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“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I can assure you,” Osteon says in complete deadpan. “I am being completely forward with the conditions.”
“But—but I can’t. Isn’t there some other dorm you can stick me in? Doesn’t Feles already have an overpopulation problem?”
Osteon flips through his notes, frowning. “Lupi and Vulpes being out of commission already make the situation complicated. It’s difficult as is to reassign all of the students' new dorms, given the…issue. Feles was the only available option left.”
AJ’s mouth falls open in disbelief. “I can’t room with her.”
“I’m sure any troubles you’ve had with Ghostie in the past won’t affect your living conditions now–”
“It will,” she cuts them off with a sharp nod. “It absolutely will. Trust me on this one. Me and Ghostie can’t be in the same room together. I don’t even think she wants to be in the same room with me.”
Osteon glances up from their notes to look at her. “I highly doubt that.”
“What do you even mean by that–”
“All I am saying, AJ,” he interrupts, “is that I don’t think Ghostie would not want to share her dorm, per your words, seeing as she was one of the first students to pitch the idea of sharing dorms in the meantime.”
What the fuck.
“That– that,” she splutters out an exasperated groan. “That doesn’t mean I should have to room with her!”
“I really am sorry,” Osteon says, tone anything but apologetic. “But it isn’t something I can change. Every other student in the Academy has been accounted for.”
AJ might throw up. Or keel over. Or possibly both. “What about Drift? Who is she rooming with? Maybe I could just squeeze in with them too.”
“Ah, hm.” Osteon frowns and picks up her notes once more, eyes scanning over the pages. “Oh. It looks like you don’t need to worry about where Drift is staying too.”
AJ really, really does not like where this is going.
For her own sake–and for Drift’s too–she hopes that this isn’t going to end up where she thinks it might. “Is she rooming with Graecie?”
Please. Please let it be Graecie, or Zam, or even Legs at this point. Even Elaina would be a better choice than Ghostie. Anyone would be a better choice than Ghostie right now–
The corners of Osteon’s lips lift slightly in what AJ thinks is supposed to resemble a smile. “Given the limited circumstances we have, it appears she’s staying with you in Ghostie’s dorm.”
This is it.
AJ is going to die, officially.
She’ll be killed by Drift first and foremost–because of course she will. It’s Drift. And then right as AJ thinks her death might be done by the only hand she’d ever want it to be by, Ghostie and her infuriating self-sacrificial tendencies would be the one to drive the final blow to her heart.
Fuck.
Literally, what the fuck.
In other words, she’s doomed. Metaphorically and literally.
She’ll die at the age of twenty-four, killed by her sort-of-not-really-but-somewhat a girlfriend, and her ex girlfriend.
She grips the sides of her seat so hard she thinks the wood might break into splinters. “Are you sure there’s nothing that can be done? No extra dorms you might be hiding up your sleeve?”
It’s supposed to land as a joke, and she hopes it does, because there is absolutely no way AJ is about to explain to Osteon of all people, why she, Drift, and Ghostie, cannot be in the same room with each other for longer than fifteen seconds.
But, for a split second, AJ lets herself hope that Osteon does actually know of some secret set of dorms hidden within the Academy. Hopes that all of this is some crudely formed prank that Scott or Cambam set up to be funny, and that she doesn’t have to actually room with Ghostie and Drift.
AJ shudders at the thought.
She steals a glance at Osteon, the mage still flipping through their notes. “Osteon?”
“Hm?” They look up from the pile of papers, brows furrowing. “Ah, well, I’m afraid there isn’t any alternative to this. Everyone is rooming in pairs of three or more, unfortunately. But I did take the liberty upon myself to place both you and Drift together.”
The corners of her mouth continue to lift in an uncanny manner. “I had a feeling it would be something the both of you would appreciate greatly.”
Is… is Osteon pleased that they’d thought of pairing AJ and Drift together?
To sleep in Ghostie’s dorm?
A low, pounding ache begins to stir in AJ’s head.
She needs a drink. Or two. Or to get away from this godforsaken Academy once more.
“I…” she trails off, voice tethering on the edge of horror. “That is just…wow. I– and remind me how long will this rooming situation last for? It’s not permanent, is it?”
