title from idfc by blackbear.

Sometimes he misses when they were kids. Not because his childhood was exceptionally euphoric, but it was a simpler time. A time when they were just two kids, bathing in the midsummer sunshine on his porch, face and shorts sticky with ice cream as their bare knees brushed. Giggling over superheroes when they were no more than a fantastical role model to daydream over.

He misses the innocence of being eight, lying side by side in the backyard, blades of grass poking into his skin as they excitedly pointed out mythical shapes in the clouds, writing nonsensical stories with no ending and little plot. Being able to hold hands and bump knees under the protection of being playful boys, the boundaries between platonic and more not yet established.

Now they are older. Oliver shows it the most, his face sagging and eyes darkening into something private and dangerous that Kaz has learned to approach cautiously, if at all. Oliver tries not to let the despair rear its ugly head often, but his mask slips in the precious, quiet moments after especially harrowing missions or in the darkness of a movie night, nothing but artificial television light to distinguish his sullen face from the dark.

Kaz wants to reach out, to do more than a clap a hand on his back and say a witty one-liner, those rare moments fueling a desperate desire to make his friend genuinely happy, to cross the line from platonic to more. But it's unspoken territory between, the want to hold each other with a fierce intimacy that Kaz is no longer sure extends both ways. Instead, his emotions have yawned into a chasm that he stands at the edge of, looking into the untelling darkness below, alone.

This road block, unwavering and indestructible, has allowed a friendship to blossom in an unexpected place. On slow days, where the world isn't in need of saving and they break into their respective groups among themselves, Kaz watches, silent and envious, as Chase shows Oliver his newest invention, indulging the younger boy's ravenous interest in the genius's brilliant ideas.

He has no right to it, but jealousy licks his stomach with tongues made of flames, his watching as the two young men are bent over the desk, Chase's arm casually slung around Oliver's shoulder with an ignorant privilege that makes Kaz seethe.

Kaz starts spending a lot more time his room, even when the days are sunny and bright with the potential for innocence havoc to be done. The more honest part of him smugly tells him he's eager for his best friend to notice his lackluster attitude, but his stubborn, dominate part shoves this ugly truth way down until it can no longer be heard at the edge of the yawning chasm.

: : :

Attraction is a seductive creature, one with fangs and claws and a sleek fur coat that prowls in the darkest depths of your mind until it ready to strike. Skylar has felt it, idly slinking around her subconscious until it abruptly strikes, poisonous fangs sinking into her gelatinous thoughts until the venom has triumphantly blackened every sensible nerve in her possession.

Now she is tainted, her brain cloudy and her tongue a useless slab of muscle that awkwardly fumbles with words, her stomach nothing but a pit hoarding eccentric butterflies that are sent into a frenzied dance when she catches the scent of coconut shampoo.

Once, Skylar did not know who was more foolish - Kaz for being so blatantly in love with the person who could do the most damage to his entire being with just a few words - or Oliver, who remained completely unaware and continued to live on as if he wasn't slowly killing his best friend. Now she understands - attraction is a drug that chooses the person who could hurt you most to be the person who you love the most. It's a deadly, lethal game to play and as far as Skylar is concerned, there is no winners. Once the oblivious cloud shrouding the tower has evaporated, they will all lose, and a new word will have to invented to fit the awkward, cautious group of sudden strangers they will become in place of their team.

She keeps these probably outcomes in the front of mind, a constant reminder of all she has to lose if she allows herself to think about what it would be like - sharing a bed, waking up entangled together in the early sunshine of a beautiful morning next to a beautiful girl.

Sometimes, though, it's hard to be so abstinent, especially when Bree is eager to drag her into the deepest throes of Centium City's underage party scene, eager to explore the minor clubs and dance floors as a wild, adventurous duo.

