the one with the bonfire. clue.

[🌱 kaitlin.]

» maverick «

Maverick watched Presley go with trained eyes, felt his whole body relax and slump as he muttered coward under his breath, Ally's hands running through the hair on the back of his head. Presley feels too human for him tonight, the ferocity of what Maverick feels for the other boy burning crimson in his chest. Walking out to the bonfire behind the house feels a lot less like a choice than it does a compulsion when Maverick pushes up from the couch, extricating himself from where Ally has slung her limbs across his body instead of the cushions.

He barely notices when she stands up after him, trailing behind and saying something that he's not listening to. It feels like he's staring into static, walking through the room as the people around him fade into nothingness. He stumbles into a door frame, shoulder slamming into the wood, but he just keeps on moving, furious and desperate to move somewhere else. Presley wants to walk away out the front, so Maverick finds the back door, pushes through it so hard there's a resounding slam that echoes along the wall it slams back against.

Down the stairs, towards the fire, he finds another beer and leans back against a tree. He stares at the fire but there's a mass of white fog in front of his face that slowly blurs away the rest of the world.

Behind his eyes, it's Presley meeting his gaze again across the crowded living room, turning on his heel and leaving. Over and over, it's all he can picture. Presley's shoulders, Presley walking away, Presley leaving. It's a particularly ironic projection when he considers it was Maverick leaving the first time. He takes a sip, warm beer hitting the back of his throat, sloshing in his stomach. Ally has her arms wrapped around his waist, fingers anchored through the black fabric of his belt loops. He goes to rub the heel of his hand into his eye socket before realizing his arm is halfway slung over her shoulder; somewhere between thinking he was walking away from her and now, she'd wriggled up under him and he'd let her.

"My head feels heavy," Maverick says and pulls her closer by accident, on instinct, trying to comfort himself and clear his thoughts. He tips his head until it's leaning on hers, feels it tip to the side. His thoughts are a disorganized mess, scattered pictures burning behind his eyes. His best friends dark mat of curls bouncing up and down as he spoke animatedly about the prank they were pulling; Naomi's shuttered eyes as she slept in his bed, scars ruining her pink mouth; Cleo digging her nails into his forearm at the opening assembly; his lips on Ally's neck as she breathed in his ear, making promises he never intended to keep. The worst thing he can think to say, his lips against Ally's ear now: "what ever made you think I was interested in you?"

He pulls back, head heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy; it tips, sloppy, but he pulls it upright before he loses his balance. One step back, two, he mentally takes them, knows that he should take more than that before he says anything else. His feet stay planted, weight against her hips.

He smiles then, and it's a weapon.

"Think I'd be an easy lay cause Frankie died?"

[sidney]

» clara «

Clara's head was filled with smoke. At least that's what it felt like. She giggled as her hand slipped inside Naomi's, her other arm locked with Presley's. The smell of the bonfire had reached the front yard and as soon as it had hit her nostrils, she'd shrieked excitedly and pulled the others along with her, not taking no for an answer. She hoped there was s'mores, or marshmallows at the very least. Her ass and thighs didn't need them; she needed to keep her weight down if she was going to start the rest of the season, but at the moment she didn't give a flying fuck.

Joint precariously placed between her lips, dangling, really, she presses her mouth together and inhales, but quickly realizes smoking and walking is quite the feat. Clara pauses, halting the three of them. "Hold up," smoke billows out between her parted lips, as she reaches to grab it then pass it to Presley. "Come here," she smirks, dropping Naomi's hand in favor of wrapping hers around the back of the girl's neck. Clara pulls her close, hovers her lips a few centimeters away, but keeps their eyes locked. Breath still held, she offers up instructions. "Inhale when I exhale, yeah?"

Clara breathes out, sharing the hit with her and finishes the exchange with a soft, as-gentle-as-possible kiss. Pulling away, she rests her forehead against Naomi's with a light 'mmm', then moves back in line with Presley. "Okay, friend," she says happily to the boy on her left, "girlfriend," Clara muses to the girl on her right, without even thinking really about the repercussions such a title might have. It would seem it only takes Clara Burns exactly four hits to lose her wits. Let's see what happens after a fifth. "Bonfire. Now, please!"

