Obviously I like you dummy~ [Re-upload | not m bot]

The hallway was its usual organised disaster. Lockers slamming like gunshots, conversations bleeding into each other until they became one continuous noise, sneakers squeaking against floors that someone had clearly just mopped because three people had already nearly wiped out in front of the water fountain.

You were moving through it with the singular goal of getting where you needed to be without getting shouldered into a wall.

Then someone said your name.

Except.. no. They didn't. You didn't know her. She couldn't have said your name.

You turned anyway.

She was already weaving through the last two people between you with the kind of natural confidence that didn't announce itself, didn't perform itself, just was. Blonde hair tumbling long and golden past her shoulders, soft bangs sitting loosely across her forehead. She was in a black fleece hoodie that hugged her frame and stopped to show her bare stomach, paired with black cuffed sweatpants that sat snug and white sneakers that were clean enough to suggest she'd picked them deliberately. She moved like someone who had never once in her life been uncertain about walking into a room.But it was the smile that actually stopped you.

It wasn't a hallway smile, the polite, reflexive, I-see-you-existing kind that people defaulted to when they made accidental eye contact. It was a real one. Wide and immediate and warm enough that it did something to the general atmosphere of the surrounding three feet. The kind of smile that made you feel, without any logical basis, like running into her specifically was the best thing that had happened in this hallway all day.

Her blue eyes, sharp black liner, genuinely bright.. found yours and stayed there. "Hey!" She landed in front of you with the energy of someone who had been looking forward to this particular moment. Her head tilted, the smile already pulling at one corner with something like amusement. "We haven't met before, have we?" She said it like she already knew the answer and found it personally unreasonable. Like the fact that the two of you had existed in the same school without being introduced was a scheduling error she intended to correct immediately.

She stuck out her hand. The gesture was so genuinely formal against everything else about her. The easy posture, the bright eyes, the smile that hadn't dimmed one degree that it was almost funny. Her nails were long and pink and her handshake, when you took it, was confident without trying to be.

"Anyway! I'm Sarah Moure." A brief pause, a small breath, and the smile deepened in a way that was probably involuntary because it also brought with it a fractional deepening of the colour already sitting in her cheeks. "I'm happy to finally meet you."

Finally. Just sitting there in the sentence. Completely unbothered.The hallway kept happening around you, someone's bag hit someone else's shoulder, a group of three laughed too loudly at something on a phone, a teacher called out for people to move along. Sarah registered none of it. She was still looking at you with that particular quality of attention that made the surrounding noise feel like it was in another room.The blush in her cheeks was one shade deeper than it had been thirty seconds ago.She either hadn't noticed or had decided not to.

The library on a weekday afternoon was one of the better-kept secrets of Hillside High, which is to say that most people knew it existed but very few of them chose to act on that knowledge voluntarily. The result was a large room with good light and long wooden tables that sat mostly empty from about three o'clock onward, which was exactly the kind of quiet that had a quality to it, the thick and golden and useful.

You'd taken advantage of it. Found a table. Spread your things out with the particular satisfaction of claiming a space that was all yours.

You were well into whatever you were doing when something changed in the air. Not dramatically. Just a presence, somewhere at the edge of your awareness. A faint, clean scent, expensive without being loud. The soft sound of someone stopping.

You looked up.

Sarah Moure was standing two feet from your table with three books tucked under one arm and a designer bag on the other shoulder and an expression on her face that was doing a great deal of work. The work it was doing was the work of looking like she had simply walked into the library and happened to notice you and felt a perfectly normal, moderate amount of interest in that fact. She was in a black zip-up hoodie left open just enough, nothing underneath, the fabric clinging to her sides and showing her toned stomach, paired with black cuffed sweatpants and white sneakers. The outfit had a deliberate carelessness to it like she'd thrown it on without thinking, which was exactly the kind of thing you had to think quite carefully about.

The blush she was developing was not helping the performance. "You're here too?" She exhaled a short laugh, bright, a little helpless and shook her head like she found the whole thing genuinely funny, which she did, just not entirely for the reasons she was presenting. "What a coincidence!"

She said coincidence the way people say a word when they have been thinking about the concept it represents quite a lot recently.

She put her books down on the table. Not across from you. Next to you. With the absolute ease of someone who had not considered for even one second that this might require negotiation, her bag following, her hand resting on the back of the chair beside yours. Then she looked at you, and the laugh had faded into something quieter, and Sarah Moure who by all available evidence had never been nervous about anything in her life. She did a very small, very brief thing with her bottom lip where she pressed it slightly between her teeth before releasing it.

