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Red takes the steps two at a time, flying down the three flights that separated her dorm from the one she was hounding toward until she finally makes it to the first floor of the irritatingly hot Perrault building. She sails past the obnoxious crowds, even going so far as to duck under the legs of a couple Tourney girls when they seem happy to not move from the middle of the hall, barely evading the new wave of zombie students with their overzealous and badly frosted-tipped leader who had nothing but attention to spare. Because all that occupies her thoughts is Chloe, and how Red herself can’t imagine being forced to live on this horrible, and irritating main floor of the student affairs building, but at the time Chloe had seemed ecstatic with the thought: the little extrovert paired with her once-upon-a-time older sister during freshman year. Red was paired with Mal. They had a lovely three mandatory hours tagging buildings, and the following mandatory six skipping on their own accord.
Thankfully, despite Chloe’s enthusiasm for opening her door and seeing hundreds of people, Red’s dorm choice of one of the top floors reigned superior in the housing administration building. Apparently cleaning out a storage room that had no window and stuffing a bunk bed in there wasn’t ’fire safe’ despite the studious amount of loop holes Chloe had searched through.
Alone in her dorm, Red had waited a good hour. Barely patient, but an hour still. Her eyes had been drawn to the odd shape of the dorm-given floor lamp. Its back arched disquietingly. Its hue, magically or otherwise, flickered a colour mixed pink and purple. Fluorescent lighting and soft librarian lighting mixed and made her omnipresent tired eyes sore from just being near it. She sat right beside it, a book in her hand she would never actually read but that felt like a fitting thing to do: sat up in a lounge chair, waiting for someone to come home…
Red’s eyes had drawn from the bright of the bulb as flashes of her mother crossed: who she once was, who she is now, who she can still be. She imagines that loneliness for herself. Holding it, having it, keeping it. Imagines a world where she shuts herself off too and loses Chloe to time, or distance, or…someone else. And that’s when she took off.
The day they had met was a celebratory day by Cinderella’s sights. Best friend’s meeting, one of the most precious times in a young girls life (though Red is sure she had seen her whack Prince Charming and point when her and Chloe had gotten away.) Bridget deemed it something much more like a scab that had been picked at, doused, and then lit on fire.
Her mother never quite healed from doing nothing that day. Storming off, wanting her daughter to tow but Red being encapsulated by the daughter of her enemy. Apparently seeing her ex best friend was worse than seeing an ex. Though she was a big fan of Chloe, she was not a big fan of Chloe’s family and would scoff the second Cinderellasburg was brought up.
Finally, after nearly bowling over a lost first year and having to bat away the puppy-dog eyes of some club recruiters, she makes it to the door she was looking for. For all she’s explored of this place, the sheer size of the women’s dormitory would never not disturb her. Nor did she really understand why the seniors needed their own sectioned off wing of the building. She raps her knuckles twice and tries not to swivel around like a mad woman as she impatiently waits amidst her anxiety-spiral for the occupant to open up.
“Coming!” Evie’s soft voice finally says, and after some shuffling around, her scream is near immediate when she pulls the door open. “Red!”
Red jumps accordingly, “Clocks, Evie! Why did you scream?!”
Evie puts on her best frown, “Your colour is just so offensive to the eyes. Where’s your better shade match?” She asks when she peers around the other girl, usually sure that Chloe will pop up right beside her. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen them apart, actually. It’s a shame. Her pastel blue is mildly nauseating, as much as she may love the kid, but much better than the horrid and loud red adorning the princess across her.
“I was coming to ask you if you’d seen her.” Red sighs, pushing into the room and glancing around like Chloe might fall from the scaffolding. But nope. The room remained painfully and solidly royal blue and purple and leadened with senior woes.
“Can’t say that I have.” Evie hums as she returns to her sewing machine, feeding the cloth through the needle. “Though I’m surprised you wouldn’t know where she is. I just assumed you were both cosmically connected, or that you had a tracker embedded in her ankle or something.”
Red’s eyes narrow. “Har har. No, I last saw her last night and we were supposed to meet up— why are you making that face, what is that?”
Evie’s eyebrow is raised; her grin almost painfully coquettish. “Last night, huh?”
Red blinks. Then— “Oh my clocks, we’re roommates! I saw her before she went to sleep! In her bed!” She clarifies only when Evie starts to snicker.
“Wouldn’t you worry where Mal was if you hadn’t seen her in—“
“—ten hours?” Evie cuts her off, threading the needle through the end of the skirt with precision. “Well she always tells me where she is, so I wouldn’t have to ever worry about that. Perhaps your girlfriend is hiding from you.”
Red turns as bright as her hair. “My what? Hiding? What— do you know where Mal is, so I can ask her then? I doubt she’ll be as wholly unhelpful as you, no offence.”