At least she hopes it won’t be permanent.
Osteon hums. “While there isn’t any confirmation as to when we can get the mold situation under control, I have full faith in this not being permanent. These living conditions should last about a week or two.”
“Two weeks?”
The color drains out of her face the moment she registers Osteon’s words. “Tell me this is a fucking joke.”
They stare at her blankly. “Why would I ever joke about something like this?”
“...Fair,” AJ concedes. There’s no use in trying to weasel her way out of this one.
See, one week she can maybe handle living with Ghostie. A week and a half is pushing it, but AJ could still keep up an act around the woman if she attempted.
But two weeks is absurd.
And it isn’t simply just two weeks with Ghostie, AJ reminds herself with a miserable inner voice. It’s two weeks with Drift. And Ghostie. And herself. All in the same space.
“If you have no more questions, then that should be everything,” Osteon tells her, seemingly indifferent to the fact AJ’s gotten three times paler. “You’re free to make your way to Ghostie’s dorm for the time being.”
“Great,” AJ says, voice tight. “Just great. Yeah, no. You’ve just given me the highlight of my year.”
Osteon simply spares her a glance. “Have I now?”
…The blacksmith might just be fucking with her at this point.
She gets up from her seat with a less than dignified groan. “The Academy better fix that mold problem soon or else someone in that dorm isn’t coming out alive, and it might be me.”
“Perhaps,” Osteon presses his lips together. “Although I’ve heard you can put up a good fight, so you could last for quite some time.”
Yeah. She’s definitely being fucked with.
She’s about to slip out of Osteon’s office, when she hears him call her name out again. “Yeah?”
They look up from their notes once more. “If you see Drift, do tell her what your living conditions are for the time being.”
…Oh god.
How is she supposed to explain this to Drift?
Between the two of them, Ghostie was something of a sensitive subject. It wasn’t like they were trying to avoid any talk of her, because avoiding the woman was impossible in the Academy. But it was more of AJ and Drift skirting around the topic, because talking about it meant confronting things neither of them wanted out in the open.
Like how Ghostie knows sides of AJ that she hasn’t even let Drift see yet. Or how Ghostie can get under Drift’s skin by just being in the room. Or how neither of them know what to do with the mere idea of Ghostie.
Still, it’s for Drift, so AJ just plasters a tight smile over her face. “Sure thing.”
She is so fucked.
-
Just as she had expected, Drift isn’t too happy about the entire situation either.
“But– but they can’t just expect us to room with her,” Drift protests, pacing around the library’s floor. “Couldn’t Osteon just, like, shuffle up the list? Or let us bunk in with Graecie and Zam? Or–or do something!”
AJ sighs from the leather seat she’s draped herself over. “No can do, Open Book. Everyone’s already got their sleeping buddies.”
Drift wrinkles her nose. “Ugh. Please don’t call Ghostie our sleeping buddy.”
And…yeah. Okay. Poor wording on AJ’s part, but she’d been a little occupied on the way Drift’s nose scrunched up whenever she got annoyed. Sue her.
“Sorry,” AJ says anyway, because it’s Drift. “My point still stands. We can’t do anything about it, so might as well just accept our fate.”
She receives a Drift-esque huff in response. “AJ, I don’t want to sleep with your ex. Frankly, I don’t want to accept that fact at all.”
“Technically you’re not sleeping with her, Open Book,” AJ points out, “we’re all in the same dorm, so we’re all sleeping together.”
A noise that sounds like a wheeze and a cough met halfway escapes from Drift’s throat. “Don’t say that one either.”
“Sorry,” AJ sighs again. “It’s just – I’m not happy about this either.”
Drift pauses in her pacing to stare at her. “Literally who is?”
Well. Drift kind of has her there, because the longer AJ thinks about it, the more she realizes that this situation isn’t good for any of the parties involved.
Drift, obviously, isn’t thrilled about the prospect of having to essentially share AJ’s ex’s dorm. If the fact that she’d been wearing holes into the library’s carpets for the better half of an hour was anything to go by.
AJ isn’t that sure what Ghostie’s stance on their less than ideal living conditions were, but if the years she had spent with the woman were anything to go by, then she probably wasn’t jumping for joy at the idea of sharing her personal space with AJ and Drift.
