Chapter Text
"---ust between you... and me. Does that sound good?"
Really? In public? Couldn't those people wait for a more private setting to start cheating on each-others partners or something? Yeah, sure, this is an adult place that only operates after 10, but don't people have any decency? Like... whatsoever?
Upon thinking on that for a little longer, wow, that sounds incredibly bad. Cheating on somebody isn't okay at all, actually. I might just break it up if this continues any...
...longer.
With her hands to his neck and her tail slowly swaying behind her, Michi stands before the wall to the bathroom entrances, perched on her toes, pressed flush to his chest and pushing her fingers into his hair. Aaron's hands are tentatively placed on the bare half of her waist, his lips slightly parted and his cheeks red, this soft look in his eyes that Aphmau has never seen him give to any other.
He shoves her off of him like nothing had happened, his brows cinching with what she hopes is confusion or anger. Garroth and Laurance choose that exact moment to walk out of the guys' bathroom, these unreadable expressions on her faces and something odd in their gaits that tells her that they saw the whole thing.
"What the fuck was that?" Aaron's features contort with a sneer, and he backs away as he sees the boys approach him, his palm pressed against the limestone of the wall. "Were you guys in on this too?"
Garroth and Laurance turn to each-other, worry evident in both of their gazes, and they quickly sputter two different things at once.
"Oh! We-- we uhh..." "No! We weren't, I swear!"
Aaron must have finally noticed her silently watching them from the corner of his eye--- pathetically sitting there with her knees locked, leaning against the sole water fountain low enough to knock against her waist--- because he reaches out, genuine surprise playing on his face. She can barely hear him over the rush of blood in her ears, her skull split by what feels like a lance.
"Aph!" He cries out, rushing towards her, "I swear, this really isn't what it looks like!"
Oh.
Head full of cotton, Aphmau stumbles backward, and some foolish part of her wishes for it to be him that's there to catch her inevitable fall.
"I think I need a drink."
"Are you sure you're okay, Aph?" Lucinda smiles through her concern, lightheartedly chuckling at her distraught expression. "You still haven't told me what freaked you out so much."
Aphmau opens her mouth to answer but can't seem to get anything out. The bartender comes around and steadily passes a shot-glass her way, filled to the brim with something she doesn't remember the name of, which she eagerly takes and tips through her lips. It burns as it crawls down her throat, the tang of the aftertaste agonizingly heavy on her tongue and thick and warm as it pools in her stomach, and it takes a conscious effort to not throw it up.
"O-oh, ri-ight," she coughs, pounding on her chest, "when I walked into the bathroom there was... like, a crap ton of tampons just... all over the floor. It was disgusting."
"Eugh, that's so gross!" Lucinda shakes her head, and she sets the absurdly tall cup supposedly full of a witch-made drink in her hands onto the bartop. "I don't get why people can't clean up after themselves sometimes. You'd think you'd only see this kind of stuff during high-school, but I guess not."
"That's what I thought too! There was blood absolutely everywhere," Aphmau mimics a gag, bringing a hand to her neck, sweeping her arm out in a grand gesture she can't really decipher herself. Her free hand mindlessly rolls around the glass, tapping the edge of it against the marble. She thinks about the way he was looking at her and has to hold back a real one. "Couldn't do it. I don't think I'm ever gonna forget what that looked like."
"I don't blame you girl!" She shakes her head. "I think I would drink myself to death after seeing something like that!"
Between you... and me.
"...yeah."
Her and Aaron weren't official. They've coexisted along-side each-other for so long, pining or not withstanding, that trying to label their relationship had become a tedious task as of recent years. They had always been FC and Shu, or Aaron and Aphmau, life-long best friends--- nothing more, even if bordering on it--- and that was that.
There were things he never let others see, though. Never let them touch or feel. No one really knew of his love for guitar, no one really knew of the story behind the small permanent scar that branched from his bottom lip, no one really knew of how those same lips felt against skin or their own, no one really knew of what his voice sounded like half-asleep--- light and ragged, unfurling from his lungs like smoke--- no one except her.
Their friends were nosy about it, about their lives behind his velvet curtains or her violet ones. They had always found some way to maneuver around their prying, and it was nice.
Imagining Michi in her place made the contents of her stomach roil.
She hadn't known him since they were kids, never talked over the phone for hours into the night for the sake of some dare they had inflicted on each-other, never broken windows or run from security agents for the sake of being together. She hadn't patched him up and healed him of the injuries he'd get after stupidly throwing himself into fist-fights during his teenage years because he needed to defend himself, nor did he when she'd stand up for him. She hadn't been serenaded in that Irene-forsaken music room at the crack of dusk, not whenever she couldn't sleep and needed to figure out how, impulsively dialing his number with the naive hope that he'd pick up didn't hesitate at all to try again, even after years of inexperience.