Evie smiles, “None taken. But you are mistaken, Mal is far more brutal than me. However if you want her, she should be down in the large oak tree sketching.”
“Great. Purple is less nauseating to look at anyway!” Red huffs out before she spins on her heel, that vibrating need to find her friend sending her adrenaline into overdrive again.
“I’m telling Chloe you said blue is ugly!” Evie says before the door can fully shut, rolling her eyes at the younger girl. She doesn’t remember her and Mal ever having been this nauseating together.
·•—–٠✤٠—–•·
Red does find Mal up in the familiar tree, stretched out with music blaring from a little speaker by her knee and sketchbook in hand.
“I thought tree climbing was a Wonderland thing, but I guess I was wrong.” Red shouts up, drawing the dragon’s attention.
Mal pops the gum in her mouth, rolling languidly and without a fear in the world onto her side, her head precariously hanging off the branch.
“Before there was you, there was me. Never forget that, Red. What do you want?”
If Red didn’t know Mal better then she did, shed think she was a bitch. But she does know her, so she only thinks she’s kind of a bitch. They were more acquaintances than friends, forced into proximity by the unfortunate situation of their roommates both being involved in sports and getting along like a house on fire. When there was a swords game, there was a cheer game. The two blue’s got along great, but Mal was often rude and short and Red— well, she didn’t think there needed to be two of them.
“I’m looking for Chloe. Seen her?”
The face that Mal forms reminds her horribly of old man Cheshire at home, filled with riddles and rhymes and wholly indifferent to helping. Even the way the other girl was kicking her foot felt uncomfortably like the whoosh of his tale.
“Lost your girl already, have you?” Mal tilts her head, a pout on her lips. “Shame. She was sweet.”
Red digs her nails into her palm to stop from ripping at her hair. Why did everyone have to think they were something they weren’t?
“She’s not my girl. Have you seen her or not?” And the more she corrected people, the less she felt she wanted to. But that was a problem for a different time, when she wasn’t bouncing on her feet and wringing her hands out in anxious energy.
She tries not to blush as red as her hair at the fact it’s only been ten hours and she was acting like an addict in need of a fix.
Mal, taking pity, tilts her head back in the direction of the field. “She’s sparring with her less desirable brother.”
Red could smack herself. Of course Chloe, perfect Chloe, would be working out on a Saturday morning.
“Thanks Mal.” Red grumbles half-heartedly, stepping away from the tree and its purveyor a little too fast.
Mal notices, of course. “Why don’t you start skipping, you whipped puppy? It’s only been like 10 hours!” By the end of it she’s shouting, and luckily she looks mildly embarrassed by the fact.
Red flips her off. And if her feet raise in a little hop as she runs, it’s only because she’s restless. Not for any other reason. None at all.
·•—–٠✤٠—–•·
The field is littered with people enjoying the warm sunny weather. Students lounge on blankets tanning or napping, a few girls dance around to the speaker playing something tinny and familiar and a few groups or coupled around passing various balls. Red has to duck under a frisbee as it whizzes right by her ear, snapping her gaze to-and-fro so fast she thinks she may have whiplash. It lands on someone’s lunch. The disgruntled picnickers with ketchup flavoured textbooks are not quick to forgive the grovelling junior athletes.
Red swerves around a group of Auradon Prep Theatre kids running like they were auditioning for some kingdom-wide musical (they were). She mutters a curse under her breath, wondering if she’s the only person in the world with someplace to be right now. Then, just around a tasteful staged breakup…
Chloe.
She’s standing just a ways away in the centre of the field, tape on the grass marking starting spots and where the limitations would be during a game. Her hair is pulled back in a perfectly annoying ponytail, gleaming like she’d been hand-polished by a fairy godmother that very morning. Sword in hand, stance solid, Chloe grinned as though this sport was made just for her. Her brother Chad, a metre away and opposite her, is bowled over and red faced. Somehow he’s managed to completely flatten his curls with the amount of sweat he’s worked up. He looks like he might be cursing her out, but she just grins.
Red freezes for a second. Not because she doesn’t know what to do next—but because her chest squeezes so tight she thinks for a horrifying moment that Evie might be right. A tracker. A cosmic bond. Whatever it was, Chloe had her in her clutches.
And Red hated it… and kind of loved it.
She shakes herself out of it and stalks closer to the ring. “Hey, Bluey!” she yells, hands cupped around her mouth.
Chloe’s head snaps up, that perfect, irritating smile breaking across her face to replace the smugness. She doesn’t even hesitate—she dodges Chad’s lazy strike, disarms him in one move, and leaves him yelping on the ground while she jogs over until she’s just a hands reach away.
Red almost does reach out, but her nails are keeping her palms firmly still.
