Chapter Text
It’s just past eight and I’m feeling young and reckless
The ribbon on my wrist says “do not open until Christmas”
Only liars, but we’re the best.
-Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued
It’s only when a melody twists its way into her cloudy dreams that Aradia Megido wakes. She lashes out blindly, slapping in the general direction of her nightstand until her hand finds contact and the rock song cuts off. She rolls over, burying her head under a pillow.
Somebody downstairs shouts in Japanese—a curse word, no doubt—and Aradia sighs, admitting defeat. She throws the pillow off and sits up, untamed curls hanging in her face and striping her vision with chestnut-brown strands. It smells like something’s burning downstairs.
“Ugh,” Aradia mutters articulately, and pulls herself to her feet with reluctance.
It’s too bright out for 6 AM. Sunlight pours through the gauzy drapes, and Aradia blinks and throws a hand over her eyes to block the light out. She still isn’t completely adjusted to the early-morning schedule of high school, even though it started two weeks ago.
Damara yells something else in Japanese, and Aradia catches the word “リトルビッチ”—“little bitch.” She sighs again and tugs her t-shirt over her head.
When she gets downstairs, fully dressed and her hair somewhat tamed, Damara is standing in the kitchen holding a burned plate of toast. The shards of a mug lie in a puddle of coffee around her feet.
“ヤギ性交行く,” Damara tells her.
Aradia rolls her eyes. “Where’s mom?”
She doesn’t expect a semi-literate answer, and she doesn’t get one. Damara spits something else in Japanese while Aradia pours what’s left in the coffee pot into a dirty mug. She already knows her mother’s activities are most likely something she doesn’t want to know about. Aradia sees her mother’s face about twice a month. She suspects she’s secretly a murderess or a thug, a sneaky, silent one who stabs out peoples’ eyes with those needles she always has stuck in her hair.
Damara bitches about her sex life while Aradia devours a bagel and swings her school bag over her shoulder. She can’t get out the door quick enough. Her sister never knows when to shut up.
A car horn blares at her the moment she sets foot outside the house, and she laughs loudly, finally able to be happy for the first time since she woke up that morning. “Shut up, I’m coming!” she yells as she runs towards the piece of crap her best friend calls his car.
Sollux is blaring some loud classic rock CD when Aradia slides into the passenger seat, the cracked vinyl rubbing against her tights-clad thighs. He looks over at her and grins. “Morning, aa.”
“Morning, Sollux,” Aradia says with a wide smile.
It’s one of the many, many advantages to having a best friend that lives literally next door to her—Aradia gets rides to and from school with Sollux every day. She’s begun to value them more and more as their lives have gotten busier and more complicated. Sollux has been her best friend for as long as she can remember.
“I heard Damara yelling from all the way out here,” comments Sollux as he puts his shitty 50-year-old car into drive. It groans loudly and the engine sputters before it rolls out onto the street.
Aradia rolls her eyes. “Yeah, she’s got problems. Don’t ask me what they are, though. I barely understand her half the time.”
“I don’t get your sister.” Sollux revs the engine and speeds off down the street. The car bumps unpleasantly, the ancient shocks worn out so much that Aradia jolts in her seat.
She laughs. “To be honest, neither do I.”
Outside her window, the main street of Cork Tree, Connecticut rolls by: the library, the coffee shop, the one-screen movie theater that shows old black and white reels on Thursday nights. It’s barely changed since the first time she saw it when she was three. That’s the way it is in her sleepy New England town—nothing ever changes. There’s one high school, one church, a supermarket, the movie theater and a handful of restaurants and stores, and a bunch of bored teenagers with cabin fever.
“How’s your junior year going?” Sollux asks.
Aradia pulls a face. “Alright. I’d probably stop going to school if it wasn’t for you and Tavros and everyone. You’re the only good part about this town.”
Sollux laughs, a right sound that cuts through the music. His hand lands on her knee reassuringly. “Right back at you, aa.”
Aradia can feel her face begin to heat up. Sparks shoot into her bloodstream and across her eyes. It’s not enough, but she’ll take what she can get.
The high school is a hulking prison of red brick and glass at the end of Main Street. It’s swarming with cars that gleam like shiny-shelled beetles in the full morning sunlight. Aradia’s walked the halls of that building for the past two years, and she detests it with all her heart.
“Another day in purgatory,” Sollux says. He smiles grimly.