There is an Kareoke Night at the most popular one, 20 Below, and Bree is dying to go and show Skylar the glory of watching teenagers stumble through songs from the 80s, nervous and tipsy on rum snuck in through lousily checked coat pockets and the piss warm Coke they serve at the bar. No one goes there for the drinks, anyway, they go with similar intentions to Bree's - to watch like hawks for the moment something Big happens: a fight, an embarrassing moment to be recorded and framed on the internet forever, something like that.

A little cruel, Skylar thinks, for Bree to be so hungry to appease her appetite on the humiliation of the people she's sworn to protect, but she understands - cruelty in a characteristic of normal teenage behavior, and the cost is a high one to pay for a night of normalcy. But not high enough for Bree not to pay it.

Bree dances around their room now, the loft still smelling like greasy burgers and fries they got from the burger joint down the street. She has something playing that makes her hips swing and stomach roll as she glides from the spread of makeup on the bed to where she has Skylar stationed on a desk chair.

"We won't live too long," Bree sings along now, low and quiet as she leans forward to brush red lipstick across Skylar's lips. She's close enough for her breath, warm and smelling like spearmint, to fan across Skylar's face. "So let's love for one song."

Her thumb brushes against Skylar's lower lip to erase a smudge of lipstick. She smiles as she does it, her gaze momentarily leaving the brunette's lips to stare into her eyes.

"You have such amazing eyelashes," Bree says enviously, breaking the moment. "You don't even need mascara."

She applies some anyways, carefully curling each set of eyelashes before leaning impossibly close than before. Skylar wonders dimly if she's still breathing as Bree edges her knee in between her legs as she swipes the mascara wand slow and surely across her lashes.

This is a different kind of cruelty. Skylar watches the other brunette replay the song on her phone before grabbing an eyeshadow palette, her body moving to the song as if it's set to naturally follow the rhythm of the song. This cruelty is the oblivious, heart-wrenching kind. Torture that is put upon the person who isn't fast enough to escape affection's acidic fangs, controlled by someone who has no idea what power they possess.

: : :

Chase approaches him on a particularly quiet night, evil and wrong-doers taking a night off as Kaz watches Bree pulled a pained Skylar out the door and into the night. He briefly wonders why Skylar has adopted to wearing that face around Bree so frequently and why he seems to be the only one noticing it, but quickly settles back into his regular self-pity routine

He sits on the couch, blankly staring at a cartoon he's cocooned himself into therapeutically watching when bouts of jealousy and longing become especially unbearable. A boat of leftover fries, still warm and marinating in their grease, sits abandoned on his lap.

Chase enters the room, bringing the smell of electrical smoke and motor grease with him. Kaz watches him out the corner of his eye; his sleeves around up to his elbows and sweat has killed the effects of his potent hair gel, making the usually stiff spikes of hair damp across his forehead and shades darker. If Kaz hadn't known that such a look was evidence of hours in mission command bent over his newest project, Oliver watching eagerly and handing him tools when requested, he would think Chase almost looked like an attractive, albeit nerdy, mechanic getting home from the shop. Oliver is probably frozen in his own puddle of drool now as Chase moves around the kitchen, tossing an apple in the air.

If he hadn't been infuriated that such idiotic behavior could be caused by him, Kaz would admit that Chase looks good - the nerdy greasemonkey is an air that put his stern, disapproving looks into the attractive light Oliver must have always seen him in.

Kaz angrily shoves a mouthful of cold fries into his mouth to keep from insanely starting an impromptu jealousy rant.

Chase lingers behind the couch, halfway between the hyper lift and kitchen as he take a loud bite of the apple.

"Hey, you okay, man?"

"Just peachy," Kaz spits out, stubbornly staring straight ahead; Shaggy and Scooby are holding each other in frightened embrace as they stand in front of a dark doorway punctuated by ominously glowing eyes.

"Bullshit," the other man intones, and propels himself onto the couch in a swift one-armed movement that just makes Kaz hate him more. "The real answer."

"It's nothing," Kaz insists. He stuffs a few more fries in his mouth to refrain from having to speak anymore weak excuses. Chase senses his diverting tactics, however, and rolls his eyes.

