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Grian couldn’t help but roll his eyes in near to fucking despair as the minutes ticked by slower and slower.
He couldn’t bear to be in the classroom for another minute, honestly, even if the honeyed bars of sunlight did look pretty beautiful when they hit the redhead across the room’s eyes. Her gorgeous green eyes, oh my god, they were like nothing else.
As much as he hated detention, Gem’s presence made it a little more bareable this once. Now, it wasn’t like he was some wrong’un who was shoved into a 90-minute detention every week, okay? They— well, he was late, but Gem was barely to the lesson before he was.
Call him selfish, but he would call that opportunity.
Opportunity to make detention a little less mind-numbingly boring, if nothing else. But the crisp leaves falling outside the window did create somewhat of a romantic mood, right? Right?
It wasn’t like he was some 11-year-old with a ‘crush’. He was mature. He had class.
But it was now or never to make his move on Gem. Or anything. Just make conversation. Like, they talked, but they weren’t ‘talking’.
He couldn’t even express if he tried how sick and tired he was of this ‘talking stage’ bullshit. Just grow a pair and ask her out, you know?
He was working up to it. Slowly
Anyway, the last 10 minutes eventually drawled by and Grian practically jumped out of his seat and skipped over to Gem the minute the bell rang.
These days, he often feels this weird ass feeling of time slowing down when he looks at Gem. Especially when the sun is looking majestic and the leaves on the trees match the shade of her hair.
For a while, Grian sort of viewed her as a sister. Not in some creepy incest way, but they were such close friends to the point they would act like siblings more than a couple. Like when they would go to the lake with their friends, and they’d end up nearly drowing eachother and getting eachother as soaked with manky lake water as possibly rather than swimming or tanning or whatever the rest of the group was doing.
It had all just felt so.. normal. Sneaking into the bathrooms during lessons and talking to eachother by lifting up the ceiling tiles. It was absurd, honestly. God, they were bored.
It felt casual, sure, when they walked out of said bathrooms leaving them smelling faintly of watermelon ice and triple mango. But it felt.. intimate when they nearly raced eachother down the corridor, pushing and pulling on eachother to get to lesson before the late bell rang.
It sounds corny as fuck, now that he’s replaying it, but there was a ‘look of love’ or some other Arctic Monkeys reference in there somewhere. Swear!
Maybe it was just Gem. She really was special to him, as much as he never said it. She was like an iPhone in a world full of Samsungs.
He’s not good with metaphors. Makes him sound more like an itrritating salesman than a poet.
Point being, Gem turned from this chick he could see as his twin sister or some shit, into this girl he actually liked. The girl he walked home with after detention, playfully bumping shoulders as the foresty path narrowed. The girl he wishes he could man up and ask out.
And Grian knows he doesn’t ‘express his love’ or whatever therapy buzzwords are popular this week. He can avoidant attachment yearn his way to Mars and back, but that doesn’t give him the balls to talk to her.
He could always ask her older brother, Etho, to put in a good word for him..
But that could go south quickly.
Grian shuddered as he rememebred the last time he talked to the white-haired boy after a painfully long detention. He could never forget the way this bitch was death staring him from across the room. Just pull out the machete and get it over with, Christ!
Looked like there was no hope. He sighed absentmindledly as he pretty much walked into a tree, conkers and pinecones coming down like rainfall. He didn’t hit it that hard. Ugh, nature.
Gem’s laughter pulled him out of his little bubble. Cute, jokey laughter. At least she was laughing with him for once.
He might have left the ‘sibling’ era in the past, but the shit she used to pull will never be forgotten.
Grian shook his head, not able to supress his own chuckle. Hard to keep a straight face when a genuine angel sent from heaven is blessing you with her laughter.
Angel is a pretty good descriptor, actually. Ethereal, too. Anything that highlights that whole ‘heavenly’ aesthetic, or whatever. God, he sounded like a loser. Like those fucking idiots in TikTok comment sections spamming stickers of basketballers shooting to the moon. Talk about dead internet theory. Dead romance theory.
They fell back into step, the warmth of the sun softly warming up his body through his uniform. Or maybe it was just the blush creeping up his chest and onto his cheeks as he and Gem’s fingers brushed against one another’s.
And then their eyes met.
And for once, Grian didn’t see Gem, the girl in his year that he happened to be friends with, or Gem, his ‘annoying friend’ who laughed when he racked up three detentions in two days.
He saw Gem, the girl he’d been too blind to see that he’d loved for years.
He saw the intricacies of her freckles, he saw her loose, red curls framing her face in the October sunset, and he saw the look in her emerald eyes.
The look that reciprocated his.
That look of gentle intimacy built over years of friendship and romantic tension. The natural progression that was, maybe, unavoidable? Destiny? Grian didn’t believe in soulmates, but fuck, Gem was a convincing argument, just by being herself.
She was funny and witty, and she knew his favourite shitty emo songs, and the way he cut his hair, and the password to his Roblox account.
And he knew about all of her little idiosyncrasies. The way she only had a dimple on her right cheek, when she smiled. Or, the way she teased him with the same smug grin everytime, and the same warm laughter as he fell into a fit of giggles in a silent classroom for the last time before he got sent out.
He knew how she liked her hair braided, and the shade of concealer, or blush, or whatever she used. Rosy Glow, by the way. Not that she needed it.
He’d seen her late at night, after she’d shoved her hair into a lopsided bun and forced him to watch 20 episodes of the latest sitcom she was watching. And he’d seen her laugh at the corny jokes— and laughed with her.
Grian saw Gem. Really saw her.
Beyond Etho’s evil glare and Joel’s teasing comments, he saw her. The love of his life.
Maybe he was being a little dramatic. All they did was hold hands, after all..
But maybe that was all Grian needed. A quiet display of affection on a cute Autumn walk after a day of troublemaking at school. Highschool romance, or whatever. Love is in the air and shit.
He caught himself smiling like an idiot as they walked in silence.
It was hard not to, honestly.