“Red!” Chloe beams like she hasn’t been missing for hours. Like Red hasn’t been spiraling.
Red scowls, though it comes out softer than she wants and now she’s just pouting in BROAD daylight. “Do you know how long I’ve been looking for you?”
Chloe tilts her head, tapping her sword against her shoulder. “Hmm. Ten hours?”
Red groans, dragging her hands down her face. “Did you send an email out, or something? Why does everyone know how long it’s been…”
Chloe giggles—actually giggles, like the kind that would summon butterflies or tame a beast or some other dumb fairytale thing Red’s brain scrounges up —and steps closer, dropping her sword to her side.
“Relax, I was just sparring. You didn’t have to send a search party.” She jokes, eyebrows pinching.
Red doesn’t say that she nearly did. Instead, she huffs, “You could’ve told me.”
“And miss you storming around campus like a little wolf on a hunt?” Chloe bumps her shoulder against Red’s as they start walking away from the field. “No way. That’s the most entertaining thing I’ve thought about all week.”
“Little red riding hood, are you seriously?…” Red sputters, torn between combusting on the spot or melting into the grass. She settles for glaring at the ground. “You’re insufferable.”
“Mhmm. And you missed me.” Chloe singsongs, swinging her sword like it’s a purse and not almost half her weight.
Red’s silence is damning, and Chloe knows it.
So she grins wider, catching the sun in her hair, and Red knows she’s already lost. Blue as glassy water, blue as the makeup by her beautiful brown eyes, blue as the faint glimmer of Red’s favourite earrings, blue as… well.
Red was many things. A poet was not one such thing.
They just stare at each other for a while, now. Chloe’s eyes soften, travelling from Red’s disheveled braids she’d been pulling at to the scuffs on her boots. Red stares too, at the light smattering of freckles starting to form, at the scar near the corner of her mouth, at her mouth…
She’s not sure who’s moving first, only that their noses are brushing and Chloe’s breath is warm against her parted lips and she smells like bergamot and sunshine and—
“Chloe! Where’d you go, let’s get back to it!” Chad’s voice rings out from a little too close for comfort.
Chloe growls, and doesn’t give Red the chance to protest before she grabs her wrist and tugs her across the field, weaving through the mess of students until they’re tucked away behind the equipment shed.
It’s quieter here, shaded by the maples all around them, with only the hum of the field in the distance and the faint hiccup of a frog from the stream close by.
Red’s heart is still pounding. Chloe hasn’t let go of her hand.
“What are we doing here?” Red asks, trying to sound like she’s fine and unbothered, landing somewhere near breathless. Her eyes wouldn’t move from Chloe’s lips if the hand of God reached down and snapped her neck up
Chloe shrugs, dropping her sword against the wall and taking a deep breath. “Because I wanted you to stop looking like you were going to explode in front of everyone. And because…” She loses the self assurance from her voice now too, sounding… almost scared “I missed you too.”
Red swallows hard. Her rehearsed comebacks scatter like playing cards in the wind. “You—what?”
Chloe steps closer, until Red’s back hits the shed and a quiet oof leaves her “You’re ridiculous, you know. Storming around, worrying, flipping people off in trees—”
“You saw that?!”
Chloe laughs, the sound bubbling out, light and tinkering like sand on glass
Always with the glass metaphors.
Glass… shoe. Oh.
“Of course I saw. I was on a break grabbing a drink from the concession.” She takes a breath, eyes flicking between Red’s, “And it made me think… maybe I like that you’d come find me like that. That you wanted to so badly.”
Red’s face burns. Her fists clench and unclench. Unbidden, a song plays in her head. Something one of her classmates learned from her uncle Sebastian, kiss the girl, or something. “You drive me insane.”
“Good.” Chloe tilts her head, her lips twitching like she’s fighting against the biggest smile in the world. Her hand finds the small of Red’s waist, hovering. “Because you drive me insane too.”
Red presses into the touch, and Chloe surges forward. Her lips are softer than Red could have ever imagined, sweet like the cola she’d drank earlier and warm. All of Chloe is warm, heat bleeding into the apple of Red’s cheeks and staining her her namesake.
When Chloe pulls back, her smile is wide and mischievous. “Still not your girl?”
Red’s voice comes out rough, and she swallows hard to clear it. “…Clocks, please be?”
Chloe beams, “I’d love nothing more. Now cmon, I have to go beat my girlfriend-less brother at his own game.
Chloe takes and tugs Red’s hand again as they step back toward the noise of the field, like the world hasn’t just shifted on its axis. And Red follows—restless, red-faced, and undeniably hers.
Somewhere not far, Mal is cuddled up against Evie’s side at the base of the tree, hopeful that their colour-halfs don't take as long as they did to figure it out.