"I don't get you people," Chase huffs, flopping backward against the couch. "First Skylar and now you. Can't you just quit moping around and them out already?"

Every nerve in Kaz's body turns to ice, freezing over as he slowly looks at where Chase is mildly watching the screen, unimpressed.

"What did you just say?"

The other man reaches up to run a hand through his hair, messing it up even more as he irritably sighs. "You seem to forget that you're living with a bionic genius, who just so happens to be able to sensor and detect your emotions." A single eyebrow quirks up as he looks at him pointedly. "Your heart rate increases and your body temperature spikes whenever Oliver enters the room. I can also read off the chemo signals that go off when you look at him. They're the same ones that go off whenever Skylar looks at my sister, which is a different story entirely, but you get my point."

"That proves nothing," Kaz retorts, as if they were debating if it was going to rain tomorrow. As if entire heart hadn't been stripped in that single moment by a guy he spent so much energy into hating. As if it wasn't such a big fucking deal.

Chase snorts. "Fine, whatever. But I'm gonna be waiting to say I told you so when this ignore-it-until-it's-gone charade blows up in your face."

He lifts himself off the couch but Kaz doesn't move until he hears the whoosh of the hyper lift carrying him away, down toward where Oliver awaited.

: : :

20 Below is a glorified underground maze of rooms separated by beaded curtains and different neon light themes. The main room, the dancefloor and bar, has a black light floor that makes everyone's teeth and white clothes glow and casts weird technicolor shadows around the room. It's crowded, even for a Friday night, and Skylar feels Bree's hard work beginning to melt off as soon as she is pulled into the throng of sweaty people that sucks up whatever current of air conditioning that had been trying to circulate.

She can practically feel Bree's excitement vibrate against her wrist as the other girl whips her head to excitedly meet her gaze.

"Isn't this place amazing?" she says loudly to combat the roaring EDM that shakes the foundation of the building. It's so furious, accompanied by loud yells of euphoria and ecstasy that Skylar cannot believe the street isn't shaking along with the walls.

"Yeah," Skylar tries, but it's weak and swallowed by the commotion around them.

Bree fails to catch her lackluster response, however, as she looks around the room, taking in the DJ on the stage and the dancers near him, shimmying and grinding against each other that reeks of a desperate want of attention even from where they stand across the room. Skylar finds it sad, pitiful, even, but Bree looks entranced by them, her feet naturally beginning to gravitate toward the wave of teenagers that fumble around with the influence of spiked soda.

Skylar gratefully lets her go, pushing through the crowd until she comes to a large bubble of fresh air around the vacant bar. She plops onto a stool, head in her hands, already exhausted with the few minutes they've been there. Bree's wholehearted eagerness to thrive in such a loud, overwhelming horde of drunk teenagers is completely lost on her, but even she can admit it's fun to watch as Bree finds the rhythm of the music and begins to dance in a way that's all long legs and gyrating hips.

"Can I get you anything?" A tattooed girl with lovely blue hair stacks colorful glass cups behind the counter and follows her gaze with mature, understanding eyes.

"A Coke, please," Skylar requests, spinning in her seat to turn her back to the dance floor.

"That your girl out there?" She asks it casually, loud enough to be heard over the clink of ice pouring into the glass and the music. Nonetheless, the question alone is enough to knock the wind from Skylar's lungs, a verbal punch to the gut that nearly has her doubling over.

"What, no!" she denies, a little too loud and a lot too fast to be anything but guilty.

The girl, still smiling, soft and understanding - maternal, almost - sets her order down on the counter. She shrugs, then says, "But you want her to be," like it's a fact.

Skylar ducks her head to glower at the bubbles fizzing against the ice cubes in her drink, hot and embarrassed to have been read so easily by a total stranger.

"No," she mumbles, fetal and thin.