Michi didn't known Aaron like Aphmau--- no one did--- so what was it that Michi had that she didn't?
Was her body more lean? Were her lips fuller? Were her eyes prettier within day? Was her tolerance for everyday life in mundanity better? Did she cry less at emotional scenes during movies, or try harder to suck it up when she skinned her knees? Was she better than her at her only stupid talent, arranging words and structuring their sentences, or even her hobbies? Was she smarter than her?
Did he just like her more in-general, even though they had just met? What was it about her that had him squirm under her gaze like he did and flush that pretty rosy color, the one that had only appeared on his face during the nights they were alone and too close to each-other but too tired to care, or even want to kiss her?
Who the fuck did Michi think she was?
"Hey, Aph!" Katelyn runs up to the two of them with Nicole in tow, bracing her hands on her thighs as she recollects herself through a series of pants and a grunt as she stands up-right again. Aphmau can vaguely make out the disappointed face of Dante and the tired one of Travis from the outskirts of the arcade section, and she can only assume what had happened between them. "Me and Nicole are gonna head out, did you want a ride back to the house?"
Fuck no, I haven't had enough to drink yet, she almost mutters, blinking as she refocuses. "No, you guys go ahead,"---she coughs again, wet and deep from within her throat---"I'll probably catch one with one of the guys or something. Drive safe, okay?"
"You know it!" Nicole cheers from behind her, readjusting the sleeve of her sweatshirt and pulling it onto her wrist from her elbow.
"Wait, can I come with you guys too?" Lucinda pushes out of her barstool, swiping her thermos as she steps away in one smooth motion. "I have a few papers to skim through back at home about work 'n' stuff. They're due to the Council by tomorrow but it just... completely slipped my mind."
"Of course!" Katelyn smiles, weirdly sweet for someone of her demeanor. Her expression quickly contorts with pointedly placed suspicion. "Wait, no, don't tell me---"
"Last one there has to handle Kawaii~Chan's next failed shipping shrine!"
"HEY! Not fair! I live with her--- get back here! Lucinda, I will destroy you!"
All three of the girls run off with a haste that Aphmau hasn't seen since her sophomore year--- she can almost picture them in their athletic uniforms, careless under the blazing sun of the volleyball court--- Katelyn hot on her heels and Nicole lazily jogging behind them for the fun of tagging along.
The silence that trails after the sudden absence of Lucinda is a rope around her neck that she's much too exhausted to undo. She waves to the bartender as he passes by her spot at the bartop again, rapping her knuckles against its hard marmoreal surface.
"Two more shots of Patron shaken," she says, pressing two fingers to her left temple in an attempt to nurse her growing headache.
In reality, Aphmau was a lightweight, but nobody was there to care anymore. Nobody was there to tell her "Aph, you shouldn't have anymore, you're going to be sick" or "we really need to get you home" or "you'll regret that once you get a taste of a hangover tomorrow morning," despite how desperately she wishes there was.
She curses the stupid photo of her and Aaron tucked into her wallet as she pulls it out from her back pocket in advance, the doting smile on his face directed at her, even though she's looking to the camera. Imagining the dumb Michi girl in her place makes her skin crawl, and she thinks she hates her. She thinks about how she hates Michi as she digs her nails into her palms, and she thinks about how she had taken him away from her, as selfish and cruel of a thought as it felt.
She doesn't think when she rushes to down both of the shots into her mouth, nor does she think when she asks for the tab.
She cares and doesn't really want to, but also does at the same time. It's suffocating and confusing. She hasn't even remotely felt this way since her freshman year of college, murmurs of her body and her sex life akin to a track of shoddy ambiance in a horror game that's way too loud and keeps looping and looping throughout the whole play-through like some annoyingly persistent fly.
Whatever.
She's awoken in her own puddle of drool, sticky and clingy to her hair and the side of her face--- fuck, she'd need to shower later--- by a staff member that goes on and on about principle and the cost of overnight stays. She doesn't listen.
Aphmau sluggishly swings out of her stool, stretching her arms up, up, up until her wrists meet and she drops them with a satisfied sigh. She pats around her shorts' pockets, blinking the sleep out of her eyelids, and she groans as she realizes oh wait, I forgot my phone in Aaron's car. So Uber for her ride home is out of the question.
Her desperate, faithless prayers for good fortune are a pitiful attempt at a joke to Irene.