Then… there’s herself.
Being with Drift is already, unanimously, something AJ knows she enjoys greatly. Being with Drift is easy. It’s almost second-nature to her. Being with Drift is almost like breathing–she doesn’t even realize she’s doing it until it hits her in full force, but AJ doesn’t want it to stop, ever.
But being with Ghostie is different. Ghostie is different. Ghostie reminds AJ of late nights, and secret kisses, and words traced over the skin of her palms. Ghostie reminds AJ of frustration and anger and guilt–and everything ugly and wretched about her that she had so desperately tried to burn down the second she stepped foot into the Academy.
She doesn’t think she can survive a night being with the two of them.
Let alone two weeks.
“Fair enough,” AJ mutters under her breath. “This is bound to be a shit show anyways.”
Drift lets out a low groan. “Why did it have to be us?”
She resumes her pacing, the sound of her shoes beginning to thump against the carpeted floors again. “What if we switched?”
AJ furrows her brow at her. “Huh?”
“What if we switched our sleeping buddies?” Drift’s face contorts into a dismayed expression as the term leaves her mouth. “Ghostie doesn’t want to be with us–obviously. And we don’t want to be with her. Couldn’t we just… I don’t know. Beg to be placed with someone else?”
“Everyone’s already rooming with someone,” AJ points out. “Where would we go?”
“Somewhere,” Drift says immediately. “Someplace else. A dorm that doesn’t have to be with Ghostie. A dorm far from Feles, or–or we could sleep here.”
AJ blinks. She isn’t sure if she’d heard Drift clearly. “In the library?”
Drift nods enthusiastically. “Yeah! In the library. We could just take some spare blankets and pillows and have an entire fort in here. It’d be better than squeezing three people in one dorm.”
She glances at AJ, eyes sparkling. “Have you ever built a pillow fort before?”
AJ shakes her head in reply. “I haven’t – but that’s not the point. They'd never let us stay here.” She wrinkles her nose. “Something about ‘student safety’ and having to be in a ‘designated area’ during nights.”
She watches as Drift deflates, shoulders loosening and lower lip jutting out. It almost makes AJ want to take back her words immediately, because just seeing the way Drift had lit up at the idea of sleeping in the library made something in AJ’s heart sing.
But, still. Osteon would never allow it – and while AJ is usually not a fan of the rules that the Academy’s got set into place, she isn’t that eager to spend the night in the library instead of spending it in a proper bed, even if it meant having to bunk in with Ghostie.
So instead, AJ gets up from her seat and bumps her fist against Drift’s shoulder a little awkwardly. “We can have a sleepover in the library some other time, Open Book.”
The gesture’s supposed to be comforting, but AJ winces a little when Drift blinks up at her in confusion.
“It won’t be too bad. I think,” she continues, “Ghostie’s just another student here. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Drift’s voice is laced with incredulity. “She’s your ex.”
“So?” AJ’s brows furrow as she reaches up to cup Drift’s cheeks, feeling the warmth of her skin burn onto her fingertips. “That doesn’t mean anything to me. I want you now, Drift. No one else.”
The tips of Drift’s ears flush an impressive shade of red. “Oh,” she echoes. “Right–okay. Yeah. Okay.” AJ watches as the flush creeps down to her cheeks and wishes she can revel in it a little longer. “I– I want you too, AJ. Just you.”
AJ lets a small smile grace over her features, hands still cupping Drift’s cheeks. Everything about this is warm, and easy, and good. Everything about Drift is warm, and easy, and good.
It eases the tension in her heart just a little bit.
“Glad to hear that, Open Book.”
Drift huffs out a good-natured groan. “And here I thought you were over the whole Open Book thing.”
AJ laughs – the sound bubbling up in her throat. “Me? Never. That nickname is gonna stick with you for the rest of your life as long as I’m with you.”
Drift glances down at her, a small grin etched on her face. “Guess I’m stuck with you forever then.”
“Are you complaining?”
“Hell no.”
-
When neither of them can delay it any longer, both AJ and Drift begrudgingly make the climb up to Feles’ wing.