“Another day closer to freedom,” Aradia reminds him.
Sollux chuckles. “That’s a better way to look at it, I guess.” He pulls into his parking spot and cuts the engine with a loud sputter. “Come on. We’ve got a chem quiz first period.”
The sunlight and Sollux’s mindless chatter fill Aradia with warmth. She wishes she could stay out here, but Sollux is right—she really does need to do well on this quiz. Chem is her bad subject. She spends one last moment in the autumn sunshine, knowing it’ll have to last her the rest of the day under fluorescent lighting, before delving into the crowd swarming the entrance to the school.
There’s a familiar figure at Aradia’s locker when she and Sollux walk in. She grins and runs over to the boy. “Tavros!”
Tavros grins and accepts her hug as best he can from his wheelchair. “Oh, hey, Aradia.”
“You weren’t online last night!” Aradia frowns. “Where were you? I thought we were going to go after that final boss in the FLARP campaign.”
He blushes bashfully. “Sorry. Uh, I was at the doctor’s. They’re trying to get prosthetics for, um, you know.” He gestures at his legs.
Aradia’s face lights up. “That’s fantastic, Tavros! I’m so happy for you!” She knows it’s been hard for him being bound to a wheelchair because of an accident that happened when he was young, especially since high school started, but she’d never love him any less for it.
He tells her more about it as she roots through her locker for her books—how they’re going to custom-build him metal legs, and if the experiments and tests go well, they might be able to function just like real legs. “Nobody could ever tell the difference,” he tells her proudly. Aradia shoots him a fond smile while Sollux claps him on the back.
She takes hold of the handles of his wheelchair and begins to navigate through the congested halls, Sollux right behind her. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your first class.”
*
Aradia’s pretty sure she failed the chem quiz, because she’d spent the time she was supposed to be studying the night before playing FLARP and chatting with Sollux. She’d never admit it, but she’s kind of glad. It means she’ll have an excuse to ask Sollux to help her with the unit. It’s not like she doesn’t spend almost all of her free time with him anyway, but studying with him makes her feel warm inside. She loves the way he leans over her, his chin propped on her shoulder and his arm slung casually around her to point at things on a page full of words she doesn’t understand. She spends more time studying the lines of Sollux’s hand than the textbook, but that doesn’t matter.
“That was easy,” Sollux says as soon as the bell rings. He stretches his long arms, his shoulder blades squeezing together. He nudges her. “How’d you do?”
“Terrible,” Aradia says brightly.
Her next subject is gym, and it’s one of the only classes that she doesn’t have with him. Consequently, it’s one of her least favorite classes. It would be even if he was in it, but the absence of Sollux’s deprecating comments about everyone else and secret, sparing smiles intended just for her make it even worse.
She’s not bad at P.E., per se, but she hates the people in the class. Namely, she doesn’t like Feferi Peixes and her loud, bubbly group of friends, who spend the class running around the track in their ridiculously tiny shorts and generally looking like Californian swimsuit models. Aradia spends the class sitting in the bleachers most days, because she couldn’t give two shits about gym class.
Today is no different. While Feferi dashes around the track, her thick black ponytail swishing, Aradia lies back on the burning metal and lets the sun soak her arms. Nobody bothers her, and that’s the way she likes it.
She’s sinking into a daydream before she even realizes it. It revolves around Sollux sneaking in through her window in the middle of the night and—
A shadow falls across Aradia’s warm sunlight, and she opens one eye, her face already scrunched into a scowl. Feferi Peixes stands above her in all her glory, hands on her hips and mouth curved into an exuberant grin.
“Hey! Aradia, right?” she says. “Why don’t you come run with us?”
“What do you want?” Aradia groans.
Her disapproving grimace does nothing to dissuade Feferi. “You just look so lonely lying over here all on your own! You should come run with us, it’s a lot of fun!”
“I’m sleeping,” Aradia protests.
Feferi giggles. Her laugh is high-pitched and grating. “Come on, it’s gym class! You can’t spend the whole time lying here!”
Aradia throws a hand over her face. “Try and stop me.”
She waits, but she can still feel Feferi’s shadow on her legs like a heavy, chilling blanket. Finally, she sits up with an elongated sigh and grits her teeth.
“What do you want, Feferi?”
Feferi sits down next to her, her tan legs swinging. “You’re friends with Sollux Captor, right?”