The three approach slowly, passing the joint back and forth between them, Clara always turning to offer Naomi a shotgunned hit if she wants. And for the thirty-five or so seconds it takes them to cross the yard, Clara feels at ease. That is, until she sees who's already sitting in front of the fire, with Ally on his lap and venom on his tongue. As per fucking usual. Snake, she thinks to herself. No, more like a scorpion, a familiar, twinned voice echoes back. She ignores it for now, but that's definitely a new voice in her head. My therapist will love that.

Think I'd be an easy lay cause Frankie died?

Clara blinks a few times, utterly disgusted by the lack of respect in Maverick's tone. Not that she's ever really been on the Ally team, in fact, she's rather hated her for the last several years for being just as bad as Cleo. But that didn't mean she deserved to be embarrassed - practically shit on in front of all her supposed friends. "Well, I'd say you're in rare form tonight, Mav, but--" she gestures around his entire frame with an abhorred look on her face, truly detesting him more and more the longer she has to be in his presence, "I guess asshole is your new look, right?"

Rolling her eyes so hard she's worried they might snap and pop right out of her skull, she takes another hit from the joint before leaning in to go and pass it to Maverick, as if everything is cool and she was just roasting him like any other dude. But then Clara flicks it into the fire at the last second without looking, keeping her eyes trained on the small-dick dipshit in front of her. "Has no one told you to shut the fuck up yet?" Extending an arm, she reaches up and pats her palm against the side of his face a few times. Hard against his cheek. Enough so there's a satisfying smack. "Allow me to be the first: shut the fuck up."

[calla]

G    R    A    D    Y

The time it takes to actually get out of the greenhouse could have been anywhere between ten seconds and ten hours. It’s dark and then light again and then the greenhouse is on fire. He’s standing in it (in front of it?) but it’s cold.

It's cold?

He's cold.

He's a lot of things.

He was in love with Maverick until he hated him and he was best friends with Naomi until he ended up hating her too. Looking at them now makes him want to rip his own eyes out, so he just doesn't. He still misses them so much it burns. Maybe that's why the fire's there. Maybe someone stabbed him and then doused the greenhouse, lit the thing up and then walked away.

Maybe he's on fire.

"Put it out." He demands of a shoulder, but half his face is pressed against it, so it doesn't really come out right.

He slumps further against the thing he thinks it's Zeke (It has to be Zeke. There's no one else here).

"Stop manhandling you." He says nonsensically. "I - me. S'is your fault."

Cleo laughs right in his ear.

He gets practically dragged across the grass, which is weird, because he can walk for himself. He can feel himself doing it. See? One foot in front of the other, trip over nothing, fall over something, he's fine. He doesn't even feel that drunk anymore.

Except he is still on fire. It licks all along his side, like there's a lighter pressed against his ribcage right where the knife slipped in, but his hands are too full to do anything about it. Every few steps he moves funny, something moves funny, and he has to stop and breathe through he teeth because he is on fire and no one is doing anything about it.

If his haughty behaviour was ever going to catch up to him, he expected it to be around exams or something. Maybe Cass would've finally stood up for himself and quit doing Grady's English. Maybe Cleo finally would've ditched him and found someone that let her eat their face off every period before lunch.

But sometimes you end up accidentally making out with someone you shouldn't and then someone takes a picture of it and then your life gets just a little more fucked up. Sometimes shit like that just happens. Sometimes your girlfriend who's not really your girlfriend gets murdered and eighty-six percent of the student body thinks that you're the one that did it.

If he's only got sixty seconds to come up with his last words, what's he going to use them for? An apology? He'd rather shit on Parker one last time. He'd rather try to save his ass one last time because if Stella ever found out about Benji, the way she found out about Scarlet, God the shit she did to Scarlet, Grady knows, he was there for the whole thing, laughed with her-

She'd dig Grady up and then stab him through the eye with a single, actually quite-sensible, high heel.

Vermillion crimson. He's turning hysterical.

His sweater's more red than green now. He can't get his hand to uncurl from the rim of the flower pot he's carried all the way from the greenhouse. His lungs all fill up with smoke and he's pretty sure that's a good thing because if he's full of smoke then it means there's no room for the blood to pool where it shouldn't.

It'll just stay where it is - on the flower pot, on Zeke's hands, on the grass. On his sweater.

“Stells,” He says, only slurs a little bit, stumbling into the firelight with Zeke, “M’gonna need the name of your-“ God, he’s going to throw up again, “- dry cleaner.”

[✌ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ]

b e n j i .

He's not the boy that he was at the beginning of the story.