They’d spent the entire day together to avoid doing exactly this. It isn’t something AJ thought she would ever have to do – and it certainly isn’t something she thought she’d be doing with Drift, of all people, which makes this entire situation worse than already it is.
Being in Ghostie’s debt already leaves a bitter taste in AJ’s mouth. Knowing that Drift’s also being pulled into this, when she has nothing to do with the past that AJ and Ghostie share, just makes AJ want to slam her head into a wall repeatedly.
Drift doesn’t deserve this. None of them do – really. But AJ can compartmentalize all her feelings about Ghostie until they were nonexistent. And she knows that Ghostie had vowed not to come between her and Drift, so there was no need to worry over what the woman’s intentions were.
But Drift is a different thing entirely. Drift is an outlier to this, because she’s Drift. And after that, she’s known, in a colloquial manner, as AJ’s sort-of-but-not-really-but-still-sort-of girlfriend. She’s what Ghostie used to be, and AJ hates that she knows it’s eating Drift up inside.
But right now, they’re standing in front of Ghostie’s dorm, both staring at the door knob as if the handle would magically turn on its own.
Drift tugs the straps of her backpack over her shoulders even tighter. “Should we… knock?”
AJ blinks. “Er.”
“We– we should, right?” Drift turns to her, brows creasing. “I’m gonna knock. Fuck. AJ, tell me it isn’t a bad idea to knock on her door.”
“It’s not a bad idea to knock on her door,” AJ tells her wholeheartedly, because there is only so much she can do to resist Drift’s charms.
Drift sucks in a breath and raises her knuckles to rap against Ghostie’s door.
The sound reverberates around the empty hall like a cacophony. At this time at night, no one’s out in the halls except for AJ and Drift.Everyone else had already gone back to their dorms for the night, rooms considerably more filled now that there were twice the number of students living in Feles for the time being.
For a few seconds, nothing happens.
AJ thinks Ghostie might just be blocking them out completely, and then the idea of sleeping at the library doesn’t sound that bad of a plan, until the door swings open all of a sudden.
Ghostie’s standing at the doorway, eyes squinting at both AJ and Drift until she recognizes who they are in the dim light, visibly relaxing at the pair.
“Oh,” she says slowly, “hey AJ.”
She peers around AJ’s body, directing her gaze towards Drift. “Drift. Nice to see you again.”
“Ghostie,” Drift manages to choke out. Even with the woman behind her, AJ can practically feel the tension radiating off her body. “Hey–uh. Nice to see you again too.”
A beat passes.
“Soo,” AJ drawls out. She can’t bear another second of silence any longer. “You gonna let us in or what?”
She glances up at Ghostie, watching as the mage’s tongue pokes out from between her teeth. “I was getting to that.”
“Sure thing,” AJ shrugs, moving further into the doorway. As a reflex, Ghostie steps out of her way and lets AJ pass through. “And I was about to suggest we start braiding each other’s hair and start talking about gossip. Y’know, things that’ll never happen while you’re here.”
Ghostie’s eyebrows pinch together. “This is still my dorm, AJ. I thought you’d be smart enough to know that, but maybe not, seeing as you’re insulting me in my own home.”
“Home?” AJ barks out a laugh, beckoning Drift to follow her inside. “You’ve been here for a week. You can barely even call this a home–”
But whatever she’s about to say dies the second AJ takes a better look at Ghostie’s room, because what the fuck.
The room is barren, devoid of any furniture except for a mailbox right by AJ’s side, and a bed, standing in the middle of the dorm like an omen.
A bed that is definitely too small for three people.
“Uh, Ghostie?” Drift’s voice floats in AJ’s ears as she steps into the dorm and lets the door swing shut behind her. “Is–is there really supposed to just be one bed?”
Ghostie blinks. “Well yeah? It’s my dorm.”
“Right, right,” Drift laughs nervously, shooting AJ a panicked glance. “It’s just…we’re three people, and that bed looks like it can barely fit one.”
“It can fit at least two people,” Ghostie defends, “and we don’t need another bed. It’ll be fine.”
Drift’s brows lift so high AJ thinks they might reach her hairline. “Fine? How can this be fine?”