“Sollux?” Aradia asks incredulously. “What do you want with Sollux?”
The other girl waves her hand impatiently. “He helps me with homework sometimes. Are you his girlfriend?”
“What?” Aradia splutters.
She can feel her hands shaking against her thighs. Feferi laughs again. Aradia kind of wants to punch her. “Are you guys dating? I just see you together in the hallways all the time, and you seem close, so I—“
“No,” Aradia cuts her off. “No. No, we’re definitely not dating. He’s just my friend.”
Feferi’s expression changes for the first time since she came over, and now she’s staring at Aradia with confusion and more than a bit of hurt. Aradia realizes belatedly she probably said that with more venom than she needed to.
“Sorry,” she mumbles. “But no, Sollux doesn’t have a girlfriend.”
She wants to die.
Feferi blinks, and then chirps “Great! It was awesome talking to you!” and bounces away.
“Yeah, fuck you too,” Aradia mutters.
*
French and English are easy, but she barely makes it through precalc alive. She isn’t badat it; numbers just bore her to death. She spends the block doodling skulls in the margins of her notebook and flicking bits of paper at Sollux until he turns around and sticks his tongue out at her.
It’s the promise of lunch that pulls her through, and by the time the bell rings, she’s ready to dash out of the room and to the cafeteria as quickly as she can. Sollux takes his time, though. When she stops by his desk, he’s saying goodbye to, of all people, Feferi Peixes.
“See you tomorrow!” she exclaims with an unnaturally wide grin. Sollux smiles—actually smiles—back at her before turning to Aradia.
“What’d she want?” asks Aradia.
Sollux shoulders his backpack and turns towards the door. “Not much. I’m gonna start tutoring her in precalc tomorrow, though. She wanted to know when we’re meeting.”
“You’re tutoring her?” At least now Aradia knows why Feferi was so interested in Sollux, though she still doesn’t understand her strange line of questioning.
Sollux nods. “I know, it’s weird. I think the teacher recommended it. She’s nice, though, aa. You should try getting to know her. She’s really funny.”
“Yeah, great,” Aradia mutters. She wonders if Sollux would think it was funny if she punched Feferi’s stupid perfect face in the middle of the lunch room.
The cafeteria is crowded and loud like usual, but Sollux and Aradia navigate their way through the lunch line and to their normal table in the corner without too much difficulty. Vriska Serket doesn’t spare Aradia her daily catcall of “Hey, Megido, sacrifice any dead babies to Satan recently?” Aradia’s learned to ignore her by now. Vriska’s a bitch to just about everyone.
Their table is two-thirds empty, as usual, but four of the seats are taken up with familiar figures. As they near the table, Nepeta squeals with excitement and waves at them.
“Hiii!” she trills as they sit down. She’s perched on her seat as usual, her legs folded beneath her like a cat so her tiny figure is at eye level with the rest of them. Even so, she only comes up to the shoulder of the boy sitting next to her. That’s just because Equius is so big, though.
“Hush,” he tells Nepeta fondly. “There’s no need to grow so excited. You saw Aradia and Sollux yesterday.”
“It’s alright,” Aradia laughs. “Hey, Nepeta! What’s up? How’s Meulin?”
Nepeta grins, showing her strangely sharp little teeth. Her eyes slide into slits. “She’s purr-fect! Busy with boring college things, but good!”
Aradia giggles. College is something Damara hadn’t even thought about, much less something their mother would have paid for. Sometimes she envies Nepeta’s family. She, too, lives with only her mother, but Mrs. Leijon is a warm and loving woman, and Nepeta’s gorgeous sister Meulin is both smart and sweet. It’s nothing like the relationship she has with her own mother and Damara.
“She’s studying to be a veterinarian, right?” Sollux asks, his mouth full of pizza.
Nepeta nods. “I think so! Unless Kurloz tries to change her mind, of course…”
She shoots a furtive, anxious glance across the cafeteria to where Gamzee Makara, the brother of Meulin’s boyfriend Kurloz, sits. Kurloz had always creeped Aradia out the few times she’d met him, but Gamzee seemed fairly harmless. At least, he was pretty close friends with Tavros, and that was good enough for Aradia. Plus, anyone who sat with Jade Harley at lunch couldn’t be too bad.
A visible shudder runs down Nepeta’s spine, and Aradia quickly changes the topic. “What’s up, John? You’re quiet today.”
