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Zari had never had to romantically chase after someone. It wasn’t a brag or anything. It was just pure facts. She had always been a bit more on the aloof side, so whenever she had been with anyone, they were always the initiator, and she kind of went along with it. So, Zari wasn’t a stranger to being flirted with. There were times she could even admit it had been a fun distraction. And that was exactly how it started with Charlie as well. They had some playful banter. A smirk over here, an eyeroll over there, and Charlie’s multiple attempts of asking her out that were always received with a sarcastic comment. It was all harmless bickering. No heart, no foul. Until last week.
It was morning, and she had just walked into the kitchen to prepare herself breakfast waiting for her daily silly compliment that she would’ve rolled her eyes to. But she received nothing of the sort. Zari, seeing the situation, started messing up with them, sparking the conversation, but Charlie just gave some generic reply and didn’t match her energy. At first, Zari just shelved the interaction as the shapeshifter waking up on the wrong side of the bed, but then, the next day came and it was the same situation. Every day after that, Charlie stayed nice, and the more politically correct they were, the more it was driving her insane.
Unfortunately, seven days later, she got sick, which meant spending the day on bedrest giving her time to spiral even further. As she came back from Gideon’s fabricator with a box full of tissues, she suddenly started feeling nauseated and when she felt something coming up from her stomach, she went to the bathroom as fast as she could. But when she opened the toilet seat and got herself ready to throw up, nothing but a bug the size of a fly came out.
“Fucking finally! You took your time with me, didn’t ya, homie?”
“What the—Who said that?” Zari said as she looked around. Did she—did she hallucinate that?
“Who do you think, homie? By the way, have you considered a breathmint? Your insides stink!”
Zari looked at the fly for the first time. This was not happening. She was not talking to a fly she just puked. “You have got to be kidding me.” She sighed. If she didn’t know any better, she would think she had gone clinically insane. But for the Legends, this was a regular Tuesday.
“Oh, great. An open-minded one. That will save us time.” The fly… smiled? Or at least that was what it felt like. “I’m tired of dodging your rolled newspapers and old rags just to help you, humans. Like, I’m not getting any younger, you know?”
“Whatever. Why are you here? Who—who are you?”
“Right! I’m your lovebug, Lawson. How you do, homie?” The fly said, tipping an invisible cowboy hat. “I’ve come here to help you.”
“You’re gonna stop making me sick?”
“In a way, yes.” The fly sat on Zari’s hand. “Us lovebugs don’t just randomly spawn on humans, you know? They call on us. You did. With your problem.”
“Sure, what problem?” Zari played along with this bug’s fantasy. This was obviously a magical creature, and like all magical creatures, all she needed to do was to trap it, somehow.
“Oh, we both know what it is.” The fly winked. “Or rather, who it is.”
Zari furrowed her eyebrows in response.
“C’mon, homie! The British shapeshifter with a smug grin.”
“Charlie? What about them?”
“My God, you humans can be so thick sometimes. I’m a lovebug, homie. Love. Bug.”
“This—this is a misunderstanding I don’t—they’re just a friend.” Zari said, quickly.
“Well, that’s part of the problem, now, ain’t it?” Lawson winked at her.
“What? No, it isn’t. We’re friends. What—”
“So you haven’t been spiralling about them in the last couple of days?”
Zari, who was about to say something, shut her mouth.
“There it is. Sometimes it just takes a moment, but we always get here.”
“How the fuck do you know that?”
“Again, cause I’m your lovebug, homie.”
Zari didn’t want to talk about this, especially with a magical fly, but it was looking at her with a certain honesty that made her trust it. Plus, talking about it with someone—or something—seemed like a good move.
“Fine, whatever. I have. But I don’t—I don’t like them. I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Cause… I just can’t. We just joke around, or we used to, anyway. And now we don’t anymore.”
“And why don’t you ‘joke around’ anymore, as you say it?”
“I don’t know. Ask them.”
“You look mad.” The fly pointed out.
“Yeah, no shit. I’m talking to a magic fly while sitting on the bathroom floor.”
“Not about this, about them.”
“Well, yeah. Cause we’re not…” Zari didn’t know what to say. “They…”
“Why did you say you couldn’t like them, before? Is there something wrong with them?”
“No, no. I didn’t say—” All these questions were making Zari nervous. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Then, how did you mean it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then what is wrong with Charlie?”
“Nothing! They’re not—fuck. They’re not the problem.” Zari hadn’t realised how frustrated she was getting.
“So, you are? Is that it?”
Zari brought her hands to her head, refusing to speak.
“I know why the shapeshifter has stopped talking to you, Zari.” The fly said after giving her a minute. “And I think, deep down, you know too.”
“They got tired of me, didn’t they?”
“I wouldn’t phrase it like that, but sure. Let’s go with your words, homie.”
“It’s just that for once in my life, I have a good life. I’ve got a place to be, friends I love like family and I—I just didn’t want to mess it up by trying something that could ruin it, okay? But I couldn’t step away.”
“Step away from what?”
Zari sighed. “Them. I mean, if I had just stopped it or something, this wouldn’t be happening.”
“But you didn’t want to.”
“But I didn’t want to.” She admitted. What else did she have to lose? “They’re funny, and witty and so unapologetically themselves. How am I not going to—to like them?”
Now that all her feelings were out in the open, she didn’t think she could ever put them back, and she didn’t think she wanted to, either.
“So, what are you going to do?”
“I’ll—”
Zari got interrupted by a series of footsteps right outside the door. When she looked back at her hand, where the Lawson lovebug was, there was nothing in it. Maybe she had imagined every single bit, but it didn’t bother her. Cause at least, she knew what she had to do next.