A hand patterned with bronze ink reaches out to sympathetically pat her folded arms. "It's alright, everyone has someone like that."

"Someone like what?"

"Someone that holds your entire universe in the palm of their hand without even knowing it."

Skylar looks up into a face that's marginally sadder than it had been before and softens considerably.

"What's your name?"

"Carmen." Carmen holds out a hand, a neon green dish towel slung over her shoulder. "And you are?"

"Skylar." They pump arms twice with friendly squeezes before dropping their arms. Carmen stares past her shoulder to the dance floor; Skylar takes a loud, noisy gulp of her soda, letting the fizzy bubbles erode her desire to go home.

The song chances to something a little more bubblegum, a bounce that actually had a groove to it that even Skylar can find. When she dares a look out to the dance floor most of the tipsy dancers have stumbled down the hallway of rooms or lean against the wall, watching the remaining people on the floor sway to the beat.

Bree has no longer made herself at home in front of the stage and now bounces on the tip of her toes as she talks with a trio of people Skylar squints to make out in the neon rays. Their faces are still fuzzy even with her added effort, but she can make out the way Bree's throat looks when she tosses her head back to laugh at something a guy with a buzzcut said. Skylar looks away before jealousy can meet the napping affection in her brain and make sparks.

"What do you do behind here?' Skylar asks Carmen. The bar is still woefully empty, only her occupying the leather bar stools as she nurses her quickly warming Coke.

Carmen shrugs, wiping down a nonexistent wet spot on the counter. "Watch people mostly."

"And that's fun for you?"

"Sometimes." She tilts her cobalt locks forward and a little to the right, to a couple that is so intimately wrapped around each other, moving so in tune with each other the music, it's hard, to think of them two separate beings. "Those two, though, are my favorite."

Skylar looks closely. It's two boys, one with olive skin and a head of curly chestnut locks, and another with short-cropped hair, a pale complexion, and a head of height on his partner. The taller one holds his partner close, arms snaked around the small of his back as they roll their bodies as one being. She's unsurprised by the leap of want that awakens in her gut at the sight of them, so pure and innocent and undeniably in love with just the presence of another. But instead of nursing it, allowing it the time to fester and become something ugly, she takes another big gulp of Coke to drown it out.

"Do they come here a lot?" she asks, mainly for a distraction.

"Often enough for me to know their names. Hugo and Ryan." Carmen sighs, long and wistful. "God, they have what we all want. Still in high school and it's like they've been married their entire lives, you know?"

Skylar keeps drinking until there's nothing left. Just beyond Hugo and Ryan's dancing forms she can make out Bree taking the hand of Buzzcut and following him into room, blackened with shadows beyond the beaded curtain.

She asks for another Coke and tries to keep from cracking the glass when she grips it in her hand.

She wants what they have enough for it to burn her to her core.

: : :

After the girls stumble in, tipsy and smelling like several different perfumes at once, the loft returns to the dead silence he awoke to revel in, wrapped in his quilt as he sits on the terrace, staring into the sky. It's hard to tell whether or not the sky is lit up with actual stars or just airplanes, the horizon blurring with the city lights still ablaze and the skyline freckled with cell phone towers and airplanes carrying tired toward home or somewhere new, or somewhere in between - a place they've been and liked enough to go back to.

Kaz wants to be one of them. Fast asleep in a coach seat while a movie plays and a stewardess clears his food tray, the world thousands of feet below him as he escapes to a destination far away from here and the room he shares with the two people he cannot stand to look at.

He wonders how Skylar does it. Bree always touching her - a hand on her arm, an arm casually slung across her shoulder, lithe hands braiding her hair. Doesn't each touch, or even the most innocent gaze, set her brain on fire? He remembers the days they spent in Mighty Med, Oliver standing close enough for Kaz to smell his generic shampoo and too-strong cologne as they examined a patient together - even the memory of such little space between them is enough to make his legs weak. Even worse, Kaz struggles to remember a time he wasn't this pathetic. In a way, he had always been falling for his best friend. Falling into the role of best friend; falling into the role of partners in crime; falling in love.