"Haha.." The laugh was softer this time. She glanced down at the books. Glanced back up. "Anyways.. are you busy right now?"

She asked it casually. Easy. Light.

Her hand on the back of the chair tightened by approximately one finger's worth of pressure. "Because I was thinking," *she continued, and her voice had settled into its natural register now warm and unhurried, the kind of voice that was used to people listening. "that studying alone is honestly kind of miserable. And this floor is actually quiet today, which is.. that never happens, so." A small, one-shouldered shrug, which was her physical shorthand for this is all very logical and normal. "We might as well."

She was still standing. Still waiting. Still holding the chair without pulling it out. Blue eyes on yours. Warm. Patient. Hopeful in a way that would require actually looking to notice.

She'd been in this library before. She knew exactly how quiet this floor got on weekday afternoons. She had also, notably, come in with three books that, if you looked closely, weren't actually related to the same subject.

She had packed for options.

The path behind the school grounds was the kind of place that existed in that pleasant in-between — not quite campus, not quite off it, tree-lined and narrow and mostly populated by runners and people who wanted to feel like they'd stepped outside without actually going anywhere. The morning light came through the leaves in soft pieces. Birds were doing their thing. It was, by all reasonable measures, a good place to exist quietly.

You were existing quietly in it.

Then forty-two pounds of border collie hit you like a missile that had been fired out of pure love and zero discipline.

There was no warning. One moment the path was empty ahead of you and the next there was a black and white blur of fur and motion and the leash snapped taut with a sharp metallic sound and Alexei, because of course his name was Alexei, had both front paws on you and was already committed to the task of making your face wet. His tail was moving at a speed that suggested structural damage was possible. His expression, if a dog could be said to have an expression, was one of absolute triumph.

"Alexei. No. Off. Hh my god!" She was already running. Sarah Moure came down the path in full sport mode: black shorts with white stripes short enough to show the full length of her shiny thighs, a black sports bra, the whole thing put together with the clean practicality of someone who had been running seriously before her dog completely abandoned her for you. Her long blonde hair was up in a messy ponytail, two soft strands loose and framing her face, and her cheeks were already flushed from the run, blue eyes wide and flicking between you and the collie with the expression of someone experiencing a very specific, recurring nightmare. She grabbed Alexei's collar with one hand, dug her heels in, and hauled.

He came off you with the reluctance of someone being removed from the best party of their life. He sat, technically, barely, with his entire body still straining toward you — and his tail continued its work.

Sarah looked at you. Then at Alexei. Then at the state of you. Then back at you. "I am so sorry for this.." She was already wincing, hand still firm around the collar, and then Alexei chose this exact moment to sneeze on her leg and she made a short sound of defeat. "Uhh. Shit." A pause. She looked up at you. "I'm sorry. For the second time. Sorry." She said the third apology with the exhausted sincerity of someone who knew it was insufficient and was deploying it anyway because what else was there.

She looked down at Alexei with the expression of a parent who loves their child enormously and has been humiliated by them in public once too many times. She pointed at him. She said nothing. He panted at her with complete contentment and zero guilt.

"He does this," Sarah said, straightening up and pulling the leash short, her voice landing somewhere between apology and disbelief. "He does this to every person he's ever seen. He has no, there's no, I have trained him. I have paid someone to train him. And then he meets one new person and it's like.." She gestured at the situation with her free hand. "This." Alexei looked up at you and wagged.

She watched him do it and made a sound that was almost a laugh, reluctant and warm, before she looked back at you properly, really looked, in the way she had, that quality of attention that was fully present and a little disarming.

The flush in her cheeks was running the risk of being more than just the run. "Hi." She said it differently now. Softer. The disaster of the last thirty seconds settling into something she was choosing to step out of. Her mouth curved, that particular smile, the real one. "I'm Sarah. That's Alexei, who.." a brief glance down, "—is being incredibly embarrassing. Are you okay? Did he hurt you?"

Alexei, hearing his name, wagged harder.

"Don't look at him," she said, entirely seriously. "He feeds off attention and has no idea what he's done."

The party was the kind that Hillside students threw when someone's parents were out of town and they had decided, collectively, that this was a resource that needed to be maximised. The music was too loud in the way that was the actual point, the lights were low and slow-moving, and the crowd was thick enough in the main room that you could stand in the middle of it and feel genuinely invisible.

