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The fact that Aguefort is hosting a Valentines dance is a personal attack against Kristen Applebees and her most recent romantic failures.
Her bag hits the lunch table with a heavy thunk — she'd love to say that it's because of her books and studies and not because of the unknown number of energy drinks that are trapped in there but her Mom told her lying is a sin — and her head hits the table with the same noise as she groans. Adaine's the only one with this lunch and there is no world where she is truly sympathetic to any of Kristen's girl troubles. Last time she came to her with heart eyes and told her that Tracker was back in town, Adaine threw a pillow so hard at her head that she had a bruise on the side of her face for a week. Kristen could have healed it and Adaine did apologize, but she had to milk it for all that it was worth. Besides, ladies like scars and injuries. It didn't work on Tracker, but that's besides the point!
Look, Kristen isn't known with her luck with girls. At least not at Aguefort. All her friends tease her for it, and that's fine, shes used to it, but it gets to a point. There are only so many times that one can fall after trying to lean on a wall before it starts to sting. Her last situationship had ended up with her becoming the girls nemesis! It was Gertie that had ended up telling her about the dance anyhow, they managed to become one of the sponsors.
Valentines day has everyone in the mood for love, at least five different clubs are selling valentines of some sort with candy or flowers — or in Gertie's case, honey. The signs are everywhere, especially in the cafeteria, a fact that is not making Kristen feel any better in her woes. Every couple in Aguefort is making out in the hallway and hanging off each other like they are going to be together til the day they die instead of breaking up like 98% of high school couples. Riz told her that statistic after Tracker broke up with her and while it definitely didn't make her stop crying, it did prove useful to think of whenever she sees prom-posals going on in the hallway.
Prom-posals are bad enough. She doesn't look forward to seeing what valentines day proposals will be.
Her ear just manages to catch the crinkle of Adaine's jacket as she sits down next to her, a decidedly unsympathetic smirk on her face and a faux level of concern in her voice."
"Find out about the dance?"
"How much do I have to pay you to be my fake date?"
"Not a number you can afford."
Maybe theres still time to fake her death and run away. Maybe Cassandra will take pity on her and strike her down before the dance. The little voice in the back of her head that sounds a little too much like Cass whispers that shes being dramatic. She rolls her eyes.
"Why do you even need a date? We always go as a group."
"'Cause it's valentines day! It's one of those bigger events. You're supposed to go with a date and then kiss in the back of her parents car until you're breathless and—"
Ow. A french fry hits her forehead as she finally looks up at Adaine.
"Too much information there, Kristen."
"Soooooorry." Kristen drags out the "o" as she forces herself to sit up and ruffle through her bag until she finds her favorite energy drink flavor, Fallinel Grape, and the extremely crushed bag of chips she's been snacking on all day. "I just gotta find a date. At least to save face. Gertie was the one to tell me about the whole thing 'cause apparently she has a date. I can't let my nemesis/kinda ex-girlfriend have a date while I am still hung up on my other ex who left for Fallienel again."
That gets a grimace from Adaine, she was there for that whole debacle with Gertie and it was not pretty. Before she can speak though, Fig sprints into the lunchroom and collapses onto the seat next to Kristen, grinning like a mad man as she tucks her skateboard into her bag.
"GUYS! Did you hear about the dance?" Fig may be out of breath, but nothing can hold back her enthusiasm. Adaine simply gestures at the sad wet cat eyes Kristen sported at the mention of the dance.
"Yeah, Kristen's over here in mourning over it."
Fig grimaces, matching Adaine's earlier look. Living at the manor together has linked them in ways unexplainable. Gorgug calls them the wonder triplets when they all have lunch together and do shit like this. Speaking of Gorgug, he's in barbarian classes right now and so should Fig—
"Don't you have class right now?"
"I'm auditing, obviously. I'm not sure if I'll stick with it. The new barbarian teacher seems less evil. Not that I don't have my eyes on him at all times though." Fig's eyes narrow as she thinks about the board that Riz made for her. There's no real use for it, Aguefort finally engaged in a decent background check for a teacher for once, but it makes all of them feel better and Gorgug was pretty touched even if he won't admit it. "But we weren't doing anything and I can't really rage and I saw the new posters for the dance and had to come to lunch. Also I was hungry." Fig grabs a chip, inspecting it thoroughly before throwing it in the air and catching it with her mouth. Kristen and Fig spent an entire summer once trying to learn that trick. Kristen still doesn't have it quite down but Fig is good enough at it for the two of them.