Pathetic.

"I knew I'd find you out here." His voice is soft and gentle, but Kaz jumps nonetheless, wrapping himself tighter in his blanket like it was a shield, protecting him from the outside world.

Oliver steps closer, tentatively standing near the edge of the chair Kaz occupies. "When we were little you'd always go to the roof and think, remember that?" He rubs his neck, eyes distant and glassy. "Sometimes you'd take me with you, but we wouldn't say anything. Just look at the sky and do nothing."

What happened to that, Kaz wants to ask, but Oliver's mere presence evaporates any chance of verbal communication, so he just nods and looks into the skyline, determined to maintain some ounce of dignity.

The silence stretches until neither of them can take, Oliver nervously perching himself beside Kaz. They aren't touching, but almost. Enough to make Kaz tense as he waits for the accidental brush of their knees or shoulders.

"Why do you do that?" Oliver asks, an injured voice that makes Kaz's ears want to shrivel in on themselves.

"Do what?" he manages, heart accelerating until it's flying, leaping through his chest and over the edge of the building.

"Flinch like I'm about to punch you." His chest in nothing but a bloody hole now, with edges made of ripped skin painted crimson and salty with the tears that he wants desperately to shed, but in anger or sadness he doesn't know.

"Did I do something?" Oliver presses, pained and teary as his body shifts, begging for eye contact. "Please, Kazzy, tell what I did wrong."

Nothing! You didn't fucking do anything! Can't you see that I'm the screwy one here, that I'm the sicko that chose to fall in love with the one person he can't risk losing?

The sound of the childhood nickname, lost and scared like when they snuck gory comic books from the comic book store, sends his flying heart plummeting to grotesque, ugly smack against the pavement, a still and gelatinous pile of useless muscle.

Kaz can't explain any of this. He doesn't have the words, doesn't have the names to call the kind of torture it is to turn and see his best friend with tear tracks running down his cheeks, his name written with each tear that collects on his chin and falls into his twisted hands.

So he kisses him.

Hard and fast, pressing their lips together with enough force to bruise. Oliver's face is wet and their nose bump in a way that hurts, but the throb feels good, punishing - he deserves it.

Kaz pulls away and retreats back into the defeated shell of unrequited love sickness he's been existing in for months now, and stands. Tightens his blanket around him until his knuckles are white and shaking. Oliver looks up at him, mouth raw and slack.

"That's why."

Then he leaves, his heart hundreds of feet below on the pavement, lying still.

: : :

Bree is a heavy, laughing weight in Skylar's arms as she runs them both home, away from the pulsing music and the beaded curtains of 20 Below. Hours seemed to have blurred together between Carmen's sympathetic talks and Bree's disappearance into one of the dark rooms, and the apartment is still with the dead of night time, still and dangerous.

Tipsy and careless, the giggling brunette spills herself onto Skylar's bed, clumsily kicking her shoes off and looking up at Skylar with a childish glint in her eyes.

"Mine!" she calls out softly, starfishing to solidify her claim on Skylar's bed.

The other brunette hovers in the middle of the room, trying very hard to remember that Bree has had a little more rum than Coke, and that anything that happened would be a lie and just another thing to leave dormant until it erupts later. An eruption she couldn't risk happening now, with a gorgeous drunk girl rolling across her bed and her dress slipping, exposing more milky skin as her bright, wild eyes peeked out from her sprawling hair.

"Come and take it!" Bree taunts in a sing-song tone. Her hands reach out in a grabby gesture, and cautiously, Skylar moves forward, thinking of the worst things - dirty laundry, a knife to the gut, feeling a bone break. Anything to keep Bree from becoming more and more attractive, anything to keep the feral creature from coming out to play.