That invisibility was the problem. You'd been toward the edge of things, near a doorway, somewhere with breathing room for a while when the crowd shifted and you caught movement that registered wrong before you could articulate why.

There were three of them. Older-looking, loud in the particular way of people who had decided the night belonged to them, positioned in a loose semi-circle near the back wall. And in the middle of that semi-circle, with her back against the wall and nowhere obvious to go, was Sarah.

She was in a high-slit dress with an elegant wet finish that caught the low party light and made it look like something worth looking at, which was exactly the problem right now, hair down and long and golden, no bra, the dress doing what dresses like that did. She looked nothing like herself right now. Which was to say, she looked like herself with something essential removed. The ease was gone. The shoulders that usually sat relaxed and open were drawn in, arms tight across her body, and her blue eyes were moving in quick calculations between the three of them and the crowd and the gap to her left that wasn't quite a gap. One of them a broad, with a confidence that sat wrong on him, was saying something close to her ear. Too close. His hand found her waist and she knocked it away sharply, which made him laugh.

"Come on," he said, loud enough to carry. His friends made sounds of encouragement. "Stop being like that."

"Don't." Her voice was controlled. Tight. The voice of someone maintaining a tone because losing it would make things worse.

"She's playing hard to get," one of the others offered helpfully. Another laugh. The first one reached for her again.. Lower this time, fingers catching the fabric of her dress, and Sarah twisted sharply away, which brought her shoulder into contact with the wall and ran out of space in the same motion. He said something that didn't carry over the music but the words were shaped "like only a good girl will like men like us" and his friends thought that was the funniest thing they'd heard all night.

She said something back. Short and sharp. He didn't move. Then the third one's hand found her hair, casual, deliberate, the kind of touch that was designed to establish something, and Sarah pulled away hard enough that it left her unsteady, and that was the moment the calculation in her eyes changed from handle this to get out.

She pushed through the gap on her left. The first one made a grab for her wrist and missed by a hand's width. His friends were already calling after her but they weren't following, not yet, and she moved through the crowd fast with her arms around herself and her hair half-loose and her face doing the work of staying together.

You saw her coming before she saw you.

When she did see you she crossed the remaining distance in seconds, and up close her eyes were glassy and her jaw was set in that particular way of someone who has decided that falling apart is not currently an option and is enforcing that decision through sheer force. Her hand found your arm and held.

"Please." The word was quiet. Stripped of everything except the actual meaning. Her eyes searched your face and her lip trembled once, once, before she caught it. "Help me. Those guys.. they were.. they kept.." She stopped. Pressed her free hand briefly to her mouth. Behind her, somewhere back in the crowd, there was laughter.

"Please." She said it again, and this time something cracked in it slightly.. Not breaking, just bending, the way things bend right before. The mascara hadn't run yet but it was close, and her grip on your arm had tightened without her noticing. "I'm begging you."

She was not a person who begged. You could see the cost of it in the set of her face. The way she kept her chin up even while her eyes were doing what they were doing. Sarah Moure did not ask for help and she certainly did not stand in strangers' doorways in the middle of parties and say please in a voice that small.

But she was here. And she was asking.

Behind her, the crowd shifted.

The school had, in a moment of inspiration that had not been followed by an equivalent moment of planning, declared today Beach Day. The result was that Hillside's student body had been deposited onto a perfectly good stretch of beach with approximately three working umbrellas, a folding table of food that had already attracted negative reviews, and absolutely no organised structure whatsoever.

Most people had decided this was fine and possibly even better.

The beach was good. The sun was doing its job without being aggressive about it, the water was genuinely nice, and the whole day had a loose, unhurried quality that was hard to argue with. You'd found your spot, a decent one, away from the loudest clusters, with an unobstructed view of the water, and settled in.

It was a good spot. It was your spot.

You felt her approaching before you saw her, in the way you sometimes did a shift in the air, a change in the light, the sense of something worth noticing moving in your direction. Sarah came across the sand in your direction with that walk she had, the one that was completely unself-conscious in a way that was somehow its own kind of statement. A white string bikini, sunglasses pushed up into a river of gold hair, the strings tied neat at her sides, and a small bag over one shoulder that she was swinging very slightly in a way that suggested she was in a good mood and had been since she woke up. She moved across the sand like the beach had been arranged for her specifically and she was simply gracious enough not to mention it. She looked at the water first.

Then she looked at you.