There is a tenderness there beneath the blades of his shoulders, something that was absent before. Maybe it isn't that he's gained something though, maybe it's just that he's lost too much and his walls have grown brittle from it.

Benji Rowland wouldn't normally sit around the campfire with his friends and that had never been an issue before, no one even probably expected it of him at this point. His obligatory hello before slinking up to hide from the rest of the party in Stella's room was the most they could hope for. Besides, it wasn't really a party unless Benji Rowland was sitting on the balcony, watching it all unfold from above with a book in his hand.

Tonight, the party isn't at Stella's house and there's not really anywhere for him to hide except beneath her in a camp chair at the bonfire. Rare form. His arms are wrapped around her waist and his forehead rests against the back of her neck. He's had to have a drink just to make this work but two weak beers aren't enough to get him drunk, just pleasant enough to be around.

Smoke has already permeated Stella's hair, it mixes with her perfume, creating an entirely new scent and that's somehow exciting. After all this time, all of this knowing her and her habits, she still gives him new things to categorize about her. Strange how there was a time when he thought that wasn't possible anymore, nothing she could do could surprise him; a snake may shed its skin but it will always be the same old snake.

Maybe the beers have travelled into his brain.

His arms are clasped around Stella to keep her from slipping off somewhere, she being more inebriated than him. It's not that he cares where she goes, it's more that the last time he let his girlfriend out of his sight at a party, Benji never saw her again. He doesn't know if that's something he can take anymore.

Scarlet dead, Cleo too and part of him is dead with them.

He sees how people look at him, what they think that they see- everything he touches turns to ash.

Benji opens his mouth against the nape of Stella's neck and kisses the skin there. She's warm but she blocks the heat of the fire and his skin tingles in the cold night air. "Can we go soon?" he whispers softly, "they're all just arguing anyway."

Not their fault that every one of them is half-mad from grief but Benji doesn't know how to carry that. He spent so much of his childhood alone, he never got the practice. Stella doesn't speak but she places a hand over one of his and squeezes once in answer.

“Stells,” comes Grady's voice from beyond the light of the fire. Benji turns his head to watch his approach. Grady and him aren't on the best of terms but that's never bothered him. There's mixed history there, a kiss in the summer and the half-hearted offer of a second that Grady threw a shield up against.

And then there was sleeping with his girlfriend.

Cleo. Her name is a cold hand against the back of his neck. Benji straightens, sobering as Grady moves into the light, hanging off of the arm of Zeke, a flower pot in his arm. He's wasted," is Benni's first thought but then he sees the other boy's sweater, maroon in the dark when Grady arrived in evergreen.

Iron cuts through the smoke and Benni's nose is filled with the scent of Grady's blood. He goes still, eyes wide, jaw clenched in the dark. Instinctively, he pulls Stella closer, holding her tighter as if he can anchor himself that way. Images of Scarlet, of her face, her laugh and smile, flood his head, followed by the atrocity that ended her. He sees Cleo, barefoot and pale, stumbling up to him in the dark, collapsing in his arms.

And the grief is fresh again, a tidal wave over his head, pulling him down.

Someone is screaming maybe, someone else stands and bolts from the fire, as far as they can get. No one is equipped to deal with Grady bleeding out on the lawn because if none of the others did before, this attack cements it. They're all targets.

One by one, all of his friends are going to die and that knowledge is unbearable. Benji isn't afraid for his own mortality, he's faced death before, it's the concept of continual loss that is so painful to him.

Then Benji is standing, hands on Stella's shoulders, pressing her back down into the seat they just rose from. His thumb finds her lip briefly, fingers run across her cheek and then he's moving without premeditation. Benji, always so still and quiet, calm, oh so empty is helping Grady down to the ground, one hand pressed against the wound as if he can hold him together like that.

"You have to stop moving," he says, voice calmer than he feels, "You're losing blood." He might be an architect in a family of doctors but that doesn't make him useless. Benji lets go for a moment to tug the shirt off of his back. He balls it up and presses it firmly into the wound, ignoring the cry of pain it summons. "Grady, I mean it, you're going to die," he says, pressing Grady's own hand down over the fabric.

It's better like this, focusing on what he can fix instead of what he can't. It's easier, painless to hold two fingers against Grady's wrist to find his pulse and to count the beats between minutes.

He looks up, searching for a sober face amongst his friends. For once he doesn't have the capacity to hold back the grief in his tone, "We need to get him help or we're going to lose him too."