With surprising strength, Bree reaches out to yank Skylar's nearest arm and pull her onto the bed. She tumbles forward until she is stomach down on the bed, threateningly close to Bree's face. Close enough to feel her breath come out in warm, alcoholic puffs against her mouth.

Something lingers in the other girl's eyes, a flicker of sobriety that eats its way through the drunken recklessness for a single moment before winking out like an extinguished candle light. What had she thought in that single clear moment? Skylar cannot help but wonder as Bree's eyes begin to flutter, her head slipping to rest against her collarbone. Did she think about how dangerously close they were now? Nothing but two dresses and underwear separating them?

Warm lips touch the bare skin of Skylar's exposed throat, a patch of skin not covered by the collar of her dress or the hair that's fallen from her stylish bun, instantly making the skin bubble, burned.

"Come and take it," Bree's voice sings in a sleepy mumble.

Skylar doesn't breathe for the rest of the night, the imprint of a warm mouth searing her into a perpetual alertness that lasts until the first signs of morning light.

: : :

Kaz remains a sleepless lump on his bed for the remainder of that night, and many nights after. Sometimes he listens to soothing sounds of Oliver's even breathing; sometimes he blankly stares at Chase's mannequin-esque figure in his capsule, his face thrown into an alien look by the blue glow emitting from the platform he stand on. Kaz thinks of everything and nothing all at once. Of the kiss, of the carefree child he used to be, sticky with popsicles and chocolate and sunscreen. He thinks of everything he's wrecked now.

The two them, formerly so inseparably close, a creature of their own creation, are now unrecognizable strangers. Just two days ago, on a stakeout mission two cities away at a waste dump allegedly being ransacked for radioactive power sources, they may have been coworkers - allies, even - but it was the same as working on a project with a stranger. A face you would see in the hallways and maybe remember their names, if you tried hard enough.

It was painful. It still sits in the gaping that exposes his insides, open and raw and still hurts to touch.

Everyone else must notice it, Kaz thinks dully now, roughly turning away from the wall to glare out into the darkness of the room. But he can't dig up the energy to care. The tension between him and Oliver is palpable that it seems to push the distance between them into a bigger, uncrossable canyon.

He closes his eyes and listens. Oliver's breathing is soft and slow, but now with the easiness of sleep. He's awake. They're both awake. But he doesn't move. Doesn't get up to sit next his best friend and talk about the latest comic book news he stalked their favorite sites for. He lost that privilege.

There's a long stretch where the rest of the world seems to fall away - the cars are no longer zooming by on the street and usually vulgar balcony shouters from the apartments around theirs have retired for the moment and it's just the two of them, awake while the city itself sleeps.

Kaz wonders if Oliver knows he's awake and they're just lying in bed, trying to fake each other out until someone really does fall asleep and leaves the other to contemplate the darkness.

Just when he thinks the tension of the night and the fatal mistake he made will weigh down until he's molded into the springs of his mattress with no chance of separation, Oliver makes a move. His bed makes soft creak as he removes his weight.

Kaz waits for the bedroom to open as he slips out of the room, but the creak of hinges fails to come. There is, however, the barely-there whisper of socked feet sliding against the wooden floorboards as Oliver makes his way across the room, lithe and graceful in a way his thin body allows him to be. Kaz always used to think Oliver could've been a dancer in a past life - he moved like he already knew the moves to a dance everyone else was still learning.

The footsteps stop at the edge of his bed. If Kaz opens his eyes, he'll find himself struggling to make out the shape of Oliver's legs as he stood just above Kaz's head.

"I would've said yes," Oliver whispers, soft and fragile like tissue paper.

Kaz takes a moment to respond, slowly filling his air with the cold of the night and the courage he desired to make it through this conversation with a better hold on his mind than he had on his heart.

"To what?" he asks.

Oliver breathes in a shuddering breath. It sounds like he's sucking in air while housing glass in his lungs, making Kaz's own chest ache in sympathy.

"To anything you asked of me that night."