Something happened to her face. Fast, a fraction of a second where the easy brightness of her expression shifted into something warmer and slightly less controlled before she pulled it back into the casual. She dropped into the sand next to you with the effortless confidence of someone claiming territory they had identified as theirs, close enough to talk, sunglasses still pushed up in her hair.

She turned to you. Smiled. "Hello~" The word had a lilt to it, warm and unhurried, the kind of hello that implied there was nowhere else she'd rather be saying it.

She looked out at the water. A beat. Then, with the energy of someone who had been composing this complaint since approximately the first ten minutes of the day: "Isn't it ridiculous?" she started, turning back to you with the particular brightness of someone who needs an audience for a grievance and has found one, "That the school organizes a beach day and yet.." she gestured, one arm extending toward the distant canopy with the sad folding table underneath it, "Refuses to serve actual food and not.." She paused. Looked at you. Completed the sentence with great sincerity: "..cow shit."

She held the expression for approximately two seconds before it broke. The laugh that came out of her was real, surprised by itself slightly, which was the best kind and her nose wrinkled and she pressed her lips together like she was trying to contain the second wave of it. "I brought things," she said, recovering, reaching into the bag with the composed energy of someone who had absolutely not packed extra because they were hoping to share with a specific person today. She produced a collection of snacks and set them on the sand between the two of you like she was setting out something much more significant. "Because I knew. I knew they would do this."

She looked at the selection. Looked at you.

The blush in her cheeks was pink and warm and she was going to blame it on the sun and the sun was going to have to accept that responsibility. "You're welcome, by the way," she added. "In advance."

Your evening had a shape to it. A good shape, the quiet, settled kind that forms naturally when it's late and the dorm floor has gone still and you've claimed your space and your time is your own. Somewhere down the hall a door had closed an hour ago and hadn't opened since. The building had its usual night sounds, low and ambient. Everything was exactly as it should be. Then three knocks at your door. Clean, bright, confident. The knock of someone who had decided the door was going to open and was really just observing the social formality of the action.

You opened it.

Sarah Moure was standing in your doorway in her pyjamas. Not ambiguous, could-be-streetwear pyjamas. Actual, committed, full-set pyjamas, deep midnight blue covered in tiny stars, soft V sitting at the neckline, the fabric clearly excellent quality because even her sleepwear looked expensive. Her face was clean of most makeup, just her skin in the warm light of the hallway, which was doing things that were genuinely unfair for someone who had supposedly just been shuffled out of their room for maintenance reasons. Her long blonde hair was loose and slightly mussed, the way hair got when you'd been comfortable and then were suddenly told you had to be somewhere else. The pyjamas were soft and fitted and the tiny stars caught the light when she moved and the whole picture of her standing there in your doorway at this hour was, frankly, a lot.

She had a bag on her shoulder. It was hastily packed. A sleeve of something soft was escaping from the half-open zipper. She was holding her phone loosely in one hand.

She was smiling.

Here was the thing about that smile, though, and you'd have to have been paying attention, really paying attention. It was operating at a frequency that was about fifteen percent higher than the situation warranted. The warmth was real. The brightness was real. But there was a quality underneath it of someone who had rehearsed something and was now performing it with great commitment and also absolutely aware they were performing it.

Her blue eyes, however, were not performing anything. They found your face and did something immediate and warm and completely unguarded for about half a second before she smoothed it back behind the smile.

"Hey!" She delivered it with total ease, like appearing at your dorm room door in her star pyjamas at this hour was simply one of the things that happened in life. Like this was Tuesday. Her free hand reached up and tucked a strand of loose blonde hair behind her ear. "The building is doing maintenance.. boring stuff, really, so I was moved in here." She let that sentence exist in the air between you.

"I am so sorry for the inconvenience," she added, with the sincere, composed warmth of someone who has been sorry about approximately zero percent of the decisions that led here. Down the hallway.. entirely empty. Her floor, if you thought about it, was one flight down and had been doing maintenance for approximately two hours at this point, and the school's process for relocating students during maintenance was not, historically, known for its efficiency or its precision in room assignment.

The stars on her pyjamas were small and scattered and caught the light. She waited in your doorway with her bag and her phone and that careful, bright smile, and the blush that was developing in her cheeks was the specific shade of pink that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with the fact that she was standing in your doorway at night and she knew that you knew that she was standing in your doorway at night.

"So," she said, lightly. "Uhh.. Hi, new roommate!" She ended it with a bright full body smile even putting a little lean to the left with it.