“Woah, hey, Open Book,” AJ intervenes, stepping in between Ghostie and Drift like a barrier. The nuance isn’t lost on her. “Breathe. Come on, you’re good. I’m sure Ghostie has a plan, or something.”
She shoots Ghostie a look – one AJ knows the other woman knows all too well. “You do, don’t you?”
Ghostie just barks out a laugh, high and gigglish. The sound identical to windchimes in the summer air. “Calm down, AJ. Jeez. Didn’t think you were the anxious type.”
Low blow even for you Ghostie.
AJ shrugs, gaze flitting towards the bed again. “Things have changed. Now are you gonna tell us your grand plan? Or are we gonna keep talking until we wake up half of the student population?”
Drift’s eyes catch her, a silent question written all over her face: What are we going to do?
AJ just hopes that the little twitch her mouth does is enough to convey to Drift that she thinks she might know what’s coming.
It doesn’t mean she has to like how it plays out though.
Ghostie sighs dramatically, gesturing towards the bed. “You two can take the bed,” she says, glancing towards AJ and Drift. “It can fit the both of you easily, despite what you guys might think.”
AJ blinks.
That… that hadn’t been what she was expecting.
“Ghostie–” she starts, “you can’t just do that–”
“Yes I can,” Ghostie interrupts with a small frown. “It’s my dorm. I get the final say.”
Drift tilts her head at Ghostie with an unreadable expression written all over her face. “Are you always this self-sacrificial?”
Drift, dear god, no–
AJ barely has time to groan internally when Ghostie’s gaze snaps at Drift. “Are you always this dense?” She bites back.
“Just an observation,” Drift shrugs. She hooks her thumb towards the bed. “Where would you even sleep if AJ and I took the bed?”
AJ doesn’t want to think about the fact that Drift seems partially convinced on sleeping in Ghostie’s bed for the night at all.
She desperately needs a drink. Or two. Frankly, even three might do the trick.
By god how she misses her dorm.
Ghostie’s eyes flit towards a chest pushed to the side of the room. “Pyro lent me a mattress,” she explains, “it’s enough for one person to sleep in. I can take the floor for tonight.”
None of this seems right. It isn’t right. This isn’t what AJ had wanted when Ghostie had told her that she didn’t want to get in between her and Drift.
This isn’t simply avoiding the idea of AJ and Drift. This is Ghostie punishing herself for even being in the same room as Drift and her.
And AJ, with her own twisted, wretched heart, doesn’t know what to do about it.
“Ghostie,” AJ groans again, hoping to talk some sense back into her. “Can you just– ugh. Can’t you just listen to me for once?”
Ghostie’s eyes narrow at her ever so slightly.
Fine. AJ didn’t want to have to go here, not with Drift in the room, but she knows there isn’t a way Ghostie would be willing to have a conversation with her without having to pull this trick out.
“Look. You don’t have to do the entire ‘self-sacrificial, i-want-to-save-the-world’ act just because Drift and I are here,” she tells her. “So can you just listen to what I have to say for a minute? You were always good at doing that.”
Behind her, Drift stiffens.
Way to go AJ.
She’ll talk about this with her later – she will. AJ promises herself to make sure of it. This isn’t going to become a frequent thing. It’ll be something she’ll do once, and never again.
For Drift’s sake and for her own. And because she and Drift are together. Somewhat. Kind of. Most likely.
…Maybe she needs to have a talk with Drift on what their supposed label is.
By the looks of it, the muscles in Ghostie’s jaw are wound so tight AJ thinks the mage might just not dignify her with any response, until–
“Fine,” Ghostie concedes with a slight huff. “Have it your way.”
“You’re not sleeping on the floor,” AJ says immediately. “And for the record, none of us will be sleeping on the floor while this…situation is happening.”
Ghostie rolls her eyes. “Then what the hell do you propose, AJ? We all sleep in my bed together? Yeah right.” She shoots a glance at Drift. “I’m sure your Open Book here would be thrilled about that.”
AJ feels Drift bristle at the nickname. “That’s not my name.”
“That’s what AJ seems to like calling you,” Ghostie shoots back.
“But you’re not AJ– ugh,” Drift huffs out. “Listen. This obviously isn’t going to work if we can’t all come to an arrangement.”