Fingers play gently across the untamed tuft of hair that hangs in Kaz's eyes when it isn't gelled into submission. Slowly, he pries his eyes open; Oliver looks down at him with watery eyes that gleam in the dimness.

"Run away with you, steal you the world, stay on the terrace on that chair forever," Oliver continues with the same raw, unleashed pain. "Anything you wanted me to do and I would've done it without a second thought if it meant we went back to the way things used to be."

When the hand sliding through his hair slowly inched down to cup his cheek, Kaz licks his lip and struggles for something to say. The thought of who they used to be is foreign to him now - he thought the hope of them achieving any sense of normalcy between them had been so far gone that he abandoned the idea completely.

He missed the way they could sit together in the same room and have a conversation, talking and laughing and poking fun at each other. Watching a movie together and running commentary like sport announcers. Being able to accidentally brush up against each other without feeling like his entire body was set on fire.

It's too late for that. Selfishly, he wants more. He wants kisses and shirtless touching underneath a blanket and sleeping in the same bed, close and happy in the way they bravely were when they were kids. He wants hand holding and couch cuddling and everything that Bree coos about in the movies she watches. He wants it all.

"Stay here with me," is what comes out, raspy and low, a little more desperate than he intended, but saying it helps releasing the burning knot of nerves coiling in his stomach.

There's a brief moment of frozen time where neither of them do so much as breathe, too scared of shattering each other's resolve and melting away the privacy of the night, shedding a light on the issue of what this means for them. Kaz thinks that is for sure the moment that will send Oliver leaving, but time thaws and Oliver's fumbling to make his way underneath blanket, settling close enough for their legs to bump and his warm, stuttering breath to puff out against Kaz's nose.

"Now what?" Oliver whispers, their eyes meeting.

Kaz is thrown - every part of him is overwhelmed, each nerve tingling with electricity. He never thought that they would make it this far, and he has no clue how much further he can step without it shattering beneath him like ice.

"I don't know," he admits, "I didn't think we'd ever get this far."

Oliver continues to look at him, eyes scanning over his face before settling on his eyes, searching for something that Kaz doesn't know if he has.

When their lips meet this time, it's slow and uncertain. Their noses bump and their lips are chapped, but it feels more genuine than anything else Kaz has ever experienced, immature and laced with a brand of awkwardness that can only come from sincerity.

They stay there, bumping legs underneath the blanket as they kiss, until Oliver pulls away, eyes alluringly bright and alert. Kaz feels a loss in his stomach even though their chest irregularly moving with their pants are nearly brushing.

"We'll figure it out," Oliver says simply.

: : :

Skylar expects little change to the depressing routine she has developed over the weeks - continuing to follow Bree around in her quest for female adolescent normalcy, pushing her attraction farther and farther, deeper than she thought her mind was able to go.

But something changes. She can't decide if it's because of the drunk courage Bree experienced the night of their outing to 20 Below, or if it's been subconsciously engineered by the annoying displays of intimacy Kaz and Oliver have been displaying the past few days.

(Skylar would be happier for them, but it's hard to feel congratulatory for them when they are making an example of everything she wants to do with Bree while blocking the pantry, leaving her jealousy and hungry and desperate to get to the Sugar Flakes in the pantry behind Oliver's pinned form.)

Either way, Bree, now sober and showing no signs of remembrance or regret from her rum-induced affections, has become braver in a way that, if Skylar was a lot less smarter than she was, would make her elated. Instead, she feels nothing but wariness as Bree skips into their room, eyes sparkling as she announces she's found another hot spot to explore for the night.

"It's going to be amazing," the bionic brunette promises now, a manicured hand lingering on Skylar's shoulder seconds longer than usual.

This game continues throughout the makeup process - fingers that slyly caress the sides of her face as she sweeps Skylar's face into an elaborate braid; gentler touches as she tilts her head down or the side as she applies bronzer and blush.