Kristen's sour demeanor must be even more obvious than she thought. It only takes Fig a few seconds to register it, "What's up with you? You were happy this morning, Gorgug got you your favorite energy drink and Lydia didn't get a chance to steal it."
"She doesn't have a date for the dance and is convinced she's losing her cool points." Adaine interjects before Kristen can respond. Kristen sticks her tongue out at her before turning to Fig.
"Fig it's a tragedy! How else am I supposed to be the cool lesbian president if I can't get a date to the dance celebrating love of all things. They're gonna impeach me."
"Aguefort doesn't do impeachments, I looked in the bylaws—"
"Adaine I'm never gonna heal you again." Kristen's lazy grin turns sharp, though not with any actual threat.
Adaine will never stop being a younger sister and Kristen will never stop being an older one. Bickering is second nature and something about it makes Kristen's chest warm and fuzzy.
"Don't mess with her too much, Adaine, she may as well die without a date. Single people problems." Fig jests as Kristen turns her gaze towards her again.
"Are you not included in that group of singles? Have a hot date you are planning for? Someone I gotta beat up for your honor?" Kristen says, punching the air in front of Fig.
No one is sure when it became a running joke, Kristen and Fig secretly being in love but it must trail back to Junior year at some point. The two of them were always close but there is something distinctly homoerotic about teaching your best friend how to pray and worship a god. Your god. The one that only has a handful of followers and one of them is the girl who saw you crying and bleeding after your parents kicked you out and took you in without missing a beat because the love in her heart is so big that it bleeds into everything she does. And at some point maybe she thinks that you are her god and you don't mind it in the way that you probably should.
Kristen's love for her friends always tends to blur the lines. There's a sort of love that doesn't fit in the lines the way it should. Love isn't supposed to be like that with your friends, at least she doesn't think. You shouldn't want to kiss your friends on the cheek, especially if you aren't attracted to them like that but it never stopped her. She changes in front of them without thinking and the insecurity about her scars tends to go on the back burner for a few moments. The love in her chest drowns her sometimes until she can't breathe as she looks at her friends and realizes they love her for every bit of her insane and wild self that can't ever hide it's true feelings. So, it was easy for the jokes to pop up about her really being in love with her friends. Fig was simply the one that fake flirts back.
Fig swoons at Kristen's threat, her slightly sharper canine teeth glinting, "You'd defend lil' ol' me? I'm honored."
"Of course. How else am I supposed to secure you as my date?"
A lightbulb seems to go off above both of their heads as what Kristen says clicks. The Bad Kids always go to dances together, that's not revolutionary, but going as a fake couple? The ultimate commitment to the bit and the perfect way to solve Kristen's girl troubles? It'd be perfect, and easy enough to pull off, half the school has bets on them secretly dating already. They'd have dates and get to mess with the general population.
Kristen opens her mouth to ask, never thinking before she speaks, just to hear the faint ringing of someone yelling, "FOOD FIGHT!!!" Fuckass freshmen ruining her beautiful and haphazard plan. Her annoyance does not mean that she is willing to be left out though. Fig catches her eye once again as she grabs one of the energy drink cans and bites it open, ready to be thrown like a grenade.
Kristen's never been more in love with one of her friends.
—
Kristen does have a plan. That plan involves a box of chocolate, a ton of balloons, a ring that she had Gorgug make, doves that she managed to steal from the druid classes, and three boomboxes. It's gonna go great. She's not terrified that she's gonna manage to embrass herself and fall flat on her face at all.
She's never prom-posed to anyone before, though this is for a whole different sort of dance, but she's seen it in so many movies that it should be second nature. You grab a poster, stand in front of the girls class, get a flash mob, and suddenly she's saying yes with heart eyes.
The cleric classes are done for the day, Buddy's baby god was throwing a fit and accidentally burned down half the room so the teachers are focused on that for the afternoon, thank the gods, so Kristen is stationed nearest to the paladin classes.
The first thing that goes wrong is the fact she has no clue where Fig's class is. Gorgug said he'll report if she's in barbarian classes, Riz said he'll use his time to sneak around and hunt for her in case she's in warlock classes, and she even managed to convince Lucy to check in on the paladin classes. Fig hasn't been to bard classes since junior year and she made the teacher cry and take a sabbatical that's so long it may as well be an early retirement. So, that's nixed out at the least. She hopes.