“You think?” Ghostie’s voice is saccharine sweet. “What do you propose then, Drift?”
If Ghostie’s getting under Drift’s nerves, then Drift is doing one hell of a job of hiding it, because AJ can barely read the expression scrawled over her face. “Why don’t we just take turns sleeping on the floor?”
AJ stares at her. “Sorry. I think I misheard you – did you just say we should sleep on the floor? Right after I said none of us should be doing anything like that?”
“I said we’d take turns sleeping on the floor,” Drift corrects with a shake of her head. “And I just meant that we’d switch whoever gets to sleep on the mattress for the night. It’s the best case scenario for all of us right now. Unless anyone has any better ideas?”
She glances around the room, eyes meeting AJ and Ghostie’s respectively.
“...Guess not.”
Ghostie’s nose crinkles slightly as she takes in Drift’s proposal. “We’d all share my bed?”
“In pairs,” Drift nods, brows furrowing when she catches wind of the look plastered on Ghostie’s face. “What? Again, it’s the best case scenario for all parties involved. I don’t like it, but it’ll have to do.”
“I’m not sleeping with AJ,” Ghostie points out, frown deepening. “I don’t even think you would want me to sleep with AJ.”
A low snort escapes AJ’s throat. “Wow, Ghostie,” she says, “never thought I’d hear you say those words.”
In return, she receives identical stares that convey the same thing: shut the fuck up AJ.
Alright. Fair enough.
Drift just shrugs, gaze flitting from the bed and back to Ghostie. “We’re all in the same boat right now. Current, um, relationships past don’t matter much here. Neither do past ones, if that helps you feel any better.”
AJ tries to ignore the way her heart flutters when Drift says the words current relationships. She isn’t very good at it, and frankly, she realizes that she doesn’t care.
Not when Drift keeps stealing glances at AJ when she thinks she isn’t looking. Not when Drift confirms to Ghostie – implicitly or not – that she and AJ were together.
Even if the circumstances they were under weren’t the…best.
Ghostie, on the other hand, just gives Drift a half-hearted shrug. “Alright. I’ll take the floor for tonight.”
AJ opens her mouth to interject, but Drift beats her to it before she can even get a single word in. “Sure. Fine by me.”
What the fuck?
Ghostie moves to pull the mattress out of the chest, while AJ turns to look at Drift, mouth slightly ajar. “You just made Ghostie agree with you.”
“Technically I also agreed with her.”
“Yeah, but–” AJ can’t wrap her head around what had just happened. “She’s…you just don’t make someone like Ghostie do something like that.”
What she means to say is that she hasn’t seen Ghostie fold like that in a while. No. Scratch that. She hasn’t seen Ghostie fold like that to anyone but her.
She was usually too hard-headed to get any sense into her, and it took more than enough prodding and convincing from AJ to get the woman to come to even a semblance of an agreement with her.
But with Drift, Ghostie had done her usual song and dance of skirting around agreeing and bringing up her own ideas, sure. But she’d agreed in the end.
None of this makes sense.
Drift just raises a single brow at her. “What do you mean?”
“It’s…” AJ shifts in their place “I’ve just never seen Ghostie so quick to agree to something like that.”
“Ghostie is still in this room by the way,” Ghostie deadpans. “Do I need to remind you that we’re all in this dorm together, or does your brain just block everyone who isn’t Drift out, AJ?”
At least Drift has the decency to flush a delectable shade of red. “I– uh,” she stammers, gaze darting from AJ to Ghostie. “Sorry Ghostie.”
“Yeah,” AJ echoes, tone the furthest thing from apologetic. “Sorry Ghostie. Guess it’s hard not being the center of my world anymore, huh?”
Ghostie barks out another laugh. “Is that so?”
AJ gives her a smile – although it looks more like she’s baring teeth at the mage. “Maybe.”
In return, Ghostie doesn’t entertain her with a response. She finally pulls out the mattress from the chest and lays it down on the floor next to her bed, placing down a blanket and a pillow on top of the bedding.
AJ glances over at Drift, taking this as their cue to finally move towards Ghostie’s bed. She meets Drift’s eyes halfway, switching her gaze from the bed to Drift in hopes that she’d understand what she's getting at.