The sixth member of their table, John Egbert, looks up, his black hair messy as always and his cerulean eyes bright behind chunky glasses. “What?” he asks thickly.
Aradia clicks her tongue and smoothes down his hair. “Did you stay up too late again? You need sleep, you know.”
“I know, mom.” John bats her hand away but grins fondly all the same. “Yeah, I guess I was up a little too late. But I’m okay.”
He falls into silence again, his eyes focused on some point in the distance. A tiny, dreamy smile crosses his face.
Sollux groans loudly. “Dude, not her again.”
Aradia follows John’s line of sight to where it rests on a mop of brown hair atop a skinny, spiderlike body. Vriska Serket sits at the other end of the cafeteria, her back to them, but John watches her as if her shoulders are the most fascinating sight he’s ever seen.
“She doesn’t even notice,” he sighs despondently. “She never will.”
Aradia is hit with a sudden, overwhelming need to hug John. Because more than anyone else, she knows exactly how that feels—to know that you’re the last person they would ever think of romantically; and no matter how close you get, they’ll never see you.
“It’s Vriska Serket,” Sollux exclaims. “She’d rather rip your head off and eat your carcass than date you.”
“That’s a rather flawed assumption,” Equius interjects.
Sollux looks suddenly apologetic. “Oh, sorry, Eq. I forgot she was your neighbor.”
Equius smiles and shakes his head. “I simply meant to add that, judging from personal experience, she would probably rather drink your blood first.”
“Okay, okay!” John holds up his hands defensively. “We get it. I’m an idiot, Vriska’s a bitch. But really, she’s an amazing bitch…”
“And you’re an amazing idiot,” Sollux mutters darkly.
John lapses into silence, staring at Vriska’s table again, and Aradia’s gaze follows his. To her disgust, Feferi is sitting next to her, her shiny black hair bouncing as she bobs her head in excitement. As Aradia watches, the boy sitting next to her turns his head to look out at the full cafeteria. His gaze catches on Aradia’s.
Sollux nudges her gently. “Whatcha staring at, aa?”
The guy breaks his gaze and turns back to his own table, focusing his attention on Feferi once more. Aradia recognizes him, but she couldn’t say what his name was. It’s something pretentious and fancy, that’s all she can remember.
“Nothing,” she says. “I’m just tired.”
Sollux furrows his brow. His eyes are beautiful, brown and concerned behind his glasses. “Is something wrong?”
Yes, Aradia wants to say. Yes, I’m keeping the biggest secret of my life from my best friend and it physically hurts not to be able to tell you.
“No,” she says brightly, and turns back to her lunch.
*
Her favorite class is right after lunch. Sollux isn’t in it—in fact, none of her friends are—but it barely even matters. History is so fascinating to her that she doesn’t even notice their absence.
She slides into her seat well before the bell rings and pulls out her notebook, her pen poised at the top of a fresh page. A sense of relief washes over her. She’s made it this far through the school day, at least, and now she’s safe for another forty minutes.
Her desk jerks suddenly, and she looks up, startled. There’s an angry black slash across the page from where her pen had jolted. The nameless boy from Feferi’s table at lunch, his blond hair carefully styled and a scarf wrapped tightly around his neck, is passing by and laughing loudly at something another girl had said. There’s an obnoxious purple streak running through the front of his hair.
“Douche,” Aradia mutters. He doesn’t hear her, or else he doesn’t care.
The teacher breezes in moments before the bell, his hat tilted at an angle and his tie straightened as always. He sets down his coffee cup and barks “How many of you actually did your homework?”
A multitude of hands shoot up, Aradia’s included. It didn’t seem to satisfy the teacher, though, because he yells “Ampora!”
After he doesn’t get an answer, he rolls his eyes and snaps “Eridan, will you shut your mouth for one minute and pay attention?”
Eridan. That was his name. Sounds like a name for a douchebag, Aradia thinks as Eridan looks up and drawls “Yes, Diamonds?”
“That’s Mr. Droogs to you, Ampora,” the teacher growls. “I take it you were too good to do your homework again?”
Eridan shakes his head and smirks. “Sorry, Mr. Droogs. My dog ate it.”
The class bursts into laughter, and Eridan basks in the attention. Aradia doesn’t get why everyone’s so amused. It’s not like Eridan’s actually funny.
Mr. Droogs doesn’t think so, either, because he yells “Shut up, Ampora.”