Ugh, she really should've accepted Katelyn's offer. Even if she would've regretted it later, at least that way she would've woken up on a damn pillow.
She swallows the sensation of her guts waiting to spill out of her mouth and takes a shaky step forward just to realize another thing, that thing being there is no way I'm going to be able to get home. Katelyn and KC are going to send out a search party and paste missing posters all over the block, and when she finally stumbles through the doorway, they and the guys are going to beat her senseless for worrying them so much. Aaron would...
Aaron wouldn't care, she bitterly thinks to herself, gnawing on her tongue. Not anymore.
Fuck, Aaron.
Aaron and his unworldly beautiful eyes, Aaron and his dumb big mouth, Aaron and his sweet smile and his absurd amount of patience and his lack of hesitation to strip himself of the clothes on his back just because she had dared to shiver.
Then there was Michi. Good Lord, she doesn't even want to try to think about Michi right now.
Aphmau steels herself and begins to walk to where she can only hope is the exit for this place, the lights hanging overhead twisting and morphing in a kaleidoscopic canvas of messy color, burning into her eyes like a brand. The music gets a little louder, her heartbeat a little faster, her knees just barely bending enough for her to get by.
I think I see the door? Irene, I don't know, I just want to get out of here---
She jerks forward, dropping her purse and staggering into a stiff kneel. The dull ache of where something hit her bicep hard pulses under the waves of nausea she has as she ducks, and she clutches at her side with a wince.
"Sorry," someone croaks as they pass by, the apology spoken seemingly thoughtlessly. Their voice is deep and close to ragged, like they hadn't spoken in years. She wonders where she's heard it before.
When she looks up, he's there, shaggy black hair and slim arched brows and thin lips and dark, pretty black eyes, gleaming with a lurid scarlet accent under the bright lights of the arcade. He rapidly blinks, and his mouth falls open as he registers that she's the one he shouldered.
The red of his sleeveless jacket is momentarily replaced by the navy of a Phoenix Drop High blazer, a bandaid over his left cheek and a scar across his nose-bridge, and for a precious sliver of a second, Aphmau thinks she's dreaming.
"Oh my Irene-- Aph!" Aaron drops to her side, strong arms wrapping around her like a vice. Being so beside herself with tequila-laced mania almost deludes her into believing there's something like genuine worry painted all over his face. "Holy shit, I've been looking for you everywhere, are you---"
"Aaron!"
Pathetically, she begins to cry. She bunches her hands in the fabric of his jacket and she weeps, wet and loud and snotty, splitting her head in two. She presses her head into his chest, and he pulls her closer. He buries his nose in the crown of her head and brings his hand up to her nape, brushing away her hair and pressing his thumb to her pulse point.
"Irene, I'm so glad you're okay," he breathlessly whispers, quiet and slow, meant for her ears and her ears only. "I don't-- I don't know what I'd do if---"
"Shouldn' you---" Aphmau sniffles, "shouldn' you be with-- with Michi righ' now, or-- or something?" The concept is foul, lingering in her mouth like nicotine, and she feels beyond awful for saying it. Fuck, she misses him so much, why is she pushing him away?
"What?" He chokes, his voice hoarse. "No, nonono no never! Why would I-- oh my Irene, oh Lord, oh fuck, no Aph, I..."
"I can'-- I can'-- I can' do this right now," she shakes her head, grappling with how hard it was to speak with each a scratchy throat and squeezing her eyes shut. She breathes in his scent of cut grass and charcoal and regrets ever trying to hold what happened against him. "I'm-- I'm drunk an' I'm a mess an' I'm-- I'm---"
"No, no, it's okay," Aaron shushes her through his own tears, "please, just rest, okay? Can you do that for me?"
"Please, don' leave me," she sobs, hugging him as tight as she can with her lax body, "please. I don' care if you love her more, please."
"Wh-- what? I'm-- I'm not going to do that." He shakily inhales. "not now, not ever, I-- I couldn't..."
"I miss you so fucking much!" She admits against the cloth in her face, and she bawls even harder. "I can' live withou' you, Aaron, I can't! It hurts-- fuck-- it hurts..."
He readjusts his hold on her, calloused fingers gently pressing into her waist, his words a sad murmur against her hair. "I missed you, too."
The grind of gravel against worn rubber slows to a stop as rough stones turn to concrete, the engine sputtering to a slow halt. Aphmau blearily feels around for the buckle of the seatbelt and pops it out of its socket by her thigh, her head thudding against the back of the seat behind her.
"Are-- are you okay?" She can see him turn to her with this overwhelmingly soft look in his eyes, his brows knit with his worry and his mouth slightly open. "...Aph?"