“You can stop with the eyefucking and just get on the bed,” Ghostie rolls her eyes at them. “It’s not boobytrapped or some shit.”
For the second time that night, Drift’s cheeks turn an incredible shade of red. “Right,” she says, moving towards the bed. “Uh– AJ?”
She glances over at AJ, beckoning her to come over. Gladly, AJ follows suit, plopping her backpack down on the bed.
It really isn’t that small. It looked small the first time AJ had set her eyes on it, but up close, it’s clearer that the bed is meant to fit at most two people. It’d be a tight fit for her and Drift tonight, but it shouldn’t be too terrible.
AJ hefts herself up on the bed, taking the left side. It shouldn’t be this weird, but it is. Because as much as she’d thought of moments like this with Drift – them, together, on a bed, and not a care in the world – she had never thought it’d be like this.
Down on the floor, Ghostie is already fiddling with the lantern hanging by the wall. She glances over at AJ and Drift, a question on the tip of her tongue.
“Can I–?”
Drift nods a little too quickly. “Yeah. Go for it.”
With a small shrug, Ghostie switches the lantern off, plunging the dorm into darkness.
Beside AJ, Drift slips under the blankets, her body flush against AJ’s own. The space between them isn’t that big, but it’s enough that they both don’t need to shift places to get comfortable.
The sheets rustle and as the seconds pass by, AJ feels Drift’s hand collide with her own, knuckles against knuckles.
A murmured out apology floats into the air, but even in the darkness, AJ can feel Drift’s hesitance.
“Drift?” She asks, voice quiet.
She doesn’t reply immediately, but Drift’s voice is low and almost a whisper when she does. “Yeah?”
“Just– here,” AJ pulls her hand out from under the blankets, waving at their shared mass of blankets, until she finally grasps Drift’s free hand.
Drift’s palm fits snugly against her own, like it was always meant to be there. Her fingers instantly wrap around AJ’s, nails digging slightly into the skin of her palm. She doesn’t mind it though, because it’s the grounding reminder that Drift is here, and real, and that she isn’t going anywhere.
“Better?” AJ can’t see Drift’s face in the darkness, but she hopes that the act can bring her at least some comfort.
“Way better,” Drift confirms, voice still barely above a whisper.
AJ thinks this might be it. That this might be how all of this ends, and that she’ll be able to drift off to sleep with Drift’s palm in her own, and not a single thing interrupting them, when–
“Are you guys done yet? Or are we still going to continue this song and dance, because some people do need to sleep.”
Oh. Right.
She kind of forgot the entire reason they were even sharing a bed in the first place.
AJ squeezes Drift’s palm a little tighter as she twists herself to glance over at Ghostie’s form down on the floor. “Relax, drama queen. The lights have been off for, like, three seconds max.”
Ghostie huffs out in response. It’s so undignified and so unlike her, that AJ thinks she might really need to go to sleep. “You’re interfering with my sleep schedule.”
“Sleep schedule?” AJ lets the disbelief roll down her tone. “You are still such a priss– ugh. Whatever. Can we all just agree to stop talking and go to sleep now?”
Ghostie’s reply is short and straight to the point. “Fine.”
A minute passes.
None of them dare to break the silence.
Then, it’s interrupted by Drift’s voice, a murmur against the dark: “Good night, AJ. Night Ghostie.”
AJ taps her fingers against the soft skin of Drift’s palm. “Good night, Open Book.”
Down on the floor, Ghostie is silent.
AJ doesn’t think Ghostie’s going to respond – why would she? She has no reason to, and as much as AJ hates to admit it, she gets it.
Which is why it comes off as a little surprise when Ghostie’s voice resonates within the room. “Good night Drift.”
A pause.
“Night… AJ.”
AJ tries not to bristle at the way Ghostie says her name too hurriedly and too fast. Like she doesn’t want to leave any trace of AJ against her skin.
It wouldn’t be the first time she’s done something like that.
Still, she chooses to humor Ghostie. “Goodnight Ghostie.”
With a small hum, AJ finally closes her eyes and lets herself drift off to a dreamless sleep.