The second problem is the fact that the balloons showed up at Mordred Manor at 4 am. Fig sleeps under the piano, she's more than reliant on everyone else to wake her up, but of course that was the night she stayed up writing a new song in one of the extra rooms and heard the doorbell. And of course Kristen had fallen asleep in the chapel again because come on, prayer and meditation does get tiring. Clearing your head of all thoughts with your eyes closed is the perfect nap conditions! So, Fig was perfectly placed to interact with the man who rang the doorbell. Luckily she was able to explain it away by saying it was a valentines day gift for Sandra Lynn that Jawbone had ordered.
But that's only two things! Two on a very long list of things that are going right. The ring she got made is stunning, the silver band and the black gem match perfectly — she was gonna go for red but that may bring up some bad memories — and that's not to mention the fact that it perfectly tunes whatever instrument the owner has. It did take a while to get Fig's ring size, it's hard to manage to steal one of her rings to measure when she literally sleeps in them. But Kristen got Gorgug the measurements without too too much strife. She got the boombox from him too, it's one of his parents old creations that they had when they were in school. Kristen made sure to clean that extremely thoroughly.
The ping of her crystal manages to shake her away from that unpleasant thought as she jumps, crystal almost falling out of her hands as she scrambles to answer it. Riz's contact pops up, the stupid little .5 photo she managed to snap of him appearing as her finger finally manages to click the button.
"HEY!" Kristen's louder than she means to be, she always is, but the nerves must be getting to her more than she thought.
"SHH!" Riz is just as loud in his shushing so Kristen really thinks he doesn't have room to judge, but far be it from her to correct him, "Fig went to Bard class for some reason. You've got five minutes 'til she leaves."
"That's halfway across the school, how am I supposed to—"
click
Riz is not known for his eloquent endings to calls. Maybe he is just trying to distract Fig? Maybe he can buy her time. But she can't count on it. She's been working out for months, but it's all coming down to this, she's just gotta sprint across the school in a few minutes while carrying enough stuff to take out any oncoming freshmen.
Of course it goes wrong, Kristen wanted it to go right so badly, it was truly inevitable with how clumsy she is most of the time. Even evil villains have pointed out how clumsy she is. Kristen isn't sure exactly how it happened, just that one moment she finally had everything in her hands, and the next she noticed that her shoe was untied. It doesn't take a genius to guess what happened next.
"Woah, Kristen, what's going on?" Fig appears above her, inquiring.
Kristen can feel the bruises developing on her shins already, purple and green and red muddling together like the valentines cards she used to make as a kid. "Uh. I was trying to prom-pose to you. I kinda sorta fell."
Fig's laugh has always been infectious. It was one of the very first things that Kristen noticed about her on that first day of school. Kristen had made some stupid corny pun that made her crack up with laughter so loud that Kristen thought the corn cuties would come even closer and kill them. She did die, but Fig's laughter didn't lead her to it. Ever since then, she always tries to get that laugh to bubble up over her chest and into the air between them til they both start to choke. They did piercings and tattoos at midnight and laughed so hard they woke up with side cramps. They sobbed together late at night when the dreams felt too real until a giggle started out of nowhere and for a few seconds both of them felt so perfectly okay. They sleep in each other's beds half the time and kick each other under the covers.
So, Fig's laughter doesn't sting. She knows that she's an insane picture, here on the floor with one shoe untied and in way too much pain for such a small fall. Her epic failure is not on the forefront of her mind. The doves that are currently flying around and pooping on every surface do not bother her. The boombox is broken on the ground, splint into a thousand tiny little pieces that Gorgug probably can't fix. The balloons are fighting the doves for air space. The chocolate is getting stolen by rats, probably for the little rat city under the ground.
Kristen manages to sit up just a bit, managing to scramble into a proper proposal position. The precious ring in her pocket didn't go anywhere, that at least went right. Maybe the plan wasn't all too bad.
"Figueroth "The Infaethable" Faeth. Archdevil of Rebellion. Champion of Ankarna. Will you do me the absolute favor of being my date to the Valentine's Day Dance so that I do not look like an absolute loser lesbian without a partner." Kristen ends it all with the biggest grin anyone's seen on her since she saw Bucky for the first time since she was kicked out.
Fig pulls her up without a word and without thought, "YES!" the excitement in her voice so palpable and solid that you could probably run into it like brick wall. If she squints, she can almost see hearts in Fig's eyes. That's all the confirmation that Kristen needed.
Kristen kisses her instantly, not a care in the world for who saw. After all, it is a commitment to the bit if anything. Fig's lips are soft and taste like cherry and cloves and she's certain that the lipstick Fig is wearing will stain hers for the next few days. Fig breaks away for just one moment and Kristen expects to be rebuked but she hears none. Only a small and simple statement.
"Hey, Kristen."
"What?"
"Your shoes untied."