If Skylar were a better person, she would have been able to say no. Scream at the top of her lungs that this wasn't fair - that Bree couldn't take advantage of Skylar's inner destruction for the sake of some experimentation - but she's weak. Getting weaker as Bree helps her zip up her dress, fingertips skimming her sides and the band of her bra in a way that lights her on fire and leaves a smoking trail.

Chase is sitting at the counter tinkering with something as they leave for the evening. His eyes meet Skylar's a little longer than normal as Bree latches onto her wrist and drags through the door - his eyes are dark with something that equally conveys how pathetic he thinks she is and how sympathetic he is. However insensitively, he understands that his sister casts a spell on people, and Skylar is no exception.

The club is across town in an abandoned office building. The first two floors of twenty have been turned into a graffitied stoner's paradise - a bar carved into the farthest wall, neon paint decorating the doorless stairway that leads to the second floor, which was illuminated with neon laser lights and people dancing erratically in glow in the dark jewelry from the street.

The bouncer doesn't even bother to card them, but the place reeks of alcohol - a far cry from the subtly that had thinly veiled the underage drinkers of 20 Below; although the bar offers soda products, Skylar feels a pang for the glasses of Coke she got that was accompanied by Carmen's sisterly advice and empathic eyes.

Bree is unbothered by the lesser quality of the club and drags Skylar deeper into the depths, her hand a vice grip on her wrist even as her head swivels back and forth she takes in the crowd. It's a much more raucous crowd that the clubs they usually scope out - people grinding against each other in time to the music, half-naked and covered in glowing body paint. The music is loud enough to make Skylar's teeth vibrate, but Bree looks unbothered and right at home as she turns around to face Skylar and loud exclaim, "Let's dance!"

Skylar's balance is vanquished by the sudden turn of events; she stumbles forward as Bree situates them in a rare clear spot on the dancefloor and keeps them together by settling her hands on a firm grip on Skylar's hips.

The bionic brunette is confident as she moves her hips to the music - slow, rhythmic thrusts to the beat of the music that sends heat shooting through Skylar's body and flaring at her core - but Skylar is unsure, unsteady and awkward on her feet. All her timeouts at the bar drinking soda have left her dumb with naivety, but Bree looks unbothered by this, instead tossing her hair and slinking her arms around Skylar's neck. Closer and closer until their chests are touching and the only thing distinguishing them from the erotically moving couples around them is the fact that they are both still fully clothed.

In between the milliseconds of time where the music is quiet enough for her thoughts to be heard, Skylar wonders how far Bree will toe over the line before she shatters the illusions she is so recklessly painting. She wonders if booze and the thumping bass will make Bree brave enough to kiss her; if she'll sneak out of her capsule late at night when Skylar is drowning in self-hatred and climb into her bed, making promises that she probably doesn't even know what they mean as her clever fingers slide down Skylar's stomach until they're pulling her pajama short aside and palming her experimentally.

She wonders when she'll say no. When she'll wanting it so fucking bad and starting rebuilding the self-respect she threw out the window months ago when attraction sunk its fangs into her brain and poisoned her entire body with its toxins.

Whenever that time comes, Skylar knows that she'll never say no now, on this night, as the music takes a breath and declines into something a little less crazed and Bree giggles, pretending that she's already tipsy enough though they just got her and her hands slip back down to Skylar's hips, brushing the skin of her thighs that isn't covered by this godforsaken dress as she blinks her big Bambi eyes at her through the pulsing lights, pseudo-innocence.

But, fuck it - it's too late for either of them to turn back now, for Skylar to say no, or for Bree to pretend that any of her game has any legitimate substance to it other than a hunter praticing shooting rounds on willing pray.

Skylar will herself be lost in the godawful music and the volcanic waves of heat that run through her body throughout the night the bolder Bree gets. She will get lost enough to think for just a brief moment that this could be real and she could be just another girl who won the attention of the girl she liked as they danced in clubs around Centium City like they were just normal and in love.

She's got nothing left to lose.

fin.