma.

So into her that it makes her want to do stupid things for stupid reasons, but also no reasons at all.

She could make a scroll of reasons explaining just how fucked she is.

The rolling stops, and Harper just wants it to start up again. It sounds better than the jackhammer.

The jackhammer grinds away in her ears, and Harper’s sure it’s made a hole at this point.

Fuck. She’s into Emma.

She almost wishes she’d never realized that.