The class falls silent. Droogs might seem like a crabby, informal teacher on the surface, but he gets scarily angry. He’s nice to Aradia, though, kind of like he’s taken her under his wing. Aradia thinks she’s the only student in the school who genuinely likes him.
“That’s better,” he says, glaring at Eridan. Eridan just stares back calmly, his violet gaze level and condescending. How stuck up can you get? “Now, if everyone can remember for a damn minute that we are in a place called history class…”
Aradia keeps her head down and scribbles while Eridan cackles away with his friend in the corner. She grits her teeth and soldiers on.
*
Sollux meets her outside of her last-period art class. Her hair is tied up in a sloppy bun, and her hands are smeared with multicolored paint. She blushes. She must look terrible.
“Lookin’ great,” Sollux laughs, and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Her heart beats its’ way into her throat.
He tells her about his classes that day as they make their way to his car: his gym class had sucked as usual, and all he’d done to pass the time was walk Tavros around the track in his wheelchair; English was boring and he hated the people in his class; history was okay, but he’d need her help with the chapter if he wanted to pass the unit; and tech and computer science was his favorite as always. Aradia’s content to listen to him ramble about their school’s bullshit. Hell, she’d probably listen to him recite the dictionary and never get bored.
“You need to get dropped off at work?” Sollux asks as he unlocks the car.
Aradia sighs and shoves her hair back from her forehead. “Yeah. Same as always.”
Whatever her mother does all day, it doesn’t bring in enough money for the necessities, and the concept of “work” is completely foreign to Damara, so Aradia’s usually the one who buys things like milk and toothpaste and laundry detergent for her family. Her mother covers the bills for the house, at least, but Aradia still got a job three years before she was legally supposed to. She was a mature thirteen-year-old. She knew there was no way she’d be able to afford to go to college if she didn’t do something for herself about it.
The Cherub Diner is a tiny, `50’s style diner on Main Street. Its’ owner, Calliope English, is probably the sweetest woman Aradia has ever met. She’d been born with extensive birthmarks and tissue scarring that deformed her face, but she never let it stop her—from running the diner and from being friends with everyone in town. The diner itself is kind of cheesy, though, she has to admit. Every time Aradia slips on the pink blouse and bubblegum-colored roller skates, she feels herself lose a bit of her soul.
Still, it isn’t bad. She gets tired roller skating around serving milkshakes six hours a day, of course, but the customers tip well and she’d never had any trouble. Calliope gave her time off whenever she needed it, which wasn’t often, and really, Aradia couldn’t ask for anything better in her town.
The diner is mostly empty when she pushes open the door. It’s before the after school rush really starts, so the only people there are Calliope behind the counter in the center and a few people scattered throughout the red vinyl booths. Calliope waves to her when Aradia comes in, smiling brightly.
“How was school, love?” she asks with a hint of a British accent.
“Alright,” Aradia answers, slinging her school bag onto a chair. “Long, boring. But everyone is good.”
Calliope grins, her kind eyes crinkling at the corners. “That’s good to hear. How’s Sollux? I haven’t seen him around in a while.”
“Busy,” Aradia sighs.
And so is the diner. When Aradia comes out after getting changed, the counter and the booths are filling up with loud, energetic teenagers that Aradia recognizes from school. With a long-suffering sigh, she laces up her roller skates and skates off towards the first table.
She’s dead on her feet by five o’clock when the door swings open once again and another group of chattering students bursts in. She glances up, shoving her bangs out of her face, to be caught in Eridan Ampora’s piercing violet gaze.
Oh, great.
Eridan doesn’t seem to recognize her, because he looks away after a moment. To her disgust, Aradia sees Feferi is next to him, her hand on his elbow and her mouth moving a mile a minute. There’s a gaggle of teens behind them—she recognizes the prim, sharp figure of Rose Lalonde, her blonde hair pushed back with a lavender headband, and her brother Dave. Kanaya Maryam is hanging off her other arm, looking perfect and haughty as always, and Vriska is lounging at the back boredly as if she’d rather be anywhere but where she is now.
Aradia turns away, hoping Calliope or another waiter can deal with them, but before she can escape Feferi calls “Aradia! Hey!”
She turns back slowly, gritting her teeth. “Hey, Feferi.”
Eridan smiles condescendingly. “Who’s your friend, Fef?” He speaks with a strange, wavy-sounding accent. It makes him sound even more stupid.