"'m gonna be honest with you, Aaron," she slurs, digging the heels of her palms into her eyelids with the childish hope it'll wear away the burn behind them. "Can' stop thinkin' about how you were lookin' at 'er. How you held each-other."
"I swear, this really isn't what it looks like!"
"Aph, I..." Aaron's voice cracks, so pained, so distressed it physically hurts. "I don't know how to explain to you what happened without sounding like a liar. I-- I don't. I promise you, though, that that really wasn't what you think it was."
She tiredly turns her head in this direction, weakly cracking her eyes open. She's never been able to see that well through water. "What was it, then? Wasn' no damn acciden', that's for sure."
When he doesn't respond, she annoyedly pushes herself out of the car, elbowing the door open with force she doesn't remember having. She slams it shut, bracing for the walk back home, and her phone vibrates in her pocket in that moment. She has to bite back a frustrated scream as she carelessly yanks it from its spot in her shorts and clicks on the notification without reading its contents.
It's a weirdly long series of texts from Garroth. Weirdly, because Garroth never types more than five words in one message. They had supposedly been sent two hours ago, but for some reason, never went through to her end until now.
Garroth Ro'Maeve
Hey Aphmau
I wanted to say that what happened at the arcade wasn't your fault. Or Aaron's
Before you start typing please let me explain what me and Laurance saw
Michi hadn't been Michi in that moment. She was you
I don't know how but I think it was the work of a potion. She looked and sounded exactly like you, the only difference between the both of you being the two inches of height she has on you
Aaron didn't know it was Michi. She was flirting with him and had gotten him against the wall by the time you walked in, which was exactly after the potion wore off
I already mentioned the situation to Lucinda. I don't know if she's said anything to you or if she's going to do anything but I thought you deserved to know. Just in case you don't believe Aaron himself when he tells you
Take care
Michi... and a potion.
Aphmau's hold on her phone tightens. She has to reread the messages three times before realizing that was something Garroth actually texted her, and she wasn't just imagining it.
"Is..." She peels away her gaze from her phone and finds the pleading expression of Aaron's at her side. She swallows the saliva lapping at her tongue and turns the screen towards him. "Is this true?"
After a few seconds, he nods, his eyes idly trailing to the ignition. "Yeah. Yeah, it-- it is. She was-- she pulled me away from the counter and complimented me, then started talking about how she wanted to kiss me. I told her we were in-public and that everything was sudden and then she pushed me against the wall."
"Did you wan' to kiss 'er? Or-- or me, I guess."
Aaron shyly turns back to her, the flush forming on his face faint in the dim light.
"...yeah."
She reaches up to him, a hand lightly cusping his nape, gently rubbing her thumb over the corner of his jaw. She watches his eyes flick down to her lips then back to her expression, watches as his own fall apart.
"You could've jus' said so," she drawls, "I would've run off with you. Not much differen' from our everyday lives, right?"
He thickly swallows, stammering, "I-- I, um. A-Aph, you're drunk, I don't..."
"You don' what, huh?" Aphmau's expression sours, an ugly, heavy weight clawing at her lungs, her heart. "Do you not wan' to anymore?"
"No, no, that's not it, it's just..."
Aaron's face--- his dumb, beautiful face, the same one that hasn't changed in Irene knows how long, the same one she got to see when others couldn't--- twists with what she assumes is guilt over something that hasn't even happened yet, the world's smallest voice pouring from his lips.
"I don't want to take advantage of you," he murmurs, his gaze softening under her own. "I don't want to be like the guys, I want-- I want you to want this, too, in the right mindset. For you to make the choice, knowing you won't regret it."
She leans closer, stretching her other hand towards him, and flashes him a lopsided smile. "I coul' never say no to you, even if sober."
"I love you, Aaron. Every single part of you. I have for"---hic---"a very long time."
His hands snake around her waist as their worlds collide, lips slotted perfectly and arms wrapped around one another, every dip and curvature in their bodies made with the other's in mind. She feels him move, his fingers splayed against the bare skin of her back beneath her sweatshirt, tracing the outline of her spine like ancient sculpture, and she shudders, sliding her own fingers into his hair, drunken bliss pooling in her gut.
Breath hot, ghosting her flesh, his mouth briefly pulls away just to find Aphmau's again, and she hums happily, tilting her head and leaning into his touch. Something warm and euphoric blooms where their forms meet, a slow and steady build-up of feelings she forgets was ever absent long enough for her miss.
"Fuck," he breathlessly groans as he pulls away, the sound a loud, incessant echo in her ears. There's one, two, three pants before she urges him closer again, and he lets her.