there's only right and wrong | {zoe} blitz!

[umber vivuus 12b 🥀 [dars]]

wade hailsham

i'll be fine without them
but all i do is write about them
how the hell did i
lose a friend

Officer Jenga was about as strict as Wade had expected. For the first month, he wasn't even allowed to leave the house. His illness, he'd learned, was lupus, which was an autoimmune disease that caused his immune system to attack his own organs and tissues, which explained the bouts of fatigue and the aches. As it happened, his lupus was still being used against him in the free world; he couldn't go to school until his health improved, and since he'd gone through so many episodes untreated, that was a process.

Really, it was just a way for him to mull over his choices. To keep him quiet just long enough for him to realize he'd picked the right option; he knew that. He wasn't ever the best at anything. Jack of all trades, they called him, which was their nice way of saying he wasn't special. And he wasn't. He hadn't ever been. He couldn't paint like Roan, or dance like Jane, or sing like Rose, or act like Jule, or tell a joke like Luke. He wasn't the fastest because Beck was, or the smartest because Gwen was, or the strongest because Raja was.

Hell, he'd always told himself that at least there was Bell, because he was too dumb to realize that she ran every show she was a part of until he saw it on camera.

But, despite the odds, Wade was a survivor. And over time, and with the help of summer break, Jenga started letting him out from time to time. Only for a couple hours, curfew set long before sunset, and he obliged because it was still the closest he'd ever gotten to freedom.

It was during one of these freedom walks when he'd first laid eyes on the girl, racing a class of others, neck and neck with a boy who was taller and darker than she. He gathered from their uniforms that they were training to become peacekeepers, and Wade took note of it, because maybe that meant there was a chance that they weren't corrupted yet, like Jenga was.

The next time he saw her was several weeks later, standing in line at a grocery store with someone who could only have been her brother from the way they talked. Wade wanted to speak to her then, but didn't. Couldn't. Too public.

And now, for the third time, he saw her, this time standing on the beach, staring at the horizon but keeping her distance from the shoreline. Alone. Isolated.

"I'm Wade," he babbled, realizing too late that just because he'd noticed her didn't mean she'd noticed him too. "Uh, I mean- Yeah. I'm- I am. Wade. Uh," he pointed away from himself with his thumb, "I keep watching you. Seeing you, jesus, not, like, watching you."

[✨ zozo.]

calypso leto

dust the dust up
off your shoulders
you’ll come round
and be h u m a n again

She was happy.

Happier than she had been in a long time. Calypso was still wicked in her ways, grinning with glee when she'd heard Perdita had parted from that god-awful rat Brentley Grey and deadly serious on beating Nico for first in class. But she had softened her sharp corners against his laughter - still splintered, but rounded. He gave her competition, fueled her thirst to win, and fuck it, he was fun to be around. 

Not that she'd admit that out loud. 

Her heart stung with betrayal, even after all this time. And the closer she strayed to Nico, the tighter she held her insecurities - petrified of having them ripped from her chest and displayed for the world to see. So she stood at the shore, staring down her worst enemy, curling her hands into fists to stop them from shaking.

The sea just stared back.

But she swore she heard it laugh.

When the stranger on the shore finished speaking, it was her turn to smile. "Like what you see?" Still sharp, still got it. Nico was teaching her first impressions meant everything and that not everything was about being the smartest, snarkiest, cleverest person in the room. 

So she pressed her lips together and unfolded her arms, playing with the ends of her scarf as he twitches nervously. God he looked like Arty, probably the same age. "Relax, Wade, I don't bite. Why exactly have you been watching me?"

Caly bit back a 'Want to take me out on a date?', teeth grazing her bottom lip. The waves brushed against the shore like a whispered giggle and she hoped it was laughing with her, not at her.

She doubted it.