“I’m not her friend,” Aradia mutters, but Feferi speaks over her.
“This is Aradia Megido. I’m sure you’ve seen her around, right, Eridan?”
Vriska grins at her. Her face is sharp and without any trace of kindness. “Heeeeeeeey, Megido. What are you doing here?” She stretches the word “hey” out until it’s almost unrecognizable.
“I work here,” Aradia says shortly. “Let me find you a table.”
They leave her alone once she gets them seated at a booth in the farthest corner away from her. With any luck, another waiter will have the patience to deal with them, and she won’t have to endure Feferi’s stupidly gorgeous face or Eridan’s scornful grin or Vriska’s sharp, grating cackle any longer. Anyway, she’s only stuck here for the next…
Two and a half hours. Great.
*
When Aradia gets home after a twenty-minute town bus ride and a half-hour walk, all she wants to do is collapse on her bed and never wake up. But she’s got hours of homework left to do, so she forces herself to ingest whatever food is in the refrigerator and avoid Damara’s shouts and curses long enough to take a shower and hole herself up in her bedroom, safe from her mother’s rage-filled tirades whenever she gets home.
Her laptop dings with a new message as soon as she’s cracked open her chemistry textbook. She can see the flashing signature mustard-yellow font from her bed—Sollux. A grin spreads across her face of its’ own accord.
-- twinArmageddons [TA] began pestering apocalypseArisen [AA] at 22:13 –
TA: how wa2 work?
Aradia throws aside her textbook. It’s not like she’ll be able to concentrate, anyway.
AA: terrible as always
AA: n0thing different but i d0nt kn0w what else i expected
AA: y0ur new friend came in t0 visit
TA: my new friiend?
AA: feferi peixes
AA: she and her wh0le ent0urage
AA: eridan and r0se and kanaya and vriska and dave
AA: it was a pain in the ass
TA: oh yeah, must’ve been the 2tudent counciil meeting 2he was talkiing about
AA: since when is vriska serket 0n student c0uncil
TA: ii dunno what her deal ii2
TA: ii thiink 2he’2 ju2t there for ky
AA: well shes a bitch
AA: theyre all bitches
AA: except maybe dave hes funny
It’s true, Dave isn’t so bad. He’s not a jerk to her, for one; and he’s close with John, so he can’t be too bad. He was in her algebra class the year before, and he’s actually funny—not fake-funny like his idiot friends.
TA: cc’s not bad
AA: wh0s cc
TA: or ff ii gue22
TA: feferii
TA: iit’2 her chumhandle
TA: cuttlefii2hculler
Aradia physically feels her expression fall. What had been a grin seconds ago flatlines into a closed-lipped grimace. She pecks out her next words violently, her fingers attacking the keys like they were Feferi’s face.
AA: thats a dumb handle
AA: whats it even mean
TA: ii don’t know but ii think it’2 cute
She backspaces over the words “0f c0urse y0u d0” before her finger can land on the enter key.
AA: i like 0urs better
AA: matching chumhandles remember
TA: of cour2e ii do, how could ii forget?
They’d picked them out together when they were thirteen. They made their accounts together, of course. Back then, they did everything together. Apocalypse and Armageddons, partners in crime.
TA: and neiither of u2 ever changed our2, eiither
TA: that’2 pretty cool iif you a2k me
Aradia giggles. She can’t help it; sometimes Sollux is just so incredibly dorky and adorable that she has to.
AA: yeah
AA: it is
AA: ive g0t t0 get back t0 my h0mew0rk n0w ugh
AA: but ill see y0u t0m0rr0w
TA: briight and early, 2un2hiine
AA: haha yeah
TA: niight,aa
TA: <>
It’s just a stupid symbol they made up when they were younger. Two matching, corresponding halves, like they were. A diamond, because diamonds are unbreakable. They last forever. Aradia and Sollux still type it at each other whenever they say goodbye. Old habits die hard, she guesses.
AA: g00dnight s0llux
AA: <>
twinArmageddons [TA]
ceased trolling apocalypseArisen [AA]
at 22: 25
Aradia closes the laptop with a sigh. Then she slams her head down on top of it, her breaths coming fast and hard. There are tears pricking at the corners of her eyes and she doesn’t know where they came from or why they’re there.
That’s a lie. She absolutely does know.
It’s because it’s damn near impossible being in love with your best friend.